Oh, shit, folks.

See, now this is just no good at all. So you're telling me that anyone I've looked at on Friendster in the last thirty days can see in their own profile that I've viewed them? Um, perhaps you haven't given much thought to how this might affect the obsessive stalkers in the audience?

Seriously, I am so busted. In the last month, I've looked up two ex-girlfriends, an internet quasi-celebrity, a girl I wrote to once on Craigslist, three former co-workers, an insane girl I used to do theater with back in high school (now engaged), and a handful of people who wrote freelance pieces that I happened to read on the internet somewhere, not to mention the dozen or so random profiles I've clicked on out of general office boredom.

Change your preferences, kids, or be forever identified as the leering, web page-refreshing, ex-lover-hunting freak you are.

I’ve been fascinated recently by things that seem to be "common knowledge" or part of the collective unconscious, seemingly for no good reason. Like, f’rinstance...the other day a colleague of mine was eating a banana, and -- being that we are hip, young, fresh comedy writers -– decided to do a bit wherein he threw the banana peel on the floor and pretended to slip on it. Yes, groundbreaking comedy, I know. However, the joke made an impression on me, not for the yuks, but because, well...how did a banana peel become the archetype for "thing that makes you slip and fall?" I can easily think of a dozen things more slippery than a banana peel. Walking on a waxed floor in your socks, let’s say, or perhaps wet grass. In fact, stepping on a banana peel would more likely result in a smushed banana peel than it would in one’s foot being comically flung out in front of one’s body, pitching one backward onto one’s imminently-bruised ass. And yet, a banana peel on a floor is universally recognized as an icon for slipperiness. It’s just the thing. Somebody had to be the first person to decide that. Somebody told that joke before anyone else did. Whoever you may be, congratulations, sir. Because banana peel = slippery is part of our basic human programming.

I mentioned this to Real Live Girl last night and she provided another good example: Elephants like peanuts,. And they’re scared of mice, too, right? Well, sure Everybody knows that. Now, I have never seen an elephant eat a peanut, nor have I ever heard anyone with even a shred of zoological expertise say anything about the hostile rodent/pachyderm relationship. Not that it matters. This is just something that "everybody knows." Also, goats eat tin cans. Right?

I’ll offer one more example, only because this one seems obvious to me, and yet RLG had never heard of it. So back me up on this one, folks. In college, if someone was talking about taking a ridiculously easy course, a gut course, an easy A with little effort, that course was called...what? Hint: three words, sounds like something Martha Stewart might teach. Anyone? "Underwater Basket Weaving?" No kidding, I’ve heard people of all ages, from all parts of the country joke about taking "Underwater Basket Weaving." Why is that? How did that become the thing? Who started it? And when?

And most importantly, am I really the only one who’s heard of "Underwater Basket Weaving" before? I know I'm not. I mean, check out this Google search.

I broke up with my therapist about two months ago. This may come as something of a surprise to those few of you out there who know me well and never knew I was one of those types who went in for having my head shrunk, but there it is. I never spoke about it because I didn't want to be that guy for whom the main benefit of getting into therapy was having something to talk about at cocktail parties for the rest of his life. I've met those people. They're the reason I drink so much at cocktail parties. Anyway, the breakup was, as nearly all of my previous breakups have been, my doing. I had been sporadically seeing my doc for close to year -- I say "sporadically" because it didn't take much for me to cancel an appointment. A friend in town, a dinner reservation, a psychosomatic sore throat...all of these seemed to me perfectly reasonable excuses to skip my weekly 45 minutes on the couch. This, I realize, is perhaps not the most productive attitude towards therapy.

I will say that the experience was generally a positive one. To be cliche about it, I did learn a lot about myself and was able to isolate certain issues and facets of my personality that could stand a little more focus and improvement. Though most of the time I went into the office griping about "not having anything to talk about," I was frequently surprised when what I thought would be a go-nowhere session would generate some insight or connection. Overall, I liked the idea of therapy, particularly when I felt it was doing something. In the end, though (and folks, isn't this how all relationships go?), we just weren't clicking. I had a hard time making myself understood at times, and on those rare occasions where I did come in with something specific to discuss, I'd find the conversation getting sidetracked. I started skipping sessions more often. Frankly...and say it with me everyone...I just wasn't that into her. (The "her" aspect also had something to do with my eventual departure. Doctor-patient confidentiality aside, I realized there were certain things I simply had trouble discussing with a woman.)

Hence, the breakup. I handled it like a gentleman. I rehearsed my speech and tried to prepare myself for any counter-arguments she might offer. I steeled myself to not be swayed, to stand firm in the face of any impassioned pleas to "give it another chance." Unlike most breakups I've been through, it went easier than I expected. She understood. She put up a half-hearted resistance, but in the end, realized it was ultimately my decision. And we parted ways.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I think it's about time for me to find someone new. I quit with the expectation of starting up again eventually. The only problem is, I'm not quite sure how to go about finding someone. All I know is, it should be soon, because I have been depressed and grumpy for a week. It's nothing debilitating, just a low-level grouchiness that I can usually beat back but that occasionally rears its ugly head in socially unproductive ways. Real Live Girl caught the brunt of it this past weekend when, for no good reason, I shut myself down and moped around for an evening, refusing to be cheered up and, at one point, even saying a not-very-nice thing. Serious low points like that are few and far between, but something of late is not sitting quite right with me and I can't quite articulate or even identify exactly what it is. Which means you can probably look forward to a lot more personal bitching and moaning in this space for a few days as I attempt to figure it out in a non-professionally-counseled way. In the meantime, if anyone knows how to find a good therapist in NY who will take my insurance, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Hey, are you not content simply being a dick? Good news! Now you can smell like one, too.

A bottle of this stuff in someone's medicine cabinet says more about a person than actually driving a Hummer ever could.

How good is afternoon drinking? I'll give you a hint: really good. Of course, with my ever advancing age, it's one of those things that I seem to remember as being better than it actually is. I have memories, quite possibly invented ones, of spending entire sunny afternoons sitting outside pouring beers down my throat like I had a hole in my neck, popping home for a quick nap, and in no time being fresh as a daisy and ready to head out for a late night of continued adult refreshment. Not so, today. Called up a friend around two o'clock and met for beer and burgers at ramshackle rathskeller on the Upper East Side. Enjoyment of lunch amplified by direct view from our table of some lithe tank-topped young things stuffing their faces full of greasy pub grub -- somehow a wistful reminder of summer's imminent mortality. Beers turned into additional beers which turned into well, if you have to head home then, yeah, sure, why not have one more at your place. Buddy and I now drunk, with the clock approaching seven, and us both expected at the same birthday party later this evening. I realize there is no way I'm going to make it there without additional a) water, b) food, c) sleep, and excuse myself to find all those things back at my apartment.

Kind of a shame, too, since said buddy and I were getting into the kind of conversation it actually helps to be somewhat alert for. Speculation and general soul-baring about who was getting married and when and how we felt about that and what was going on in our relationships and how did we feel about what seems to be the general trend towards permanent couplehood among our circle...and then the waitress would come back and we'd get another round and forget what we'd been talking about.

Anyhoo, got home, stumbled around like a college kid after his first frat party and fell into bed. Awake now, logy, hungover (hung-fucking-over at 9pm), still unshaved and unshowered, and finding it extremely difficult to motivate to get out to this party. S'posed to be a late night, this one. No idea how I'm going to rally. Hoping that perhaps blogging is the new cold shower-slash-cup of coffee rememdy for alleviating this condition. So far, that seems unlikely.

It was a truly bizarre experience yesterday, flipping on the TV and seeing President Bush speak bravely about the importance of staying the course in Iraq, while the whole time a little graphic of Hurricane Rita bearing down on the Texas coast spun frighteningly in the corner of the screen. And yes, you heard right: Bush did, in fact, say that terrorists view the destruction left by Hurrican Katrina and "wish they had caused it."

But this, this is pretty priceless. It's no secret that most of the administration's events are stage-managed affairs with pre-selected questions and pre-written answers. But what happens when you call on your plant to ask the question you've already decided you'll answer next...and she's not there?

Why, this happens.

I love this. I love the fact that there's not even a semblance of a hint of a shred of an attempt to disguise the fact that the whole thing is just a scripted performance. Make sure you catch the part where a reporter tries to use the pause to ask a follow-up question and Bush says, "No, that's alright."

But hey, maybe Bush bashing isn't your bag. In that case, maybe you'd prefer to take a look at some yiffy porn? Ah, nothing takes the edge off my liberal outrage like some good old fashioned anthropomorphic cartoon animal sex. This is the kind of shit I do during the day instead of working.

Ah, fuck. Fine. Okay. I admit it. I talk shit about blogs all the time. I hate them. They're masturbatory, self-congratulatory literary wastelands for exhibitionists and megalomaniacs. I mean, it's all well and good if you want to tell the world what music you happen to be listening to at the moment, but I'd prefer it if you stayed off my bandwidth.

There. That being said, I'm starting to get it. For a long time I would have ridiculed the idea of keeping a blog. I would never have done it, mainly because I always felt I had no time, no motivation and nothing interesting to say. Then I got hired by Nerve.com. It's amazing how quickly your opinions of blogs can change when you're a) getting a little paid, and b) getting a little laid. Having written a quasi-blog for Nerve for more than a year now, I've grown to like the forum, the feedback, the gratification that comes with knowing at least a couple of people are out there picking up what you're putting down. It's fun. It's therapeutic. And dammit, I'm a writer who knows all too well how little discipline I have. I've been telling myself for years I need to have some sort of regular outlet, a page upon which to write words, any words, on a consistent basis. Never done it. Never saw the point of keeping a journal. Never scribbled down screenplay notes or jotted my dreams into a fraying spiral-bound memo pad.

But maybe this is it, kids. I've been swayed, brainwashed by the phenomenon, swept away by the tide of Nerve-olution and energized by all those refugees who, joining LiveJournal, started keeping blogs of their own. And after a few conversations on the topic with my lovely lady, Real Live Girl, as well as the ever-verbose Stockdude, I can protest no longer. I am closing the final few inches between me and absolute total geekdom.

Sweetie, I'm sorry I ever said anything about your blog.

Watch this space to find out whether or not I keep up with the damn thing, or just let it peter off into oblivion. Meanwhile, there's a new post up on the Nerve Blog-A-Log that nobody's reading. Start there if you really can't wait for more.