Grey and rainy today, turning cold. I like the cold part--- a chance to open a bottle of pinot noir and go out on the balcony. Red wine on a rainy late-October night, Marin Marais or Loscil on the Small Psyduck iPod. Not a bad evening.

Friday--- I'm glad for that. I do hate my job; I just don't have any alternatives. I'm absolutely useless at what I do--- something I never, never, never felt while teaching. FML, darlings, FML. Which does not stand for Feldmarschalleutnant.

Looking at the latest New Yorker. The model on the back cover is...lovely. The ad is for Banana Republic. Blonde, with deep blue eyes. She's in a very fitted grey tweed jacket worn over a French-cuffed blue-striped shirt and a white pullover. Skinny-leg black pants. Just a hint of challenge in her expression. I want her in that outfit, want her across a table at a bar in Chelsea on the gallery strip. New Yorker is advertising a Chelsea gallery tour--- a High Line gallery tour for 7. November. I wonder if Lissy at emigree is going. It's forty-five dollars--- certainly doable. Lissy worked at Banana Republic for a couple of years... I do wonder if she's still a girl who looks at fashion ads or sees herself trying on outfits for a gallery tour. Did she ever get that classic trenchcoat and the tweed hacking jacket she wanted?

"Medicine for Melancholy"... I really do want to discuss the film with Miss Ginny. I need voices to just be there late at night and talk about film and books... I hate looking at my phones late at night and willing them to ring. I hate feeling the glass walls pressing round and walling me off from any sense of being part of the world...

I still haven't been able to use my little Toshiba external hard drive to back up my iTunes. Ten months, now. I so need some lovely friend-and-correspondent to call and walk me through setting the XHD up. People have promised, but no one has ever actually called to walk me through backing up my iTunes. There's a clear statement about my value.

A red tartan scarf. The model in the Banana Republic ad on the back of this week's New Yorker is wearing a red tartan scarf. I've always had a thing for girls in scarves and pashminas and keffiyehs.

I like university scarves for myself, too--- six-foot scarves in Oxbridge college colours. And keffiyehs. Keffiyehs are always key.

Hannah at likeagirlshould just called from Berlin. Still putting off going back to Columbia. And seriously tripping on Ecstasy. I'd forgotten E-monologues--- girls on E talking and talking about their lives. Hannah is wickedly bright and UES, and she knows comp lit. I like having her call--- girls calling from Berlin must count for something. I just wish there was even a hint of flirtation in the conversations, or a sense of intertwining-and-exchange.

Heavy rain outside, and wind in from the west. I do love the sound of rain.

Nela at steeping sent me an LJ message this morning. I couldn't open it, of course. I do miss her entries and her notes. She's gentle and kind and bright. But I can't open any messages that might be Bad News. So I'll never hear from her again. The same thing happened with Tamara at drocera. I couldn't open her messages--- too afraid that they might be Bad News. I kept hoping--- and still hope ---for calls from her. But I'll never hear from her again. I suspect the same is true for steeping and Ioana at winterbymorning. I will miss Nela. I'm sorry for whatever I did to make her Vanish.

Feist is singing. Long ago--- the summer of the Year Six ---Lissy recommended Feist to me. She used the word "chanteuse". I liked that a lot.

It was Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo who got me to listen to the Buzzcocks and Fela Kuti and Pizzicato Five, though.

So...what do phylogenies tell us about evolution? Well...they tell us to...Smite the Amalekites and (always!) beware the Vile, Batrachian Manxmen and the Loathsome Andaman Islanders and the Evil, Alien Esquimaux. You can never smite too many Amalekites. Let's take that as a given.

Halloween is always a good time to reiterate that everything you need to know in life can be learned from the works of H.P. Lovecraft. And a key thing is to never, never, never allow yourself to be Jostled by a Lascar. And a fortiori not on the streets of Oslo.

I do wonder if Miss Ginny is doing a major All Hallows' in Montreal. In costume or not? My lovely clever Obsession en titre once laughed about all the undergraduate girls dressed up as Catholic schoolgirls for Halloween. No one who'd ever really gone to a Catholic school, she said, would wear the uniform again once they got clear, let alone find it fetish-y. I do wonder what Miss Ginny's own tastes in costumes are...

I haven't scrobbled to my LastFM account for a long while. I'll have to plug the Small Psyduck iPod in tonight--- that may add a couple of hundred plays to my LastFM tracklist. I just wish lovely wicked clever girls were still reading through my LastFM plays and making notes. I've always regarded LastFM tracklists as source material to be analysed. They're Advertisements For Myself, true. But they're source material as well. I look at girls' tracklists and try to infer things about their lives and loves. I just wish girls were going through my own LastFM site and finding me Valuable based on what they might find.

I do wish the Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt would call again. I miss her voice and laugh.

Miss Chang called earlier. Her flight from the ATL back home was cancelled--- hydraulics problem. She ended up stuck in the Atlanta airport tonight--- food voucher and a room at the Days Inn. She'll fly back to Sarasota tomorrow morning, do laundry and re-pack, and then fly out to USC and Stanford Sunday evening. She called and gave me a phone tour of her hotel room--- a critique of the '80s-style furniture and the mass-produced faux-Impressionist art on the walls. We compared notes--- hotel room art we've seen.

Three weeks 'til my birthday. There's a kind of premonition of gloom about that. I wish I could have Britt-Nicole's voice again. She called last year and we talked 'til dawn. Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife promised to call and we brilliantly wicked on my birthday. But that was a summertime promise. I'll never hear from her again. Having Laura-Ashlee just Vanish hurts more than I can say.

I wish Miss Ginny would call for my birthday. Just as I wish I could take her to Brooks Bros. and buy her a boy's classic Brooks buttondown in that pink that fades out framboises-et-creme. I do want to see Miss Ginny in just that shirt, kissing me in a Montreal apartment filled with books and her vinyl collection.

I suspect that no one at all will call on my birthday--- no lovely clever wicked panty-free girls as Voices on the Aether.

I hate my job. I hate being useless at my job. I hate where I live. I hate being behind walls of glass. I hate not having a girl who'll call and flirt and laugh and be gently affectionate and utterly wicked all at once. And I hate my lack of any kind of future whatsoever.

Rain, still. I need a girl to kiss while it rains. I need a city that I can watch in the rain. And I need more pinot noir. Or more Irish whiskey.