We need better dental insurance in this country. I can�t have all of my friends running around with uncovered root canals and loose caps and cavities. It seems almost everyone I know has had to wait like seven months just to get his or her root canals covered. One friend of a friend couldn�t hang out the other day because he�s in so much pain but can�t get any dental work done right now. It just makes me feel awful. Insert �How Much I Feel� for ya baby here.

Heh! USA Today was hacked last night and one of the new headlines was �Pope Calls Christianity a Sham.� Isn�t that rich? So rich, darling, so rich. Yes, immature and sad, but funny.

Very exciting, yes, is that Justin Timberlake is giving it to Janet Jackson. I have a difficult time believing that Timberlake can properly give the hot beef injection to Miss Jackson If You�re Nasty. It reminds me of those R. Crumb cartoons of the very little goofy man diving into the splurting vagina of a Huge Woman.

The B-Side was fun last night. Julie and I (mostly I) bitched about celebrities and also how much harder it would be to wake up with a hangover and be famous and open the front door to a newspaper jamming out something like, E! Has Penciled Jenn S. In For A True Hollywood Story In 2020 Where She Will No Doubt Apologize For Her Bad Behavior And Discuss Her Visit To The Betty Ford Clinic. There is a reason I decided my freshman year at BU that I would opt for a film degree instead of majoring in journalism. I�m not one for pithiness.

I was a supreme bitch to F. at practice last night but kind of with good reason, I think. Wil finally got his Ibanez re-strung and sounding hot, and was doing these tasteful dive-bomb things with harmonics and the whammy bar during the Human League�s �Don�t You Want Me.� It sounded good. F. says, �That was pretty good. This time let�s do it without the dive-bombing.� Then he chuckled. So I was like, �I liked it. I liked it.� And he�s all, �But they won�t ask us back to manray if we don�t do it straight.� And I�m all, �Well, I think it sounds good but maybe I just have my period.� And he�s all, �The people who go to 80�s night want to hear it straight. They don�t want to hear it Van Halen-style.� So I�m all, �Wil, I guess you have to do it square this time.� And a whole discussion ensued about why we need to do it as close to the original as possible, blah blah blah and the way I see it, if we�re undertaking the grandly dorky task of playing all 80�s covers, shouldn�t we be at least mildly ironic about it? I think herein lies the difference of vision that F. and I have�he isn�t being ironic at all in this band, and I am. I will dance like a fool and whip out all of my 80�s moves. But I�m not taking myself seriously. I�m not taking myself seriously when I sing in my most authentic Susanne Sulley voice, �I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar/That much is true.� I�m not taking myself seriously when I repeatedly smack the tambourine over my head and then on my ass in perfect rhythm. I�m hamming it up. F. guffawed at me when I suggested we all wear cat ears when we play. Oh how dare! And upset the pristine layer of virgin musical snow we will be laying on them with something, so, ...cough... silly?! Meanwhile, paunchy 47-year-old men in slave collars walk around manray with buttless leather pants on. You tell me what�s silly! Please, give me a safe word!

On a side note (what else is there, really) M. who grabbed my guitar out of my hands at my Halloween party knocked on the practice space door last night to say �right on� to the Human League song. He has no idea who I am. And that I accidentally found his live journal whilst looking to see if Charlie�s had a web site and he�s all talking about how hot A. is, who I know, who used to work at Charlie�s. Oh whatevs. He has no idea what a small world it is, I guess. �In a town so small there�s no escaping you.� �B&S

Watching Charlotte Church�s raised eyebrow faux angel flared nostril �gather �round ye lowly mortals� singing scares the bejeezus outta me. And her mouth contracts quickly and continuously in an �O� as if it were a golden rectum savoring its delectable emerging poo so much that it�s not sure it wants to let it go.

I find it hilarious that Rosie O�Donnell is deathly afraid of practically all animals and yet for some reason this animal woman would always get booked on her show. I�m watching a rerun of the show and Rosie practically ran offstage. She was like, �This is the worst day of my life.� There were birds flying all over trying to find a place to land and the audience was screaming. It really was quite funny. Then when the woman brought out a baby bull Rosie ran away and yelled at it, �Don�t look at me! I�m not your friend.�

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Word of the Day for Friday July 12, 2002:

monomania mon-uh-MAY-nee-uh; -nyuh, noun:

1. Pathological obsession with a single subject or idea.

2. Excessive concentration of interest upon one particular subject or idea.

One of the themes in the book was the necessity for a leader to be passionate about the work. And sometimes in a corporate setting, passion becomes monomania. --"Balancing the Personal and the Professional," [1]New York Times, October 10, 1999

It is a monomania that approaches a frenzy in which girlfriends or wife, family and sleep, mean nothing. --Newgate Callendar, "Crime," [2]New York Times, January 4, 1987

He was... a rather impossible person -- self-absorbed to the point of monomania (when lesser beings presumed to take part in his monologues, he would say "Quite" and then continue along his solitary path). --Thomas M. Disch, "Later Auden," [3]Washington Post, July 4, 1999

After visiting American prisons Tocqueville and his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, wrote that social reformers in the United States had been swept up in "the monomania of the penitentiary system," convinced that prisons were "a remedy for all the evils of society." --Eric Schlosser, "The Prison-Industrial Complex," [4]The Atlantic, December 1998

Monomania is derived from the Greek elements mono-, "one, single, alone" + mania, �madness, frenzy, enthusiasm."