• I don't think Aimee's Cute Bar Guy thing is annoying. The thing that I said earlier about having a beer w/him and putting us all out of our misery was for fun. I can't stand suspense. I can't bear it. I have to rush right through to the end to find out how things work out. This is probably why I almost always read the end of a book before I'm half-way finished with it. I know this habit is blasphemous and a major sacrilege. I don't care. I love doing it. I feel deliciously dangerous doing it. And it won't land me in prison. But back to Cute Bar Guy. My point is this: I like hearing about this sort of exciting stuff since I have so little of it in my life (exciting stuff). I'm not whining, and I'm not bitter, at least not at this moment. My point is that Cute Bar Guy is an example of life imitating art. There's suspense in the story. Will they? Won't they? When? How? There's romance. Meaningful glances exchanged over pitchers of beer. There's violence. All that throwing pointed objects at a poor defenseless target has to signify some latent viscious killer tendencies. There's adventure-- the thrill of the hunt, the exhiliration of the chase... In short, the Cute Bar Guy saga contains all the elements of a blockbuster summer date movie. I need Cute Bar Guy stories. Don't send him into syndication just yet. I'm not ready for re-runs through the Aimee Archives. Let me live on fantasy a while longer. Please.
• I wonder if someday soon now, while I'm sitting with my back to the door in the NWR, Aimee won't sneak in w/her sock-o-nickels and off me. The ole stake through the heart trick might work better on a character like me, though.
• I don't know why this is freaking me out, but it is in some way. I don't have time to reflect on why right now. I'm supposed to be writing a paper for Dr. Hardy on matriarchy and Flannery O'Connor. It is probably going to turn out to be a paper on women and O'Connor or family and O'Connor which means that Christina will have to change the button on the web page for my essay, but that issue will have to be addressed later. I just want to freak out a bit over a piece of info I ran across while working on my Hardy essay: William Gibson wrote The Miracle Worker in 1956 or 8. It looks like this is the same Gibson who wrote Neuromancer, the same Gibson that Matt is interested in. I don't know why it freaks me out. Too much interconnectedness maybe? Some excuse for being able to take a break and type in my blog? Does Matt know this? If he does, what does it really matter? Hm. May muse more later. Too busy being paranoid now.

Just went to The Sopranos site and got my Mob nickname. Matt had the site on his blog. He might have gotten a dorky name [Chimpy Teeth, I think it was], but I got a way cool one. As a matter of fact, I want people to call me this from now on. I've never had a REAL nickname before. Oh,people call me Les sometimes, or better yet, they call me Lez [don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are lesbians], but I've never had an honest-to-goodness nickname. But I have a great one, now, thanks to The Soprano's web site which is a show I've never seen before, BTW. Anyhow, here's my nickname: The Pipsqueak! Isn't that just marvy? I am so completely opposite what a pipsqueak would be/is that I want to be called this all the time. When I get my PhD I can be Professor Pipsqueak. Sounds like a children's book character. hmmmm...See? More of this synchronicity stuff. I'm almost getting scared it's so good right now.

Even though I'm agnostic most of the time, every once in a while several related events occur that serve to get me marveling about synchronicity, Fate, Destiny, karma, the cosmic conspiracy of the Universe-- call it what you will, but that happened to me today. I get a kind word and hug from a valued and respected friend right off the bat and out of the blue this morning [not to be overly cliche or anything]. And Aimee asks after me as well. And it isn't just their asking, it's the words they say, the timing, how it's done that helps me to feel better and soothed and all that mushy, warm fuzzy kind of stuff. There is absolutely no way they could know that I needed to hear something kind at that moment in time. Well, my last whiny blog post might be a clue, but that was last week. I'm nothing if not mercurial, but I digress. So like I was saying, my pals saying and doing the exactly right nice things at the perfect moment in time has me rethinking my cynical view of the world this evening. This awe and generalized feeling of gratitude will last until I step in doggy doo-doo or back over my garbage can leaving for work or something equally annoying, and then all will be dismally right with the world again, but for now, I'm content with my faith and optimism. Lester Ballard be damned.

• I would just be happy if Aimee would share a Bud Light with Cute Bar Guy and put us all out of our misery!!!

• I have no idea what is happening to me. I feel compelled to make another troubling confession. I am ashamed to say that I am really liking a pop song by Evan and Jaron. Aimee's Justin Timberlake poster must be evil. It is exerting a weird influence on me to like boy bands. I'm also feeling the urge to bar hop and surf E-Bay. Must fight. Must resist...

• Matt thinks I should stop assuming his identity if I don't like the computers opening to his homepage. I really dig pretending that I have something long and stiff like him, though. I admit to having mohawk envy since my hair was mutilated by some bimbo with scissors and no sense of linearity. Mohawks are much better than mullets, don't you agree?

• I'm nominating Chaospiral to the Shameless Self-Promotion Hall of Fame. EVERY computer in the building opens to his homepage. Enough already. Perhaps this Grand Poo-Bah thing is going to thine noggin?

• 
  Christina is a web goddess!

• He [husband] has the heat turned down to 62. I am typing in my coat and headscarf. I wear the headscarf a lot. Josh says it makes me look like Jane Fonda. I'll start to worry when they call me Hanoi Leslie. There's a person who can re-create herself, though. I have one of her fitness videos from the 80's. Wonder if I could sell it on E-bay.
  
• Still in love with Gary Harkness.
• Saw the purse that Aimee bid on. I liked the tiki man better. I'm thinking there should be tiki-themed sex toys. Peter Brady could be the spokesperson.
• Must be productive tomorrow. Must start being smart again. Must think of topics for two research papers. Must stop babbling and go to bed.

It has not been one of my more stellar days as a decent human being. I suppose I'll have to try again tomorrow. In the meantime, my one friend that is talking to me sent me the following:

• Erotic fortune cookies. Do I really want to know that "Someone is thinking kinky thoughts about me?" I'm sure those thoughts would involve pain, humiliation, and a whole lot of effort for not much reward. I think there should be fortune cookies for the terminally married. Perhaps, "Someone thought briefly about doing you, but decided it was too much effort and went back to their Danielle Steele novel." or "Destiny smiles on the married-- you no longer have to care that your stretch marks have stretch marks."

• A totally entertaining way to spend an evening alone. I did Me and Bobby McGee, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Long Cool Woman [in a Black Dress], and California Dreamin'.

• The Mountain Astrologer says that Gemini is an air sign. "Airy individuals live and breathe to make connections, both social and conceptual. Living primarily in a world of ideas, they are verbally expressive, endlessly curious, and have rich inner lives, but may have trouble translating their inner world into tangible accomplishments in the outer world." Indeed.



• Checked out my horrorscope. How can I come up with eight names? All suggestions will be considered. I'm beginning to feel like Chairperson of the Bored. Rob does horrorscopes in French, too. Bookmarked the site. May help me with my French class.



• My cable modem was out for several hours. I had to call tech support. Jason and Terry have really sexy voices. Flirted shamelessly. "Don't put me back on hold, Terry. I can't listen to one more Enya song. Please. Anything but Enya. Why can't I stay here with youuuuuu?". Amazing how quickly service can be restored when the tech support guy is askeered of the customer.



• Ack! Greek! I haven't looked at it for a week.

• An E-bay and Egghead rival. It sure takes a lot of clicks to see what is available for sale. I don't do a lot of online auctioning, though, so maybe most of the sites share this characteristic. I'll have to ask Steve, aka the King of impulse buying.



• I wonder if Prozac or some other sort of serotonin inhibitor would have helped Eyeore. I was just listening to the story about when he fell in the stream. He says, "Don't mind me. Nobody every does." I'm not the first one to have diagnosed Eyeore as a depressive. I guess I might be depressed too if I was constantly an ass and couldn't change that. Wait. Hm. That sort of is...but I digress. My point is that I'm sort of the mind that the entire world should be on Paxil or some derivative thereof. I could start my own business. Drive around town in a tanker truck filled with liquid zoloft and lightly mist the homes and yards of my customers. When I wasn't busy, I could leave little tags on people's doorknobs advertising my service. "Free estimates! Ask about our holiday specials for when you need that extra little pick-me-up. Mention Freud, Jung, or Rogers and receive your first treatment free."



• Aimee likes my new page bar. Thank you. I was thinking that it looked slightly tarty, especially in combo with the "Where Bookhag tells almost all" title, but tarty isn't necessarily bad, right? I was telling Aimee and Meredith that I'm going to go with a seasonal design for my page. Web pages are easy to decorate. They are about the only things that I do decorate. I hate decorating my home mostly because I'm lazy. My neighbor down the street has a bay picture window and changes her display according to the holiday. She has little wooden cut-outs of Abraham Lincoln's profile and stuff like that. This is very intimidating to me. The closest I came to decorating for Halloween this year was dragging a witch poster out of my basement and throwing it onto a chair in my living room. It lay there collecting dust until the dog jumped on it and tore it and then I put it in the recycling bin. My tendency toward holiday laziness isn't a good thing for a mother to have. Kids like decorating and feeling festive. They like making cookies and cutting out red and pink and white paper and gluing them to the underside of the kitchen table. I forgot to put my creche away with the rest of my Christmas stuff and it is setting on the table in the entryway of my house. I suspect it will be there until next Christmas. This could raise some interesting questions around Easter: "Mom, how did Jesus age 33 years in 3 months?" To which I would reply, "Well, honey, I know how it happened to me-- I gave birth. I don't know how it happened to Jesus, though. Divine intervention, maybe." Actually, aging 33 years in a few months is probably something that kids can buy. T.V. characters morph and age all the time. So, my utterlaziness is what appeals to me about decorating web pages instead of domiciles, and so after Valentine's Day, look for something green. Not a very original system, I know.
• I have tried to write about Levy's article several times. I finally gave up because I ended up sounding so essentialist, which I do not mean to be. I told Matt that I would have to go out to lunch with him to explain my take on the whole thing properly-- his treat, of course. He hasn't e-mailed me with a date or time yet. But personally, I am simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by The Man Show and the concept of G-String Divas. [I have never seen the G-string show, I don't think. I saw a short part of a show once where three or four women were auditioning to become exotic dancers. It was a sort of documentary. The women were interviewed while they were in rehearsals, etc. and the final segment of the program showed them strutting their stuff in a live performance. What show is this, I wonder?] But I digress. The point is this: the content of these shows goes against every humane, respectful cell in my being. What attracts me is the completely unabashed, unashamed, and unrestrained celebration. I don't think it is necessarily the sexual/social mispropriety that holds allure for me. It is simply the embracing of enjoyment. I suspect that some of the participants, producers, viewers recognize this quality, but I worry about the ones that don't. In some ways, I think that is why the show Home Improvement was so popular. Tim the Tool Man totally embraced his ability to grunt and build stuff. He totally dug that part of his personality. He didn't just do those things, he wallowed in his enjoyment.
  I am reminded of the times I sat and watched my kids play in their birthday cakes. They would have cake everywhere--in their ears, nose, between their fingers, under their nails, and they would be completely, utterly, totally absorbed in the moment, savoring the sensual. I loved those times. So, I suspect that political correctness, rather than just raising my awareness so that I change how I interact with other people, caused me to feel a sense of shame regarding my tendency toward self-absorption, earthiness, sexuality, sensuality, the experience of being human, really. Shades of Epicureans perhaps. I ended up being uncomfortable with unabandoned pleasure, especially in areas that culture/society or some other authority (the church?) deemed "icky." So, I am fascinated and drawn to those shows that celebrate and enjoy without reserve.
  
  This intrigue isn't just for things that are societally taboo. I think this is why I love watching The Crocodile Hunter shows, also. That man LOVES his job! I don't watch the show to see him catch a crocodile. I watch to see the joy he derives from catching a croc. I know that's why I love WWF. Characters like Stone Cold relish flipping their boss the bird. They can revel in their inconsistency, meanness, and ambition. I love their utter lack of remorse and their certainty.
  
  This is a completely idiosyncratic way of analyzing this stuff, I know. But maybe it might explain why Levy's friend didn't seem to find paying for a lap dance to be quite the exhilirating experience she had expected. Maybe the fascination w/stripping, etc. has nothing to do with sex/sexuality and everything to do with a desire/need to revel in pleasure, whatever that might be. Wow. I feel like smoking a cigarette. Was it good for you, too?
  
  *I know at least a couple people read my odd meanderings. Please don't avoid me when we happen to meet face-to-face at work/school. Well, at least don't avoid me so that I can figure out that you're avoiding me. Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.

• I scared myself last night. I was wearing my Rock shirt-- the one that says, "Your role, know it," on the front and, "Your mouth, shut it," on the back. That part didn't scare me. I'm over that one. But here's what did scare me: As I was galumphing around the track at the Y, I started wondering what kind of linguistic construction those phrases were. They're sort of inverted, I know. I suppose I would be more likely to say, "Know your role," which Rocky does say sometimes. So, I was wondering what kind of social, rhetorical [sociorhetorical-- is that a word?]implications that inverted structure might have. Meredith would know. So what's happening to me? I had perfectly good Tom Petty music on my Walkman, perfectly nice views of sweaty hunks playing basketball, stretching, lifting weights and otherwise being completely man-like, and yet I am wondering about sentence structure. Just another exciting Friday evening. I also did my French homework. Sad, sad, sad.

• This week has seemed really long and it was only four days. I'm behind already. I did find two students in my 103 section that speak French, so I'm down with my lessons from now on. They help me, I'll help them. heheheheh.
• I had to get new brake cylinders on my mini-van. $160. Ouch. I flirted shamelessly with the shop guys. All of them. I'm so promiscuous!
• Evan has basketball camp tonight. I'll take him and try to lift some weights while he's there. I haven't been in the gym since early November. I hate starting all over.
• Taylor is playing for a Boylan game. Nothing happening tomorrow, thankfully. Maris's birhtday party is Sunday afternoon. Hopefully this won't be my last calm weekend of the semester :::praying to the university gods:::.