The bad thing about assistant directing a collegiate musical? It leaves absolutely no time for proper scribbling. I'm quite tired of having no time for scribbling. It's as though I've got a piece missing somewhere . . . like a toe, or an elbow, or a knee. You know, a quiet-but-essential sort of piece.

In any case, I hope all you starving-ardent fans wish me and the cast a lot of broken legs tomorrow. Make sure to tune in after the weekend run. I'll find some thrills and chills to write about then. And hey, by then they might even belong to me.

Ah, the Golden Globes. The only good thing about all these binging-media award shows is getting to watch all those rented dresses and jewels and faux-fur coattails, all the while lamenting the demise of normal body structures and wondering exactly how many times those skinny little starlets are going to be asked "WHO'S THE DESIGNER THEN, LOVE?!" Of course, that depends on whether you consider such deeply cynical smirkage to be good or not. I did get a certain amount of satisfaction from Nicole Kidman's win this year, though, because I got to crow from my safe, cold-ridden place on the loveseat, "IN YOUR FACE, TOM! WHO'S LONELY NOW, YOU FAKE LITTLE BUGGER WHOM I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT?!"

Hey, I take my misguided satisfactions wherever I can. Kudos to you, Nicole, oh persevering and fellow-heighted diva.

Are you taking your life for granted?

It sounds like a trite after-school special, but I've been asking myself that question for some time now. I don't think I'm taking my life for granted. Then again, lately I've been discovering that what I think doesn't always turn out to be true. So maybe I am taking my life for granted. For example? Sometimes when I make pasta, I don't eat it on a plate, sometimes I just grab a fork and go at it. Sometimes I drink straight out of the juice carton, and I'm a girl. Sometimes I fall asleep on the loveseat only to wake up with both of my feet asleep, on account of the loveseat's being too damn small to fit my too damn tall body. Sometimes I stay up too late at night, most likely internalizing the disgusting things that keep happening to me. In short, there are too many sometimes in my life. I'd really like a few occasionallys, or even a nice . . . well, a nice often. I've never been a fan of stasis. Or of ruts. But brother, I think I'm in both.

What we need here are some fireworks. And if you don't think I intend to have them, you've got another think coming.

If this place isn't due for some newness, I don't know what is.

Besides me, that is. Better scribblings to come, folks.

Children's stories are so much better than our silly old mature people's stories. My favorite of the Ring books? The Hobbit. It has the most charming lilt. Childlike stories always have a certain inexpressible lilting element which grown-up books lack, be it the pig who runs a circus or the badger that reads Proust or Peter popping in from the nursery window. When I was home for vacation, I found a bookshelf full of my old books and found myself almost starting to cry. Gus still takes care of a baby ghost at the historical museum. Charlie the cat still plays tiger in the tall, tall grass. I don't know why I felt like crying. I just did. Simple beauty moves me like that.

Or maybe I just spend too much time in the campus bookstore, buying books that make even film noir sound tedious, buying books for the sole purpose of pushing the old edumacation one very slow centimeter ahead, buying notebooks to take the same old endless notes on the same old endless books . . . Call it necessary. Call it important. Call it ludicrous. Call it what you will, but it sure ain't beautiful.

Here's what I think about New Year's resolutions: plllllbbbbt. I never keep them, I forget to make them, I eat them for breakfast and then roll off the couch into a pile of peeled potato skins. I don't like resolutions because they make me feel defeatist. And potato-y. Yet I was thinking about resolutions yesterday, imagining all those women and men waving their fingers up high as proclamation to the inevitable gym, family dinner table, or Betty Ford Center. Then today, I thought about the same women and men licking frosting from their fingers alone in front of the telly and washing it all down with le vin on the cheap. And that's just one depressing picture I'd rather decry in jest than personally experience.

The good thing about resolutions? No one wants to hear about them on the second day of the year.