Man, I'm tired of singing

First, Happy Halloween.

Second, I could not possibly be more elated by my recent discovery that Fine Living re-airs The Martha Stewart Show each day at 8pm. My life just improved immeasurably. Tonight's inaugural Martha-inspired project: apple cider cocktails. Now that is a Good Thing.

Third, I know no one wants to listen to me whine about my back anymore, but just to put it in perspective: at this point, my back is so tight that after five visits to the chiropractor and two weeks of therapy, the doctor still can't adjust it. But the best part is this: my x-rays have shown that my problem is entirely muscular, and - surprise surprise - largely attributable to my predilection for four-inch stilettos.

Call me vain or call me foolish, but I will have surgery before I will give up the shoes. It's bad enough having to wear flats while my back is out. I actually wore sneakers yesterday. I kept looking down at my feet and feeling defeated. It was awful.

Finally, another memo to Britney:

Honey, you really need to clean your act up so that I can buy your new album in good conscience. I've been streaming it on a loop for the past two days and I am not kidding when I say it may be your best yet. I still haven't decided whether that's surprising or not, but either way, it restores my faith in you even though you seem to be on a quest to erode it completely. Regardless, the Britney Spears portion of my CD collection is going to remain incomplete until you realize that nonstop partying, recreational drug use, and erratic driving is not behavior befitting a mother. I mean, while I would also in theory be more than happy to give Tony Romo a lap dance in a crowded club, in practice I realize that it would constitute bad decision-making. (And nobody loves a professional athlete more than I do. Except maybe Alyssa Milano. But I digress.)

(Also, I downloaded the whole shebang on LimeWire. You know, in protest. Because why should I suffer for your idiocy? But the version of the song Piece of Me - which is the best song on the album, incidentally - that I downloaded is one of the early, low-quality leaks. I would have deleted it, but midway through the first listen I realized that the guy who ripped it also managed to record a completely ridiculous, uber-gay commentary over the music. At one point, he lisps, "This song is almost as hot as me." It is SO FUNNY. So I kept it. You simply must hear it.)

Actually, the fact that both Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys had new albums out yesterday makes me wonder, what year is it again? Can I look forward to a PYT reunion sometime soon? What about Innosense? We've got all the makings of a TransContinental Entertainment renaissance, really. Even Johnny Wright has that Making Menudo show on MTV. And Lou Pearlman has been all up in the news recently for, um, swindling senior citizens out of their life savings. Or was it child molestation? Oh,wait. It was both. Okay, so maybe Lou Pearlman won't be having a renaissance. But really, do the members of Boyz 'N' Girlz United have anything better to do than reunite? I always rather enjoyed their cover of Atlantic Starr's Always. I bet at least three other people on the continent did too.

Not to mention, I personally would be quite amenable to filling in for missing members of any of the above. I can totally sing. I can sort of dance - I was once quite the modern dancer, performing a variety of interpretive parts including but not limited to whale, water nymph, great lover of trees (with live tree), parrot (with realistic papier-mache head), and astronomer. Copernicus, as I recall. And I like to think I've got at least a few years of Maxim-cover foxiness left in me. Thing is, I don't really know how much longer I can swing this whole nine-to-five gainful employment thing. I mean, it was fun playing grown-up for a while. But now it's just...ick.

It's kind of like when I decided at the beginning of junior year that I was was so over high school, and started skipping my campus period, doing as little of my homework as humanly possible, and - gasp - refusing to take a laboratory science. In lieu of recording my assignments in my planner, I recorded my outfits, lest I accidentally repeat one. Best of all, I started carrying a box of crayons and a Barbie coloring book and began blatantly coloring through my classes rather than taking notes. In retrospect, was the weirdest, least effective rebellion ever, although it did amusingly result in my Humanities teacher, who disliked me for never paying attention in class and comparing Gilgamesh to Fabio, curtly informing me that I was "wasting a brilliant mind." Lucky for me, even without engaging in a single one of the usual conventions of study, I managed to be a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist, get a 1400 on my SATs, ace multiple AP and honors courses, and get a major scholarship to a great college. Obnoxious, huh?

Anyway, now the coloring habit has been replaced with fashion magazines, the constant note-passing with g-chat, the Backstreet Boys fan fiction with legitimate creative writing (did I seriously just admit to that?), and the school skipping with 90-minute "lunches" at the mall. But the end result is the same: I do my job damn well with the barest minimum of effort and spend the rest of my day fighting abject boredom.

Bottom line, I really can't do this forever or I will go crazy.

Somebody had better give me a record deal before I'm forced to audition for season three of The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll.