I'm feeling the anxiety brought on by a mild case of surprisaphobia tonight, while I wait for my shirt to dewrinkle.

Though it's more than that. More than just a feeling that I'm not ready for certain surprises. Tonight, I'm also noticing an almost palpable certainty that if I'm not surprised, then the entire night will end up being a waste of time.

So yeah, it's kind of a lose-lose situation if I go. I should probably just let fear win and keep me at home. But I won't.

Wish me luck.

Thanks.

The Louisville weather forecast for Saturday.

A slight chance of snow showers between 8am and 11am, then a slight chance of snow showers between 11am and 1pm, then a slight chance of snow showers between 1pm and 4pm, then a slight chance of snow showers after 4pm.

I'm not really sure how to express this. I might write some drivel and then delete it because it's stupid. Or maybe not. Some of you people have come to expect, and even desire, drivel from me.

Where to start?

I had a brief lunch with NotHideousGirl today. And it was nice and pleasant, and she's lovely and witty. I talked to EllaGirl for a while after that, and it was intriguing and enchanting, and she's pretty and funny.

Perfectly normal stuff.

But then, after EllaGirl was called away, I allowed myself to imagine that MixedSignalGirl was there with me. And it was poignant and burning, and she was beautiful and incredible and delicious. And I wanted to cry.

And, after a while, I went back to work. And I was fine.

I went to Rich O's after work. And while I was there I saw the ghost. And it was heart-rending and exhilarating and stunning, and the ghost was sparkling and burning and radiant. And I wanted to cry.

And, after a while, I came home. And I was fine.

I am, for today anyway, I am in control of my emotions. I can feel what I want to feel, when I want to feel it. And then I can turn off those feelings when I no longer want them.

This is fucking huge.

Because I don't want to bury these things so deeply that they're effectively absent from my life. But neither do I want them to control my life and maybe even define my life.

I want what I want, but only when I want it.

This is fucking huge.

I hope it lasts beyond today.

I'm afraid to go to sleep.

Nineteen years.

Ninefuckingteen. Ten plus nine. Twenty minus one. And, more importantly, forty-two minus twenty-three.

That's a lot, right?

That's too much, right?

Now, if I were retarded, then maybe. Maybe I wouldn't care so much about the total lack of commonality between our lives. Maybe I wouldn't spend all of my time wondering when someone new, someone better, someone at least fucking younger would come along and lure her away from me with his fucking full head of hair and all his fucking teeth.

Or if she'd grown up homeless on the mean streets, learning about life the hard way while other children her age were singing along to Barney and fighting with their siblings over who got the biggest slice of cake at Grandma's birthday party, then maybe. Maybe she'd be wiser than her years. Maybe she'd be ready to settle down into a nice and safe and boring domesticated life.

Or maybe if I was 80, and she was 61, then maybe. Maybe she could help me remember my own name, and wipe my ass for me, and stay with me because she'd know that I didn't have much time left and then, cha ching! Life insurance money!

Nineteen years. That's 600,000,000 seconds, give or take a few tens of thousands.

Yes, that's definitely too much. Maybe. I think.

Damn she's hot though.

It wasn't my idea. I was just being a friendly person.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Before I get into my reviews of the girls this week, I should point out three things.

First, I will typically watch the performance, then write my thoughts. Then I'll listen to what the judges had to say. Randy I can always ignore because he's a racist asshole. Paula I can safely ignore because she's too damn nice, and she may be drunk. Simon, I usually end up agreeing with. Sometimes, if Simon and I really disagree, I'll write something about that fact. But usually not.

Secondly, I'm in a bad mood.

Thirdly, joining me for tonight's viewing was Brother Thelonious from the North Coast Brewery (50).

Gina: Very good. That one loud and out of tune background singer should be fucking shot though. I like Gina. (75 points)

Alaina: A good job, but this week her voice seemed very generic. There are lots of people on the radio who sound worse than her, but there are lots more who sound better than her. I gave her a million bonus points for being so hot. I thought the judges were way too harsh on her, and I'd like to hug her and pet her to make her feel better. (1,000,070 points)

LaKisha: She had her hair redone. It looks good. She looks her age now. She did an amazing performance of a great song. Give her the fucking title right now. (100 points)

Melinda: Stupid song, but an incredible performance. She finished particularly strong. No flaws. (100 points)

Antonella: She looks hot in a groovy dress. A good song, but her performance was wavering at times and flat at others. I adore Antonella, but not her singing. Now I'm in a bad mood. She seems so nice. I give her a half-million bonus points for not being stuck-up. (500,065 points)

Jordin: Disneyesque performance of a stupid song. Much better than last week though. (80 points)

Stephanie: Maybe it's all the fault of the horribly stupid song choice, but I thought this was a train wreck. (5 points)

Leslie: Adorable. Boring song. I took off 100 points for that stupid skat stuff. (negative 40 points)

Haley: Disconcertingly pretty. I really like her voice, and I thought she did a good job. (80 points)

Sabrina: She's managed to gain some depth to her voice in the past week. Wow. (85 points)

I was at work, but it was at my old elementary school too. I know, weird.

Anyway, I walked up to this one section, and there was some kind of assembly going on for the kids. When I arrived in the area, there was a pretty woman on stage. She was completely nude except for something she was wearing on her shoulders. Like football shoulder pads but not as bulky. She was also completely hairless.

I think she was the mistress of ceremonies or something, because she introduced the next act right when I got there.

It was a Samoan guy, dressed in tribal getup, and he had a foot-long boner. At the end of his boner was tied a string, and he was jiggling the string to make his boner go up and down. All the kids were laughing hysterically.

I remember thinking at about this time that perhaps this wasn't a proper show for elementary school kids. The Samoan guy started saying something, but I could hear because there were two people in front of me who were talking too loudly. A couple of people behind me kept making shhhh noises, but the loud talkers ignored them. So then the people behind me complained to a teacher, and the teacher told the loud talkers to shut up.

Then the loud talkers went back to confront the people behind me, and the people behind me did some kung fu moves and beat the shit out of the loud talkers. That's also when I noticed that the people behind me were obviously retarded.

When I finally got home, it was 7:30. It was my old house in Lanesville, and my parents were there playing cards with my uncles Wayne and Stan and my aunts Carol and Helen.

Dad asked me where I'd been so late, and I told him school. He didn't believe me, so I said I'd call the school and they'd vouch for me. But when I looked in the phone book, there was no listing for my school.

I asked my dad what year it was, and he said it was 1969. I remembered then that my school hadn't existed yet in 1969, so that made sense.

I asked my dad how he thought my goatee looked, and he said it looked good.

I said, "Especially for a four-year-old, right?"

He said, "Just wait until you turn five."

Then I went to work. To real work, not the work/school I'd been at earlier. It was still 1969, but one of my coworkers was there anyway. He was all excited because he'd added a new disk drive unit the size of a washing machine, and so now we had a whole 120MB of storage space on the computer floor. Then I told my coworker that I could predict the future. I wrote "34 terabytes" on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope. Then I gave the envelope to my coworker and told him not to open it until 2007, and then he'd see that I was telling the truth.

A pretty shitty night. I might not bother to watch the guys next week.

Phil: Pretty good. Safe and boring, but good. (75 points)

Jared: Wow. The perfect song for him. This is the kind of music he should be singing all the time. (85 points)

A.J.: Quite possibly the gayest A.I. performer since Clay Aiken. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As for his performance, I fell asleep. (50 points)

Sanjaya: I didn't listen because he sucks. I bet he spends a lot of time being shoved into lockers at school. (0 points)

Chris S: He missed a few notes singing a stupid song. I gave 15 bonus points because his wife is hot. (80 points)

Nick: I like his voice, but it really clashed with this song. I didn't care for this performance at all. (40 points)

Blake: A decent performance of a stupid song. I took off 50 points for the stupid hat, another 30 for the gangster wannabe hand gesture crap, and another 800 for the beat box bullshit. (-820 points)

Brandon: Incredibly out of tune. (10 points)

Chris R: The judges all want to suck his dick for some reason. I don't like him at all. Plus, it was a stupid song. (20 points)

Sundance: Stupid song, but he did a pretty good job with it. (70 points)

My sister Neisha once said that her hobby was collecting hobbies. I know exactly what she meant, because I've always done the same thing. Except that I usually take it a step further. Or a million steps further.

My hobby is obsessions.

A month ago I wrote about an anonymous gift I got in the mail. A copy of The Game by Neil Strauss. I still don't know who sent me the damn thing, who decided for some reason to introduce me to the world of the pickup artists.

But that world, that community, it has become my newest obsession.

Learning about these people, and what they think, and how they operate. How they formulate and rehearse everything they do when it comes to meeting girls. It's a very fascinating subject for me. Like I wrote before, it's both intriguing and repulsive to me. It's a fucking auto accident with dead and mangled bodies strewn all over the road.

See a pretty girl. Walk up to her. Say some canned line. Gauge her reaction, and say another set of canned lines. Get her phone number. Meet her again in a few days. Have sex with her. Rinse and repeat.

The whole thing makes me kinda sick to my stomach. It likens women to mindless robots, and it reduces relationships to formulaic interactions with sex as the only goal being pursued.

Seriously, there are guys out there who are actually proud of the fact that they date several women at the same time. That they have can have sex with a half-dozen women in a week.

I may be generalizing a bit. The stated goal of at least some of these people is the same goal that a lot of men have: To have an awesome relationship with a wonderful girl. I know that's been my goal for as long as I can remember.

But for others, for others the goal is to make up for the lost time they spent as shy and unpopular virgins. And to do it as callously and impersonally as possible.

Disgusting.

Speaking for myself, I've never had a real problem meeting girls. Talking to girls. Setting up and going on dates. Those things have never been a problem for me, but that's not to say that I don't have any problems when it comes to girls. I have a couple that, sometimes, annoy the shit out of me.

My first problem is that, over these 1.3 billions seconds or so of my life, I've found very few girls who seemed to be worth any effort whatsoever. Not the effort required to get to know them, and not even the effort required to simply bed them. Whores and sluts. Stuck-up prima donnas. Fucking basket cases.

So, most often, I don't even bother. I go by my first impression, and I give up before I ever get started.

This really annoys me. I know that I'm missing out on some wonderful opportunities.

But that's not my biggest problem. Not even close.

My biggest problem is, I seem to always be on the fast track to the dreaded friend zone. I make friends all over the fucking place, and I daresay that most of them are girls. I try to tell myself that this isn't a bad thing at all. That a good friend is much better than a one-night stand could ever be. I tell myself that, and at least a part of me knows that I'm right, but it can still be frustrating as fuck. I'm still a man after all. Biology and instinct does play a big part in my life and my moods and my desires.

I think about some of the most wonderful and fascinating and beautiful girls I know, and almost every one of them is or was a friend of mine. So close but still so far. Like I said, frustrating as fuck.

That's why I've become fascinated with this pickup artist stuff. To try to learn how to avoid this pitfall. To try to learn how to avoid the friend zone until/unless I decide that it's where I want to be. I want to finally be able to make that choice instead of having it forced down my throat.

Because, once I'm trapped, there's no escape from the friend zone.

And, once feelings develop as they inevitably will, it's fucking torture.

I've had enough torture in my life. I have enough friends. I want something else. Something more.

Now this is exactly the kind of thing for which I wanted a camera in my phone!

Sunday I was sitting at a red light, minding my own business, and there was suddenly a loud crash to my left.

The sign says "No left turn" and it seems a lot bigger when it's lying on the ground than it does when it's 20 feet in the air.

I bet it's a heavy fucker too.

I wish I'd been thinking more clearly. I could have jumped out of my truck and grabbed the sign. Then I could have mounted it in my basement or something.

There are way too many people making left turns in my basement.

I sat down here a few minutes ago, thinking that I should probably do a weekend recap or some shit like that.

So here goes.

Saturday night I had a 1950s date with a nice girl I met Friday at lunch. After lunch actually. We did the 1950s dinner (Red Lobster) and a movie (Children of Men) thing. It was quite nice, and I think we actually like each other, but it's a bit too soon for me, and we both realized it at about the same time. I mean, I met her about two minutes after MixedSignalGirl ended our lunch date so abruptly.

Sunday I worked all damn day, then I took a five-hour nap.

Okay, that's my weekend recap. I never said it would be interesting.

Plus, I want to write about something else. Something that I started thinking and wondering about right after my nap.

Emotionally, I am about halfway shut down, I think. But realistically I should be much much worse. I want to be much worse.

I don't know if the events of the past couple of years have numbed me, or if maybe I just don't care about these new things as much as I'd have thought, or if maybe I'm still in denial.

I kinda hope it's only the denial thing.

Because I don't want to be numb. I paid too high a price to get my emotions back to have them come back neutered.

I don't want to be apathetic either.

I hope it's just denial, and I hope that someday soon reality will trample its way into my head and my heart and destroy me.

I don't want to be sort of sad. I want to be devastated and obliterated.

Weird, I know.

You know what? This subject is worthy of more creative ability than I can muster right now.

Maybe some other time.