I woke up this morning, as I have on many mornings over the last few weeks, unable to go back to bed. A lot of things have been taking their toll on me recently including classes, personal relationships, the constant horror broadcast by the media nowadays, work (or more appropriately, the lack of it), sensory and information overload from every quarter, constantly questioning my role in this world, etc. Unfortunately, this morning I hit the snapping point and took my stress out upon the rest of the world. Primarily this was done via the Internet through email and social networking sites. If you received a weird message from me, just disregard it — I’m feeling much better now. I came really close to doing what Howard Beale advised everyone to do in the movie, Network:

That would have meant I would have spent most of the day in jail. Luckily though, I was able to chill enough to go back to bed. I was awoken five hours later by a visit from one of the people to whom I sent a crazy, obscenity-laced email. Big ups to Linda for understanding that I was under a lot of pressure. I couldn’t quite articulate what I was feeling, but I think she understood. Later, I realized that a verse from the Green Day song “Having A Blast” came closest to expressing my feelings:

Do you ever think back to another time?
Does it bring you so down that you thought you lost your mind?
Do you ever want to lead a long trail of destruction and mow down
any bullshit that confronts you?
Do you ever build up all the small things in your head
To make one problem that adds up to nothing?

Anyway, I blew off most of my plans for the day to unwind and de-stress by playing miniature golf, visiting the batting cages and hitting the arcade at Adventure Landing in Raleigh. It was a lot of fun and worked wonders for my overall stress level, especially a game in the arcade called Silent Scope. In it, you shoot terrorists with a sniper rifle-shaped controller. Mmmm, fantasy violence… makes me think that I missed my calling in life. Best of all, it kept me out of trouble. 

Today, I subscribed to a new blog via my RSS reader called Coyote Blog. Its covers a lot of cool news, politics, economics type of stuff that I would otherwise spend my entire day searching for. Almost by fate, one of today’s posts mentioned that today was the birthday of Rick Astley. Having bright red hair, looking really white and having a deep soulful voice (as I did back in the 80s) was never so cool. When I got older, I would even go so far as to tell other people that **I** was Rick Astley. Chicks totally dug that, especially the ones who were dumb enough not to know any better.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to become acquainted with Rick Astley’s catalogue of hits. I almost forgot how much I liked his song “Cry For Help.” I used to have hair like he did in that video (tearfully, until a few days ago, that is). Anyway, with how I struggled today only to fail, I think this is the perfect way to chillax with a Schlitz 40 (or two) and man-cry myself to sleep.

You should really check out the video for “Cry For Help.” And no, that link’s not a rickroll of “Never Gonna Give You Up.” I’m super cereal about that…

H/T:  Coyote Blog

I just found out that iTunes creates a playlist of the most frequently played songs. Kind of interesting. Thus, in an effort to enlighten those around me and answer the age-old question of “What do you recommend musically?” I will divulge this list and present to interested parties “The Top 25 Most Played Songs” from my iTunes playlist:

1. Cruel to Be Kind by Nick Lowe
2. Street of Dreams by Rainbow
3. Man on the Silver Mountain by Rainbow
4. This Side by Nickel Creek
5. Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck by Prong
6. Causing a Commotion by Madonna
7. Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush
8. I’d Really Love to See You Tonight by England Dan & John Ford Coley
9. Bitches Are Hustlers Too by D-Fyne
10. Cuts You Up by Peter Murphy
11. Ready to Fall by Rise Against
12. Death Comes Ripping by The Misfits
13. Breakout by Swing Out Sister
14. Everyone’s Gone to the Moon by Jonathan King
15. Bungle In the Jungle by Jethro Tull
16. 3 A.M. Eternal by The KLF
17. Hot Butter Popcorn
18. Year of the Cat by Al Stewart
19. Life Less Ordinary by Carbon Leaf
20. Groove Is In the Heart by Deee-Lite
21. Wait and Bleed by Slipknot
22. Push It by Static-X
23. Novacaine for the Soul by The Eels
24. I’d Love to Change the World by Ten Years After
25. Mystery by Dio

There you go, the twenty-five most listened to songs (out of about two thousand) on my iPod. Not sure if there’s a common theme among this list. Some are out there on YouTube; all should be available on iTunes. Hopefully you find something that sparks your interests. Enjoy!