5:04 AM:

Note to self: The next time you go to a karaoke bar, pick something easier to sing than "Hell is for Children." Jeez.

Still, on the whole, it's been a nice night.

5:57 PM:

Ever wanted to rip a videocassette out of your VCR and hurl it against the wall?

Well, that's the way I'm feeling about now, except that the tape's a rental, so I can't really afford to commit violence against it, even if I had a wall suitable for throwing videocassettes against. Plus I still want to see the rest of it.

See, the problem isn't with the tape's content, as such. The movie in question is High Fidelity. I'm about halfway through it, and it's not bad so far, except for one problem: sound levels.

I don't care for loud noises. I am, in general, a very quiet tenant, this despite the fact that I nearly always have some sort of sound-emitting device on whenever I'm home and conscious, whether that be in the form of CDs, MP3s, radio, or TV. My point of view in general is that "just loud enough to hear clearly" is the optimal sound level, and I adjust the volume accordingly.

High Fidelity careens wildly between between very quiet talking and very loud yelling. So the narrator will be silently mumbling something about his former girlfriend, and I'll have to crank the volume up to 18 or so in order to catch what he's saying, and then suddenly he'll start yelling at top volume (with plenty of profanity that would shock my landlords if they could hear it, which, hopefully, they can't). So I quickly bump the volume down to a 8 or so, and then, moments later, it's back to quiet talking, and I need to turn the volume up again. Very frustrating, not to mention nerve-wracking. And not my idea of a fun time.

Today's much-needed invention, offered for somebody else to actually invent: a TV that allows you to set a minumum and maximum volume -- perhaps in decibels -- that'll adjust itself to keep whatever you're watching within the chosen parameters. Man, I could use one of those.