You may be wrapped in greasy skin, but inside you have the heart of a robot

Being somewhat transient at the moment, I find myself out of my comfortable little computing sphere and subject the the desktops of others, and I've noticed something peculiar. Why is it that most people (I exclude the computer gods in this generalization, of course) are content to clutter their computing experience with all the little bonus icons, oh-so-informative windows, and constant error messages that accumulate with the inevitable installation and uninstallation of programs? I refuse to believe it is because they are incapable of rectifying the situation. Does anyone actually need a desktop shortcut to Yahoo! Mail? If Windows has notified you upon every startup for months now that it can't find COM1 to Hotsync or whatever, does this concern you at all, and if so, why does Windows have to tell every user who logs in? These are the little things I like to pretend keep me up at night, so I'll have an excuse for this blasted insomnia.

Today I tried to trace back to that place where I went so horribly off track. Surely there was a time in my life when I went to bed at a reasonable hour, and something or someone really fucked it up for me. I came up short. I'm sure I had a bedtime as a child, but I have memories of waiting until the house was asleep and roaming the halls, playing with my toys, reading, whatever, except actually going to sleep. As I got older (and my family expanded--jesus, when will that end?), I cherished these late hours as a time to be alone, until the rest of my generation followed suit, and I found myself in the middle of a party after the parents went to bed each night. Truly, I think I was happiest when I was waiting tables or bartending, because I had a legitimate excuse for this deviant behavior. Of course, being up late with your friends drinking or getting high is almost acceptable--far more than, say, spending entirely too long on a self-absorbed blog post--but even then, only a few nights a week. I feel as though someone really fucked up when they were programming my circadian rhythm. I'm still waiting to grow out of it, but as the years speed by, I'm becoming doubtful. I defy anyone who is reading this to call upon a time when I said "Well, I'd love another drink, but I think I'm just gonna go to bed..." Can't do it, can you? It's not the alcoholism, it's the insomnia....the alcoholism is just a convenient cover-up. Eh.

Ever feel like you're on some sort of blacklist, but you can't exactly pinpoint what you've been blacklisted from?

Yeah, neither have I.