i can't find the words

I think things are going OK.

Kristen and I are going house hunting Tuesday, right after she takes me to get a massive haircut at, get this, American Hairlines. I hope we won’t eventually have to go housemate hunting, though, as strangers are bad.

Test and quiz tomorrow, test Tuesday. Tomorrow’s just going to be taxing in general. Hopefully I will have time to relax between 8 p.m. and midnight. Oh, and then press night Wednesday, followed by a week off (thanks Pacing Break, you my boy).

I have been better about not leaving AIM open all day. I think it makes me less of a loser. Of course, the fact that I put that much thought into the matter probably counteracts the less-coolness and then some. Sigh.

Bling seems to be doing just fine. I need to clean his tank ASAP, but other than that things are great. We are on good enough terms now that he swims over to one corner of the tank when he is hungry and then eats the turtle stick right out of my hand. This may prove problematic when he gets big enough to take a chunk out of one of my fingers.

Oh, I have been working an excessive amount lately, but the tips have been getting better. I’m taking a bunch of time off next month for concerts and such, which will be a relief. Except I might end up working all of Pacing Break; I told Kate I was definitely [being a loser and] staying here.

Finally, it’s weird, but people are automatically assuming that Kristen and I are dating. This happened last fall, or maybe it was the spring, I don’t know. Anyway, unless someone is explicitly introduced to you as my ladyfriend, it’s very doubtful that she is. But go ahead, compliment her anyway; that’s fine by me.

“Jeopardy!” was a fan favorite when I was in elementary school. I played along almost every night, never answering in question form or waiting for Alex Trebek to finish reading the answers, but faring decently well for someone who still had trouble tying his shoes. Seriously, I had no motor skills.

Then my family moved a couple of times and thousands of miles equated into an inconvenient air time; I all but stopped watching.

Fast forward to last summer. In keeping with a time-honored tradition that had never yielded any results, I signed up for a chance at a “Jeopardy!” tryout. Only this time, I was one of the lucky people who were randomly selected. My brother called me at work one day to let me know that “Bob” from Sony Pictures had left me a message and that I should call him back posthaste.

After jumping up and down while internally singing “Eye of the Tiger” for the next 15 minutes, I punched in those 11 magic numbers. Bob informed me that, if I could promise to be in Indianapolis on Aug. 10, I would get to try out for the college tournament that would be taping in October. Without even checking a calendar to see what day of the week that was, I committed and he wished me good luck.

Suffice to say that I went a little crazy over the next few short weeks.

Not that I buckled down and started studying trivia books right away – no, the first order of business was to work out what I was going to do with the $50,000 I planned on winning. It was tough, but I decided to set aside some money for car repairs and then squander the rest on lavish European vacations, shopping sprees at CD Reunion and maybe a full-wall aquarium for my yet-to-be-purchased pet turtle.

Approximately two days before the tryout, I realized that the test might not be a cakewalk. Luckily, my mother had ever-so-graciously purchased me a “cultural literacy” study guide – I spent the next 48 hours poring over lists of the most inane facts ever compiled. Did you know that Birmingham, Ala., is the “Pittsburgh of the South?” Or that the Gulf of Bothnia lies between Sweden and Finland? I read more than 300 pages of that sort of stuff and my head nearly exploded in protest.

On the big morning, I started to feel nervous for the first time.

I knew what was coming: a 50-question free answer test that allowed a mere eight seconds per question. If I did well enough on the test I would get to stay for a mock version of the game show. No sweat, right?

OK, I was a little worried. To avoid utter disappointment, I kept my hopes down, walked into the Indiana Convention Center assuming that the questions would be impossible and my dream of appearing on “Jeopardy!” would be forever crushed.

As it turns out, I could hardly keep from laughing at how easy the test was.

When the proctors left the room to grade the papers, I busied myself filling in the personal information that becomes Trebek’s crib sheet during the interview portion of the show. I also stole glances at my neighbor’s sheet, silently laughing when I saw that he had listed his AP Chemistry score as something the American public might find interesting. My story about my car breaking down in rural Illinois was so much better.

The proctors came back in, told us that the test was hard and begged us not to cry if we didn’t do as well as expected. Then they announced who passed, pausing for a staccato applause after each name. I did, of course, along with 10 others.

The lady in charge of the whole shebang explained how the mock game worked and let us have at it as soon as we filled out some paperwork, including a waiver that prevents me from disseminating any questions from the test. When it was my turn to play, I grabbed a buzzer and pretended that I was on television.

My game was uneventful; I only got to question three or four answers and then it was over. After everyone had played, we were subjected to a “Don’t call us – we’ll send a contestant package to you” speech and given T-shirts and key chains to accompany the fancy blue logo pens given for the written test.

Upon leaving the building, I whipped out my phone to call everyone I had ever acquainted with. Mass excitement ensued, everyone was sure that the “Jeopardy!” producers would want me, would think I was great for ratings.

Once I got back to Lehigh, I hiked up to Ulrich nearly every day to check for that pink slip that would signify an invitation to the 2003 College Tournament. There were several false alarms, unexpected packages from my parents that had me trembling with excitement until I recognized the handwriting on the boxes.

With the tournament taping at Yale in just a few days, I realize that it’s too late for The Package to come, so I’ve abandoned my “Jeopardy!” dream, for now. I could always try out again next year, but I think that I might wait until I’ve graduated and try out for the more difficult standard version of the show. That’s where the big money’s at.

I am not a religious person, but I think I might have sinned the other day, broken one of the commandments on the third stone tablet. You know, the one that Moses, played by Mel Brooks, dropped.

I was at Best Buy only because I wanted to buy the third season of “Family Guy” on DVD. But the shopping trip that had started out with good intentions soon plunged into a fiasco, a debauchery in the world of overpriced aural stimulation.

Simply put, it was the day after payday and I felt like Mr. Moneybags, prancing about town without a care in the world, top hat, monocle and gold pocket watch gleaming in the gorgeous September sun.

I was caught up in the moment and had no cognizance of the fact that I was actually in a fluorescent-bathed corporate hell. Before I knew it, there was a $100 stack of CDs in my hands and some young ne’er-do-well in that god-awful blue-and-gold polo shirt approaching me, itching to see if I wanted to buy a new stereo for my car.

I told him my car was just fine, thanks, and shooed him away before returning to the awful task of putting most of the albums back onto the shelf.

Given the temporarily elevated status of my checking account, I figured it would be OK if I bought just two of the CDs. Three would’ve been too much, but two was perfect. Besides, they were newish albums, so buying them used at Play It Again would’ve been next to impossible.

Actually, buying anything used at Play It Again is next to impossible. Although it feels like I’ve successfully completed a treasure hunt every time I find something worthwhile, I just can’t stand the order-less method of arranging things. If they’re not going to alphabetize, they may as well throw the CDs at you when you walk in the door and let you keep whatever you can catch.

Back on topic, I eventually whittled down my heap of albums until the Kings of Leon’s “Youth & Young Manhood” and Damien Rice’s “O” were declared the champions.

The Kings of Leon followed the increasingly popular path of releasing a debut EP before their first full-length album, and February’s “Holy Roller Novocaine” set the stage for them to make a big splash. By the time “Youth & Young Manhood” was released last month, the Kings had already completed the late-night talk show circuit and been featured in pretty much every music magazine as the next big thing.

Featuring a lineup of three Followill brothers and their cousin and hailing from Nashville, Tenn., the band has garnered comparisons to Southern rock mainstays Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band, as they also project a ’70s aura about them — their picture on the album’s cover might cause an illiterate person to wonder how John Bonham is able to do so much posthumous drumming.

The Followills don’t try to hide the fact that all of their influences come from that wonderful era VH1 has taken to profiling recently, and the album’s first track, “Red Morning Light,” opens with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”-inspired strumming.

The album progresses through “Happy Alone,” “Wasted Time” and “Joe’s Head,” three up-tempo songs perfect for any summer road trip along the Deep South’s U.S. Highway 20. The lyrics are sinister —“Joe’s Head” recounts the story of someone who goes on a bloody killing spree — but straightforward, the hook in “Wasted Time” is, “Time on me is wasted time.”

The next track, “Trani,” is one of only two plodders on the otherwise fast-paced record. This track and the even slower “Dusty” serve to break up the album and make it seem longer than its scant 38 minutes.

On “Spiral Staircase,” Caleb Followill’s already gritty vocals take a turn for the raspier and the result is that it sounds like the lead vocals have been taken over by a grouchy, decrepit 60-year-old who has smoked three packs a day since he was old enough to work a lighter.

The album closes with the title track from the Kings’s debut EP. “Holy Roller Novocaine,” a song with a bouncy, frolicking bass line and lyrics about a philandering preacher that are equally wicked.

I admittedly don’t know much about Damien Rice. A friend put a couple of the Irish singer/songwriter’s songs on a mix CD for me and they were decent enough that I decided to check out his album.

The first thing that I noticed was that the lyrics book was more book than lyrics, a collection of intimate paintings by Rice, most of which ooze Rice’s yearning for the girl they depict.

The songs tend to follow a set formula: Rice sneaks into your ears, strumming along and singing in whispers. As the song continues, his voice crescendos and the backing string section becomes more prominent. The song culminates in a violent fortissimo of both vocals and music and then fades away just as quickly. In “Eskimo,” Rice’s climax is immediately followed by vocalist Doreen Curran exploding into a Finnish operatic solo.

The soft to loud to really loud and back to soft again progression flaunts Rice’s David Gray-ish crooning and, coupled with the intricate string arrangements, provide the perfect soundtrack for a cozy night spent in front of the fireplace.

My only beef with the album is that some of Rice’s lyrics are a bit clichéd; he repeats “I can’t take my eyes off of you” to no end on “The Blower’s Daughter.”

I might have made a mistake in shopping at Best Buy, but there was no mistake in the albums I purchased.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.