Pazz and Jop results, my ballot, and Glenn McDonald's critical alignment ratings.

I am disappointed to have been the only person who voted for Amerie's album.

At times it occurs to me that while my sense of the way things are is basically nihilistic, my wish for how I would like them to be is hopeful, and anything I regard as good work or worthwhile thinking on my part always contains at least some small expression of that hope. But this seems to make my failures of will, failure to work, especially dispiriting. It's an unhappy lot, caring just enough to want to care more but not enough to actually care.

'I decided to think of it as a period of training in techniques for dealing with boredom.'

(So write about the situation, already.)

'Mind you I don't believe what Kierkegaard believed, but of this I am certain, that we are not here in order to have a good time.'

My favorite song right now is maybe 'Unspoken Word'.

But I'm disappointed by the lyrics there. I always imagine he's saying 'Bobby Digital / keyboard cord, bitch you analog'. But digital keyboards have cords too, so maybe that doesn't make any more sense than 'keyboard clogged' (which doesn't make, you know, lots).

One of the coffeeshops I frequent keeps playing this album every time I'm there. I don't know what it is but my dislike for it grows every time I hear it. I don't want to ask what it is because I can't fake being interested in it and would very much like to inform whoever I ask that I dislike the record. I have to know. I would like to be as precise in my dislike for the record as possible.

I hope the exuberance I feel at hearing my favorite jazz records doesn't fade once none of them feel new any longer.

'Absence becomes an active process, a business (which keeps me from doing anything else).'