I'm not the only person driving around in a older-model vehicle. I accept that there are certain concerns faced by all aficionados of the vintage automobile. Funny, though, I seem to be the only such motorist who, when it's raining, must operate my 1965 vehicle with a squeegee in my f*cking right hand, to swipe away at the constantly-amassing fog on the inside of the windshield. With both windows down, no less. Even then it's like driving with Vaseline in my eyes. No one else has to do this. And no one else shares my opinion that it's not funny.

I throw the term "gender traitor" around a lot, with much apparent vitriol, but usually my tongue's in my cheek, if invisibly. Seriously, though? The women who emphatically declare Oprah Winfrey a fine candidate for President of the United States? Are.

Each year I lose more of my always-paltry share of holiday spirit. Nothing newsworthy there, But y'know what never loses its holiday dazzle? Photos of zoo animals unwrapping their "presents" and, even more devastating, eating food treats made to holiday specs. I saw this one shot of a polar bear destroying some meatloaves shaped like gingerbread people that OH, that made rubble of me, jeez. I'm awful tough.

Everyone knows one must never read one's high school journals later in life unless one's got an abnormally high threshold for pleasurable self-humiliation, but I figured mid-college journals might be OK. Wrong! On the very first page I peeked at through leery fingers, I spied this quotation (source not cited) written down with apparent approval and affection: "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Oh, the pith! Funny, I don't remember scouring Reader's Digest's "Words to Live By" or whatever it's called section for wisdom while at school.

Exactly how uncharacteristically (to say the absolute least) personable and charming are the white-Rasta trust-fund glassblowing anarcho-hippies next door? So uncharacteristically personable and charming that when they open all of their doors and windows and blast endless dub reggae with Latin-jazz percussion, I only smile indulgently and think "Oh, those guys."

Our front door now bears its first-ever graffito: "KLEPTO", it reads. Christ. Could there be a more disconcering tag than that to show up on one's residence? Feels rather like a warning of some sort. KLEPTO, when you return and burglarize me, please make sure my cats don't run out the door. (And tell EXODUS that that's some nice work he did on the cheese shop across the street - fine use of shading, EXODUS.)

An addendum to my post of 12/8*: No matter how many engines you've rebuilt, or how many tiny, crisscrossing scars your knuckles bear from the teeth of other bar brawlers, if you use both "recherche" and "dishabille" in a single e-mail, in unrelated paragraphs, you are a complete gaylord who should drop all aspirations toward pulsating virility. I do not feel many observers would dispute me on this.

*an addendum I post here almost entirely because it's such fun to slander friends who neglect to read this blog

We all know the diamond-mining industry is so bloodily brutal that it makes the coke trade in South America look like a Lutheran bake sale. That's a given. But Christ, must the evil be compounded by all that (literally in this case) infernal advertising? This billboard I have to look at twice a day, for example: it shows a disco ball of a pendant with text above reading "Imagine the resolutions she'll make." Nice. Oh, that's nice. Or is my mind too gutter-bound, and others aren't reading that as more or less "You'll get a ton of blowjobs"?

I've got this friend. He prefers men to women romantically, and is unpleasantly overproud of how shocked people are to learn this fact. A homophobic homo, and what a charming bunch they are. Sure, he ****s ****, but he's got a sweet jumpshot and a muscle car, so he doesn't "count" somehow. God, the tedium. Anyway, here's the point I'm getting to, a point I take pleasure in making in this forum because I know he doesn't read this thing. Mr. Butchie? If you want to keep burnishing that gaydar-jamming machismo you've got, you may wish to avoid cooking up honey-persimmon oatmeal made with cream and stating that you intend to "pioneer the field of dessert oatmeal". You fag.

I'm not sure what it is about lighters, but I operate under some sort of delusion that they cannot be purchased, only obtained through noncommercial means. Everyone's familiar with the phenomenon of coming home and discovering in one's pocket someone else's lighter; I'd bet that, conservatively, 25% of lighters reside with someone other than their purchaser. But why must I feel that it's only through this accidental theft that a lighter can become mine? It'd never cross my mind to pick one up at Walgreen's, say, while replenishing my supply of the earplugs I use to muffle the arguments between prostitutes and their clientele that lively up the night beneath my bedroom window. Instead, I must fret and worry when a given lighter's begun to run out of inflammatory power. "Christ, this here Bic's not long for this world, and me with no parties to go to for days. Dear God, let it last."

A workless work afternoon spent looking at online personal ads only cements my impression that no trifecta of words gives the American public more spelling trouble than "tongue", "gorgeous" and "maybe". (Yes, "maybe".) How these three bedevil us.

I just overheard a conversation between a broker here and a gentleman encouraging said broker to consider investing in a new, as yet inchoate company. Now, I have not seen the name of this maybe-company in print, and have only this overheard conversation to go by, but I can't imagine any other way its name could be spelled than "Lixor". Lixor. Lick Sore. Hey, investors, are you ready for a hot new stock that'll make you feel you need one of these?

Mike Nichols has a new film coming out, right, "Closer". Good cast, good buzz, but I don't care at all, really. I've got an arbitrary dislike of him and his work. It happens. Yet despite not caring, I have a compulsion toward reading any and all film reviews, completely irrespective of my interest in viewing the movie being discussed. So I've read two of "Closer" so far, and both have made reference to a particular line of dialogue, voiced by Clive Owen's character: "The heart is a fist wrapped in blood." Evidently this line's emblematic of the film's thematic content, to such an extent that compulsive film-review readers can expect to stumble upon it more than once. The problem here? Goddamnit that's my line. I said it first, albeit in a modified form: "His heart's just his third bloody fist", in re. an SOB I'm fond of. It is my line. I want it back.