Listening to Private Conversation by Lyle Lovett

I have listened to approximately 3100 songs out of the 4120 on my iPod. It has taken me about two weeks up until this point, what with the stopping and the starting, etc. I am determined to make it all the way to the end. Just to hear what that last song may be on the algorithm that Steve Jobs decided to personally implement in my music machine. I swear, that guy is like a real life Willy Wonka.
I saw Mission Impossible 3 tonight. I would just like to say that I have never seen a film that is more thematically linked with a person's (questionable) "real" life. Cruise's character marries a younger chick, pushes himself beyond believable limitations at his age in what could be considered a fading Ace's midlife crisis. There were also overtures of Cocktail, Top Gun, Magnolia, and a bunch of other shit he has done. All and all it was an action packed melange of a whole lot of "please, love me!" bullshit.
Also had a voice over class tonight. It went well. I nailed the copy I was given. I guess that I am just not doing everything right. Or maybe, I just don't feel like I am. Work has been a drag as of late and I am looking around kind of perplexed. Not really knowing what the next step is. It's funny - a lot of the time you kind of have to sit on opportunities and wait for them to unfold. Especially in this business. And life? Well ... life just kind of marches on. Nieces and nephews grow older, friends get married, get divorced, siblings start to bald, you gain weight, you lose weight, you tell your Ma about someone you're dating, she knows better than to ask about whether you are still dating a few months later, coffee is drank, coffee is quit, cigarettes enter and exit your life with equal nonchalance, arguments arrive and depart, seasons change, yada yada yada.
What's the line from the T.S. Eliot poem? I have measured out my life in coffee spoons? Hmm ... wait a sec - google - ah yes, here it is:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

So how should I presume? Isn't that the real question? And what am I presuming? Am I presuming that I know any more than the next guy, just because of my limited experience? Is there any real time to puzzle it all out as we hurtle through our little lives, arbitrarily making up rules as we go along, trying to adhere to what little moral code we can assemble from the bombardment of this strange experiment. Can we separate ourselves from the molding influence of our parental guidance? Our genetic affectations? Our own troubled pasts? Can we aspire to live our lives according to some greater paradigm like religion, or politics, or and other -ism that may collide with us on our paths? Do we fool ourselves into believing that zealotry is anything more than a facade designed to hide our deepest fears from surfacing? How do we presume to adventure forth into this great experiment? Do we all really die alone? I think that we do.
You know what somebody said tonight ( and, I think, it is said quite often)? They said "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." It should be known that I have also heard it said as "Imitation is the highest form of flattery." You know what - it's not. That's bullshit. People imitate you because they are assholes and/or jealous. If jealousy is a form of flattery then tell Joseph's brothers to give him back his fucking coat already, right?
Sorry - This has been a little scattered.