I've been listening to a lot of metal lately: Slayer, Mastodon, Metallica, High on Fire, Boris. I find it's easier to enjoy when you're alone and no one can say, "What are you, 12?" There's something about a fat, chunky metal riff that just screams junior high school, but if you can suspend consciousness and move through that knee jerk connotation, you can have yourself a lonely time, especially if you're wearing eyeliner and black studded chaps with the shades down.

I just can't care about the Giants- again. After hockey and World Cup, watching baseball is like trying to relate to indie rock. At this stage, the gulf widens.

I'm developing an Existentialism in Literature course and I'm struggling to find accessible fare- here's what's made the go list so far, but methinks it is too heavy for the whippersnappers- Camus' The Stranger and essays, Sartre's No Exit and The Flies, Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, Kafka's The Penal Colony and Metamorphosis, Jehovah's Book of Job, parts of Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Seventh Seal, plus essay passages from the usual suspects. Granted, a pretty standard list, so what I'm looking for are ideas outside the despair box. Find me a new dread angle, Johnson.

The Shield is good television, but Deadwood is the greatest show ever made- its quality is aggressively unrelenting.

I really want to go to Ozzfest- not for the music, but for the people-watching and to see fans actually do something more than stand there. But mostly for the metal chicks. I mean, really.