That cliffhanger I was talking about. The first ever death metal band practice.

It seems less likely since a bunch of stuff has stopped me from seeing my friend Josh, but here it goes. Josh is the polar opposite of me. He doesn't believe in God and he thinks love is a mental disorder. For real. He's a nihlist (which I maintain must be exhausting.) We're also musical opposites. He loves death metal. Which, I suppose, is fine with me since my boy John Darnielle (aka the Mountain Goats) also digs it. I don't, per se, but Josh and I do agree on one thing for sure: death metal is funny. So, we're talking about getting together one afternoon to write some songs. It should be really funny. And he's going to teach me to scream, just like my heroes Morbid Angel. Rock and a half. I'm still effing tired. Effing.

The Ben Folds show was good. Similar set to the last time I saw him, but the guy is just entertaining. And talented. I can't stop listening to the song "Everything Thermals." The next three or four mix tapes I make will probably have to contain this song. I have to back up a band that says things like "The Thermals go straight to your head/The Thermals had sex in your bed" and "The Thermals don't need drugs to have a good time/The Thermals need drugs just to stay alive." They're not the best band in the world, but they're a heeaall of a lot closer than The White Stripes, who currently hold the title of Most Overrated Band in the World. At least, that's the impression you'll get if you read Rolling Stone and then listen to their new record. Or just talk to me about it. I have the straight dope on it.

God, man, I'm hardly coherent here. I think, anyway. I am quite tired. Aaron Weinberg has an incredibly nice house in Rock Island. You should visit him. I should too. But right now, I'm about to visit my pillow and comforter. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow I'm going to see Of Montreal. Color me excited.

Last night, there was a layer of ice covering all of the grass on the NIU campus. The ice was thin and rested on the stiff blades of grass (sometimes, somehow, just above the grass) so that if you stepped on it, it made a loud, satisfying cracking noise and your foot fell through to the ground. Stepping on it was satisfying in the same way that popping bubble wrap is. So, when my friend Melissa and I went for a walk last night, we couldn't resist stepping on it. A lot. For about twenty minutes, because we found a huge, untouched patch of it between the two towers of Stevenson that we live in. There was something settling and good about it that made us both step back and smile. It was loud. We knew we were being obnoxoius, but it didn't bother us. Someone poked their head into the screen of their dorm room window and yelled at us for the terrible racket we were making, and normally we would have stopped, but as luck would have it, it was Melissa's next door neighbor Mitul. So, we kept it up for a few minutes. Until we were really cold and we went inside.

One of the best parts about our destroying the ice last night was that this morning, the sun melted it all. We both agreed that we felt strangely lucky for having the accidental foresight to trample that ice for as long as we did before it disappeared.

Nothing that good happened today. But there's always tomorrow. And Ben Folds.

Just had a ridiculous, long conversation with Kirsten who lives thirty driving hours away from me. That's a lot of driving, and it's too bad. Becuase I'd drive to visit her if it wasn't so far away. So much for going to bed at decent hours. I apparently suck at that, big time. Oh well. I feel like a winner at the game of life right now, and that feeling has not hit me very much recently. It feels pretty nice. So, I'm going to forget that I'm up unreasonably late and just realize that tomorrow, I might not feel this good.

Also, I miss Whitney a lot. It's hard having someone you're really close to just be so unreasonably far away for so long.

I know, a shocking moment of humorless candor. But hey, I'm the straight talk express. And I'm tired. And I don't even know how much senses I'm making. There will be no proofreading. Only semi-careful typing. Have you had these Munchies things frito lay makes? Man, are they good. It's snack food for the indecisive, finally. Now, if only they could introduce salted meats and chocolate into the equation and sell the things with a bottle of mountain dew, I'd...well, to be honest, I'd probably get sick. Especially at this time of night. Also, I think I have that SARS for real. Well, assuming Jade has SARS. If she doesn't, then maybe I'm just sick. But sick or not, I'm seeing Ben Folds on Thursday. I cancelled the first ever Death Metal Band Practice for it.

Consider that a cliffhanger.

So, I'm going to start using this audioblogger thing...here's how it works:
I pay them three bucks and they sell me twelve two-minute posts. I call a phone number and it patches me through to an answering machine type thing where I talk into it and it gets posted here as an mp3. Rockin'. I'm excited.

We hung out here in my family room again tonight. Ate Uncle Nicks again. Twice in one weekend, man. Although this is decidedly not the weekend. There seems to be an outbreak of SARS that has felled Jade, Trish and possibly also me, but I only felt sick for the five or six minutes that I was awake at 3:10 (when I thought I was going to go to my literature class, but stood up and thought I was about to die.)

This whole sleeping thing hasn't been my fortè lately. Lots of real, honest-to-God insomnia which I haven't had in a while. Not for more than one night at a time, anyway. But between that and the daylight savings time and the keeping unreasonable hours, it's no wonder that I would get the SARS. I went to bed at like six a.m., got up at 11:30 for class and then crashed on the couch at 2:25. I love napping. Napping is king.

You want to get your ass rocked? Listen to Ben Folds. That guy...man. I got The Bens (Ben Folds, Ben Lee, Ben Kweller) tour EP tonight. On the first listen, I really dug it. Except the song "Bruised!" has that possibly undesirable Reinhold Messner vibe...it might, anyway, I'm not positive. On the second listen, it didn't seem as bad. Well, that's enough for now. Time to strap on one of those surgical masks and do Nate's homework.

I am so tired. Not even in dekalb. Stil have to go to dekalb tonight. So much laughter. We were eating ice cream. Dan said "I should just tape this to my thighs, because that's where it's going."

Wow.

Just so's you know: Dan thinks I'm plotting to screw him over. Apparently, the other night Dan MacnCheese and Dan Major were watching the war and talking on the phone. Big surprise. And Dan Major said for some reason "sometimes I think Brian's trying to screw me over." Anyway, my byline on this thing used to say "Brian tried to win you over" but since these Dans are convinced that I'm in the screwin' over business, I changed it.

Also, Soft Targets. Soft targets are ungarded things that could be attacked (by terrorists or otherwise.) Things like shopping malls and airports. Anyway, this blog used to be called "place to be" which is a wonderful, wonderful Nick Drake song. But all of a sudden I'm not in the mood for that. So here's what soft targets is: it's a mountain goats song. The headline to this blog is the last line in the song. God, I'm tired. We're going to watch the simpsons.