March 10, 2002 | 2:12 PM

I really and truly was going to do a SAGA update today but folks I am just too god damned warn out. How on earth did I ever pull 60 hour weeks at The Stupid Company? Spending more than 40 hours at work this week has turned me into a drooling yawning idiot. I can barely think straight, and all I�m doing is sitting in my office and listening to music. Low pressure. Easy. But my battery is dying and soon I will collapse.

It doesn�t help that I have a major metaphysics paper due on Thursday�on Nagle and physicalism (ugh) that I am dancing around writing, but not actually getting anything done.

Saw Donnie Darko for the second time yesterday night. Loved it even more than I did originally. I think that after work today I might go see it yet again. I am in love in love in love with that movie. It is as though Richard Kelly made that movie checking off a list of every single thing I would want in a film. I am heartsick over it. I dreamed about it yesterday and have thought about it all morning. It�s coming out on DVD and I might buy a DVD player just so I can own the DVD and watch the director commentary and all the deleted scenes.

Even the soundtrack is fucking perfect. �The Killing Moon� by Echo and the Bunnymen. �Under the Milky Way� by the Church. �Love Will Tare Us Apart� by Joy Division. Amazing.

I wish I could write more intelligently about how this film makes me feel or what it means. But at this point I am just such a gob of goo over it. This is even more of a high than being in love with a boy.

Oh, and tonight is another new episode of Six Feet Under, which I am in love with almost as much as I�m in love with Donnie Darko, but not quite.

I don�t know what it is. I give my heart to fictional characters in books, or movies, or HBO television dramas, but when it comes to real people... I keep everybody at arms length. I can sob over an episode of �Law and Order� or while reading �Long Day�s Journey Into Night�, but someone will have to call me five times before I call them back. It�s not that I don�t care about the friends I have, because I do care. A lot. In fact I used to be (in high school and college) really intense about people, but some time during the SAGA period of my life I just kind of cut off. It�s as though there was just too much damage to my emotional circuitry and something malfunctioned. I am really fucking guarded and sometimes I miss being so connected to other people, but it definitely is much easier this way. Even with people I love desperately I am very protective of myself. I come across as far more vulnerable in my writing than I do in person. I can be brutally painfully honest on Diaryland and 'just another bubble' in person. It's a good duality to perfect.

I just listened to the song �Legal Man� by Belle and Sebastian. Talk about a fucking great song. I was dying to get tickets to that show, but alas it was not to be. All sold out. Phooey.

Well, my birthday is so soon. The Ides of March. Me and Ceaser.

I want a Big Mac. And some fries.