"The 2001 PT Cruiser has that kind of alluring charm. Rounded fenders, a purposeful grille and an elegantly sloping liftgate are heritage design cues from an era that produced cars you loved."

Well, so says www.chrysler.com. But I say differently. If you're smart like me, you'll shun its purposeful grille and run away when you see it coming, shrieking,"Suburban hearse! Suburban hearse!" and making the sign of the cross. Amen.

I have been reading my old journals again, and let me tell you, if I ever start whining about the good old days, you have my permission to put a new hole in my head. Seriously, have at it. Because I can see that I mourned my life as a spastic socialite as much, if not more, than I regret the social coma at hand.

For example:

22 September 1996

"...Anyway, if it were just *****, okay. Eventually that will die, or he will. Or will move away. Or will get fat. But this kind of angsty trauma will never get old and fat and relocate. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I am drawn to suffering."

or

Friday, February 28, 1997

"It's hard to find new things to write when nothing changes. And honestly, nothing changes. I wish it weren't true. But it is, and it's so dismal. I heard the phrase 'look on the bright side' yesterday, and I was shocked, because I'd forgotten there was a bright side."

That being said, I would give a decade of vacation funds to go back and spend one week in college. Maybe back to junior year when Matt called me five times a day (12.24.96 -- "... I don't consider the excellence of our friendship often enough. Not at all. It's spectacular, even.") and Gail was the closest thing to a life partner two straight girls could muster. When my heart jumped and my stomach fell every time I heard a knock on the window, knowing it was Bill, coming to wreak some more havoc on my life ( 11.16.96 -- "I'm stupid and he's evil."). When Danny could flip my world upside down in a matter of seconds. When Chris was only my favorite R.A. at school and nothing more. When I lived in that wonderful suite that was the closest thing to home I'd ever had away from home, with people who didn't match me, who might never have been my friends, but somehow were among my best. When I skipped all my classes and never skipped rehearsals. When I never, never, never had nothing to do, and I always, always had someone or other to kiss me.

hidoro: do you think people are genetically predisposed to hate one another for reasons that are entirely invented? mental fabrications?
hidoro: i don't believe in genetic predisposition much, but sometimes i wonder...
Lupschada: I don't know
hidoro: because SO many people are so very AWFUL to other people, and prideful about it
Lupschada: in a certain sense... people have always existed in a realm of competition and outlasting the Joneses
Lupschada: survival of the fittest has become having a nicer Lexus, but still
hidoro: I guess I never really made that connection, although it should be obvious
hidoro: everyone is born ready to be the alpha dog. And so they're mean to everyone to get ahead
Lupschada: and people who can clearly see they're not alpha dog are hardly complacent about it
hidoro: diminish everyone else in their mental picture of them so they no longer count... knowing it doesn't solve the question though
hidoro: I'm gonna get kindergarten for a minute here.. but how come I can be nice to people, and WANT to be nice to people, and the rest of them can't and don't want to?
hidoro: that's what keeps me up at night
Lupschada: I wonder that a lot
hidoro: that I bother. that you bother. And yet legions and legions of others do not.
Lupschada: I was talking about that same basic concept yesterday, thinking about human decency, and how the hell road rage became so prevalent.
Lupschada: I think *most* people are baaasically decent
hidoro: hmm, that's probably a good microcosm
Lupschada: and yet... if you consider that a car is a weapon
Lupschada: how many people would say, "I don't like where you are in that lane, you tried to merge in front of me, so I'm going to wave a loaded gun in your face."
Lupschada: not many. I think. I hope. And yet, people will speed up to tailgate you. Or cut you off with a foot to spare
Lupschada: or do something equally ludicrous to show they're pissed. With, essentially, a deadly weapon
Lupschada: normal people do. Everyday people do. People I know personally do this
Lupschada: what is HAPPENING to the world of kindness?
Lupschada: it amounts to threatening someone's life because you don't like how they drive...
hidoro: I think it may be true of most people -- technically, they understand
hidoro: but... something.
Lupschada: so over the top
hidoro: something stops people from acting on what they know is the best thing
hidoro: even if it's best for *them* as well as others
Lupschada: I'd like to think that the people who act that way would be DEMOLISHED if they ever really hurt someone doing that
Lupschada: but they can't go from point A (cocky driving) to point B (killing someone/yourself)
Lupschada: little kids learn action --> consequence.. so when did we all forget it?
hidoro: i don't know.
hidoro: and i think that is probably what gets me out of bed in the morning
hidoro: wanting to figure it out, so i can fix it
hidoro: i'm a hopeless idealist
Lupschada: hopefully not hopeless, right?
hidoro: hey, i just drew a connection between my overwhelming urge to understand all cultures and that
hidoro: well, in reality...
Lupschada: or at least, that's what we have to believe to continue being idealists
hidoro: right
Lupschada: lol
hidoro: that conversation was classic
hidoro: can that go in your journal entry?
Lupschada: I was just thinking that

there is a pale metal rain today,
there is a dim recognition of something better, somewhere
there is a loneliness that is terrifying in its baselessness;
a feeling fleeting but real, as wet as the rain, and just as cold

I am preoccupied by thoughts of desolation:

the dark monolith of a broken heart

the burden of kindness

the horrible warmth of change from hands of
toll booth operators;
small envelopes of soul
passing though coins
every time we meet on the Massachusetts Turnpike

Well, I had my party and turned into a demon.

I should have known that would happen.

Tonight is my birthday party. Very exciting.

I have a sore throat. And the cutest cats in the world.

It's my birthday. 25. How about that?

All day I have had a hateful and dull headache the color of dirty metal. No amount of Tylenol or Tiger Balm seems sympathetic to, or even aware of, its nagging resonance. Bother. I am trying to ignore it, and am actually grateful to the amount of work I have to do today. And that's to say nothing of tonight! The downside of living in squalor (as though there were but one) is that every time I have a party, I kick my own ass cleaning the house. It's so hard that I swear to five gods and their mothers that I will never leave a dirty dish on the living room floor, or drop mail under the table, or ball my clothes up in corners (or the middle of the room; let's be honest here) ever again. Is that true? Does that really happen? Invariably, I am a slob again in a week or two. I think I may have gone as much as a month once. But mid-slovenry, I just dare you to tell me I don't like it that way. I will deny you with the power of a thousand bulls, no matter how right you are.

But I've been well. I spent the weekend in Baltimore, celebrating my birthday early with my family. They are awfully cute and awfully generous, and I came home with a bunch of birthday loot, and a full tummy.

And before that, Danny took me out for a long ride on his motorcycle. Truly, I tried to hate it. But I just can't. Slow is fast and fast is like lightning. Every road is rollercoasterrific, like flying, but much less comic-book-creepy. And how *cute* do I look on the back of a bike?! Actually, I don't know. Danny said pretty cute, but maybe he was just being nice.

I am bored. Bored. I am going to get a haircut. And lose a few pounds. And get some new clothes. And write a short novel. And read lots and lots of photography books. And start scoping out places to move when I've simply had my fill of Boston. And decide once and for all whether I'd rather make lots of money in a pointless job and live my life, comfortably, after hours, or make much less money doing something meaningful all day. And finally sort out my views on the role of the publicly sexual woman as exploiter/exploited. And clean my house, and do some damn laundry. And practice my guitar.

So, that's good for today. Tomorrow?

These are the books I bought over the weekend. I should probably join a library...

The Fourth Hand by John Irving (hardcover)

The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll (hardcover)

The Princess Diaries, volume 2 by Meg Cabot (hardcover)

The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll

No Logo by Naomi Klein

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging : Confessions of Georgia Nicolson
by Louise Rennison

Transformations by Anne Sexton

X 20 : A Novel of (Not) Smoking by Richard Beard (used paperback)

The Wishbones by Tom Perrota (used paperback)

I've been a happy one this past week, notwithstanding annoyance and overstress at work. Last Saturday, I drove to Amherst for a good, old-fashioned APOV party. Pretty much everyone was there -- Jenn was back from LA for a few days; John and Dan are in town for the summer before embarking on their first post-collegiate adventures, Ryan and Jess are at Mount Holyoke for another month before they move to Nowheresville, PA; Nick is leaving for Texas in a week, and Raph was there, obviously, because we stayed at her parents' house (sans parents). Put like so, it sounds pretty end of the world, and I guess it was.

Anyway, last Saturday.

The merriment ensues:
In Super Stop and Shop (note the vital inclusion of "Super"), I was reminded by Dan of the game "knifey-spoony" (as described in the Simpsons episode "Bart vs. Australia," original airdate 19-Feb-95) and literally drooled in the aisles (which is like rolling in the aisles, but wetter) over the many-levelled hilarity.

We bought more food than 8 people could ever eat in one night, and returned to the house with a raucous thunderstorm in quick pursuit. We missed the rain by about 3 seconds, and watched the most clean and jagged lightning I've ever seen from behind a huge window, with the lights out, eating carrot sticks.

After any number of intellectual and thoroughly uncultured discussions, and two actual interventions, we settled in to watch the classic (and deservedly so) film "Rat Pfink A Boo Boo." If you've not seen it, I suggest you pick up a copy of this long discontinued masterpiece at your earliest inconvenience. It's brilliant. Brilliant A Boo Boo, in fact.

It was 5:30 AM before I fell asleep, having spent the last hour laying in the oppressive heat, giggling with Jenn as we made "a boo-boo" the suffix to every word uttered by our friends. Poor bastards.

The next day, we foolishly ignored the menacing sky and went to Riverside (Six Flags, whatever the hell it's called), and arrived just in time to pay the exorbitant fee for cancelled rides and no refund! I skulked home a frustrated hour later so I could watch AI with Greg, which turned out to be the most horrible flopping disappointment I've ever heard. And I mean heard. The movie is gorgeous... I maintain that AI on mute would be my favorite movie ever. Or, if all of it were mute except Teddy. That would be okay.

But anyway, my friends stayed at the park to wait out the rain, and as I sat in a snarly traffic jam on the Pike, they road the Superman coaster three times in a row. Did I say poor bastards? Lies.

So AI sucked, but whatever. I had fun with Greg, and the next few days were a barrage of popping noises and sparkly things. Last night, of course, was the fourth, and I was terribly depressed to be away from my family. Dan Gatti was supposed to come hang out before flying to Japan, but the moron lost his PASSPORT (in classic Dan fashion) and didn't bother to call (in classic Dan fashion), but the rest of us had a pretty good time. Raph and Dan (her Dan) and his sister and Greg came out to Waltham, where we picnicked on my front lawn. We walked over to the fireworks at Leary Field, which were very Walthamy, and ended up sitting in front of my acupuncturist. How random. Afterward, we got drunk and smoked cloves on my front porch. A perfect dot-com holiday.

So, that catches us up, yes? The moral of the story is: I will be happier when I find more friends who are as much my speed. Amicitia semper prodest.