It's everywhere. I can't escape it. It follows me like a feverish nightmare.

Not the holidays, silly. "Roll with the Changes" by REO Speedwagon.

GM is using that song for every commercial it's airing between now and Jan. 2, when its interest-free financing* Keep America Rolling** campaign expires.

* Interest-free financing applies only to insanely wealthy people with immaculate credit.
** Corporate slogan is no guarantee of the continuation of rolling condition of United States. Applies only to price of General Motors common stock. Void in Wisconsin and where prohibited.

If it were just one commercial, that would be fine. But we're talking one commercial for every GM make covered in the deal – Chevy, GMC, Pontiac, Buick, Saturn – and putting that same stupid chorus from that goddamn song in every commercial. I cannot go through 5 minutes of TV-watching without the freaking spot coming on. This song wasn't played as much in '78 when it first came out. At this point, you could put every Fleetwood Mac (post-Peter Green / Bob Welch) and Eagles album on an endless loop and feed it to me through earphones at a brain-melting volume. And I would gladly prefer it to the commercial takeover by Kevin Cronin and his permed-out-and-mulleted minions of High Infidels. At this point, I'm so glad I bought a Nissan – at least they use The Who and The Police in their ads. (OK, they use "(Na Na Hey Hey) Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam, too, but I'll let that slide.)

We've got family friends over for Xmas Eve dinner. An argument has broken out over the pros and cons of commercialized popular culture and personal appearance – you know, the old substance-not-style warhorse of rhetoric. Someone said offhandedly not to listen to women's advice about this type of thing – which of course has led to a protracted verbal row and has made me want to poke my ear drums out with the turkey-carving fork, or fake stigmata wounds with said fork ('tis the season).

Please kill me. Or just wake me so I can open my presents. Every time a bell rings, an inappropriate intellectual donnybrook breaks out. If you'll excuse me, I need to go chew on Zuzu's petals – I hear they have remarkably sedative properties.

When I got home last night, there was a surprise package from Hanne – two volumes of elegant smut that will keep me warmer than a punchbowl full of egg nog. Thank you, gorgeous.

I still haven't wrapped the balance of my presents yet. Humbug. Wrapping sucks. And my family is so very much into the presentational wrapping thing. They go to the upscale gift card/wrapping store the day after Xmas to stock up on wrapping for next year's holiday – sheer madness, I tell you.

It's been a week of wall-to-wall work at the day job. Seems like because everyone is out of the office next week, the workload was twice as heavy this week – and a few of my working friends (with whom I don't work) found that to be the case as well. Well, at least my slate is finally clean now, at 3:30 on Friday afternoon. I can exhale, bore the hell out of the 5 of you who read this, and go home.

Personals update: 6 responses and 1 date so far. I went to a Warriors game – for those of you who don't follow sports, the Golden State Warriors are an ostensibly professional basketball team – with an intelligent, cute and funny school counselor. I had never attended an NBA game, and it was fun. The fans, however, seemed more amped that the Warriors scored 100 points than excited that the team actually won the game – when the Warriors score 100 points in a game, every fan in the arena gets a coupon for a free chalupa at Taco Bell. So there was the crowd in the half-empty arena, dead for 45 of the 48 minutes of the game, then chanting "Cha-lu-pa! Cha-lu-pa!" when the Warriors had one point to go. Antawn Jamison, the young franchise player of the Warriors, sank a free throw to win the chalupa sweepstakes and send the fans home happy. Jamison was cracking up because people were going apeshit over a deep-fried gordita that costs about a buck. I never did pick up my free chalupa coupon at the door - I ate a hot link and a pretzel at the game and did not want to hit the dyspeptic trifecta of doom.

Time for me to go home and wrap presents like a procrastinating motherfucker, before the next nasty storm hits the coast.

After ignoring them for years, I've just lately begun to examine my website's log file, just to see who the hell actually visits this page. It's been a surprising and interesting mélange of locations that I've found. In no particular order:

• Evanston, IL
• New York City
• Manitoba province, Canada
• Columbus, OH
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Grand Rapids, MI
• Newton, MA
• San Antonio, TX
• France
• Boulder, CO
• Seattle
• Philadelphia

Mad props to my national and international homies.

My brother-in-law has turned me on to the scariest band in the world. I've been listening to Deadbolt's album "Zulu Death Mask" for the last couple of days and it's sick, perverse, and funny as hell voodoo surf music from San Diego. Don't ask me why I find a song about a guy who decapitates hippie beggars on Haight Street laugh-out-loud funny, you've just got to listen for yourself. Merry fuckin' Xmas – no saccharine holiday music here, just "Jackals of Botswana" cranked up.

Saturday was a weird day, a restless day. It marked the 20th anniversary of my father's death. I can hardly believe it's been that long. I was going to visit his gravesite, but my mom reminded me it was the Jewish sabbath and the cemetery wouldn't be open. Shows you how religious I've been the last 15 years. So, I'll go this morning to visit my dad's and my grandmother's graves. I picked up a yahrzeit (memorial) candle. We gathered around this tiny candle, forgetting the kaddish prayer, my mom prompting me to say something. I couldn't think of anything to verbalize. I lost him when I was young – I can hardly remember him. I just know that I couldn't let the day go without observing it somehow. I still miss him. Occasionally I'll have a dream where he shows up out of nowhere and announces that he faked his death – if anyone could do it, it'd be him.

I shopped briefly at the mall, then came home and set up a personals ad - one of 4 I've posted since Friday, when I decided that a year without a date was too damn long, and that as long as I've got headshots that make me look "movie star handsome" (chuckle), I might as well use them. So far, 2 responses. Whee!

I got cabin fever and motored up to a karaoke bar, where I serenaded the throng with "Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)" and "Cherry, Cherry." By the time I drove home at midnight, singing along with the Stones and the Isley Brothers, things got better.

And now I see it's been a whole calendar year since I started this web somethingorother. Blogger rocks. To the couple of people who read this regularly, like Hanne in Baltimore and John in Phoenix, bless your hearts. I promise I'll post more scintillating prose like this more often.

Damn. A dude who lived in Marin – he went to my high school (5 years after I graduated), and somewhere in that time he converted to Islam – was discovered as a Taliban prisoner in the Mazar-e-Sharif uprising. His mom thinks he got brainwashed somewhere along the way after he arrived in Pakistan to do humanitarian work.

Today was a quiet day – stayed at home, watched football in my PJs and listened to the storms outside, went out to lunch, then came back and watched more football in my PJs before doing my first brick-and-mortar holiday excursion. Nothing like shopping at 9:30 in the evening to avoid the rush. (Bless you, Toys R Us.) Then I came back home and decided to do a little facelift work on this page – fewer graphics, overhauled style sheet, and a new snappy randomized series of slogans at the top of the page. (Go on, click reload to see if you get a new one, I double dog dare ya.) Considering it's almost a year since I started this debacle, I figured a redesign by degrees would be a fun project. Stay tuned.

Today is World AIDS Day. Link and Think is a site which is encouraging webexhibitionists like myself to devote time and thought to observing the day.

In 1990, I was a senior in high school, immersed in theatre and journalism and senior-type dissolution. I was asked to act in an educational video about herpes for a nursing program at Samuel Merritt College. Just ad-libbing around a couple of scenarios – the careless cad who didn't tell his partner about his condition, the understanding guy listening to his afflicted girlfriend. The video was set up by Carole, a nurse who was the mother of one of my classmates, Rebecca. During the day, she was chatting with the actress I worked with – another classmate who was friends with Rebecca. It just came into the conversation that Carole had AIDS. And she was healthy and happy and funny and vibrant. And she was the first person I'd ever met who had what was (to me) an abstract bogeyman of an affliction. Her elegant courage touched me.

Carole Chenitz took her condition public and used it as an extension of her work as an educator and a health worker. She passed away years ago, around '92 or '93 I think. Rebecca is married now, a mother of two lovely kids and a musician. I only met Carole a couple of times, but she left a lasting impression on me.