My acquaintance -- the one who insisted I give Chicago another try after a first disappointed viewing -- and I have a dispute. I think sultry, vivacious Catherine is the bonafide sexpot of the flick. He counters with scrawny, squinty-eyed Renée. 

Rouged knees, or skinny legs? I turn to the masses, should they stop by ...

A pleasure of life is to let go in an apparently deserted hallway several hot, noxious, lingering farts, from between two tightly pressed together buttocks ...

A pleasure, so simply quashed by a single person --  usually your professional superior or whom you find deathly attractive, or both -- popping up from behind a door and coming in your direction.

As the fog hits them, they flinch, see you frozen like a deer in the headlights, know the windy culprit; they try to hold their breath while looking nonjudgemental. Throwing them a nod of horrified acknowledgement, you spin around on your heel and walk so fast your legs cramp, because you foolishly think you can outrun humiliation.

I have a 7-kilometre, or half an hour, commute every weekday to work, from the Leslie stop to the Queen subway station. Sometimes the entertainment is there -- like the man reprimanding his friend about his ignorance of corn foods ("You've NEVER had a corndog? Corn beef? What about cornbread? Corn muffin?" "Well, I've had a corn muffin ... the time you gave me one ...").

But mostly I have to create my own entertainment.

Today, I was inspired by a recent article in a local paper, which discussed advances in cycling fashion. It spoke about shirts, trousers, shoes, and even garments regarding more sensitive lower areas of the human anatomy, but not a single mention about protective headgear.

(I wrote an extravagantly worded and what I thought to be wry letter to the editor, but it was not published.)

With this in mind, I counted cyclists, and noted whether they wore helmets or not. Their fashion choices were not taken into account, although I will comment that by and far many were all rather poorly dressed.

Within half an hour, counting just those on the north side of Queen St. East, I managed to tally 36 cyclists. Here's the breakdown:

• 30 people did not wear helmets, or about 83%.
• Despite a Toronto bylaw requiring those under 16 years of age to wear helmets, nine of those 30 were definitely minors and two of them were even sharing a bike meant for one.
• Three more people were walking their bikes, and they were neither wearing or carrying a helmet.
• Three people were rollerblading, and one was wearing a helmet, or about 33%.

As I walked thoughtfully home, I concluded that (1) people were idiots, (2) but their brains were clearly deficient anyway and didn't need preservation, and (3) natural selection was still churning away as strong as ever.

Found it.

I've lost my umbrella. That, along with the impending rain, has put a heavy dampener on my day. Although it is definitely not beyond replacement, it was of estimable quality and I very much liked it. 

My cinematic flick of the moment is Chicago. I fell out of the rush when it was hot -- almost determinedly -- but a Floridian friend's appreciation led to a second run. I hum now, everywhere, John C. Reilly's pathetic rendition of "Mister Cellophane." I was in fact planning to call this blog "Miss Cellophane", but it lost out to the more pretentious and punny "Gloriana." I suppose the former, with its sniffy, fearless "Miss", pushed the label of independent-yet-feminine woman just a tad too far for my reach.

I know. Some people would love to have my "problem." But hey, if I can't be indulged here, where else can I go ...

I'm on the shorter end of 5'6". I teeter on the possibility of 5'5". I weigh, on average, 110 lb. As a result, I'm quite slender, and just about skinny. I can touch my index finger to my thumb around my wrist, and I can fit into a girls' size 16 pant. I worry.

I have scarcely any hip. My breasts, they look fine when I'm naked, like a slightly heavier version of the Venus de Milo's -- perhaps that's my dilemma, that I know my female nudity from classical art. Larger bosoms, the ones that show shape through clothing, look to me swollen and heavy, when bare. But, at least they show. Me, my upper torso, I have a, shall we say, modest curve -- an embarrassing one now that I care about such things.

I want a womanly figure, soft hips, breasts, a rounded silhouette ... how do you make love to bones and angles?

Gloriana. Clever, no? Actually, no ... I naively tried for "Gloria" -- which is my "real life" name -- but that of course was already occupied. "Gloriana" occurred to me as first as what it is -- an alternate form of "Gloria" -- but then it occurred to me secondly that like "Americana", artefacts of American culture, "Gloriana" could, yes, be artefacts of my culture (were true culture not defined as of many and not of one). Now, again: Clever? A bit more than usual, maybe.