While retrieving my lunch from the vending machine yesterday, the Snickers Munch bar collided with a Hostess Apple Pie on the way down, dislodging it from its coil prison and netting me both tasty morsels for the price of one. Sure, just thinking about eating the 480 calorie "pie" makes me nauseas, and touching its grease-soaked wrapper makes me feel covered in slime, but getting it for free makes me feel pretty lucky.

Man, waking up after a great, whirlwind Friday night out -- a night filled with laughter, intoxication, and big ideas -- is so much better than waking up after a night standing lethargically behind a counter at Blockbuster.

I'm standing there with a few of my co-workers and we start to talk about wine. They prefer "very dry whites."

"Well," I say. "I like reds. Give me a good cabernet or a merlot any day."

"Oh," they laugh. "You like the strong stuff."

"Yeah, I do. I like to feel it."

So, Lindsay, I hear you and your boyfriend have broken up. According to some website I read, it says you should avoid listening to sad music during this time period. In fact, it even went so far as to say you should be listening to music without words. Of course, I say this is preposterous. Instead, listen to these:

1. U2 - Achtung Baby - Pretty much at the top of every top 5 album list that I make. Including this one. As far as breakup albums go, it doesn't get any better than this. The Edge's marriage was dissolving and U2 were were on the verge of breaking up themselves. To confront these demons head-on, they plugged themselves into the heart of darkness -- East Berlin. During a trying recording process it seemed as if nothing was working. The "hats" (Bono and The Edge) and "the haircuts" (Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton) could not agree on the direction that the band of the 1980s should be taking in the brave new world of the 90's. Then, just as the Wall came down and East Berlin ceased to exist, the band experienced a breakthrough while struggling with a rough version of "Ultraviolet," a last desperate plea for intimacy to a partner in a disintegrating relationship, when suddenly Bono started improvising lyrically. Then Adam felt the grove on the bass. The other members fell in line and "One," perhaps the single greatest love song ever recorded, emerged. In short order, U2 found hope amid the darkness, and Achtung Baby had a cohesive theme: "How far you gonna go before you lose your way back home?" Not just a breakup album, but a Freudian exploration of fidelity and infidelity. Every distorted guitar chord is an anguished lover's wail, every piano note a teardrop, every throb of the bass the beat of the human heart -- all wrapped up in a James Joyce Nighttown wandering sexiness. Best album ever.

2. Everything But The Girl - Amplified Heart - Let's say I have to limit myself to only one EBTG album, which one should I choose? On one hand there is Walking Wounded, the first and best album from the band's techno period and, with cuts such as "Single", "Wrong", and "Before Today", a very respectable breakup album indeed. On the other hand there is Amplified Heart which is the last album from their smooth jazz period. It gets the nod simply because it tells a more complete story than Wounded, even if it is less sexy. And it ends with "Disenchanted" which is actually an optimistic song if you can make it all the way through without crying.

3. Beck - Sea Change - I was once told by someone that she thought that this was just about the saddest thing there is. I pretty much tend to agree.

4. Various Artists - High Fidelity soundtrack - Great book, great movie, great soundtrack. Certainly it should come as little to no surprise that this would find its way onto a list like this. Sure, as far as mix-tapes go this is not the most consistent but then neither are you at this time. And it ends on the most optimistic of all notes, "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)", a song about picking up and carrying on, about still believing in love despite all evidence to the contrary, about staying vulnerable and letting yourself get hurt again.

5. No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom - Just because you are despondent doesn't mean you can't be upbeat about it. Witness this underrated 1997 breakup masterpiece. Old timers can take Fleetwood Mac's Rumors any day for intra-band romantic dissolution, but make mine No Doubt. Gwen shows surprising lyrical depth in plumbing the realities of the breakup of her seven year relationship with bassist Tony Kanal and turns it into 100% fun. Breakup standouts include "Happy Now," "Sunday Morning", "End it on This," and of course, the jaw-dropping "Don't Speak."

While enjoying a -- and I quote -- "Cheddar Char Dog" at Chicago's semi-famous Weiner Circle, I was told by trip-mate Neil that on one of his prior visits to the Circ' a young woman approached him and said, "Did you hear? Someone beat Super Mario Bros. 3 in 11 minutes."

I am happy to live in a world were that qualifies as the sort of news with which one approaches a stranger. In that vein, I am happy to live in a world where someone would make this.

While trying to organize the haphazard mess that is my Windows-default "My Documents" folder I came across this little gem which I was too self-concious to post when I wrote it. Considering that I am in the midst of making a serious (and seriously good) Ohio Jones film and, more immediately, moving out of the house, this one is interesting.

Some of the worst things about living at home without a future are the periodic reports from my father about my faults and my need to "get real" and start wanting to have the sort of jobs and go to the sort of graduate programs that he thinks are good, rather, than, say, ones that are of any interest to me.

Inevitably, this results in him saying that he regrets encouraging me to persue "my dream" which was -- and theoretically is -- to be a filmmaker. The other day, he insinuated that I am talentless and that I couldn't possibly have a film in me that anyone would want to buy. He'd formed this opinion on Ohio Jones which was not exactly intended to be a showcase for any sort of talent.

All this, because I suggested that maybe, you know, maybe, in the future, I would get off my ass and take a few thousand dollars (this would be an imaginary future in which I have access to a few thousand dollars) and make a movie. He got really incensed by this suggestion, despite my assurances that if you want to be a filmmaker, that's how you do it. He said that was unrealistic, that I'd be better putting all that money into lottery tickets, but I don't think he understands how much easier it is to sell a good film than it is to sell a bad script.

Of course, what I don't think he (or anyone else, since I've never mentioned it) fully understands is that being a filmmaker wasn't originally my dream; it wss his. When I was nine years old, he told me I wanted to be "a screenplay director," and, despite there not being anything called that, he assured me, "that's where the money is." People would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I parroted "screenplay director." After all, that's what my dad told me I should want to be. (I used to take directions really well.) People ask you that question a lot when you're younger, so I ended up telling quite a few people that's what I wanted to do. All this naturally informed my developing self-image, and I eventually began to see myself in that light. At some point, someone told me which college I should go to for that sort of thing, and, many years later, I even went there for a little while.

But if that day in the kitchen 15 years ago my father had told me that I wanted to be a politician or a computer programmer or something, that's probably what I would have wanted to do with my life, and thus what he could be telling me to forget all about today.

Why do you, dear reader, want to do what it is that you want to do?

I just experienced one of the most serendipitous moments in my life.

I'm driving to Kinkos this afternoon and my mind starts to wander, so I start to sing a song to myself -- U2's "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses." When I arrive at the Kinkos, I get out of my car still singing the song. I open the door and walk in. I stop singing, but I'm overwhelmed with confusion. Something is strange here, I think. That's when I realize it: the radio in Kinkos is playing "Who's Gonna Ride" and at the exact spot where I had been singing, no less.

I think perhaps fate is trying to tell me something.