Once upon a time, endless night covered o'er the land. Of course, Christa was probably awake in the duration.

An old favorite poem popped into my head tonight. If there really were a club for night people, I would probably be president. And if that position were already filled, I would probably be the sergeant-at-arms, because I think sergeant-at-arms is a very nifty title. (A "Rarr, I'm strong!" sort of title.) To me, there's nothing like a laughing, jazz-filled, non-scary night. Then again, there's nothing like a quiet, fully-awake, sunlight-filled morning. Unless you had a long night before said morning, in which case morning bites the big one . . . The great mystery of college isn't about self-discovery, I'm thinking. It's more about the balance of sleep.

A ghostly deliveryperson must have dropped off my Valentine's Day present while I was sleeping today, because I while I certainly heard and saw nothing, the package still materialized at my door. Ain't the mail system grand? And ain't I thoughtful to send a pretty little present to my pretty-not-so-little self?

It seemed to fit me, see, what with its being crowned and all. And it was on sale. And who says you can't buy yourself a present every now and then? Not me! Obviously! Evidently! Now all I need are some island photos to put in it, to make it a sort of "wishing locket." I am an eccentric, but I'm a fancy eccentric.

They say rain breeds inspiration. But I don't know about this oft-mentioned They. For example, They like to jump off cliffs, They enjoy doing everything en masse, They like to stay out all night long when they're thirteen . . . and They never used to wear what I had in my closet. (Of course, nowadays it's good to have nothing of Theirs in your closet. I wouldn't know, seeing as my closet is black and red and booted all over.) They do a lot of things, but I find 99.9% of the things They do to to be an incredible lot of idiocy. So no matter what They say, I'm out of inspiration. I'm fed up with college. I'm fed up with people. I'm fed up with nowhere and no decisions and noninteresting things.

Hence, this. I'd offer an apology, but I'm fed up with those too. Here's to They getting Theirs, and here's to un-fed later days.

Dear Upstairs Neighbor,

You are a noisy little imp. Get that? I do not call you a troll, or a bulbous nitwit, or the French word for a female canine. Instead I call you a noisy little imp, because that is all you are to me. Your always-clean little black car parks right next to my sometimes-clean little blue car. I have seen you around and about, noisy little imp. You are a small and weightless sort of person. How can such a diminutive gnome make so much noise? It baffles me to no end. The moment you walk into your apartment, located directly above mine, perhaps you put on some kind of elevator shoes and then proceed to practice the lost art of Bang-Clank. Bang! Clank! At the most inexplicable hours! Almost every day!

As a result, oh upstairs imp, on more than one occasion you have turned me into The Glowering Landlady. That's right. You have caused me to bang upon the ceiling with my broom handle. (Okay, okay, with my Pledge Grab-It handle.) Imp, I do not wish to be The Glowering Landlady. I don't have enough wrinkles, I own neither muumuus nor curlers, and if someone deserves a glower, at least I try to do it in person.

So please, try to keep it down. You wretched noisy idiot.

Quietly Un-Yours,
Christa

Forget off and on. This week, the weather's been off and off. It's grey and dreary, and it's not supposed to be grey and dreary here. (Or as they'd say in my film noir class, it's been an anti-myth week. Yeah, don't ask.) Being an annoyingly photosynthetic person, I too have felt grey and dreary all week long. My laundry sits undone. My head aches with unsunny vibes. I have an unstudied-for French test on Tuesday, because after all, my professors wouldn't want any of their students to actually enjoy a three-day weekend. I feel old and yucky and hungry. I am a grey and dreary woman. What's more, I am exceedingly tired of hearing the words, "I'm sorry" or "I feel your pain" or anything remotely resembling empty pity. I. Am. Tired. Of. Everything.

And I shouldn't be watching Meet Joe Black in this state, either.

And now the news.

1. There is too much television.
2. All French professors are either bad or good, never in-between.
3. I have a bad professor.
4. Bali has been officially added to my do-or-see-before-death list.
5. Valentine's Day, the day which ultimately makes every sane person want to jam ridiculously expensive fountain pens into their eyesockets, is a bunch of hooey. I hooey at its hooeyness, and I have far more better things to do. Breathing, for example.

It baffles me, what passes for female beauty nowadays. Of course, I'm not baffled by why. Our society is literally, figuratively, and ridiculously saturated with appearing sexual: it's in our advertising, it's in our idiot boxes, it's in our art, it's injected by Hollywood Botox surgeons into every individual peel of our supermarket bananas. It's everywhere, and I'm more than tired of it. You can only see so many de-molded bubblegum-princess abs before they start to blend together -- to make one giant ab, or "Scary Mono Ab," as I like to put it. What passes for beauty now is being young. Or being skanky. Or pretending to be liberated when you're really acting without the presence of your brain.

Fact is, I don't think beauty is about being young or blonde or trooping around as part of the great media myth where talent equates fame. I don't even think beauty -- real beauty -- fades. To me, the most beautiful women in the world are over thirty. They still laugh. A lot. They float around in sari silks or layered bracelets or putter around in gardens. They know their worth, and it's not measured by what they wear or how they think or by men who believe women are only worth their time as sexual objects. Beautiful women have seen more than me. They persevere. They define art. They've found peace. That's beauty.

And if I have to sit through another popstar video moment in the middle of all this political upheaval, and Valentine's Schmay, I'm going to throw things. After all, I ain't thirty and peaceful yet.

Somebody rolled off the wrong side of the bed onto the wrong end of the floor this morning. Somebody then looked up from the floor to the clock which read, insolently, four thirty a.m. And then somebody growled a grouchy groan, because somebody can't seem to sleep without waking up at least five bazillion times per night for the last week and a half. Somebody keeps having nightmares. Somebody feels like a teenage poem gone wrong.

Somebody really needs her tea.

Yesterday, my film noir class was interrupted by loud chanting somewhere outside on the main campus. "Oh," quoth my snappy-chic, crazy-intelligent professor, "that must be the anti-war rally someone scheduled for eleven-thirty." Break time eventually rolled around, and when Suzanne and I zipped out to saturate our arteries with caffeine, we discovered the origin of the chanting. Was it an anti-war protest? Were Suzanne and I party to the common man's double-sided politics in action? Was there mud? No. No, the chanting was not chanting. It was karaoke. Karaoke to determine who would make up the Homecoming Court.

And if that doesn't tell you what's wrong with this country right now, then I don't know what does. Unless it's the news never being more than one timeslot away from Joe Millionaire, that is.

When you go to the grocery store at eight a.m. for the sole purpose of buying cereal, you know you're in college. And when you buy three kinds of cereal at the grocery store, cereal for sugar, health, and in-between, you know you're also single. But nevermind about me. What you should mind about, oh ye citizens ye, is the sad and sorry state of Lucky Charms today.

You remember Lucky Charms? The cereal with the drunken leprechaun on the front, being chased down the high road and the low road by insipid schoolchildren for just one bite of his sugarcoma-inducing cereal? Of course you do. And even though I've never been a sugar-cereal girl, I've always thought Lucky the Leprechaun more psychologically stable than his breakfast compatriots, who are still a little too preoccupied with being unjustly abused by the more evil schoolchildren who for no reason at all refuse to share their surplus of Trix, or escaping from the local mental institution to sail around on a boat and pretend to be captain of a cereal. But I digress. What I mean to say is that Lucky Charms have changed. We collegiates remember them as they ought to be: pink hearts, blue moons, yellow stars, green shamrocks, and purple horseshoes. But now, today, are you aware of the Lucky Charm perversion that is currently going on? In my cereal box today, there were rainbows, pots of gold, leprechaun hats, shooting stars, and red balloons. You heard right. Red balloons. How red balloons can possibly be considered lucky, I do not know. But I can picture the French cinema star who probably proposed it. ("Regardez le ballon rouge!")

Yeah, so. Perfectly balanced breakfast my foot.

So I've been fighting with sleep. From wee hour to wee hour, I alternate between kicking sleep around the room or letting sleep smoosh me into the ground. I'm not sure why, other than the sneaking suspicion that I tend to subvert all my various thoughts and thinks into the nether regions of myself, thereby crushing my circadian rhythms into a jagged pulp. And that's probably more of a great truth than a sneaking suspicion, too. What I need is a massage. Or a a really large Sandman-trapping cage.

But sleep or no sleep, AW's design is new today. (Tell me what you think, babycakes.) I wanted to do something simple and clean, because my life lacks both of those things at the moment. Except for the clean part, because I'm almost always overclean. Oh shower, sweet shower, thy cleanly disciple is moi . . .