It would seem that I'm in the middle of a full-blown insomnia phase. I accepted this fact when I realized that it had been well over an hour since I had taken a muscle relaxant that would normally knock me out in under 20 minutes. I took the muscle relaxant instead of Ambien because all the tension in my body is currently concentrated in my neck, jaw, and the upper part of my head. I've obviously started grinding my teeth again when I do finally get to sleep; I could hardly chew tonight because of the jaw pain. The muscles in my forehead are actually sore from crinkling themselves up too much. I keep trying to massage my face into some sort of zen-face-master state, but it only works for about ten minutes at a time. Plus, it hurts. So, now, my mind is good for absolutely nothing, but I still can't seem to switch it off, as I've developed a drug-resistant strain of a wakefulness virus. I wonder what they give horses. Maybe I can convince our vet that we have livestock out yonder with a hankering for some good downers.

On friendster, my email address is listed as majorweather@yahoo.com. My full name is Shasta Turner.

We have signed up with a gardening service just for the front. They are going to mow the lawn, edge the sidewalks & walkways, trim bushes & shrubs, sweep the driveway and sidewalk, rake the lawn, weed in all cracks and crevices, clean the street in front of our house, and fertilize every 2-3 months for $9.95 per visit. I feel kind of bad for hiring them; I keep imagining their staff as a bunch of 8 year-old ex Nike employees from Indonesia. Of course, it's much more likely that they'll be adult males who have immigrated illegally from Mexico.

In a state like California, in which the labor of illegal immigrants has an enormous—though not officially acknowledged—impact on the economy, it's sometimes hard for me to decide whether or not I feel okay about my own role in these economic transactions. Always, there's the dilemma: am I providing necessary employment to people who need the money or contributing to the exploitation of an unenfranchised class of workers? Perhaps it's both, a catch-22. I suppose I'll wait until they come and then decide how I feel about it.

Do you remember that song by Randy Newman, "My Life Is Good"? I think it was on the same album as "I Love L.A."

"A couple weeks ago
My wife and I
Took a little trip down to
Mexico
Met this young girl there
We brought her back with us
Now she lives with us
In our home
She cleans the hallway
She cleans the stair
She cleans the living room
She wipes the baby's ass
She drives the kids to school
She does the laundry, too
She wrote this song for me
Listen
Yeah."

The man's a genius, really. It's astonishing to me how many people are incapable of wrapping their minds around the fact that the primary feature of much of his older work was irony. There are a whole lot of them. They are, as "I Love L.A." the official anthem of the City of Los Angeles. They're the short people who were offended by "Short People." They're the ones who think that when Robert Frost wrote "good fences make good neighbors," he was promoting the sanctity of property lines. They think the people behind blackpeopleloveus.com are obviously racists, and they probably don't think bonsaikitten.com is even a little bit funny.