At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Perhaps this is what it means to go mad: to be emptied and to be aware of the emptiness.

You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.