I’m watching a TV movie about Enron that’s both compelling and stupid, and I’m not sure which of the two keeps me watching. It also has Shannon Elisabeth from the American Pie movies, but she looks somewhat terrible, and is playing the role of a whiny, two-dimensional Enron wife, which pretty much kills any sort of sexual attraction she would normally exude. Anyway, it’s the only thing on TV right now, so here I am.

I went out last night to see Bowling for Columbine and go eat in Times Square. The Times Square thing was unusually busy and very strange, given the ghosts I see of my two years or so of working there. But many of the stores are changing, and many new things are opening up. One new good thing is this huge Toys R Us store, which is where a cheap theater and a bunch of those annoying junk camera stores used to be. One bad thing is that the food court next to the AMC 25 on 42nd is now gone. That sucks, because it was one of the open, public, and no-hassle restrooms in the area. And speaking of ghosts, I once again ran into former coworker and standup comedian Matt Daly, handing out fliers to his comedy show at a club right off of Times Square. We didn’t have too much to say other than the usual catching up, but he’s always a cool person to talk to, and I really hope I manage to catch one of his shows.

After dinner at the Howard Johnson’s, which was pretty unmemorable, especially my $16 faux stir fry, I went to the AMC 25 for the movie. I resisted going to this movie for a long time. I am not always down with Michael Moore’s confrontational style. I did like Roger and Me a lot, but I saw The Big One in the theater, and found it to be uneven at best. There was good information in this one, but it didn’t really offer any kind of a thesis or solution. And while some people might consider it some sort of in-your-face vigilante justice to corner a company spokesperson in a lobby while waving a fake check in their face and telling them they laid off too many people, I ultimately don’t see how it does much of anything, especially when you consider that most company spokespeople and other talking heads are brainwashed and functionally useless.

Given all of this, I thought Bowling for Columbine was interesting and entertaining. I would have done a few things differently, but I dug it overall. I was going to write much more about this, but I have no energy to do so right now, so I’ll stop.

I bought the Ethernet card for my PlayStation 2, along with Tony Hawk 4. I can’t get the card to work with Socom Navy Seals, but I read online that it’s because Sony fucked up on their servers and they never let people log in because of load. They should get that shit figured out if they’re going to run commercials constantly. The Tony Hawk game is pretty cool, and it’s incredible to play it online. It doesn’t use that much bandwidth, and there you are skating along with other dudes in the same skatepark. It’s a very hypnotic game, the sort of thing where you can play forever, going back and forth on the same level, trying different tricks over and over. A very good time-waster.

Not much else. I need to get out of here and think about going to bed in a few hours. I was up till about four or five last night, so getting up at seven tomorrow will be a real trick.

Happy New Year. I think I’ve figured out all of the associated issues with knocking the journal over to 2003 without completely mangling access to the old archives. There are still broken bits and pieces, and the UI isn’t wonderful, but it looks like it’s at least mostly functional.

And what did I do to usher in the new year? I was mad at work trying to finish things for my next book. And now, I’m happy to report that Tell Me A Story About The Devil: Selected Journals, 1997-1999 is on its way to the publisher and will hopefully be available in a few months. It’s a collection of old journals from right here, edited and pulled together into a nice, bound copy. I’m very happy about making this a book, and I really do like all of this old writing. Of course you can get all of this stuff for free on this site, but it will be a different experience to be able to sit in bed or on the bus or whatever and read a copy on real paper.

The last few days have been a real bitch, pulling together the manuscript, dealing with the little bits like the back cover text, marketing summary, and all of that, and getting the cover ready. (It’s here if you want to look at it.) Ray did the cover again, and it took some work to find a photo that I liked. But I think it looks good, and I’m happy that after two black book covers, I will have a bright red book to put on the shelf next to it. Anyway, I haven’t slept much, and my food schedule is way off too, so I feel like shit. After finally submitting everything to the publisher at 10

this morning, I got a few hours of sleep and went out in the pissing rain to get some Subway for lunch at about 5. Now, only a few hours later, I really want to get supper, but I really don’t. And I don’t want to work tomorrow, but I have to go in. At least it will be a nice, short, two-day work week.

Not much else is up. I am not going to ramble on about resolutions or look back at the year in review or anything like that. I do too much of that stuff on a daily basis. Right now, I need to clean the disaster in my house from working at full-bore for the last week or so. I’ve got a bedroom full of photos everywhere, a living room covered in red-penned printouts, and a sink full of dishes. I doubt I will do too much damage to that tonight, but I would like to get things returned to normal so I can get started on the next book.

And yes, there is a next book! I have an idea, but I won’t jinx it. For now, I need to get thinking about the trip to Vegas in about two weeks. I just ordered a new battery for my laptop, and I hope that fixes the problem so I can get mobile and running. If it doesn’t, I think I’m going to buy a used PowerBook and go Mac. But I hope the battery fixes everything. It’s weird to think that I used this laptop for the last 40 or 50 hours almost constantly, scanning photos and plugging away at the manuscript, but it won’t work without a cord.

Okay, time to look at this dinner problem again…