What I'm listening to:
-The Magnolia Soundtrack (I am irked that Phil Collins won the Oscar for best song over Aimee Mann's haunting, gorgeous "Save Me." Are those Academy judges deaf?)
-Ray's promotional copy of Tsar's first CD which will be released later this spring.
-Moonshine Records' soundtrack to Better Living Through Circuitry

What I'm reading:
-Sartre's play "No Exit." (read it in college, but I'm re-reading it and finding it to be so ultra-sharp.)

What I recently finished reading:
-Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin. I was never a huge fan of Janis Joplin, but this book is an engrossing biography of an incredibly talented, driven, tortured, lonely woman. She really paved the way for strong dangerous women in rock. Author Alice Echols (who's a professor at Oxy and a writer for The Nation) also presents some of the most detailed and well-researched info on the '60s scene in Haight Ashbury that I've ever read.
-Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. It's the third time I've read this one, and I love it just as much every time. See, maybe I'm not such an ultra-modern gurl after all.

Past journal entries:
October 20, 1999
September 2, 1999 (at Burning Man)
September 1, 1999 (at Burning Man)
August 28-31, 1999 (preparing for Burning Man)
August 16, 1999
July 25, 1999
July 5, 1999
June 14, 1999

3/27/2000 07:24:03 PM: On Friday Allyson sent me Project Zapster, the Sucksters' silly scheme for ending Napster's reign. (Speaking of Napster, did you hear about Wrapster?) Then today she sent me Carl Steadman's latest -- Let's Do Launch, which is hysterical and 100% accurate. If you read that and Can We Go Live With This?, you'll know everything you need to know about a day-job in Web Production. But don't tell my company that you heard about that here. I don't wanna end up like these peeps.

3/20/2000 05:00:48 PM: On the orders of the MIS guy at work, I'm cleaning out my Microsoft Outlook in-box, because apparently I'm taking up way too much space on the company mail server. I hate to delete stuff; I save everything. It's a disease. I'm an electronic pack-rat. I guess I'm just afraid that for some reason I'm going to need that e-mail from December 16, 1999 telling me about cool myCaster stations or the one from December 14 sending me to Chickenhead's Geriatric Erotica site.

So, my In-Box's loss will be your gain. I will now post some of the zany URLs that my friends and co-workers have sent me over the past 4 months...
-- from Steve, 12.21.99, Virtual Truck Route and The Resonate Coil Project: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Coil Winding
-- from Jim Beard, 1.6.2000 Pass the Mic, JigglyPuff
-- from Jim Beard, 1.11.2000 jesusdance.com
-- from Mike Vecchio, 1.11.2000 Kevin Porter's Wacky Packages Web Page
-- from John Nugent, 1.12.2000 Artopod's Experiments in Design, Technology, and Multimedia
-- from Chris Rullet, 1.14.2000 TV Themes Online
-- from John Nugent, 1.20.2000 Scratch It
-- from John Nugent, 1.20.2000 Interview with a Verbot
-- from John Nugent, 1.21.2000 Atom Films
-- from John Nugent, 1.27.2000 Ceiva: The World's First Internet Connected Picture Frame
-- from Camille, 1.28.2000 Porn Star or My Little Pony?
-- from Tiffany, 1.31.2000 Movie-Mistakes.com
-- from Selena, 2.3.2000 WuName
-- from John Nugent, 2.4.2000 Superfriends, whassup
-- from Tiffany, 2.7.2000 Snowpea and Tofu
-- from Mindy, 2.8.2000 Morrissey Gets a Job
-- from John Nugent, 2.9.2000 Test your powers of observation
-- from Tiffany, 2.9.2000 Mark Hamill's casting video for Star Wars
-- from Debi, 2.9.2000 Intertainer
-- from John Nugent, 2.9.2000 Hollywood, PA
-- from Julie, 2.9.2000 TheSpark.com's Bitch Test (I'm 68% bitchy.)
-- from Allyson, 2.10.2000 Who Do You Do?
-- from Tiffany, 2.14.2000 Psycho Studio and Movie-a-Minute
-- from Jeff, 2.17.2000 Radiskull and Devil Doll
-- from me, 2.17.2000 Can We Go Live With This?
-- from Jeff, 2.18.2000 I'm on Salon.com
-- from Julie, 3.2.2000 Pet of the Day
-- from Mindy, 3.2.2000 Nude Man Carrot
-- from John Nugent, 3.9.2000 AOL Instant Messenger web version
-- from Lee, 3.9.2000 The Lifestyle: Group Sex in the Suburbs
-- from Steve, 3.15.2000 The spooky "haunted" painting for sale on eBay

2/24/2000 11:29:23 AM: This blog thang is getting addictive. I started a new one called Instant Messages and invited Lee to post to it.

2/24/2000 11:26:08 AM: Yesterday Salon ran an article called "Alpha Male Epilson" which I promptly sent to Lee (who I sometimes forget was actually in a fraternity). The article made some strong points about why frat boys can become endearing, even to people who would naturally despise them. I am finding myself enamoured with a frat boy despite the extreme disdain I've nurtured for years. After all, I chose my college based partly on the fact that it didn't have and had never had fraternities or sororities. I loved the idea of individualism too much, and then I found myself at a school where so many people isolated themselves in their single dormrooms away from everyone else. A school with a large percentage of anti-social extremists -- however intelligent and interesting they were. Anyway, four years after leaving a place championing individualism, I find myself dating a frat boy. And the last two paragraphs of the Salon article do a bit to possibly explain why:

In 1995, Mark Adams wrote in GQ that being a frat boy involves more than the look, but learning a fundamental "tolerance and commitment" toward other people and applying that. "That's why fraternity men make such good brokers and congressmen," he wrote, "they already know that in the real world one has to cut deals with cretins and idiots, and that you can't run away from everyone whose interests and foibles don't jibe with your own," he wrote.

In other words, they possess the great gift of balancing conformist, self-centered and often thuggish behavior with their warm personalities, arresting good looks and endearing masculinity -- coming across as honorable, American and even downright charming. And that may just explain their broad appeal, because who doesn't secretly wish they could do the same?

I sent the article to Lee, and he replied, "Who would have known I would be so en vogue?" He's a trendy accessory item.