March 2011
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Problem/Solution
Problem: Many of the greatest culinary options (including but not limited to: chicken nuggets, an entire loaf of bread by itself, 6 to 7 churros, etc) available to an office worker in Midtown Manhattan are available at inhospitable locations. Namely: at Wendy’s, at McDonald’s, from food carts, in the Duane Reade ice cream aisle. These disgustingly fulfilling foods are sold in places...
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Things That Could Reasonably Be Considered Game...
Moving to New York
Breaking up with my first serious boyfriend
Getting my first job in publishing
Discovering that the tampons in the ladies’ room at my office are free
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“Text me when Kylie gets here.”
– Matt, after we saw Craig Finn at the Mountain Goats concert.
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I would like to sincerely apologize for not titling my last post “Beauty is in the Eyebrows of the Beholder.” That was a grave oversight.
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“The way we think of progress is that it heads in one direction, and I think...”
– John Darnielle, to Mother Jones.
“Things do go backwards; things go all sorts of directions.”
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THE THICK OF IT IS BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK →
Best news OF EVER.
Initial Concern
I just found out that the initials CSP after a person’s name indicate that he or she is a Certified Speaking Professional, certified by the National Speakers Association (which is most definitely not that NSA). Unlike CPA or PhD or any of the other terms that people have heard of and that mean something, this abbreviation is very appealing to me because it means that I should be able to make...
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Lately I’ve frequently found myself looking at my computer or picking up my iPhone, staring at the device emptily, and then realizing that I just don’t want any of the information inside.
But this e-fatigue did not stop me from emailing the following stories to friends this morning: Whoopi: I Smoked WEED Before My Oscar Speech! and I Give My Girl, 8, Botox for Pageant.
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This morning while I was catching up on the starred items in my Google Reader, my iPad experienced a telling glitch: every video in every post was coming up as the Rebecca Black “Friday” video, regardless of what video was supposed to be in its place. At first I thought it was just the wrong screen shot, but every time I hit play I was met with the same “eee-oo-ooo.” Clips...
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Where do you go to be alone?
Stiller: The other room.
Meara: He goes to swim at the JCC. Where do you go to be alone, Jerr?
Stiller: I’m never alone.
Meara: He doesn’t like to be alone.
Stiller: I don’t like to be alone. I’m never alone. But I walk, I play music in my headphones.
Meara: And you write.
Stiller: I write. It’s kind of like, what is being alone? You want to be alone but you don’t want to be alone — you’re caught up in two of these things. Without Anne being there, talking to me in some way, I would feel very lonely
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It is the nicest day ever ever ever ever outside.
Today at lunch Daniel and I sat outside and saw two red-headed twin ladies walking very fast. One had two fountain sodas, one in each hand, and the other had two cell phones, one to each ear. But once in Penn Station Matt and I saw two elderly twin ladies in matching sweatsuits eating pizza, which is very hard to beat.
Then Daniel and I played a game called “name the emotion,” where...
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#itsaprocess
I am sitting at a desk at a job I have wanted for a very long time and weighing the pros and cons of various grief responses (crying, digging paperclips into the palm of my hand, crying under my desk, throwing up quietly, crying standing on my desk, playing with the tape dispenser until it’s time to go home, crying while laying in the hallway, laying my face on my desk and then rolling my...
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“Maybe you could be a freelance search engine!”
– Matt, on my prospects.
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Did you know a group of widows is called an...
COLLECTIVE NOUNS ARE FUN. Here is a “mason”* of collective nouns:
A neverthriving of jugglers
A worship of writers
A riches of matrons
A glozing of taverners
A herd of harlots
A conflagration of arsonists
A promise of barmen
A goring of butchers
A sneer of butlers
A shrivel of critics
A disguising of tailors
Hey, guys, things are getting tense in here: why don’t we...
The Ghosts of Christmas Past Wear...
Yesterday evening on the F Train I stood next to a group of young women who, between 2nd Ave and Carroll St, revealed themselves to be the both NYU sophomores and the platonic ideal(s) of NYU sophomores. They were semi-terrible, semi-awwwdorable, but really mostly terrible reminders of how I was when I first came to the city. Everything they said was confused and world-weary and bewildered and...
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These are stray thoughts, and they are for you.
The most masochistic thing I’ve done today, a day filled with masochistic things (sleeping on my own pull out couch, existing in the rain, not eating the brownies for breakfast, sitting next to a leaner on the subway), is read Aylet Waldman’s Twitter. More importantly, I read the Twitters of the women who tweet at her. There’s nothing to say because it’s exactly what you...
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I paint-penned stars on my cellphone case and they’re chipping off, leaving tiny, dirty, colorful shards all over my desk.
A short compendium of people who have called me...
Times my direct line rings per workweek: 6
Times the person on the other end of my direct line is looking for me per workweek: 1
Here is a collection of lost souls that I failed to help, so far:
A German reporter who wanted to ask about David Foster Wallace.
A man who wanted to track down someone who had blurbed one of our books because had known the blurber personally a very long time ago,...
“And I think there are a lot of really smart people who would consider themselves...”
– Andy Cohen, on the Real Housewives series.
Splitsider: Fran Drescher And Gay Ex-Husband Write... →
In the CNN.com/SHOWBIZ of my heart, this will be the lead story AND the most emailed story forever and ever. I hope and pray they have flashbacks to the set of The Nanny; this could be everything Studio 60 never was.
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mammalingo asked: I'm glad I found your tumblr. It was the featured #lol that did it for me. Anyway, you're funny. Please don't let this go to your head. It will make me regret writing this incredibly personal fan letter.
NYTimes: The Least Happy Person in America →
“Statistically speaking, the least happy American would be a 4’10”, middle-aged Muslim woman without children who is separated from her husband and earns under $12,000 a year. She’s also an unemployed manufacturing worker in West Virginia.”
Why stop there? I’m sure we could get much more specific: She had three of her fingers chopped off in an accident at the plant, and her...
Iowa Woman Jailed For Thinking About Abortion →
ljm:
stfuconservatives:
Submitted by ironchefbatali: “I wish that headline was from The Onion, but it’s not. Apparently the gallant defenders of fetuses everywhere have decided that policing thoughts is the next best way to trample on women’s rights protect life.”
SO SCARY.
HOW is there a new one of these seemingly every day?
