After completing my compilation of old Bruce Springsteen albums ... which, after listening to Tunnel of Love, may not be a useless exercise in cataloging after all ... my iTunes library numbers at 49,997. What lucky album will provide the 3 songs to push me over 50k? Anything on the horizon? Am i going to become incredibly discerning so as to ensure the momentous album that gets me to this milestone is worth the honor?

Rewatched the captivating French Connection on Encore last night while doing some programming. Somehow, unlike my experience with a Fistful of Dollars, i was able to get some work done and keep up with the plot. Although i realized 3/4 of the way through that as i had left the front door open to cool off, the neighborhood was getting treated to the blaring sounds of Gene Hackman swearing and French drug smugglers being shot. My volume regulator Veronica was at an evening performance of Jersey Boys in the city with my mom and was therefore off-duty.

always falling to the floor
softer than it was before

these bonds are shackle-free

I finished Ghost Recon 2 over the weekend. Veronica was becoming increasingly agitated when i told her i was going to kill some Mexicans, despite my assurances that these were evil ones who were trying to bring nuclear weapons into the U.S. The game, like its predecessor, is undeniably brilliant ... amazingly beautiful, with precise controls and a host of fantastically imagined bleeding edge military technology. The story in the sequel was a bit of a let-down, particularly the ending that left me wondering if i had made some mistake in my final actions. But i look forward to future Tom Clancy squad-based shooters with renewed excitement.

Veronica and i were discussing Muse the other day when i remarked about their oft-cited similarities to Radiohead. V protested vehemently but i maintained that the singer, particularly on their last record Absolution, was doing a thinly-veiled impersonation of Thom Yorke. She called me a few days later to ask what specific songs bore the resemblance, so she could play them for her officemate and Radiohead fanatic Cindy. My response was "Hmmm. Ummm. Let me thiiiink ... umm. Oh yeah .... ALL OF THEM."

(in all seriousness, when i first heard "Time Is Running Out" i thought it was Radiohead)

Okay, the match report on today's Champions League final between Liverpool and AC Milan sums up why i'm sick of the English league. Have a look at this pair of direct quotes:

"There will be no consolation for the Merseysiders' vast following that Milan's crucial opener was a fluke, Andrea Pirlo's 45th-minute free-kick flicking off Filippo Inzaghi to give Pepe Reina no chance."

"... some will remain convinced [AC Milan] should not have been allowed back into the tournament after initially being expelled in the wake of the Italian match-fixing scandal ..."

Unbiased reporting? Really? The live online commentary was loaded with even more choice judgements, but i'm not particularly compelled to troll it for more quotes. If you read between the lines of the English reports, A) Milan shouldn't have been in the tournament at all, B) Milan's first goal should more or less be ignored, and, most annoyingly, C) Liverpool are a better team than Milan and were denied victory only through a freak cosmic accident. The latter being analogous to the argument championed by Rams fans in the wake of their shocking loss in Super Bowl XXXVI by the underdog Patriots. What these reviews fail to appreciate is how Milan's defense lived up to its impressive reputation, and how Dirk Kuyt's late goal, closing the gap to 2-1 and giving the English side hope of another incredible comeback, (c/sh)ould have been disallowed for offside. Now Rafa Benitez has remarked that not all of the three minutes of second half stoppage time were played, which i'm sure will be repeated and amplified until it appears Liverpool would've orchestrated a second majestic comeback if not for referee misconduct. Perhaps if i spoke Italian then i could get the oppositely polarized review, but alas i cannot. I'm just plain exasperated by this sort of crap on English soccer news websites. It reinforces my desire for sport to be boiled down to its ultimate essence ... two men fighting to the death. No holds barred. No spin there ... if you're dead, then you lost. Simple.

V and i caught a movie on a whim after dinner in downtown Redwood City on Saturday night. We saw that the last showing of Hot Fuzz was starting only a half hour after we finished our meal, and bought tickets and whiled away the time next door having ice cream. The flick, another from the team of director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost who made the hilarious Shaun of the Dead, focuses on an overachieving London policeman (Pegg) who is exiled to the country for making his fellow officers look bad in comparison. Used to nonstop action, Pegg struggles to adapt to his new job in a sleepy village in western England, until he begins to suspect things aren't as tranquil as they seem. The film is really the trio's homage to action movies, and is loaded with visual and verbal references to the cop film canon. I was particularly amused when Frost tells Pegg "Forget it Nicholas, it's Sandford", paraphrasing the famous line from Chinatown. Wright reuses many of use visual flourishes from SotD, particularly the rapidly edited shots emphasizing repetition (Pegg closing his locker and leaving the station spliced into shots of pint glasses being filled at the pub, for example). But his style is a good one and the jokes are downright hilarious, so it's no bother.

Despite my affection for ice cream, for some reason i am just not attracted at all to the concept of Coldstone Creamery. I take no delight in watching ice cream get pulverized on a granite countertop. For this reason, i was very amused that the ice cream place next to the downtown Redwood City movie theater is entitled Marble Slab Creamery. Hrm? Is the marble refrigerated perchance? How many other ways can this concept be uniquely franchised? Chilly Rock Creamery? Winter Quarry Creamery? Frozen Lava Creamery? Hmm ... that last one's got a ring to it.

We keep finding more worthwhile restaurants around the hopping Redwood City downtown. On Friday night Veronica was stuck at work until 9:30pm, delaying her return home and our subsequent quest for food until after 10:30pm. Most of our usual haunts were closed, but we spotted Tarboosh, a Lebanese place across from the theater that was still buzzing. We had a yummy meal of kebabs on the patio, and were interested to learn that you could also pay $15 for a hookah for the table, as several neighboring tables had done. Definitely a spot to revisit, especially if i decide to get adventurous and amuse the restaurant with my attempts to smoke.

I picked up a bunch of old Bruce Springsteen records last night, for no other reason than i wanted to hear what Artie Lange and the Killers keep raving about.

Okay, i might have fibbed slightly in my previous rant against television juggernaut American Idol. Apparently i do have a vested interest in teenage phenom Jordin winning the competition. Not because i'm rooting for her persay, but because i cannot stand that beatboxing poseur Blake. I didn't see him sing Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" the first time round, so his encore performance on last night's finale was my first experience with his stilted, overstylized, grating interpretation. It's difficult to one-up an 80's hair band in overperformance, but Seor Lewis accomplished just that. Whenever he peels into one of his vocal breakdowns, i turn to Veronica and start quoting Eddie Murphy in the Golden Child: "i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i want the knife!".

(what, you're not intimately familiar with the Golden Child?)

If you drink a six pack of Guinness and squint your eyes really hard, then Amy Winehouse might have some kind of trashy allure. Otherwise she looks like a semi-retarded $20 prostitute who may or may not be hiding something in her jockeys.

Just watched the Spurs close out Phoenix 4 games to 2 in the Western conference semifinals. I've always liked the no flash, workmanlike approach of the Spurs, punctuated by captain Tim Duncan's mild-mannered demeanor and the team's dedication to defense. This series they've taken a lot of flak for playing physical, getting in a bunch of hard fouls on the free wheeling Suns stars. Many say a fantastic series was ruined when the league responded to Robert Horry's cheap out-of-bounds foul on Phoenix talisman Steve Nash in the closing minute of a Spurs loss in game 4. David Stern and co. suspended Suns stars Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for a game because they came off the bench to enter a brewing brawl. Instigator Robert Horry got two games, but in effect the punishment screwed Phoenix as Horry is only a bit player for San Antonio, while Stoudemire and Diaw are integral pieces of the Phoenix team. The NBA was following the letter of this particularly rigorously worded rule, but the rule needs reconsidering as Amare and Boris weren't even close to escalating the situation, let alone close to the fracas. San Antonio won the ensuing game 5 in Phoenix, although not as comfortably as you would've thought. And tonight they finished off the plucky Suns back home at the Alamodome.

Despite the Spurs roundly defeating their rivals to clinch and doing so with a compelling offensive as well as defensive display, for me the lasting image of this game (the only one of the series i watched) was Steve Nash's recovery from a tough first half to almost single handedly will the Suns back into the game in the fourth quarter. Early in the final period the Suns were down by 20 and looked to be collapsing. Nash reentered the game and began an offensive clinic, scoring 10 consecutive points and making all kinds of ridiculous drives, dishes, and long range 3's. He just would not accept defeat. Nash got his team to within 5 in the last minute, but his squad couldn't thwart a few final Spurs buckets and free throws that maintained the gap. Steve has definitely shown that he deserved his MVP awards in 2005 and 2006, and now i hope he's able to add a championship to his resumé in the years to come. He certainly deserves it more than those Maverick putzes he left in Dallas.

Piano and modern rock was a great thing. See New Order's "World In Motion", Electronic's "Feel Every Beat", the Other Two's "Innocence" (sensing a pattern here?), et al.

"Aw, the carabinierrrrrrri!" (Gary?)

You know what else is a great song? Marion's "The Smile", from their little heard sophomore album the Program. Jaime Harding's vocals once again soar, and the overall composition of the song is greatly assisted by Johnny Marr's production. It's odd that such a great song leads off an album that welcomed the band from much hyped to mostly forgotten.

Thanks to a random Julian Cope interview i read online somewhere, i've discovered a wonderful, relatively obscure post-punk band in the Sound. Not current Swedish alternarock bores the Sounds, mind you, but the late 70's/early 80's London outfit that never quite earned the attention enjoyed by their peers Echo & the Bunnymen and Magazine. Another oddity ... i can't freakin' stand Julian Cope, but apparently he's got good taste.

Something about vocoders ... instant guilty pleasure music. Hee.

Judge favorite Melinda got booted from American Idol last night. This would concern me if a) i considered any of the AI "hopefuls" interesting artists, and b) i believed in the show's "America votes" policy. The Howard Stern news department has been airing a series of segments containing anonymous testimonials from current and former Idol employees. One suggests that the show's voting software was chosen in part because it precluded the generation of concrete voting records, to give the producers the ability to massage the results to fit their vision for a given season's evolution. The news squad also reports that it received evidence that Lakisha's post-show publicity tour had been booked to start immediately following her ousting ... before the supposed votes were cast. Of course, getting hard-nosed reporting from Howard Stern is like asking George Bush what's going on in Iraq. However, his news team did uncover one interesting and documentable tidbit. In the voting policies for Idol, it learned that the show reserves the right to exclude so-called "fraudulent votes", such as ones generated by someone using automated techniques to call repeatedly. How exactly they identify such votes is poorly defined, thus opening a potential method for the producers to mold the results. Is this how Sanjaya got dismissed? Who knows. It's not like the show has produced any worthwhile talent. Have you seen Kelly Clarkson's latest video? Egad. Been watching one too many god-awful Jared Leto/30 Seconds to Mars vids.

Speaking of reality TV, who in their right mind listens to anything that comes out of Tyra Banks's mouth? At this point, America's Next Top Model appears to be a weekly mass at her altar. At the end of each photo shoot, they make sure to display an old pic of Tyra from a similar shoot as if to say "anything you can do, she can do better". Perhaps this final sentiment isn't PC, but is there really any profound skill involved in this career? The frequent discordance between the judges' reviews and their verdicts seems to imply that it's all one bitchy crapshoot.

The other day Veronica mentioned that the O.M.D. song "So In Love" is downright retarded, and i have to agree.

Trailers for the new Harry Potter flick Order of the Phoenix are out. Don't care. I for one sincerely hope Rowling kills him off in the supposed final book this summer, although my hope that will end the series is probably futile. This movie will be the first one made from a book i haven't read. By the time the wonder of Hogwarts wore off, the series for me had become a second-rate fantasy yarn populated by a bunch of annoying adolescent jackasses.

Chelsea's season comes to a close this Sunday at the new Wembley stadium in the FA Cup final against Manchester United. And somehow, i'm almost rooting against my beloved. It's not like we deserve to be rewarded for this incredibly disappointing season. United have been clearly superior. We've been ravaged by injuries, stifled by infighting, and in general not especially imposing on the pitch. José Mourinho seems intent on sticking it to his bosses Roman Abramovich and Peter Kenyon, actually suggesting last week that he might play his third string goalkeeper Hilario as a striker. I'm sick of the team's commercial and footballing philosophies. Maybe a new manager will help. Maybe not. I've been comparing Chelsea and fellow dullards Liverpool with Spaniards Sevilla and Espanyol, who put on a cracking UEFA Cup final, and wondering if i'm just sick of the English league in general. At least i wouldn't understand the Spanish tabloid rants about the Liga Primera.

I am a hater. To be said in the broken English style of Björk's "Hunter".

eighties ... i'm living in the eighties eighties ... i have to push, i have to struggle eighties ... get out of my way, i'm not for sale no more eighties ... let's kamikaze 'til we get there and we sing you do it this way eighties ... by day we run by night we dance, we do eighties ... i'm in love with the coming race eighties ... i've got the best, i'll take all i can get eighties ... i'm living for the eighties

Despite occasionally flirting with a spectacular comeback, Chelsea finally conceded the Premiership crown to Manchester United last weekend. Needing victories in their last three matches (not to mention losses by United in both of their last two), the Blues had Khalid Boulahrouz sent off early against Arsenal and scraped a 1-1 draw only through a late Michael Essien header. In a conciliatory email to my friend and United supporter Sean, i congratulated him on a fine season and admitted that it would have been a travesty if Chelsea had pipped the title after they did nearly everything wrong this year while United were brilliant. I'm left to ponder whether Roman Abramovich and Peter Kenyon will fully prostitute the club i've loved for ten years, shoving the polarizing but skilled José Mourinho out the door and possibly alienating and subsequently exiling the heart of the team in Frank Lampard and John Terry, then bringing in a slew of new superstar recruits who will undoubtedly sell replica kits but fail to gel once again.

It's difficult to imagine that such a strategy could establish Chelsea once more as the dominant team in England, especially while United's young attacking nucleus of Rooney and Ronaldo continue to develop and Alex Ferguson gradually solves his defensive woes. Two years ago comparisons between the young Ronaldo and Chelsea's Arjen Robben were significantly tilted in the Dutchman's favor, but now those evaluations are clearly reversed. Why? Cristiano Ronaldo has certainly learned to apply his unlimited potential to something more useful than endless crossovers, but i think Robben has not only suffered from injuries but also regressed due to a lack of discipline and structure at Stamford Bridge. At the World Cup he showed his dismaying tendency towards playing one on 11, and at Chelsea Mourinho seems to have relegated him to his back pocket, to be produced only as a sub when José needs some late-match inventiveness. Hardly a recipe for player development. Elsewhere around the league, i've been impressed with Arsenal's commitment to youth as well, and while Wenger and co. have had their growing pains i have to think our London rivals will be challenging for the title again before long. Liverpool ... well, i think Benitez has made it clear this season that he is much more concerned about the Champions League. That's the only way i can rationalize his squad losing to the likes of Fulham domestically while defeating giants like Barcelona on the continent on the way to another CL final appearance.

But really, this is a problem at Stamford Bridge. We have to address our own issues before we can begin to think about competing with our foes. First off, keeping Lamps and Terry is imperative. If Abramovich has to pay them what he pays Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack, so be it. The Englishmen have certainly done more to deserve it than our two high profile, low impact imports. Regarding our manager ... i like Mourinho, but i don't consider him essential to Chelsea's success. However, i do think removing him at this stage would be a mistake as any managerial change will surely set back our progress at least six months as the club adapts to new leadership. I would love to see the Stamford Bridge execs give more control to Mourinho so that he can mold the squad according to his tactical vision. That was a huge reason for our downfall this season. Mourinho was refused money to bring in new defenders because apparently they didn't fit into the management's strategy for marketing the club. Meanwhile we sustained injuries across the back line and our defense went from stalwart to hemorrhaging overnight. And that summarizes my third and final recommendation ... the club execs need to make a commitment towards producing a successful footballing squad, instead of a successful commercial squad. Signings like Ballack make sense on the accounting sheets, but little sense on the pitch. Everyone outside the Stamford Bridge luxury suites knew this before Ballack signed with the club, and it became painfully apparent once he began playing. Can we do it? We undoubtedly have the resources and the foundation of talent, but without a cohesive strategy (an Alex Ferguson guiding the ship, to give some begrudging credit to our rivals), we're not going to achieve the glory that United has enjoyed.

Also off with a whimper, my hair. Last week i could take my unkempt curly hair no more and scheduled an appointment with Samuel. It seems every time i see him, he ends up giving me some variant of his current hairstyle. This time, when i asked how i wanted him to do my hair, i actually ended up responding "Like ... well ... yours". As you can see, the sides and back are quite short once again, while i've got a subtle faux hawk going on up top. Oddly i'm still adjusting back to short hair ... would've thunk part of me might miss long floppy locks ... but i was pleased that i styled my hair in less than a minute this morning. Amato referred to me as a "young Republican" at lab meeting this morning. I guess my new appearance was a stark contrast to my old dirty hippie looks.

It still rankles me that the shimmering, unparalleled "Untitled" by Interpol (a level of resonance they've been unable to duplicate, imo) was perverted by use in Friends. I could rant more, but ... 'nuff said.

My Kenneth Cole slim laptop bag has been on its last legs lately, with the stretchy strap gradually disintegrating. I contemplated different replacements, and finally setlled on an antique brown leather messenger bag. It's not a huge step up in volume from my old bag, but i like the way it fits all my laptop crap and notebook, and it hangs very comfortably in the typical cross shoulder configuration.

Veronica and i caught the first summer blockbuster, Spider Man 3, on Sunday night with new friends Frank and Jennifer. We prefaced the showing with a very nice Italian dinner, finding another winning restaurant in downtown Redwood City. I was reasonably excited to see the third installment, particularly because although i've never read any Spider Man comics, i find the Venom character wonderfully drawn and an interesting storyline (from what i've learned from Wikipedia). I've mentioned previously how i seemed to be the minority regarding my underwhelming reception for Spider Man 2. Unfortunately, i thought the third episode was equally if not more disappointing. The pacing is a mess ... the film is all over the map. It shifts violently from breakneck action to mind numbingly soapy drama to corny attempts at comedy. In a sense this reflects the comic and its lighthearted attitude, but on film it's a jumbled nightmare. Raimi and co. do well enough to preserve the original stories, but this leads to another problem ... the movie is hopelessly bloated. There's three villains, each with their own convoluted backstory that only tangentially intersect. And unfortunately the one i really wanted to see doesn't appear until the final half hour. Maybe i'm being overly harsh. Maybe the franchise has run its course, or needs reinvention such as how Christopher Nolan has invigorated the Batman series. I love the recent spate of comic book adaptations, but overly dense installments like this one or just plain lame efforts like Fantastic Four (money talks and bulls@$# walks, as evident by the forthcoming sequel) may bring that trend to a grinding halt.

One final note on SM3 ... i'm not sure why the filmmakers felt that the masked villains (Venom and the Green Goblin) should frequently shed their masks and expose their faces. It was odd when the Goblin showed off his automatically opening and closing faceplate, but it was downright bizarre when Venom's symbiote suit kept peeling back to reveal Topher Grace's face. It was even more unnerving seeing the scrawny Grace's head on top of the beefy Venom.

Speaking of being overly harsh, i was accused again of haterism on Saturday night as we met up with SoCal visitors Kevin and Shyoko and SF friends Nathan and Summerlea at New Wave City. Which is odd because i actually had a decent time. Unlike recent instances of the club that played like an 80's greatest hits cd, this time the DJ's seemed to find the right mix of familiar and obscure. The only knock i had on the night was that each DJ apparently felt compelled to pay homage to the night's Smiths and Morrissey theme by playing "Hairdresser on Fire" and "The Headmaster Ritual". I wasn't the only one who noticed, as i spied one of those updating digital message boards underneath the DJ booth displaying a message from another clubgoer: "Hey, why don't they play 'Hairdresser' for the 5th time. Haven't heard that one in 10 minutes.".

Every time i see the singer from CSS, i think of that sequence in the James Bond classic You Only Live Twice where he has to marry a Japanese girl to maintain his cover. When James asks his Japanese superspy counterpart Tiger Tanaka what the chosen girl looks like, he's told "she has a face like a pig". And yet by the end of the film Mr. Bond seems to have forgotten his reservations over her similarity to barnyard animals and gives her the JB special. Same with CSS ... the singer isn't "conventionally attractive", to use a P.J. Harvey descriptor, but she is damn sexy nonetheless. Like anyone who sings "let's make love and listen Death from Above" should be.

A doubly bad sports day for me ... the Warriors fell short in their bid to close out their improbably run against Western conference top seed Dallas. The down and out Mavs now just have to win two in a row to triumph, while Golden State gets a chance to close out the series on their home floor. Is it a) me being a worrywart, b) me heeding recent Golden State history, or c) me being a general pessimist that is causing me to think the Warriors great postseason run will end in disappointment?

My laptop has its third LCD screen in less than a week, after the Dell tech popped by Stanford to replace it again. Hopefully this one has a lot of life left in both the hinges and the monitor. I'm currently looking at laptop bags to replace my nice but rapidly deteriorating Kenneth Cole messenger. I've become entranced by the idea of a sturdy vintage leather messenger bag. I'm not thrilled with KC's, but i've found nice ones from Tumi and L.L. Bean online.

Writing a blog post and trying to follow A Fistful of Dollars is no easy feat. Throw in writing some IDL code and the movie becomes downright incomprehensible. Furthermore, when i finally do look up from my laptop to glance at the screen, i keep getting the heebie jeebies from the dubbing.

V's week of shows continues as she secured a last minute ticket to Morrissey's performance at the Paramount. My interest in Moz is mostly dead these days so i opted to stay home, relax, attempt to watch old westerns, and thwart some Mexican rebels in Ghost Recon 2. That's right, south-of-the-border criminals seem to be the order of the evening.

I haven't yet figured out why my website guest statistics have been occasionally inflated recently. I was all set to sit down and probe my code, particularly after successfully upgrading my concert and album review comments interface earlier this evening, but now i see that the erroneous statistics aren't a constant problem. Which naturally makes isolating, reproducing, and correcting the problem that much harder. Perhaps i'll instead focus my coding compulsions toward finally implementing the comment utility on ana-girl.

The long diminutive Graves lab is primed to undergo some significant growth this year, as i'm looking to hire another two molecular biologists, a radiochemist, and i've got an electrical engineer signed up for the fall. That would double the size of my group, and give me a squad that i could genuinely call "my lab". Coupled with my recent acquisition of NIH funding and my continuing stream of published papers this year, my academic progress in 2007 has gone swimmingly to say the least.

People always call in to the Howard Stern Show to say they had to pull their car over because they were laughing so hard. I had my first of such moments a few weeks back when i heard Richard Christy's crank call to a pharmacy where he played a ridiculous porn clip of a man moaning while he told the pharmacist he was having chronic dry heaves. I just listened to it again here and Tara walked over to me, ostensibly because she was concerned that i was wailing and crying. In laughter, of course. You can also hear the previously discussed Yankees/tapeworm clip there as well.

Still have little to no idea what's going on in San Miguel during my first viewing of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western escapades. All i know is that the crying kid has got the freakiest dubbing of all.

I need a better method for synchronizing my assorted calendars. Lately i've had way too many missed appointments and forgotten visitors, largely because i've got Outlook calendars on both my laptop and desktop, and i do a relatively lousy job of keeping each up to date and furthermore transferring the calendar to something that can regularly pester me, ie my cell phone. I've made an effort to record all my appointments in at least one of my Outlook calendars recently, and also taken the even more important step of not scheduling new affairs without first checking the calendar. However there remains the non-trivial issue of keeping everything accurate. Stanford has a nice online calendar application, which i think would make a nice central scheduling hub if it only could import and export Outlook data. Any suggestions? Is Google Calendar useful? More importantly, can it export to my BlackBerry?

It's odd that every time i can't find a piece of software that meets my needs exactly, my thoughts turn to solving the problem myself with Visual Basic. Speaking of VB, my iTunes log application has stabilized, and to my eye runs robustly and efficiently.

The man with no name just got the holy hell kicked out of him, apparently for double crossing a gang of Mexican bandits. Excuse me ... banditos. Any more in depth plot analysis than that and i'd have to actually pay attention to the film. I can't wait for the cackling sidekick villain to get his.

Kevin is coming up for a visit this weekend, and may come bearing a Wii to complete V and my collection of next-gen gaming consoles. I'm still not ga-ga over Nintendo's last gen hardware with a next gen gimmick, but part of me must think that when i bring the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 into close proximity that something magical will happen, like the shankara stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

My patience was finally broken earlier this week ... i ran out of Sumotech and tried to improvise while styling my hair. Halfway through the day i caught my reflection in a mirror and was genuinely angry. I've come to the realization that long hair is not for me. While through the years i've tried to convince myself that i have "wavy" hair by keeping it short and teasing it out, now that it's got some length i can say conclusively that it is full on curly. I've had to exercise quite a bit of restraint this week to keep from digging my clippers out of storage and shaving it all off. Veronica has tried to convince me to let it continue to grow, but my assertion that i officially hate my hair persuaded her to let me do a Delilah. I've got an appointment with Samuel next Tuesday and am now counting the minutes.

Why is it that when i had short hair and i saw the hipster kids at shows, it seemed like they all had long hair, and now that mine is long i only see short haired indie boys? Am i perpetually behind, or god forbid, ahead of the curve?

And there goes Clint off into the hills. With some wonderful Ennio Morricone accompaniment. Makes you pine for your own theme song, à la Peter Griffin.

And there it is. To tell you the truth, for a self-loathing Chelsea fan such as myself, i would've probably been more upset if the Blues had actually beaten Liverpool to reach the Champions League final. Instead, we're out after a penalty shootout at Anfield, yet again put to the sword in a cup competition by our scouse rivals. As much as i detest the Liverpudlians, i'm actually semi-rooting for a very winnable final rematch for them against AC Milan. As for the Londoners, i'm frustrated. We need a change. A change of personnel, a change of style, a change of attitude. Unfortunately the latter two mandate a change in upper management, and that's not going to happen. I suspect we're seeing the final days of Mourinho at Stamford Bridge, and for all his drama i'll be sad to see him go. It's interesting that for all their feuds, even Sir Alex has expressed regret over the probable departure of his Portuguese nemesis from the English game. He's a personality, certainly one that gave Fergie more challenges than the easily wound up and humiliated Arsene Wenger.

¿Primera Liga, cómo estás?