7/25/05
I had every intention of going to work today. I just discovered last week that I had three unused floating holidays, a birthday being a perfect candidate for taking a day off. But I already had a summer Friday off last week and a three-day run seemed sufficient. What was I thinking? This morning I couldn’t bear to get up and out the door. Is this what 33 will be about? My throat hurt, I was in a pool of sweat (ok, I’m exaggerating, but my face was damp—my own fault for not running air conditioning at night), I could hear thunder (maybe it was the BQE) building up outside and I felt like I’d been punched lightly all over, kind of beat up and haggard (I expect my Sundays to be a bit rough after drinking until 4am on a Saturday, but you’d think that by Monday all would be relatively well again. This had better not be what 33 is about. In my twenties I’d scoff at the slightly older folks who’s tell me “I just can’t drink like I used to.” Please, what babies. I also wouldn’t take doctors seriously who’d warn about smoking while taking birth control pills. As you may know, women over 35, and ideally women of all ages, are vigorously advised not to combine the two. And if you already have high blood pressure then you’re kind of fucking retarded for persisting. Heck, I’ve still got two years). I don’t know if I was truly sick or wanted to be sicker than I actually was so I could justify staying home on my birthday. No matter, it had to be done. It was nice to wake to email birthday greetings from Clairol (“We’re wishing you a COLORWONDERFUL celebration”) and Wine.com, despite never having ordered a single thing from either company online. Tonight James is taking me out to Yumcha, which seems like the kind of place I would be into, despite (or in spite of) garnering only a single star from the NY Times. Which reminds me of how much I admire crazy funny and weirdly sharp writing by women like the Bruni Digest’s author, and how rarely this genre gets the attention of all the horrible sex in the city style blogs that the media (and apparently rabid female readers who live everywhere except NYC) pisses itself over. At my party Sat. night, a friend asked if I’d seen the recent hideousness in the NY Times. Oh, had I, and repulsion barely scratches the surface. It’s the same junk as that fish bicycle woman who wrote the first in a newish series of Modern Love columns, which isn’t available for free anymore. In the late ‘90s we used refer to these ladies as ‘”browns,” like the dullest, mediocrity possible. They always have long hair, they care about designer labels, they look close to 40 but are actually late 20s, they frequently have media-tinged jobs, and have a false sense of importance. They’re not quite middle America boring, but big city gals who think they’re at the pinnacle of breezy worldliness when they’re just showing how hopelessly blah they truly are. But the browns are winning, the browns are getting book deals, browns also get guys you might even be interested in (this woman, while not directly involved in my social circle, has permeated friends of friends’ existences). It’s not right, and it needs to be stopped. You know, I could be concerned how to do amazing things and stop being a bum during my thirty-third year of life (uh, change comes from within, right?) but it’s so much more fun to fixate on external nuisances that really have nothing at all to do with me.

7/20/05
I know the Martha Stewart interview in the August Vanity Fair is old hat, but I’m not one of those topical, current commentary bloggers. People seemed distressed that she had mentioned that she knew how to take her ankle bracelet monitor off because she’d looked it up on the internet (I swear, she’s probably one of those 50+ folks who refer to computers and their ilk as “machines.” As in “go get my email off the machine.” It’s a step up from internets, I suppose). I was baffled yet highly amused by her suggestion for a jaunty catch phrase to indicate that a contestant has been fired on her upcoming reality show. “I would never say, ‘You’re fired,’ so we are trying to come up with other ways to say it. For instance, if someone is from Idaho, I could say ‘You’re back in Boise for apple-picking time.’” (And I had naively thought that Tommy Hilfiger’s half-hearted “You’re out of style” admonishment had reached a laughable pinnacle.) Boise? Reality show contestants are never from Idaho (oh, I take that back, there was that guy from The Apprentice’s first season [only the last two seasons are on the website] who did that country boy shtick and had an drawl. People from the NW don’t have accents, and while rural in parts, it’s not quintessential country. But there’s so much you can do with regional symbols. “You’re back in the Everglades for manatee petting season,” or “You’re back in Providence for coffee milk time.” It’s probably not as easy as it sounds to come up with these witticisms. Not everyone is from distinctive environs. Like if someone was from Sterling, CO you might not instantly know how to craft a cutting quip. I could totally help. I’d love to research city specific one-liners, though admittedly, it wouldn’t be easy working sugar beets into your send off. I mean, you could totally say, "You're back in Sterling for sugar beet time," but most viewers would have no idea what you were on about. And that would be the beauty of it.

7/15/05
While I’m glad that no one was crushed to death by that uptown building collapse yesterday, I’m afraid that baby safe in its stroller side story is only going to justify all those hideous SUV prams being pushed all over the city. You never know when a structure might implode on your infant, after all. The actual make of this monstrosity is the Urban Double Mountain Buggy, a.k.a. the old mom with money who can’t conceive naturally model. Speaking of “littlest victims,” Sugar Bush Squirrel could stand to be rescued too. This morning I rediscovered this old bookmark where a scary lady dresses her pet squirrel up in crazy outfits. It’s quite timely. She already has the squirrel posing as a rescue worker who has found a suspicious bag in London. I only wonder where you get a miniature British style phone booth on short notice. I do like how Sugar Bush hasn’t been gender stereotyped, despite being a female. She plays both groom and bride, soldier and nurse. One of the best parts of the site is where you can vote and nominate what you want Sugar Bush to dress up like next. Suggestions totally run the gamut, from occupations: auto mechanic and stripper to ethnic pride: a Scotsman and Indian National Costume to the oddly specific: Saddam Hussein (when he was captured), John Frusciante (guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Thomas Pynchon (the reclusive author). I don’t know if the parentheses are from voters or are the webmaster’s annotations. Me, I’d like to see Sugar Bush as Jonathan Antin or maybe Fat Nick Minucci.

7/14/05
I don’t know if it’s the train I ride, and I’m definitely not complaining, but I don’t see as many panhandlers/ kids selling candy/doo wop singers/saxophone players/battery salesmen as I used to. When I rode the L and the M it seemed way more rampant than now on the F (and W before that). But the F still has its resident battery hawker. I can’t quote his exact spiel because I tend to tune it out, and because I’m horrible with recreating dialogue (I’m convinced that if I had a better ear for conversation and was more adept at capturing it in type that I would be a much better writer. Show don’t tell, duh. I’m bad at showing and just like to tell everything). I’m not sure if the guy is a little slow mentally, but he has thick glasses and an odd slow singsong delivery where the words stick in the back of his throat. I felt kind of bad for him the other day because he wasn’t getting any business at all. Even though I think the average consumer is wary of the $1 batteries deal (Where do they come from? How do you know they even work?) there used to be a brave or desperate soul or two who’d want them. But lately, total cold shoulders. I attribute the lessening need for double A alkaline batteries to the ridiculous popularity of iPods. This has New York Times City Section written all over it (I was dismayed to see a piece in last Sunday’s section on The Container Store. I had just been to the NJ location [I was not on purposely present at the Manhattan location’s opening last year, and it scared me away from there for life] the day before and had plenty to say about it, but it’s not the New York Times would be interested in my musings. How does one get paid to write about the freakin’ Container Store in a major daily anyway? It appears that you have to have a novel you are promoting for your opinion on chain stores to be interesting. Hmm, and she’s having a reading in a couple weeks in my neighborhood [all writers live in Brooklyn, though specifically Park Slope, didn’t you know?] ha, maybe I’ll peek in the door on my way home from work because I want to see what someone looks like who writes about The Container Store in the New York Times. Ok, it’s not technically an opinion piece, it includes reporting and she gets revealing anecdotes and quotes from shoppers, which is the part I find difficult about journalism because I’m not good at eliciting sources [though in soft, non-news articles like these I’m convinced that writers just use friends and acquaintances, you notice her quotes come from a 33-year-old writer and 34-year-old editor, her demographic, most likely]) A noble literary portrait could be painted of this dying breed. Oh, the clashing of cultures in our melting pot. High-low, the democratization of once exclusive devices. What does the future hold for analog peddlers in a digital world? Er, or something like that. If I actually felt compelled to talk to strangers, glean insights and write about it. Oh, but my point—yesterday this battery salesguy got on and I felt like cringing because no one wants his wares. But then at the last minute, the girl leaning over against my seat, positioned at the door (the worst combo, if you ask me—a door blocker and fat back oozer. You don’t have to be pudgy to be back fat oozer, you know, they lean up on the side seat and if you’re lucky enough to be sitting there you get a back or backpack in the face. I like that the newer trains have bars blocking this offense) wanted a battery. My heart lifted, but my happiness waned as the girl started futilely rifling through her bag for money. It turned out she didn’t have any on her, and at least it seemed that she felt bad for calling him over for nothing and apologized. I was getting stressed out just sitting millimeters from the scene. How would it play out? Humiliatingly, I feared. But the battery guy told her she could just have the pack of batteries anyway and that she could pay him if she saw him again, which wasn’t what I was expecting. Yeah, it’s cheesy to find these interactions uplifting. I wasn’t exactly uplifted, and the battery guy didn’t even make a sale, which is why I felt bad in the first place, but maybe he’s not totally obsolete. Battery guy is adaptable.

7/12/05
There’s no less attractive combo than surly and dull (well, maybe dumb and dumber), and I think that’s been me the past few days--angry and irritable but too full of ennui to do anything about it. And I don’t even know why I’m so ire-filled yet bored, so that’s also why I can’t do anything about it. Even though August seems like the lamest month (a 31 day chunk with no holidays?), I think July might be more doldrum inducing. And I should be happy because I get two summer Fridays off work and a birthday. On second thought, I’ll take back the latter because birthdays always end up sucking, just like New Year’s Eves and Fourth of Julys do too. Total letdown events. This morning a pregnant woman got on the subway at my stop, which is hardly unusual considering almost every female of child bearing age (and plenty who are not) in Carroll Gardens is with child. She had the quintessential look down, well, at least the no make up, natural fibers, flowing prematurely gray locks (as I’ve said, in my twenties I thought this was kind of cool, but now surrounded by women of a similar age who seem to revel in their resoluteness against hair dye I’m all about coloring my hair. Salt and pepper boho chic just doesn’t do it for me) trifecta. She was very tall and bony with strong, i.e. large features (the kind that walk the line between handsome and witchy), probably younger than me since everyone I think is thirty-ish always turns out to be about five years younger. No one would give her a seat, which wasn’t my concern since I was standing too. I was irrationally irritated by her existence. I kept watching to see if she’d take her forced standing in stride or make a fuss (my favorite being the well dressed, model looking [meaning so tall and thin there was hardly even lump in her mid region] biracial woman who loudly shrieked “I’m pregnant” into a row of seated passengers until one was eventually scared onto his feet). She pulled out an oriental fan and started waving it around her face. I’m not sure if this was out of genuine hotness (I was sweating, but then, I’m always burning up on my morning commute. Yesterday was the first day like ever where I didn’t perspire to death. I hear the humidity was usually low, i.e. normal for the rest of the country) or to draw attention. She got a seat at the next stop and I forgot about her…until Delancey St. when her doppelganger got on. This woman, accompanied by an African man (meaning from the African continent, which I’m only gleaning from his accent) had the exact same build and look, minus the fetal bulge and old lady hair. She caught my attention because she was wearing this loose tunic thing with giant armholes and no bra, so I could see her entire tiny left tit without even trying. I understand how A and small B cups might not feel the need to wear a bra, that’s fine, but you might want to consider some sort of layer between your hemp blouses and the air. (Recently, Aunt Sassy from The Comeback’s catchphrase “I don’t need to see that” said in her horrible wavery whiney voice keeps popping into my head. I don’t think anyone watches that show, so that line is likely unfunny, and perhaps even so to regular viewers.) I was like, “those two women are total peas in a (soybean) pod” when the bare breasted Manhattan one started waving at the gangly Brooklyn one, and it was completely apparent they were sisters. I don’t think they were twins, but if Mary Kate and Ashley can resemble each other like they do without being identical, who’s to say? I really don’t know why the urban hippy twins freaked me out, but I couldn’t stop staring at them for the rest of my ride. Maybe it’s just novel to me, the concept of family members living in the same city, a big city, and running into each other on the same subway car. Maybe it happens every morning and they’re extremely punctual and routine-ized (that’s one baffler about NYC, I always leave at the same time and stand at the same spot on the subway platform, but I hardly ever see the same people. Maybe one or two faces will seem familiar, but not every day).

7/8/05
Maybe it’s the slowness of summer, but I got on this inexplicable nostalgia rampage the other day. I was reading my own old crap and got caught up this headline “Zine publisher through with 'E.T.' star” that I’d mentioned somewhere at some point, probably when it was written in ’97. I’d completely forgotten about this guy writing an article and me in the San Antonio Express-News. I don’t recall ever getting a copy of it, but he must’ve sent me the text at the time. Working in a library so very rarely has any perks, that’s why I got so excited about having access to subscription news databases, and for once not having to search Adweek or Beverage World. Tracking this article down was a serious pain in the ass, too. The databases that were supposed to have ‘90s San Antonio Express-News were all missing this particular date. I (well, not me exactly) had to end up paying $2.95 to get the damn thing, but it was so worth it. In the late ‘90s I had the overwhelming feeling that good things were going to happen to me (a sensation I haven’t experienced in eons). I think that’s why I wasn’t freaked out to randomly move across country. But things are cyclical, and as we hit the mid decade mark (was July 1 mid decade? Maybe not technically, down to the nitpicky date, but colloquially it should be) I think some goodness might be brewing up again. The next five years are so totally going to kick ass in ways I don’t even know yet. I’m serious.

7/7/05
It’s strange how when you do something completely random like eating a new cuisine in a neighborhood you never frequent, in this case Staten Island Sri Lankan, that the same week the NY Times runs a review of the same thing. They went to New Sunshine, and I tried New Asha, but it’s odd especially since neither of these places are new and the Times doesn’t usually write up restaurants that have been around unless they’re a classic. Speaking of food (which I often am), there’s a new minor (very minor, to be honest) bee in my bonnet. A few months ago it was that Rodney Rotham guy who wrote that memoir Early Bird about being 28 and living in a Florida retirement community. And then he was everywhere with articles in men’s magazines, all over TV and part of a CNN panel discussion about retirement. They guy was a David Letterman writer, he’s not an economist or financial advisor. Last I heard a TV show based on this book was in the works. For the record, this is the same guy who in the early ‘00s got into trouble with his New Yorker piece “My Fake Job” where he pretends to work at a dot com company and fudged a lot of facts for comic effect. Now in the past week, I feel like I’ve read about the guy Tucker Shaw, who took photos of everything he ate for a year and published a book illustrating his tasty exploits, a million times. Is this what publicists are paid for? Permeating the world with this genre of humans (frequently male) that makes me nuts. What I’m most fascinated by is how these stunts come to pass (Mr. Shaw had a friend who was friends with Sam Sifton, the editor at the time of the NY Times’s Dining section [now he’s Culture Editor] who gave his photos a plug and then apparently that press was enough to get an agent’s attention. Who knew?). As you know, there are a shitload of people who get off on photographing their meals (and yes, it dismays me for no substantial reason) but it’s not like anyone is handing out book deals to these folks. I too could go live in a nursing home, and even detail the experience in writing, but it’d doubtful some literary agent would be salivating over my humorous memoir. What I need is a really inane obvious idea…ok, I’ve got plenty of those. Now I just need to line up a slew of friends of friends in powerful media positions to sway with my hilarious shtick.

7/5/05
Nothing terribly remarkable transpired over the holiday weekend, but I’m not complaining. I saw Batman Begins and found The Scarecrow to be strangely attractive, then realized later that it was Cillian Murphy, who is a pretty good looking guy. Why wouldn’t he make a handsome villain? Maybe I’m in some weird hormonal phase (I really hate the idea of things like nature, raised estrogen levels, ovulation, etc. affecting perception) but I also thought Christian Bale was mildly attractive. That one is weird because he has such a man body (yeah, I know he was recently at the opposite end of the spectrum in The Machinist), you know, like a big back and shoulders. I, and friends, have referred to that type of male as “baby got back,” and not necessarily as a compliment since we all tend to go for the ectomorphs. It’s unsettling to wake up next to some random guy and there’s this massive back lying in the bed. I helped paint one of our living room walls Crushed Cumin, which is a very yellowy green, not brown like cumin (it was a real toss up between that and Greek Tapanade, which was also a green despite most tapanades I’m familiar with being sort of dark brown—love the food paint names, though). I ate Sri Lankan food on Staten Island at New Asha Café. I did absolutely nothing Fourth of July-ish until the very last minute when James talked me into going outside where we actually had a pretty decent view of the midtown fireworks, despite being physically closer to the downtown ones. Despite today’s NY Times piece on how illegal fireworks (I didn’t realize that all fireworks are illegal in NYC, though I’m glad they are because people are really freaking stupid and careless. You can’t even buy sparklers in the city, which is fine by me because I wouldn’t trust nearby grade schoolers with even those). seem to be on the rise, but not in gentrified neighborhoods, our block was teeming with out of control blasts and sparks. I think it’s because we’re right across from a school yard and the BQE so people don’t treat it like a residential area. Kids were setting crap off over the BQE foot bridges and running, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it was either that activity or someone actually tossing something off the overpass that set a car on fire, the big excitement of the evening. When I stepped outside I could see traffic was completely stopped on the BQE and there were big plumes of smoke billowing from the highway. As we got closer, we could see that a car had just burst into flames along the shoulder (I’m hoping the driver was out at this point—there was a guy walking on the edge of the expressway, but I couldn’t tell if he was the car’s owner or just some wandering freak). In seconds, it was a total fireball. Everyone was screaming and totally not paying attention to the fireworks behind us. Teens were jumping around and yelling, the mob (including myself) obviously wanted to the see the vehicle explode like on TV. But it was kind of scary because some stupid bold cars insisted on bolting past the flame engulfed car. I was waiting for a darting taxi to catch on fire too. Sensible drivers were jam packed a good ¼ mile down the lane. It burned for at least five minutes before any fire trucks appeared, but it just raged and never blew up, no climax. I’m so disillusioned with movies and TV now, cars don’t explode in mere seconds, or even minutes. I was genuinely excited to see that Shasta, the missing Idaho girl was found this weekend. You thought I was being flip because I was amused by their names (and it gets better, there are/were two other brothers: Vance and Slade) but I’ve been fixated on this story because it’s so bizarre and no one seemed to remember it, especially since the Natalie Holliway thing has taken over the airwaves. I just didn’t think the kids were dead (though now it appears the other brother Dylan, probably is). It’s one of those weirdo west coast stories, it kind of reminds of the Elizabeth Smart tale. In the rest of the country, girls go missing and it’s pretty obvious, they’ve been abducted by a sex offender and end up dead. But in Idaho and Utah, they don’t die and turn up right in plain sight, in the city where they were originally kidnapped from. And the details are twisted, it’s not just run of the mill ex-con crime. Brian David Mitchell is a total kook. This current three-named kidnapper Joseph Edward Duncan is also a piece of work (huh, I was going to link to his resume, but North Dakota State Univ. has taken it down in the last hour. According to it, he like doing Karate for the exercize [sic]. But if you move fast, you will still be able to read his creepy, eerie blog, which has entries after the kidnapping occurred). The guy spent fourteen years in jail after raping a teenage boy at gunpoint when he was also a teen (in Tacoma—NW, why are you so fucked up?), now he's very NAMBLA. I totally don’t get this story, like did the killing of the three family members have anything to do with kidnapping the two younger children? Was it a drug deal gone bad like originally thought or was it some demented ploy to get the kids? Why would a killer want little kids, it doesn’t make sense. Are the two crimes weirdly unrelated, like somehow this sex offender ended up with the children but wasn’t involved in the original murders. I’m completely obsessed with this story, the news sites need to update their reports because I’ve already exhausted all the online sources.

7/1/05
I’ve been fixating on this job posting for an Information Scientist a.k.a. librarian at the Thailand Creative & Design Center. Nowhere in the ad does it say you need to be bilingual, but I can’t imagine that a Thai resident with a master’s degree wouldn’t speak English, so I don’t see how an American would be a preferable candidate. Realistically, I don’t see how I would actually get either of the jobs (they’re hiring two librarians). I do have an art degree and “excellent command of English and IT literacy” but I’m not much of a project manager, policy maker. “The demonstrated ability to mentor and motivate staff in a team-based environment that supports the goals of a learning organization” isn’t something I naturally excel in. But 80,000 Baht (approx. $2,000) a month isn’t shabby for Bangkok. Heck, I take home a whopping $200 more a month than that in NYC, which is sadder than sad. James insists that I’d hate it, but that’s just because he’s a baby who doesn’t like change. I moved here randomly, not really knowing anyone and without any job (oh boy, and look at me now), and fucking hated it. How could Bangkok be any worse? Of course, there’s the little matter of language barrier (people always say that it’s not a big deal in big cities, but we had countless communication troubles in Bangkok. It’s one thing to not realize you’re eating a chicken heart skewer until after biting in, and another to end up in the middle of nowhere unable to get the cab driver to understand where you’re trying to go. Grilled innards are better than getting lost). But it’s not like NYC doesn’t pose its own wordy problems. Hearing phrases like “standing on line” and calling coffee with lots of milk and sugar “regular” still make my ears bleed. (I just got made fun of at work for saying bark dust, my favorite Oregon colloquialism that I didn’t even realize was regional until a few years ago. I instigated the whole conversation because the person who sits behind me was using the term “tree lawn” to describe the patch of grass at the edge of a curb, between the sidewalk and street, which was bizarre to me, but apparently not made up.) Well, one downside to living in Thailand would be not getting the 4th of July three-and-a-half-day (we get out at 1pm today, only 42 minutes to go) weekend. Yeah, I’d better give this some serious consideration.