I have been listening to the same 20 songs and artists for the past month. Seriously, I’m sick of them. I’m wearing them out. I’m going to throw up if I hear any of these songs, or these albums, one more time.

But that said, and they’re all great — I’ve listed all below for your enjoyment. However, this list comes with a fee: Please tell me what you’re listening to non-stop lately (particularly anything upbeat/happy and by girls, or bands with girls and boys) because I have $100 in Amazon credit, and it’s burning a hole in my pocket.

Paolo Nutini — 10/10
Polly Scattergood — Please Don’t Touch
MGMT — Kids
Regina Spektor — Dance Anthem of the ’80s
Ida Marie — I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked
AC Newman — The Palace at 4 AM
The Generationals — Nobody Could Change Your Mind
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club — Ain’t No Easy Way
Holy Fuck — Lovely Allen
The Thermals — When We Were Alive
The Noisettes — Sister Rosetta
Fiery Furnaces — Drive to Dallas
Miike Snow — Animal
Passion Pit — Sleepyhead
Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Heads Will Roll
Metric — Help I’m Alive
Florence and the Machine — Hurricane Drunk
Gentleman Reg — It’s Not Safe
Jarvis Cocker — Pilchard
Franz Ferdinand — No You Girls
Diane Birch — Valentino
The Avett Brothers — I and Love and You
The Gossip — Love Long Distance

Thank you for helping me spend money. I often have a hard time doing it.

So, this has been bugging me.

Chris Brown hit a girl = douchebag.
Joe Francis hit a girl = douchebag.
Jon Gosselin walks around in Ed Hardy shirts and bangs any dumb slut who’ll have him = douchebag.

But … which one of them is the worst? I can’t decide, so you tell me.

Update: The local DC Top 40 radio station, Hot 99.5, came forward Wednesday morning and admitted that this whole thing was a prank, designed to prop up their ratings during the week of Senator Kennedy’s death (when listeners might switch over to news stations for coverage). Oh, and it was a test of the media’s fact-checking skills, too. Riiiiight. They might as well own it — the scam was a blatant play for ratings — during the last week of the month, during the last week of a quarter. Dirty, dirty Comcast. Makes me even happier that we spoofed it.

By now, you’ve seen the story about William Taylor,” but in case you haven’t — he’s the guy whose wife caught him cheating, and made him stand out in a busy intersection during rush hour holding a sign that said, “I Cheated. This Is My Punishment.”

It turns out, that intersection is less than a mile from where my husband and I live.

It also just so happens that I think the whole story is ridiculous. First and foremost, it seems like a prank — something specially designed to go viral (when I first heard about it, I directed my suspicions at the local pop radio station); secondly, is this really the route to forgiveness? Is the wife really going to forgive him afterward? It seems too petty, too contrived, too simple.

It also seems ready-made for mocking.

Which is why my husband and I stayed up late last night with posterboard and markers, making signs, and why we spent an hour at that very same intersection this morning:

I sat across the median on the sidewalk and watched while Scott stood, looking as pathetic and sheepish as he possibly could, in the center of the median, twisting and turning for optimal passersby ease of reading. I think the story has been in the local media enough that travelers are conditioned to peek over at that intersection. I’m sure a lot of people just assumed “Oh, there’s that William Taylor guy again,” but plenty of others looked, read the sign, looked again, and started laughing. There was honking, some thumbs-ups, and a lot of cracking up. We only lasted an hour — Scott has a borderline stress fracture in his foot, and he has to wear a boot, so I could only force him to stand there in the heat for so long — but Project Go Fish was a success.

And, for the record, no — he didn’t actually cheat at Go Fish. (But he is ridiculously good at it.)

On the left, that dude from My Boys.
On the right, that dude from Drop Dead Diva.

Yes, REALLY, two different people!! Crazy, I know. I was fooled until this very moment as well. But, also, I am drunk. Are you? I hope you are. (I’m not really.)

Today’s Mail:

Let’s see, from left to right, that’s Elle (Miley Cyrus cover), Wired (Brad Pitt cover), GQ (Channing Tatum cover), Allure (I have no idea who is on the cover and I’m too lazy to Google it or walk to the kitchen and look), Blood Horse (ditto), and Vogue (that is Christy Turlington, in case you’re blind).

The only one of those cover stories that wasn’t leaked and covered extensively online already is Blood Horse (I caved, Amy Adams is on the Allure cover). Sometimes, that is the one thing that disappoints me about working in online media: There’s rarely anything new or surprising in the mailbox because print offers up everything online first. Which may or may not be why I fight with Scott for first dibs on Playboy every month.

Also, where were all these magazines when I was sitting by the pool reading an actual book on Saturday?

I have to go read now.

I got a mani-pedi after work on Thursday; I’ve been wanting to try a new salon because my regular one has possibly the worst selection of polish colors ever — I always end up buying my own, which then increases the overall amount of money that I’m pissing away on what I have convinced myself is a necessary indulgence.

This new place seemed to have a decent color selection — but I was in particular looking for my favorite (which is OPI on Collins Avenue [above], a fairly recent addition to the line). I picked up a bottle I suspected was right, turned it over to check the name on the bottom, and bingo, there it was. Sold. This is my new salon.

And then, as I was having my nails done, I noticed something funny. Every other woman who came into the place and looked at the color wall would pick up a bottle or two or three or four, always flipping it over to read the name.

Why?

Maybe some were, but not every single woman could’ve possibly been, like me, seeking out a specific color. So why does the name matter? Why even look?

If you want a blue, does it matter if it’s called Teal the Cows Come Home or Blue My Mind? It really shouldn’t, but it does (I would pick Blue My Mind, obviously, because it seems to pay some homage to Arrested Development). If you want a hot pink, and you hate Paris Hilton, would you refuse to wear That’s Hot! Pink? (I would.) But, ultimately, a color is a color, and the names shouldn’t matter — but they do. Let’s face it … I never even would’ve tried OPI on Collins Ave if it hadn’t been for the obvious Miami tie.

Meanwhile, and on a completely unrelated tangent, halfway through the pedicure, the manicurist looked up and asked me if I wanted my eyebrows waxed, too. I considered it; I am a horrible plucker.

Then I noticed that her eyebrows were drawn on.

I said no.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, has a new book out. It’s called Free: The Future of a Radical Price, and I’m interested in reading it. I just wandered over to Amazon to see if it’s available yet, and what it costs — because I’m used to Amazon lovingly slashed 40% to 50% off the cost of new hardcovers (and basically everything else). Ironically, I found this:

Turns out, even though he’s written a book about how everything is going to be free in the future, Mr. Anderson wants some cashmoney for his book.

These two dudes are not the same person (and I totally thought they were). The guy on the left is Justin Bartha, from The Hangover, and the guy on the right is Tom Everett Scott, who is currently on Southland but will always and forever be, in my brain at least, The Guy From That Thing You Do. As far as I can tell, these guys aren’t even RELATED, and here I’ve been spending all my life just thinking they were the same dude.

My mind is blown.

Lawyer Ron was euthanized on July 10 after complications from colic surgery. This bums the hell out of me; he was 6, and to this day I remember listening to the 2003 Arkansas Derby in Scott’s car during a rainstorm. I don’t remember where we were going, but Ron won, and we were hot on him in the Derby that year. Then Barbaro came along…

La Ville Rouge is expecting a filly. This makes me happy because, when we were at Three Chimneys in October, the tour guide told us that the Jacksons were hoping for a filly last season, but sonograms showed another colt. This will be the first full sister to Barbaro; the Jacksons have been naming the Dynaformer-La Ville Rouge progeny after a painting of foxhounds — Barbaro, Nicanor, Lentenor are the named colts so far, so it looks like the yearling colt and the coming filly will be Margano, Sererno or Calypso. (The last seems the most filly-appropriate to me.)

Pioneerof the Nile, second in this year’s Derby, was retired due to a leg injury on July 9. Bob Baffert was heartbroken at the news — and I have to agree. I didn’t feel like we’d seen the best of POTN yet. Hope he lives happily ever after in stud, as well as Monba, last-place finisher in the 2008 Derby, who was also retired to stud on July 9 due to injury.

Steve Haskin wrote an amazing column this week about perennial runner-up Sham — I knew Sham finished a blazing second to Secretariat in the ‘73 Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but I didn’t know that, at the beginning of the Derby, he smashed his face on the starting gate, cracking two of his teeth. And I didn’t know that his heart weighed 18 pounds when he died … second only in size to Secretariat’s (his was 22 pounds).

I have bet on three races at this point and I haven’t won shit — of course Atomic Rain sucked in the Derby, but won today. I’m done spending my money as soon as I root for Life Is Sweet in the Hollywood Gold Cup, which goes off in about an hour. I love a good girls against boys race, and this looks like a good one.

More non-racing (i.e., non-boring) content coming soon.

There is absolutely nothing to eat in our house right now.

His joke: Our cabinet is so bare, it should be stealing picnic baskets.
My joke: Our cupboard is so bare, it should be spread-eagle in Playboy.

I win.