Why do men spit? I don't know, but I can hazard a guess. They think it makes them look, and here I must use quotes to encompass the coolness of the word, "tuff." To a man, hocking a loogie on the pavement might very well appear to be the ultimate expression of tuffness, of a devil-may-care attitude that comes with being young and male and rebellious. But to everyone else, it just looks ridiculous and unsanitary. I have never once in my life thought a spitting man an attractive man -- "Can you imagine the size of his saliva count?!" -- nor do I know any other self-respecting woman who does. ("A self-respecting woman? WHERE?!") If you are a man and you cannot hold your spit in long enough to reach, say, a sink, then for god's sake use a tissue. Tissues aren't just for girls anymore, spit-boys. If you need further comparison, compare man-spitting with woman-heel-wearing. Women do not look sexy when they fall down and break their crown in stripper-sized platforms, and they do not look attractive or intelligent when teetering precariously around the sidewalk or any other place that requires, say, movement.

That's what they made flats and Sabrina heels for. And they also made spittoons, and the lost art of couth.

Thanksgiving is coming, and I am afraid. Not because of our national dedication to a holiday which celebrates the genocide of another race who got here first. (I don't think it fitting to really indulge there until they invent time travel and I can plant my feet on Plymouth Rock and extend an angry pointing finger, that is. "BEWARE, PILGRIMS! AND REMOVE THOSE RIDICULOUS BUCKLES FROM YOUR HATS TOO!") No, I am afraid of Thanksgiving because I know that sometime, somewhere, somehow, I am going to have to come up with a special food item of my own. Not only will I have to come up with a special food item to bring to The Big Meal, but I'll actually have to cook that item in a tasty manner as well. Such is the lot of all my many many extended family members. Mum makes cranberry bread and some sort of amazingly tasty squash-n'-cheese dish which obviously needs a better name. Uncle Herb does something wonderful to the turkey to make it sit up and ask you if you'd like your nap now, or later. Betty can make huckleberry pie from scratch. My cousin Tammy makes a surprisingly delicious graham-cracker casserole with marshmallows and Jell-O. (Guess if she's got kids. Go on, guess.) And so on, and so on. Of course, Aunt Kathy takes the cake -- she not only hosts the whole shebang, but she also makes three special items: sweet rolls, green bean casserole, and yams with brown sugar and walnuts and enough fat-ridden goodness to make you sob.

So you see it's really very hopeless. Sooner or later, it will be my fate to come up with something special, cook it well, and bring it to the table in a properly-insulated dish. And somehow I doubt that omelets or pasta or sandwiches from Quiznos will be fully acceptable. ("And here's Christa with the toast! And the soup from a can!") So I think somebody must have taken my Betty Crocker genes and sold them on the black market. Because when I'm afraid, I like to blame someone else.

Shame, thy name is Christa. I tried to resist buying the leather low-slung belt, I honestly did. I tried to tell myself that trendy accessories never last, I honestly did. I tried to remind myself of my overwhelming preference for simple classics instead of quick peasanty trends, I honestly did. I gave it the old mental school try, but then the mental students set fire to the mental chem lab and burned the mental school down.

It does make for an interesting closet situation, though:
Black Skirts: 'Ere, whot's that?
Red Shirts: We don't know! We think it looks like a snake!
Tall Boots: SNAKE? WHERE?
Stupid Trendy Belt: What time do the clubs close here, love?
Little Black Dress: Don't forget, hussy; I'm worth ten of you.

Oh the things one finds funny in the wee morning hours.

It's official. I'm not down with Daylight Savings Time. Who invented it, anyway? I remember looking it up once and reading about some fool who thought they'd save money on national lighting bills by putting everybody to bed an hour earlier . . . or later, as may be the case in spring. This is sheer idiocy, however. Daylight Savings Time does nothing but make me more tired an hour earlier. It also makes me more accustomed to hooting. You know, like the nightowls that are now able to fly at four in the afternoon. But not all the blame lies with the Daylight Savings inventor, I guess. Some of it lies with my insanely photosynthetic clockwork.

Plant girl lives. And gets her sleep schedule messed up, too.

Eating is a plague on my existence.

No matter how many times I eat, I always have to do it again. I despise things like that. Almost nothing gets me more frustrated than that which never gets done, like laundry and cooking and dishes and keeping my studio clean. It's surely some kind of great mystery as to how such a teensy apartment can get so dirty. Today I got home, kicked my shoes off, and then shrieked aloud, "I'm only one woman! I can't possibly track in this much dirt!" (I rarely mind being weird when there's nobody around to hear. Come to think of it, though, I rarely mind being weird when everybody's around to hear . . . ) Basically, I'm tired of cleaning. I'm tired of laundry. I'm tired of dishes. And I'm really tired of eating.

Curse these bare necessities, these con-tin-'uous necessities.

Somebody's mad about me in Maine. Too bad I don't know who they are. That's the funny thing about trackers and the virtual world: you see your ardent fans, but you never really know them. (Actually, that's 99% of a good thing.) Although I'm not so sure we ought to call the virtual world a "world." It doesn't seem right, seeing as it's entirely constructed out of codes and blips and nothings. The real world at least purports to being real . . . if you leave out the inflatable models and the slippery magazines and all the Manolo Blahniks perched atop environmental meltdown, that is. (Can you say "liberal college student with misplaced anger?") Of course, one might argue that an entirely constructed world is more real than the real world itself. One might argue that there's far more opportunity for beauty or expression or even individualism in a place that becomes almost solely what one makes of it.

Yes, one might argue that, if one had a student's brain set to self-destruct in about ten years. Or five years, whichever comes first. I wonder if they think too hard in Maine.

In other unrelated news, Ambientwhimsy will be getting a redesign over the next few weeks, Christa will be attempting to scribble on a more regular basis, and Little Miss Muffet will finally get off her duff and wring that curd-stealing spider's neck. Great things are coming; let us rejoice. Or else.

The neighbors had a smallish fight yesterday. They woke me from my nap, in fact, and so I participated by laying on my bed in a bewildered state, eavesdropping with only a small amount of guilt. I sided with the woman. Now now, before all you male ardent fans go throwing up your hands or stalking off to blast something angsty and suburban on your stereo, hear me out. The woman cried, you see. I could hear her crying for a moment, and as Resident Helpless Softie, that bothered me a little. (Okay, a little more.) The man kept going out the door and slamming it, then going back in and slamming it again, and he did all the talking -- or rather, barking. After one final parting slam, he left. This is the first peep I've heard out of their apartment in the entire time I've been living here. I must admit to feeling somewhat miffed about the entire episode. I missed my nap, and some unknown woman next door was probably feeling very lousy indeed. Fighting may be unavoidable, but you don't have to go barking around and making people cry about it.

Especially if you're doing it in another language that Christa couldn't possibly decipher for love or money.

If I turn the television on one more time and hear one more off-color joke about the female body or watch one more male make fun of a wholesome woman's reputation or listen to innuendo-laden dialogue meant to amuse peanutbrains with the self-control of pillbugs, I am going to throw up. Or smash something. Or both. Or just think about doing both with a very dry and hermit-bound glare.

Oh sure, my anger is probably misplaced. (There's a shocker. Whose isn't.) I can't control what they put on the telly, or how much skin the billboards define as chic, or how P. Diddy blathers on in Vogue about being the ultimate pinnacle of fashion. But I can control how I feel about it. I can decide to not feel anything at all. I can plant my own gardens and redefine chic. I can order the stupidity away. I can feel secure in my own frame, my own skin, my own knowings.

And I can also turn off the telly.

Well, it's happened. I've finally become a film snot.

All film majors come down with snottism at some point or another. I think it's a rule. Somehow, somewhere, the least-expected films have begun to sneak into my brain, open my eyes, elongate my boundaries, and generally wake me up with their madness (which usually means newness). Fact is, I am no longer 100% content with the screen-bound same-ol same-ol. Oh sure, I like a quirky Hollywood-made romantic comedy as much as the next secretly-struggling romantic sap. And I'm a musical nut. And I'm hopelessly enamored of countless old movie stars. But I'm also susceptible to filmic beauty from other countries, or movies that showcase other ways of thinking, or films that travel different paths and take different tangents and use different pictures to get their ideas across -- films that dare to touch on new ideas.

In one way, however, this new state of filmic events is kind of sad. I can watch P.T. Anderson's Punch Drunk Love and grin throughout the film's entirety at its enchanting nonsense and color and rhythm, but I can no longer watch such beautiful somethingness with multiplex-intensive friends who ask, over and over, and here I quote, "What the hell is this?" Oh friends, friends. Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all above you. (Besides, my pedestal is in the shop.) I see where you're coming from. You want to watch what you know. You want laughter and guts on parade and semi-fashionable mooning. You want things to have a point. But sometimes, just sometimes, movies don't have to have a point. Not everything has to be concrete. Life itself isn't. And when all is said and done, movies are supposed to reflect life . . .

But I still hate David Lynch. Guess I'm not too far gone.