6/7/04 3:07 AM: I gotta wake my crazy butt up tomorrow and handle business, so lemme make this as short as I can ... damn my verbose blogging!

DEKSTASY: So I found this freeware called Dekstasy, which basically can turn any Mac running OS X into a DJ station. Instead of records, it uses MP3 files. It allows cross fading, tempo matching, and a buncha other cool stuff. I screwed with it for a while and was able to get a not-completely-crappy mix in a fairly short amount of time. The only problems are: hitting "play" on the track is on another "tab" (tabbed browsing, as in Safari and several web browsers) from the mixer, which means I gotta be fast; there is no way to listen to a track and cue it up while another is playing (which is like DJing with no headphones -- risky, but doable) since there's only one audio output, not one for "line out" and one for "phones" as on a traditional mixer; and the beat-per-minute analyzation doesn't always work, so I'd have to manually count beats on songs where the number isn't provided before, say, a show. Still, an interesting project, and since I'm so audio-concentrated now, useful as heck (I can record mixes, including my own music, heh).

GARAGEBAND: So I'm writing a song about pie. Mostly because I'm crazy. I spent some time Saturday working on the track, and I found two people (a teenager and a thirties-aged sister) who like booty shaking music (like Lil Jon). I had them help me tweak the track until they both reacted (i.e. started shaking) when they heard it. They called it a mix between Timbaland, Outkast and the Lil Jon flavor I'm reaching for. I'll take that. So now I gotta make a temporary "beat" track (which will just have a really basic arrangement) that I can write the song to. That's freakin' great. It will be called "The Pie Song."

Secondly, my dawg Dana (one of my very short list of acceptable white people, which she is endlessly tickled by) is probably one of the coolest people I know, and I told her I'm gonna sneak up behind her, beat her on the head, stick a syringe in her arm, drag out the "uncrazy" in her and spray it in the air. She's used this term in her regular life, even talking to a producer who's hooking her up with a record deal. We both thought it was funny how much stuff the other tells us we end up incorporating into conversations with random people in life. Tonight, after I got done working and checking out this show (tell you more about the show in a second) I told her she has to make a song called "Uncrazy," and I just decided I wanna help her make it happen, on my software. Mwahahahaha!

SOUP: I like to make soup, because it's the fastest thing I can cook in my toaster oven. However, I refuse to do dishes. So I buy these aluminum baking tins, cook soup in 'em, and toss 'em when I'm done. Probably wasteful. Tasty though. Dunno why that popped in the old brain. Ate a lot of soup during that canker sore thing. Mmm.

THE GIPPER MUST DIE: Ronald Reagan died on Saturday. I am happy about that. I've always hated him. With good reason. He didn't die fast enough. Right.

OLDER: Speaking of that canker sore thing, it's one of many new twists my thirties are introducing. I noticed that the skin around my eyes isn't as tight as it once was. I have moles and discolorations where once I was flawless. However, despite all of that, I am so much more beautiful now than I ever was before. It's strange. In the words of a Warren Ellis character, I am almost unspeakably beautiful. Bwahahahahaha.

FANTASY BASKETBALL: When I started ESPN's "Beat Bill Walton" Postseason promotion, I was more than 2300 points behind the NBA legend. As of the end of the conference finals, I was 609 points behind him, all in six weeks. Game one of the finals put me a hundred points closer (had I picked the Detroit coach to win I'd be doing even better). Even though I know the prize is lame, a Bill Walton throwback jersey, I still wanna kick his ass for my own evil purposes. It helps that he forgot to rotate his team several days, which allowed me to leapfrog ahead. Sucker.

JENNIFER LOPEZ' 3RD MARRIAGE: According to some sources, Jennifer Lopez quietly married singer Marc Anthony this week, five months after breaking up with Ben Affleck. This makes me tired. I have nothing intelligent to say about this. I defy you to find anyone who does.

THE COUNTRY MUSIC CODE OF SILENCE: I've talked about my singing sidekick Jon Lawson before, and one of the strangest things about him is his endless desire to sing country music. Part of me understands it as why I sing alt-rock -- it's relatively easy. Country is even easier and less ornamented than alt-rock, so for Jon's fairly limited (yet not unworthy) vocal talents, country music is a perfect fit. Problem is, listening to him singing these "contemporary" (i.e. coming out these days) country songs, I've discovered that country music artists sample as much as hip hop artists, they just won't own up to it. Jon sings three songs, "Real Good Man," "Watch The Wind Blow By" and "Paint Me a Birmingham" (I dunno who does 'em, you can get to Google if you really care). Anyway, these three songs bear alarming musical resemblances to "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder, "Easy" by the Commodores and "I Believe I Can Fly" by R. Kelly. Go ahead. Sing along, if you hear 'em (I do, a lot, they're favorites of his and we sing at the same spots most of the week). Now, I'm not against sampling -- now that I have Apple Loops SDK, my own music can have samples in it too. But I'll admit it. Most country music proponents (I'll admit Jon is not one) acts like the hip hop aesthetic is so uncreative and unacceptable. To which I'd reply, "You ain't got to lie, Craig." I will find the country music Puff Daddies and Wyclefs and expose them! I will!

CARMAGEDDON: There's a $2,100 check coming from Mercury Insurance for my car's damage. I've talked to two salvage companies about taking the car off my hands for maybe another grand. I'm gonna try to settle up with the first accident guy for as much money as I can get. Then, I'll drive my boss' truck (he's driving a fresh new Isuzu Axiom, I don't think he misses the truck) and buy me a new (to me) car. That's the size of that. My dawg Daniel is lending me his driveway to let the salvage companies come. I hope I can get all this done before the 2PM Tuesday movie screening I wanna go to.

DISCWORLD: I'll have, by mid-week, seven new karaoke CDs, including having "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" by Morrissey and "Suitelady" by Maxwell. This pleases me endlessly.

DERAILED: My new pal and karaoke singing buddy Piper dances on Soul Train. He admitted most of the women on the show are barely legal. He didn't explain why the music acts have been so lame in the last month (I tape it after Static Shock and Teen Titans on Saturdays). The Soul Train line is almost all that's worth watching, and it's less "learning new dances" and more "softcore porn." Like the Garfield movie, I believe the rails have been irreparably jumped, and we're plunging into the murky, frozen abyss on this one.

"... SKYSCRAPERS, AND EVERYTHING:" So I did this private party with my boss Pete Chinelli today, where he was basically ready to sing four hours of Sinatra songs. All I had to do was load and unload equipment, set up and tear down, and run the sound. Had the electricity worked right, this may not have been so bad. It seems some rich Middle Eastern family was sending a son to Columbia University, and they invited all their other rich friends over to celebrate. With an open bar. And a cappuchino machine. And fresh sushi. They were running so much power, that the juice for us kept cutting out (plus, somebody kept cutting off the power). So that was zany. Plus I had to drag a challenging bit through some rough patches of grass. We somehow made it thorugh, even going a half hour over, and I got $120. A lame amount of cash for my time, but I needed the cash. Seriously.

We drove so far out on San Vicente, it was weird. I didn't even know Brentwood went on that far. The endless opulence, the gated homes, the ridiculously well maintained streets. It sickened me. Living in the Jungles and hanging out in bars, I sometimes forget how much of a distance there is between me and the wealthy. Hopefully, they'll all die horribly as well. So that was that.

YOU POSER: Been fighting a download for about a week now. Haven't quite ... oh, never mind.

ROMANCE: Going fairly well, thanks for asking. No significant complaints.

Must. Sleep. Argh.