"Gin is just flavored vodka" -- This I never knew, until about a month ago. Usually when people are keep independently referencing something that I know nothing about, it means I missed an event on the internet. Like I knew about the whole "double rainbows" thing, but when I overheard my co-workers watching it I just figured they were looking at porn, which maybe says a lot about me and my company, because I work at the kind of place where someone might be watching porn, but also the kind of place where I try to avoid watching YouTube videos and instead have a really meta understanding of web culture because I read countless re-posts of the same video, then actually catch up with the video itself on Saturday mornings when I'm already totally irrelevant.

At first, I thought the "gin is vodka" meme was just something my friend was telling me to explain why he was better than me when I was hungover, but I'm beginning to suspect there must have been a New Yorker article or a trend piece in the Times or something. In a world where flavored liquors keep multiplying (see: Cafe Patron) and as someone who consumed bubble gum-flavored vodka for the first time last Tuesday, it seems pretty bizarre to think that 400 years ago someone decided juniper-flavored vodka would be a hit and then it actually was.

May God have mercy on our souls if 20 generations from now our descendants are drinking bubble gum vodka on the regular.

My friend from high school trained me that self-awareness is pretty much the greatest facet of any art form. As such, he loved TV shows that broke the fourth wall and the musical episode of Buffy and the Paris Hilton song "Stars Are Blind" (which was not autobiographical, incidentally). In retrospect, I half-heartedly disagree and tend to view "really unspeakably bleak things happening to the main characters, especially in so far as they make your life seem better by comparison" as a really key element, but maybe I'm just thinking that because we just finished Season 1 of Party Down.

I'm really not this abrasive.

Currently, I'm on an NJTransit train back from the beach. Fourteen hours ago I was drinking margaritas and playing Settlers of Catan (because I am The Coolest). Twenty four hours ago I was on the beach. So far, the most exciting thing to happen on the return trip is that one of the conductors screamed at a forty-something couple who wanted to bring their bikes on the train, peppering his speech heavily with the F-word, because this is NJTransit, not the elitist off-peak MetroNorth to Greenwich (which, truth be told, has its share of rowdiness, at least while the bar cars were still active)

Probably the worst thing about coming back from a trip is how miserable the return itself is, in sharp contrast to the promise and excitement of your outbound journey. Who cares about waking up early to go TO the beach? Of course there's traffic! Going to the beach is a great idea that lots of people had! You sing songs and play games with the road signs ("Silver alert! Ha ha ha!"), you talk about life and your job and your apartment in broad strokes, and there's a sense of camraderie because your all escaping lame things and responsibilities (see above: life and job and apartment) to go to the beach because you are all geniuses who had the same great idea as 15 million other geniuses stuck in the same traffic jam. Then, suddenly, it's all over and you're running late and maybe missing your train and half your worldly possessions are sandy which means you'll have to do laundry again and you'll probably have to get up at like 4am tomorrow just so you have time to wash your clothes and rearrange all your furniture and still spend a solid fourteen hours looking for a job online that doesn't require and advanced degree and ten years experience and the ability to code in Java and Flash.

Ultimately, though, I should appreciate these little panic attacks because they correct my anxiety equilibrium. Otherwise I'd just spend all day analyzing my sunburn patterns.

During the summers when we were growing up, my brother and I thought my mom was insane because she never wanted to use the air conditioning, and when she finally caved (because it was 97 degrees outside, 105 degrees in our house, and our cheeks were permanently flushed) there were all these stipulations, like we could only start the air conditioner at night and it wasn't ever set to 72 degrees like at "other people's houses" (read: my dad's car) but was instead set to something balmy like 80 degrees -- a temperature at which "other people's parents" (again, probably mostly my dad, in his car) would already have turned on their air conditioning. I'm sure we went so far as to suggest this was child abuse, and the first time I visited my mom's house after starting my job (in a hyper-refrigerated corporate office), I suggested that she could only afford to be so blase about the A/C because she spent all day at the hyper-refrigerated hospital, while her two fragile children were sweating bullets or taking illicit shelter in neighbor's homes ("Of course her parents are home, Mom. Geez, do you think they have jobs or something!?").

But at the ripe old age of 23, I find I'm becoming my mother, in this case by taking up the role of air-conditioner Nazi in my apartment (ostensibly, because I own the window air conditioner that we installed in the kitchen because there are bars over my bedroom window, but really because I'm a monstrous neurotic control freak who cannot abide temperature-related discomfort of either the too-hot or too-cold variety). Because I am a benevolent dictator -- and because it's been 90 in Brooklyn for the past two weeks -- I've allowed the air conditioner to be run. But because we only have the one unit, I've also instituted an elaborate fan rotating system (facing out during the day, facing in during the night), covered the one source of natural light in our garden level apartment, and switched religiously from "Fan Only" to "Low Cool" at various points throughout the day (the algorithm for when and how this switch occurs is mysterious, known only to me and not at all random or based on whether I want to take a nap or will be out of the apartment all day).

I'm sure when our electric bill comes in 4x as high as it was in the spring, I will explain to my roommates that we're lucky, because it could have been 8 million times higher if I hadn't turned off all the lights, unplugged all the electronics, and rocketed us back to the Stone Age during daylight hours.

I think the main reason I object to Lori Gottlieb's Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough is not so much the whole "I'm 23 and the idea of settling just to get married seems abhorrent," which is more of a "me" thing and less of a profound truth (then again, her argument for settling seems to be more of a "her" thing as well, but I digress), but that it started as an Atlantic article. In my heart of hearts -- and in the heart, or at least the spin, of Gottlieb's publicist -- I'd want to believe that she wrote the book, and the article for that matter, because she had battled with an inner demon, came out on top, and then wanted to share her feelings with the world (via the Atlantic) and then with the wider world that doesn't subscribe to the Atlantic (via the book) so that they could face down this same demon and hopefully use her advice to also come out on top.

But like... probably not, right? Because, aside from having a wildly successful blog, writing a punchy and hotly debated magazine article is pretty much the fastest track to a book deal. So it seems just as likely that Gottlieb was sitting at home and instead of thinking "I want to help people find a husband" thinking "I want to have a moment of semi-fame and also a book deal"* and wrote a piece she knew would ruffle the proverbial feathers.

Which is, again, fine. Go for it. I just feel kind of bad for all the people who are actually ruffled, not by quasi-feminist angst and the protective bubble of their early twenties, but women who already do feel a little bad about not being married and who probably don't need someone's book-deal ploy to make them feel worse or at least confirm that they should feel bad, perhaps even more than a little.

Then again, this is mostly conjecture and I can't claim to truly know Gottlieb's motives or have read the book. For that matter, I wouldn't even have given it a second thought except my alumni magazine wrote a review and it happened to be on the dinner table while I was eating. So I'm doubly (and perhaps triply or quadruply) insulated against its advice, sage or otherwise.

*Itself not a particularly uncommon or objectionable thought. I actually find this way easier to swallow/empathize with than a matchmaker compulsion.

I'm not proud, but also perhaps not ashamed enough to admit that I used to obsessively peruse gossip blogs. It all started with the Superficial but quickly branched out to TMZ (too much to keep up with) and Perez (could never really get over the MSPaint additions). After a few months, maybe towards the end of senior year, once I finished my senior essay and spent marginally less time handcuffed to my laptop, it all fizzled out as mysteriously as it began.

And with the distance of almost two years and after weathering other web-addictions (Curbed and Craigslist while I was apartment hunting, Apartment Therapy once I moved in), I think in some ways I was lucky I hit the gossip circuit when I did. It was, after all, the hey day of Britney's head shaving, Paris' limo-leaving, Lindsay's various rehab stints and burgeoning lesbianism. Sure, I bet she and Sam Ronson are still doing that on-again-off-again thing every once in a while, and I bet Kim Kardashian is doing something, somewhere, but I can't help looking back and thinking celebrity shenanigans aren't what they used to be.

Which is probably for the best, because otherwise I'd still be losing precious hours of my life...

It's things like Tom's toothpaste and Dr. Bronner's mysteriously-multi-purpose-but-seems-like-it's-probably-just-soap soap that make me wary of someday leaving major metropolises (metropoli?). Not because they don't have these things in the suburbs -- they probably do, and even if they don't that's why God and Al Gore created the internet -- but because I remember in sixth grade my best friend's parents were chiropractors and she used Tom's toothpaste (in my mind, these things go hand in hand) and I remember feeling really sorry for her. Like her toothpaste wasn't pink and it didn't sparkle and that seemed wrong.

I was reminded of all this when my brother came to visit me and borrowed my toothpaste, only to leave the bathroom reeling in disgust because Tom's is really baking soda-y and not artificially sweetened, which is something I wouldn't even think of toothpastes as being until I switched to Tom's. Then this morning I thought of it again, because we'd finished off our Tom's and I was wrestling with an essentially empty tube of Arm & Hammer, another really baking soda-y and not brother approved toothpaste, in an attempt to wrench a pea sized dollop from its clutches. The good news is, I prevailed. The bad news is, I gagged as soon as I tasted it because I'd gotten so used to the other kind.

But it's way too soon to stress, because I've got no thoughts of leaving soon. And who knows, maybe all my neighbors will be super impressed that I can use also my body wash to wash my hair AND my minivan.