1:56 AM:

Karaoke update: Tonight was actually my second time going for karaoke in Boston. The first time was about a month ago, on the trip on which I found my apartment. It was a Sunday night, and the bar was dead. During the hour or so I was there past the starting time, I was the only one to sing anything ("Crocodile Rock," not that anybody cared). The bartender and karaoke guy both assured me that it was usually better than that, that it was an inexplicably slow night. And who knows, I may give it another try someday. Someday far off in the future. It does have the advantage of being within walking distance, provided that you like walking...

Anyway, I went to a much, much better place tonight, in Cambridge. Decent ambience, and the most comprehensive song list I've seen anywhere. I did "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," which went okay, and then a song I'd fantasized about performing but never expected to find anywhere: "One More Minute." This is probably the best of Weird Al's deadpan songs with dissonant lyrics, not to mention the song with his very best bad metaphor. ("I'm stranded all alone in the gas station of love / And I have to use the self-service pump.") Just a pleasure to sing, honestly.

The only aspect of the evening I particularly disliked was the necessity of watching the clock, so as to make the last train back to downtown. Possibly a working bicycle my size would help -- I've got one that's too big for me and needs a tire change, not that this helps me -- if it weren't for the alcohol units (tonight's count: two). Or possibly I'll keep shopping around to find a suitable place that's closer. Or possibly I'll stop complaining and learn to live with leaving by a quarter to midnight. Time will tell...

Well, okay, the other thing I wasn't thrilled with was my complete lack of interaction with anybody when I wasn't singing, but I still don't know what to do about that. I need a larger set of social skills; there's nothing in my upbringing that covers "striking up conversations with complete strangers in bars and/or cafes."

12:50 PM:

From my e-mail this morning:

I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected by the Graduate Admissions Committee to receive an administrative assistantship based on your outstanding academic merit. Our graduate assistantships are extremely competitive, and I commend you on this accomplishment!

I desperately need human contact. For purposes of this journal entry, phone calls, IMs, and signing up for membership at the local video store do not count as human contact. I've been in this city half a month, and the twenty minutes or so I spent speaking to a career counselor on Monday would be the only sustained conversation I've had with a human being since my brother drove off with the moving van.

I do have plans to see someone on Sunday evening, so, in the immortal words of Tim Rice, "At the end of the tunnel / There's a glimmer of light," but, I mean, look at me; I'm reduced to quoting lyrics from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when a simple declarative sentence would do just fine.

[sigh]

5:52 PM:

People on Metafilter like me! Or, at any rate, they like "Freemont Perot's" work, which amounts to the same thing. Whoo-hoo!

So I'm about halfway through watching The Birdcage, and the only reason why I haven't already switched it off in disgust is that a couple of friends told me that I really needed to see this film, and I pledged that I would do so. It had better get better, that's all I'm saying...

[fifteen minutes later]

Honestly, the only way I'm getting through this is by keeping most of my attention on the computer, rather than the TV set...

[fifteen minutes after that, gritting teeth heavily]

Only a half hour to go, only a half hour to go, I can get through this, come on...

[twenty-five minutes later]

Whew! Done! Thank goodness! I'll never have to watch that ever again!

God, that was crap.

12:40 PM:

Unless I've missed a cache of them somewhere (which is not outside the realm of possibility), all of my mass-market paperbacks have now been unpacked and shelved. Now I've just got to figure out how best to deal with the rest of the books. And records. And clothes. And other stuff. But progress is being made!

Having asked a couple of people and discovering that neither of them bothered clicking on the link in the ultra-concise second entry before last, I shall have to elaborate here.

Y'all are familiar with Poetry.Com, yes? The online form of the International Library of Poetry, one of the most notorious writing scams out there. You submit a poem to their contest, no matter how awful, they inform you that it's a finalist, that it'll be included in a book (a copy of which will be filed with the Library of Congress!), and that you can get a copy of this book for just fifty bucks. There's also a banquet and such, but you get the idea. Pamie had an entry about this some time back.

Anyway. Dave Barry, just before taking a vacation from his blog, decided to have a bit of fun with this:

So anyway, this blog was just thinking how interesting it would be if a whole bunch of people submitted poems that contained a certain key poetic phrase. To see how it might work, this blog submitted a poem under the pen name of "Freemont A. Harkins," entitled: "A Sad Day." Here's how it goes:

A Sad Day

i am sad, so very sad
the tears run down my nose
it was a happy day until
the dog ate mother's toes

You can see this poem at www.poetry.com, using the search engine to search for "Freemont Harkins." Wouldn't it be fun if a lot of people submitted poems using a Pen Name that began with "Freemont" and incorporating the phrase, "the dog ate mother's toes"? Then we all could search for poems written under the first name of "Freemont" -- currently, this blog is the only one -- and see how creative everybody was!

Or would that be wrong?

Tuesday This-or-That:

1. Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck?
   Bugs.
2. Tom or Jerry?
   Tom.
3. Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck?
   Yawn.
4. Rocky & Bullwinkle or Boris & Natasha?
   Neither. This is why remote controls were invented.
5. Road Runner or Wile E. Coyote?
   Wile E. Coyote.
6. Sylvester or Tweety?
   Tweety.
7. Popeye or Bluto?
   Popeye.
8. South Park or The Simpsons?
   These days, South Park, no question.
9. Jetsons or Flintstones?
   Flintstones.
10. And finally, the eternal question asked by all good Scooby-Doo fans: Velma or Daphne?
    Velma, of course.

11:46 PM:

Yeesh. Why did no one tell me (until today) that Deborah Gibson is one of the judges on American Juniors?

The question now is whether that'll be enough to get me to watch the show, which I've deliberately avoided until now. I dunno.

Brilliant.

("Freemont Perot")

I've finally changed my desktop wallpaper, for the first time in almost a year. I've been using Clive in a Box pretty much ever since Erin posted it. Before that, my wallpaper, used from the time I got this computer, was a picture of T'Pol. (There were brief periods of a day or so in which I tried replacing it with Salma Hayek or Christina Ricci, but those didn't work. Too distracting.)

Back on my old system, I used this nice purple feather pattern that had come with... some version of Windows, I forget which. Maybe NT 4.0. Anyway, I copied it over to every other system I used, before it ground to a halt here, as it looked washed out on my current monitor. Before that, I'd used a drawing of Buster Bunny.

Anyway, as of last night, my new wallpaper is a photo of Tina Fey. We'll see how long this lasts...

Reasonably boring set of answers to this week's Unconscious Mutterings:

1. Natalie::Cole
   
2. Concrete::Bricks
   
3. AIDS::SARS
   
4. Rubber hose::Water
   
5. Paper clip::Pencil
   
6. Route 66::Get your kicks
   
7. Summer camp::Swimming
   
8. Coin purse::Sow's ear
   
9. Orion::Group
   
10. Instigate::Conflict