last friday, i opted to take a longer subway ride and wait in the rain for a connecting bus to a longer walk home - because i have seem to have hit that wall where you think to yourself "if i honestly have to go through this routine one more time, i'm going lohan."

why the celebrity-strength hostility, gijyun? didn't you like, just get back from vacation?

yes - i think that might be part of the problem. YOU try keeping a smile on your mug after spending a white christmas in denver and a week in costa rica and have to come back to rainy, freezing philadelphia where the seasonal discomfort is surmounted only by the fact that somehow, you thought it'd be a fantastic idea to resolve to give up expletives for the new year.

i dare you to try it for a day.

of all the vices i hath excorcized, this one is proving the most challenging by far. i've tried using a new year's resolution to restrict what goes in my mouth, but never what comes out. making a plan for quitting smoking and not drinking for a month and cutting out high fructose corn syrup pale in comparison, because they all have other things that can supplement or vindicate them (living, the end of the month, and limited amounts of organic cane sugar, respectively).

but my catalog of expletive substitutes is limited. hence, i act to emplore you, both of the remaining bible readers, to suggest other things one can grumble, for instance, when you get all the way to work in the rain and realize you left your boss's receipts that had to be turned in by noon on your dresser at home.