Drugs, Man

I didn't think people still did heroin (mistakenly thought that all stopped in the 90's, which was just a reincarnation of the 70's) but apparently they do if they're in New York and fancy themselves artistes but actually just do a lot of drugs and film themselves having sex and spray newspapers with semen and glitter. Trust. This is what Dash Snow did (if you don't know the name, he was big in certain circles here for the last five years who was buddies with Ryan McGinley and Gavin McInnes of Vice) and he ended up offing himself a few weeks ago in my neighborhood with 13 glassine envelopes of heroin.

He was 27.

Before we start thinking this is in any way romantic, he committed this knowingly (called his girlfriend to tell her he loved her) and did so despite his two year old daughter. As cinematic as this all is, it's actually very sad, sure, but more so, very gross. We know better. Come on. It's not Woodstock and it's not Punk and it's not even Grunge, all the forward "I'm young and it's a revolution, damnit!" movements in music and art and writing and politics have kind of been made, or at least, because of those who have come before us, have been made way easier and therefore has made this time of shock-value rabble-rousing pretty damn extinct (in my assertion, all we have left is technology wars, which is actually very cool). So what's up with this ridiculous shit! Even hipsters are over, are people really still selfishly dying from heroin for God's sake? This is just another landmark for people who get older but refuse the next and better stages of their lives to still skulk around in Ramones T-Shirts and bemoan when New York MEANT SOMETHING and was all thriving and filthy and dirty and therefore better. But you know what? That's bunk, because people only say that about New York, or any place for that matter, because it was the world they lived in when they were 20-27 years old. When they were full of promise and hadn't done everything already and they had a zest for life and everything seemed new and exciting: love, money, substances.

New York wasn't cooler in the 70's. There were shooting galleries and garbage fires and general malaise and gang violence and all that. Just because CBGB's was home to a burgeoning scene doesn't mean that scene was worth all the rest of the crap that came along with it or even that the scene was that good. But, you know, people who say that it was were young then. And the thing about being young is....everything is good! It's like that phenomenon when a guy gets laid in, say Ottowa, and then later relates to his friends, "Dudes, Ottowa is awesome!" No, it's not. Anecdotal good times aren't evidence, and are colored by factors that have nothing at all to do with Ottowa. And that's what people are saying right now about New York in 2005.

I know, this is what's being said. I can't believe it either. Now that Dash Snow is dead, he's become an icon for the hipster movement and everywhere you go people are going on about how NY was SO MUCH COOLER in 2005. No it wasn't! You're just four years older and you're pissed, because you're immature. People who choose life beyond one-night stands and pukefests that seemed so awesome a few years back are not losers who've lost their edge. It's like this, you thought you kicked ass when you were 13 didn't you? Was life so much more awesome then? No it wasn't. But somehow when this very same notion is applied to the time when you were 21, it holds water. Maybe because you can have sex and drive and do drugs and buy things finally. So you don't romanticize 13, you romanticize 21 because it represents the years when you finally had access to everything in the world and still had the naivete to think it was brand new and you ruled.

The thing is, if you don't think you can kick ass at 30 or 40 or 50, you never kicked ass to begin with. Sorry Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Dash Snow. I had nascent crushes on all of you but I hope I never, ever be so naive as to think that's cool of you.

Also, this is the best thing that I've read on the subject of us as aging kids in New York City. It's just very good if you're not easily offended.

Remembering: Girls' Night Out

Girls’ night is becoming more and more the standard and these days it feels like summer camp without the shorts. Loose hair instead of barrettes, juice boxes tossed for aperitifs, ants on a log have vanished and frisee salads appear as replacements.

I race out of the office instead of my parents’ kitchen, still with my bag whapping my side and my flip flops sliding around, to meet them downtown in a flickering West Village bistro, arriving late and excited and relieved as though Tuesday was Friday.

We drink too many glasses of wine and divide too few crab cakes at Paris Commune, contemplating New York and LA, reviewing weekend plans and downloading each other on the latest gossip, work and play. Shore houses, summer romances, tennis lessons, promotions; we all have something to share and envy here. And it prompts a Robert Altman conversation pace, everything overlapping, nothing resolved, as our glasses grow dry, the louder we exclaim, “Wait, what are you guys talking about?”

An adult in charge needs to shush us, but our waitress only encourages (probably so that she can reap the benefits of our overtipping to match our over-ordering). For us, the best of the summer week is at night, past our bedtimes, snapping phone photos and comparing sunglasses, making plans and taking initiatives, being aspirational because it’s who we are.

Everything has to be explained more than once, especially since she’s in for a visit, an ex-pat now part of that other city, so we can’t stop our questions. How’s the pool in the apartment? Is just it like Melrose Place? How much is there really the prevalence of smog/collagen/silicone/a thong-clad Lindsay Lohan? Is June gloom anywhere close to the humidity of here? Are all the men blond “directors” with mustaches and vans? We know it’s all a cliché, but don’t clichés start from some point of truth?

I’ve wanted to start a life on the west coast ever since 90210 aired, and we talk about what it might be like next year, if I end up making the move. But now I’ve become such a fan of the pulsating vibrancy of here, I’m not so sure. It’s camp in the city all of the time, and it’s getting pretty hard to leave, particularly since there is no bus to pick me up and tear me away from my friends and paltry paycheck that I spend simply to be with them while we’re still sort of young, and sort of glamorous…at least to us.

Eating. Badly.

I love the idea of cooking. How many times have I told myself if only I had the time I would be oh-so-European and shop for food on a semi-regular basis, walking the perimeter around local grocery stores or any isle of the nearby-Whole Foods, plucking fresh fruit and vegetables, a myriad of colors in my little bag (which I would have brought from home and would be very environmentally sound) as I sashayed through the isles: fresh-squeezed orange juice, house-made soups, pre-arranged cucumbers, carrots and celery, perfect for dipping in my newly bought tub of garlicky hummus (the one kind with the pine nuts is so good!).

Yeah right.

Now I'm figure the milk in my coffee is sufficient calcium supplement for the day. I'll eat a quesadilla and call the salsa "vegetables." I'll think because I have flavored throat lozenge, than it's really lemon. How did this happen? I spent my formative years reading the glossy pages of food magazines, eating my mother's apple cake and lamb chops, going out to spectacular restaurants and vacationing at lodges in organic lemon groves?

Oh right, I've got no money. Now that I've got the time to shop the way I'd like, I just don't have the funds. I read somewhere that in the recession, people are turning to canning. Canning? Really? I'm turning to takeout. It's not cheaper, but it's variety and those things take lots of ingredients while I can't buy a spicerack. I tell myself that it will all be different when I'm a grown up. But I'm 27! I fear that if eating and cooking well on a regular basis, on a natural basis no less, it would have happened by now. I mean, writing has. Going to the gym has. Relationships have, hanging out with my family has, stopping shopping unless I really need that coat (realized I don't), catching up on sleep on the weekends (nothing is as wonderful), and even doing laundry (not as much as I hoped, but it's a start) have all become routine. But feeding myself? Not yet.

I wonder why.

World's Ugliest Animals

Have you read this article on the world's ugliest animals? Some of them are cheating (three dogs and one hairless cat? Just stop the list at ten and be legit!) but some of them are downright nast-ay, like the fish with four hearts and two brains or the walrus that has a big fat inflatable bladder on its nose. I love animals, wanted to be a zoologists as short as five years ago, but wow, barf.

Though really I don't think this monkey's that bad. Yes his nose looks like a "bing bong" but other than that I find that a baboon's big red ass is the worse of the two and the editors didn't see it fit to make the cut. Anywho.

Follow the leader...

Dear Friends,

I have been neglecting you. Badly. It's because I'm writing for pay elsewhere. That's right, pimpin for cash. You knew I was a sellout when we met, don't act surprised!

The thing that stinks is, I'm hard-pressed to share it with you because this blog's been anon for years. I've been able to take refuge in you guys because it won't get back to the powers that be. Been able to artfully complain about people, give you anecdotes about friends, share my crushing heartbreak or falling in love, my crazy and loving family, or my d-bag ex-coworkers has been only because you've been there for me, and you've been there for me quietly.

Thank you. You rock.

But while it's not time for an all-around unveiling (I said it would be when the book got repped and I will stand by that!), I should send you to another place where I'm pretty much writing every day, albeit for music. Sssh, don't tell them that I live here, and more importantly, live here for you. Or they'll come after me and I'll never be able to tell you the skinny of what's going on in my life as well as I have.

Can you keep a secret? This is just between us. Cool?

Did Anyone Else See Public Enemies and feel a little conflicted?

No Spoiler Alert, Don't Worry!

Hey, I'm the first one to say that I wanted to love, love, love this movie. But I left the theater feeling...perplexed. I thought everything looked fantastic, was well-shot, the pacing was consistent, Johnny Depp was cool as hell, and well, what else did I need?

I don't know. Some of this was ruined because I read some of the reviews beforehand. (Side note-hours, and I mean hours, could be spent reading movies on Rotten Tomatoes, oh how I adore that site). But I think I wanted more backstory on why Dillinger was who he was (I know that cutsie little "I like good clothes, baseball, fast cars and you" was supposed to sum it all up, but how did these guys meet each other? How did they plan their next move? Who was really best friends and who merely tolerated whom? How close were they with Pretty Boy Flyod?).

Also, I have to admit, I fell asleep during some of the love story. I sort of felt the chemistry was lackluster. And how it ended with the closing credits was kind of nebulous. It would have been cool to follow up with a few lines that "Dillnger stole X amount of money and will forever be known as the coolest guy in the world". Or monster. Whichever. But this movie left me feeling unsure who I was rooting for. No one was all good, and no one was all bad. That's cool, I understand that's the way it is in life. But shouldn't I really understand one person in the film's motivations?

I'm Afraid...

Of our kitchen drain. It bubbles up with soap at odd hours like the goo in Ghostbusters II.

That I don't know how to have a real job any more since I've gone out on my own as a permalancer.

I might never floss properly.

Because I have more nightmares than sweet dreams, and I wake up not remembering them, just that they were terrifying.

Of the pull-up bar at the gym.

That I have chosen wrong, and there will be no course-correcting.

I might be out of touch with the kids today, but am not old enough to be a yuppie.

That I am devolving in the spelling department and that I say "dude" too much.

Of the far reaches of my closet: scarves, one scuffed slingback and...a diary might be in there!

That I might die in the street one day and my family will have to go through my room and through said closet and all my achievements will have been for naught because I don't fold my socks, my bras are hanging from my ettiger, and my potbelly marble-top antique dresser is missing some of its brass work on the side from where I tore a laundry bag on it.

My immune system stinks because I've never been without roommates and we're all touching the remote and coughing in the air.

Of not being able to stand on my two feet forever.

That I push people away when I think I might lose them.

I won't pay off my credit card bill. Not this month. Not this year. Not ever.

Of moving away from New York. And of staying here for missing opportunities I've painted in my mind.

I let bosses walk all over me because I want them to like me, but they never respect me.

That I'll never get a kitten.

My brain might be turning to mush because in an attempt to "detox" from all that I read and write, I only watch Snapped on Oxygen (it rules) and reality T.V. shows (Real Housewives of New Jersey should have been first!) and cartoons (Simpsons and Family Guy--will I be able to watch these when I'm forty?)

Of forgetting all that I have to be grateful for.

Of ever reaching my perceived perfection in my goals, because then I will have no more room to learn, and that is the greatest possible travesty of all.

Crazy Sore Throat Cure

So yesterday I woke up with an insanely sore throat. I could feel this one coming on, as I always do, the night before and I was the third beer in of the evening. Of course I figured, by the time I felt it, there was no going back, so I ended up finishing the pitcher and getting cheese tator tots (hey I work out too much not to eat like a jerk, right? If I had to work out AND eat well all the time, I don't know if there'd be any joy in life at all. Today at brunch I ordered an appetizer. An appetizer. For brunch. I'll let that sink in).

So being a freelance writer has some incredible perks--several bosses, teams and jobs so each one feels fresh and interesting; the work always has to be turned around quickly and I work best under pressure, and the hours are flexible--I do work hard, but if I have to run to an appointment or go to my parents' home in Connecticut, I can take the computer with me or make up the work at 4 in the morning if I like. There are also drawbacks--you can feel lonely, you drink too much coffee, I've stopped wearing heels and makeup, nothing's secure and the pay is lowish, depending on the job. Another one? Health insurance.

Back to the sore throat. It was really bad. And mayhaps the beer aggravated it, but it was there, I swear. I woke up foolishly hoping it wouldn't be there, but it was. Much, much worse than before. I lied around in my bed trying not to swallow and watching old 30 Rock episodes and sipped tea to no avail. My mom's always sworn by warm saltwater gurgles, but it's never really worked for me. I just don't feel it. So I looked around on the internet in a furious rage that can only belong to an underinsured freelance writer on a Saturday afternoon having cancelled two sets of plans because of the damn throat, and found something.

Cayenne pepper.

I know! I was in so much pain I would try anything. I gargled with a teaspoon of the stuff, several shakes of salt and almost-hot glass of water. I gurgled a big cayenne bubble that popped and then flew up and hit me in the eye. I don't recommend this--do it with your eyes closed! Online they said do it every 15 minutes until the pain subsided. And it DID!

I'm not saying it worked completely and it wasn't nasty. It was. I gargled, I combined it with honey and lemon and ate the stuff, I made the worst hot chocolate known to man (about a quarter inch of cayenne on the bottom-ick), I covered the Pad Thai we ordered in because I ruined our plans by being sickly. But it kind of felt better.

And this morning I woke up with no sore throat--and that NEVER happens! Of course, the cold has now moved to my sinuses and I can't really breathe and I'm hacking a lung and almost ruined brunch. But the point is, I went to brunch! I felt well enough to go and though it was too expensive and I couldn't taste anything, I could swallow. And that was a victory.

I can't believe I didn't know about this before! Now to get rid of this nasty cold. Anyone out there have any surefire ways to get rid of a sore throat/cough/head cold without resorting to pharmaceuticals? And I promise, if I'm still bad by Tuesday, I'll go to the doctor...

WTF

The first public death that affected me was Kurt Cobain, when I was 13. I cried for days, Then I was unaffected, an affectation where I was consumed in teenaged angst where nothing bothered me and nothing was considered by me unless it was my own selfish little bubble, who I loved, who didn't love me back, where I was going, why I wasn't there yet.

And now I think with last year's death of Heath Ledger, I felt oddly strange, upset, for a man I did not know, whose apartment I passed daily and did not realize, who if I saw while alive, would not care. And this week, there was Ed McMahon, who while important was old, Farrah Fawcett, who was the same to me, some abstract creature that did not relate to me in any way, I knew she meant something, I just didn't know to whom. I knew her death was sad, but for me, for cancer, there is time to reflect.

Michael Jackson, a man I grew up watching descend, his brilliance matched only by the swiftness in which he fell--much of it perhaps in his own creation, he was the first of us to overshare to nearly blog when there was no reason to blog, he was the first celebrity I knew of to melt down over and over, and why I knew this I cannot say. At the time I was too young for even grunge, even though I thought I was just old enough really, and I didn't care to understand disco, and thought pop was garbage (though grunge WAS pop, I see that now). I wasn't even a year old when Thriller came out, my mother told me that when I did, it terrified me, and again, far before anything else I mourned, I cried for him then, because I thought he was coming to kill me. The video, long-since considered a masterpiece, gave me nightmares, I hear. I saw it later, saw something which was mystifying and amazing and only scary in its complete awesomeness, but by the time I saw it--and saw that in him--he was not that man any more.

He was something else, a fabulous disaster to us, the grabbing masses, something that they called Sid Vicious thirty years ago when he self-destructed, and now I can't help but feel in impenetrable sadness as I watch hours of videos of imitators and news coverage feeling like this man, this poor man, was a joke to us in his twilight years. Today, at least we remember him well. I must be getting old or things are just different in the world, but now I see death and it comes very often, perhaps more than anything else.

Tonight I'm saying WTF. This is horribly sad to me, and I do know why, because it is death, and he was a man who must have felt an inordinate amount of pain for the past fifteen years, and part of me wonders why he couldn't have died before he was tarnished, as awful as that seems, because today we care about him more than we had for decades. Today we remember him more fondly, there are no Walmart boys' pants half off jokes, today we remember his genius, and we should have, we should have before.

And yet. If he did what he did...who can say. The man is dead and I for one, hope he can finally rest in peace.

Your advice is needed!

I haven't been here because I have a new gig writing at a music site and long story short I spend about all my free time doing that, and going to my brother's high school graduation (which has the startling capacity to make me feel SO OLD that he's graduating the same year I had my reunion) and wrapping up three classes and enrolling in a new one and sending the novel off to the editor and really getting on writing the second novel and talking with my writing sample--arguing with it really--for school and organizing all of my lists of where I'd move to school to.

All this in the rain.

It's exhausting! I need a staycation (can't afford a vacation) where I just don't use the internet after a certain hour or I turn into a gremlin. I want to stay at Mogwai. My boyfriend's feeling neglected.

So I'm spending the time I should be scouring for new artists, looking up my favorite music videos of all time. So far I've come up with this, but I want to post some more on the site. So any more suggestions?

Radiohead - Paranoid Android
Uploaded by hushhush112. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Musical Youth - Pass The Dutchie
Uploaded by trashfan. - See the latest featured music videos.

Duran Duran - Rio
Uploaded by aquanote. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Riskay Feat Aviance & Real - Smell Yo Dick [NEW]
Uploaded by PeteRock. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Stone Temple Pilots - Sour Girl
Uploaded by Dan_of_the_Land. -

Advice, Etc.

Rant Alert!

Boy am I glad this blog is pretty much anonymous because my God do I feel shafted by a group of designers right now. Why is it that every time I work with them they shirk their work so that they're doing the absolute minimum (and not one iota beyond their job description, even though they ask that of me) and they refuse to take a phone call and instead insist that any changes I have, no matter how small, no matter how much they screw them up unless I walk them through them, that I EMAIL THE CHANGES TO THEM.

Actually this is a rant about emailing versus calling people. I have spend an hour and a half writing a document which spelled out changes that a designer needs to make in layout and STILL they get it wrong? They do it even though I ask about 10 times can we just talk on the phone? But NO. They want to talk by email.

The 40 email chains that go back and forth instead of a 30 second phone call. And because of this, we are all working TWICE as hard, because I have to spend the time typing out the changes, they incorporate them and make mistakes all over the place incorporating them (because let's face it, making changes is hard when you are looking at two different documents and trying to keep your place, I get that, I've been there) when we could both BE ON THE PHONE, looking at the same document and MAKING THE CHANGES TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME. Then when it comes back to me, I don't have to freak out that everything will be all screwed up.

BTW, they still make me email the same document back and forth, even when they change things in layout that AREN'T IN THE DOCUMENT. AND CHANGE THEM WRONG (I'm editing text and some of it is in word form, some of it they use later for titles and stuff and even though I ask them to change it by email, they don't do it right, because they are ONLY LOOKING AT THE DOCUMENT WITHOUT THE EMAIL). AH! People just pick up the phone! Once you hear my voice you will know I sound like a child and am not scary and am actually trying to do this as efficiently as you!

And they all think I'm an annoying biatch because I demand that they do it right--I just know I'm known over there as the person that's difficult to work with because I have to keep saying over and over and over again, we are not to have "www" in front of a website, the magazine doesn't like it that way!

And yet, I still have and love this freelancing gig and apparently they do too and we have to work together and it blows because without them picking up the phone, they think every email I send is bitchy, and truthfully, I think the same of them.

Why Lord, why? And they always start every conversation with: I think there's been some confusion. Or why don't you go ahead and do that--when I have sent a request to them to do it? I get no respect there and I know they are nice people (why else would they keep getting hired) and good at what they do (except they don't seem to want to be working on the same team with me and somehow think my changes are negotiable even if something is spelled wrong because I have to tell them ten times it's wrong). Frustrating! What am I doing wrong? Anyone?

Gawker Says It Best: Like a Staycation, But at Work, For No Pay

I'll admit I used to be a big fan of Gawker. Now, eh, not so much. It's recently become more recaps of shows (God Bless that Richard Lawson, he's the only funny one left) and blatant and not-so-great ripoffs of DListed (that website is so, very good. If you are still reading Perez Hilton or the Superficial, I implore you, DListed is the gold standard). But this article caught my eye, and I'm hoping the tide is turning over there so they can get back to what made them great, what continues to make, say, Jezebel great (except when they are just recapping shows and ripping off DListed as well...sigh).

Today's article is about the Union Square Virgin Megastore closing. Have you seen this? Another nail in the coffin for those of us who are praying that there will be some sort of divine intervention to come down and pull us out of this mess. I was a permalancer. Now? Prolancer. I'm a professional lancer of sorts. I freelance as a profession in a world where nothing is certain and anything can be taken away with a drop of a hat (sounds like a great movie line, right?) Anyway, on with the story.

From Gawker:

"The Way We Live Now: Eking out a hard living in cubicle hell while beauty dies, duh. We work without music. We work without pay. We work without jobs, just to say "Hey, one day."

Virgin Megastore is officially dead. Dead along with it is one of your top five theoretical backup jobs in the event of your layoff; the idea that selling music in a store could be a profitable endeavor; your own whimsical daydream about one day maybe opening up a little record shop, just the really cool shit, and just living that life; and the music industry as a whole.

Hell, Joan Kroc gave the Salvation Army $1.8 billion and it still can't scrape together enough to build a new swimming pool in Detroit. Argentina's not crying for you, buddy. At least you have a job. You better hold onto like the precious diamond that it is—a valuable gem made out of dirt that you squeeze really tight. You do what you must. You do what the boss says. You do what the boss doesn't say, just to scrape and give yourself that tiny edge that just might cause them to lay off Doris, the receptionist, instead of you, when the time comes. "Furloughs," they said. "Ten percent less in the check, but you get a few more days off each month," they said. What happened? You work right through those furlough days. Because there's too much work. It's kind of like a staycation, but at work, and minus the "-cation." Just a "stay."

Of execution? One might say that. Yes one might. Because your Stay could be a staycation—of poorness:

"The real problem is that long-term unemployment is going up dramatically," said Franklin Allen, finance professor at the Wharton School. "Unfortunately, many people in their late 40s and 50s may never get jobs again."

How do you like them apples? I hope you like them enough to sell, for nickels, for the next 30 years."

Ugh. Wretched. And how much do we hate Franklin Allen? What a jerk! I mean, yes we're looking at the coffin in the store, but could you at least wait until someone dies before you decide to bury it? That metaphor worked in my mind, at least. But come on! Let's hope Professor Allen doesn't get laid off in his 40s and then decide his life is over and just give up and buy ten cats and stare at a wall for the rest of his natural-born life.

Items for the Weekend

Dinner with Emily at DGBG, Daniel Boulud's foray into downtown dining (I hear sixteen kinds of sausages and an ice cream sundae cart!)*

Look out the window and pray for sunshine

Anxiously await the edits from my first personal essay ever, slated to be published, in a brand-spanking new literary magazine (if it happens, you'll be the first to know)

Take a nap

Finish Stanford class and breathe a huge sigh of relief, then, slow-witted as I am, sign up for a new class to tackle the 2nd book (yes I'm still working on the first!)

Go to Torrington, Connecticut for a clambake reunion of high school friends

Drink a little too much wine somewhere and barefoot

Hunker down and get those music blogs in for that new job, edit an article on Hawaii for an old job, and be very thankful for working at all, even if freelance and part-time translates into weekend full-time

Gather new obsessions: mint green tea, Stephen King movies and a new motorcycle helmet

Don't look at my paltry bank statement, don't, don't, look

Clandestinely watch all the episodes of So You Think You Can Dance that the boy refuses to watch with me

Find the four inches of scarf I knitted in winter, my cell phone charger, time for the gym

Have a wonderful weekend!

*and very excited to see DB's takeover of the branding of famed Sid Vicious vomitorium CBGB's.

Ten Things I've Done That Lead Me To Believe I am Old

1. Think the phone on the T.V. show is my cell phone getting a new text. See also: listen to the T.V. way too loudly and watch a WHOLE lot of "Dateline on ID". You know you love it, too. Oh, also "Snapped" where there are harrowing tales of women killing their cheating husbands.

2 Find dogs and children adorable and take every opportunity to have a staring contest with them when their owners/parents aren't looking. See also: name the pets I do not have yet.

3. Let a boy get up and give his seat on the subway to me (I wasn't even wearing heels! They were flats, still kind of uncomfortable, but still).

4. Sort of enjoy prunes (Have you noticed they now call them pitted plums? We know what prunes are! Old people food that looks like doodie and tastes delish!)

5. Be hot and cold and the same time--so wear a sweater and no socks and solve nothing.

6. Can't remember what I ate yesterday. Maybe it involved prunes. It also involved dried figs, also old people food. As if Fig Newton constitutes a cookie! God I was so mad when my parents passed those off as cookies to me. Now Raspberry Newtons, that was something I could get my grubby little fingers around.

7. Buy a foot massager so I can stop asking my boyfriend to massage my feet. Ask him about three times a day to do it anyway. Then complain that he's "doing it too hard" and "no, in the arch, I said the arch!"

8. Use the phrase, "I'm too old to be suckling from the indie teat, so find someone else" during a music job interview, and get the job anyway. Being crotchety is so hot right now! (PS Why do people always give you the jobs you tell them you don't want?) See also: saying I don't want jobs online and sort of not caring who sees because I'm too old to be caring about people who care about what in tarnation I do online.

9. Talk about the way New York used to be and sigh. (So what if I'm only referring to last summer? Everything's closed down, it's so depressing!)

10. Have a sexual dream about Tom Jones. See, let me explain this one. I was JOKING about it and then it happened. That is such an old person's thing to do. Also, I had a dream where I made out with Conan O'Brien. Or maybe it was Tilda Swinton. I can't remember. Wake up feeling both too hot and too cold.

Mean Girls: Yoga Edition

I'm trying to get back into yoga. Used to love it. But ever since I got a trainer that left me sore for days after running suicides, I let the yoga classes fall by the wayside. Plus they were always so damn full, every time someone did Warrior 2, I'd nearly loose my head by some errant jerk who wasn't watching their elbow.

But still, I have gone three times this week--I need the flexibility, like the deep breaths, and even get some sort of sick thrill from the yoga instructor adjusting my poses. It feels like a mini-massage, but painful. And it makes me feel like we're friends. I get it, I'm lonely for friends now that I don't go into an office. Don't judge me, a yoga instructor counts as a friend! Even though she doesn't know my name! Right? *Sigh*

So anyway, today. I finished up working out exactly at 11:30. Yoga class starts at 11:30, but people usually mill around for at least 45 seconds so I figure if I can grab a mat and head to the back quietly, I'm golden. Except the clock in the yoga room is FAST. Five minutes fast to be exact. How do I know this? I'm in the gym five days a week and know which clocks are right and which aren't. No one ever said I wasn't a loser.

So I come in and people are sitting in lotus, ready to begin. There is a girl who looks to have not have eaten or gotten laid in about four years taking up two spaces with her mat, sweatshirt, shoes, etc. I make eye contact with her, all she has to do is move six inches to the left and we're good to go. I walk around her. I smile. I say, "Thanks so much, sorry to make you move." Keep in mind this is a FREE CLASS AND NOTHING HAS HAPPENED YET.

She doesn't say anything. Let me also tell you that I am sandwiched between her and the wall. I can't move. She must. There is about two feet to her left that she can move and still give the girl on the other side plenty of room. Me, I just want six inches. The girl moves from sitting position to standing--a perfect opportunity to scoot her mat. Does she? I think you know the answer.

Instead she begins stretching her arms in sun pose (is that what it's called). And looks at me with daggers in her eyes as I stand there patiently waiting for her to move. And says "Watch it, my arms are coming out." I stand, mouth agape. "Okay, I say. Maybe if we both moved..." I trail off.

I do nothing, I can't start any of the poses, I can't start anything, because it's apparently more important in this life for this girl to push me out of the way. After she moves through several exercises and I've been able to do nothing, I say "I'm so sorry, could you move a little?"

She doesn't respond.

After a few more, I ask again. Now I've wasted a good four minutes of workout waiting for her to do the right thing. "I'm sorry, can you move over just a little?"

Nothing. Finally I say, "Are you even going to move at all?"

To which she hisses "YOU CAN WAIT GOD DAMNIT!" Other people look.

The instructor looks at us, confused, as if she can't understand why this girl won't move to the side. I want to say "I know, right!" Instead I say nothing.

Girl continues hissing at me. "You're just going to have to wait, got it? And by the way, YOU WERE LATE!"

And then, here's the kicker. She proceeds to loudly breathe the entire time, as if my 10 seconds forcing her to move have entirely unbalanced her chakra, and goes on to restart everything she did before, and even though the instructor gives her extra time, makes a huge deal of not doing the rest of the moves everyone else does. Can I catch up with them even though this girl robbed me of a good five minutes? Of course I can! It's a free yoga class people! Not the army! She thought she was so much better than everyone else that she took all these long breathing breaks and make a big deal of doing the poses really slowly (and might I mention, badly as the instructor comes over to her more than once and moves her around). I'm not saying the instructor didn't come to me, she did (and you know I loved it! Free touching equals mini-massage!), but if this chick was soooo much better than everyone else and I set her off so badly by forcing her to be a human being and treat other people in her FREE YOGA CLASS like other human beings, then she better be doing the Lotus upside down.

I remember why I stopped yoga in the first place. I want to offer her a cheeseburger, but it would have done no good. Fine, I'll go get one myself.

Baby Boy Boden! (Cheesy Girl Post)

My wonderful friend Colleeeeeen (from college) and her husband Read (ditto) just welcomed into this world a baby boy! As their long-distance supporter (I'm glad I bought the semi-unisex baby gift because they waited to find out if their baby was a boy or girl and now there is absolutely no excuse--I must go visit them pronto) I am posting the pics they sent everyone here. Yay Boden!


It's enough to make the most hardened semi-employed writer with three roommates go "Awwww." Also, my God are they big when they come out. I have a really gross baby question that I just asked my other preggers friend Selly: when the baby comes out, he or she breathes air for the first time, so I was wondering if the baby peed for the first time after coming out, and if not, does the baby pee inside you? That can't be right! But there are so many fascinating and insane things that happen to your body and the baby's during the whole process that I don't even know how idiotic my question is. Can someone tell me?

Friends with an Ex, Part Deux

So there was a time on this blog when I asked, can you be friends with an ex? The discussion got good and then I got conflicted. All my exes (save one who flat-out refuses to talk to me because he thinks that talking to me will break up his engagement--come on I'm not that evil/fascinating/rich for that to even be a consideration! Think about it, Person Who Hates Me) want to be/have wanted to be friends at some point.

Methinks there is an ulterior motive sometimes. Others, I can't say. When you break up with someone (or someone breaks up with you) isn't one person basically saying to the other person "I deem you unworthy as of this moment" and shouldn't both parties just straight disappear forever? Won't you always be rehashing old times and pissing off your current boyfriend/girlfriend? What is the point unless you are going to try it again, and btw, don't ever try it again if you broke up because that trust can never come back, right?

I am full of questions tonight after an ex called long-distance because of a song 'that reminded me of him' and I sort of asked all these questions inappropriately. I sort of had a grandstanding speech when the guy was just trying to tell me he missed me. I sort of said, "We're fake friends, not real friends! I want real friends and we can never be real friends!" I got hung up on. I don't recommend following in my path. It feels crappy.

But crappy or not, is it true? Or am I clinging to some antiquated idea of what friends are and affixing myself to the pain of our relationship which ended years ago! Will I forever be the brat who can't let bygones be bygones?

I'm dying to know...

Someone Tell Me...

1. How I've gotten to the 21st of May with only 4 blog posts? See this is the strange thing about not working in an office. With all the free time to write, I push and push it off! Just like I said that I would explore all these parts of the city that I never have before since I had the luxury of doing it on a weekday and working instead on the weekend. You think I've done it? Yeah, well you're right, I haven't.

2. If you've ever gone anywhere by cashing in miles on an airplane and if it was the worst trip of your life. I've had the same US AIRWAYS Visa (yes, everyone calm down, I have such a pimp card right? It was my first credit card and I was 17!) for ten years and it's finally amassed an amount of miles that I could use to go to Hawaii (well another $2500 to spend on it to go I think). Now I'm thinking, once I hit my limit, I'll have to take fourteen planes to get there right? On a side note, is US Airways even a airline any more?

3. Where the good salads are that aren't in midtown. Now that I "work" from "home" I can't get a salad the way I used to. And sometimes, I want one. And making one seems like it makes less sense since my fridge is teeny and my wallet is empty.

4. What shows you DVR. I got really overexcited and now the TV is full of 20/20 and 30 Rock and nothing else (I kind of think the Office stinks these days, I know I know, but I want Jim and Pam to break up. Am I the only one? Barf them! I liked their pining, not their whining). Now that we're about to go into TV no-man's-land (the summer) I think I need a cache of good watching and I don't know where to go.

5. What you're doing on your summer vacation. If you've ever been to Cambodia. If you have a fun idea for a day trip outside the city. Or in your own town. As I ponder what pictures are appropriate to show and a story about San Antonio (have you been here? Holy CRAP you would not believe how weirdly strange, cool and scary it was!)...

Anybody been to Austin?

Bake ooey, gooey brownie bites that are so soft and rich they are practically fudge, check.

Rewrite short story to appeal to liberal white guilt more in the hopes that it will get published, check.

Forget to do laundry, check.

Watch the Monorail episode of the Simpsons, check.

Forget to write a chapter of the children's book, remember that I made the brownies for them, feel better, check.

Start to incorporate running into work-out routine. Gain four pounds but lose three percentage points of body fat and call it a wash. Eye brownies, check.

Celebrate Mother's Day late and give her a shout-out on my blog for being so fantastic and supportive (you too Dad!), check.

Make itinerary for anything to do in Austin as I am going there tomorrow. Whoops.

Anybody been to Austin? Is there anything I must do, must not do? Any bar I must dance on, drink I must chug, shop I must buy shoes in, park I must lie down in?

Anything would be so helpful...hooray!

Finally!

It's time for some good news on the writing front, and here it is, from Dave King, one of the best editors in the entire world!

WHAT WORKS: Oh, nearly everything, but perhaps this sums it up best: I’m a middle-aged editor living in the Massachusetts countryside, where most of my social life takes place at either the library, the local hardware store, or the town dump. (Actually, the Ashfield town dump is probably not what you’d imagine.) I was still drawn in by the coming-of-age story of a young woman who moves among the upper echelons of Manhattan’s monied wastrels.

Of course, she moves in other circles as well, and one of the things that drew me in was your near-perfect pitch for character creation. Becks, the Ruffians, Connor and Kay, Alfred, even minor characters like Stewart and Blaine are all beautifully, clearly developed. And likable, which is difficult to do with the more shallow, self-centered characters like Becks or Kyle. (You do a very good poor little rich girl.) The relationship between A. and her mother – especially the scene on the way home after A. hits the deer – was beautifully done, as was the love scene between A. and Connor or the scene between A. and Kay in the amusement park.

Then there’s A. herself. From the start, you’ve captured (at least as far as this middle-aged, Massachusetts editor can tell) the fear, the lost hopelessness, the confusion of a young girl’s coming of age. You’ve also resisted the temptation to simply spin generic banalities about growing up and becoming an individual. The longstanding tension between A. and her mother, the way their relationship revolves around money, the secrets her mother has been harboring all of her life, all give concreteness and reality to A.’s transition into maturity.

There are a lot of little strengths as well. You manage your plot exceptionally well for someone writing such a character-driven story. Both the news (SPOILERS THAT I'VE TAKEN OUT!) well-crafted surprises, and you keep the tension up until the end. Your descriptions are vivid and visceral, with some very nicely turned phrases (“Beck’s father was a boldfaced name,” for instance). Your dialogue is crisp and feels authentic.

In short, you have written a remarkably strong novel.


Yaaaay! No rest for the wicked, am still working on many projects. But this gets me ever-closer getting an agent. Fingers crossed!

I Can't Stop Laughing

First,
This is the Slap Chop. If you hadn't seen the infomercial before, there is a point where Vince says "You're gonna LOVE my nuts!" before chopping them.

Second, Vince, the Slap Chop spokesperson is also the ShamWow spokesperson (I have one and it rocks!) and was somewhat recently arrested for punching a prostitute that tried to bite off his tongue (ick, not that we didn't already know he was insane from these infomercials). And now, the remix. My favorite is that lady at the end who is so happy she has a Slap Chop.


Thank you BT!

Nerd Alert: Fun With Words

I'm not one to post others' words much, but after class last night, I just had to re-post this. These provided me with a grande-sized shot of adrenaline and I had to share my favorites.

Probably standard fare for any regular "how not to" lecture, these did not, and I figure, will not ever cease to make me laugh...

Drumroll please...

"Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay (I do doubt this in many cases, because some of these are just too great...)

1. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

2. Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

3. Her eyes were like two brown circles with black dots in the center.

4. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid5528.com/aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake. (We agreed this one would be perfect for a tech presentation at work, then again, none of us is a techie.)

5. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

6. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man".

7. John and Mary had never met. They were like two humming birds who had also never met."

I can't stop laughing at these. I want more. If anyone can help me, I'd be eternally grateful.

Want Not

My own little slice of the cosmos can be banked on from time to time.

Opportunities influx in multiples, then dissipate as regularly as the tides.

I’d like a new mantra. Don’t want for it. Then, it’s inevitable that it will come.

Pray, fantasize, hope? Each is a little piece of paper, vulnerable though seeming solid. Each blows away in a dry dust, leaving no residue, no negative of former thoughts, sand-slipped through clumsy fingertips.

Everything counted on gone, counted on because of the sheer volume of options, dwindled down to none, or worse, the one cast aside to begin with (the job half-done because it didn’t count, the relationship sometimes fought for because it surely wouldn’t last, if there’s three things before you then one, just one you might think, would work out). Bruised and deflated, an ego retreats back into its turtle-shell, whimpering—not to venture so fool-heartedly again (or at least until sufficient pity party is over).

Imagine the next time a boss, a parent, a huffy friend, high and mighty significant other demands, “What do you want for your life, your career, your heart?”

Nothing, not a thing, none of the above. Only then, I think, contentment, pared-down purpose, simple living in white moonlight and firefly flashes. Drained of envy and hard-worn bitterness, sour grapes and hints of deserving. Filmy, flimsy and light. Buoyant. Radiant.

Cut free from strings, routines and comfort snapped. Exhilaration with stability. Other oxymorons.

Fortune without the fame.

Character tall.

All wants, never needs, and not yet realized because of the self-fulfilling prophecy…

Want and you shall not receive.

Here’s when I’ll repeat my mantra. To trick my predictable luck, or lack thereof, into turning on itself and maybe, just maybe, flipping inside out.

Is There A Coffee Shop That Isn't Full of Weirdos?

Today is a beautiful day. I hope that you are outside enjoying it, because in New York the weather is in the low eighties and in Brooklyn, where I'm at now, Prospect Park is blooming and there are plenty of patches of green where you can lay out a blue blanket and eat chips and drink Diet Plum Tea Snapple as I was doing just a few minutes ago. Of course, when you're underemployed (I will not say unemployed until the very last steady freelance jobs I have go out the window--fingers crossed that they won't!) slash student hybrid, but not a real student, because you're taking classes from three different institutions instead of one (don't ask, this was poorly planned) you have to do work on the weekends. Even glorious ones like these.

So after I was in the park and picking out china from Real Simple and also circling all the restaurants and boutiques I want to go to in New York magazine, I'm in a coffee shop. Now, no judgment here, because I am one of the people that must spend this beautiful day inside, and perhaps they are too. But everyone around me is a creepy weirdo and it's dark in here and the music is blasting and I think it's Maria Carey. And not the good Maria Carey. And it's really loud. And no one is talking to each other and we're all looking at our little screens like that part in Wall-E that gave me weird dreams for a while.

And I need to write a short story that I can publish before I apply to MFA programs and I can't, because I keep staring at everyone and with my mouth hanging open. Why why why would someone choose to be here if they didn't have to! And why is the music so wrong and everyone that works here keep screaming "Fur Burger" to each other?

I am not ready to be a person in a coffeeshop all day. Dear Lord I need an office so badly. If you know a place where I can go that is a little less like this, please tell me. I'm afraid of what I'll become here.

Now go outside and away from me and the other trolls. We're being weird in the dark recesses of Brooklyn instead of interacting with other people, the least you could do is have fun because we don't know how to.

More from the Children's Book

Sorry! I am in 3 classes and have two editing jobs and am generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to learn how to be an adult and a writer and both of these in this economy. Here's a scene of what I've been working on, my children's book. In the meantime, I have given myself a reading list:

1. Island of the Blue Dolphins
2. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
3. Hatchet
4. A Wrinkle In Time

Any other suggestions??

From the book:

In the fifth grade, it works like this: Mrs. Tropiano’s our main teacher and we sit in her classroom most of the day. It’s decorated with samples of our best cursive penmanship and a few papers that earned gold stars and there are at least three of mine up there. In the back there’s a couch for reading, and if you finish a test before everyone else, you can sit in it and lie back on cushions of worn-out corduroy. But when it comes to special subjects, we’ve got different teachers for that, and we leave Mrs. Tropiano for them and head to the gymnasium, the art room or the music room. Today is Wednesday and that means music.

Dad says don’t use the word hate, so I won’t. Miss Peroski is our music instructor, and she’s a skinny one, she looks like if Olive Oil stepped right out of the television. She’s got long black hair that’s plaited into a thick dark rope that reaches her bottom. Today she’s feeling kooky so she greets us by playing a recorder as we shuffle in and is smiling a big toothy grin. When she sees that I’m last, she says, “Katie Burnett, don’t dilly dally!”. Some kids laugh, and I can’t tell if it’s at me or Miss Peroski because we both have something to be embarrassed about.

“Everybody take your seats please,” Miss Peroski says as she twirls around in a bright Indian skirt and long feathered earrings. She is the only woman I’ve ever seen who dresses like every day is a special holiday and it occurs to me that I wouldn’t mind seeing her on the Fourth of July. Maybe she’d have on a big wedding dress made out of a patchwork of flags, a swirl of red, white and blue and a crown of sparklers. And the sparklers would shoot off her head like rockets and she’d still be dancing around completely unaware, with her guitar strapped to her shoulder and telling all the dogs to go on and scoot, even when the little fires on her head started lighting up the gravel around her.

I laugh at this, and it’s a big mistake.

“Thank you for volunteering first, Miss Burnett,” Miss Peroski waves her recorder like it’s a wand and she summons me to the front of the room.

“Ooooh,” goes the rest of the class, like a chorus. I feel the blush creep into my face and at this moment I wish I could bolt out the door in a flash, fast as Henry.

“Miss Burnett, we’re waiting,” Miss Peroski says and I look at her long braid and am again reminded that I have never had the discipline to grow mine past my ears, and even if I did, it be as fine as a baby’s and could never be braided.

I walk to the front of the green blackboard and there are notes and treble clefs on it in white chalk, but it might as well be Chinese, I can read it but that’s where it ends.

“Miss Burnett, can you tell me what this note is?” She points to the board. I know from memorization that I can decide between “All Cows Eat Grass” for the spaces, meaning the notes are “A, C, E, G” or “Good Boys Don’t Fight Anyone” which means “G, B, D, F, A.” Don’t as me why G and A are on there twice, it’s got something to do with the bass clef versus the treble.

“G,” I say.

“Very good,” Miss Peroski blows the note on her recorder. It sounds like a rush of wind through a drainpipe. She opens her mouth in a little oval and repeats the sound perfectly, “La, la, la.”

She smiles. “Now you try it.”

The back of my neck is itchy and I turn from her and look at the class. Rachel’s looking at me and mouths, go on and do it! and she touches her thumb and finger to create the A-OK sign we make to each other in class when we need a boost. Everyone else is looking around the room, at the glockenspiel and at the African drums, and I’m sure they’re all thinking what I’m thinking, if only we could have our bongo circle today instead of this garbage.

I clear my throat, it’s something that Dad and Henry do, and it makes their voices sound loud and strong once they’re done, but on me it’s more like a squeaky mouse with laryngitis.

“Kathryn are you feeling all right?” Miss Peroski says, and though it’s kind I bristle a little because I don’t like the name Kathryn one bit—Kate or Katie suits me better.

“Pardon me,” I say, and I look at the big ticking clock on the wall above the door, as if it’s pushed forward a whole forty-five minutes and I’m scot-free. No such luck, there’s still a good thirty-eight minutes to go. “My throat’s not feeling up to snuff.”

“Your throat sounds perfectly lovely to me, now go on,” she says and sings once more, “La, la, la!” It sounds like a silver bird.

I shake out my hands, stamp my feet a little, anything to shake a silver bird from my throat, I give it a go, “Lo, lo, lo.”

It’s abominable. Worse than I could even imagine. It was not a joyful noise, as Mom says. My silver bird is a big fat turkey. Some of the kids look like they can’t believe such a sound has come from me.

Miss Peroski looks as though I stole her feather earrings and now am wearing them right in front of her. “I see someone hasn’t been practicing. Keep forging ahead, Kathryn,” and she dismisses me to my seat.

“Miss Peroski, I have too been practicing,” I say, and it comes out of my mouth very high and sharp and it surprises even me.

“I’ve never known you to be a liar, let’s not start now,” she says, and she points to Rachel. “Miss Murphy, you’re next.”

“I’m not a liar, I swear,” I say but Miss Peroski is already asking for Rachel to point out the notes, and she does not point out the right note, but when Miss Peroski plays it on the recorder she sings it back perfectly, and it sounds like an angel would.

And I think, how much has she studied, and that it couldn’t be more than me, and yet here she is, the sound out of her is pure and shiny and it is beautiful and suddenly it comes to me. She has never studied the way I have, and it doesn’t matter at all. She can sing and I cannot, and that’s as complex as it gets.

High Noon

I work from my bed, coffee shops, other people's living room rugs. Sometimes one office, sometimes another. I feel still blessed to have the life I have, however downsized from what it was following the economic meltdown, but I can't help think back to the days when I would escape with my lunch outside the office...all that I used to think because outside moments were so precious:


It’s a joy to be in Bryant Park at high noon. Debonair and foreign gentlemen toss gleaming silver weights on the Bocce court; over faded gray pebbles at the west end. Before the crushing lunch rush, you can sit under the shade of trees and shadow of Tom Colicchio’s gourmet sandwich stand, ensconced at a painted table and chair, the smooth finish warm against the backs of knees and elbows, sipping ginger beer, turned towards the splash of the fountain and long of the meadowed lawn. A space to breathe; encircled by towers of steel, brick and mortar of banks and shops, and snaking lines of yellow cabs.

Slowly, as the crowds peter in, slim suits morph into separates as jackets are removed, then laid as impromptu picnic blankets, paper bags crunch open, napkins assemble and the seal of designer water bottles crack. The power lunch turns lazy under the sky, loafers and heels kicked off, freeing feet, now tickled by the cool blades. They face the heaving animals of the merry-go-round, the marble lip of the stairs, slipping colors and crawling clouds.

On the south side, flowering plants for sale are vibrant and rich, and priced for the vibrant and rich. On the north, the young and free attempt to continue their path to the library, veering off to lay their bags on sod for catnaps. Once on the field, stillness begins, the shine of light against closed eyelids feels heavy, and it seems as though anyone at all can capture the tranquility of the Far East right here in Midtown West.

An hour under the sun as reward for eight under cheap florescence. For a weekday, it’s not a bad trade at all.

Funny

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the 2009 winners:


1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.


2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.


3. Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.


4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.


5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.


6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.


7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high


8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.


9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.


10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)


11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.


12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.


13. Glibido : All talk and no action.


14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.


15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.


16. Beelzebug (n.) : Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.


17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.



The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.



And the winners are:


1. Coffee , n. The person upon whom one coughs.


2. Flabbergasted , adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.


3. Abdicate , v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.


4. Esplanade , v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.


5. Willy-nilly , adj. Impotent.


6. Negligent , adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.


7. Lymph , v. To walk with a lisp.


8. Gargoyle , n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.


9. Flatulence , n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.


10. Balderdash , n. A rapidly receding hairline.


11. Testicle , n. A humorous question on an exam.


12. Rectitude , n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.


13. Pokemon , n.. A Rastafarian proctologist.


14. Oyster , n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.


15. Frisbeetarianism , n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

**Shout-out to BT for providing, thank you!

Reblog: The Mailbox War

This one was too good to stay in the vault...


My father is a survivor of two wars.

The first was Vietnam (where he was a medic). The second was the war at home (where he was part-villain, part victim).

The war at home was not fought against my strong-willed mother, nor her strong-willed daughter (me), nor her strong-willed newborn (my brother, who was such an intolerable, shrieking toddler that we referred to him as ‘the Raptor’). Instead, the war at home was fought between two venerable enemies, and battled on civilian soil in the early nineties. On one side, my father in shorts and a polo shirt, a.k.a. Mr. Mom, who raised my brother and me and two dogs and one cat, while my mom bio-medically consulted her way through Europe, coming home only in stints.

On the other: the teenagers of Peekskill, New York and their arsenal of baseball bats.

At that time, there wasn’t much to do in town. One movie theater, one neon-signed shopping plaza (the main attraction tied between the pet shop and the hardware store). Not much else. And lots of bored teenagers in the summertime, half-assing wait or landscaping jobs during the week, coming home only to nurse beers and drive restlessly at night.

So they did what all red-blooded Americans do with energy, aggression, and an arguably poor upbringing. At low speeds in open cars, they swooped past mailboxes, improving their batting averages by smashing perched metal off poles.

We had just moved into the white clapboard house on a hill. Our mailbox was at the bottom of it. And because my parents had just begun to take pride in the place (recently out of the rental down the street), they renovated and improved, bursting with the satisfaction of their newly purchased home. One of the first acts my father took was to buy a beautiful mailbox as a prosperous symbol; a miniature bright, red barn, with a tiled roof and wide doors from which mail sprang.

And one of the first acts the neighborhood teenagers took was to smack it right off the pole in the middle of the night, denting the plastic and knocking off the doors.

When my father saw it, he knew. He had done his fair share of toilet-papering the principal’s house as a kid. But that was Halloween in Normal, Illinois. Not a summer spent destroying mailboxes in Peekskill, New York.

This was much, much different in his eyes. He had survived far worst virtually unmarked. He didn’t "come back from 'nam" to let a bunch of "punk kids" stick it to his young family, his new house, his new mailbox.

So he put it back up. Upon seeing this, the kids knocked it right back down. They too, had survived--plenty of fathers in town were out to prove a point with their mailboxes, dads that refused to be defeated, until the kids broke them down and the old guys gave up, heads hanging in shame, only to return to their wives and their kids with their shoulders shrugged in conquered disbelief.

But not my dad. Not him, not ever. My dad was of a breed these kids had never seen.

He ditched the cutesy, hard plastic in lieu of a sturdy wood structure bolted into a sturdier wood pole in the ground.

The next morning we saw, as we scaled down the driveway in our white Ford Taurus, the box lay splintered on the side of the road.

I remember what it looked like. And how my dad’s face hardened with determination, a smile flickered fast at his mouth. Even at ten years old, I saw what this meant. This was not over. This had only just begun. These were just the formative stages of what would be known forever after as The Mailbox War.

Next up was a traditional tin box, plain and black and just like all the others on the block. But it deviated when he encased it in a circular steel sheet, leaving gaps around the rectangular receptacle. Into those gaps he poured a yellow liquin plastic that bubbled and dried hard and puffy, like insulation. This he fixed to a metal pole, which he buried deep into the ground.

Now, instead of a mailbox, we had a space age monstrosity twice normal size, that gleamed in the sun with a terrible glare. As the bus lurched around the bend towards my house, I would instruct all substitute drivers to the “mailbox that looks like a big bullet” to ensure I was dropped at the right spot.

The teenagers had a hell of a time with this one, but they were just as committed as my dad. They bashed that thing mercilessly, over and over again, night after night. Try as they might, they dented the sheet and the insulation under the surface, but you could see from looking dead on that the mailbox protected by all this was entirely unscathed.

That was part one of my dad’s plan. To erect something that caused them to park their cars on the side of the drive, jump out with their bats and poles, and on foot, dance around the box, smashing it.

Part two was to hide his green and gold-flecked Buick at the bottom of the hill, obscured by night and the shade of pines. To sit in the driver’s side with his hands gripping the leather wheel, nodding off and jolting awake, his BB gun (previously used only for scaring squirrels away from the birdfeeder) at his side. Once he saw the flash of baseball bats by moonlight, the idea was to jump out, laughing maniacally and spraying the stars with BBs, forcing the teenagers to run screaming back into their cars, not before one or two of them soiled themselves, and drive away in hysterics, never to speak of that night again, and never to return.

Unfortunately, he never got the chance. The kids, perhaps anticipating an ambush, came at odd hours, and in strange patterns. Once they left the box alone for an entire week. A few days of sleeplessness and my dad’s fatigued ramblings caused my mom to put an end to that real quick.

Soon after, the mailbox was officially dismembered. Because the kids couldn’t beat it to a pulp, they blew it up, uprooting the pole like it was a diseased tree, and left it broken on its side in a nearby ditch.

At this point, we all congratulated my dad on fighting the good fight. The silver mailbox had lasted far longer than anyone could have imagined, and now that we had to erect number four, we wondered if we could just frequent a P.O. Box and live our lives in peace.

My dad scoffed at this suggestion, and got to work on his ultimate structure. He knew he had created a mailbox that could almost withstand the beatings, but a pole that could not. His solution: an iron pole cemented into the ground. As a nod to the would-be destroyers, he bolted a new version of the maimed mailbox on top, daring them to continue to try.

The box stayed atop the pole, through the winter, then spring. It seemed this had ended it. Once in a while a new dent would appear on the sheeting, but for the most part, it was left alone. No more explosions. The teenagers had been handed. But this is not the end of the story.

The hill on which our house stood was at a very dangerous turn of the road. I lost Peaches-the-cat to whizzing cars careening by. It was accident-prone and everyone within a ten mile radius knew to proceed with caution.

One day, a teenager, maybe one who had fought in The Mailbox War against my dad, maybe not, but to be sure, one who was not paying attention and one who was driving a borrowed BMW far too fast, swerved around the curve. And drove right into our mailbox. He hadn’t slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting it, assuming it would give with the thousands of pounds of steel and fiberglass of the car, figuring that the pole would bend and the box would pop off like the head of a dandelion, and he’d slow to a stop.

Instead, the car wrapped around the immovable object we called our mailbox. The airbags went off, the car was destroyed, he was in tears, his mother arrived in a rage, my father was apologetic and concerned for the boy’s safety. But our mailbox, it stayed.

The boy was perfectly fine except for the tongue-lashing he received from his mother, “I can’t believe you did this, you said you were going to be careful with the car, I never should have let you borrow it, your father is going to kill us both!”

Almost immediately, my dad dismantled the mailbox and its pole. He couldn’t, in good conscience, let it stay, knowing that bad drivers endangering their lives and the lives of anyone who happened to be nearby, could become fixed in a metal swirl around it.

He constructed a normal mailbox after that. One that was flimsy, and like most others on the block. But the funny thing was, it was never touched again. Maybe because that kid actually had been a perpetrator of our previous boxes, or maybe because the other kids were tired of it, or maybe they thought it was a trick.

Nevertheless, they stayed away.

My dad remains, to this day, victorious (if a not little notorious, as well).

Items for a good mood...

Lengthy updates via email from cross-country friends

The very last sniffle of a cold

A found twenty-dollar bill

Cold lemonade or hot tea, depending on the weather

Sample subscriptions to magazines boasting implicit simplicity

A deep breath and a deep stretch

A cell phone chirp indicating a new text message

A snarky comment prevented from repetition aloud

A soft bed, with high thread count sheets freshly laundered

Low glow from an antique lamp

A well-thumbed book, the third time read

Free lunch, and even better, at a restaurant

A scary movie, and someone to split buttered popcorn with

Al fresco anything

Having someone tell you there’s something in your teeth, immediately

Impromptu invitations

A sick day for your boss

Sunlight through the sunroof

Dew on grass, and then feet on dew

Praise

Icy water, without the ice

Naps

Sunday night before a Monday holiday

The burger at Wellville, Blue 9 or Corner Bistro

Bryant Park’s fountain

The still of seven a.m.

Being second in line (first is the worst, second is the best…)

Trampolines

Blue-bottomed pools

When someone refers to you as their best friend

Rooftop cocktails and fireworks

Bare arms and legs in the afternoon

Sunglasses that don’t pinch

Tulips

Shade

Knowing that, on Friday morning, the entire weekend lies ahead

Remembering: What Matters

My speaking voice has been gone all week, a good seque to me finding my literary voice, as I revise and re-revise my writing sample and my novel (going off to a tell-it-like-it-is editor in one week--good Lord, so much to do before then).

Today, here is what I remember:

Under the sun, geckos dart around my feet, and I think about the things that matter. What they are. What they are not.

I think they’re not budget reports and filing piles. They are not dinners with peers strategizing nor blank-faced TV programs where hours pass, uncounted. They are not a blur of drunken vomiting and strangers kissed each weekend to fill the unfulfilled. They are not when days knit together, undulating grumpily until there are two parts of one life—the minutes spent anticipating and the minutes spent reminiscing. They are not go go go and yoga merely purposed to un-hunch shoulders, praying only when things are bad because we wish them to be good, breathing merely to dissipate emotion and apologies to get our way.

They are, instead, sadness at stopping and finally seeing what we have wasted our time and energy on. They are finding the right in saving ourselves from ourselves, and our own distractions. They are realized the moment we inhale cut grass and understand that living is anything we make of it, sure, but more, we hold a choice in our balled hands. That choice is to make it good, make it count, and be free or to bow to impositions, cower under the difficulties of waking each morning and to let anything move us instead of moving it ourselves.

I think a popsicle and open sky and two fully-formed feet are incredible gifts once I unfurl my heart. I think what matters is being thankful and being forgiving and forgiven.

Needful Things

In times like these, some fashion items cross over from accessory to necessity. Like this this,for instance.* There was a time where I was going to make a necklace out of my wisdom teeth dipped in bronze, but it turned out that making it was far more work than just acting like I was going to do it until the novelty wore off in my mind.

In other news, I have lost my voice for what is now the second day. The first (yesterday), it was this little cracking, off-key, in and out honking voice that rasped up at the end of each sentence, making them all seem like questions which made it sound like I was an undergrown goose with a cold.

Today, it's so bad it's a whisper. I never have lost my voice before, but I remember being twelve and wanting to, because I thought it sounded sexy. It, as it turns out, sounds like emphysema, which is decidedly un-sexy. Luckily any jobs I have require me to write, not speak, and now that I'm working from a variety of coffeeshops and living rooms, I can just tap all day. I need that computer voice so that I can communicate with people. You know the one.**

*Thanks for sending, CD!

**How do I use that? I'm pretty inept at computer programs but assert that because I have a Mac, the option's got to be on here. I mean, I could record play the guitar on this thing, or so says some icon at the bottom of this screen that I'm not cool enough to click on.

A Poster on Gawker Sums It Up Best...

About this AIG mess from today's Gawker comments:

"I'm sure there are individual bankers who did their job, did it well, and probably deserve some extra compensation. But the notion that these bonuses are somehow promised compensation is absurd. Every employer I've ever worked for that offered bonuses took great pain to specify that bonuses are just that - an add-on to your salary. They've also taken great pains to specify that the terms of the bonus can change almost without notice.

I don't begrudge (some) people in the financial services industry their money; they do a job that, in many cases, I don't understand or comprehend. But the notion that hundreds of millions of dollars are required to retain "top talent" - in many cases, talent that oversaw the actions that got us into this damn mess to begin with - is absolutely absurd, and not in keeping with, you know, the overwhelming majority of Americans. Regardless your level of employment, if you work for a firm that was required to take bailout cash to continue functioning as an organization, I'd say that pride in your organization is misplaced (regardless of what area you work in). I work in support operations, and if our marketing group does an awful job conceptualizing or releasing a product, the product is a failure regardless of whether the support operations are solid or not.

In short, fuck them."

Minetta Tavern: Crispy Pork Trotters, Lamb Saddle and Grand Marnier Souffle...

Sure it's the most impossible reservation to get in town, but that didn't stop my more-than-lovely friend Emily from inviting me to be her date to Minetta Tavern's opening week. It helps to have friends from the food world...

From FOOD & WINE and my darling friend, who described what we ate better than I ever could:

"Even better, chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson (who, as alums of Balthazar and Pastis, are used to running popular restaurants) are already turning out some great dishes, including tender Berkshire pig's trotter mixed with mushroom duxelles and pork forcemeat that’s deep-fried and crispy. It’s a classic French dish that fits seamlessly with the bubbling café vibe. Juicy lamb saddle with belly meat intact is excellent, and so is a bright, billowy Grand Marnier soufflé flecked with orange sections."

Check out the rest of the article here and tell her she did a great job!

Everyone is Pregnant

Is there something* in the air? No less than four of my good friends are pregnant. Of course these fine young women are off married in other states. Is this a suburban** vs. city thing? Or is it just the whole world against NYC thing?

Are we all destined to continue a prolonged adolescence in New York where we don't want to get married until 30 if even then or have babies until 35+?

So many questions remain unanswered. Like how they're figuring out to pay for school for their unborn, and how I'm trying to figure out how to pay for school***...for myself****.


*My choice not to use "semen" instead of "something" proves that I am actually mature.

**My choice to use "suburban" even those these lovely girls live in Seattle, Philly and Jersey proves that I have finally succumbed to the wave of pretension around me, and therefore am not mature, and am simply, a pompous jackass who thinks NYC is the end-all be-all of the world.

***My choice to apply to schools everywhere except New York proves that I am less of a jackass than previously thought.

****Less of a jackass, maybe. But no less selfish....hey no one's going to make my life cool for me. It's up to me to do that now. And you know, I promise when I have a baby I'll spoil it rotten. Until then, there are plenty (about to be) around to teach me how.

Life Plan, Here We Go

I'm unemployed on a regular basis.

So I get to be lazy (between futile job searches and freelancing assignments and classes, that is).

BUT, not lazy in a usual sense. Systematically choosing new MFA programs to apply to has occupied my time (if at first you don't succeed, try try again--I'm looking at you 2006, the worst year of my life: Dad got cancer, my long-term live-in relationship ended, I changed into a horrible job and I was an absolute mess because my boss from the last job took me with her to the new and she hated it, I applied to schools because I liked how they sounded so far away, and I got in to some...with no financial aid, and decided that running off to Hawaii was not the answer to solving my problems, it was staying and facing them. It was hard, it was ugly and it was my finest moment. )

I'm inspired again (you know how I get that way) because my new book is just fun in a way that my old one isn't (God I'm sick of those old characters!). But I'm inspired by those around me, friends getting into spectacular programs: top ten in social work, top five in marketing, top everything. These are my friends, this is my group. I've got to hold up my end of the bargain.

So back to the flurry. I've enrolled in a Stanford writing course on Voice in Fiction, which (fingers crossed!) I will get an A in and then squeeze out some info from the prof on applying to Stanford's writing program (here's a hint, it's impossible to get into, ugh). I've enlisted an amazing editor to take a long hard look at my first novel about how to turn nearly good into definitely great (meaning I'm frantically changing things starting TONIGHT so that I can get it to him by April 10th). I've also tracked down some really prestigious writers who I want to get advisement on choosing the right programs for me, and the right writing sample--(I've got hundreds of pages to choose from and it's impossible to pick what's right). Oh yeah and I'm writing the children's book and hoping to get it to agents this summer.

Writing to come tomorrow, today I'm planning out my schedule and begging NYU to send me my transcripts from the ONE Tisch class I took which apparently all grad schools require the grade I received: B plus, damnit.

Unspecial

Excerpt from my newest book...for kids (some adult themes are explored, btw)...

Today I turned ten and guess what I got? A cake full of mayonnaise, that’s what.

Mom’s gone on another site dig, so Dad had to make the cake and let me tell you, he’s basically the worst at cooking. Whoever said the greatest chefs were men never met my lunch. When Dad makes my sandwiches there’s never any mayonnaise, just the baloney and the bread. So what’s with the mayonnaise in the cake, I say when I blow out the candles. He says try it.

Henry makes a face and takes a pretend bite when Dad’s watching me cause when it’s your birthday everyone pays you too much attention and stares when you eat. Henry’s too old to warrant Dad making a sandwich. Henry gets money instead. He’s in seventh grade so he’s at middle school. He gets to have a really big locker that he’s always forgetting the combination to. I’d never do that.

“Mmmm,” I say and just lick the frosting. Trails of smoke from the candles are swimming all around Dad’s face. I must have blown them to the side.

“You didn’t try it,” Dad says, and sighs.

So I take a bite. It doesn’t taste like mayonnaise. It tastes like cake. Maybe a little burnt, but it’s chocolate so it’s hard to tell. “Where’d it go?”

Dad beams like he’s won the lottery and we can all go live in Hawaii. “We were out of eggs and then I thought, what’s mayonnaise except oil and eggs? Two ingredients on the back of the cake box are oil and eggs, and here I had both, already mixed!”

I want to interrupt that my birthday was no time to play around, this was the most important thing I’ll eat all day, but I don’t. Dad’s a biomedical engineer, which is just a fancy label for scientist, and he loves breaking down and building up things. He thinks didactically. I forget what it means, but I suppose it’s an answer to some question I never asked.

So here I am, eating the cake and still Henry won’t take a bite. He doesn’t like what he can’t see. Dad loves that about Henry, says it means he’s a verifiable brain-in-training. I said Henry’s an idiot, and my supporting evidence was people can’t see planets moving or see evolution. That’s just a leap of faith. Henry said I got it backwards, as usual, and waved a book in my face, The Beak of the Finch. He said Charles Darwin saw it because he was patient, unlike me. I go, I’d read that book myself just to shove it in Henry’s face if it weren’t so freakin’ boring.

Dad said don’t say freakin’, it’s unladylike. Another thing Henry gets to do that I don’t. I’m supposed to become a lady and he gets to be a man, which aside from not being able to cook seems a lot better because you don’t have to wear lipstick and no one judges you by how big your bra is. Dad says talking about a bra before I need one is also unladylike.

You’re exasperating, I said to Dad, because he always says it to me. He said don’t push it, so I didn’t because, you know, he was making that face. He was making that same face to Henry about the cake so Henry took a bite really fast.

“Hey this isn’t half bad,” he says, and with his mouth full too. And then he keeps eating, just wouldn’t stop eating it. His piece was gone in like, a millisecond, I swear. I count in my head. At that rate, the whole thing would be gone in one point two minutes.

“Don’t pig out! Leave some, I want to eat this all week!” I tell him.

I’m starting to regret that my birthday party isn’t until next Saturday. You can’t have a party on Sunday night, not with your friends cause no one will come, so we’re having our little party as a family. Plus the bowling alley would be more fun on the weekends. Rachel and Andrea and Sammy have never eaten a mayonnaise cake, to my recollection. They would have told me if they did.

“I can make more,” Dad says, probably as a cue for us to pipe down.

So we all keep eating it and I don’t say out loud how I wished Mom were here to try it. She’s missed my birthday before—she’s an archeologist and is basically always gone—but I guess I thought she’d be here for my graduation into double digits, since today I turned ten. That’s a big number, especially now that I’m in fifth grade, the last grade before middle school. It seems important to have your mom around for that kind of a thing. But then again, I wouldn’t have had a mayonnaise cake if she were here. So I didn’t say anything about Mom missing the cake out loud. If she were here, it couldn’t have been mayonnaise cake at all. That’s what Dad calls an impossibility.

Lesson Learned?

So remember when I took the huge artistic stand? And was preparing to get fired from the publication? Well turns out, acting like a man about it (this is my theory, when I act assertive and full of confidence and like I don't accept something less than what's a little bit more than I'm worth, I'm not a bitch, I'm acting like a man...this gives me some sort of Oprah-esque boost where I prance around in unflattering pants and go "I'm FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABulous!") actually worked! (So far, I can be proven wrong at any given moment).

Throwing my theoretical balls out on the table showed everyone I wouldn't accept less than, pointing out the mistakes made in a non-threatening, non-emotional and somewhat authoritative way actually showed that I was a professional (mwah, hah, hah, they'll never know the truth) and I got respect in return! I mean, no one's asked me to write a feature or come on staff there or anything (pssst, I'm totes available to fill a position there, please please please?).

So uh, I'm worth it? Coincidentally which is also some sort of makeup commercial I think. Maybe she earned it? Maybe it's Maybelline!

Oh Brain, Where Art Thou?

Pardon me, I've been away,
Where exactly I can't quite say,
Burning bridges, Just about
Stamping career embers out....

Yes, about that. So there comes a time in every youngish-getting-old-as-hell writer's life when he/she is faced with a job opportunity which would essentially be managing person on a very large editing project but that is not offered full-time, nor permanent and would interfere with other projects that writer has going, so she has to turn it down. Fine.

But does that very same youngish-getting old as hell writer have to take an artistic integrity stand on another little project, one with a magazine she actually loves and hardly ever gets work from?

Because she spent so much time crafting a *fair and subtly balanced profile that was oh so nuanced (hey, we all think we're geniuses--zing!)* that after a revision became something she wasn't so happy to put her name on (PS Yes, said writer knows that she is an absolute nobody and does not have clout to flex) ?

With a bulleted email, no less, because the edit doesn't do the subject matter justice even though said writer kinda disliked the thing said writer was profiling? Bulleted in such a way so that the incensed email pointed out where the new director had not only substantive errors, but stylistic? Did said writer have to point out to editor, and by proxy, new director where they had made grammatical, fact-checking, and, by God, punctuation errors just to make a point?

In this economy, with this writer, the answer is yes. In the words of Homer Simpson, "I wish, I wish, I hadn't killed that fish."

SH*T. Guess I'm not getting hired there anymore. Hey, at least I fought the power...right? Right. Back to the children's book, which by the way is going swimmingly...no seriously, it's pretty awesome.