Dairy of a Madman

There’s a lot on my plate for the coming days. I need to think about the idea of moving, figure out what’s feasible and how badly I want/need to change locations. I need to get my work situation figured out, maximizing money and minimizing work hours (among a billion other bits of criteria). There’s some long-overdue freelance work that I need to knock out, and a couple of jobs that I need to play irritating bill collector on. And of course, there’s all the usual madness of working, working, gigs, working, screening movies, and sleeping when I can.

In the meantime, I’ll be hoping that this feeling of temporal displacement either goes away or makes itself useful; I’ve been feeling more and more over the past seven days like it’s 1998 all over again. Naturally, this is making me think both about Melissa and new relationships a lot — that’s what was happening to me this time that year, as far as memorable events. There’s nothing comparable this year, and the feeling like it’s eight years back isn’t helping me ignore that. Now, if this is some sort of signal that a new romance is coming my way, more power to it. If not, I’d like to say that it’s less pleasant nostalgia and more bedevilling torture, so please, cut it out.

Watched John Cleese’s WINE FOR THE CONFUSED last night as I was passing out, and again during lunch today, since I apparently lost consciousness during the preview part of the DVD. I’ve never been much of a wine aficianado (or, as I like to call them, fucking booze snobs), though it’s nice to have a bottle with the right meal every now and then. I learned a little about wine during my time at PF Chang’s, but really just enough to be able to sound competent when I described the expensive bottles and recommended them with every meal.

WFTC, though, is something I’d highly recommend to any of you who like wine but not enough to become some sort of elitist prick about your drunk. It’s a little cable-TV-Python-lite in a few moments, but for the most part, it’s a “Wine for Dummies” in 45 minutes. The first half of the program is about the grapes and the differences they produce in wine types; the second half is, equally importantly, about buying wine (both in stores and in restaurants), storing your bottles, and serving. Quality stuff if you just want to know enough to find something you like.

It’s a rather dry time for new music for the next month or so for me. I’ve got The New Black to look forward to in a bit, but not much else, and looking backward hasn’t really gotten me too much new (I finally tracked down the first Dark Suns disc, Swanlike, but it hasn’t held my attention too well after only a week; the new Tool disc is great, but I’m overhearing it at the bar; all the death and thrash that I’ve been checking out is mind-numbing). The long and short of this being: I need some new music. Feel free to make recommendations.