The Male Carrie?

Guy in Dress Not Welcome at Prom.

What a fucking stupid situation. What VALID reason could anyone offer for not letting someone wear whatever he damnwell wants to his highschool prom?

Fundamental

But not fundamentalist! In fact, quite the opposite. The new Pet Shop Boys album, Fundamental, is astonishingly good--definitely their best since Nightlife (and, as with Nightlife, if you don't get the special edition with the extra CD you're seriously shortchanging yourself), and quite possibly one of their best, period. It's a fairly dancey album, unlike their last--which I flatout didn't like at all, hence the reason I can't even remember its name--with tracks like "Minimal" (a total, total bootyrockin' Pegritz Jam[tm]), the lead single "I'm With Stupid", and ultra-high-NRG album-closer "Integral" recalling their signature work from the '80s but definitely not just repeating the same old stuff. There are plenty of slower, pretty songs on the album as well, with the highlights definitely being "Numb" and "Casanova in Hell". As usual, the Boys are quite diverse in their synthwork and songwriting approaches, but it all coheres beautifully around their well-established sound.

But it's not ALL just standard PSB! The second disk is extra tracks and remixes, and much like the extras disc that came with Nightlife, this is not just a throwaway collection of B-sides and awful, repetitive remixes--any time the PSB release a remix disk, the remixes are fucking awesome. Period. And on "Sodom," an amazing reconstruction of "The Sodom & Gomorrah Show," they literally take a rather bland and forgettable song and turn it into this amazing house-meets-IDM anthem that sounds like Broken Spindles remixing PSB. It's freaking mindblowing, and one of the few instances in which I actually like a remix better than the original track. The remix of "I'm With Stupid" is fucking BAD-ASSED, too.

So get it. It's the shizznat. This is what synthpop should be, not the travesty that was the new Covenant album or that horseshit VNV Nation squeezes out of their talentless rectums.

The Googleplex

You know how I'm always going on about how Google will spontaneously become self-aware one of these days?

It'll happen. Trust me on this one.

Natural-language/semantic recognition is a VERY sophisticated process. I can guarantee you that once these systems begin to be integrated into Google in the next few years, I will ask the search engine "How do you become self-aware?" everyday until it damn well DOES.

SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE.

Literally.

You know that cute red-headed chick from Mythbusters, Kari Byron? She's in the new issue of FHM.

Gentlemen, start your boners.

Even worse.

Now I have a UTI.

I ave no idea how...I've been on Cipro for five weeks now to AVOID this. but it's apparently spread through my kidneys, my prostate, and now my bladder. I'm pissing broken glass, my kidneys hurt like someone punched them, and i can;t suit down for long without scremaing.

I can't hit bottom.

you've no idea how close i am to shooting myself and being done with all this. i literally, literally cannot bare being alive anymore.

The Era of Decent Health = over.

I just got backfrom the ER. I am on so much medication now its amazing i can stand up.

My guts are kind of scerwed up again. Not badly--not like last time--but bad enough to warrant "concern." I have the world's worst UTI and the antibiotics wont touch it.. They literally had to give me something called Nubain or Neubane to kill the unimaginable fpain. And i'm now on Elavil to help deaden my pain response a little.

my health is wrecked. no, seriously, folks. Wrecked.

i won't be in town this weekend at all, and maybe not next weekend either. i don't feel good, i don't have any money, and all i want to do is lie down, watcj ghostbusters one last time, and then squirt an airbubble into the nearest convenient artery. i can't live like this.