Some people have been known to ask why the wording of this place doesn't seem all that personal. And I, well-known lover of people that I am (cough cough), suppose I ought to think of an answer. I'll begin by listing off rhymes and reasons. One, what seems personal to one might very well seem impersonal to another. Two, come on, you don't care one whit of a jot of a millisecond about the not-so-tawdry details of my life, like "here's what I did today" or "I bought myself some blueberry muffins" or even "my roommates better damn well take their lovemaking outside my hearing vicinity."

But rhyme and reason number three is probably the most important of all. Simply, vaguely, I feel distinctly uncomfortable when the non-webcentric peruse my scribbling. Strangers can take you or leave you, laugh with you or laugh at you, and it doesn't really matter either way. But as for someone I know reading over my bursts of wit and nonwit -- well, that's a different matter entirely. That feels like someone crawling around inside my personal shell without permission. It's difficult to explain. You want to ask me something, ask me something. Don't go trying to interpret it on your own, because you'll be incredibly unsuccessful. So I guess the question is, "Why scribble at all? The web is public, you know." And I guess the answer is, because I can. Because I must. Because while there is something uncomfortable about the web, there is also something beautiful about the web, about the people who punch in time and put in effort and make do with what coding and words and visuals they've got. It is a blank canvas. It is an art form. It is something I feel proud to participate in, be it on a small scale or not, be it comparing and contrasting with my life or not. Comfort, do your worst.

Laundry is just like cooking. No matter when or how you do it, you always have to do it again.

But aside from battling laundry, things are actually starting to look up. It's about time, let me tell you -- you computer-bound person you, sitting there in your comfy chair, probably looking for pictures of naked things and being thoroughly unsuccessful at it here. I've had a run of bad luck for two years, and things are finally starting to look up again. And it's not because of interesting people, or romantic people, or just plain better people. If that were truly what it takes to be happy, then nobody would ever be happy. I'm not exactly sure why things look so bright, actually. Maybe I feel better. Maybe I'm starting to work more and delay less. Maybe I've actually gotten out of the house and tromped off into the sunshine for a few days running. Maybe my brain just feels more grounded, more me. I feel like me again. And for the first time in a long time, that's starting to become a good thing.

Everybody is tired. Why is that? I've been told that I shouldn't write about being tired anymore. Stephanie suggests I write about fortune cookies, or the way a cloud in the sky looks eerily like Winnie the Pooh. But Stephanie is probably just tired. During summer, tired should not be allowed. Being tired must have something to do with being a twentysomething, or being a college student, or being any kind of student at all. I don't know many fortysomethings who are tired without reason. Their kids kept them up, they had too many hors d'oeuvres at a business luncheon, they killed their boss with a very large and cumbersome paperweight. These are naturally sleep-depriving things. But what do I have to do be tired about? The one last week of summer school? All the time I spend doing nothing? All the more nothingness I've yet to do?

I mean, it's not like I have anemia or anything. Oh. Right.

Napoleon probably just wanted to be tall.

There are certain social stigmas attached to height, or so my summer sociology courses say. They say that taller people are generally perceived as being more powerful, more attractive, and ultimately more successful than shorter people. In other words, our society connects being short with being childlike and therefore less capable of handling responsibility. I'm not so sure I agree with that. More often, I find that our society connects 5'10" me with Amazonian tendencies and playing basketball. Not to mention the fact that our society gives me utterly no attractive short-heeled shoes or pants that are long enough for my accursed legs. But then, my sociology classes would say that the social stigma for height differs between genders. Because of gender bias. And also, our welfare system sucks. And corporations have taken over pretty much everything. And the whole world is wandering down the road to hell, and we've forgotten to bring our handbasket.

Ah, sociology. A science built on innumerable, unfortunate, and magically depressing Waterloos.

Since yesterday, I have been twenty-one.

Birthdays don't usually make me feel older. They are merely days spent with cake and a fancy dinner and some happily inocuous phone calls, but they almost never hover in the area of old. Until this birthday, that is. Apparently it takes a shockingly short and layered latest-season-Rachel haircut (to the collarbone, god save us all), a new little black dress, and a renewed state of mind to make me feel older. Or maybe it's my upcoming laser eye surgery, which will finally give me the gift of sight after eleven years of fumbling around in the dark with bats. Out of the batcave, and into the night. Sounds almost gotham. Well, you know what I mean.

In any case, birthdays or no birthdays, I'm still Christa and I'm still old. Now get the hell out of my rocking chair.

Going home has become a process of maintenance. Get the hair cut, get the skin punctured, get the teeth shammied. When one grows up and leaves college, I suppose one has to find new maintenance professionals. This scares me. I'll have to find a new hair stylist and a new doctor and a new dentist. And I'll have to get a life insurance plan. I don't even know where to get a life insurance plan. And don't start with me on retirement, or stocks and bonds, or mutual funds, or European facials, or wrinkles and Botox and hair dye, or any other kind of grown up maintenance, either. Suzanne and I decided at lunch yesterday that there should have been a class offered on this stuff back in high school. Because that would have been, oh I don't know, actually useful.

All maintenance aside, am I allowed to like System of a Down? And am I allowed to like Skid Row? More importantly, am I allowed to scream along with System of a Down and drool over the lead singer of Skid Row, even though he's incredibly dated and -- to put it vaguely -- completely out of my league? I don't know. I don't know a lot of things.

I don't know how I feel about that.

Nobody really knows what to do with Michael Jackson anymore. As an eighties child, I can easily remember the measure of his fame back in the day. That man was famous. (A cousin of mine had a video game starring the guy, for the love of Pete. I think it was called Moonwalker. Egad, that's oldskool.) I seriously doubt anyone who reached the level of fame where they could not leave their own house for fear of rabid mobs would ever -- or could ever -- be "normal." And at least in the eye of today's public media, Michael Jackson never appears to be completely . . . normal. Normal is a relative term, of course. But fellow eighties kids know what I mean, because they've seen his image waver just the same as I. VH-1 had a Michael Jackson marathon last weekend, playing the old videos like Beat It and Thriller and Bad. I'd forgotten how cute Michael Jackson used to be. A magazine editor once said that Michael Jackson is now "a man haunted by his appearance." How sad. How sad that a life spent without childhood may very well have created a kind of modern-day Phantom of the Opera. And now? Now nobody knows what to do with him. Old marathons, new dramas, old crass commentary, new ambiguity. Nobody knows. Michael Jackson is an artist, sure, but he's an artist framed in the past and seemingly unable to wholly face the future. And that's the saddest thing of all.

On the other hand, I'd rather listen to Michael Jackson than some of this skinnified bubblegum nonsense of today. Britney, Aaron Carter, N*whoever. It all kind of makes one wonder who really deserves to be haunted.

There is nothing to say. I hate it when that happens. There should always be something to say. And there usually is, only it's often hidden deep in the woods of lethargy or worry or an overlying air of grouch. One should never let a day go by with nothing to show or say for it. There seem to be annoying little white flies flitting around my spider plant, Roz. There, that's something. I could explain why my spider plant is named Roz. Or I could just let you wonder. I could let you sit there, baffled and agape and wringing your hands over the fact that Christa likes to name her possessions without reason. For while one should always have something to say, one needn't always make sense in the saying. Nonsense is important. I believe in nonsense. In a world that makes so little sense, nonsense should be both respected and enjoyed.

49 is new. No saying required.

Surprises are some of the most lovely things about life. It's easy to forget about surprises when you're stuck in a depressive rut, or busy as hell, or worried as hell. (Hell sure is a conflicted place. It's crazy as hell and mad as hell and just plain like hell! and an entire slew of other semi-misguided expletives.) But sometimes the lovely part of life sneaks up on you when you least expect it. For example, none of your trip-canceling roommates may come home one night and you may lie awake for hours and hours in a very dark and blue mood and miss your class in the morning because you didn't fall asleep until five am, and then you might just finally wake up and check your messages and find not one message but four messages from people who are almost literally desperate to see you, and one of them may just be your old discussion leader, the first male to have struck your fancy after what seems like an eternity, and maybe you've just lost three pounds, and maybe you've awoke with a new lease on your studies and abilities and life. Maybe you don't need anybody after all. Maybe it's just about you and up and getting there.

And maybe you've finally learned how to straighten your hair with the iron from hell. Ain't surprises grand.

Nobody wants to speak up and laugh anymore. Classes and professors and hours go by, and yet the majority of my collegiate population would rather sit on their not-so-cushy bums, semi-comatose, and not contribute a single word to discussion of any kind. This baffles me. After all, this never happens in arts-oriented classes. Only generalized classes seem littered with silent students, students who never breathe a word of amusement or insight or even appear to be alive at all. (Perhaps if they were poked. Every hour, on the hour.) But then again, the professors might be at fault. Today, after lecturing on an overtly racist sociological philosophy (a philosophy that apparently involves believing one race is biologically "better" than another), my professor then inquired as to the philosophy's biggest flaw. And I, fed up with the dormant mass surrounding me, finally gave forth a highly cynical snort and said, "Because it's fascist?" Did the professor share my cynical snort? No. No, he did not share my cynical snort. Instead he said, with utter seriousness, "Well yes, but I'm looking for something further." Did any of the comatose students share my cynical snort? No. No, they continued to sit there, unblinking the hours away, permanently stuck in their empty and obviously lesser-yeared lives.

If this generation of collegiates cannot attempt to make some use of humor in our long, hot, excruciatingly trying hours of summer classes, then we are a sad generation indeed. I won't cry for you, generation. I'd rather go join someone else's generation. The thirtysomethings are the "me" generation, right? That's fine with me. We get on pretty well, me and I. We even like to speak up and laugh every now and then.

Sometimes I'd like to take a big handful of all the stupidity in the world and knock its block off. That is, if stupidity has a block. Anything rampant probably does. Feeling ill? Don't go traveling and risk giving your cold to others. Having a wonderful time? Brag about it to someone else. Family issues? Put your kids first and then think about yourself. Feel like making reference to a sex life? Don't whine to me about putting your eggs in the wrong basket.

At least hardly anyone was stupid this weekend, except for all the picnic people. I wouldn't think picnic people were so stupid if I could just figure them out. Where do the picnic people go on their picnics? And how do they find time to put a picnic together? I sure don't know. I've never been on an official picnic -- you know, the kind with a real picnic basket and real fried chicken and real deviled eggs, on a real gingham blanket, while wearing a real southern-belle sunhat. That kind of picnic escapes me. And don't get me started on nasty park rangers and sidekicks named Booboo. We'd be here, unstupid and nonpicnicing, all day.

Call me crazy, but I'd like to meet the Dell computer boy. He hops around their commercials with such an irresistible grin that I must restrain myself from skittering over to the nearest computer store and buying one of them there Dells right away, even though I know it's all entirely implausible, because one, I already have a computer (though currently broken it may be), and two, the Dell computer boy does not work at any computer store I've ever been in. He probably works in Wyoming, and who lives there? Have you ever met anyone from Wyoming? I didn't think so. But it hardly matters, because irresistibly sweet and goofy guys are never attracted to me. I get the ones who stare at my figure 24-7, or the ones who live only for their work, or the ones whose greatest joy is to lie, or the ones who predate me by a decade, or the ones who lack a brain. And frequently all five.

Maybe the Dell computer boy could play me a sad little song on his violin. If he weren't a fictional media amalgam of materialistic and commercial proportions, that is.

In more serious news, Verselife looks new today. See simplicity go. Go, simplicity, go.

Errands hate me. They stack up when I'm not ready for them and then they refuse to get done. Problem is, there's always something to do. Sometime, someday, somewhere, there ought to be nothing to do. That's right. There ought to be a designated time when nobody does anything. There ought to be a time when we can all sit around on our collective bums and whistle a lazy tune and eat some petit-fours, and do nothing whatsoever. Now, you might be thinking, "Wait a minute, we already have that! It's in England, and it's called teatime!" If that's what you're thinking, well, you think wrong. Because I'm not in England, and I don't get teatime. And because I'm not in England and don't get teatime, I don't have any petit-fours and am therefore bitter and have too many errands that never get done.

Oh what a miserable non-English life I lead. Forsooth. Indeed.

Newness, newness everywhere, and not a drop to drink. While I've never worked as a coat check girl -- well, not yet -- I must admit I've managed to pen my "Buddy, you could never possibly pay me enough to justify my wearing this skanky getup" expression quite accurately. Every woman should have one of those expressions. Of course, with spandex tube tops back in so-called style, it's an incredibly expressionless world.

How was my cousin's wedding, you ask? Please tell me how great your trip to Iowa was, you ask? To all you askers I say: the wedding was disgustingly beautiful, Iowa was disgustingly hot, and I'm so glad somebody cares. Even if that someone happens to be sitting in front of a computer screen, ardently searching for porn. Move along, pornie. Nothing to see here.