An ice plain, to the pale horizon. The Antarctic plateau? Nearby, a woman bundled up in furs is kicking a dead jeep. She's tallish, blonde, slender, beautiful, and disgusted.

On the horizon, a black dot. It grows. It's a car. No, half a car. An empty shell: the body, with no wheels or motor, driving a foot above the ice plain like a flayed skin, like a ghost.

And it is. A car ghost! She's heard of it--tales of it are a cult thing among polar researchers. The Carghost Cult.

She doesn't fear the skittery, sputtering thing. In fact it gives her an idea. The body looks like an early Volkswagen bug crossbred with a small Volvo. So she yells "You clunker! You're underpowered!" Carghost hovers, turns toward her. Its lights blink like angry eyes, and a ghostly engine snarls--as much as a VW can snarl. Then she says it--the Volvo fighting word. "You're boxy, boxy, BOXY!"

Carghost roars in rage and charges her. She dives in her jeep, and the ghost rams it. She's using it as a motor! Jams the jeep in gear and tries to start the engine with the energy of the next ghost-jolt.

At last Carghost gives up, and glides off over the ice. But her motor is idling firmly now. The woman in furs climbs out of her car again, to scan the horizon. Any more weird polar phenomena, or can she head back to base in peace?

The reason she doesn't fear ghosts becomes obvious when she gets out to look around. Her neck stretches, rubberly, to triple the normal length, and snaps back. She rears up, growing to basketball size, then shrinks to a child size to check under the car, all in seconds. Nearly as fluid as a ghost herself, though her body looks quite solid. A shapeshifter!

A rubbernecker, to be exact.

What other kind would you find around stalled cars?

All this is being televised, of course. The blonde rubbernecker is a famous lesbian actress, and the station is showing her to advertise their upcoming Lesbian Night. Their announcer shouts

Even when her neck started to stretch? Yeah. In fact... I have to admit I was MORE attracted, not less!

And why not? It meant she's accessible. After all... she's as weird as me!

MORNING NOTES

• Dead car on a plain of ice... I have been feeling socially stuck. But this stuck?
• The blonde was the heroine of the French movie I saw today, called FURBELOWS, about the Parisian high fashion houses around 1950.
• The ghost VW = In "Furbelows" the heroine modeled a weird wedding gown about as big as a Volvo. As ugly too. Maybe Carghost is my feeling that I'm clunky, ugly, unstylish.
• The rubbernecker isn't so human herself = in FURBELOWS, the boss is a fashion-fascist with a mannequin in his office who he hallucinates is the girl he loves. Jumps to his death with it, breaking his neck... So is the rubbernecker a mixture of madman and mannequin? Yeah, that's me all right. Not quite human. Pretty resourceful, though, in the dream...
• All-lesbian programming = well, the straight world hasn't been showing me any healthy role models for relationships! I think I'll ask all the lesbians I know how they met their girlfriends...

  Even if it is a cold, cold, polarized world out there... that's no reason not to do a little, uh, research.

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