April 30th, 2004 09:09 hours CST currently listening to: "Man Mountain" by Blue States.

Last entry for April. Chicago seems to have become beautiful overnight. The grass is greener, the trees are getting their leaves back and the flowers are starting to bloom. Granted, it's fucking cold today and it's very overcast with the possibility of thunderstorms today. But we had some super nice weather this week. It's nice having the windows open in the apartment. So far Stella has not attempted to take her claws to the window screens.

Went to Neo last night but I only danced once. Naturally it was with Hannah as she's my new favorite dance partner. Hell, I haven't had a dance partner since Kim, really. Man, I haven't seen her in months. Wtf. Anyway, we danced to Cities In Dust by Siouxsie and the Banshees. My favorite Siouxsie song. The rest of the night was a lot of loud talking and a bit of drinking. I actually wore a tie. I never wear ties.

I bought three games for my Xbox. Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and Ninja Gaiden. I have yet to play SC yet, but I'll get to it this weekend. Everything they've said about Ninja Gaiden is true. It's a beautiful games that's fast paced and it hands your ass to you on a silver platter in about 10 minutes. That game is fucking hard. Crimson Skies is wonderful! I'm having such a good time with this game and I can't wait to get on Xbox Live with it. I'm finding myself playing it every chance I get.

Not sure what's going on this weekend. Well, wait. Tonight Aric is taking me to some S&M thing at Vision. I kinda turned my nose up at it until he told me that people electrocute each other and at that point I decided that I couldn't miss this. I'm not into S&M to any stretch (nice pun, eh?), but I do like to watch this stuff. I'm reminded of the time I went to the Eroticon back in Bloomington and I grabbed that handful of condoms in the punch bowl by the entrance on my way out. I discovered later that they were Lifestyle's "Tuxedo" style condoms, which means they were black. I didn't look at it when I put it on and I looked down at one point (while having sex THANK YOU) and I freaked for a moment. "aarrgghhh!"

I'm really bummed that Hannah is moving back to her parents in the burbs. She's not gonna be that far away but already it's hampering my chances to hang out with her as she already had to cancel our plans to se The Punisher tomorrow night since that's the day she's moving. To compensate, I watched Wild Zero, which is the BEST b-movie I've seen lately. Japanese, rockabilly, rock soundtrack, Guitar Wolf (the entire band as well as the man himself), courtesy tits, hermaphrodite love, UFO's, god damn ZOMBIES, exploding heads and a motherfuckin Gibson SG that turns into a SWORD. This movie had it all. I seriously need my own copy of this. And so do you.

April 28th, 2004 09:00 hours CST currently listening to: "The Winefield Audition" by Blue States.

There's nothing like waking up at 4 AM to the sound of a vomiting cat. The main reason I wake up, besides the sound being super gross, is that I want to make sure she's not puking on something important. This time she came within inches of horking on my shoulder bag. I would have gone through the roof. I'm thinking of getting rid of the rug in my bedroom under my bed. This is the 4th time she's puked on it and I can't completely get the stains out. I know, like The Dude said, "The rug really tied the room together", but I really don't need it and it's so much easier to clean that mess up off the hardwood floors. But enough of that subject.

Mischa convinced me to go to the Empty Bottle last night. Maria drove us down there. I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't know any of the performers and I was in a weird mood due to the nap I'd had just before we left that made me feel like a zombie. But I got to chit-chat with some friends and Erika and Joee and I had some fun photo booth action. We planned all these elaborate shots where we would progressively get more naked, but it just didn't happen. I've decided that I'm going to cut down on my beer intake. Hard alcohol is fine, but the beer is going to get phased out. I've been to the gym twice this week already and I'm determined to lose some weight and get to my desired target weight. Right now I have 10 pounds to go.

Part of me is getting a bit tired of the socialite scene that I'm in right now. Don't get me wrong, I really like these people and I like feeling accepted and we do have fun, but it's becoming the same thing every time. We all meet up at bars to hear a few of them spin the same music over and over or there's some show we go to (like last night) that's with a bunch of electro-crap bands that I feel to be mediocre. I guess maybe last night was just something that set this feeling off. I paid a $12 cover charge and only watched a few songs of the headlining band. Though it was nice to catch up with Christian and see some people that I hadn't seen in a while. I guess maybe I'm falling back to my root habits of staying in with a few people, ordering pizzas and watching movies. Speaking of which, Mischa and I have yet to have a night of video gamming and pizza since he moved in next door. WTF.

April 26th, 2004 08:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Iodine" by airiel (project one).

The show on Friday night was fucking great. Things were a bit hectic in the beginning, as there was a hardcore show going on before ours and there was little to no parking to be found, but that's normal for Wriggleyville. The place was a sauna thanks to all the kids from the previous show. We rushed to setup and were ready to go with enough time to grab a beer and for Adam to clock his head on a pipe in the basement. Several of my coworkers showed up as well as some people that I did not expect and was delighted to see. We had a great crowd! I couldn't tell how many people were there when we debuted "World Cup" at the start of our set, but Adam told me to look up after the 2nd songs and my eyes went wide at the amount of people in the audience. Many thanks to David from the Layaways for letting me know that we were opening and not closing. That saved us, I think. Both "World Cup" and "Cinnamon" went off without a hitch. We met some new people and just had a great time. I managed to shove the merch list, email list and the bag of buttons into my pedal board and then immediately forget that, so I was running around telling people that the buttons had been stolen. Duh. Oh well, at least I found them. I found a pad of paper back at the merch desk and pulled out two pieces to use as a merch and email list. I realized later that the backs of these pages had info from the Low Flying Owls on them. Wooooops. Low Flying Owls were good, but oh my god they're trying to be BRMC way too much. Granted, airiel sounds like a lot of bands, but if your gonna mimic a band, at least do one that's over 5 years old at least.

I slept in on Saturday and cleaned up my place. My uncle Phil was in town for a SCUBA convention and he came over around 6:00. I took him to the Twisted Spoke over on Ogden and Grand. I don't think I'll be hitting the new one in Wriggleyville at ALL during Cubs season. Anyway, we had some burgers and beers and I tried Jalapeño Poppers for the first time and those things are damn good. We came back to my place and watched Kill Bill vol 1. Then we walked over to Small Bar and had a few drinks that lead to shots. When we got back, I showed him the Happy Tree Friends DVD's that Deb had bought me and Phil laughed to the point of almost passing out.

The Next morning I took him to Wishbone and I gorged on pancakes. I hadn't done that in a long time. He took off for Wisconsin and I slept for another 2 hours. I decided that I needed to see Kill Bill vol 2 and since we cancelled band practice, this night was a perfect chance. I couldn't get anyone to go with me, so I just went solo. This movie was fucking awesome. I know a lot of people didn't like vol 2 as much as vol 1, and I can understand why, but I still think this was excellent. The tension at the beginning when Bill shows up at the church is unbelievable. Sid Haig was in this movie but for a scarce 7 seconds. But this movie did lack the witty action and excitement of all the Japanese Yakuza butt kicking, but I think the bitter hatred that flowed throughout this one gave it its own unique flavor. Daryl Hannah still creeps me out.

April 21st, 2004 12:00 hours CST currently listening to: "Try All You Want" by Electronic.

The chick who moved into the apartment on the second floor of my building below Mischa dates guys who don't wear deodorant.

April 19th, 2004 09:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Ladybird" by Beaumont.

Battered, bruised and torn. My body has been destroyed. Well, mostly just my legs. Somehow during paintball on Saturday I managed to strain the living hell out of both my legs. I've never been this sore before and I had some serious difficulty getting down the steps of my building and up the steps of the train stop at Monroe. But beyond that, it was a ton of fun.

Friday night was pretty mellow. The week had been complete hell and I needed a nap, so I took one the moment I got home. I cleaned up and picked Hope up on my scooter. She had never been on the back of any two wheeled vehicle before and she was pretty scared. In fact she nervously yelled "slow down slow down!" before I was even in 2nd gear. She relaxed after a while though. We had dinner at the Green Ginger, which is this great pan-Asian restaurant on Division right by Damen. The valet from the neighboring restaurant was kind enough to let me park my Vespa in their car lot. We talked about relationships most of the night and I had this crazy chicken dish that I later described as "donut-fried chicken". I'm not kidding. That's what it tasted like. I managed to eat half of it in fear that consuming any more would cause a heart attack. When we pulled out of the lot, we passed 4 other restaurants that had outdoor seating and I said to Hope "you realize what we just did? we just because them envy of 150 people". Everyone needs to own a scooter. Maria, Meredith, Skip and Heather are apparently considering getting scooters and I'm all for it. Mischa and I need riding partners. People are gonna start thinking we're..... funny, or something.

I dropped Hope off so she could get her car and I went over to Lava Lounge. I chatted with Ben (Mod Ben) for a while about scooter this-and-that's. Hannah showed up as well as Andrea and Miguel. I didn't stay very long. It had been a long week and I was still exhausted. Plus, I had to be up early for PAINTBALL.

DJ loaned me a ton of gear. I had an air force flight suit, an ammo belt that held 6 ammo clips as well as an extra CO2 tank, a muzzle cleaner and a black face mask. I was set. Oh, I also had knee pads. Two of Mischa's coworkers showed up promptly at 7:30 and we took off. I drank one of Mischa's "sparks" which is an energy drink that has alcohol in it. It's like drinking concentrated cough syrup, mixed with smarties, mixed with ass. It's really gross but the taste kind of goes away the more you drink it. It also unfortunately dyes your lips and teeth a revolting color of radioactive yellow. We pulled into the Challenge Park Extreme ("EXTREEEEEEEEM!!") right in front of Aric, who had Brian and Yenta with him. This place was 10 times more professional than the last place I played Paintball. The ref's were all pretty cool and they were also very patient. 4/5 of our group were Med student friends of Aric's. I knew maybe 6 people in this entire party, including the folks I just mentioned.

They split us in half and gave the other team arm bands so that we could tell each other apart. We had a great time. There was an elimination match in an abounded town setting where I got up on the 2nd level of this post office. I managed to take out three guys, but the windows were at a height were you either had to stay on your knees and look up, which did you no good, or crouch down and this is where I think I screwed up my thigh muscles. Between the heat, the adrenaline and being out of shape, we were all pretty tired by lunch time. Speedball was definitely the best game we played since it was fast and you could easily shout out commands to your teammates. Aric got hit from the left and the paint went up into the vents of his mask and covered the inside eye shield. He could barely see a thing.

Anyway, enough about paintball. We left before three and pretty much had time to shower and that's it since Hope was having a BBQ at her place. Mischa and I took our scooters to Dominick's and I got lots of veggies for kabobs and then we stopped back at our apartments to get warmer coats as it somehow dropped nearly 15 degrees within the hour. Hope has a great back yard for grilling out. We need to get some sort of net set up so we can play volleyball or something. Jason was there and he was drunk as hell. He pretty much ruined the whole setting. Apparently the guy drank an entire bottle of Crown Royal within 2 hours and made a complete ass out of himself. Eventually he passed out on Hope's bed and we all took a collective sigh of relief. I have little to no tolerance for this type of behavior. It was just fucking stupid. And I guess it got worse afterwards when Renee showed up to pick him up. We all left for the Empty Bottle for a show and I guess he and Renee got into some screaming match and the cops were called. But anyway. The first band (Zelienople) was great, but the 2nd band (The Cougars) were absolutely fucking rotten.

Sunday was laaaazy. My legs were killing me and I didn't do much at all. I updated service packs on my laptop and crappy desktop that I want to throw out the window. Band practice was great. Adam was there and it all rocked. We're going to play two new songs on Friday night. One of them doesn't even have a complete name yet, so we gotta get on that. I also have to finish the lyrics to Cinnamon, but it's 2/3 of the way finished already. My new Rickenbacker sounds fantastic and I'm gonna play it more than my Jag at the show. I can't wait.

April 16th, 2004 15:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Deep Purple Girl" by Pia Fraus.

Finally there is calm. This day has been nothing but never ending waves of stress since 8:45 AM. I absolutely hate having close friends as coworkers sometimes. I want to go home, turn off the lights, close all the curtains, make my apartment as dark as possible and fall asleep while trying to control my breathing and subsequently lower my blood pressure. I've been getting compliments and reassurance from Dave, my boss, all day about my patience and taking control of a completely shitty series of situations. I hate laptops right now. I hate our warranty options that we have with Dell. I hate batteries and things that require batteries.

Now, to top it all off, I was just told that the barcode and catalog number for the new Airiel CD (fresh from the printers) is wrong and has already been used on a previously released CD. This day has been (as my boss would put it) "10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag".

April 15th, 2004 10:08 hours CST currently listening to: "Rose Cardigan Cloud" by Airiel (Project One).

I'm so happy that the exchange mailbox moves to Seattle FAILED last night. It means I won't have any dumbass mother fucking exchange issues for an entire day. Praise the Hipno-toad. I might actually be able to roll out some new computers after our meetings today.

I rode my scooter into work. The weather is so wonderful. As Hope described it, it's parallel to that feeling when you're still a kid and the weather is finally warm enough so that you can ride your bike to school. Speaking of scooter stuff, these are the coolest helmets I've ever seen. I'm thinking of getting a half face one in blue with a the white stripe down the middle. Clear face plate, not green. I like some of the darker colored ones, but a dark helmet in the summer here would be like wearing a microwave. Nooooo thank you.

Here's the flyer for next Friday's airiel show. Cory Osborne strikes again. I'm gonna have him make our flyers from now on, damnit.

April 14th, 2004 11:00 hours CST currently listening to: "Delores" by Blind Mr. Jones.

Managing Exchange 2003 within an Active Directory environment is an exercise in cruelty and self-loathing.

April 12th, 2004 09:45 hours CST currently listening to: "Valerie Loves Me" by Material Issue.

I'm going to not drink this week. Last week was just exhausting. I never even got out of my PJ's yesterday. I'm glad Rose never called me back about hanging out because I was in no shape to do much of anything. The only thing constructive that happened was that I actually got lyrics down for "Cinnamon". It's not coming out the way I had expected, but then when have my lyrics ever been premeditated. Ok, yeah, there's "this is why I can't sleep" which is obviously about Lisa being a cheating bitch, but beyond that, it's all kind of random. Still, I've been listening to the Sundays a lot and lately and that's been giving me inspiration. I also have a crush on someone and it's weird how it's barely factoring into the song. Probably because I'm a big chicken.

Thursday night, a bunch of us went to Neo. I danced with Hannah a lot and I had a great time. Hans was there as well and he commented on how much he appreciates that I don't alienate him because of my friendship with Rachel. And I really appreciated that. He's a fun guy, he just shouldn't be dating Rachel, that's all. While driving Mischa home, I accidentally went through a few alleys, trying to reenact some Grand Theft Auto action. It was fun scaring the shit out of Mischa. But he deserved it.

Friday night, Maria came over and we ordered pizza with lots of garlic and watched Aliens. She's such a fun person and we need to hang out more. Saturday was pretty mellow during the day. I dropped my scooter off at scooterworks and then ran a few errands. The party that night was fucking INSANE. I've never been to an apartment this crammed with people, a lot of which I'd never met before, which is actually weird these days. The line to the only toilet in the place was always long, so Michael and I decided to whiz in the back yard. Someone had spilled a drink down the back steps making them deadly. I was in front and grabbed onto the hand rail for dear life when Michael fell behind me and tried to take me with him. Joee was shouting from the window "the cops are coming!" as we were peeing in the bushes. Joee's sense of humor has been in high gear lately and it's been great. He got us out of the crowded apartment by shouting "I'm gonna throw up!" several times loudly and man, that clears a path really quick. Genius, I say. But while we were in the back yard, we would occasionally hear people thumping down the stairs. I hope nobody broke their necks or even worse, spilled their drinks.

A girl that was at the party decided to invite people over to her place on Milwaukee and I think nearly half of this crowd got wind of this because all of a suddenly we're at another apartment that's now flooded with people. Her poor roommate didn't know she was having people over and he was not at  all pleased. I don't blame him at all. He was basically standing by the door, not letting anyone else in. I saw Marissa who I haven't seen in maybe a year. Miguel, Marcos and their respective girlfriends and I went to Borderline and had one last beer. I think it was close to 3 AM at this point. I got a hot dog and went home. There is ketchup and mustard all over my damn couch now. I can only imagine how horrific I must have looked devouring that thing.

At least now I feel completely rested and free of any hangover symptoms. However, I messed up my left should somehow. I must have passed out on it or something. The sun in shining, I'm thinking about a girl, I'm upgrading my laptop, and I'm hitting the gym tonight. Things are good.

April 8th, 2004 08:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Deep Purple Girl" by Pia Fraus.

Well, I'm now 27. I've decided to list things I've gained or lost on April 7th, 2004:

GAINS:
• makeout time in a darkened office hallway (how could I not put that first?)
• multiple e-cards, some of which really cracked me up.
• a cat-fight button.
• 12 Clairecords CD's. Pai Fraus is wonderful.
• 2 shots of Jamesons.
• 2 huge glasses of Stella and a lunch with DJ and heather.

LOSSES:
• one of my four Ladytron buttons. The one with the rainbow. Was replaced with Cat-Fight button.
• my virginity of being spanked on stage by an all-girl cover band in Schaumburg.
• any indie credibility I may have ever had. (see the line above)
• one of my headphone felt cover thingies. felt? whatever the shit those are made of.

All in all, for it being a Wednesday, that was a pretty good day. The weather was awesome and despite how busy work was, the day was pretty solid. In case you didn't see the post I did on Friendster yesterday, here it is. This is all the info for the birthday party this Saturday:

Aric, Nikola, and I are having a combined birthday party/ already giant house party on this coming sat April the 10th. There will be bands and DJ's (djs hcglth, heaven 8teen, nogunri, vnlo, live pa by insect deli...) and a f#cking excellent and most gracious hostess, Bahareh, so get off your lame ass and come out... and BYOB or we will gut you from crotch to sternum like a rainbow trout.

INFO:
2145 W. chicago Ave. Apt #2
Saturday april 10
10ish

I'll hopefully be wearing a suit.

April 7th, 2004 09:00 hours CST currently listening to: "Voices In The Mail" by the Clientele.

Today I am 27.

Shit.

April 6th, 2004 10:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Goin Out West" by Tom Waits.

Tom Waits and Screamin' Jay Hawkins need more radio airplay, you know? Voices like angels. Angels that gargle Clorox and then make you watch. That's awesome.

I completely forgot to add an MP3 yesterday so it's now up. It's this cover I did of the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Head On" a long time ago while in my dorm room or something. Apparently Helen Stellar has to pull out of the show on the 15th of May. I'm really disappointed, but as long as the show is still going to happen, I'll get over it. If the show gets cancelled, I'm gonna be out for blood.

April 5th, 2004 13:10 hours CST currently listening to: "Now It's Time To Say Goodbye" by Kitchens of Distinction.

Weekend was pretty fun. Saw Hellboy with DJ and John. It kicked lots of ass. Saturday I met up with Andrea and we went to Penelope's. I bought a dress shirt. Froze my ass off getting home. Stayed in that night. Sunday I scoured the bathroom and kitchen. They needed it. Got the Crackled artwork from Ben. That and the master disc will be going out tomorrow. Not much else to report except that my faith in humanity (and gravity) were restored this morning when I watched Dave fall off his desk and ruin his shit right in front of me. Glorious.

April 2nd, 2004 09:30 hours CST currently listening to: "Parallel Lines" by SouthPacific.

It's already April. Scary. The entire right side of my butt was involved in some muscle spasm thing on the train. Either it's because of the workout on Monday night or because I'm sitting next to too many people on the L that take up too much space, causing me to sit in ways nature never intended. Seriously though, the entire right cheek. it's weird. It's like you're gonna see me suddenly bounce off to the left at any moment. First I'll be sitting my comfy little office chair at my desk, typing away on some mindless spreadsheet or more likely updating my iTunes lists, and then *boing*!, I'll be over on Dave's desk rubbing my ass. Actually, that's happened before, but for reason I shant disclose in this journal. Get me drunk first and then I'll tell you. Maybe boing isn't the right word. It's going "bip" or "tap" or something. I can't think of the right onomatopoeia for a butt-centered muscle spasm.