no cars go

There's something totally overwhelmingly emotional about the new Arcade Fire album. I can't put my finger on it, but it's getting to me. I'm not totally familiar to all of the songs yet, but they just give me some divine inspiration.

I want to keep writing in this because I feel like any thoughts I have I have to get out in case I never do or something. It's weird, I know, but hey, that's me.

I think I'm a lot more spiritual than I let on. I don't know exactly what I beleive but I think there's something. I don't think I ever want to say and go on that I'd ever be religious - because that's not the case. But I could suggest that maybe - just maybe there's something there. I don't know. I won't make a big deal about it.

I wanted to get out tonight but I did nothing about it. My fault. Oh well. It's one thirty in the morning. Probably should call it quits.

"I don't like hip hop, but I like Gwen Stefani." I heard something like this on NPR when I took the cab to the train station. It was really weird. Apparently some weirdo NPR dude stuck that "Wind It Up" track on the air. I don't remember much past the yodeling and have yet to give any chance to The Sweet Escape. I just want that new No Doubt record.

Barack Obama is running for president. I'm glad and I'm hopeful. Let's look back on this sentence in the coming year and see how it develops.

I'll probably get to sleep now being that tomorrow's the last day I can sleep in until like, oh, Wednesday? Gah. I still have to do my assignments for my Thursday classes. I wished my fucking computer worked.

she wore a raspberry beret

I don't like how Maggie Gyllenhall talks to little children. She made me cringe talking to her kiddo in Sherrybaby and did the same exact thing when I was watching World Trade Center - which, by the way, had me tightened up in a ball for the first thirty-five minutes. If that's even an inkling of what those guys went through, I still don't think I was ever able to grasp the enormity of that situation until kind of seeing it played out on screen. It just seems to get bigger and bigger as time goes on.

Man, has stuff really slowed to a crawl. Nothing really interesting is going on. I'm sure there is an up, but it's hard to see right now. I want it to feel better.

Prince is awesome. Go do yourself a favor and listen to one of his songs. Any one. I don't care. Just do it.

Updated "Sam"

I still remember quite clearly this iconic figure that drifted in and out of my life as a little kid, and then, just as quickly, faded out. I knew him as "Sam".

He was kind of like a cartoon. You could always rely on him to stay the same. Same cheapo teamster style jacket, same impenatrable dome of silvery-black hair. Whether this was a product of not showering or some very effective Brylcreem, I'll never know. He always smelled like Marlboros.

Apparently, he was some kind of contractor my dad became friends with sometime in the mid-80's when our house was being built. It was kind of a weird picture - a married, thirtysomething man with two young children, hanging out with this relic 30 years his senior, who looked like John Wayne if he had gotten in a fight with a meat grinder- and survived.

I don't recall him ever saying that much to me - ever. He was a nice enough guy when I was around, probably because I was so little. The things I do are little snapshots, like riding in his old black pickup truck with the white tool box attached behind the cab. (From that day forward, I've judged every pickup if it had a tool box behind the cab. Even at age three, I had standards.) On those rides, I remember the empty cigarette cartons sliding from side to side with every turn. It was a very foreign world to me - but strangely enough, I felt safe.

Sam died not too long before my tenth birthday. It came as a huge shock to me. Even if I didn't know him that well, the small moments I did spend around him left me with several memories I won't forget.

I still don't think I've ever seen my father so close to crying then I did that day. It's still hard for my dad to talk about him sometimes. Every time he tells a Sam story, that sad tone returns, and he says the same exact thing.

"Sam was my buddy, I miss him."