On Twitter

So I've been pretty delinquent in blogging as I've allowed myself, after much hemming and hawing, to get hooked on Twitter. The reasons for this are essentially threefold:

Fold #1: To justify a blog post, you have to have a topic worthy of approximately 400 words of expostulating. Sure you can stray a little and write shorter or longer posts, but ultimately that's the length that feels about right to me, so that's the metric I tend to use when deciding whether to blog or not. With Twitter, though, you only need an idea worthy of 140 characters, which is more or less the bare minimum amount of space I need to complete a thought. Even a half-baked one.

Fold #2: Similarly, since the standards for what merits a worthwhile tweet are so much lower, your dumber tweets get diluted by those that are marginally less dumb. The sheer quantity tends to make you forget the crappier things you set forth into the digital universe. Somehow a blog feels more like a memoir, like someone might dredge up something you wrote and hold you accountable for it, even just over drinks in a bar, and you have to actually entertain the subject because they spent 5 minutes reading your post instead of 30 seconds skimming a tweet so you can't just say "who cares?" because clearly they cared, or thought they did, and you wasted five of their precious minutes.

Fold #3: Ultimately, and a little embarrassingly, what most motivates me to participate in social media is feedback, or rather engagement. And while the whole @ mention and re-tweet thing hasn't exactly been a thriving source of adulation for yours truly, linking my tweets to my Facebook status has yielded near constant response. So while I know thirty some-odd people who tweet and maybe a handful (and that's generous) who would read my blog on a regular basis if I committed to updating on a regular basis, it seems my real adoring, if sporadic, public is on Facebook. Probably because people are visiting Facebook for totally separate reasons (stalking their exes? seeing who got married or fat?) and my comments on my prom dresses are totally incidental.

This morning in the subway I saw a sign that said
"Danger
People
Working
Above"

And, while I appreciate the effort of going from men to people (just think of what it would suggest to have a sign that said "Danger: Women working above," like "better watch those women when they get their hands on power tools!"), it made me wonder if perhaps it shouldn't be "persons" instead of "people." This, I guess, is the problem with intuitive grammar and/or the way American education approaches grammar and/or this is the reason I was never particularly successful with Spanish grammar.

The thing about Conde Nast shuttering Gourmet is that, while it may have been totally logical and appropriate and even maybe a long time coming, it just seems like such an un-Conde thing to do. Why grant The New Yorker, charmed as it is, special immunity, only to axe a similarly marquee title? While Gourmet may have been a luxury brand -- perhaps even uncomfortably so -- isn't that what Conde is supposed to be all about?

Like, to a fault?

Like, Anna Wintour will probably never have to take a cab?

Ever?

Today I had occasion to reunite with a somewhat rag tag group of acquaintances and friends at a profoundly bitter sweet event and I was truly and surprisingly astounded by what a brilliant and crazy and haplessly beautiful group of people they were. Or perhaps, I think, I hope, we were. It reminded me how easy it is to get caught up in the petty squabbles or the not-even-squabbles, the awkwardness and the sense of not quite belonging and forget how strange and wonderful and remarkable these people can be and people in general are.

It feels a little odd to put words to such sentiment, but the sight of everyone, rain spritzed, frizzy haired and attired in theirl many interpretations of formalwear and funeral-chic, shirts coming untucked and ties askance, seemed to merit remark. And commendation. And remembering how lucky I have been.

It's weird to think of books as being "used" or "new." Pretty much any book you buy at a store has probably been flipped through at least once or twice, but I feel guilty describing a paperback about horses that I'm trying to sell as "new" because I remember that in this one, at the last second, the vet realizes the test was a false positive and they don't have to put the horse down after all (!), and I did not obtain this information by osmosis.

I should also add, for those familiar with my typical book-destroying reading habits, that I read these so quickly that I didn't hardly flag the pages or break the spines AND it was before I had a purse so they were most likely stored safely on my nightstand when I wasn't devouring them into the wee hours of the morning.

Walking home down fifth ave with Pappa John's dessert pizza in tow makes me feel like novelty delivery persons of fantasy/yore. Would have given an unhealthy cinnamony slice to a homeless person if they asked but none did.

-- Post From My iPhone

Today I wore a dress to work (which is maybe remarkable enough to merit a post if its own) with a slightly worn out elastic waistband, such that even after I hiked it up to a flattering shortness it would inevitably slide down to tea length within the hour. And though this phenomenon was annoying in its own right, it also made me acutely aware of how insanely short everyone wore their shorts and skirts in high school, where the rule was that you hemline had to be longer than your finger tips when you held your arms at your side. Not only is finger-length so short as to attract all kinds of unsavory attention, but at fourteen (when, in my own defense, I was probably significantly less likely to attract unsavory attention) I regularly broke said rule, as did everyone else I knew, and it was a rare and salacious minority who was ever scolded.

I guess my point is twofold:
1) if I dressed like I did in ninth grade I would probably be sent to the proverbial principal's office/HR
2) if we weren't all so gawky we would have all been hussies


-- Post From My iPhone

Last night I had a dream that I won $2000 in some very minor gambling affair -- like I played roulette by accident or picked up a scratch card or something. In retrospect, this seems like the perfect amount: I could buy cowboy boots and a really nice digital camera (something I didn't even think I wanted...) and an oven thermometer and then put the rest in my savings and forget about it. This is pretty consistent with the mundane sort of dreams I usually have -- others have included picking out t-shirts or discovering new clothes in my closet -- because it's not enough money to actually change my life, but it would make things just the tiniest bit better. But, and I think this is critical, it is enough money that I'd have a little bit leftover, so I wouldn't have to feel bad about spending it because I'd still have some for my savings.

Annoyingly, if I weren't so plagued by that sort of fiscal responsibility, I actually could just dip into my savings for those cowboy boots and that digital camera, and an oven thermometer is a pretty negligible expense, but if I did I'd have nightmares about losing my job or realizing I owed my old landlord $2000 and I'm not at all sure it would be worth the guilt.

How many nights will I spend stuck in a cab at the corner of Flatbush and Tillary? Answer: as many times as we have shows on work nights between now and the completion of the offending construction project. Might be less frustrating, though probably the same time to take the Brooklyn bridge...

It's unacceptable to sleep in a cab, right?


-- Post From My iPhone

Things JFK has that the Zurich flughafen should have:
1) Walk left, stand right.
2) Ruthless commitment to the individualism of self check-in. If you cant use the machine? Too bad. Wait in the mile long check-in line. If you're in the bag drop line and you haven't checked in yet? Too bad, you have to wait in line again--the back drop doesn't instantly become a check-in counter just because you need it to be one. You picked the wrong line, you suffer the consequences.


-- Post From My iPhone

Day 5 in Zurich -- well, 4.5 really, as we spent the afternoon in Berne, after a morning of window shipping and a quick, slightly awkward visit to Cabaret Voltaire (in defense of the bored clerk on the Macbook, I did show up the instant it opened, or maybe even before it was properly opened, and the first pseudo-customer of the day tends to be a rude awakening).

The proximity of European cities (Berne is 50 minutes by train, Geneva is less than three hours, and Paris -- where we considered a too-ambitious day trip before settling on Geneva -- is 5-ish) makes it easier to understand how you could... say... conquer Poland in a little over a month.

Zurich is lovely and safe -- though in the words of Le Corbusier "The Swiss are clean, and industrious and to hell with them" -- but I'm excited to venture out to the more French-leaning portions. Not that my French is any better than my German, or my Swiss-German. I'm still pretty much stuck at "weiss wine" and "rote wine" and since I'd gotten used to saying "schoen" for "thank you" in Berlin and they don't say it here, I basically find myself mumbling some nonsense combination of "greutzi" ("hello" in Swiss-German), "grazi" ("thank you" in Italian), "merci" ("thank you" in French and Swiss-German) and "danke" ("thank you" in German and Swiss-German) to anyone who gives me something or does something for me. And since I probably also look deranged when I mumble it, I can't really even hope that body language will get my point across.

Things that Zurich has that New York should have:

1) Countdown to the arrival next tram/bus/train in all stations. Also countdown to the next 5 stations inside nearly all the trams/buses/trains.

2) Combination tattoo parlor/bike shop. Hipster in a can.

3) Sports chocolate. Also known as, a regular chocolate bar with raisins and hazelnuts and almonds. For those extra long hikes.

Kathleen had lots of mice to scan (no Labor Day for the Swiss, at least not today) and all the museums are closed because it's Monday (which does seem to be an international phenomenon) so I spent the day wandering around Switzerland -- including, but not limited to, a visit to the zoo and a quasi-planned nap on a bench in Bellevue*. Mostly I feel accomplished that I was able to navigate public transit to Kathleen's office and the zoo without getting lost, although clearly the above mentioned signage was pretty crucial to that endeavor.

*A plaza area by the lake, not an insane asylum.

Also -- my block is famous! http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/09/07/090907ta_talk_widdicombe

Started my pre-trip preparations by leaving my Visa in the Wachovia ATM by work. Oops. Earned myself a trip back to the office (or rather, the bank branch immediately below my office) to retrieve it on my day off -- fortunately I'm developing a close relationship with Wachovia-employee John, who is responsible for handling such matters and who recognizes my card because it has a photo booth sticker on it.

Then the red eye to Zurich with excellent Swiss Air snacks (tortellini and croissants) and an early morning arrival in Switzerland. The fact of being in another country is maybe not quite setting in, besides that all the subway stops are more unpronouncably named than Hoyt-Schermerhorn or Kosciusko. Bratwurst is delicious though and the proximity of lakes and mountains to the city center is a bit shocking. Nature and metropolis aren't supposed to co-exist.

As I exited the subway at Columbus Circle into the absolutely blinding light, the AM New York man was proclaiming that, for today only, he was giving away free sun shields ("they only look like newspapers!").

I wonder if anyone else realizes this man is a genius.

I also wonder if the editorial staff of AM, whoever they are, would appreciate this treatment of their work. On one hand, the paper's getting given away regardless and there's no way of forcing anyone to read it. On the other hand, it was probably not their life's ambition to decorate a sun shield. Then again, it probably also wasn't their life's ambition write for AM New York...

So I joined Twitter this afternoon, after a truly enormous (but not unprecedented -- I probably advocated in favor of CDs and Internet Explorer too) amount of hemming and hawing. The breakdown is most likely precipitated by having to defend holding out an average of once a week, as often as not to the same handful of people, while simultaneously becoming aware that the explanations sounded flimsy even to my own ears.

But the truly disturbing thing was that, upon loading my gmail contacts, a bunch of people I know pretty well had quietly joined. Of course the people I knew who talked about Twitter and worked at Google had accounts, but it turns out lots of other people did too. Like my best friend's mom.

Not only was I dragging my heels and a luddite and totally passe. But I was the only one.

Of course, given this realization, I've chosen to blog about it. Instead of, you know, tweeting.

Walking through Williamsburg in the evening makes me feel old and poor and ugly and under accessorized and over employed. People laze about in McCarren park with their significant others as if their laundry does itself and their scalps leak hair gel so they never have to worry about a strong wind disrupting their flawless neo-fascist side part.

Ah, to be young and pale and tattoed and to have a job that has you picnicking before sunset. Objectively, I guess I'm not that far, but how do you stay so pale when you're lounging in the sun all the time?

The most depressing sentence I've read in a while:
"I saw the best minds of my generation / accept jobs on the fringes of the entertainment industry." --Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man

There are certain things I'm discovering are a lot easier than I'd figured or been led to believe, like cooking turkey or making enough lasagna for 11 people. Likewise, I'm finding that certain things that had previously seemed straightforward, if not quite easy, are surprisingly difficult, like hanging pictures or setting up wireless Internet or getting a certified check. It seems to me that realizations like this characterize the transition from childhood to adulthood and that when you finally understand how hard everything is then you've officially grown up.

Two things about Michael Jackson's death have surprised me (besides, of course, the event itself):
1) the number of people who, perhaps in an attempt to feel safer, are professing that since bad things come in threes (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and MJ)... then what? No celebrities can die for another week or so? They always seem to trail off when they get to the punchline.
2) the apparent need to quietly ascribe the heart attack to some kind of drug use, as if fifty year old men can't just have a heart attack, especially if they're famous fifty year old men. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is most often professed by middle aged men who presumably take some comfort in the knowledge that they're not habitual drug users.

And so, it seems, everyone's feeling their own mortality pretty acutely this week.

Presently I am trapped in the lobby of my building, as our elevator is broken and we were apparently the only floor not prescient enough to demand a key that would allow us to access our apartment from the stairwell. Right now we feel pretty dumb. On the plus side, we're meeting several of our neighbors, many of whom are attractive and/or have cute dogs.

-- Post From My iPhone

I think part of what makes New York hard for newcomers to navigate is the question of give and take (which, if you're not attuned to the subtle machinations of angry mobs, feels mostly like take and take and take).

For instance, when you're on a super crowded subway car and you have to get off at the next stop, this seems like an obvious "take" scenario. You climb over that baby carriage, lean your hip into that elderly woman with the cane, and get yourself positioned by the door so -- God forbid -- you don't end up trapped in your seat as the train pulls away, whisking you off to Far Rockaway.

But, really, this is a rookie mistake.

This is a "give" scenario. And not just because shoving old ladies and leaping over baby carriages is frowned upon in polite society.

Because chances are it's rush hour and the train is crowded because you just passed Times Square and you're hurtling towards Columbus Circle where you absolutely must get off to make it to the office in time and this, combined with the distance to the next stop (125th street, aka way out of your way and 60 blocks from the office), makes you nervous and inclined to shove your way to the door. But odds are that 90% of the people on your train are in exactly the same situation because 90% of people on that train work in Midtown, not at 125th street. So your odds are 9 to 1 (and that's pessimistic) that you'll get off the train, bouyed by the shoving and jostling of the crowd.

I would say that this knowledge (predicated as it is on an understanding of the rush-hour popularity of one's subway stop, as well as the stops immediately before and after) would eliminate the vast majority of dirty looks given to hapless tourists by elderly women with canes and young mothers with baby carriages.

Lady Gaga is a more interesting performer/cultural figure on mute. The "Paparazzi" video is glamorous, provocative and decidedly not mainstream. She's slightly odd looking and is constantly in costume. She looks like the product of Andy Warhol and Un Chien Andalou and Dr. Evil.

And then her music is... meh. Catchy, but meh.

Then again, if her music was as exotic as her performance, probably no one would listen to it (myself included), which means no one would get to see the (honestly pretty awesome) video which she probably couldn't make because she wouldn't have the money, which means the total weirdness would actually be less, and maybe we should be happy to get anything at all.

Last Wednesday (I'm so behind the curve on this one), the Times ran this totally unnecessary trend piece about teenagers hugging so regularly that it merits remark and the incredibly dubious identification as a trend. Though I can't bring myself to read it (and am still half-convinced this was some deeply meta joke about the dubiousness of many trend pieces published by the illustrious paper), I have two reactions.

Reaction 1: 98% of teenagers are hugging because they want to touch each other, or at least they want to touch one specific person and if they hug everyone then they can give an extra special hug to that extra special lady or gentleman.

Reaction 2: The remaining 2% of teenagers are well on their way to becoming that person you know who is always way too friendly and intimate even though you barely remember their name (see: the close-talker, the cheek-kisser, the guy-who-grabs-at-your-necklace-while-talking-to-you-in-a-way-that-makes-you-think-he's-probably-just-looking-at-your-chest-or-gay-or-something, the person-who-grabs-at-your-side-fat-to-illustrate-how-much-skinnier-you-are-than-either-your-previous-self-or-themselves).

For as long as I can remember, I have been intrigued by people who seem to have finished hysterically crying only moments before stepping into public. Not simply a sad face, I'm talking about the saddest-girl-in-the-world face of someone whose boyfriend just broke up with her through BBM or whose prom date just tore his ACL at soccer practice but is going to try and tough it out regardless, meaning she can't find a new date.

But as I'm battling my first serious bout of hay fever and people keep asking me if I'm okay, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I've spent countless hours fixating on strangers, at least 50% of whom were probably just having a histamine reaction.

Due to a totally unexpected (and as far as I'm concerned unannounced) little government* project, my apartment is now about six blocks from a "beach." In Jersey shore terms this would increase it's value infinitely since previously it was probably five to ten miles from anything that could be called a beach. Maybe more, since I'm not even sure where the nearest so-called beach would be.

Pros:
It exists
It isn't full of tourists or NYU students or even people in general like every other sunbathing location in the city
There are two (2) Dunkin Donuts on the way
There seems to be a snack stand

Cons:
It will likely become super crowded once people realize it's here, tucked strangely behind the Express on pier 17
There's no clear precedent w/r/t wearing a bathing suit or laying down so I'm going to end up unevenly cooked
Even if one wanted to wear a bathing suit, the beach is right under a second story viewing deck, making it ripe for voyeurism and having things thrown at you
It's pretty small

All in all though, it will definitely suffice until global warming renders my street more literally beach front. At which point, I'll thank god I'm on the fifth floor.

*That's who does things like this, right? If it were private sector I'm guessing it would be the Lincoln Financial beach or the Gatorade beach or something. Is the Water Taxi public or private? Maybe they've branded it so sneakily I didn't even realize.

It's strange to me how quickly my aversion to plastic bags has sprung up. Like a year or more ago, I bought a fabric grocery bag but only to use as a casual purse that I couldn't find anything in because it's flimsy and clumsy and the pockets aren't differentiated because you're not supposed to be using it as a purse in the first place. And then now I'm eschewing plastic bags left and right, to the point that I'm wrecklessly denying bags to customers at my volunteer job. Like: "Sir, that bottle of Chaos already has a handle and it's pretty heavy so it would probably tear through the bag anyway so let's just skip that step, ok?"

And I don't even know where that fabric shopping bag went now that it could ascend to it's true calling.

Moving in New York is harder than finding a boyfriend.
1) You pretty much have to do it once a year. Even on the off chance that your current apartment(/boyfriend)'s quirks haven't driven you into the arms of another apartment(/boyfriend), your landlord* will probably realize he's not demanding enough of you raise the rent or kick you out or make you sign a two year lease or buy your apartment or something insane.
2) You pretty much have to make a year commitment. There is no such thing as an apartment one night stand (unless it's a sublet and you flee under cover of darkness, which is tricky and maybe almost as illegal as the fact that the person you're fleeing is subletting the apartment in the first place).
3) You can't do it drunk or at night. Realtors frown on this, I suspect.
4) Your friends will not help you (much) or offer support (much). Sometimes they'll even be too hungover to help you move, and you will have to accept this because moving is more miserable than first dates, by like a hundred-fold. And whereas most decent friends are willing to hear amusing dating anecdotes, you pretty much have to sleep with someone to get them to help carry your sofa.

On the plus side, it's way less sordid to pay someone to help you find an apartment. By like a hundred-fold.

*This analogy breaks down almost immediately, as I can't think of the boyfriend's landlord analog.
Nb. I'm writing this post and I'm still a full 2 and a half months from the end of my current lease. Very bad sign.

According to the trivia blurbs in our elevator at the office, the Spiderman movies grossed over $2.5billion. According to the stress tests, our banks need a lot of money, but less than we feared. But would as many people see Spiderman if they announced they were diverting the profits to TARP?

A few days ago I witnessed (and was nearly caught in the midst of) an interaction between two people that was so obviously counterproductive as to be almost unimaginable.

But I get ahead of myself.

You see, the Dunkin Donuts near my office, despite having truly awful coffee that's always burnt, is usually pretty crowded in the mornings, so they have a two line system where, theoretically, you walk in and pick whatever line seems shorter and once you get to the front of your line you order. And even though inevitably it seems like the other line is moving twice as fast and the moron paying in nickles is always in your line, it also feels like it's half your fault for picking the wrong one and besides you can't very well switch because theres now a whole line behind you.

But, on the fateful Tuesday, there wasn't really much of a line when I arrived so the three counter people were jockeying back and forth between the two lines and I ended up switching sides with the girl next two me and everything was fine and we were good and anyway coffee and donuts were coming to solve any problems that might have been lingering. And then the guy behind me, feeling entitled to go next since he'd arrived before the woman in the adjacent line, began to call his order to the cashier for the other line, only to be interrupted by the woman next to him (probably a regular) who believed that cashier belonged to her. Yelling and cursing ensued. Service stopped. I was thirty seconds later to work than I would have been otherwise because I was clinging to the counter to avoid getting involved.

Now I, of all people, understand that donuts are a serious matter and denying someone their coffee a capital offense, but it seems to me the aromas of powdered sugar and fry grease should engender a feeling of camraderie, a unity born from the knowledge that we're all about to do something terrible to our bodies because it feels good for a few seconds. The feeling of friendship I imagine bubbles up just before you're huffing a can of WD40 with the kid from down the street.

Moral of the story: I need to eat fewer donuts.

I don't know how you could live through a week like we've had in the Northeast and not believe in global warming. First it's 60 degrees out -- great! it's spring! -- then it's 50 and raining -- fine, whatever, April showers -- then it's 94 degrees outside and your roommates are turning on the air conditioning and it's hot when you wake up under the comforter and it's not July so why is this happening already. Oh, yeah, then it's going back down into the 50s tomorrow.

Even if you say it's the natural cycles of the universe, it's still, on a micro, local, I'm-sweating through-my-clothes-and-I-just-left-the-apartment kind of way, pretty bizarre.

Today I did something that made me feel like an adult, and a really old person, and a kind of young person, all at once.

I bought a subscription to the print edition of newspaper. This makes me feel like an adult, because since I'm no longer a dependent or a student, newspapers don't suddenly fall from the sky. And also because, now that they've stopped falling from the sky*, I suddenly have some desire to read them (on Sunday mornings, before I change out of my pajamas/what I wore out the night before, maybe with coffee). And then it makes me feel like a really old person, because I'm buying a print paper and also because I'm getting the Observer and my purchase was (at least in part) inspired by an article in the Times about how much-beloved editor Peter Kaplan is leaving, which means I clearly missed the boat on what everyone else thought was a substantial and wonderful period in the paper's history. And then it makes me feel young because, rather than thinking of it as paying for a service I needed, I kind of think paying for the print edition is like a charitable donation because I could totally read all the articles online at work except that I want print journalism to keep existing. Also, because I don't really have time to add more online publications to my repertoire. Also, because I subscribed to the Observer, not the Times, and because I did this since I know I don't have the attention span or the free time on weekday mornings to accomodate a daily.

Next stop: The Weekender.


*There is some nerd-relevant "make it rain" reference to be made here, perhaps.

A new poem

by the great David Kant.

What exactly they
want interms of
exchange, can artists
apply at large?

(c) 2009

Sexism is a funny thing. Not "ha ha" funny, but like... weird, funny.

Like, as a woman, I don't feel like I've been actively discriminated against personally, despite working in a male-dominated industry and a male-dominated aspect of that industry. But I definitely notice instances in which women are treated differently (like someone was just described as "always being pregnant" when she only has 2 kids, which isn't evil and nefarious, just not something you'd every say about a man... because men don't have babies...) and there are definitely instances of man time, when we have to look for our bosses because they've all disappeared together. But that's not evil and nefarious, just a little bit of a hassle. Like the fact that my computer is slow or the air conditioning turns off at quarter to six every night.

In my mind, because my office is predominantly young-ish and liberal-ish and unconventional[-ish], we'll be insulated from those nasty old school woes. But maybe that's a matter of yet? Hopefully not.

I read my first Twitter today. Mostly because a friend whose blog I read (and, for that matter, the only friend I have whose blog I'm consciously aware of) wrote a post that I'm vainly thinking was tangentially inspired by a conversation the two of us had while I cooked dinner, or washed dishes, or just banged a bunch of pots together to make it SEEM like I was cooking or washing dishes and also to make the conversation more difficult (banging pots:conversation::hurdles:sprinting).

And I'm kind of ... whatever ... about it. Then again, I still read novels for fun, so what do I know. It's hard to say whether I'm the early adopter sort. I have an iPhone and I'm still the only person I know who has a Kindle (and I stepped on my Kindle early enough in the whole phenomenon that they replaced it for free when I feigned ignorance about the weird line across its screen), but I also still have a Dell and blog quasi-begrudgingly as a stand in for a career in print news.

This is a belated rehash of a conversation I actually had last Saturday, but my excuse is that we (being me and my partner in crime/conversation) were too hungover and/or lazy and/or busy doing laundry to properly investigate this incredibly timely issue.

Which is... [drumroll please]

Double decker strollers.

While sipping lattes in the park by City Hall, we noticed not one, not two, but three (three!) young-ish, attractive men pushing children in double strollers. But not just any double strollers. Double strollers in which one child is in a hammock-like pouch over top of the other child (say, apartment style). The questions this reveals are endless (probably not). Like: How do you decide which child goes on top? The cute one? The one most likely to require your attentions? The one most likely to climb out of the stroller but be dissuaded by the height? Or the one less likely to climb out of the stroller and so less likely to be maimed by the fall from the greater height? Why is it only men who have these strollers? Why are they all young and attractive? Why did one of the men not even appear to have actual children in his stroller? Is it that much of an accessory?

This is how trend pieces are born.

Nb: I was concerned I wouldn't be able to find a picture of this strange beast, but actually the picture I've found is bizarrely perfect. It's taken in Brooklyn (which, though I don't live there, is part of New York, where I do live). It features a relatively attractive man. It's part of another blog post about a nice day (which last Saturday was, otherwise our coffee in the park would be a non-starter). AND I could totally have been that sloppily dressed girl on the right side because I WAS sloppily dressed on Saturday (although it wasn't warm enough for just a t-shirt, and my companion was not nearly as sloppy as the girl in the picture's).

There was a debate on the most recent episode of the Real World (my source for cogent cultural commentary) about whether the world is harder for little girls or little boys. Ultimately, it devolved into name calling and foot stamping, but there are definitely some things are more complicated if you're female.

Take dressing up, for instance -- if you never make an effort, a certain kind of desirable man will never notice you. You have to be Betty Draper to marry Don Draper, and even then he'll still cheat on you with nearly everyone woman who enters his office, even though John Hamm is guest starring on 30 Rock. Then again, his character seems to be unhinged -- maybe even more so than Liz, which is something -- which is a lesson to you: If ever you see a couple in which one partner is significantly more attractive than the other, that person is probably completely insane or totally unbearable.

BUT if you make too much of an effort, dress a little flashy one day, and then you'll attract the wrong kind of attention and be forced to live in a state of perpetual invasive awkwardness. Take for example today's adventure on the subway (of course, where else) when a generally jovial homeless man boarded the train and proceeded to declare that we were all beautiful white women (I was wearing sweats) but that his favorite was a averagely attractive but conspicuously dressed (short skirt and heels, she looked a little trashy but, again, I was wearing sweats) and then proceeded to spend the next two stops touting her charms to the rest of the passengers.

Moral of the story: Betty Draper would have been shamelessly catcalled on the subway. Liz Lemon would not. Because she is practical. But she only gets to date Don Draper if he's a basket case.

I think this whole blog-to-book thing is only the logical extension of music (and now, thanks to broadband internet, video) piracy. Everyone in the big ol' media establishment is looking for ways to "monetize"* content that users are increasingly obtaining -- and, as such, increasingly expecting -- for free. Why buy the iTunes single if you can download it from Napster/Limewire/a bit torrent/whatever the illegal downloading mechanism d'jour is? Why buy the DVD if the entire first season of 30 Rock is available from a weird Chinese website? (Answer: Because sometimes when you really want to see Liz Lemon and friends, the Chinese website doesn't load and you're left watching the same 30 second opening gag on repeat until it does. Also, it's illegal, and 30 Rock will get cancelled it we don't declare our loven with dollars and/or credit cards).

But those savvy publishers have found a way to get back at us (although not necessarily a way that supports the industries that suffer from illegal downloading... not that the publishing industry is exactly flush right now): Making consumers pay for content they could get for free just by clicking through old blog archives, because the ability to click through old blog archives doesn't make for a very good gag gift for your friend on her birthday.

*I believe that's the word. If not, I'm sure my extensive readership in the big ol' media establishment will let me know.

Fact: this blog is one zany family member and two weird medical maladies away from being exclusively about public transportation.

For instance, possible ideas for my next post included, "Why is it OK to drink conspicuously on Metro North (like they have a drink car) but it's against the law to drink even inconspicuously on the subway?" and "I feel simultaneously more sympathetic to and more annoyed by homeless people with dogs, because on one hand there's a cute dog that's probably not hooked on heroin that's hungry too and on the other hand, I don't get to have a dog because I don't have the space or the means to care for one, why did you think it was a good idea?"

But maybe this would actually be a good turn of events. Lots of popular blogs have themes (even that inexplicably popular blog about TD that appeals to maybe 300 people at most, if you assume everyone in TD enjoys reading blogs or that there are sufficient numbers of interested alumni to compensate) and considering I spend most of the day in an environment I can't blog about (and which, were it the subject of a blog, might not appeal to too many people given that most of the little dramas are very little and of the "you had to be there" sort) or in bed, public transit really is the source of most excitement in my life.

So in the near future, maybe you can look forward to a post about how public transport is a hard place to exist if you were raised to respect the opinions of others and cower when yelled at.

I feel like the New Yorker is disappointed in me.

Or rather, would be if it were, you know, sentient or animate or whatever. While certain people (read: my father, who almost bought me a subscription for Christmas before cleverly casing out my general indifference to its venerable pages) think we should get a long, I fear that my concerns are not its concerns, my discourse not its discourse, my preferred fiction not its preferred fiction (though we do share a surprising fondness for Sedaris). And, worse yet, despite my best efforts, I can't make it work between us, can't commit to a thorough analysis of geopolitics or discern the soon-to-be-big-time poems from the ones they throw in because Joni Mitchell wrote them. But I've resigned myself to this fact, and I do begrudgingly admire my peers who've secured jobs and internships and profiles within its glorious preference. For me, though, a weekly's just too much of a commitment, even if it were all cartoons.

This afternoon, while using the A/C platform of the Fulton street stop to get from the 4/5 platform to the side of the station that's directly under my apartment (convenience made manifest) I overheard someone playing the guitar and singing in a slightly Bruce Springsteen-esque voice. The first thing I noticed was that he wasn't half bad. I even entertained a whimsical daydream that this might be the kind of place one could possibly, if one were incredibly lucky, get a record deal. The second thing I noticed was that he was singing "Song for Dennis Brown" by the Mountain Goats. Which, with lyrics like "jets of contaminated blood will cloud the rivers and the lakes," is probably not a moneymaker when it comes to subway performances. But it got my attention. Although not my dollars (when I tried to give him a cheesy two thumbs up he didn't see and I felt awkward that maybe other people DID see and also he was kind of young and not broke looking so...)

This morning was something of a mess, at least in the public works department. This morning, in a hurry after hitting the snooze instead of popping up to go to the gym (because what morning do I ever pop out of bed?), I stepped aboard the C train and immediately found a seat (a seat!), only to realize seconds later that there was an eighteen or nineteen-year-old kid blocking the door and calling for a police officer. Fine. Whatever. A pain, a delay, but whatever. But then no police officer came. And it came to light that he was yelling because a woman no more than 5 feet tall had "punched" him in the back. And then she explained that it was only because he had been kicking her and wouldn't stop even after she repeatedly asked him. Then another woman joined the fray and announced that she had a job interview that she couldn't miss, then another man, seemingly calm and intent on conflict resolution, asked the woman to write down her name so that the young man could give it to the police upstairs and everything was starting to look up...

But then the kid was still half-heartedly calling for a police officer after receiving the woman's nameand the seemingly calm man announced that he was a corrections officer and that he was going to "lock up" the yelling kid if he didn't stop holding up the train, and then something must have gone horribly wrong very quickly because the next thing I knew the corrections officer had shoved the kid off the train and was more or less chasing him down the platform with the intent to inflict some manner of bodily harm and the two women (the initial assailant and the one with the job interview) were chasing after the corrections officer and telling him not to get himself in trouble.

And then eventually he got back on the train and the kid was nowhere to be found and everything resolved more or less as quickly and inexplicably as it had started.

Except:
Where were the MTA employees during all this?
For that matter, where were the police?
What if this was a slightly less ridiculous assault charge?
What if I was the assaulted party?

In the words of a very wise woman after the doors shut and we were on our way, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's only Tuesday."

At the ripe old age of 22 (newly ripe, like 22 and... [counts] 3 days), I think I'm finally falling apart. It's either that, or the winter, or seasonal affective disorder, or laziness, or a sinus infection. Whatever the cause, every day it's increasingly easier to justify an additional five minutes sleep, or taking the day off the gym, or falling asleep on the couch.

Did you, loyal readership (of one, most likely), know that you can get a brain abscess from an untreated sinus infection? Or maybe I'm allergic to my cat.

It's enough to tempt me towards tanning or alternative medicines, or incorporating lots of gingko into my diet. But then that shit is expensive and I'm not going to spend my money to have someone poke me with pins when I could poke myself with pins and while some might make the argument that doing it yourself doesn't work because you don't know how to do it, that is exactly my problem with the so-called professionals as well -- without licensing and FDA approval, what makes you an acupuncturist and me a civilian and the guy down the street a tattoo artist, huh? And this is why I haven't left work for an appointment with the acupuncturist (or the ENT, for that matter) yet, or ever.

As this recession creeps along, slowly cutting down the working masses until absolutely no one has a job anymore and we're all reduced to an elaborate barter system, it's starting to hit closer to home. While I believe I have a modicum of job security, given that they pay me nothing and I don't get benefits and am not an official employee to begin with, several of my friends with similarly entry-level jobs (though I'm pretty sure they have benefits because it's ridiculous that anyone doesn't have health insurance... Obama '08...) are beginning to see their co-workers picked off. One one hand, it makes the fact that you have a job (any job) feel kind of exciting. On the other hand, it completely dims the prospect of having a better job in the near future.

It seems, though, that we as a working class (term used loosely, of course) are developing little games to save off despair. For instance, a friend said that as people in his office were getting fired, other people tried excessively hard to make light of the situation while everyone else was avoiding eye contact and clutching their staplers like security blankets.

We've not been doing so much of that around here, but in order to reassure myself that I'm not going to be an assistant for the rest of my life, I've been taking some cues from my unemployed friends and pursuing informational interviews. In theory, these basically mean getting together with someone who has a job you want and talking to them about what it would be like, hypothetically, for you to have that job and what you'd need to do to get it if, hypothetically, there wasn't an iron clad hiring freeze in every industry you would even consider pursuing a job in. In practice, though, this really consists of emailing someone you would never have any reason to email (or, in some cases, whose email address you would never even have) and asking them out for a drink so you can meet them and hang out under the guise that you're only hanging out because the economy sucks whereas the real reason is that you want to hang out with them because you think they might be cool.

In other words, it's a platonic date with that cheerleader/football player from high school who you were always too scared to talk to.

Recently, I got to work too early with good intentions that were essentially squandered and thwarted.
Less recently, though, I got a tattoo, which I will write about in the free time I have as a result of my squandered and thwarted good intentions.

All in all, the tattoo has been a very positive, only moderately painful, process. It hurt about a 7 out of 10 during the process, and there was a point where three of us simultaneously mistook blood for unanticipated red ink, but the memory of it has completely worn off, such that I'm thinking of what I'd get as a second tattoo, which is more or less what a man in the shop said as soon as I entered and declared my desire to get a tattoo (specifically, he said, "They're like potato chips" and added, as I stared in confused silence, "once you have one you can't stop there." It seemed beside the point to tell him I don't like potato chips), but I digress.

Because,
The real remarkable thing about the tattoo is that... [drum roll please]
Apparently no one at work has noticed. Or, at the very least, absolutely no one has commented on it, unless I showed it to them and announced its presence.
Which means that either:
a) Everyone at my work is really unobservant.
b) Everyone has noticed, but because I'm so cool and rebellious by nature they assume I've always had it and they just never noticed before (aka, I am the kind of person who would have a tattoo, and was prior to actually acquiring the tattoo, so it's not been a major change in their eyes).
c) Everyone has noticed, but feels too awkward or horrified to bring it up (I'm hoping this isn't the case, and it seems unlikely since I was previously one of the only people in my department without one).

Also, the horseshoe is symmetrical in real life, but my arm is twisted in the photo so it looks off-kilter. I like to think it's dancing.

A wise person once said to me that being on break from college is like "a vacation to being fifteen." You live with your parents, which means you can't drink or smoke or make out with random strangers because you have no place to do it besides your car (which is I guess something different from being fifteen, except that you're now at a point in your life where it seems ridiculous to do any of those things in a car because you've gotten so used to doing them in your twin XL).

Now that I'm no longer in college, however, I'd like to submit for approval that having two weeks off from work for Christmas is like "a vacation to that week before classes start when everyone's just come back from break and you haven't seen eachother in a while and basically don't do anything besides eat and sleep and drink" (aka Camp Yale, for those who share that particular allegiance). Essentially this is the opposite of the "vacation to being fifteen" because you can drink and smoke and make out with random strangers because everyone has converged in New York and it doesn't matter that you don't have a car because you have an APARTMENT! (or a friend's floor, or a random stranger's floor, if you're trying to do the "make out with random strangers" thing).

Except the return to work is even more brutal than the start of classes because it's a return to something old, rather than something new and potentially exciting, and because having a job doesn't have the same interesting plot arc that classes have. With a job, you either have it and it's the same, or you don't have it and you either got fired or promoted, which is more of a steep cliff than an arc.