There are entirely too many things around for the buying.

The list goes on without end, you know, into the sunset and beyond: clothes that make sense, home furnishings, great books, great movies, great vacations. Kittens, gasoline, food. Hair products. Maintenance in varying doctoral varieties. Diet sodas. Worse yet, all that buying makes worry, and then you have to shell out even more cash, sweat, and tears -- now opening for Earth, Wind, and Fire -- to alleviate that worry. It isn't just my media education talking, either. (Supply exceeds demand, kiddies, so demand must be created!) It's vexation talking. It's annoyance talking. It's the grumbly mumbly no-more-lollygagging ya-latesleepers talking.

It's enough, sometimes, to make you run screaming for the nearest avaliable hermitage.

Although linguistics was a decidedly horrible subject to be prisoner of -- it still trumped mathematics, of course, but only slightly -- the rare dialect note was its saving grace. Or in a clearer sentence, I like how the world's posse has different words and pronunciations for things. For instance, some Southern-types tend to say something is "kitty corner" where others would say it is "diagonal." (Why there are so many cats lolling about in corners down there, however, is anybody's guess.) Also, I've noticed that the older Iowa-type generations tend to put an r-sound in the middle of the word "wash," as in, "I just turned my crop of corn into a magical baseball field and now I've got to warsh my clothes." And Eurospeakingly, I think the British have bloody terrific pronunciations for the most surprising things, like "ahh-loo-MINI-um" for "aluminum" and "pah-pee-eh mah-shay" for "papier-mâché." (They also spell color ever so much better than we do, with a "u" in it. Colour really should have a "u" in it, just like your mum.) And of course, Canadians are all about the "abooout" sound -- I once met an entire flock of them on a ship, in fact, and they kept referring to what I in my non-Northern state of speech assumed to be a most lucklessly-named Gross Mountain, as in, "Who dumped gross toxic waste on this mountain?" and only later discovered it to be Grouse Mountain, as in, "Don't let our feathery grouse friends get into the toxic waste today."

Linguistics professors never talked about this stuff beyond the rare anecdote during lecture. No, instead we prisoner-students got the phonetic alphabet, the syntactic trees, and the sweet farking Moses why do I need this in life, my brain aches, why must you hurt me so you despicable language curs. On the whole, university was pretty much unbearably stupid and great at the same time. Just like the world's posse, come to think of it.

When did trade-offs for good become the norm?

Look, it's great that you want to give something out of your piddling little life to help other people. It's more than great, even. It's grand. Let's do it already. Yet why do radio stations and the like proceed to market everything as though it were some sort of double feature picture show: "Hey, by purchasing these tickets for charity, you get to help people out and you get to go to a swanky concert!" Forget the concert, dude. Stop singing, band. People should just do some things because it's the right thing to do. Shouldn't they? Don't they? I don't know. Do we really need fake royalty to influence our notion of what is good and right, or do I still have an unbroken pair of rose-coloured glasses pushed up and lost somewhere above my head? How is that even possible anymore, when we all know how vastly little I believe in 90% of people?

Yeah, I don't know. And the media called it looting. When people needed food, when people got fed up with all the ignorant crap that's been going on for the past half-century or so, the media called it looting. That really irritated me beyond the pale, and you know what? I'm pale enough already. I don't have the answers. (Nobody does, you know.) Maybe Frankie has it right, what with his whole out-of-here-by-35 deal. Maybe I'm tired. Maybe these lost pinchy glasses are giving me a headache. Maybe I'm all wanderlusted up with no place to go.

Deep down, somewhere to the left, probably between my I'm Secretly Afraid Of Attractive People room and my Never Tell Anyone That I Skew Romantic room, I think I have hidden gothic tendencies. Eyeliner, style fixtures, a dash of vampire fiction, poet boys with painted nails -- I can be pretty down with all that stuff, in varying degrees. Plus, goth happens to be one style that pale anemics can always pull off. When was the last time you saw a goth cancering-up their skin cells by the pool? Next to never, Edgar Allan. Next to never.

I can even appreciate Trent Reznor, too, because let's just face it, he is one hot biznatch. Although I still fail to see why radio stations even bother to bleep out his old -- and true, not exactly my favorite -- "Closer," song, with its ever-subtle "I want to (bleep) you like an animal" lyric. After all, there's really no other verb you can imagine substituting in there which doesn't sound just as dirty. What, "I want to cook you like an animal?" How about, "I want to dress you like an animal?" "Poke you," "hold you," "marinate you?" Obviously, censor-bleeping becomes utterly pointless when you've got an eccentric imagination.

Of course, "I want to cuddle you like an animal" might be the clincher. I suspect, however, that my thinking of that particular one renders me 90% safe from utter gothhood. That, and the fact that I like colour, and I don't care for pain, and I think Marilyn Manson is nothing but an awkward old nerd prancing around in expensive makeup. Plus, the entire concept seems to be just a tad too self-indulgently depressed for my taste. If you must be depressed -- and what sane person isn't -- at least don't be self-indulgent about it. I say share your depression. Drag other people into your depression too, and you'll be escaping the pink of goth in no time.

It's been far too harried and ill around here. Worse yet, while the latter has ended, the former remains. I know you've missed me, though, because I can hear you weeping profusely. (Has anybody ever truly wept profusely? I doubt it. When you're that upset about something, you're hardly conscious of its literary profuseness.) There there, ardent fans. All betters.

Back up in this tomorrow. Oh the anticipation.