CEO of the World

Leaving

2009-06-18T15:57:00.003-04:00

I think it's time to close this chapter. I'll be making a new blog soon.

If I don't know you, email me and I'll send you the link.

-L

Wilting

2009-02-23T17:00:00.003-05:00

"Just because I don't always vocalize it, doesn't mean it's not always there."

He told me this, and it was a thought that kept him smoldering like a coal inside my belly. It would fade, then he would say something like this again and it would reignite, tickling me into a giddy, giggling school-girl mess.

But then the day comes when you can feel it, like a switch has flipped off and it's not there - just a lump of coal that won't catch, a stomachache.

It's hard watching something fade, a slow burn that dims little by little and you're not really sure what you did wrong. It's a more intense version of how I'd feel whenever I got a houseplant. I would follow my grandmother's instructions to a T - water it, aerate the soil, put it on the windowsill, move it away from the windowsill, prune it - but still I'd watch helplessly as the leaves wilted and yellowed and I'd wonder what I could do to fix it, to somehow reverse whatever I had done and bring it back to life.

But once certain wheels are set it motion, there are no brakes.

So I've been left for the past two weeks watching this die. Sitting with my hands crossed, trying to be patient, trying not to drive myself crazy reassessing everything I've done to find the spot where I made the nick that became infected into a necrotizing wound.

Another little blip, a tidbit that stopped short before it even had the chance to become a story like so many notes I have written on the backs of receipts and cocktail napkins collected into piles where they'll never find homes.

I'm trying hard not to be sad, or care. "Oh, it was nothing. Just a minor flirtation, crush, thing. You know me. I'll be over it soon." But I'm only explaining it to myself because it was mine. And now it's not anymore.

Quitting

2009-01-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

I want to write something. I want to write a lot of things.

But I can't.

Most of them are too personal for me to put up here. Or, maybe "personal" is the wrong word. They would test my pride. What would be a good word to describe that? "Shameful" sounds too dramatic, but it's something along those lines. A few people still read this site and I just can't admit certain things. I can't let them know that I'm doing and thinking certain things.

It's just too sad (in a pathetic sad kind of way, which is the saddest thing, really).

I used to be a strong advocate of "out of sight, out of mind." I'd talk and talk about something that upset me and then I'd set a day and just stop. The things that made me sad were like any addiction and I'd cut myself off cold turkey and a week, a month, a year later, I was washed of it.

I try to employ this same technique now, but I can't help the conversations I have with myself in my head.

Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough.

Hello?

2009-01-12T23:55:00.003-05:00

Hello?

Anyone there?

Have I lost you all?

Does this mean that now it's okay for me to finally start writing everything that I want to write for a change?

I'm high right now. Probably not in the way I wish I was or the way you would assume I was. I went to a birthday "thing," had more fun than I thought I might, but still came home feeling...wrong. So I took a shot of NyQuil hoping sleep would swallow me faster than my thoughts would. But somehow I ended up here. I guess my thoughts won.

Am I making any sense?

Is anyone listening?

I'm going to bed.

Affair

2009-01-12T17:58:00.005-05:00

An acquaintance of mine has started an affair with a married coworker. It hasn't escalated to what would be considered an affair in the traditional sense because there has been no exchange of bodily fluids, but it seems even deeper. They talk and they connect in a way that I'm sure will hurt his wife more than if she discovered he was screwing hookers. I know this only because she writes about it on her anonymous blog, and I read these stories and I don't judge because I wonder if that is something that is foreseeable in my future.

I was propositioned once by a married man. A coworker from London, who had only been married for a little over a year when he came to New York for a business trip. We met for a drink. A drink became dinner and more drinks. Soon we were buzzed and he was stroking my arm, telling me how sexy I was. "Come back to my hotel with me, L. We'll have some fun."

I shook my head and told him that infidelity disgusts me. But it still didn't hinder him from sending me text messages throughout my train ride home asking me to reconsider.

BSquared and I have progressed to email messages via Gmail instead of instant messenger to exchange our overtly sexual talk. The messages grow more dangerous every day, but today I don't write because I'm thinking too much and feeling unhappy and jaded with all these bad dates, unwanted propositions and dangling carrots.

Maybe if we didn't work together this would all be fine. He would be another Chef. And we'd be able to carry on a "relationship" based on fondness that never grows into something bigger. But, forced to see him every day--lonelier than I can ever remember being in my entire life--I know that I'll create something in my head that isn't there. I'll become jealous. And if, or when, he does enter into a relationship with someone else, I'll know that his excuse that he can't be in a relationship right now isn't true. That it is me. And that's what scares me most.

Exist

2009-01-05T13:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know that last entry was all over the place. Yes, I know the little I write lately is all over the place, vague, nonsensical. It all reads like some sort of inside joke that no one is a part of except for me. Even the people who know me, those who know enough about my personal life to understand what I'm referencing, would draw conclusions that would all be wrong.

So don't bother.

But this is how it is now. This is how my life makes sense to me. This is how I experience things. How my planet operates. All in relation to these moments that exist the way I see them in my head. Sitting at my desk and jerking my head up at a coworker who taps my desk as they walk by, catching a stranger's eye on the street, standing in the cold smoking a cigarette, sipping wine on another bad date, getting another tattoo, checking my profile on some social networking site, refreshing my email waiting for a message that doesn't come, making coffee, drinking coffee, having that conversation I promise I won't have ever again.

It's a far cry from the things I used to write when I tried so hard to amuse everyone with straightforward observations, witty jokes, words. But I spend so much of my energy on a daily basis trying to amuse and I've decided that this is now a place where I can tell my version of the truth--as arcane as it may be.

So, for those who might be interested in the black and white part of me: I have a new job. I still drink a lot. I started smoking again. I am addicted to body art. I started going to the gym a lot. I stopped going to the gym a lot. I'm still an insomniac. I never have any time even though I don't know what fills all that space. I'm still sad all the time and I'm still not sure why.

Un-resolved

2009-01-03T01:53:00.008-05:00

BSquared strolls by my desk, shoots me that disgusting star athlete Midwestern smile that I find so irresistibly alluring and asks me how my new years was and I say, "Good. Yours?"

He tells me about his. His was actually good.

He sends me an instant message later: "I really don't want to be here."

"Seriously," I respond. I'm happy he's initiated contact for a change but at the same time I'm feeling tired and done with it all.

"So your new year was good?"

I groan internally, "Actually, it sucked. But no one wants to hear about that so I just say 'good' when they ask." I see no point in lying to him. I don't need to impress him.

"Are you still chaste-ing?" he jokes with me. I've told him my new policy. No more hookups. I am a nun until further notice.

I tell him I am.

"No new year make-out then?"

I want to lie now. I know he definitely indulged in a new year kiss and I don't want to give him the smug satisfaction of knowing that I had sat out the ball drop alone, sipping champagne, crossing my legs, forcing smiles and clinking my plastic glass of champagne against anyone who stretched theirs towards me, while his tongue wrestled with some herpes-infected Lower East Side whore. But I tell the truth. It would be too sad to lie. "Nah."

I'm picturing him now, lips pressed against some curly-haired brunette and I'm jealous. Like I was when he had shown a picture of his friend to a coworker who, not realizing that I was harboring a crush on him, had passed his phone along to me. "Who's that?" I had asked.

"BSquared's girlfriend," he replied, slightly sarcastic. He's fucking her for sure.

"Oh, she's cute," I said, the heat rising in my cheeks.

"Nah, she's just my friend," BSquared had said, snatching the phone from me. "She's the girl whose party I'm going to later," his eyes met mine briefly but I refused to let him see any indication of my already hatred for this nameless slut.

And now I had given him the upper hand. Again. I had never even let him kiss me. But I let him see too much of the weak side of myself. He had never touched me further than the tip of his finger brushing the inside of my thigh, whispering that it was the softest thing he had ever felt. I wouldn't let him come any closer. But I had inadvertently let my guard down and let him into something deeper.

Now we exchanged our overtly sexual banter at work. And now, ever since he had been straightforward to me and told me that he couldn't do that relationship thing again, not after his last one, the one that shook him, turned his world on its ass, we did this waltz. Sometimes daily, sometimes weekly. Sometimes I led, sometimes he led. We dipped and parried. Sometimes I misstepped, sometimes it was he.

And I welcomed his honestly. And I wished I hadn't started this new celibacy thing. Or, I wished that my mental state hadn't deteriorated so far that I couldn't do anything other than this celibacy thing. That was what I couldn't really tell anyone. Leaving that detail out, it sounded like a show of solidarity instead of an unfortunate consequence of the steady atrophy of my cranial well-being. I deleted his phone number so I wouldn't be tempted to seek solace in his warm East Village apartment one drunken lonely night.

And now I think of dinner with K a few weeks ago when he confessed that he had harbored a crush on me the entire time we were working together. How it had taken a good amount of effort on his part to resist the urge to pursue me so as not to complicate our work situation. And I'm glad because I have evolved past him. So much so that when he tells me I should come to his place for a glass of wine, I decline and trudge through the cold to the train station.

And now I think of that date I had gone on with JM who had seemed sweet. Slightly off, but who was I to judge? Who had, after failed attempts to woo me back to his apartment, kissed me on both cheeks at the entrance to the F train and told me to call him when I got home.

I texted him later, "I'm on the train now. No need to worry."

"Call me when you get home anyway."

And I did.

"What are you wearing? Are you playing with yourself?"

I sighed, told him I would call him tomorrow, rolled over, and went to bed. I deleted his number.

And now I think of P, who I barely know but feel wouldn't try to lure me to his apartment with the promise of wine or call me after a first date and try to lull me into phone sex. Maybe I am being naïve. Maybe he would. Maybe everyone would.

But I want to be naïve. As long as I don't know any better, I want to believe that there is still someone out there that I could have a little faith in.

"Any resolutions?" I ask BSquared.

"It's the year of the six-pack. I joined NYSC again," he says. "What's yours?"

Abandon all hope.

"Me too," I say. "I'll race you."

"Deal."

P

2008-11-30T19:30:00.003-05:00

I want to grab P and slap him and shake him. "Do you know how lucky you are that I want you? Do you know how many men would love to be in your shoes?"

I'm feeling childish and selfish and cruel. But mostly lonely.

His eyes were very kind. They looked honest. Not like The Mistake--his had a glint in them that, then, I naively took as charm but am mature enough now to recognize as deception.

When P looked at me, I could tell that he wanted me. Not in the animalistic way that most men do. They softened, slightly. I felt like he wanted to hug me and nothing else. I didn't fantasize him naked. I fantasized holding his hand.

I wanted to know him.

He entertained this whim for a little while, but that was all it turned out to be--a whimsy. A silly girl with a silly crush and he ultimately chose a redhead instead. I think they were friends for a long time.

Best Friend tells me, "You are way hotter than her," and I know it's meant as comfort but she might as well have told me that my nail polish is redder or my ears are more ear-like.

I tilt my head to the side, "She has a bit of a horse-face."

"She does," Best Friend nods.

But she also has him. She is probably funny and kind--not embattled, bitter, oozing resentment and ill will, manifesting depression and insecurity into disgust towards everyone else. She probably paints things that remind her of him, and the mornings when she leaves for work early she leaves him witty notes to wake up to. She's silly and positive. He misses her on the days they can't spend the night together and he devours her on the nights they can. And when he looks at her, that moment right before he brings his lips to meet her's, she is beautiful.

Ink

2008-11-18T23:04:00.002-05:00

I've started a new job. Full time now at the same company I was freelancing for and I’ve taken to working late. Partially out of my own accord, partially because there’s too much to be done, mostly because there’s nothing to go home to. I spend quiet nights sitting at my desk browsing stories, editing links, downloading pictures, uploading pictures, tagging videos…

There's an attractive guy there and in typical L fashion, I take notice almost immediately. He's not the kind of guy I would normally be attracted to. Tall, athletic, light brown hair, blue eyes--a cookie cutter all-American guy straight from the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. He looks like he would surf. He looks like he played football in high school. He probably dated a cheerleader.

But he has a tattoo, and I notice this before I even notice the person. It's a large black and grey Japanese sleeve occupying his left arm from shoulder to midway down his forearm. And he's a lawyer, which I find paradoxical. The "house lawyer" as I refer to him. He makes sure we don't offend anyone too much. He makes sure we don't break the law. I really have no idea what he does but he tells me he graduated from Brooklyn Law School when he introduces himself to me outside while we smoke a cigarette. He smokes the same kind of cigarettes as me.

His desk used to be positioned right by mine in the dark, back area of the office, right by the freight elevator, but after two years there--two weeks for me--the CEO decides he should move to the front by the other lawyer-y types. I lament this over instant messenger to KM, "They are ruining my employee morale." She laughs.

I don't expect anything. I don't want anything. It's just a welcome distraction from the routine: Coffee at ten AM, cigarette break at eleven. Lunch at twelve-thirty, meeting at four. He has a pretty little Chinese girlfriend, another lawyer, very skinny, and they live together (I think) in their cozy apartment in yuppified Brooklyn with a fireplace, exposed brick, flat-screen TV, suede sofa. Maybe they have a dog with an ironic name like Bob. He leaves the office every day at six and they probably order in because they're both too tired to cook, watch some football (if it's Monday) and fuck before they go to bed. I wonder if he's ever pictured me while he's fucking her, and I'm sure he has. Not in a creepy way, but even the good guys, the ones who are in love, need to let their minds wander when they're screwing the same girl every night.

He usually leaves through the back elevator. I decide this is an excuse to pass by me on his way out and not because that exit is closer to his train station. I declare this in my head. Tonight, he passes by my little cave of a desk, leaving late himself, finding me nowhere closer to heading home: "Working late again?"

I sigh and tell him there's so much to do. No time to do it. Busy week, busy week. As he turns to leave, he stops himself: "What's that tattoo on your arm?"

I show him the ambigram I have etched into my left forearm, "Want/Need" and we launch into a discussion about tattoos. He divulges the locations of the rest of his ink that I'll never see--back, thigh. I tell him I wanted to go get a new tattoo today but I’m stuck at work. He tells me he's dying for another. He tells me about the regrettable tattoo he got when he was drunk on his birthday. Waking up and wondering what he was thinking, and I laugh and tell him that it's a story to tell. Like stupid scars, they still leave good stories. And he mulls this over before he nods in agreement.

There's something about other people who get tattoos that draws me to them. They'll understand something about me no one who doesn't believe in body art ever will. There's the moment you have that perfect idea. I imagine it’s like falling in love with someone--“You just know,” as so many have chosen to describe it to me. Weeks of anticipation, imagining how it will look. People who get tattoos share a strange, but socially acceptable form of, masochism. The slight insanity of willingly inflicting pain on yourself to scar yourself for life. Understanding the commitment you're making.

And it applies to everything in our lives. The sting of easing yourself into a new experience and letting it leave its inevitable mark on your personality, your memories, your neuroses. But more importantly, understanding that getting rid of it--trying to leave that potential mistake behind, righting a regret--takes so much more dedication and pain. Ten sessions of a laser burning searing heat out of your scarred, blistering skin. And even then, they always leave a trace.

-L

Avoiding Work

2008-06-23T03:14:00.007-04:00

Avoiding work, writing scenes. A beginning that will most likely have no end. Much like all the other pieces of fiction I write. Don't judge too harshly.

---------

I was fourteen when I met him--a skeletal rendition of a woman I had the possibility to become--naïve and never kissed. My jeans were baggy on my nonexistent hips and the fabric was ample enough to obscure my platform shoes. I wore a too big collared polo shirt that I had stolen from my older brother and silver rings on almost all my fingers.

It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school and most days were spent at my mother's Laundromat in the West Village doling change, cleaning lint filters, handing out dryer sheets and single serving packets of powdered soap. He walked in with a guitar case slung over one shoulder, a bulging bag of dirty clothes over the other. Hair hung in loose unwashed curls over his sad eyes and around his thin, white neck. He wore a simple white t-shirt and faded black jeans fitted tight to his narrow calves and he cleared his throat before he handed me three dollar bills and asked for quarters.

His soft voice had a buttery quality to it and I knew that when he sang, it was the kind of sound that weighed people down, made them slouch in their seats and close their eyes.

I avoided his eyes as I carefully counted out the coins but looked at him eagerly when I placed them into his hands. He hadn't looked at me at all up to this moment but when he finally did, he gave a few seconds of pause to take in my face before mumbling a soft "thank you," and walking away.

I pretended to read a book as I watched him load clothes into two separate machines taking care to sort colors and check pockets for loose change. When he was done he took note of the time and walked out into the steamy late June evening returning forty minutes later so I could watch him load them into a dryer and back again in an hour so I could watch him fold.

My mother wondered why I wanted to come to the store more days after that. I told her I was saving to buy a computer.

Two and a half weeks pass before my anonymous white boy--ten years my senior--reappears and this time my mother is with me behind the counter where I am writing in a marble notebook. My eyes shoot towards the door as they have grown accustomed to every time I hear the vacuum kiss of it swinging open and when I see him, I immediately look down, feeling my face fill with blood.

---------------

I find it so strange that I'm fine with posting aspects about my life but I feel wholly uncomfortable showing people my fiction.

-L

Weekend

2008-06-16T02:44:00.004-04:00

I had a weekend.

Friday was W's birthday celebration at Zombie Hut in Carroll Gardens where their signature drink, the Frozen Zombie, comes in a slushy swirl of deceptively innocent pink. The first sip is pure Bacardi 151, the second is a sweet concoction that slides coolly down your throat until you're crawling home on your hands and knees speaking in tongues. I opted to stick with my usual vodka sodas and, at a wallet-friendly five bucks a pop, the $40 I had vowed to limit myself to for the evening went a very long way. Home at 4 AM, drunk, unable to resist the lure of food, I engorged myself in chorizo and bread and Parmesan cheese and watched bad television before falling into a fitful sleep.

But I was still up bright and early at 8:30 to trek to Long Island for a winery tour. One toasted bagel with tofu cream cheese, three vineyards, half of a fried softshell crab sandwich, one scoop of cappuccino heath bar ice cream, a stroll around the Strawberry Festival and my hangover was completely cured. Wine wasn't exactly the hair of the dog that bit me, but it was his cousin and did just fine.

I'm not much for whites but in the stifling heat and humidity, I developed a newfound appreciation for a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc outdoors. Delicious. I had considered wineries in the past, but after spending the final hours of sunlight lounging on huge cushioned lawn chairs in front of rows of vines with a glass of blush, it's now my life goal to own a vineyard in Italy or France. And after fiddling with my friend's dSLR, I'm dying for an Olympus E-420.

A long day that should have ended at ten when I was lying on my couch feeling bloated and fuzzy ended up powering on until 4 AM. Bowling and many pitchers of watered-down Coors Light later, I was home, drunk, again. But still ready for the Mets game the next afternoon. Eldest Bro and I decided to stay for the entire doubleheader, too tempted by the lure of a free game and the fantastic seats in the Loge boxes behind home plate that we had upgraded ourselves to. A huge dinner at a Korean restaurant with the family for Father's Day and a few shots of vile soju and...

...now it's 3 AM. I have deadlines tomorrow that I most definitely will not hit. I have lost sleep that I should make up for. I have a headache and a stomachache and a neckache. But I'm feeling content and pensive so I decided to spit some brain spew.

-L

Just

2008-06-13T02:29:00.004-04:00

After over a month of running around, sporadic emails, missed opportunities and scheduling conflicts, the Architect and I finally got together for our first date tonight. While there's no grand story here, all I can say is that it was lovely. Just that--lovely. He's the kind of guy that I should like and, for a change, I actually do like him. But he's flaky. We'll see where this goes.

I also got together with K today for the lunch we were supposed to have two months ago. I was more nervous to see him after three weeks without than to meet the Architect, but it was nice. We've achieved a level of comfort with one another where he tells me about certain aspects of his personal life and I've discovered that he is a) arrogant beyond all human comprehension, b) a manwhore that could rival Gene Simmons in manwhoreness, and c) a spoiled, old money rich kid who somehow has a Centurion Card. I probably shouldn't have said anything when I saw it peeking out of his wallet, but having never seen the almost mythical Black Card in person, I could help but blurt out, "You have a Black Card? How is that possible?" But to be fair, I know him well enough now not to be surprised that he places it rather strategically in the front slot. Predictably, he just shot me a self-satisfied smirk in response.

My spring fling, the Guitarist, left for Europe on Tuesday and I was a little blue. But he deserves a story all his own and I'll save it for another day.

When it rains, it pours.

-L

The only question worth asking and the one you never want to ask...

2008-06-06T05:36:00.000-04:00

Why, why, why, why?

-L

Love

2008-06-04T17:01:00.008-04:00

I fall in love all the time. I fall in love with everything I see--people, places, songs, artists, images, words.

I fall in love with the view from the top of the Basilica di San Pietro melding ancient ruins and modern architecture into one breath. Guidebooks warning me not to fall into the canals of Venice and bored, thin boys with dirty hair and fedoras lazing around London's Brick Lane. I fall in love with Beth Gibbons's voice moving seamlessly between harsh and nasal to soft cooing. Thom Yorke's falsetto screeching emotions that I wish I had felt first. Jeff Buckley all bleeding hearts and self-pity, crooning songs about regrets that cling tight to his skin no matter how hard he scrubs. I fall in love with anonymous phrases on a page painting landscapes of experiences I haven't yet had. Photographs of strangers engaged in joy bursting candy colors of hugs and smiles, lips puckered into air kisses, fluorescent drinks in hand. I fall in love with people I meet once and dream into monoliths of perfection sliding coolly in and out of rooms, scenes, situations.

This is my modern romance. This is how I fall.

I know it's never real. It's a flighty thing that tumbles off the rooftops of buildings in cities I've once loved, and forgotten the instant my plane touched ground on where I needed to be now. The music grows tedious and tired, faceless words get a face that doesn't live up to the fantasy I've intricately formulated in my mind. Photographs fade into painful reminders of happier times that left to take residence in someone else's life.

But every now and then a memory returns and, for a moment, I feel that fondness again. I place my hand across my chest and I close my eyes and think of how much I loved. I love, love, love--all the time. An adoration so deep it bends me in half; makes me want to peel the skin off my bones and see how something so consuming could live inside me. Directed towards everything but holding onto nothing like the wind blowing in and licking my cheeks briefly before going away. And no matter how hard I cling, it slips through my fingertips like grain.

-L

Saturday

2008-05-06T01:11:00.003-04:00

I met J on Saturday night at Astoria Beer Garden. Despite getting introduced the moment I arrive, we don’t actually speak until four beers, two hours and a venue switch. We’re at a dive in Astoria where M knows the bartender and he lets Cat get behind the bar to pull pints and mix Jack and Cokes. I watch J play darts. I tell him I want to be on his team next but someone else has already claimed their place in the coming round and we’re banished to the bar where I drink too many Blue Moons.

He’s an architect and he shows me the little notebook he carries around in his pocket. I hold this thin stack of sheets, tattered and precious, with two hands the way I would a jewelry box. “I don’t know many other people who carry around notebooks.” I haven’t brought mine today. My purse is too small.

“You have architect handwriting,” I observe, turning the delicate pages etched with dotted lines, diagrams, notes written in perfectly symmetrical stick figure characters. I know this because C has the same handwriting, a gift from his architect father. He laughs and I notice the dimple in his right cheek, how narrow his forehead is, his small eyes, the way he purses his lips and I announce, “You are absolutely adorable,” like I’ve just remembered something that I was supposed to do yesterday.

How does it come up? I don’t remember but he tells me we should go to San Francisco together and I tell him to book a flight. We can walk up giant hills and eat good food, stand on The Gayest Corner in the World, which is what it’s really called.

He tells me he wants to kiss me but I decline even though my judgment is layered under too much beer—I’ve lost count by now. But in the empty back room before Cat tells me we’re leaving, I ask him for a little peck. He presses his lips lightly against mine a little longer than I expect him to and I feel a twitch in my gut. I close my eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh before I chuckle and turn for the door.

-L

Oops...

2008-03-18T03:40:00.004-04:00

I instilled in myself a sense of false security by typing up some preliminary notes for the article I have due tomorrow so I could enjoy tonight's Vines concert/St. Patrick's Day with a clear conscience. But the hangover is settling in and I only have 900 out of 1800 words written.

Pain pain pain.

I should have just finished it all last night like I had planned, but I can't seem to get things done unless the pressure is bearing down on me. I'm a masochist. What can I say?

-L

L's Greatest Hits

2008-03-15T14:50:00.002-04:00

Got a voicemail from my editor yesterday:

Hi, it's K from ABC. I had a few things I wanted to discuss with you. Give me a call when you get the chance.

Something clicks in my head and I listen to it again, more carefully this time.

Yes, I have been pronouncing his name wrong for the past three months.

-L

Consumerism

2008-03-13T16:18:00.004-04:00

My job is turning me into a consumerist whore.

Most people would agree that if they had the means to acquire whatever they want whenever they want it, they'd exercise that liberty with reckless abandon. I know I would. There are a lot of things that I see and wish I could have but I'm usually very good about not spending. Certain, or almost all, really, purchases just can't be reconciled when you're a "starving artist." So I see, I pine, I walk away.

But when you're sitting on your ass writing product features and reviews all fucking day, it starts to get to you. A part of me needs to convince myself that something is worth it so I can write about why it's worth it for other people, and now, I'm sure that I'll drop dead on the spot if I don't own a Patek Philippe watch or a Canon Rebel digital SLR. I'm quite certain that the Playstation 3 will soon add "cures cancer" to its product specs and a pair of Air Jordans will enable me to take flight while upping my "street cred."

I've been easing myself in. Last week, I ordered a hooded Zoo York sweatshirt while hunting for hoodies. "They're versatile," the voice in my head chimed, "and it's on sale!" What...the...fuck? I don't even wear hoodies...but I guess I'll start now?

This week it was Crest Advanced Whitestrips while researching grooming products. "All that coffee is taking its toll," I rationalized, "and look, it's almost 50% off on Amazon!" This one was something I actually needed, I guess. But I'm sure there are other things I need a lot more, like say, money?

I've been kind of good so far. No obscene purchases but that new Canon PowerShot is looking pretty sweet.

I'm doing iPod accessories next week and I'm afraid. I've been itching for a good pair of over ear headphones...

-L

Pierced

2008-03-13T03:57:00.002-04:00

Every now and then, when I get bored with the state of my life, I get something pierced.

C was getting out of work early, so she called and asked me if I wanted to go talk to my tattoo artist about the ink I’m getting next month, and I said,

“Sure. Sounds good.”

I called before I left, “Hey, uh, I have an appointment with S next month and, uh, I was wondering if she was gonna be around today to talk about the design I want and if, like, she wouldn’t be too busy.”

“Oh, well, she’s always busy when she’s here, but come by. She can talk to you while she’s working.”

“Okay, cool.”

I had had a pretty bad experience with a guy at another tattoo place that almost put me off the idea completely but I did some research and found a place that came highly recommended. After browsing their artists’ portfolios, I found S—exactly what I was looking for. And as an added bonus, she was a woman—I had always wanted my first one done by a chick! Her wait was four months though, but I figured four months was nothing when it came down to something that was going to last for the rest of my life. And I dropped my $80 deposit and sealed myself in.

So I went in today for a preliminary chat. I waved around designs while she worked on a guy’s sleeve and I kept it short because I wouldn’t want my artist distracted while she was carving a permanent stain into my skin.

“So?” C says.

“Oh my God, I love her already.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she was so cool. And she has blue hair!”

But itching for something to change right now, I got my tragus pierced on a whim. The guy had a Mets cap on. It was meant to be and after signing a contract and swearing that I am over 18, I’m lying there on something that looks like a massage table while he snaps latex gloves on and tells me what he’s going to do.

“It’s going to be two parts. First I’m going to to…which isn’t that bad, but then…that part usually hurts more…then…”

It hurt more than the other piercings I’ve gotten but there’s something about pain. It feels liberating, almost.

“How was that?” he asks me, a huge needle stuck into the side of my face.

“It was…nice, actually.”

-L

Free...lance

2008-03-11T23:46:00.003-04:00

Blogging is dead. Long live.......living.

That's what I've been doing lately. Sort of. I've mostly been tricking people into paying me to write, which seems nice. I wake up when I want, sleep when I want and fill the time in between researching, writing and drinking copious amounts of coffee (on the weekends, alcohol). But now I know why writers are all insane. Disconnecting yourself from society for such extended periods of time gets a little...disorienting. I'm beginning to miss waking up every morning, commuting into the city and doing a job where only 45% of my brain needs to be present. I'm a lot more productive now, but not seeing the sun for days on end, communicating with people solely through the phone and email makes it feel like I do nothing. I jump at any and every opportunity to move and be amongst the living.

I think there's a sense of false security that comes with imposed routine. Steady paycheck, health, dental, 401k, lunch at one o'clock, answer the phone, make phone calls, expensive sandwiches, overweight boss, blah-fucking-blah. I'm making more money now than I was at my last job (that's not really saying much though because I was getting slave wages), but then I was getting the same amount at the same time. Now it's two articles one week, five another, more money, less money, no insurance, what if one of my editors decides that I suck? I'm treading water.

I'm also pretty tapped out.

Now, I have a deadline tomorrow, so if you'll excuse me...

-L

Deadline

2008-02-22T03:15:00.002-05:00

I have an article deadline tomorrow and I had hoped to be done with it by 4AM, but I look at how much I have left to write and it's becoming clear that 6AM is probably a less ambitious goal. If I hadn't spent an hour surfing the web and dicking around, I would probably be in better shape but still, as I dig into each segment, I keep finding more to research, less words left to use. I'm determined to finish before I sleep though. I've found lately that if I don't, I end up lying awake until the sun comes up obsessing. Am I choosing the right products to feature? Is the research I gathered accurate? What am I going to write about that item? Will I get the images from PR in time?

Yesterday I stayed up until 4:30AM finishing another article. I sent it to my editor with a cute little note about how my last article was sent a few hours later than I had promised, so I was sending this one was a few hours early. I still spent the rest of the night obsessing. Did I miss any typos? Did I Google all the names? Is he going to think I picked stupid things to write about? Did I repeat certain words too many times? I didn't fall asleep until after listening to my father's alarm go off, him brushing his teeth and shaving and leaving for work. When I woke up, there was an email from my editor saying that I had forgotten to attach the file. All attempts at cuteness never go unpunished. Then I didn't even re-read it before I sent it off again. I only obsess when it's inconvenient for me.

Lately, I get really uncomfortable when divulge something remotely personal (even if it isn't all that personal) and I don't get the response I'm expecting. I think that freelancing has put me in a position of constant judgment and I spend the whole day beating myself up that when everyday life "judges" me, it stings a little more. This happens mostly when I try to be creative. I don't have much issue with writing these op-ed type pieces up here or regurgitating information for articles, but it's very rare that I let someone see any of the scenes I jot in my notepads or the stories I start and never finish on my laptop. Sometimes I'll give someone a peek though and then I immediately wish I could take it back.

I think I have some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

-L

Spring

2008-02-21T16:07:00.003-05:00

Spring training officially begins for the Mets today, and how appropriate that the new Sports Illustrated arrives in the mail today too featuring a beaming Johan Santana sporting his new Mets uniform. Even though it's still fucking freezing in New York I'm already feeling the warm buzz of spring.

T-minus 39 days until Opening Day.

-L

Her Kind

2008-02-07T17:01:00.000-05:00

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

-Anne Sexton

In a college poetry class, one of our assignments was to memorize a poem and "perform" it in front of the class. I chose this one. When my professor asked me why I picked it, I said, "Because she's empowered by her insanity." In the end though, I guess it didn't work out too well for her because she killed herself, or maybe, as the second to last line indicates, that's why she killed herself.

I'm not all that into poetry anymore, but this has been my favorite poem ever since I first read and reread and reread it. I think it embodies everything about how I view myself. Just completely crazy and uncomfortable and not giving a shit and caring too much and hating it and loving it and wanting to be everywhere and curled up in a ball in the middle of nowhere all at once.

If I could live inside my head, I'd create a very nice world for myself.

-L

Gummy Bear

2008-02-05T11:08:00.000-05:00

I look through my notepad and find the lone sentence: "I ate a giant gummy bear."

I haven't jotted down any context and I can't remember what it means or why I felt compelled to write it. What's more, it's written in the pad I carry around on job interviews, so there is no drug- or alcohol-fueled excuse for it. No night of barhopping in the East Village that resulted in a curious discussion about gummy bears, worms, cola bottles or other gelatinous, slightly translucent chewy sweets. Which mindless and ultimately failed attempt at full-time employment inspired me to write something so surreal?

I have never consumed a gummy bear of inordinate size, but now I'm convinced that doing so will unlock the door to a secret fifth dimension where you walk around holding hands with giant candy bears.

-L

Good weekend for New Yawk

2008-02-04T17:17:00.000-05:00

"So what's your prediction?" the Eldest Bro asked me yesterday afternoon as I boiled water for dumplings.

"27-24, Giants," I said flatly.

"Really?"

"Oh, wait. No, it won't go that high. 17-14, Giants."

And what do you know? I don't attest to being some sort of hardcore Giants fan. Football is a sport I've only recently begun to understand/enjoy, and I grew up preferring the Jets. But gotdamn. It was cool seeing them beat the Cowboys. It was surprising seeing them beat the Packers (especially with that crazy field goal). But last night was just fucking shocking. That was a pretty surreal/slow/interesting/weird/awesome/confusing/OHMYGOD HE CAUGHT IT! game (that I should have put money on), and it was worth it just to see the up-their-own-ass Patriots lose, give Boston fans (most of whom have become unbearably smug) one less thing to brag about and just be really fucking surprised. And if the death blow was delivered by New York, all the better.

But all the Super Bowl craziness cast a shadow on news that made me just as happy to be a New York sports fan. Six years of Johan Santana makes me feel a little better that they traded Lastings Milledge for Q-Tips and coconut jellybeans, and I think the Mets need to atone for last season and give Shea a proper send off in the World Series.

Oh, and the Rangers won something this weekend too.

-L

Vogue

2008-01-30T23:39:00.001-05:00

Conde Nast, with its seemingly limitless assets, does not cater. I can't say I'm surprised that a magazine that takes pride in pushing unattainable products, services and physiques on the general populous wouldn't. But when the Best Friend lets me tag along to one of her fancy media shindigs, we usually descend upon the trays of upscale hor'dourves like vultures and leave feeling quite satisfied. So when she told me about the Vogue party tonight and the invitation indicated that there would be hor'dourves, I was anticipating little Kobe beef sliders that melt in your mouth, delicate salty-sweet caviar blintzes, chicken skewers and some variety of dumpling served on Chinese soup spoons.

Instead, we walked in to find models. A lot of models. A lot of foreign models, doe-eyed models, pouty models, bored models, tall models and the realization sank in: there will not be any food at this party. So we gulped down our glasses of Moet, collected our gift bags and went to eat dumplings at Mandoo House in K-Town. Then we had a deep discussion about prosciutto di Parma and various other cured meats over a heaping tub of Pinkberry.

Moral of the story: If you want to lower your self-esteem, a Vogue party will do so in ten minutes or less.
Moral number two: Vogue parties are le wack. (pout)

-L

Constipated

2008-01-24T01:29:00.000-05:00

I'm not constipated in the literal sense...although it is in the literal sense. I have this craving to write right now, I have freelance deadlines looming, thoughts swelling inside my brain, and I just can't find the words. There's too much to say. Or there's nothing to say. Or there's too much to say that I don't want to share. Or there's too much I want to share that I can't compartmentalize properly into neat readable folders and subfolders of paragraphs, sentences and words.

Maybe it's because I'm content. Maybe it's because I'm a little stressed out. Maybe it's because I'm content that I'm a little stressed out. Maybe I need to feel the pressure. Maybe there's just a little too much pressure on things I don't really feel like doing right now. Maybe I'm feeling a bit anxious about [thing I don't want to jinx].

The other day, I was standing on a street corner near Astor Place waiting for the light to change so I could cross, and I started daydreaming and completely zonked out. When I came to, the light had changed from green back to red and the people who were sharing the corner with me had shuffled past me and were halfway down the block. This made me feel silly, and strangely happy.

-L

Mondayisms

2008-01-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

1) 2007 left me with a handful of extra pounds I can’t seem to shake no matter what and a newly acquired sweet tooth. I was never much for cakes and cookies, candies and sweets, but somewhere towards the beginning of last year, I developed an insatiable taste for the sugary, starchy, gooey and buttery. Good for baking, bad for the waist.

2) Tonight’s attempt at chicken pot pie turned out to be a success. My brothers and I polished off the entire nine-inch pie (which doesn’t seem too big, but when it’s filled with starchy vegetables, chicken and thick gravy, turns out to be very hearty) in one fell swoop. I take a lesson from everything I make lately, and I’ve learned that making pie crust is no fucking joke. It took longer to make the crust than it did to cook the entire pie.

3) I was tempted to make crepes for dessert, but I decided that would be inexcusable and opted to eat an orange instead.

4) That old saying that you can’t ever forget how to ride a bike is a lie. I took my new bike out for a spin and I was a wobbling mess. But better than my mother who couldn’t even move a foot before crumpling into a heap on the sidewalk.

5) Anthony Bourdain rocks. He cooks, he travels, he eats crazy shit, curses like a sailor, drinks like a fish, makes fun of everyone and is as blunt as a sledgehammer. I adore and despise him in every way imaginable.

6) I watched The Namesake last night and it served as a reminder of how familial bonds are at once virtually indestructible and dangerously fragile.

7) I wanted to hold off on watching Atonement until I read the book, but two hours of James McAvoy proved to be too much to resist. (Semi-spoiler alert) The concept of using writing to create an alternate reality that should have been really stuck with me, and I can see how it would have worked much better as a book than a film. I kind of regret watching the movie first, but whatever, James McAvoy is pretty.

-L

Another year, another...yollar

2008-01-05T01:01:00.000-05:00

The holidays actually turned out to be pretty awesome. I got some cool gifts from the fam (bike, diamond necklace), B's ladyfriend (crepe pan for to nurture my new cooking obsession), and friends (nice sweaters, linzer cookie cutters, again, for to nurture my new obsession). I cooked an awesome Christmas dinner (way better than my Thanksgiving disaster), saw my grams, and had a pretty good time with good food, good people and my good dog.

New year's eve was the predictable disappointment that I expected and I woke up with one of the worst hangovers of my life and a generous helping of regret, but it's a new year, I've made some attainable resolutions (wake up/sleep earlier, stay organized, don't drink so much, take care of myself) and they've been going pretty well thus far.

I also had a sick, sick opportunity essentially handed to me by an old coworker, and despite two shots of NyQuil and the beginnings of a pretty bad fever, I still can't fall asleep because I'm anxious/nervous/happy/worried about getting started. Let's see how it goes.

Things are looking up. Stay tuned.

-L

Is there...

2007-12-19T01:55:00.001-05:00

...anything more intriguing than a person who intimidates you with their intellect?

I had accepted the fact that certain people just didn't do it for me. But sometimes, someone is just so passionate and frighteningly intelligent, even if it's about something that completely escapes you, that you can't help but feel like that needs to be a part of your life.

-L

On writing

2007-12-18T17:35:00.000-05:00

Writing is exhausting sometimes.

There are rare moments when you’re feeling it, and all of the right words spill out of you in a steady, comfortable stream. You type feverishly for what feels like five minutes only to realize that an hour is gone and you’ve satiated pages with thousands of tiny letters.

Most of the time, you have something you want to convey, but no matter how hard you try, the right words and phrases just won’t come. You fiddle with internet thesauri, retype the same sentence over and over hoping something clicks so you can feel that familiar release. You distract yourself with trips to the kitchen for snacks and glasses of water but this thing keeps burning inside your chest without a name. It radiates inside of you like a glowing coal.

By far the most frustrating is when the words come too fast. There’s too much you want to say and your thoughts are performing an assault on you, like machine gun fire. No matter how fast you try to catch them with your hands and your lips, they’re coming out in a rapid fire jumble of broken sentences and incomplete thoughts and everything you want to say feels misunderstood. That’s when you need to walk away and hope that one day those ideas will sort themselves out into something you can hold.

-L

Fiction

2007-12-18T03:36:00.000-05:00

I was all set to spend the night with a book tonight, but Pulp Fiction is on Stars.

Game over.

Trying to forget anything as intriguing as this would be an exercise in futility.

-L

Christmas a la L

2007-12-16T20:44:00.000-05:00

The cable repairman came to install our new HD box the other day and felt the need to engage me in small talk. “Excited for Christmas?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

He laughed. “Yeah it’s not like when you were a kid, right? Getting all those gifts under the tree. Not fun like that anymore, right?”

“Yeah...not like that anymore!” I overcompensate.

“Well, have a good one anyway!”

“You too!”

To this day, B and Eldest Bro tell me about the “Best Christmas Ever.” The year they woke up to find stacks of gifts under our sad little plastic Christmas tree. Big boxes wrapped tightly in paper stenciled with drawings of stockings and candy canes. They tore in to discover a brand new Nintendo, games, toys, stuffed animals, and left piles of crumpled paper, bows and boxes in their wake as satisfying skeletal reminders. I was one year old then, so I don’t remember that year, but from their "oh man"-riddled descriptions, it seems like it would have been fun.

My parents never did it again, so I never got a “Best Christmas Ever.” I still believed in Santa at that point so I assumed he was too busy. Even as a naïve child who believed a fat man in a red suit flew into chimneys and delivered gifts, I was reasonable enough to know that it was impossible for one person to go to every house in the world in one night (it was things like this that had teachers often labeling me "precocious"). I assumed he just never made it to our apartment. We didn’t even have a chimney. When we moved into the new house, there was no fireplace there either, and despite the huge upgrade from our roach-infested, tiny one-bedroom in Elmhurst, it pinched at the back of my mind that Santa had no way of getting in.

None of that mattered, though, when that same year, three weeks before Christmas, B was teasing me with stories about Santa, where the legend came from, why he never came to our house and, after pausing to chuckle to himself, he rather nonchalantly dropped the bombshell—“Whatever, you know there’s no Santa anyway.”

“Oh, yeah…duh.”

My little six year-old world was upside down. No Santa? I lay awake late into the night all wide, teary eyes wondering what else I had been lied to about. God? Was there a God? Did Jesus really change all that water into wine? Loaves of bread, fishes, Noah’s Ark.

B had no idea about any of this, of course. Even at six years old, I was prideful and sensitive to the ridicule of my older brothers, so there was no way I was going to let on that I had believed something so silly. Obviously there was no Santa.

One year, when my brothers were in junior high, we tried to recreate that Christmas ourselves. We walked to the shopping center by our house armed with whatever tiny sums of change and lunch money we could scrounge up and bought ourselves trinkets, board games, books. We wrapped them carefully and put them under the tree. Christmas morning, we tore into them, feigning surprise, but as we sat around in the clumps of packaging, B broke the illusion and said what we were all thinking: "It's just not the same."

Other than some hideous costume jewelry bracelet my mother gave me one year—one I showed off to all my friends at school until it began to rust—the gifts never came again. That didn’t stop me from hoping that one day they would. I still jumped up Christmas morning convinced this was the year they’d do “Best Christmas Ever: Part II,” but they didn’t and eventually I stopped hoping. Christmas became a source of dread, waking up early to snore through a two-hour mass, going home and watching It's a Wonderful Life.

There lies the reason that, unlike most of my friends who plan secret santas and holiday dinners, I don’t look forward to Christmas. I cringe at the compulsory let's-have-a-girls'-night-for-Christmas email that pops into my inbox the second week of December. I hate the holidays. I’m a typical Scrooge once Thanksgiving leftovers are packed into Tupperware containers and radio stations start crooning, “I’m dreaming...of a white….Christmas” and all the houses on my block are adorned with sparkly little white lights. From my childhood hoping for gifts through to my adulthood hoping for anything, the holidays have been associated with nothing but disappointment and resentment and the hope that something will be different come Christmas morning, but waking up to see nothing has changed.

So poo on you and your cheesy holidays.

-L

I am all I need

2007-12-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

Or at least I’m trying to convince myself that.

I get into a discussion with Mike about how I am prepared to be alone. It’s not meant to sound like some sort of “boo-hoo, woe is I” emotive lonely woman blabber talk. But he sees it that way and he’s looking at me with this disgusting pity-drenched, disappointed gaze.

“I’m not saying I’ve given up and I’m just going to write everyone off from here on. I’m just saying that it’s entirely possible that I’ll never meet someone I want to be with, and I’m ready for that possibility.”

“That’s just sad.” He’s shaking his head. “You have a lot to offer.”

“I never said I didn’t!” I’m getting irritated now. He has turned something I saw as a show of solidarity within myself, an acceptance that I am okay alone, into some sort of weepy cry for help.

“I don’t think you know that you have a lot to offer and you’re just accepting that you’re never going to find someone to give it to.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. Just forget it.”

Fine, I get it. Humans are supposed to latch onto one another and have babies. I’m ready for that outcome also, but just because I’m prepared for the very real possibility that I won’t find someone, it doesn’t mean I’ve rolled over and decided to be fat and join PETA.

Maybe my problem is the opposite from what Mike was talking about. I think I have too much to offer and I adamantly refuse to settle. I got into a heated discussion with S once about how I can’t give guys a chance. If I don’t feel that surge as soon as I meet them or soon after, I just can’t ever see them in a romantic light. And believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve gone on dates I didn’t really want to be on, I’ve dated guys I knew I’d never really fall for in the hopes that I might, and all it did was make me resent them for not being who I wanted. It made me cruel. S said I was close-minded, too picky, I was denying myself the opportunity to get to know a lot of guys that I could potentially have some sort of life-altering whirlwind romance with. I told him he didn’t know me well enough to assume this and he should shove his judgment up his ass.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I’m not giving certain people their due. But maybe I just want too much and I know I want too much and I know that I’m not one of those people who settle or grow with one another. I can’t be my parents who hate each other but grew to tolerate and maybe even love each other. Out of necessity, not desire. Maybe I just know myself and what I want.

I’m ready to accept being alone because I’ve seen too many people force themselves to care about someone they don’t really care about just to fit the societal norm, just to fulfill their duty as animals—survive, mate, reproduce, repeat.

I’m not all that concerned with whether or not I deviate from the norm. If I’m alone, I’m alone. I’ll live. If I don’t have kids, so be it. I’d rather travel. The majority might look at me from their pastel stucco houses and label me “spinster” or say, “how sad, she had so much potential and now she’s all alone.” But the only difference between them and me is that given an option between a life of mediocrity with a tepid marriage and children versus a life alone, most would opt for the marriage and kids where I’d rather create my happiness alone.

-L

Pedagogues

2007-12-11T21:11:00.000-05:00

When you're a creative type, it's good to know people in the following professional categories:

-Medicine
-Finance
-Law

Medicine, so that you have someone to call and ask if it's possible to overdose on vitamin C after you took 2000 mg in an attempt to ward off a burgeoning throat infection because you are without medical insurance and cannot afford to get sick, and your pee has begun to smell funny.

Finance, so you can properly gauge whether or not your mutual fund is providing a satisfactory return, or you'd be better served putting your paltry savings in an alternate investment that will make it increase exponentially so you can finally pay for that elective tonsillectomy.

Law, so you know your options after you get caught robbing your first bank.

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone in any of these fields. Well, at least anyone that I'm well-acquainted enough with to call and ask such asinine questions. I have friends I can call to ask what instrument appears in the opening bars of Lover, You Should've Come Over by Jeff Buckley (harpsichord) and who painted the Old Guitarist (Picasso), but no doctors, no investment bankery-type persons, no lawyers.

-L

Threads

2007-12-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

Things keep popping into my head that I mean to write about. I think about them and formulate long narratives in my head, but once I sit down in front of my laptop, my brain works too fast for my hands and I become frustrated with them. Ideas sound so much better in your mind than they do once they're staring you in the face. I am my harshest critic.

Some of these ideas (maybe people can vote on which ones they want to hear more about):
-My newfound obsession with cooking/baking and how it relates to everything I can't seem to do for myself in my life.
-The amazing creative writing program I found at the University of Melbourne.
-People I've met.
-My sudden shift from wanting to have a lot of children to not wanting any at all.
-My morbid fascination with reading about high-profile crimes and serial killers on CrimeLibrary.
-Just how loaded is the question, "What do you do?"

Deep stuff, I know.

-L

C'est La Vie

2007-11-29T02:09:00.000-05:00

I've been saying that a lot lately because, lately, there hasn't been much else to say.

Lost job.
Car broke down.
Partner dumped you.
Gained weight.
Dog ran away.
Had to get an abortion.

I don't know...C'est la vie.

Maybe I simply don't understand the nuances of the French language, but do they have a phrase for "life sucks big fat monkey balls" or is it just "such is life?"

Maybe the French, despite their pouts and sparkling water and wine and politically incorrect foie gras, just don't complain like we do?

Maybe I have too much to complain about that isn't really there.

I want to be in Europe again laughing at nonsensical art at the Tate, eating duck confit in front of the tacky Eiffel Tower strobes, breezing through the Irish Times crossword puzzle with Crazy Steve, drinking sangrias on las Ramblas with a gorilla, chasing a water ferry in Venice, skipping in freeze-frame in front of the Coliseum, and throwing up in a corner of Edinburgh Castle and drinking Speyside malt afterwards just to fall asleep on a train stalled somewhere in the highlands with a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in my hands.

-L

Oh for the love of God...

2007-11-15T04:34:00.000-05:00

In the course of updating the blog I got bitten by an evil mosquito five times.

-L

Driving Lessons

2007-11-15T04:20:00.000-05:00

“I need to learn how to drive,” I say as we cruise down the Long Island Expressway towards my house.

“I’ll pull over and you can drive,” Mike tells me.

“No, no way.” But sure enough he’s slowing down and getting off at the Francis Lewis Boulevard exit. “No! I haven’t driven in over two years.”

He slows to a stop and gets out of the car. Soon he’s standing at the passenger side door. He whips it open.

My eyes are dinner plates. All I can manage is a long whiny, “Nooooooo,” but he grabs my wrist and tugs me out of my seat.

“Look, it’s 3AM, the streets are empty. All you need to do is drive straight. Just try.”

The next thing I know I’m sitting in the driver’s seat trembling. "I should tell you, the reason I haven't driven in so long is because I got into an accident."

“An accident, that's exactly what it was. Just calm down,” he says and strokes my knee reassuringly. “We’re not doing anything until you calm down.”

“Okay, okay, I’m calm,” I say gripping the steering wheel.

“What do you want to do first?”

“Adjust the seat?” I ask.

“Adjust it then.”

I pull the lever under me and inch the seat forward.

“Mirrors okay?”

“I can’t see anything out of the mirror on your side,” I say and I’m ready to give up but he adjusts it for me and I’m out of excuses.

“I’m putting it into drive now, hold down the brake. You ready?”

“Meh,” I squeak, but he shifts it into gear and I ease off the brake and press down on the gas. Soon we're oozing down the street driving slower than I think I should be but the speedometer says I’m going 40.

“You’re a good driver,” he says and tells me to turn right here, left there, U-turn before we hit the highway, slow down at the stop sign, “Why are you so nervous? You’re doing fine.” I pull over in front of my house and exhale for what feels like the first time in ten minutes.

I skip out of the car. “I can’t believe I drove! I can’t believe you let me drive! Thanks!” I squeal throwing my arms around his neck.

He laughs at me. “Whatever, thanks for the lift.”

I pause and look at him. “Seriously,” I say, “thank you.”

-L

Billboard's Top Ten - Volume 3

2007-10-17T05:17:00.000-04:00

I have insomnia. Fuck you all.

There are a few things that are wrong with the Best Friend. She doesn't drink alcohol. She likes to talk about her dreams at length. She's not very fond of dogs. She has appalling taste in music. But she's my friend and she gets free Mets tickets every now and then through work, so I put up with it.

Of these flaws, the one we are most at odds about is her shitty taste in music. I know this. She knows this. I tell her this at every given opportunity because (in case you haven't been paying attention) I'm a bit of a music Nazi. Naturally, she finds my "Billboard Top Ten" posts hilarious because she actually likes these songs.

Crank Dat (Soulja Boy)- Soulja Boy (Billboard Ranking - 1)

I almost thought that I wouldn't be able to write one today because all the songs on the top ten seemed like ballads or Kanye West songs (and even though he sucks, his lyrics aren't especially ridiculous). But then I saw this little ditty perched atop the list at number 1, and, even though I had never heard of this "Soulja Boy," the moniker gave me a feeling that his lyrics might be just as...clever--he did not disappoint.

Soulja boy off in this hoe
Watch me lean and watch me rock
Super man dat hoe (Does this mean...knock her out?)
Then watch me crank dat robocop (Like, do the robot?)
Super fresh, now watch me jock
Jocking on them haterz man
When I do dat soulja boy
I lean to the left and crank dat dance
I'm jocking on yo bitch ass (I always thought "jock" meant to copy. Like "jocking someone's style.")
And if we get the fightin
Then I'm cocking on your bitch (I hope he cocks on my bitch too.)
You catch me at yo local party
Yes I crank it everyday
Haterz get mad cuz
I got me some bathin apes (They're probably mad because their's didn't bathe and they smell.)

I'm bouncin on my toe
Watch me super soak dat hoe
I'ma pass it to arab
Then he gon pass it to don loc (Why does the Arab have to pass the hoe to Don Loc? Is she not into Middle Eastern dudes?)

Discuss.

-L

Unemployment

2007-10-16T13:35:00.000-04:00

My mother has decided that October will be a sick month and she quits her job. Come November, she’ll cash in her incessant wails about sore joints, fatigue, toothaches, and “I think the Shingles might be coming back” in exchange for complaints about boredom and languid days. She’ll scour the Korean newspaper for another job hemming jeans, stitching collars, sewing missing buttons and we’ll get our dry cleaning done for free again until she is convinced that her valvular heart disease is back.

Her impeccable timing means that we are unemployed together and she has made it her full-time job to ask me inane questions—Are you applying for jobs? Do you have any interviews? Where do you want to work? What kind of job are you looking for? How is the job market?—and I fantasize about tipping the refrigerator over on top of her and watching her feet shrivel away like the Wicked Witch of the East.

The Chef, my impromptu skateboarding coach, finally cracks after over a month and sends me a text message: Hey, how’s unemployment? I’m not sure if it’s him because I deleted his number weeks ago in an attempt to train myself to play “the game.” His ego has probably become a bit bruised wondering why I haven’t contacted him. Little does he know that there were many drunken nights where I regretted deleting his number and just as many hungover mornings I was awash with relief that I did.

The number starts with 516. I don’t know many people with Long Island numbers, but I reply with a casual comment about my newfound addiction to Californication on Showtime On-Demand knowing that he was the one who recommended it to me. His response will confirm that it’s him, and it does. I ask him if he had fun camping out in front of the White House to protest the war (but really just to smoke pot and pretend he’s a hippie with his vegan best friend) and whether he got around to downloading any Jeff Buckley, and I realize that I actually missed him a little after all.

-L

Until next year...

2007-10-01T11:13:00.000-04:00

I could wax poetic about how everyone screws up and being a real fan is about supporting your team through the rough times, but I won't. I won't because I'm too fucking pissed off to give a shit about a bunch of overpaid losers who just completed the second worst collapse in baseball history (so pathetic, that they can't even fucking win at losing), and I had to watch it to a chorus of jeers from my Yankee fan-infested office because I had to work all weekend.

Yeah, I felt guilty about it at first, but then I read this:

It is not crucial that your team win championships or earn playoff berths every year. That's not what being a fan is about. If it were, there would eventually be no fans. But at some point, you have to be able to trust your team to follow through on its position in the game, in the standings, in your hopes. You have to be able to count on a team that has led its division consistently for virtually an entire season to finish the job. Yes, it's a job. The Mets' job was to win a division which was in their firm control as late as the second week of September.

They did not do their job.

So, to answer all my Yankee fan friends who have asked: No, I'm not turning my back on them. Yes, I'm still a Mets fan. But, just like they kept their "2006 NLDS Champs" banner on the top of their homepage until yesterday, the banner in my head will read "2007 History-Making Fuckups" until next season.

-L

You know your team sucks ass when...

2007-09-29T14:22:00.001-04:00

...they're up 8-0 in the top of the 4th and you're not sure if they'll win.

-L

Skating Lessons

2007-09-27T15:16:00.000-04:00

You came to meet me at the beer garden, overrun by trendy Manhattanites “slumming it” in quaint outerborough New York and they wouldn’t let you in because of your skateboard. I stood outside the door with you and we took turns throwing puzzled looks at the bouncer, plotting ways to throw it over the fence without knocking a hipster unconscious. We settled on the deli down the street where you bought a pack of Marlboro Menthol Lights and let the Pakistani man behind the counter keep the change in exchange for holding onto your skateboard, and I made fun of you for smoking menthols and I made fun of you for your newfound vegetarianism and you laughed and rolled your eyes at me—not bothering to dignify my sadistic sense of humor with a response.

20-minute waits for pitchers of Spaten poured by German baristas and we were restless and we weren’t drunk enough, but M breaks some weed onto a dollar bill and you roll it for me because I don’t realize how buzzed I am until I have to do something so precise. The crowded tables around us stick their noses into the air and there’s a chorus of what’s-that-smells.

When D and M explode into an impromptu beer fight, everyone’s covered in beer and asked to leave, but we don’t even try to argue because we’re drunk and high now and another drink is the last thing we need. But we giggle like teenagers to the bar across the street and get one anyway and end up sitting on the bumper of someone’s obnoxious birdshit-covered Ford Explorer, watching C being drunker than I can ever remember seeing him.

The Pakistani grocery store clerk laughs when we stumble drunkenly back into the store, a huge shift from our earlier composed selves and as we leave, I make my mind up that I want to learn how to skateboard, now. I perch my high-heeled feet on top of the wobbly skateboard and cling hard to your forearms as you guide me down the sidewalk. The wheels rattle along the bumpy sidewalk sending vibrations up my legs while I try to focus my bleary vision, but I keep hiccupping into giggles and jumping off. I try one more time and we start our awkward dance down the street, but I lean too far to one side and the board slides out from under me and in an instant I’m airborne, squeaking and trying to regain my balance, but you grab my arms tight and I bury my nose into your chest. We stand there laughing like that for a while.

When I find a copy of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on your desk, I think that maybe we have more in common that I first thought—that maybe you are someone I could fall for after all. But I know that I never will. I know that you never will either. And I wonder why that is.

-L

It's that time again...

2007-09-24T09:55:00.000-04:00

Time for another installment of "Choose L's Fate," brought to you by CEO's of the World in conjunction with Blogger and Monster.com. If you want random people to call you about jobs that have nothing to do with your prior experience, trust Monster. Getting your hopes up and crushing them, one phone call at a time, since 1999.

After a year at my current magazine, my boss told me that we're folding. I saw it coming, and I was planning to start looking for new work anyway, but it came a lot sooner than I thought it would. In two weeks, I will once again be unemployed. So, I'm leaving it up to the 12 and a half people who still read this site to choose my fate from one of the below options. Feel free to suggest your own.

1) Apply for another magazine editorial position. Hear no responses. Cry. Develop a dependency to pain medication, antidepressants and fried food. Drown in own vomit à la Jimi Hendrix.

2) Go back to school. Preferably abroad. Immerse self in copious amounts of debt.

3) Sell out. Become a corporate whore. Hate self.

4) Join Peace Corps. Spend two years in Africa. Contract Malaria.

5) Convince British friend to marry me for a visa. Move to Europe. Engage in illicit affair with oil tycoon from Mediterranean country. Sail a lot (because that's what rich people seem to do). Leave him for poor artist from Bar'theh'lona. Live on street.

6) Get a one-year visa to Australia. Downside: I'm only allowed to work at one job for four months at a time. Major backtrack on career goals.

7) The ever popular option: Strip.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-L

Hi, my name is L, and I am a Mets fan.

2007-09-21T11:20:00.000-04:00

This is why I am bitter, angry, often depressed and a self-loathing masochist.

I also have a crush on David Wright, which probably means I have an STD.

-L

Where is my mind?

2007-09-10T16:41:00.000-04:00

I don't know where it's gone. I used to have that itch to write all the time. I'd freeze mid-sentence to hunt down a scrap of paper just to jot. Lie in bed buzzing and finally throw the covers off in a huff to write down ideas. Sit in front of my computer for hours chain-smoking cigarettes in my little off-campus studio apartment. Leave Trainspotting on repeat in the background as a reminder of how far removed from "completely fucked" I still was. It was comforting. It felt like my mind was this neverending geyser of thought, ideas, word pairings that would continue to spew ridiculous-isms to the point that I'd never fully rest. I'd forever be an insomniac slurping cup after cup of black coffee. A full bladder sending my legs into spasms and leaving me wriggling in my seat because I refused to break my chain of thought or I was lazy or both.

But it's gone on vacation somewhere. I lost it in Europe. It might be huddled in the EuroStar tunnel between London and Paris. It might have fallen in love with a one-night stand in Barcelona and left me to pursue a man who was lost before it even learned his name. Or it's begging for change on Grafton Street in Dublin, belting out Irish folk songs at the top of it's lungs.

Maybe I dropped it in a toilet in Rome.

Now everything seems repetitive and somehow wrong. I keep recycling what it one gave me into different versions of itself and I'm so bored.

I'm afraid to look for it. That thing that lived inside me and made my brain want to move all the fucking time. What if I look and it's permanently gone? If I accept that it's just taken a break, I'll never have to face the possibility that it's dead. If I convince myself it'll be back, there's no chance of my finding it's decaying carcass somewhere in the recesses of my completely and utterly fucked head. Maybe my constant depression has ceased to nurture it and finally smothered it into a grey semblance of something it once was.

When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire.

Which is what I'm doing now. Hence the two sloppy, ill-formed posts today.

I'm ripping my hair out and setting myself on fire in the hopes that the stink of burning flesh is enough to guide my sanity back home.

-L

Transatlanticism

2007-09-10T12:25:00.000-04:00

He describes her as “the girl he loves” and it makes me chuckle into my hair. It's such a trite way to describe a woman. Cheesy song lyrics. Corny, like referring to sex as “making love” and all that bullshit. It doesn't define anything. For all I know, he's never even met her, but it makes everyone bat their eyelashes and sigh collective breaths of understanding. It only makes sense to the people who are in love. All intensity and heaving chests, air escaping their lungs like bursting balloons.

The ones like me paint their nails black and purse their lips in perpetual disbelief, understanding the lie before it even leaves his parted lips. Before there’s even a chance to tell the truth.

But it’s simpler that way. Stretching an arm to take a photo of yourself while stumbling through another drunken night over West London’s cobblestoned side streets. Sipping a strange fruity concoction from a late bar that you would never order yourself, but it’s okay because it was bought for you. And, in retrospect, it tastes delicious.

Another week is wasted whether it’s on one side of the Atlantic or another and you’re not quite jaded enough to accept it’s the same everywhere you go. So you hold out the hope that you can change it by crossing a different ocean or mountain range or reaching out for that unavailable thing—you haven’t named it yet—that keeps slipping in and out like a wave licking sand.

You dig your toes in deep but no matter what, the tide ebbs. But that moment of contact will carry you through another week here, a month there, however long it takes to settle on a good name.

-L

Ugh...

2007-08-31T13:29:00.000-04:00

God...I hate the Phillies. Especially now. But Aaron Rowand is so fucking beautiful he makes my eyes water.

Just...shoot...me.

-L

Oh well, I tried

2007-08-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

In an effort to get back into the blogging swing of things, I spent the last hour trying to write a post and failing miserably. Incidentally, it was about fucking up.

Oh well, at least I tried. And that's proof enough that I haven't completely abandoned all of you.

So, here's an update about my life:
-I'm going to London next week to visit some old friends, enjoy the horrible weather and spend large sums of money I don't have.
-I'm really poor.
-I've downloaded so much music in the past week that my laptop's angry at me and refuses to boot up properly.
-The Mets have been a source of much joy and sudden, intense stress for me over the past two weeks.
-I've decided to accept the fact that I am unloveable as a character-building trait.
-I've started freelancing for AM New York. Catch me if you can...

-L

Mondayisms

2007-08-27T13:14:00.000-04:00

1) I had a strange weekend. Not entirely good, not at all bad. Just strange.

2) Ended up at a party thrown by a friend's Hungarian ex-coworker on Saturday night at her apartment in the East Village, and it was by far the oddest mix of people I've ever seen--and I mean that in the best way. Take two steps to the left of your comfort zone and the view is entirely different.

3) Speaking of which, I had a huge ego boost in the form of an adorable younger Norwegian guy who's passing through New York on his way to Canada for a semester abroad. Scandinavian guys are incredibly good looking in a not-at-all-my-type kind of way. But I can still appreciate the ocular feast.

4) Facebook is taking over the world.

5) BitTorrent is taking over my life.

6) I have a love/hate relationship with this city. I swell with pride whenever I hear someone who isn't from here talk about how much they love it and I can't imagine making a real life anywhere else, but I feel stir-crazy and all I can think about is how/when/where to get away. I've packed too many skeletons into my too-small closet.

7) The MegaMillions jackpot has surpassed $200 million, and I'm going to buy my first lottery ticket today. I'm already fantasizing about what I could do with that much money...

-L

Apocalypse

2007-07-21T21:26:00.000-04:00

Oh shit, it's the apocalypse. L is writing a post.

Hello to everyone out there in Blogland, and welcome this evening to another installment of...oh shut the fuck up. It's a Saturday night and I'm hard at work closing the upcoming issue for our Monday deadline. Drafts, proofs, tearsheets, fact-checking, Chinese food, Starbucks and a bunch of tired writers/editors/publishers/designers is all we are offering on the menu this weekend. Unfortunately, none of these things come with a shot of Johnnie.

So where have I been? Around. It's kind of sad that in my extended absence, little has changed. My hair has grown a bit. My gym membership has been put to good use. I scored a freelancing gig with AMNY (check it out for any Asian-sounding names--might be me). I lost some friends, made some new ones and got way too drunk at Hi-Fi on the Lower East Side on too many occasions. And in case you haven't noticed, my "acid tongue" remains intact.

Don't take my lack of posting as an indication that my creativity has dried up. For some time, that was the case, but as of late, it's been very much the contrary. I've been hanging out with a lot of creative people lately, flipped though a lot of portfolios that made my jaw drop, and got into a lot of heated debates about Quentin Tarantino. I've invested in some roomier purses and made a notepad and pen a permanent fixture in my daily carry-on luggage (which is worth it just to see the alien characteristic my handwriting takes on when I've had nine beers). I bought an 80 gig iPod and promptly filled it to capacity with music (I anxiously await the release of the 200 gig model, Mr. Jobs), and the laptop I finally settled on has been click-clacking away into all manner of sleep deprivation. In other words, all I need is a $250 vintage band t-shirt from Andy's Cheepees and some stars tattooed on my forearms and I'll be a full-blown hipster.

As far as the muse situation, it's looking bleak. I settled on a few temporary ones. One I tired of pretty quickly. Another turned out to be a judgmental and narcissistic prick. A third was full of shit. I managed a story idea out of each, however, so they weren't complete busts. Hello, ladies? I am an equal opportunity employer. Do something crazy and tell me about it, and you might be the next star of "As Yet to be Determined Story by L."

Where's the fucking love?

-L

Star Search

2007-06-04T12:48:00.001-04:00

I need a muse.

I've known this for quite some time now, but that doesn't make it any easier to find one. I've found a few temporary muses, involuntary ones who would probably be horrified, point fingers and scream "stalker!" if they found out how many times I had checked their MySpace pages or Xanga blogs or Facebook sites, whatever their internet exhibitionist drug of choice may be. This has resulted in several pages of mediocre prose busted out in erratic spurts like a middle-aged man with BPH. But it's not enough.

So if you think you have an interesting life, feel free to suggest yourself as my muse. My only requirements are that you have good/unorthodox/eclectic taste in music and film, your life does not consist of mindless fraternity-esque parties, "bitches,"and your "dope ride," and you make an effort to socialize with people outside of your race/creed/comfort zone. (Loners, freaks, geeks, weirdos and those with mental illness, diagnosed or undiagnosed, welcome and emphatically embraced.) You will also have to be comfortable with me falling in love with you. Not in a romantic sense, mind you, but in a creepy, obsessive sense--the best, and only, kind of love.

Benefits include immortalization via pedestrian art. Possible casual sex thanks to a night of drunken debauchery that will inevitably result in extended periods of regret and awkwardness.

Don't all jump up at once...

-L

Yin and Yang

2007-05-14T16:37:00.001-04:00

-B

“But why does there have to be pain? Why can’t things just be okay all the time?”

In the movie “Little Miss Sunshine”, Steve Carell’s character Frank has a discussion with Dwayne in which they talk about suffering. Frank talks about Marcel Proust, a French writer who believed that the years he suffered were the best years of his life because they made him who he was, and all the years that he was happy was a total waste because he didn’t learn a thing.

Happy people scare me. There’s a healthy level of happiness, but most habitually happy people creep me out. If I’m walking down the street and someone smiles at me, I automatically assume that they’re either crazy, or I’ve got some cream cheese on my face. And bubbly people at work are totally prone to going postal, I’m convinced of it, so I keep my distance. Don’t be surprised when that cheery secretary skips into work one day with a bunch of muffins and cackles as you die from eating crushed glass coated in chocolate frosting.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been relatively unhappy. There are always those rare occasions in which I have a moment of elation but those are outweighed severely by tumultuous thoughts caused by life’s inevitable timeline of tragedies. Thus, sulking has become as instinctual as sleep. I sneer at strangers. I indulge in the occasional program of reclusion. I grind my teeth when I sleep, and I allow angry thoughts to brew and storm in my head until I get migraines. Why do I do this? Well, the real question is, why the hell not?

Life is not fair. Life was devised in such a way so that joys are brief, and pains are excruciatingly prolonged. We live in a world of long goodbyes and quick hellos. We fight hundred year wars, and treaties become broken promises. We say a quick prayer to our gods then live lives of sin. School shootings become non-passing fads. We mourn the dead for lifetimes but forget birthdays. Love at first sight is fictional but long lost loves are too real. We’re forced to learn to let go of friends, family, significant others, whether it be to differences, deaths, or breakups. And the scary thing is that as we get older, the rate at which we’ll lose those we care about will only accelerate. The future scares me. In fact, it scares me so much that I’d rather be a recluse, I’d rather live with those tumultuous thoughts and I’d rather grind my teeth and be unhappy. Maybe that way, when shit hits the fan, I’ll have my protective shield of cynicism.

But sometimes life reminds me that I can be wrong. Yes I know, “impossible!” you say, but it’s true. I can be wrong sometimes. Sometimes wars end, walls break down, and pacts are born. Sometimes you get that coveted promotion at work. Sometimes your friends and family go out of their way to show you that they care. After a lifetime of drama, you find out that your parents can be supportive in the decisions you make. And after decades of heartbreak, someone holds your hand and you instantly become addicted to the way the base of their fingers seems to fit so warmly into yours. Sometimes a kiss isn’t just a kiss. You have those moments where you’ll be at that crowded, overbearingly loud bar, and suddenly the world around you melts away. Time stands still. Sometimes you’re reminded that it’s true what they say, you will fall in love again. And you learn to allow it. Stars collide in the blink of an eye, worlds are born and other worlds die, and every once in a while, your eyes are wide open to witness it. It makes sense that changes happen so quickly, after all, in that next blink of the eye, you might be gone.

What’s the point of life if you don’t live for those instances, those terribly brief moments of serenity that seem to give life meaning? I’ll let them carry me. So there she stood, eyes closed, and I put my cheek close to hers and breathed her in. I put my hand on her face, partly because I couldn’t believe she was real. And I kept thinking about her question. “Why must there be pain?” Well… I don’t have all the answers but all I could think of was this. I think if it weren’t for all those long goodbyes, those heartbreaks, those broken promises and fights, the tears, the lies, the aches, the pains, the trials and tribulations, those times when I felt like I couldn’t go on; if it weren’t for all of these things… then moments like this would never have been this perfect.

The Unreliable Eye

2007-04-06T13:35:00.000-04:00

There’s a quote floating around somewhere about how an eyewitness is the most unreliable witness. And it’s true. An eyewitness turns a blue car red. An eyewitness thinks all Asian people look alike (though, let’s face it, we do). An eyewitness turns 15th Street into 51st.

Still, inexplicably, an eyewitness account is relied upon heavily. Despite knowing that memory carries about as much weight as a marshmallow, people are still willing to swear that what they kind of remember seeing even though they were a little tipsy is the absolute truth…to the best of their knowledge. And any jury will eat it up and send you marching into a ten-by-ten cell for the rest of your life.

And why shouldn’t they believe them? After all, most people don’t have just cause to lie. Surely someone who isn’t absolutely sure about something wouldn’t claim they are knowing that by doing so they are potentially damaging someone else. Except people are entirely willing to do just that because their pride won't allow them to admit their memory is flawed.

I bring this up because I got into a bit of a kerfuffle, if you want to call it that, with the Eldest Bro thanks to an account he gave of me that was incorrect to the point of being completely fabricated. And he swore it was true.

I was sitting on the couch on a Sunday afternoon nursing a relatively tame hangover when I mentioned to B that the night prior had been a particularly difficult one in regards to quitting smoking.

“I don’t know what it was, but I was craving a cigarette like crazy all night. Which is weird because I’ve been pretty okay the past three months.”

To this, Eldest Bro whipped around and faced us.

“You quit smoking? But I saw you smoking last week.”

“What? When?” I was half-laughing. Clearly he was making a joke. Trying to cast doubt on my accomplishment out of jest.

“That day I dropped you off to meet your friend. When you got out of the car, you put a cigarette in your mouth.”

B eyed me dubiously. “Did you have a cigarette?”

My eyes are wide now and I can’t wipe the incredulous smile off my face, a smile that can easily be interpreted as a poor attempt at lying. “No! I haven’t had a cigarette in over three months!”

“Fine, whatever,” Eldest Bro shrugs and rolls his eyes. “I’m pretty sure I saw you putting a cigarette in your mouth, after you got out of the car without even thanking me.”

“I didn’t thank you because you dropped me off in a pile of snow and I was slipping and sliding all over the place while talking on the phone trying to figure out where to meet my friend and picking up all the shit that fell out of my bag.”

“You were on the phone, but you didn’t drop anything.”

“What the fuck?” I’m livid now. How would he, from his vantage point inside the car with the door shut as he’s pulling away, see anything I was doing? Where was he getting off telling me what I had and had not been doing when I got out of the car?

“Well, I want to believe you, but why would he lie about this?” B says.

At this point, any argument I make is pointless. It’s my word against his. My word—agenda-ridden and dripping with reasons to lie in order to cover-up my supposed lapse—versus his—free from any motives. And like a true eyewitness who milks his fifteen minutes in the courtroom limelight to be self-important and presumptuous, he stands by his word with a nonchalant swagger that makes me want to rip his eyes out and shove them down his throat.

Quitting smoking isn’t an especially easy thing to do, and in the last three months and change, I have felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Smoking was the one thing I could never seem to get a handle on. But just like that, someone feels like they have seen something, testifies to it, and a huge shadow has been cast on my achievement.

It’s almost enough to make me want a cigarette.

-L

Obsession

2007-03-27T17:05:00.000-04:00

I tend to go through regular phases of obsession. When I was in the second grade, it was Tom Cruise circa Top Gun and Days of Thunder. I drooled over his (bad) Irish accent in Far and Away and marveled at his bottle-juggling flair in Cocktail. I despised Nicole Kidman in all her 5’11” willowy splendor. In high school, my sights turned towards Edward Norton. I stopped going out with friends on weekends, opting instead to hole myself up in my room and watch every movie he ever made on my little 19-inch television. Saturday nights were spent scouring the aisles at Blockbuster in dirty sweatpants hunting for bargains on used copies of Primal Fear and American History X and stammering awkward excuses when I happened across a classmate or acquaintance and they asked why I hadn’t been out in awhile. A brief stint succumbing to the (now creepy) wiles of Colin Farrell, and college was spent refining my obsessive craft on a different kind of subject.

In college, rather than develop these unreal crushes on actors and stars, I started to become obsessed with stuff. I’d see a movie I liked and instantly spend the next two weeks Googling every single fact about the actors, the production, the storyline. I’d find a band I liked and instantly learn the life history of every member, their motivation for every song, spend unreal amounts of money on concert tickets and CDs. I would read books over and over, learn everything about their authors. And baseball became a steadying force in my life—leaving me now with this unhealthy obsession with David Wright.

Obsessing over those things, while somewhat psychotic, creepy, and unhealthy, have ultimately enriched my life. I still love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Quentin Tarantino, Muse, Zadie Smith, the Mets, Portishead, David Wright, Pulp Fiction, Spike Jonze, Trainspotting, Uma Thurman, Danny Boyle, Radiohead, Ewan McGregor, Poe, et al. I learned a frightening amount of information about all these people/things over the course of a couple of weeks each, but the obsessions have died down and what lingers is knowledgeable appreciation.

As for now, I’m obsessed with Jeff Buckley. Through I first heard of him a while ago, I never really got into him until a few months ago, and now I’ve downloaded every song I can get my hands on, blown a crapload of money on every album I could find on Amazon, and spent countless hours watching clips of live performances (thank you, YouTube), and being really freakin’ sad that he’s dead.

Sigh.

I’ll eventually have to join the ranks of members of the real world.

Nah, fuck that.

Prenuptial Semantics

2007-03-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

You know you’ve reached phase three—quarter life—the moment a wedding invitation comes in the mail and it’s addressed to you.

This happened pretty early for me—I was 21. A girl who was on the same exchange program with me in Ireland got married at the ripe age of 22 (much to my absolute horror). At her wedding, I realized why she had chosen to marry so young—she was from the Land of the Marrying People. Left and right there were couples who had been together since high school. Girls younger than me flashed their engagement rings to one another, while the ones who didn’t yet have them said things like, “John’s going to propose soon, I can feel it.” Gossip mongers whispered about, “Poor Ashley’s been waiting for her ring for almost six months now. What’s Eric waiting for?” while I, wide-eyed and absolutely terrified for the entire duration of the reception, drowned myself in Jack and Cokes.

E came to visit with her husband a few months back and we got together for drinks. She and her husband were working two jobs to save for a down payment on a house and she had been stressed-out for the last two years. When he was out of earshot, she confided in me that she missed dating.

“You mean, like, you want M to take you out more?”

After a brief hesitation, “Uh, yeah. Kind of like that…”

It was pretty obvious that she wasn’t very happy. I knew it was primarily the financial burdens that were weighing her down—she hadn’t had a chance to enjoy her honeymoon period because she was too busy stressing about grad school and finding a place to live from the get-go—but she also seemed tired of being married. Despite my cynicism when it comes to marriage, I’m not about to go and encourage someone to make such a huge life-changing decision like leaving their spouse, so I assured her that things would get better once they paid the down payment. She seemed a little skeptical, but forced a smile and agreed.

God knows why, but a few months ago, a friend of mine forwarded me some sort of article about the practical questions couples should ask each other before they get married. Big things like “How many children do we want to have?” and “If one needs to relocate, will the other be willing to follow?” to seemingly inane (but still very important) ones like, “Will we have a TV in the bedroom?” Seeing no use for it, I passed it along to a friend whose brother is about to get married.

“I don’t know why someone sent me this, but you can pass it along to your brother.”

I guess she assumed that I was being my usual cynical, overly-pragmatic self and shot back with:

“Marriage is about love, not some survey.”

Very true, very true, but it’s the couples who abide too strictly by the theory that “love conquers all” who end up freaking the fuck out when they find out that their husband is going to pursue his dream of becoming a street artist the same week you find out you’re pregnant with your fifth child.

I think a lot of people, often myself included, are really taken with the notion of getting married, but the concept of being married completely escapes them. I admit, I fantasize sometimes about finding some great guy, falling retardedly in love and having a big stinkin’ wedding, but that’s where the fantasies stop. No one fantasizes about what comes after that. Who sits around and thinks about the years of dirty socks lying on the bedroom floor and getting your ear chewed off because you aren’t romantic enough anymore? Assuming the marriage goes extremely well, even, you rarely fantasize about happily sitting at home together and just being married. So people get caught up. They plan the big wedding, the $5000 flowers, the big poufy dress, flower girls and doves flying overhead as you kiss. They think about waterskiing on their honeymoon and the first year of picking out matching curtains and wallpaper for the new house and getting pregnant with the first baby. They forget about the hours of doing nothing, the arguments, the bills, the mortgage payments, the first time he loses his job, the fourth unplanned pregnancy, the having sex with the same person for the rest of your life.

I met E when she was already engaged and in the midst of her wedding plans, and she was happy, carefree, excited, young. She asked me for all sorts of advice about seat covers, cake flavors, flower colors, honeymoon destinations, houses, cities to live in. But she never asked me how to be married. And now, two years later, the dress is in storage, the flowers are dead, the cake is eaten, and all that's left are responsibilities she didn't know she'd have and routines she didn't want.

-L

Survey

2007-03-05T12:28:00.000-05:00

-B

Question: When pissing next to someone in the bathroom stalls, is it bad etiquette to audibly (or inaudibly) fart? And if proximity is the main factor for the tastelessness of this act, then how far must one be in order to considerately fart?

Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

And yeah, I just farted really loudly next to some dude in the bathroom.

Subway Sleep

2007-02-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

-B

There's nothing like a good sleep on the subway. I hate commuting because I feel like it's a total waste of time, except when I'm sleeping.

The 7 train was running all local today due to a "sick passenger". I think that term is too vague. Every time I hear it, I imagine a passenger getting up and yelling, "Damnit, I just caught a cold. Stop this damn train." Running all local only adds 5-7 minutes to my commute, but that's enough added time for me to actually fight and claw my way into an available seat. I succeeded in getting a seat and promptly closed my eyes.

I'm one of those people on the train who fall asleep and gape. It happens slowly at first, my mouth creeps open a little, but after I'm fully immersed in slumber, my mouth opens wide like a snake trying to swallow a hippo. By the way, don't watch that video if you have a weak stomach. I kept waking up and shutting my mouth quickly out of embarrassment only to fall asleep again to ensue in my never-ending yawn.

I also kept leaning into the person next to me, and jumping awake. The sight of a gaping, leaning, sleeping Asian guy who kept jumping awake was too much for the straphanger in front of me to handle, so she began cracking up. I looked up at her for a second, then slowly felt myself fall back asleep.

Best commute ever. Kill me.

Be nice to me, I'm a millionaire

2007-02-22T10:54:00.000-05:00

-B

Looks like I’m a millionaire. Whoopee…

I got the following e-mail today:

THE DESK OF THE DIRECTOR PROMOTIONS,
UK NATIONAL LOTTERY,
MORTIMER HOUSE ,MORTIMER STREET,
LONDON, W1T3JG UNITED KINGDOM.
+44 70111 49284
(Customer Services)

ATTENTION: WINNER,
We are pleased to inform you of the final announcement today, 22nd of
February,2007 regarding winners of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY ONLINE PROMO PROGRAMME, held on the 10th of February,2007. It is yet to be unclaimed and you are getting the FINAL NOTIFICATION as regards this.You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of (£750,000.00) Seven hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds.
Congratulations, you have just won yourself £750,000.00 in the satellite software email lottery conducted by UK NATIONAL LOTTERY PROMOTION in which your e-mail address was randomly selected by software powered by the Internet.Your email address was amongst those chosen on this quarter and you are to contact our AFFILIATED COURIER COMPANY for your free delivery of your certificate and cheque of £750,000.00. When contacting them you are to include this order Number 37096218 as your secret number of your parcel to the courier company.In the light of the above you are to fill this claims form and send it to the courier company for propper documentation of your address to enable them delivery your winnings with out delay of your cheque.

Thank you for being part of our online promotional lottery program.

Yours Truly,
Sir. Richard K. Lloyd.
Co-coordinator(Online Promo Pro gramme).

Upon receiving this e-mail, I immediately ran up to the CEO of my company, pulled down my pants, rubbed my ass all over the documents strewn about his desk, took a steaming shit, and smeared the words “I QUIT” with the steaming shit, all over his white board.

Well, I planned on it, but I decided to do a little research first. Apparently there are several variants of this e-mail such as:

FROM: PROMOTIONS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL LOTTERY, WINNING NOTICE
FOR SILVER STAKE WINNER- Ref. No.- RNL/051/652659967/UK

Attention:

Royal National Lottery has just concluded its final draws of it's periodical promotional program. An exclusive list of email addresses of thousands of individual and corporate bodies were picked by automated random computer search from the internet. No tickets were sold.

Your email address emerged as one of seven winners in the silver stakes category as email addresses were soughted, from a total number of 25,000 addresses drawn from all over the globe.

After an automated computer ballot of our International Promotions Program, only SEVEN winners emerged in this category and therefore each are to receive payouts of ?1,500,000,00 from the total of ?10,500,000.00 (TEN MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND EUROS).

However,every email address selected was accompanied by a reference and ticket number, after the cyber lotto selection, the below ticket and reference numbers emereged as one of the lucky winners in the above category.CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Reference number for your prize is:Ref. No.- RNL/051/652659967/UK Ticket No.- RNL87867UK

For the your prize claim processing, we have employed the service of an lnternational Trust firm. They are to handle the transfer of your cash prize of ?1,500,000.00 in line with our procedures and upon your directions.

Your prize has been insured to its full value with your email address and will be transferred to you under their professional service. To immediately initiate the processing of your prize claim, please contact our financial handlers Bond Finance & Securities,below are the contact information of their FINANCIAL DIRECTOR;

Mr. Leonard Walter
Financial Director
Bond Finance & Securities.
email:leonardwalter01@yahoo.co.uk
Phone:+447040114988
Fax: +448701355854

I guess I’ll have to save my graceful exit out of this company for another day…

The Blahg

2007-02-01T14:56:00.000-05:00

When I first started this site, I was excited to write in it. I had an orgy of cleverisms fornicating in my head, and egged on by delusions of grandeur, I thought that people would want to read them. No one did, but I wrote in it anyway, and I felt very smug about some of the pearls of wisdom I thought I was spitting. A few people were kind enough to put links up on their (much more popular) sites, and for a while, I felt pretty damn special that there were a hundred or so complete strangers who were actually willing to take time, time that could never be returned, to read something that I had written. That's a pretty cool feeling.

I don't know what happened, but my ethusiasm started to wane. My well-thought-out posts graduated into pointless drivel about mind-numbing crap, people started taking down my link, traffic dropped, I started to feel disappointed in myself. And it just continues to snowball. Unproductivity begets unproductivity. Lagging self-esteem begets eating disorders and teenagers listening to Staind and cutting themselves...you know the drill. While I haven't begun to vomit on command or subject myself to the music of Staind, my thought processes have. So, I'm going to take a break.

During this time, I will write many, many bad posts, but I will be kind enough not to put them up so those who have stayed true have any more of their time wasted by crap. If something good actually emerges from the confines of this hiatus, I'll post it up with all manner of bells and whistles and smoke and mirrors attached.

'Til then, simmer with the knowledge I just dropped on B's ass over AIM:

B: it's just not fair
L: life isn't fair
L: the haves keep having
L: the have nots keep not having
L: you can get
L: and become a getter
L: but you'll never be a haver
L: unless you always had
L: the difference between a haver and a getter
L: havers just get
L: getters have to work to have

I, on the other hand, am neither a haver nor a getter...I am the walrus.

-L

Kill Me Now: Why Work Sucks

2007-01-31T10:20:00.000-05:00

- B

I love it when people leave a voice message of themselves fumbling to hang up the phone.

After living in the heart of the big apple for 3 years (Manhattan) I decided to move back in with my parents at the beginning of this month/year in hopes of saving enough money by the end of the year to feasibly buy/mortgage an apartment. I guess it’s the better long term plan, but as far as the short term goes, it’s absolutely torture.

I am a tissue. The entire train is silent except for the person who stands right next to me sneezing and coughing on me. It seems like a daily occurrence. I’m consistently next to the sick person on the crowded train every day, and to make matters worse, they always stand in a position so that they’re facing me and coughing straight onto me. As I walk to transfer onto my next train, I brush away the remnants of germs still clinging to my jacket. The 4/5 train comes often, but is always brimming with suits who glare defensively at the newcomers to their daily grind transport machine. I ram into the crowd of suits, and somehow manage to find a space at the edge of the entrance just in time for the doors to shut, millimeters from my nose. The silent crowd searches for things to stare at in an attempt to avoid the awkwardness of having another person’s face inches away from theirs. And then the person next to me breaks the silence by sneezing and coughing on me for the remainder of the ride.

Some guys at work are assholes in the bathroom. In the morning and after lunch are when the bathrooms usually have limited vacancy. It’s not a problem because there are separators between the stalls, but every once in a while, some guy decides to be the asshole who stands far enough away from the stall to bear all. Some guys piss with their hands on their hips, their dicks hanging out and standing 2 feet away. They look down at their dicks with a stern look as if commanding it to urinate. I absolutely do NOT want to see a dick, first thing in the morning. In fact, I don’t want to see a dick ever unless it’s my own, or it’s donking Jenna Jameson. These guys should die. No seriously, they should be mauled by wildlife.

I need for this week to end right now…

Dedi-fuckin-cation

2007-01-30T01:56:00.000-05:00

Note that it is now 1:55 AM, EST and I am still at work.

-L

Boobs!

2007-01-29T19:06:00.000-05:00

What does a woman hope to accomplish by emailing a man an anonymous photo of her boobs?

This guy talks about such emails very often, and I was always under the impression that he meant it as a joke. Not until Rob actually told me a while ago that women, in fact, do send internet "quasi-celebrity"-types such as himself and Jason Mulgrew digital images of their naked bodies (sans faces, of course), did I realize that people actually do this. But you can’t blame me for assuming there wasn’t any merit to Jason's claims because, quite simply, what’s the point?

First off (and no offense to any big-time bloggers out there), bloggers, even successful ones, are not particularly special. Sure, they’re funny, they provide entertainment, and, for some, their internet fame has resulted in relative success—all very laudable accomplishments. But no one has achieved the level of celebrity that would give many women the secret satisfaction of knowing that he has seen her in various forms of undress that they might get from sending Johnny Depp pictures. Secondly, these photos are usually anonymous. Clearly they don’t want the guy to know who they are, so how is he going to reciprocate (take that to mean whatever you want it to)? Lastly, men don’t seem to do this. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but in the unlikely case that this site becomes suddenly popular, I’m not expecting men to feel compelled to email me with photos of their erect penises.

So why does this happen? After much thought, these are the conclusions I have drawn:

1) Women like attention—they crave it, they need it. Even if a woman achieves nothing more than a reply of, “Nice” (which is really the least a guy can do after some girl who was molested as a child sends him a shot of her mammaries), she feels content knowing that someone thinks her tits are “Nice,” and is possibly using them as inspiration for masturbatory fantasies.
2) Women find the romantic notion if being someone’s muse very gratifying. See above. They all want to be like Kate Winslet lying on a sofa naked with a giant diamond around her neck while a roguish chap without a nickel to his name draws her and then screws her in the back of someone else’s car like the classy broad she is.
3) Women are self-conscious about their bodies, so when one thing is working for them, they like to show it off to take attention away from what is not. Hence the cut out/blurred faces.
4) Men are very receptive to visual stimuli. While a man often needs to discuss things that a woman is interested in at length in order to engage her, a simple nip-slip in his email inbox will fascinate a man for an extended period of time (these times vary depending on how much actual boobage he gets to see and how often he sees it). Therefore, a woman who feels that a blogger has done her a great service by occupying a large portion of her billable hours with his witticisms feels that a picture of herself with a finger up her ass serves as sufficient reward. On the other hand, a man would be better served…not…sending a girl a picture of himself with his finger up his ass.
5) Women secretly want to be sluts. Society doesn’t really like sluts, so they either have to remain anonymous about it or subject themselves to ostracism and judgement from their peers. Or they could embrace it and become Jenna Jameson.

-L

Loyalty

2007-01-26T18:25:00.000-05:00

I’m well-aware of my flaws. I’m loud, offensive, overzealous, inconsiderate, lazy, horrible at keeping in touch. I drink too much, I’m terrible at being sympathetic. I argue too much, I’m judgmental. But something I have always prided myself in is that I am loyal. Through all my faults, I manage to be dependable. It’s hard for me to turn someone away when they’re in need. I’m honest, often brutally so. I’m straightforward, upfront. I do everything in my power to avoid situations that might put a friendship into potential jeopardy. And when I am inevitably thrust into a bad situation, I weigh what I want against what a friend wants and make sure that both of our best interests are in mind.

So it’s natural that I hope, or even expect depending on how close we are, the same from people. Often, just because a friend is a good or incredibly close friend, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are loyal. I can honestly look at my friends and say that out of all of them, there is only one whom I consider truly loyal. We aren’t the closest of friends, our personalities even clash to the point that we bump heads a lot, but she is truly loyal. I know without a doubt in my mind that she would never hit on a guy that I’m even remotely interested in, if I were stranded at 4 AM in the middle of nowhere, she would come get me, she would never lie to me about any of her intentions nor try to cover something up for the sake of “diplomacy.” Whenever she opens her mouth, the concept of her deceiving me is safely tucked into the most remote corner of my mind.

And that’s all I really ask.

Even though my cynicism forces me to hope for the best and constantly expect the worst, I still get blindsided when the worst happens.

-L

No, I don't want to fuck your friend.

2007-01-23T17:22:00.000-05:00

I find it absolutely infuriating that whenever I ask about someone's relationship status, it is immediately taken to mean that I want to have sexual relations with said person.

A few weekends ago, I was hanging out at a friend's place having a conversation with one of his friends (who is a fellow writer). Writer Guy and I were engaged in some sort of marijuana-infused debate about books and writers and whatever manner of nonsense that, in retrospect, made absolutely no sense. I knew that Writer Guy had been in a very long-term relationship with Dancer Chick, who I had met once or twice, and found very pleasant. However, at some point Writer Guy alluded to not having sex in a long time or something that was indicative of him being single. So, when he stepped out of the room for a second, I asked my friend, "Is Writer Guy still with Dancer Chick?" To this, he rolled his eyes and said, "Yes, he's still with her, so no, you can't fuck him."

Now hold the fucking phone. How the hell does that mean that I want to do him? I was simply asking because a) I was curious because I knew that they had one of those everyone-wishes-they-were-us relationships and it would be weird if they had, in fact, broken up, and b) I didn't want to accidentally bring up her name if they had broken up and go through the whole awkward, "Uh, we're not dating anymore" moment.

So, calm down.

-L

Spare Tire

2007-01-23T13:36:00.000-05:00

I don’t feel so much like a third wheel as I do a spare tire—possibly even a training wheel. I don’t consider myself entirely unnecessary like a third wheel, dangling off to the side, potential dead weight. I’m more like a backup plan. I offer reassurance in case one of the tires goes flat so you’re not left thumping down the road making those sad little fart sounds that make people turn to stare.

I guess I can’t really get angry about it. Frustrated, maybe. But I’ve never been there—I’ve never been in love. All googly-eyed, tongue hanging out of the side of my mouth, cheeks pinky and glowy—people who are in love always seem to glow or something. So I can’t really understand all the work that being “in love” involves. The time, the brainpower, the dedication. I just see the results.

My friends all seem to be that type. The type who falls in love and pulls a disappearing act. To me, at least. But I can’t get mad. Maybe if it happens to me, I’ll do the same. Nights at a pub throwing back beers and laughing really loudly will be replaced by watching DVDs and snuggling on the couch or whatever it is that couples do. Maybe the most reliable of friends morph into shadows of their former selves once they’re getting laid on the regular.

But once that goes flat, there I am—trusty spare tire. Haul me out of the trunk and you’ll make it to California as long as you don’t drive too fast. Or, at the very least, you’ll need some company when you just want to drive around.

-L

Mondayisms

2007-01-22T16:47:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the lack of posting as of late, but I have been stressed at work, stressed at home, stressed with friends and generally funkdified as of late. I’m feeling a lot better, however, now that I have fallen off the wagon (yes, I am drinking again. I thought sobriety might help with my depression, but as it turns out, it just makes me depressed and sober) and I have convinced myself that David Wright has an STD, and that is why he has not yet proposed marriage to me (not because he is busy sticking his thing into every model and aspiring actress on the West Coast). Anyway…

1) My playoff picks this weekend ended up being the Bears over the Saints and the Colts over the Pats. I should really start gambling.

2) Superbowl picks – Colts over Bears (with apologies to all Bears fans). Peyton Manning’s due for a ring.

3) The fam got one of those family plan cell phone thingers, which means that my father will a) be one of those old Asian men who thinks that cell phones only work if you scream into them at the top of your lungs and b) lose his cell phone for the first time within a month. On the bright side, I got one of those LG Chocolate phones.

4) I still have not smoked a cigarette. You’d think that it gets easier after a while, but the sad thing about addiction is that once you’re addicted to something, you’re addicted for the rest of your life.

5) I need a stylist or something. I’m not very girly, and my girly and fashionable coworkers make me feel very unstylish and unrefined and…mannish. Anyone want to help me? I'd be difficult to work with though because I still refuse to spend more than $50 on jeans (and $50 is even pushing it).

6) I still don’t own an iPod. I told my friend I would get one as soon as they invent the best one ever, and stop improving it. So pretty much, I’ll never own an iPod.

7) I still have not picked a laptop. The battle between Mac and Dell continues to rage. Dell seems to be winning. Recently, a new contender came into the mix. HP hasn’t been much of an adversary, but I read about this on Cnet and it piqued my interest. Anyone know anything about it?

8) It’s cold. I hate the cold.

9) The guy over at youyesyou has started a new format where he posts a new cartoon every day. He seems like the kind of dude I’d want to have a beer with.

-L

Martin Luther Kingdayisms

2007-01-15T15:31:00.000-05:00

Publishing companies do not follow the standard business holiday schedule, so here I am...at work.

1) I went 3 for 4 with my NFL playoff picks this weekend because I did not see the Patriots beating the Chargers. As for next week, I'm really struggling. I'm rooting for the Bears for some reason, but the Saints have the whole heartwrenching Hurricane Katrina story behind them, so I'm torn. The Patriots seem like they'll win because Tom Brady is just ridick, but Peyton Manning still doesn't have a Superbowl ring, so I feel bad for him, so, again, I'm torn. By the way, I know absolutely nothing about football, can you tell?

2) Why won't baseball season start?

3) In a few days, I will be one of the few Mets fans who will: a) sit in the home/visitor dugouts at Shea, b) walk on the field, c) flip the fuck out. I guess that last one isn't so rare amongst Mets fans.

4) I've been sifting through job applications for a new intern at work, and I have a few tips for people who are applying for jobs:

1. If an ad asks for a cover letter, resume and writing sample, these are not just suggestions. Do include a cover letter, resume and writing sample.
2. Do not send a resume that is five pages long.
3. Do not send a resume that is five lines long.
4. Do proofread or else I will not contact you at my "earliest experience."
5. Do not use words like, "gotta" and "dunno."
6. Do not email me from hotsexymama@gmail.com.
7. If you are absolutely addicted to the thesaurus feature on Microsoft Word, make sure the word you're plugging in is grammatically correct. The phrase "dramatic and trickery ending" is not correct.
8. In line with number 7, try not to make it too obvious. If your cover letter is written at a remedial level, and the word "grandiose" suddenly sneaks in, it's pretty obvious you had no idea that word existed until just now.
9. Do not ask stupid questions in an attempt to find out what the company is. It's anonymous for a reason. I will not email you back unless you send me a cover letter, resume and writing sample.
10. Do not send me a writing sample about your balls.

5) I haven't shopped in ages, so when I saw that I had accumulated a decent-sized chunk of change in my bank account, I went absolutely insane and bought a bunch of useless crap. Eh, I'm not spending it on alcohol, so why the hell not?

6) I still haven't bought a laptop.

7) It has been 14 days since my last cigarette and alcoholic beverage and I still haven't killed anyone. I did eat a pot brownie last weekend but it didn't kick in until I got home, so I watched TV, giggled and passed the fuck out. Good times.

-L

Hey, we have something in common. I annoy me too!

2007-01-10T15:33:00.000-05:00

I called a girl at a large publishing company to request a high resolution image of a book they're releasing so that I could include it with the blurb I had written for our culture section. The publicist for the book actually sent me one already, but accidentally sent me a thumbnail, and despite several emails that I sent requesting a high-res version, I hadn't received a reply. So, I called her up, explained my situation and told her that I need the image today. I guess she didn't realize that she had accidentally included me in the email she sent to Publicist about it:

From: girl@publishingcompany.com
To: me@magazine.com
CC: publicist@publishingcompany.com
Subject: URGENT - hi-res image of BOOK

_______ magazine said they've been trying to get in touch with you to get a larger image of the cover of BOOK. I told them I'd send it to them -- but I just searched, and there's no image on the site!!! Do you have a high-res version on your computer? The address to send it to is me@magazine.com -- she said it's "urgent" and needs to be sent "TODAY." (She was annoying. Really annoying.)

It didn't take long for her to realize her mistake because within minutes, I received this:

From: girl@publishingcompany.com
To: me@magazine.com
CC: publicist@publishingcompany.com
Subject: I am so sorry.

Oh my God, I am so sorry. It's been a crazy day here and I am overwhelmed. I am so sorry. I will find out why the image can't be found and send it to you as soon as humanly possible. I am so sorry.

and:

From: girl@publishingcompany.com
To: me@magazine.com
Subject: Update

I am having trouble reaching Publicist -- she is in meetings this afternoon. But as soon as she gets back, I will make sure she sends you a high-res image of the jacket right away.

There is no excuse for me to have written such a whiny, immature e-mail to Publicist, and I am profoundly embarrassed. Again, I apologize.

I haven't responded. Oddly enough, I feel bad for her. I was even tempted to write back and apologize for coming off as pushy (though I don't think I was rude at all). But B says, "silence is golden" and I should leave her to stew in her own embarassment for the rest of the day.

-L

Confused

2007-01-05T14:29:00.000-05:00

So...confused...

I had my heart set on the MacBook, then everyone said I could get more fuck for my buck with a PC. That Dell XPS M1728495038272whatever was looking pretty sweet until I built the package I wanted and the price? $1875. Not cool. Now everyone's saying, "Dell support sucks," but I don't understand why that matters because I'm looking for a computer, not a bra. Now I'm back on the Mac track, but it seems a little big/heavy and spec-light for my tastes.

AGH, I just want a good laptop that's small. Helllp me. Haaaaalp me!

-L

It Looks Like...

2007-01-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

...another series of short, random posts day!

I love rooting for the underdog, so naturally I'm thrilled that the Jets made it to the playoffs. It's a good thing too because if they had sucked this season, Eric Mangini's nickname wouldn't have been Mangenius, but Mangina.

-L

Starved

2007-01-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

I'm starving, but I got into an argument with a smoked turkey and goat cheese sandwich yesterday. I was doing a pretty good job of standing my ground, but I ultimately lost and ended up donating my dinner and most of my lunch to the Porcelain God. Now I'm too afraid to challenge so much as a pea.

-L

Why the Best Friend never ceases to amuse me

2007-01-05T12:06:00.000-05:00

I emailed the Best Friend yesterday:

Hey, you remember G? He's C's friend, I went to elementary school and jhs with him. You met him that one time a while ago when we went to C's for a party. Well...he asked me out on a date.

Her response:

Cool. Does he like potatoes?

The thing that really shocked me was that I thought absolutely nothing of this, and responded:

I don’t know, but I'll ask him if you’d like.

So, either I've become so used to her odd nuances that I'm simply unfazed by her unorthodox reactions and have adopted a method of humoring them or, I've become as bat-shit crazy as she is.

-L

Help

2007-01-04T14:50:00.000-05:00

I'm looking to buy a new laptop, and I need some advice. I was all set to make the plunge from PC to MacBook now that I use a Mac at work, but I've gotten some advice against it. What should I get?

Requirements:
-very small - no bigger than 13-14 inches, no heavier than 5-6 pounds
-at least 80 GB of storage
-at least 1 Ghz of memory
-price - $1000-$1500

HELP!

-L

Fix

2007-01-02T10:32:00.000-05:00

I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions, but I'm planning to try some things out. First off, Julia and I have made a bet about smoking. In addition to my pride, my lack of funds leaves me with no choice but to win, so I am now smoke free.

I'm still trying out this positivity nonsense but, to be honest, it isn't going too well. Like I said, happiness is a consequence, and it appears the consequences of my actions and situations as of late have been more depression. C said I should start taking antidepressants. But that was before his started giving him night terrors. Eh, we'll see.

Perhaps the biggest experiment I'm attempting is no alcohol for the month of January. This might not seem like a big deal to most, but when the majority of your social life revolves around guzzling ten beers and acting like an asshole, it's a pretty big change.

Hopefully these small changes will fix some of the things I find wrong with myself/my current situation.

Here's to a good 2007.

-L

Happiness

2006-12-29T10:45:00.000-05:00

Someone once told me that happiness is a choice.

Often, people have complained to me about things that struck me as insignificant, and this phrase rang true. They were making a conscious decision to be unhappy about something that even they could see had absolutely no merit, or at the very least, they were letting it get to them when it was something that could easily be ignored. Always priding myself as the voice of reason, the pragmatic, “tough-love” friend, I told them to quit their whining and get over it. I told them that happiness is a choice, and by choosing to remain in a difficult situation or choosing to dwell on something small, they were choosing to stay unhappy. After all, I somehow managed it—I avoided stressful situations, I let things slide as needed, I changed my job when it made me miserable, I moved to another country when I got bored, I stopped calling guys who weren’t right for me—and, while bitter and cynical, I was relatively happy and stress-free.

A friend of mine is bipolar, and she complains to me…a lot. Every time I speak to her she’s upset about something. Most of the time it’s some sort of bizarre and ridiculous situation she has let herself get into—sleeping with a married man, getting fired from her job for skipping a week without calling, stressing about forming a relationship out of a one night stand. Sometimes, there’s no reason at all. She goes into one of her depressive phases and she bursts into tears because of a crack in the sidewalk. Listening to her constant streams of negativity for reasons that were either nonsensical or that she had clearly bought upon herself started to get tedious, and I dropped the “sympathetic friend” role I had adopted for her special case and told her to stop being stupid. It all seemed so simple to me—happiness is a choice! She was choosing to date these horrible men, she was letting stupid things get to her, she was constantly digging herself deeper into depression instead of focusing on ways to remedy her situation—surrounding herself with positive people, pursuing interests, getting a fucking hobby, anything.

Upon considering her situation, I realized that my belief system is wrong. No matter what she chose, the chemicals in her brain refused to let her be happy. And I realized, happiness is not a choice—it’s a consequence.

Much like you can’t control the surge of sadness that overcomes you when someone you care about dies or the gush of blood that pours out of a gaping wound, you can’t control what does and does not make you happy. Sure, there are basic ways to enhance your life in practical ways, ways that I have worked at pretty ardently. And it’s worked so far because I don’t have much to complain about. I like my family, I like my friends, I like my job.

But am I happy? Have I ever been happy?

I am content. My life is good, but not spectacular. I have nothing to be especially sad about, but I don’t have anything to be truly excited for either. And this makes me sad.

It depresses me that I feel like I’ve done everything I need to do to make my life happy, but the one thing that’s missing is the one thing I have absolutely no control over. At the risk of sounding hokey, I feel that the thing that will push me over the edge from contentment to happiness would be finding a guy. The lingering absence of this element in my life has made me become frustrated to the point that I am constantly depressed. And I’m tired of being depressed all the fucking time.

There are few people who understand my situation. The majority of my friends are the type who are constantly in relationships and they are quick to brush off my problem as something I brought upon myself—I’m too picky, I’m too closeminded, I don’t give people a chance, I keep meeting the wrong people. The people who do understand my situation, however, can appreciate how little control you actually have over your romantic life. Finding a partner entails a wide variety of things clicking at once. The timing has to be right, the situation in which you meet has to be right, you have to like them, then they have to like you—frankly, the odds are against you. I don’t care how illogical this sounds, but for some people things click much more often than others. Whether they are just the type to fall for any person who crosses their path or they’re just lucky as all shit, it happens more for them, and most of the time it’s no one’s fault. I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing what I’ve been doing wrong, and I’m done blaming myself. For one, while everything worked nicely, the intellectual aspect wasn’t there. For The Mistake, the timing was wrong. For the last one, everything was there, but the spark was missing. For another, the Atlantic Ocean was dividing us. And for another, the spark was there for me and not for him. I took the chances, I did the right things, I pursued, I tested the waters, and it just didn’t work out and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

So that’s it. I’m finally admitting what’s missing, why I’m so bitter. I did well in school, I traveled, I found the right job, I cut ties with the friendships that weren’t working out, I worked harder towards the friendships that were, I resolved my differences with my mother, I got over my adolescent warped body image and everything has worked out alright. But as long as that one, last thing, the one I can’t do a damn thing to fix, refuses to click, I am not happy.

-L

Dear Santa,

2006-12-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

Fuck you.

Love,
-L

For Mets Fans

2006-12-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

...and anyone who grew up in the 80s.

Re-enactment of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series

Brilliant!

Star Wars Sixtology... ummm... yeah

2006-12-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

-B

Although I look alarmingly similar to most sci-fi geeks, I’ve never been a huge Star Wars fan. This past week, however, I didn’t have work nor the funds to go on vacation so I opted for the next best thing and sat in front of the TV. It seems there’s some sort of Star Wars Bonanza going on because one of the six Star Wars movies is playing at any given point in the day. After carefully watching all the episodes multiple times, I’ve noticed some things that really need to be addressed.

What’s up with Hayden Christensen’s acting? He’s quite possibly the worst actor in the galaxy. When casting, did they do a special Olympics for actors and choose the worst one? And his name, Anakin, why do they choose to abbreviate it so often? They keep calling the guy Annie, and every time I hear it, I’m tempted to stand up and belt out, “The sun will come out, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar” but I refrain from doing so because I might miss important scenes in the movie.

Is Yoda doing some sort of insurance fraud? Why does he need that cane. I mean, fine, in the episodes that take place during his later years, I can understand the cane. But in episodes 2 and 3, he’s doing back flips and shit and as soon as he’s done, he begins limping and using a cane again. Your supposed work related injury isn’t fooling anyone. We have you on tape you skeevy bastard. Go back to work. And what’s with his grammar? The guy’s almost a thousand years old, and he’s supposedly nearly omniscient. You’d think that by now, he’d speak proper English.

Carrie Fisher (AKA Princess Leia) is very ugly. She looks like a monkey. But in “Return of the Jedi”, that scene with Jabba the Hutt in which she’s a scantily clad prisoner… holy shit. I don’t know if it’s the body or the outfit, but, holy shit. It’s weird because her face is still really ugly. During that whole section of the movie, my penis is very confused.

I hate those scenes in which someone is dying, and they try to say something profound with their last breath. In “Attack of the Clones” there’s a scene where “Annie” tries to rescue his mother. As he’s holding his mother, with her dying breath, she says, “Annie… I love... I love…” and then she dies. How can you ever know what she was really going to say? Maybe she was trying to say, “Annie… I love… I love cock. I just wanted you to know that. I’m going to die now. Peace out biatch.” After all, I always figured that when people are dying, their brains aren’t functioning properly so they’re more prone to say ridiculous things. Hey, you never know.

Conclusion: Star Wars rules.

Optimism

2006-12-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

From now until January 16th, I have sworn to try out this thing I've heard people talk about called "optimism."

Mark my words, from this day forth, I will be spreading positivity, joy, happiness and all manner of mushystuffs.

Although, sadly, this is for a somewhat selfish reason (I am trying to balance my karma out due to hugelifechangingevent that will take place on that date) I promise to do it wholeheartedly and with as much vigor and enthusiasm as with which I have so joyously spread negativity, pessimism, gloom and depression in the past. Perhaps I'll even learn something and stop being so damn bitter.

Joy to the world! It's a dawning of a new L!

-L

P.S. I hate everyone!
P.P.S. Starting.........NOW.

Brush With a Hero

2006-12-20T18:11:00.000-05:00

-B

My sister picked up her cell phone as I waited anxiously.

“Hello… yeah… uh huh… okay.” Then she hangs up.

“Are we going now?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she replies “let’s go”.

We rush down the stairs and hail a cab. I’m kind of excited. I mean, it’s not every day you get to hang out with Milo Ventimiglia. Apparently, when he’s not out saving cheerleaders, he’s hanging out at the Soho Grand. And tonight, so were we.

I try not to watch too much TV, but lately, I’ve been guilty of allowing myself to fall into addiction with several shows. A couple of them, regretfully, are MTV programs, the type that make you stupider by watching. Another is “Entourage”, a show that brilliantly draws the attention of anyone with testosterone and a libido. Unfortunately, it’s mid season, and the new season doesn’t begin for a couple of months. I had to find another show, and quick.

“Heroes” is a show about people who begin to discover that they have special powers. As they begin to understand their powers, their lives coincide and eventually they realize that they all have a common goal. That goal is to save the world. I grew up knee deep in the comic book culture so it wasn’t hard for me to become addicted to this show. It also helps that the show has a ridiculously hot MILF and cheerleader. Yes, I know the cheerleader’s underage, but still, she’s quite “homina homina”.

Milo Ventimiglia plays Peter Petrelli on the show, the brother of a politician, who believes he can fly. He later learns that his actual power is the ability to mimic the powers of heroes in his vicinity. Peter meets an artist who is capable of painting the future, and with information provided by this artist, he embarks on a quest to save a cheerleader’s life.

When my sister and I got to the Soho Grand, we found their table and joined them. There wasn’t enough room, but nicely enough, Milo and party got up and we moved to another table. There was around 6-7 of us, and I didn’t realize that we were playing a game of, “let’s pretend the famous guy we’re sitting with isn’t famous”. So when I shook his hand and met him and his friends, I said, “Hi Milo, I’m actually a big fan, I love the show, especially since I grew up a comic book geek.” They laughed and Milo pointed at the guy he was with:

“That’s Jeph, if you like comic books, you’ll definitely like this guy.”

I shake his hand and scrutinize his face. Unfortunately, writing talents are rarely recognized, especially TV show writers. However, I regret not having known his work.

Jeph Loeb worked very closely with Jim Lee, one of my childhood comic book heroes. He’s also worked alongside dozens of other artists I used to worship as a child. However, he’s probably not known in pop culture as the comic book writer, rather a TV writer. The TV show he used to write for? A little show some of you might know as “Smallville”. He was also a supervising producer for “Lost”.

I shrug my shoulders and shake my head, unable to recognize him, not realizing that this guy is basically living one of my childhood dreams.

Milo is surprisingly nice. Not only did he stand up when my sister and I arrived and moved to a bigger table, he also stood up when we left, a gesture I sincerely appreciate. He also laughed at some of my drunken corny jokes, and paid the entire bill. However, Milo doesn’t drink, and he’s a vegetarian. Yes, I know, absolute and utter insanity. Now I’m not gay, but honestly, Milo is a very very pretty man. If you’re a guy sitting at a table with Milo, you become invisible. I could’ve gotten up on the table and began doing a Russian tap dance, and the girls at the table would’ve probably still had their eyes glued on Milo. I don’t mind though, after all, we can’t all be heroes.

In conclusion, Milo’s a really nice guy so I’ve decided to remain a staunch advocate of the show “Heroes”. A new episode comes out in mid January so don’t miss it. And if you want to see any episodes you missed online, go to http://www.nbc.com/Video/rewind/full_episodes/heroes.shtml for streaming videos of every episode.

INT. NYC – WINTER – SOHO GRAND – LATE NIGHT

A group sits at a table in a lounge drinking cocktails and beer. Then B looks down at his hands with a startled look on his face. Milo looks over at him in curiosity.

MILO

B, are you alright?

B

My… my hands (holds up his hands to the light) they’re… disappearing.

MILO

(BEAT) I think I see what’s going on here. You see B, there are people out there just like you. People with gifts, with special powers. (BEAT) A couple of months ago, did you black out for like a day?

B

Actually, yeah I did. But I thought it was because I was really drunk.

MILO

Don’t worry man, just go with it.

B looks as the rest of his body parts fade away in a Back-to-the-Future-esque manner. Soon he is totally invisible.

MOHINDER SURESH (VOICE OVER)

What is society’s infatuation with actors? With rich people? With the beautiful and the famous? How do they command the attention of everyone without any effort at all? Maybe it’s insecurity, the inexplicable desire to compensate for that which they lack. Or maybe they need for so called important people to acknowledge their existence for fear that one day, they may become… “invisible”.

Table continues to talk amongst themselves as a now invisible B watches in silence. Beer bottle lifts up in the air seemingly by itself as B takes a swig.

Fade to black.

Return of the mack?

2006-12-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

Old habits die hard, I guess.

I had another one of those weekends—Christmas parties, open bars, beer, wine, dirty martinis and phone number slips.

Great line I taught my girlfriends who feel too rude to say, “no” when a guy asks for their number—“Sorry, but I have this policy, I don’t give my phone number to people I’ve just met. I’ll take yours though.” Most guys look at me like I just said, “I love to cook and wash dishes!” after I say this. It makes you sound like a person with high moral standards when all you’re really saying is, “I think you’re ugly.”

I’ve got to learn to take my own advice as most of the weekend was spent staring at incoming phone calls from unfamiliar numbers and wondering, “Who the fuck is this?”

-L

Dear Santa,

2006-12-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

All I want for Christmas is...

Barry Zito.

Thanks.

-L

Strike 3?

2006-12-15T11:33:00.000-05:00

Strike 1:
On Wednesday, my associate publisher tells me to email Jay Horwitz (Vice President of PR for the Mets) about an article we’re doing for the magazine. I begin the email, “Dear Mr. Horowitz,…”

Strike 2:
I don’t receive a response to said email by Thursday (yesterday), so I call him to ask what mailing address I should send preview copies of the magazine to. His demeanor is abrupt and gruff, which comes as a shock to me because he’s known for being extremely nice. Today, I find this…

Today in Mets news (courtesy of mets.com):
Mark it down on the calendar: Dec. 14, 2006, was the first day since June 1987 that Mets vice president Jay Horwitz missed a day of work for reasons of illness. The club's public relations man since April 1980, Horwitz was out of the office on Thursday because of stomach flu. His absence was as conspicuous as would be Jose Reyes without a smile.

Horwitz had missed work because of the death of his mother, but the last time he missed work for illness was when he was quarantined in the team's Chicago hotel because he had chicken pox.

Wilpon said, "I didn't know what to think," when Horwitz didn't answer his 7:30 a.m. call to the Mets PR office. "We talk that early every day, and he's always there."

And, now, another bombshell. Horwitz was out sick on Friday as well.

Apparently, I underestimated my research skills when I was searching for his contact information because I found his CELL PHONE NUMBER instead of his office number, and I am now the ASSHOLE who bothered him on the ONE day he called in sick in TWENTY YEARS to ask him a STUPID QUESTION.

Hopefully he takes baseball rules to heart and I still have one more chance.

Sorry.

-L

On this Rosie O’Donnell nonsense

2006-12-14T15:58:00.000-05:00

Here are some snippets that people have posted to Rosie O’Donnell’s website in her defense:

Elizabeth writes:

I am not a die-hard fan, but the controversy about the asian accent is absolutely ridiculous. Please don’t succumb to the over-the-top politically correct! People need to lighten up & laugh a little

Rosie’s response: yup

Carla writes:

I think you are wonderful & do great things for so many people. How can you not take it to heart when people bash you for no reason? & this Chinese thing holy shit - Crazy! Keep on being u. Love U!

Rosie’s response: will do

Beth writes:

It’s so silly that Bill O’Reilly is having a segment on how you angered the Asians -you didn’t do anything at all - you were saying how silly it is that Devito became world news! Don’t listen to them!

Rosie’s response: i don’t

toni writes:

Ro, I can not believe that the Chinese are mad at you about a JOKE!!! Oh My God, lighten up people. Bill O’Reilly even stood up for you tonight on “The Factor”! Calm down people it was just a joke!

Rosie’s response: go bill

Yves writes:

Rosie-I don’t see the big deal about the Chinese routine. You’ve done English accents before on TV and the Brits didn’t get bent out of shape. They took it out of context and they need to chill.

Rosie’s response: the whole thing is odd 2 me

Now, I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m assuming that these were written by non-Asian people who never had to deal with racist taunts and preconceptions of their character based on race. So, I find it interesting that they are piping in with, "What's the big deal? Get a sense of humor!" If you aren't Asian and you didn't have to endure years of "CHING-CHONG, CHING-CHONG!" while kids used their fingers to stretch their eyes into slits throughout elementary school, don’t you think that you aren’t really in the position to have an opinion on the matter?

Sorry, it’s probably silly for us sensitive Asians to think that, as adults, people would act maturely and we wouldn't have to deal with that nonsense anymore.

Rosie O’Donnell has defended her behavior as a joke, she’s even gone so far as to refer to her gibberish as an “accent.” The fact is, “ching-chong” is in no way, shape or form a Chinese “accent.” As far as I know, there isn’t any dialect in China where the words, “ching-ching-chong” mean anything. Her words were a bastardization of a language, a straightforward mockery. To compare her passing “ching-chong” off as a representation of the Chinese language with her imitating a British accent is completely ridiculous. The two are not at all on the same level, especially given that English accents have a reputation in our society as “sexy.”

Fine, at the end of the day, she made a mistake. I am more than willing to forgive this. She didn’t know any better and she made a tasteless joke borne of sheer ignorance. This would have been fine if she had acknowledged her mistake, apologized, and said she wouldn’t do it again. Instead, she decided the better route was to say that Asians are too sensitive, it was a joke, it wasn’t meant to offend, and that she would probably do it again.

If I were to make a tasteless joke that offended gay people not knowing that a gay person would interpret it as offensive, I would apologize. As someone who is not gay, I don’t have a right to judge what is and is not offensive to gays. Case in point, I didn’t realize that referring to a straight male as a “cocksucker” (even if it is jest) is offensive to a gay person, but when it was pointed out to me that it is, I thought to myself, “Hey, that is offensive because I’m implying that being gay is a negative thing.” I definitely didn’t say, “Oh you silly gay man, you’re too sensitive. I was joking. I know more about what should and shouldn’t offend you than you do.”

As someone who is so quick to shout “Homophobe!” at every person who makes a remotely offensive statement, you would think she would be more sensitive to this phenomenon.

So, the moral of the story is, just own up already, Rosie. What you said was offensive to many people whether you intended it to be or not. Don’t declare yourself the new authority on how minorities should interpret your humor, just admit that you were ignorant about the situation, accept that Asian people have tried to tell you why what you said is offensive to us, and take it as a lesson learned. If you had apologized from the start, this wouldn’t have exploded into a media frenzy where, incidentally, the Asians are being painted as “crazy overly-sensitive freaks” and you as “innocent comedian.”

-L

P.S. If Bill O'Reilly is on your side, that's usually a clear indication that you're on the wrong side.

Pop Quiz

2006-12-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

Complete this phrase:

"Rock out with your..."

Overappreciated

2006-12-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

-B

“You’re quite possibly my favorite person at this company. My team loves you, and you really get shit done. I’m telling you, you need to get promoted, and I’ll see to it personally that it happens.”

H is a managing director for one of the most lucrative sales teams at my company. A team which I’d love to be on. Up until recently, I myopically believed that the ever so coveted position of “financial analyst” would provide the quickest route to success, and would eventually lead me to my seat on the throne as the “CEO of the World”. But the deeper into finance I get, the more I realize, it’s the sales people that run shit. It’s the people who do the big deals. The people who bring in the money. It’s no coincidence that nearly all the top guys at Morgan Stanley are investment bankers. Now I’m not saying the sales guys at my company are of Morgan Stanley investment banking caliber, but I am saying, the fact that a lot of them make around half a mil is no laughing matter. Cuba Gooding had it right all along. “Show me the money”.

I waited patiently for H to drop hints. And then he did.

“B, you’ve got to promise, you won’t leave this company. Stay here and we’ll take care of you. I hear great things, I love working with you, and you know, we could use someone like you on our team…”

H raises his eyebrow inquisitively.

Fine, maybe it wasn’t so much a “hint” per say. But I was waiting for this for a while now. Allow me to back track.

Back at Morgan Stanley, I was underappreciated. People say that about their jobs all the time, I realize that, but in my case, it was pretty extreme. The coat rack next to my cube got more attention than I did. And to exacerbate the situation, I had a boss that had me on his list of people to kill. He was slowly succeeding. His weapon: insufferable passive aggressiveness. I had a choice. Option 1 was to jam a screwdriver into my ear until I began seeing pretty colors, and option 2 was to move to another financial institution. I took the low road, and moved to another financial institution.

Going into operations management meant that I would work directly with the money makers AKA salesmen (or saleswomen, whatever) and help them get their sales processed. And since I’ve dedicated my life to a program of self deprecation, my attitude was no different at this new job. Strangely enough, this self deprecation helped immensely in attaining recognition at my company. My philosophy was this: if I tell everyone I have no idea what I’m doing, and continue to feign ignorance for the life of my career, then everyone will be pleasantly surprised when I actually do get shit done. In addition, I personally believe face is everything. Face is also largely based on the company you keep. The greatest sin at work, in my opinion, is when someone, anyone jokes about how you don’t know what you’re doing. These types of jokes, while seemingly harmless, tend to propagate into truths in the minds of other people. Therefore, I make a huge deal out of it when even close work buddies joke like this. Instead, I try to surround myself around people at work who will speak positively of me to others. And although contrived, I must admit, I also ask friends to drop my name in a positive light. Leave the deprecation to me.

J and I quickly became good friends. We had common interests. We were both passionate people. And when I say passionate, I mean we both loved alcohol passionately. I was going through a breakup that tore my world apart, and J was a hilarious lush that made me forget about it, if even briefly. The thing about J is that he’s totally different than me. He’s an extrovert with a “devil may care” attitude that goes out and hits on chicks like it’s nobody’s business. I’m the awkward over-analytical wingman who looks at the floor with his hands in his pockets and mumbles clever little nothings to himself. J has no problem pulling the trigger, no matter who the chick is. I, on the other hand, strangely refuse to ever pull the trigger. I guess the slut gene eluded me.

A couple of months ago, J made a move into H’s team. This move had been in the works for a long time, and when it happened, it made me optimistic about my career. I recruited J into my program of name-dropping, and in a few weeks time, the entire team knew me as the operations manager that got shit done. Suddenly, in a single day (well, two days), it got out of hand.

H’s sales group had a 2 day training session in which they went into details about the products and processes. During the training session, my name came up. I wasn’t present, but I was told afterwards from a dozen people that after my name came up, the conference temporarily became a worship session about me. The vice president of operations barely knew who I was, but suddenly, she was walking by my desk with a smile and a wave. Salesmen were coming up to me and shaking my hand for no reason. Then, during the second day of the conference, J told me that to his amazement, they continued right where they left off, and began speaking about me again. This got H’s attention.

After a couple of weeks, I asked J to inquire about any positions that might be available in H’s group, and not surprisingly, H was very receptive to the idea. I eventually had drinks with H’s right hand man in which I was told that we’d have a meeting to discuss my transition into the group. I hadn’t heard anything since, until the company Christmas party earlier this week. H approached me and asked if I’d attend a group drinking “thing” and I agreed. So now here I was at this drinking “thing” talking to H. I smile and reply:

“I’m sure you know that I’d love to join the group.”

R, a saleswomen chimes in.

“Oh, that’s a fantastic idea! You should definitely join us.”

And H continues:

“Yeah, I heard you were interested, this is definitely something we need to discuss. We’ll talk about it soon.”

Well call me David Bowie because I’m under pressure. Being underappreciated has it’s perks. No one expects much from you. But being “overappreciated” (which sadly enough isn’t even a word, which speaks volumes for America’s corporate culture) to messianic proportions is scary.

What happens when I drop the ball? The sound will be deafening. What if I forget to tie up those loose ends, those million little impossible loose ends that make us so perfectly imperfect? What happens when my volume falters? What happens when I go to H’s team and they suddenly see that I’m normal, that I’m just me?

Maybe I need to add funding to my program of self deprecation in hopes that others will expect less. Or maybe I need to stop this self deprecation because this self loathing is starting to feel so real.

Randomness

2006-12-13T10:10:00.000-05:00

-There's a group on Facebook titled, "I Just Tried to Ford the River but my Fuckin' Oxen Died." If you don't get this reference, your childhood was repressed, repressed! It brought back a lot of fond elementary school memories for me.

-Bacon, egg and cheese on a roll is the same price as bacon, egg and cheese on a bagel. This makes little to no sense to me.

-Blogs are DEAD. All those links on my sidebar? Garbage. Don't click them. This blog? Garbage. Stop reading it.

-I have to write an article on exotic cars and it is making me want to stick a nail into my eyeball, moosh it all around, and then eat it.

-L

Just when you thought Rosie O'Donnell couldn't get any more annoying...

2006-12-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

...you go and find something like this.

I'm hardly one to get offended by this sort of thing, but the fact that she used the most played-out Asian joke in history and she's just an annoying cuntrag to begin with irritated me. Plus the fact that she had a titty-attack over a comment that Kelly Ripa made that could only be interpreted as homophobic in Crazy Paranoid Land.

-L

See...

2006-12-11T15:29:00.000-05:00

...this is why I hate celebrating anniversaries. There's too much "important" stuff "swimming around" in my "brain" to bother "remembering anniversaries" (yes, I am one of those annoying people who use air quotes).

Happy Anniversary plus 5 days to this "blog."

-L

Relative Reality

2006-12-11T13:54:00.000-05:00

You know there’s something wrong with the world when the most logical advice you get is from a friend who is being treated for mental illness.

There is no objective reality.

Everything makes sense only in our own minds and is dependent upon what form of reality we live in.

Case in point:

This past weekend, I went to a fashion photo shoot for the magazine. As soon as I arrived, the model we had hired introduced himself to me and was extremely friendly. As our conversation progressed, his friendliness segued into blatant flirtation. Although I was flattered at first, I became suspicious when he started to be a bit touchy. He wasn’t particularly inappropriate, I just dislike being touched by anyone I do not know well no matter how attractive or nice they are. My suspicions were confirmed when another attractive female arrived and he immediately dove into his repertoire of flirtatious banter with her. Then when he started to overtly hit on the female model, then the stylist, then the producer, etc. By the end of the shoot, his creepy desire for ass or attention or whatever it was had become a running joke amongst the staff.

“The thing that completely boggles my mind is that he doesn’t understand the ‘flirting etiquette’,” I tell N, the stylist in between cigarette puffs. “If you’re going to hit on a girl, don’t hit on every girl in front of her. You’ve got to pick one girl and stick with it or else you’re just insulting everyone.”

N laughs and nods in agreement.

The female who ultimately was most receptive to his bizarre advances was the girl who was modeling with him.

Models live in an alternate reality where this behavior is not only acceptable, but encouraged. In Normal Person World, this is considered rude whereas in Model World, where everyone is pretty and gets whatever they want just by pouting, their rules of decency are different. He probably gets laid all the time using this odd tactic.

-L

Pah-tee

2006-12-08T12:21:00.000-05:00

Last night, the Best Friend invited me to a product launch party for Stoli vodka at 230 5th, a posh lounge/club on 5th Avenue known for it’s amazing rooftop view of Manhattan. Working in advertising carries some nice perks for her, most commonly, invites to media events, parties, mixers. Unfortunately for her, she isn’t much for drinking, so she supports my aspirations as a future alcoholic by bringing me along. For this particular event, I, being my generous self, convinced her to RSVP B as well.

The event was filled with models brandishing trays of blueberry and raspberry vodka cocktails and shrimp hor’deurves and poseurs ranging in age from their early-twenties to late-sixties looking bored. The eighties strip club-esque décor was complemented by two buck-naked women wearing nothing but body paint dancing on a platform.

Open bar consisting entirely of vodka + Me + B = Two very drunk siblings.

After my second dirty martini and third blueberry vodka mojito, I called it quits. B, on the other hand, decided that he wanted to exit this world on this particular night in a sea of vodka gimlets.

Once he thtarted to thlurrr his thpeech, I figured it was as good a time as any to bring up something that I had been curious about.

“So, that friend of yours, J, is it? He’s cute.”

“Eughaghflurp! Who you tawkin’ about?”

“The one from ---. What’s his deal?”

“Ughraaaaang! You’re piffin me off!”

“Why?”

“Becauth! He’s a fuckin’ tool!”

“How so?”

“He just is! He’th a fuckin’ dork an shih!”

“Dorky is good. The ones who aren’t dorky are a problem.”

“He just wanth to get laid!”

“He told you that?”

“YEAH! He said, ‘Ooh, I love New York! I just want to geth laid’!”

Figuring there was no use pursuing the topic further, I gave up. “Alright forget it.”

Having work the next morning, I headed home soon after, leaving B to his own devices. The venue was only a block away from his apartment, so I figured he’d be okay. As soon as I left, my cell phone rang.

“Yo, what wath the name of that drink again?”

“The gimlet? It’s a gimlet, GIM-LET.”

“Awright, awright.”

Once I got on the train, my phone rang again.

“Yo, what wath the name of that drink again?”

“GIM-LET! Oh Lord, go home you drunkard!”

“Awright, awright.”

Come to think of it, I should have fucked with him and said something like, "gim-tit" or "dick-let" so he made a fool of himself with the bartender. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.

-L

Opinions

2006-12-05T11:39:00.000-05:00

I have an extremely liberal friend who adamantly despises George W. Bush. The only problem is, he doesn't actually know much about politics. He'll go on and on about it, but it becomes clear rather quickly that he doesn't know enough to have a solid foundation for his vitriol.

Which makes me wonder, what's worse? Having an opinion about something you don't know shit about or having no opinion at all?

By the way, where the hell does the term "peanut gallery" come from?

-L

Gangstas of the World

2006-12-04T16:55:00.000-05:00

I'm starting on articles for the new issue as well as writing freelance articles for a website, so I'm tapped out for now. But in case you're ridiculously bored, here's a whole new way to read the site. Translate your own by visiting Gizoogle.

Now I know where Pat gets his "gangsta speak" from.

-L

Slipping Through the Corporate Cracks

2006-11-30T07:45:00.000-05:00

-B

When meeting new people at work I assume that these new people are intelligent. After all, we are a huge financial company that extensively screens all new potential candidates before hiring them. However, it seems that sometimes, invalids slip through the cracks. I’m not quite certain how it happens, but it does, and occasionally, I have to deal with them. This was the case almost a year ago.

“B, this is S, you’ll be training him this afternoon.” My boss walks away.

Thus began the training.

I proceeded in describing our general duties in the exciting world of sales operations, and succeeded the introduction with a task. The task was to update a spreadsheet with information provided by a client. All he had to do was to copy and paste a line from one spreadsheet into another. Not exactly rocket science, but the look he was giving me was totally infantile, and I was afraid that he was going to start sucking his thumb.

“Umm… so do you get it?”

He nods slowly.

“Okay.” I pause, and look at him again to make sure he isn’t lying. I can tell he is. Whatever fuck it. “So anyway, the e-mail the client sends is going to look like…”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Move so quickly from one screen to the other.”

“You press ‘ALT’ and ‘TAB’”

“What about the internet explorer. How do you make a new one just appear?”

“You press ‘CTRL’ and ‘N’, it’s a shortcut key. They’re great.”

“Dude… are you like a genius or something? Did they send you to special schools or something?”

I look blankly at him for a moment. Then I continue the training.

I’m an impatient fucker, especially for stupidity, but contrary to this intolerance, I permit a learning curve. After all, I was once a new hire as well. However, if someone comes by your desk every day for weeks and asks you the same question over and over again, and you have to answer them by pointing at the same spot on the procedures they’re clutching in their hand, then there’s obviously some sort of disconnect. Now, S was nice as all hell, but he must’ve been a premature baby or something because the guy was seriously stupid. And to further aggravate the situation, he had a case of halitosis so severe, his breath was almost visible to the naked eye.

S made me stop and wonder about my own qualifications. Was I on the same level as this guy? I mean, the same people who hired him had hired me. Maybe I was totally deluded in thinking that I was a semi intelligent, corporately cultured employee who was doing well at his job.

A couple of months ago, S got fired. I felt horrible. But at the same time, it made me feel better knowing that he was in fact someone who slipped through the cracks, and not a peer. I know, I know, I’m going to hell.

I wonder if I would’ve been nicer to him had he been a hot chick. Who am I kidding, of course I would’ve.

Hella Bored

2006-11-29T16:13:00.000-05:00

That's right, I'm hella bored. So bored, I'm going all West Coast on your asses.

I like lists, so I'm going to make a list.

Ten Things That Happened in the Last 24 Hours in the World of L:

1) I found out that another one of my friends got engaged.
2) Dog threw up.
3) Eldest Bro called from Australia to make sure I told my parents when he'd be back.
4) I lied and said, "yes."
5) I ate five clementines.
6) I watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for the umpteenth time.
7) Someone walked by my desk and farted something awful. By the time the smell hit, they were gone and I didn't get to see who it was.
8) I discovered that one of the co-founders of Gothamist was my high school chemistry teacher.
9) I rediscovered The Frames.
10) I got too lazy to think of a number ten.

-L

Spork

2006-11-29T14:09:00.000-05:00

People should make more of an effort to incorporate the spork into the everyday table setting. If only for the fact that "spork" is fun to say.

-L

The N-Word

2006-11-29T13:34:00.000-05:00

Why is the N-word referred to as the "N-word," but the words Spic, Chink, Gook, Wop, etc. almost never censored?

-L

Limbo Mimbo Bimbo Jimbo…

2006-11-27T11:27:00.000-05:00

I’m in a state of limbo.

On the one hand, my coworker continues to hint that I will be full-time soon. This means steady paycheck, medical benefits, dental, optical, and ten free therapy sessions a year thrown in for good measure (a health plan that far surpasses the poor excuse of a plan I got at my corporate hell job). This is good news, very good news. Sometime in the new year (possibly earlier) my dream of getting paid to do something I’d do for free (were it not for my foundering savings) will come true.

On the other hand, everything else in my life sucks big monkey balls.

Fine, I’m exaggerating. They don’t suck, they lick monkey balls, and not particularly big ones either. It just seems that now that one aspect of my life has lurched into motion, everything else is at a standstill, and I’m floating in a stratum somewhere between bliss and misery. Nothing’s mind-blowingly good, nothing’s especially bad, and I’m perpetually bored.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hoping for something bad to happen. I made the mistake of saying once, in a bored delirium, that I wished that anything—good or bad—would happen to wake me up. Big mistake. But I still would like some thing to change (preferably/hopefully for the better).

So anyway, here are some

Bored at Work Mondayisms

1) I have this nose stud that’s got a little bulb at the tip, so you push it in and the bulb makes sure it doesn’t fall out (people with nose rings will know exactly what I’m talking about). Now that I don’t need my nose to be corporate-friendly, I decided I wanted to change it to something funkier only to realize (after much tugging and swearing and pain) that my nose had healed around the bar, and the bulb would not come through the hole. So now I’m stuck with my plain Jane stud until I go to a piercer and have them either rip it out (ouch), or cut the bulby tip off the inside (potential ouch).

2) I’ve been getting hit on a lot lately for some odd reason. I’m not complaining as this has been great for my confidence, but when I’m getting hit on by guys who decide that obtaining my number gives them license to use it indiscriminately, numerous times a day, despite my lack of response, it becomes a nuisance. I’ve always been an advocate of not playing “the Game,” but this is just fucking ridiculous.

3) Speaking of ridiculous…I reconnected with an acquaintance from Ireland recently via AIM. This was all fine and dandy because I had been feeling nostalgic about my time in Dublin as of late. That was until he decided that every single time I’m online, he absolutely must message me—despite us having zero to talk about. It’s reached the point where I don’t even want to go online at work because I know I’ll have to partake in the obligatory small talk with him for the fiftieth time that week.

4) The Jets…whoda thunk it?

5) People who wear a lot of perfume should not be allowed on the subway.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have shit to do. Not literally.

-L