Hey there, beautiful ones, I am in a MOOD today. You�re welcome. (I say that in case your response to my first sentence was an arch, �Thank you for sharing.� I like to cover all my bases, at least the ones I can see without leaving my seat.) All that being said, I will reiterate: I am in a MOOD today, one of my many. This one falls somewhere on the Violet Mood Scale between �Sardonic Harpy� and �Poison-Spitting She-Ape,� so there is clearly room for both improvement and pyrotechnics. Stay tuned!

Part of today�s Mood can be chalked up to my having spent a few minutes too long reading hideous celebrity gossip online. Do I care about celebrities? No. Do they have any influence or bearing on my life? No. Yet I spent precious moments of my time reading the misspelled opinions of the chronically friendless about a ludicrous subject, namely: that Tyra Banks has gained too much weight and is now fat. (Which she clearly isn�t. For Christ�s sake, LOOK at her, people�she�s 5� 10� and weighs 161 pounds. Big deal.) Anyway, the subject has absolutely no bearing on my life, except that having read some startling, vicious comments about it, my faith in the goodness of humanity has slipped a little lower. (Why I might believe that reading Internet celebrity gossip might bolster my sense of goodwill is a bit of a mystery in itself.)

Today is characterized by a kind of emotional itchiness, an irritability that manifests in a need to blame the East wind, which was blowing when I awoke, for everything from my unkempt hair to the odd phenomenon that causes one of my coworkers to claim to smell cinnamon every time she approaches my desk. I am not harboring cinnamon, nor anything flavored or perfumed with same, so I don�t understand her perception, and like everything else today, it�s getting on my nerves. I understand that she believes she is smelling cinnamon. I understand it every time she comes by here to tell me. I just can�t do anything about it, any more than you out there can do anything about my irritation over the matter. This is the part where we all �accept the things we can�t change,� or however it goes, and hold hands and agree not to share our respective secrets about Dad�s gin binges with our friends or local pastor.

Today�s irritability makes certain things unbearable, say, the habit one coworker has of announcing his arrival via a hesitant knocking on the metal border of my cubical. I was slightly more patient with his dynamic and physical re-enactment of his dismay upon learning that a certain file was too large for his computer to open, but my leniency may have been related to my astonishment at his dramatic range. In keeping with a dream I had last night�a very realistic and detailed adventure through the land of production design for an ice-skating version of the Beastie Boys� latest tour�I think I�ll manage my stress better if I start to picture everyone I work with in Ice Capades costumes. Melvin�s arm-flailing will seem less alarming if I imagine him in a lime-green spangled unitard, arms fringed in gold tassels. Wait�his arm-flailing will then seem MORE alarming, but I think I will enjoy it more.

There�s no real name for what I�m experiencing today. Holly Golightly�s �mean reds� are picturesque, but I lack her powers of denial and sylphlike figure, so I may need a more robust term. It�s not the blues. It�s too quiet for the screaming meemies, too aggressive for the blahs. It�s like an anxiety attack mixed with a shame spiral, minus the shame, but plus a sense of existential despair and a hunger for Fig Newtons. I think I will call it, in keeping with my policy of having everything relate to myself, the Violet Horrors. That about captures it.

Star of the day. . .Veronica Lake