Most enigmatic/suggestive of potential plotline for future humorous episode of The X-Files headline of the day:

Space Guinea Pigs Emerge From Three Months in Bed

Things I wonder about:

Bea Arthur -- dated eighties reference or timeless cultural icon?

Why is it, in this day and age where we can clone people and have cell phones the size of a fingernail, that still when the cable guy comes to your house he inevitably walks in, throws down his giant bag of drills, looks around for five minutes and says, "We have a problem here." He then goes on to tell you that he cannot install cable in your house until you go down the street and ask three different people if he can get into their backyards and run cable lines through them. Shouldn't this process be easier by this point? I mean, is there any other utility installation that requires the customer to get so involved in the act? Wouldn't you think the cable guy could handle this sort of thing on his own?

[this entry, wherein I kvetch about the inconsistencies of a certain male person, has been deleted due to its veering dangerously close to being stereotypical women's-mag fare.]

I am beginning to feel a Charlie-Brown-like emailbox void. Suddenly, it seems, everyone I know has gotten incredibly busy over the holidays and I am left with my short attention span and job apathy, which can only be alleviated by a steady stream of online banter with my chatty friends. I think I am experiencing an email recession. There's nothing lonelier than the "check mail" link when it isn't lit up with a little red envelope telling you you have new mail. Where the hell is everyone?

All I want for Christmas is:

-health care
-a byline or two
-non-ugly furniture
-a boyfriend who isn't afraid of the word boyfriend
-a small dog
-not to be allergic to small dogs
-an iPod (must have at least one technologically ridiculous item on list)
-the ability to cook
-a facial soap that will combat the apparently long-lasting toxicity of New York air, when your virgin skin moves here from the midwest and is shocked into a series of unsightly blemishes, one every other week or so
-the new Kelly Hogan CD
-a razor-sharp wit that I will only use for good, never for evil
-a book deal, even though I haven't written a book just yet
-Travis, the Calvin Klein model with no underwear on.

Here's what not to bring on the subway during morning rush hour: a seven-foot steel beam. Especially if you are not in a good mood, and expect people to be OK with you hitting them with it as you attempt to snake it between all the standing commuters. I've never heard such a collective gasp as when this man swung the beam wildly, almost taking out several eyes, and then dropped it on the floor and cursed loudly. But the most impressive thing was the split-second time it took for people to go from being worried for their personal safety, to smiling at the person next to them in this jaded, 'isn't New York amusing' kind of way.

Those little pop-up windows are getting to be the online equivalent of the takeout menus that get shoved under your front door every day. I swear to god, if I forgot to close them and someone just glanced at my desktop, they would think I was a compulsive gambler, deeply in debt, with a penchant for spying on my neighbors.

Here's what I hate: women who don't like other women. It's a Catch-22 because I find myself so often surrounded by male friends. But what can you do? You put out feelers for that elusive girlfriend who doesn't get threatened and isn't all preoccupied with Getting/Keeping a Man and has a good sense of humor, and you find yourself quite often disappointed. I want to have more girlfriends, really I do. Where are they keeping all the good ones? I just started a new job, and while I seem to have become friends with almost all of the boys, the women seem to regard me with suspicion. Am I that horrendously uncool, or am I a threat? Either way, it's ridiculous. The one exception to the rule, of course, is the most flamboyant of the bunch: a woman who wears a thick coating of bright-red glitter on her lips every night, wears so many giant rings I have no idea how she can type, and has a distinctly Goth name that I am quite sure she was not born with. She likes me. I take some comfort in this.

Last night as I was walking home, feeling like a pack mule under the weight of my sneakers and gym clothes and walkman and water bottle and giant lamp bought at BB&B because the landlady of my new apartment has, inexplicably, replaced the nice tin ceilings with drop ceilings and FLUORESCENT lights, I stopped between two sushi places on Smith St to debate which one to order out from. As I stood in front of the cheaper one, an oldish grayish hippyish kind of guy was also contemplating going inside and asked me if it was good, to which I replied that I had no idea but that since the Village Voice seemed to think so, it'd probably be alright. He then asked me if I was alone and if I wanted to join him; I declined politely because I was tired and cranky and thinking of all the unpacking yet to be done. Eventually I made my way to the other place (given a thumbs up by an actual friend) and the guy was over there too, having decided that was the better of the two. I saw him asking for a table for one and suddenly changed my mind and joined him. As it turned out, he was a massage therapist/psychedelic lighting technician/aspiring Timothy Leary here on business from his home in, natch, California. We talked about Merry Pranksters and energy and tantra and he told me all about being at Kesey's funeral (natch again) and he bought me dinner and offered to take me out for flan (not to mention give me a massage)... and that's where I decided to make my way home. But still- good argument for talking to strangers, and a much more well-rounded evening than eating sushi alone on my carpet, staring at mounds of cardboard boxes.

Best Yahoo! headline of the day:
Grown-ups More Likely To Be Thrown From Sleds

This morning- felt as if I was suddenly in 70s New York- sitting on the F train, some guy with a big Afro got on, listening to a transistor radio playing rather loud jazz that actually seemed to have a wah-wah pedal in it. He didn't have any headphones, and glared at anyone who raised an eyebrow at him, and just leaned against the door grooving to this awful music that actually became sort of enjoyable after five or six stops.

The whole world is prejudiced against night people. As I am working nights at the trivia sweatshop, I am realizing this more and more. I wait for the train for a good 25 minutes before it comes, and it is always packed, rush-hour style, with people coming home from late-night jobs. Yet we meager night people are not afforded the every-five-minutes subway trains that the morning people get. Not to mention the fact that at regular jobs, you're supposed to get there by a decent hour in the morning or it's seen as a mark of laziness. What about those of us who can't sleep before one in the morning?