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I'm finally cleaning out all of my drawers at home. The abysmal state that they're in has finally prompted me to take action. Apparently, I used to be a packrat. Now, I finally have the good sense to throw things out.

One of the things that I never threw out were all the birthday, Christmas and graduation cards that I received over the years. Those I still won't throw out. I have to admit that I laughed when I saw a card that one of my friends got me probably back in middle school. It had a picture of some cute animal on the front, and he had written on the inside, “Sorry about the gay card.”

One of the collections that I came across were a set of encouragement notes that I received at some youth winter/spring retreat back in the day. If I remember right, we were supposed to write and give five encouragement notes to the people attending. By the end, I think that all of us (and it was no small number) ended up writing notes to everyone.

While encouragement notes were good, how encouraging is it to receive notes from everyone saying that you're an awesome person, yet despite being such an awesome person, none of those people even talk to you any more? Not even a “hey, how are you doing?”

Once again, I am falling in love with music. It's one of those evenings where I'm just doing nothing but sitting around and watching music videos on YouTube from bands and artists as diverse as Lynyrd Skynyrd, New Order and… ABBA.

Anyway, instead of a meaningless introduction to transition from that to what I'm going to talk about next, I'm just going to get right to it: this is a list of my most favourite cover versions of songs that were better than the original.

“Light My Fire” — José Feliciano (originally by the Doors)

The blind, Puerto-Rican guitar master José Feliciano took the Doors most popular hit and beautifully reduced it to a mellow, candlelight-mood song… in keeping with the theme of the song.

“All Along The Watchtower” — Jimi Hendrix (originally by Bob Dylan)

While Bob Dylan's singing is indeed an acquired taste, undeniably, he is one of the twentieth-century's best composers if not the best. His song “All Along The Watchtower” has been covered by many bands — too many to count: U2, the Grateful Dead and Dave Matthews Band have all performed the song live on their tours. In the case of Dave Matthews Band, it acts as one of the highlights of their concerts. However, no one (not even Dave Matthews or even Bob Dylan himself) can do better than the person whom Rolling Stone declared as the best guitarist ever: Jimi Hendrix. Indeed, after Jimi Hendrix covered the song, Dylan changed his performance in his concerts to match that of Hendrix's.

“Helter Skelter” — U2 (originally by the Beatles)

Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles. U2 stole it back.

“With A Little Help From My Friends” — Joe Cocker (originally by The Beatles)

Joe Cocker's career mostly consisted of covering Beatles songs. Fortunately, he was good at it. Cocker took Ringo's track off of Sgt. Pepper's and made very generous changes to the song making it quite possibly his most famous work.

“Sweet Jane” — Cowboy Junkies (originally by Velvet Underground)

If Velvet Underground sang this song drugged up on speed, Cowboy Junkies redid it on a sleepy heroin trip.

“Mad World” — Gary Jules (originally by Tears For Fears)

Gary Jules masterfully took a sad, depressing song and, somehow, made it even more depressing… in a good, raw way.

“It's My Life” — No Doubt (originally by Talk Talk)

Many people are unaware that this song is even a cover as it was one of No Doubt's bit hits. Turn up the subwoofer to get the baseline in this song.

“Hurt” — Johnny Cash (originally by Nine Inch Nails)

Recorded near the very end of his life, Johnny Cash outright stole this song from Trent Reznor who stated that he would no longer sing it as it had become “Johnny's song”.

“Just Like Heaven” — Katie Melua (originally by The Cure)

I'm biased with this one as Katie Melua is pretty much my new crush these days filling the hole that Norah Jones once filled. It also comes in a radio version that rivals her album version.

“Mr. Tambourine Man” — The Byrds (originally by Bob Dylan)

Some of my friends have probably branded me as a heretic for even entertaining the thought that the Byrds did a better job than Dylan himself on this song. Sorry, but I kind of like the electric that the Byrds provide and Dylan doesn't.

I've never seen an episode of American Idol, but I fantasise about winning it…

…and not so much because of Idol but because I want to be a rock star…

…and not so much because I want to be a rock star but because I want a certain type of shoes.

Okay, I've been dealing with a bit of depression lately, but that's all over now. Why?

They're back!

I can now drown out my sorrows… with milk.

Whenever I go to the airport and I have plenty of time before a flight, I go through security and try to look as suspicious as possible to see if I'll get flagged as a potential terrorist.

On a related note, the best way to get TSA's attention is just to attach a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife to your keychain.

So, I'm back in Arkansas. I took a trip down for a little less than a week just for the fun of it. I'm sitting at my desk at my old job waiting for a response from technical support out in Pacific time, so I figured that while I'm waiting and while I have a Dvorak keyboard available, I should write stuff.

I flew out to Arkansas on Thursday. As I was parking the car at the airport in Denver, I saw something that amazed me in a way. I got on the shuttle to head to the airport and on walked a man and (I'm assuming) his daughter. She would have had to have been about five or six years old. There was nothing too unusual about the way that these two dressed: garden-variety t-shirt and jeans. What was unusual was the fact that they were both wearing cheap, novelty cowboy hats in such a carefree manner.¹ This girl was absolutely adorable. Whatever she said or did instantly made everyone on the shuttle smile joyfully.

The sight really brought out two emotions in me. The first was the reminiscing of the forgotten innocence of childhood and the excitement of every day being new and exciting instead of our settled monotonous routines. The other feeling that I felt was one of want: specifically, I want children.

I normally flip-flop on this issue. Some days, I feel like Diane Keaton in the film Father Of The Bride, Part Two where she's looking at all the mothers and daughters having a wonderful time running and frolicking down the street. Other days, I feel like Steve Martin watching the misbehaved sons and their frustrated fathers. Thursday wasn't one of those days. I think that I felt the urge of wanting children more than I ever have. Before, it was just one of those things that I'd plan on getting around to one day. Now, it's something that I'm really thinking about, and it's way too soon to even begin to think about it. For one (and most importantly), I'm not even in a relationship right now. Also, I don't even have a home or a job or even a clue what I want to do in life at the moment. The problem is that I don't really care about any of that at the moment. I'm living one day at a time. I have no plans at the moment, and I have no plans to make plans, so I'm just going to have to deal with not having children of my own and live vicariously through my siblings and be the best uncle that I can be…

…and I am a sweet uncle.

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1. On a side note, I really don't know why people have this impression that people in Colorado wear bolo ties and cowboy hats. Colorado is nothing like that, but the tourism boards in Colorado like to promote the idea that we do. It's a lie!

All throughout high school and college, whenever I wrote a paper, I adjusted the letter spacing to make the paper seem like it was longer and thus fit the length requirements. Even if the paper was long enough without it, I'd adjust it anyway so that the papers looked consistent with each other.

I have to put in a plug for a friend of mine: www.SaveMar.org.