Glenn's U2 Addiction is something that I try to downplay a bit. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to be so obsessed by a goddamn rock 'n' roll band (especially one that's so last week, as some might say). But I really can't help it. Their music makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, especially when--

Wait. No. Hold it. I refuse to bore everyone with my passionate ramblings about four close-to-middle-age Irishmen who drag their sorry-asses around the world playing their 80's arena rock while nutbags like me fawn in their wake. I won't do it. I'm not going to sit here and explain why I'm into them and why I think they're the best thing since the invention of...well, whatever. Forget it. I'll shut up now. Let's pick a new topic.

Belts: What's the point? If you need one, you should have bought smaller pants in the first place……

Uh, yeah.

……Alrighty then! Back to the U2!

I used to think that my level of obsession with U2 was pretty high. I mean, it was a known fact that I blew off work for two days to stand in line for 30 hours for tickets for the Joshua Tree Tour. My license plate says ITS U2. And when I bought my house, instead of putting up Entertaining Devices on my entertainment center, I set up a U2 shrine. Hell, I've pretty much spent every minute of free time the last three days downloading live bootleg mp3's with my new computer. But then one day I realized that in the U2 fan pond, I wasn't as obsessed as I thought. That was the day when I First Went Online.

One of the first things I did online was subscribe to a bulk mailing list called Wire (http://www.wildheart.org/archives/wire/ for anyone interested). With over 4,000 members, Wire is the premier source for the latest U2 info (if Bono shits in the morning, it's on Wire by lunchtime). By subscribing, you get a bulk email every night of all the posts that people put up throughout the day (kind of like a emailed bulletin board). I had heard a bit about Wire before I got online, so I was pretty excited about meeting other people that had a similar taste and fanaticism about The Music.

But--as you might have guessed--I found Wire to be fantastically creepy.

Although I'm sure 3,900 of the 4,000 people on Wire lead fairly normal lives that are only tinged with U2, the other 100 are pure unadulterated wackos. First degree. I mean, there are some people who drone on and on about their "Adam Moment" (that's the bass player, folks) when they saw someone in a car in front of them in a Wendy's drive-through who had a 'fro just like Adam sported during the October era. These people don't see the Madonna's likeness (no, the other Madonna…) in a late-afternoon shadow on an Iowa farmhouse dining room table. They see The Edge instead.

So, this handful of web weirdos inadvertently taught me an important lesson: It's not who you know, it's who you blow...No, that's not it...Actually, they unwittingly taught me that no matter how psycho you think you are, there's someone else out there who is not only twice as psycho as you, but damn proud of it as well.

(There, that wasn't too bad, was it? For your sake, you'd better hope I don't get drunk and do a Way Out entry. Then the gloves would come off and I'd start dropping Bono quotes like, "Dream out loud. At high volume." And then I'd kick it in with the singing.)

I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out, and touch the flame......sorry.