January 28, 2003 | 8:56 AM

I�ve been feeling a lot of love towards people lately. I mean real pure 100% natural with no additives or preservatives freshly squeezed love.

When love gets all mixed up with need, manipulation, defense mechanisms, power struggles, and deception, it�s like having a great bottle of wine and throwing all this other stuff into it that doesn�t belong there, (i.e. cayenne pepper and high fructose corn syrup.) You can�t even taste the love anymore.

When you remove all that other shit from the equation (if it�s not too late�sadly, sometimes it is) and just enjoy love for exactly what it�s worth, realizing that love won�t save you, won�t distract you forever from other things that are going wrong in your life, and won�t guarantee happily ever after, then you can just fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE and LOVE.

I want to take all my friends and wrap them up in a great big afghan and snuggle down with them and hug them and mess up- their hair and serve them soup and hot toddies.

I am so excited about tonight and I�m bad at keeping secrets so I�m going to cut this entry short before I spoil any surprises (no, the surprises don�t have to do with soup, hot toddies, or afghans.)

OH HEY-- I just found this website. For anyone who plays guitar and likes Aimee Mann it might be worth looking at: