I’ve been having an exceedingly difficult time thinking of words lately. I feel rather sluggish and stupid. Not good. I also have random phrases and words on repeat in my head for no apparent reason. Like today, the phrase, “you will know us by the trail of our dead.” I couldn’t think of where it was coming from, so I googled it.”And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead” is an art rock band, according to Wikipedia. A band that got its name from a Mayan chant. I don’t know the band and I don’t know much about Mayans. So, that’s not it… but I fully admit that I might’ve read about the band somewhere in my musical discovery travels and the phrase could be sticking with me as a result. It’s just annoying.

What’s also annoying is how stressed and frustrated and absolutely drained of life and energy I’ve been feeling lately. And how alone and disconnected, even more so than last week — since the height of happiness over the weekend that came from attending the birth of my friend’s child is making the current low that much lower. This is why I try not to get my hopes up about things; the higher the hopes, the more dramatic the fall.

I’ve been sighing a lot and crying a lot and generally not myself. None of the usual distractions are doing a good job of distracting me; nothing is fun or enticing or interesting. I am burying myself in work and that’s not good either since that’s just stressing me out more. I’ve been through it enough times at this point. I get it. Textbook depression. This is onset. Sleep disruption, change in appetite (loss), anhedonia (inability to find pleasure in things that are normally pleasurable), crying for no reason, aches and pains, irritability, moodiness, lethargy - and I just feel sort of wrong and empty. I don’t know what’s worse - feeling palpably hollow and cold inside or the anhedonia.

There’s no pleasure to be found in books, friends, movies, food, photography, writing, work, sleep, shopping, talking. None of it. Everything feels burdensome and boring. I’m not generally jaded, but lately? Yes. Nothing feels right.

Even this post sucks and feels wrong. I might delete it in a few days when I feel that it’s a waste of time. Because it’s what I do, like a dog trying to kick dirt up over its shit.

I’m struck with a sudden desire to watch the old Adam West/Burt Ward “Batman.” The TV episodes haven’t made it onto DVD (legal fun - Wikipedia has a nice summary) but the MOVIE sure did! And I’ve got it right here - shark repellant batspray, (Lee Meriwether (not Julie Newmar or Eartha Kitt) and all. So I think I’ll watch that tonight.

To counter last night’s sad sack of a post, allow me to share some entertaining things. Rightfully, and to match the taxonomy and structure I’ve set forth thus far, this post should be called, “Easily Entertained, volume #” - but nah. I like the Riddler reference a bit better. So, here’s some random stuff:

• One of my favorite enjoyable fun reads (that is to day, not horribly mentally taxing, but definitely not a waste of your time) from Mr. Neil Gaiman is up on the internets for free for one month. THIRTY DAYS. You can download the PDF and read it. He and his publisher (HarperCollins) did this a few months back with another one of his books and saw a bit of a jump in sales, esp. in independent bookstores, if I recall correctly. This time, it’s his book Neverwhere. So… check it out if you’d like to read a bit of non-dragon fantasy fiction about London and people and relationships and puns. It’s one of those books I could read over and over again. Just fun.

• If you’re in the northern New Jersey area and have access to a car and are craving some delicious diner food, by all means get yourself over to Tops Diner in East Newark, NJ. I went after work tonight with a friend from work and we stuffed ourselves silly… after spending about 15 minutes just staring at the menu. I must reiterate that my heart belongs to the Tick-Tock diner. They’ve got the sweet potato fries, the strangely surly service and shiny chrome that gives it authentic Jersey diner flair… but Tops Diner is surprisingly upscale (I use the term in the diner sense), offering things like eggs Benedict with crab cakes instead of Canadian bacon. The decor is more modern and sleeker, and the menu is twice as expansive. So, yeah. Consider it for your next northern NJ diner run.
• The Shape of Song. This is just geeky fun. The structure of songs is such that elements repeat - choruses, motifs, etc. This site provides a visual representation of various songs submitted - check out the simplicity of the well-known X-Files theme song by Mark Snow, the minimal roadbumps of Nine Inch Nails’ Closer, anything from Radiohead and Pachelbel’s canon. Pretty.
  

  The diagrams in The Shape of Song display musical form as a sequence of translucent arches. Each arch connects two repeated, identical passages of a composition. By using repeated passages as signposts, the diagram illustrates the deep structure of the composition.

• My Moo stickerbook arrived yesterday (@ right). Moo is a UK-based company who’s partnered with Flickr to create these cute little sticker books from your Flickr photostream. You select a bunch of photos and they print them up in a cute match-book style sticker book. I was like a little kid when I got the envelope. I’m all excited about where to put my new stickers.
• Quick Sarah Palin round-up. I’m not watching the speech tonight (no cable) and I don’t want to listen, so I’ll hear all about it tomorrow morning on NPR. In the meantime, here are some posts I’ve found interesting (and/or entertaining): (1) What a librarian has to say about Mrs. Palin, (2) a post from This Recording which I should not even try to describe, (3) a piece from an Alaska native in The New Republic called, “Palin? Really?” (4) a little piece about Palin’s kids’ names (5) and something a bit less tabloid-ey from the NYT. There’s tons more, but that would just feel wrong.
• It’s going to be almost 90 degrees in NJ tomorrow and Friday - and raining on Friday and Saturday. I want fall to get here already. I want more than just the falling leaves with their colors changing (which is sort of happening already) but also the cool weather. That’s what I want. I also wanted to find and post a clip from the Family Guy episode with the leafers descending upon Rhode Island, but I couldn’t find it on YouTube or Hulu. Oh well.