[dusts off a few human skulls lined on top of a soapbox, stepping up]

Cynicism is our modern romance language. Along every café, newstand, office or mild-mannered street corner, people count themselves to have more personal power by smirking away those who possess it. Everywhere my eyes walk I trip over dangling globs of tit-flesh--some fake, some real--madly undulating to catch my attention, nursing every intellectual Tom, Dick and Harry like that alien chick from Total Recall. As with any body part worth public perusal, you'd better not just have it: you'd better damn well flaunt it for all you've got.

Girl-o-Matic is the type of woman who knows she's wanted to be a dancer since the age of five. Every entry reminds me of New York. Not the pretentious Long Island sweater type, though. I'm talking the non-plussed metropolitan Manhattan type: the waitress that can speak four languages and studies String Theory with aspirations to direct, the Art graduate living in a great apartment while making cheap art. Her café episodes and personality descriptions evocatively illustrate this supple worldliness in gorgeous streaks of color with accents of culture and sophistication.

Many people have tried the Manhattan style; many people have utterly failed trying the Manhattan style. Yet, "The Girl" does a surprisingly good job at some points. There's the episode of a woman choking on that ill-fated cliché of a champagne engagement ring, or perhaps one of her split personalities getting banged seven ways from Sunday in an airport. The dark comedy is mordant, almost violent in its brawling. The one-two punch about boys made out of chocolate is particularly amusing and brilliant. I can't think of a better way to describe the quality of boys (young or old) hanging around just to be taste-tested.

Even so, "The Girl" sometimes overstretches even her decent skills into zones of over-the-top pretentious hair twirls that leave me caked in vomit. This sucker punch, for instance, tries to flippantly glaze over epiphany using a mundane object, too short, immediate and subsequently ineffective. Or how about this over-extended attempt to be hip and vervy? Her apparent lack of updating is also upsetting.

What this journal boils down to is someone often speaking in a 3rd person perspective about herself, vaunting her mindset on high and throwing out short, stingingly effective (and not so effective) entries. "The Girl" walks a thin wire along a mine-field of potential humilliation and criticism. But yet you root for her in all her ambivalently arrogant cynicism. You are seduced by either its frankness or sophistication. Yet, most likely, you're equally put off by how pretentious it can feel (and the picture of the girl as part of the layout just pushes that feeling overboard sometimes).

Good cynicism is hard to find, though, in this Las Vegas world of showgirl intellectuals. It is a credit to "The Girl" that I didn't laugh at her once.

Smirked, but didn't laugh.