Call me crazy, but there's something about feeding a few of my paltry little quarters into a machine that gets to me. It probably has something to do with the fact that I haven't many quarters in the first place, or something do do with the fact that the machine doesn't give many quarters back . . . but the that's the thing about gambling, really. It loses you before you begin. I still made forty bucks profit on one five dollar bill, though. Shove that into your ridiculously small evening bag, Lady Luck! Also on my Vegas vacation, much good food was eaten, much good window-shopping was done, and very much fun long time was had.

But now, college begins anew. So much for winning streaks.

There's a mystery afoot. Well, actually, mystery is lurking in my camera case. Because I have only an oldskool camera -- versus the so-called "newskool" or "digital" camera, which runs around in a suit and tie and steals the stock options of more modern and wealthy people who can afford to buy such things -- my camera uses what was once called "film." Film is what photographs used to be made of, you see. Film was developed into pictures by minimum-wage workers at drugstores, or "commercial dealerships of really bad chocolate." This oldskool system can be doubly perplexing at times, because sometimes you can forget what pictures are actually on your film. And there I have my mystery.

So what is my mysterious, just-finished roll of film? Proof of alien life? Penguins? Aliens and penguins at a black-tie ball? I do not know. It could be anything, really. My only clue is that one of the pictures is composed of an omelet on a plate, because that is the picture I took to finish off the roll of film. Now, you may think that someone who would take an omelet's picture might have many mysteries in her life, and you would probably be right. My life is pretty much one big mystery, good and bad, strange and stranger. Pity there aren't any more Watsons around, though. They could get me some of that really bad chocolate.

Living is all we've got. Truly. We have a life, and we can take care of that life or throw it away or put it into deep freeze, or we can take it shopping along the Seine, or we can let it sit and twiddle it's own little life-thumbs. I know this, but it seems I only assert it in my scribbles when I'm determined to do so. It's ever so much easier to let things that bother you lie around your life, cluttering it up like last month's laundry. Every so often, though, I say do the laundry. Realize your life, and what a gift it is. No matter how bogged down the world gets, no matter how grey the skies look, that is the one thing I know -- what I've always known. Life is tough, precious, and amazing. And I'll keep on with that.

I wrote an old friend tonight, one I used to deeply care about. One I haven't talked to in far too long. I had to write him. He may very well be out there, out in the desert, fighting where the media can't sponge him. It's weird. I had to mention it. Because if I didn't write him, if I didn't at least make an attempt at seeking life, I know I would regret it later. These are strange times. But life goes on: tough, precious, and amazing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Batman and Robin was on telly last night, and I was reminded of how much a giant pile of stinking crapola that movie truly was. Basically, it set everything good about the Batman movies on fire and then threw that fire into a pile of garbage and then sank that garbage into the nether regions of the local toxic waste dump. Mr. Freeze, the only truly sympathetic male villain of the Batman world, was turned into a cliche-spouting steroid monkey. Batman, the best and most-requisite part of the entire enterprise, was turned into George Clooney. And I love you, George, but no one goes to a Batman movie to see Clooneyman. ("He's slick! He's suave! He needs a shave!") And worst of all, Batgirl, my favorite character along with Catwoman, was completely ravaged: instead of being the commissioner's daughter, she was turned into Alfred's niece, ripped of her sexy intelligence but for a few lame computer-pokes, forced to become an extremely-staged, motorcycle-racing, vacant blonde, and utterly voided of all her redheadedness, personality, and romantic tension.

I heard they were going to make another Batman movie someday, with Scarecrow as the villain and George back for another round. But I say, when heaven has a heat wave! Get Val back, get Tim Burton back, and we'll talk. Or get Michael back together with Tim, and let's see about making Batman Beyond into a movie. You see? If Hollywood would simply do as I advise, there would be hardly any problems in the popular American film industry. There would also be considerably fewer American popular films, of course, in favor of something called substance, but does that really matter? Not according to me!

O sweet comical rantage, how important you are during such frustrating times. To sugar-coat is folly. To gripe, divine.

I sit here, and I think. I think here, and I sit. I'm thinking many a thing, actually. They say one's brain can charge a potato. Or a battery. Or a battery made from a potato, or some such potato-driven idea like that. In any case, I'm thinking that the world is quite mad, and not in a good way. Yet college must go on. Finals must go on. People, exasperatingly enough, must go on. Life must go on. And Christa, a little mad in a good way, must go on too.

How simple are the truest thinks of life. And how short, at that.

Sometimes life gets far too full of me-isms. Somebody once called my generation "The Me Generation," because it was so ridiculously self-centered. Or was that the generation before mine? I can't keep these generations straight. I'm still trying to figure out where Generation Y and X came in, and what the difference between them is, and how one could have les balles to name an entire generation after chromosomes in the first place. Then again, maybe I'm so concentrated on the me that I don't pay attention to generations. Me, me, me. It's a trap, the me. How do I feel about this-or-that, how does this-or-that affect me. I'm sick of me. I've been around me forever. I need a vacation from me.

"That's what we're here for, little Pippi. To help other people."
"Heigh ho," said Pippi, "then why are the other people here?"

Making vacation plans would be a whole lot easier if every hotel had many stars and remained cheap at the same time. It would also be easier if there were less hotels. If every destination had but one luxurious and inexpensive hotel, and no other, that would be terrific. You know, like the old west used to be.

"Where ya staying, Clem?"
"Oh, down't the hotel."
"Boooooy howdy. Let's go cow tipping."

Those must have been the days -- barring the rampant racism, sexism, violence, disease, war-mongering, buffalo slaughter, and tumbleweed stampedes, of course. Come to think of it, not much has changed, except for the hotel situation. Booooooy howdy.

My mother once told me about the straight hair of the sixties -- straight hair for women, of course, since male grooming in the sixties only came in three categories: Beatle, Disciple, or Square with a Crewcut. Mum said women would sometimes take a wax candle and roll it down their hair in order to seal the ends and make it lie straighter. Today I can hardly fathom such a medieval practice, because today we have a lovely little invention called The Straightening Iron. I never could do my hair in the days before The Straightening Iron, and was thus frequently left with a mass of unruly and unwanted curls. (An ex once told me it looked like Victoria's Secret model hair. But then he turned into a toad and Aesop wrote a fable about him, so there goes his validity.) Now, with The Straightening Iron, I can burn my hair into submission if I wish, or let it curl and mess to its liking if I wish. I like being haired with danger and choice in this way.

Candles or irons or no, however, every woman's hair eventually winds up in the same place: white, permed, cute little old lady hair. There is some great cosmic rule about this eventuality of womanhair, firmly stating that little wise heads must be crowned like chrysanthemums. And I, for one, find it oddly refreshing. It's simple, it's normal, it's universal. The circle of life, Elton? Maybe. The circle of hair, everyone? Definitely.

As far as desserts go, I consider myself a chocolate-box woman. Chocolate boxes are tasty, varied, attractive, romantic, and carry an element of mystery as well. ("It tastes like nougat, but it's purple! Hoorah!") Then again, I do like a good cake. Not many people like cake, probably because the social ramifications of cake equal something akin to, "The greater the density, the greater the thighs." I've also noticed that very skinny girls usually enjoy ice cream, which isn't mathematical at all. If skinny girl = ice cream, then does cold = less fat? I don't think so, because cold = ice, ice = walrus, and walrus = blubber.

This ramble was brought to you by the equations life = complex, complex = math, math = bad, and lastly, anti-bad = dessert.

While my thumb is decidedly less-than-green -- a chartreuse thumb, if you will -- I have been known to raise a few basil plants, radishes, and roses in my day. The day of being younger-than-ten, perhaps, but a day nonetheless. Aside from my beloved spider plant, wittily named Roz and fed on both water and a mix of Italian-French compliments ("Molto bello, mon petit chou!"), my apartment is sadly bereft of greenery. And there's a small patio out there just begging for a few mini roses or mini tomatoes or some green plumy nonesuches to grace its bland cement floor.

In short, I'd like a little garden. Some people grow begonias. Apparently, I just grow more and more disturbingly domestic.

Five things I wish I'd learned already are the notes that make up the "blues chord." You know the ones -- they precede every stereotypical generalization of a blues song. That way, I could sit here, strum those notes, and suffer for art in style:

Duh-nah-nah-nah-nah
Sittin' in the 'partment
Duh-nah-nah-nah-nah
One o' clock in the night
Duh-nah-nah-nah-nah
Ain't got me any chocolate
Duh-nah-nah-nah-nah
Can't get me any snooze
Duh-nah-nah-nah-nah
I'm just a lonely lonely good girl
Duh-nah-nah-nah-nah
Got the RUNDOWN fourth year blues!

This kind of singin' could cheer the pants off a cat, if cats had pants. And if this isn't also evidence of my needing a little more sunshine and a little less downtime, then I don't know what is.