"...while dissing her 'friend the communist' (who I bet isn't, and I also bet doesn't deserve the putdown)." --brief excerpt from Robert Christgau's apt dismissal of "Soak Up the Sun," Sheryl Crow's peppy paean to lettin' the Phun Phlag Phly in the face of those mellow-harshing killjoy introverts who've stopped buying her records.

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Tonight someone called me "miserable," and this strikes me as incredibly funny. Because I'm quite content most of the time. Optimistic, even! Impressively resilient! I smile and laugh as much as anyone who has the luxury of being able to do so. I'm also cynical to the core, but merely having a dark side doesn't make me some joyless sallow-faced ghoul, does it? I dunno.

I have this recurring quirk; when I'm deep in thought (I'm a "communist" after all, no really, I'm currently reading a book about Soviet science svengali T.D. Lysenko!), I get this distant, intense look of extreme concentration, a look others might interpret as unhappiness, when honestly all I'm doing is working out some idea in my head. People who don't spend that much time alone with their thoughts (usu. they need to be around other people, having fun fun fun, or they'll DIE... it's like Speed where the bus has to keep going at a million miles an hour or it'll blow up... or substitute any variation on the "don't look back" Orpheus thing) don't recognize this look; they don't see calm introspection, they see misery! That's their easy summation of people (besides insinuating that we have no self-esteem and we suffer daily trying to writhe our way out of a prickly green shrubbery of envy) who exist outside their nonstop beer-commercial/SNL-skit of a life. Any small expression of vague dissatisfaction? Break out the violins, dude. Gentle sarcasm? CALL THE SUICIDE HOTLINE, STAT! (Nah, on second thought, let her die.)