This HBO Tsunami movie is making wish I were in Thailand ... can't be right. Regardless, does anyone want to go to Thailand?

erased a massive post ctaloguing all the different things people call "crazy"

Maybe you're perfect. Find out today!

I can’t tell you which historical lunatic you are or measure out aspects of your personality on different colored meters (you know when that test kept asking if I liked adventure and I kept answering “strongly agree” – that’s probably how I came out so adventurous on the adventurous scale at the end!)but I have formulated this personality test for you:

Pick one:

1. A. Whole Milk B. Half and Half

2. A. Tea B. Coffee

3. A. Jim Jarmusch B. Martin Scorcese

4. A. Sexy B. Not sexy

5. A. Chicago B. New York


Did you get 1.A 2.B 3.B 4.A 5.B? If so, congratulations. Has anyone told you lately that you are one fantastic great-looking guy/girl?

Anything else, Sorry, you’re flawed.

I can probably make a few more of these today. I have nothing else to do at work. :)

Public Service Announcement

If we do it, afterwards, the next time we talk, be it moments later or on the phone hours or days later, please try not to use the phrase "you" or "we" "can..." as in "We can share a cab...." or "You can come to this party with me..."

I know you don't mean a thing by it. You feel awkward. You feel insecure. You think I feel awkward. You think I feel insecure. All these things at once. All these and you're right, or close enough, and people don't know the rules, there're no rules. I know. But I'm a hypersensitive person, a proud egotistical person, and if I'm having a less than stellar day and you say this "can" stuff, then in my head I'll go "Oh CAN I? You know what? Let's call the whole thing off. Don't do me any favors." And in real life I'll go "Ummm... I don't know. I , uh... it's uh... I don't know. Maybe it's... no..."

I'll get back to you, possible sex partners at large, when I know what you should do or say. (Well, I'd just love "Would you.... blah blah blah..." but you'll never remember that.) Again, I know you're just doing your best and you've got your pride too.

Part 2... this is more complicated...
If you're hot and single and you think I want you (You should be able to tell if I go "HEY!" every time I unexpectedly see you) would you please push me up against a wall when no one is around and just go for it? Sure, when it's over I might get a little girl-weird, but this is no reason not to do this wall-push thing. You think I haven't had to work out a little "that was just lust... fleeting... you can't hold on to it" before? I have. Don't ask me to move in with you. Just push me against the wall and pull on my collar, buttons, and just be hot. I'm only 26.

I'll recind this once I've thought it over a little better.

XO

Principles

It's rough. The constant stream of stimulus in the elevator, echoing my elective New York 1 morning-time constant stream of stimulus, just told me they've put up the first beam of The Freedom Tower today. Four guys-on-the-street on New York One felt like me that it's time, we all want something there.

I can't wait for a new enormous tower. The only thing is the name right? The miracle of living in the USA, is that unquestionably the USA will replace the twin towers and with an awe-ing new structure. Capitalism is about the consistent miracle. What we can do, build, is without limit; as long as we want it, there'll be MBAs to make it happen. The money is there. The labor is there. New York's unananimous desire will a tower make. This like the belief of the ancient Egyptians made pyramids.

It's just that we should call it The Capitalism tower. Or The Money Tower. I'm not saying I don't want it. I'm bummed that it won't be done til 2011. I just think we should get behind what we're getting behind in a precise way. Power Tower has a ring.

But it's all over for hating hypocrisy. I don't think there's a choice anymore. It's actually impossible not to ride the wave, be as one with the surrounding dominant culture, for me anyway. I talk about celebrities all day long. That's all we freaking talk about at work. All day long wondering if in their circumstances we'd behave like them (YES already -- presumably given anyone's circumstances, fact for fact, you'd be them!) Last month I couldn't stand it, but I submit. It's useless. I still won't make a myspace page. But everyone, I can't tell you why not. (PRIVACY. Isn't there something to privacy? <---- I blog this. Ha.) I mean, I want to have that principle, that I don't need to advertise myself, validate myself, be rich, live richly (is this Citibank?) but I do want all those things. I do like fancy hotels and I freaking love champagne. But you can't pick and choose can you? Can I like Top Model and be disgusted by Flavor of Love? I can, I do feel that way -- but the distinctions I'd place on each are irrelevant and not to be confused with a real guiding principle.

Yet there's things I won't do. But, I don't know... I'm losing my thought... it's like... what's the point? yeah, that's it.... no it's, Goddammit, if she didn't not wear underwear we'd have nothing to talk about. the girl's taking a fall that's all. Don't you feel dignified, wearing underwear and catching the bus? Dignity. Indignity. The Freedom Tower. You write it up. It all goes together.

The Queens Center Mall and I sprain my elbow again

The Queens Center Mall is a wonderful place to spend money. I went yesterday. The stores are virtually empty. I had a fantastic time.

On the way home I was happy, then I stepped into a plastic flimsy ring such as might hold together a stack of newspaper... so when you get both your feet in one of these and don't know it and then take another step, you fall down and only your hands will stop you from cracking open your head. I hurt myself. I thought I must have fucked up my wrist, but actually it was my elbow which swelled and then couldn't be moved. I drank some, swallowed a couple pills, regained the majority of mobility. I've learned (from a man in Wildfowers Bar and Grill named Amaretto... a couple months ago)that the way to know if you have an elbow fracture is if you're in excruciating pain all the time you've fractured it. This is now dull pain and I can now make a ponytail and put on a shirt... but not scratch the back of my neck, so I guess it's sprained.

2006 was tough on the elbows. I'll type something more interesting later maybe.

XO

Britney - thin but sad!

I'm not gonna type about Britney -- I just saw that phrase on this magazine that's sitting here at the reception desk. I think I'll probably type about: *old white men - don't like them * my relationship to songs *Astoria.

Starting with the songs though. When I've gone through a break up, have been wronged, feel in love, etc. etc. I wind up hearing about it in the songs I'm listening to, right? Everyone does. But isn't it a great day when you hear the song that you once thought was so achingly catharticly emblematic of what you felt and find yourself just enjoying it in a normal, "these sounds are agreeable" kind of way? I had that this morning with a Fiona Apple "you stupid stupid moron, I'm so so so so so much more brilliant than you" song today. (I feel priveleged and lucky to be a notch or two beneath Fiona for vengeance-like sentimentality. I don't particularly relate to her song about how she's going to skin the backs off her ex lovers for example... thankfully.) Moving on is the greatest though.

And I gotta thank Andre 3000 for explaining EVERYTHING to me about falling for very very successful musicians on The Love Below. Thank you Andre 3000. I'd be disasterously in love with you if we ever shagged!

Moving on, old white men are the worst. So soulless. This morning one of them frowned at me for gettting in the elevator (hey sorry but I have to be elevated too) stood in front of all the elevator buttons so I had to ask a nice lady with a lot of bags to push my floor, then stood in front of the elevator door so that said lady also had to ask him to please stop taking up the whole car like it was just for him. And he talked on his blackberry the whole way up too. So put upon. Such attitude. I can just imagine what it would be like to have to talk to this guy at night, or rather listen. I bet he has a lot of opinions based on how hard he worked and how easy things are for others and how the world's on the decline. I think the world's on the decline too but I guess I can at least be happy if the decline shocks and dismays old resentful white men. (this is not a little informed by my experiences last year, assisting Mr. Time and Money, Time and Money, Time and Money.)

Lastly, Astoria - in the next few years, it's going to explode. I'm no economist, but it's 3 subway stops from Manhattan and the rent is at present about a third of Manhattan rents for comparable spaces so I think my reasoning's solid. For some reason, the only thing happening now though is luxury development in Long Island City. I wish i had a crystal ball to see astoria in ten years. Maybe i should hold on to my tiny flat. (At my tiny flat/ there's just my cat/ a bed/ and a chair./ Still/ i'll stick it til/ I'm on some bill/ All over Times Square." - no cat actually.) Maybe in a few years it'll be "rent-controled" in the place to be. Or maybe everything will be exactly the same except more nouveau riche will be living by the 59th street bridge dizzily happy to be living with a doorman and a gym in such close proximity to the Fresh Direct warehouse.

ain

Drain. Sometimes it's like this, a lot, and I feel this drain in my back, I think you call it strain, but it feels like drain. And if I just want to be simple about it, it's, ugh, I'm in pain.

Sometimes I barely notice it, but once about every three months it's like, I can't believe I'm carting myself around when I'm losing blood in such a way that I feel the drain strain like an aching pain in my back. (and then, compl---)

Are these then the months when conception would have meant a really extra good mattress for an embryo?

Is there a word ending in "ain" which means fatigue?

If you're a boy, I'm sorry. Isn't that funny. I was in the "floater room" grabbing Ibuprofen and boy temp said, "do you have a headache?" I said "back ache." Do you all know what a back ache is in a 26 year old girl? Why do we protect you? go to war or something.

Devolution

This is how the blogging thing is then isn't it? Compulsive to display some extremity of interestingness or mundane-ness in yourself, eventaully you post about having fun and then later feeling inert and taking a bath.

I'm at work and my lower back aches. The two things of note yesterday were:
1) Riding the subway for the subway series - hip hop on the 1 train downtown. This felt good. No one can rap less than I can. So I have to just move my head to be part of the thing... esp. standing on a subway car-seat where shaking my ass would sort of get mixed up. Sing when someone else starts it. I can get so shy.
2) Saw Grey Gardens documentary. There is nothing I can really say about this. Even the online super enthusiasts spend their essays vacillating between: "See, it's these two crazy co-dependent cat ladies..." and "Somehow, though it's inexplicable, and as soon as I put words to it it sounds wrong, this captures the whole essence and meaning of Life."

"Are you absolutely crazy? There isn't anything I can't do." <--- this resonantes.

Bath

I've predicted my own death to Adrienne who hopes it doesn't happen like this but will be impressed if it does. Just as Natalie Wood knew it would be water, I know I'm going to see some heretofore unknown insect, like the black and red moth (possibly bird) which I smote with Raid this summer, while in the shower, and scream, slip, and crack my head open.

I had the most wonderful night last night. My friends I met in Iowa are stimulating, fabulous, generous, just wonderful and Brooklyn came through with both experimental theater (with drinking) and an art party that was really a party. These were separated by a very cold walk. It doesn't get better than that Friday night.

But my upswing of activity for the past week has led me to where I sit now, in a truly dirty apartment, lacking certain very essential items, but also containing some nice ones. It was hard to sleep last night 'cuz my whisky started to give me a headache before I fell asleep and it was kind of hot, oh and also, when I haven't taken the trash out, which I hadn't, and I begin to have trouble falling asleep, then I start thinking that the feeling of a blanket on my thigh is the same as maybe a roach would feel on my thigh. This hasn't yet been the case... but I wonder if Adrienne would give me credit if I fell out the loft and died. So anyway the first order of busniess this morning was a bath.

Here are the products making my home smell deceptively good.
Lush pink sparkly crumbly bubbling thing
Lush off-white creamy "softening" crumbly bar

These both went into the bath tub. Lush bath products cost silly money but the girl who sold me these gave me a wink and told me to get out a cleaver and separate them into twenty pieces each. Twenty, no, but eight... maybe, so it works out good.

Some people think you don't get clean in a bath. Well, you get cleaner and if you smell good can it possibly matter? That's what I say. My bath water comes out -- well, it isn't brown, more green, and is there anyone in the world who doesn't know that the first time I cleaned my tub in this apartment its entire "enamel" coating peeled straight off? So who knows what evolutionary process could be happening within the material of which my tub is made. But I don't worry about it. It's only ten minutes, it's scalding hot - I say it gets me clean. But only when it smells like flowers.

So that's nice, but this place is a disaster, honestly coated in clothes and completely disarrayed ("What's this dish doing in the bathroom?") and now that I smell okay, I really don't know where to begin. (Oh, I've also got Ginger glop all over myself and that is smelling up the house too.)

I need a new facial moisturizer. Tiring of the mushroom stuff ... (really? I don't know....)

Okay. toilet paper, a vacuum... I'm going back to bed.

Does anyone remember this song?

Hey ladies/ When your man wants to get buck wild/ just go back and hit 'im up style/ Get your hands on his cash and/ spend him to the last dime/ for all the hard times.

My college boyfriend resented my adoration of this song, which was very catchy. In this case his "concern" was comical, to me, because he had no cash to speak of ever and in his wallet only a Discover card which no place accepted. If he had ever gone buck wild, I think there was a Pizzaria Uno in Rochester which I could have hit up style. But also, as my students used to continually tell me, "it's just a SONG." (My message peeve song is Juvenile's "Slow Motion" -- in particular for the instructive "When you're riding, don't ask questions about where I'm driving you." Miss Alexis: "Listen, ALWAYS ask questions about where someone's driving you. Oh, and you don't have to move in slow motion for anyone just because now you're in the rental or he bought some weed or you're drinking Hennessy you know." High School Students: "Oh my god Miss Alexis, it's just a SONG." [By the time I had sixth graders, the song which irked was Fifty's "Candy Shop" which had my nascent girls delighted over "I'll let you lick the lollypop," causing Miss Alexis to "OD" on "mean." These things all stopped being funny and started being too sad then - I mean, some of the children explained very clearly that they took instuctional lyric as instruction. And they were too youg to be making a choice so... you get it right?] Circa 2004 I also enjoyed ruining that "hotel" song, lyrics :Cuz we're having an after party, checking out six in the morning." I sang it: "Cuz we're having an after party, calling the desk and extending our checkout." I mean, if you've been partying all night, what do you want to check out at 6:00 for? Too dorky. I know.)

My little cousin Christopher was once delighted I knew Buck Wild and we sang it by the pool for a half hour or so during which time he did not irritate everyone beyond belief.

But I think the song's off everyone's radar and, like so many songs from musicals about homosexulaity or fairy tales, only I will be left singing it down the stairs and on the street and in my rowboat as civilization declines and apocalypse approaches.

Um

I'm typing because I'm very nearly bored to tears. I could cry. I choose not to. If I did, the only reason would be I'm so bored.

So what to tell the, now four(?), people, that I've given directions to my weblog (and not the others to whom I say things like "oh -- I wrote about this on my secret blog today kind of...") ?

I don't know. A month and a half ago I was on the subway and this girl was smiling and smiling and then laughing and blushing all by herself and we caught eyes for a second and so I said "What's wrong with you? Are you in love?" and she was all "Yes!" and that was awfully cute. She went back to happy land and I went back to watching her. It was nice and at least that day I wasn't in a "Well it's the worst thing that ever happened to you just wait" mode so that's a small nice story.

I want to take time off to write a couple plays that I can't get into without taking the time off it seems. Nobody doesn't know that. That'll be fun.

Ta-da.

Chicken

Last night, arriving for le date at the Public Library, I went in the 5th avenue entrance and was not in the right place for the talk, but this Indian/Pakistani scholarly dude made some comment about the bag search going in the door... something like "Now why do they do that? What is the thought?" and I was like "Oh, you know, the terrorists hate when we read." Then he said, "Oh that's very clever. What do you mean by that?" And I said "You know.. I thought I was making a joke... but actually the terrorists might hate when we read... close minded and all." The guy was oh so charmed. He showed me where to go since I was in the wrong place and then made much of exchanging numbers, telling me that first we must have a cup of Indian tea and "then if [he] earns [my] trust, then the curried Indian chicken."

Later I was recounting this, and also sort of reviewing my current thought-torture of "Why LA? You were trying to do something... what was it?"

I was saying, no one knows anymore what our current etiquette is. I was "smart" by the time I left LA in that I trusted no one. If you distrust the motives of EVERYONE not priorly known in LA, you'll be right basically one hundred percent of the time.

Taking this attitude on the road and out of LA is not necessarily the thing to do though right? I COULD mistrust every New Yorker, every person, just the same and probably would wind up protecting myself from a certain number of demoralizing experiences as such, but a cup of tea with an intellectual stranger is the reason to live in New York rather than, say, in your attic.

In some sense I think I went to LA and wanted to get jaded. I prided myself on talking back to people who were assholian about "status" when I worked at the restaurant. I fetishized how "real" I was in a city of such fakeness. I accomplished finally disgust at the whole lifestyle rather than romanticization... although now it turns out not thoroughly enough... distance now allows me to romanticize again... but with knowledge now that makes it all pretty bitter.

But the point is, (for now - that labeling thing's still not done. I've gotta get back to work) what's a girl to do? This is also why I think the internet socializing thing has to be considred and can't be a substitute for real life culture.... When a real live human wants to havea cup of tea and presumably come correct, are you a moron if you agree and have a miserable uncomfortable time like you've learned you USUALLY will blindly rolling with the punches like a "free spirit?" I say no. I wanna bring back the times I never lived through -- in moderation -- Because what ever happened to 'let's go smoke this hash and get to know eachother?" Did people turn out to be so creepy that everyone started consistently opting out, just like me?

In which my mother acts like my mother

Readers, all three of you, because this is a secret blog, in spite of kungfuramone having linked it, I feel comfortable bitching about my mother.

First I'll tell you what fun I'm having now. I'm reorganizing some word label documents into three new label documents... but I'm doing it in a corner executive office, and guess what's out my window? Yes, that sparkly gorgeous tree. I'm on a level with the Swarovski Star. The trick to these things is to be quite literally above it all. (Mike, now are you SURE hating on Christmas isn't just bad? I think I'm a little bit bad. Also, hi!)

Last night my mother took me to the "Penn Club" for dinner and then to a play reading, a comedy about holocaust survivors living in the boroughs. As we walked in the frigid frigid air I told her I was looking forward to a date I'm going on tonight. She had all kinds of weird stuff to say on that topic but I asked for it. Is the following kind? I think it is: Mom: I think you should just keep up doing everything alone. I told my friends you were living with an alcoholic boyfriend but you broke up with him and moved out and haven't had a boyfriend since and they thought that was really cool. (She also told them I was going out with Snoop Dog. Me: Mother!)

I try not to be sardonic to my mother, but I don't try very hard and it is just my default reaction. I mean, it's very hard to say anything to the above, pretty sweet comment really, besides "Un-hunh. Really cool" sarcastically. I told her I was looking forward to a date i have tonight because the person and I are being set up after years of being told we're incredibly alike and she said "No, I don't want to say it. You'll get Uptight" I said, "No, go ahead." She said, "It won't work. That would be two narcissists. You want someone complementary."

At the Penn Club we did the absolutely prescribed and necessary obsession with image food and weight just like a Cathy cartoon. Charming. I told her I think she'd look great with a boob lift. She told me to straighten my teeth. I told her again not to hold her breath for me to get braces. She asked what I weigh. I told her for the, really, hundredth time that I do not have a scale. She sent back her food and instead ordered iceberg lettuce. I could not make that up.

Overall it went well! I used to think my mother must be the craziest in all the land but it's funny that now it's clear she was only really run of the mill damaging and oblivion is not really on a par with cruelty. She's never going to really listen to me in a connected way -- she herself doens't communicate that way - in a connected way I mean - so that would be not really possible. She's not going to hear what I'm saying when she's buzzing around all over the place. But she's just a mess -- what can you do and it has its cute moments, I swear.