I just read an interesting article about how to wake up without feeling like crap. The basic method is to use two alarms - the first one set at the earliest you'd like to wake up, with the alarm being something soft, like a light tone, or perhaps music. The second alarm should be a regular buzzer set at the latest you want to wake up. This is so you're not actually late if the first one doesn't do the trick for you.

Attention, dear readers! It has come to our attention that a sex-crazed pest from Korea is hell-bent on wreaking havoc in New Zealand! It's a little thing called a Sea Squirt, it's been transported to New Zealand from Korea, and now it's threatening the kiwi shellfish supply. They're spreading quickly due to their spawning rate of once every 24 hours.

There's a spoon on my desk and I have no idea how it got there.

I've decided that I've been a tagee for too long. It's time that I became a tagger. As such, I am going to write a list of twenty things about me, and I am going to tag two additional people who will then be forced (via horrible, horrible peer pressure and a quadruple dog dare) to do the same. There are no rules about what 20 things you can include, I simply ask that they be sort of interesting. ;)

1) My first real memory was of losing my sock monkey down the crack between my bed and the wall. It was traumatic, and may explain my current deep distrust of monkeys.

Something pretty crappy happened today, so I'm coping by sharing a bit of something with you folks. Some of you may know that I've been working on a novel for a few years now, and I've decided to post a bit of it for you. Enjoy.

But don't steal. Stealing leads to killing, and I'd rather not take the time to hunt you down and stuff a pitchfork up your butt. K, thanks.

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Once again, I have been tagged by Space Nakji. As such, I have to list some stuff that makes me cry. Fortunately, I am hobo enough to be able to express myself on an emotional level.

TV shows that have made me cry:

Good lord, TV? I haven't watched TV since Happy Days was on. Ok, that's a lie, but I really don't watch all that much TV these days. Here's all I can think of:

It's been a pretty good day, if you must know. I exchanged a series of hilarious emails with The Girl, wherein we used the Google Translator (me) and BabelFish (her) to send each other increasingly bizarre love notes in what I like to call "Machine French" (which brings to mind nightmare visions of killer robot mimes, but whatever).

[Space Nakji] don't you hate when someone takes a picture of you and you only realize days after you've been looking at it in iPhoto that there's a weird art collage of penises RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR HEAD and you didn't even realize it?

[Gasoline Hobo] HAHAHAHAHAHAHA that happens to me all the time. i'll be looking at my pics and i'll be all like "GODDAMN IT!! FUCKING PENISES AGAIN!"

I have a huge bug up my butt. (Space Nakji, do NOT click that link. I'm warning you.) I feel a powerful urge to totally and completely redesign this site, including getting the fuck off of blogger. Mostly this means that I will be ripping off dooce.com, but still. This thing is getting stale.

Today finds me a bit at loose ends creatively. It also finds me with an insatiable, unholy lust for cupcakes, but we will not speak of that. Fortunately, this problem is one of too many options rather than not enough.

While this didn't actually creep me out (I thought it was pretty cool, actually), I can certainly see how this could be creepy. You know, because they LOOK. With their EYES. The stills below are taken from a photorealistic computer animation that you can find here.

Let me just preface this little piece by saying that I have nothing against religion. Like anything, it can be used for good or evil. My main problem with this story has nothing to do religion and everything to do with how stupid people are.

And by blogger, I mean blogger.com, not any particular blogger. The question of WHY blogger can suck it is a simple one to answer, as it mainly involves the fact that it ate a really long post of mine. There were pictures. There was laughter and joy and really exciting things. It took me over an hour to write. Then I hit the big friendly "publish post" button, and I got a lovely, FANTASTIC message saying that blogger was down for prescheduled maintenance and to try back later.