December 2002
Vodka And Vice City Are Better Than Times Square
In these last few hours of this last palindrome year for quite a while: some resolutions.
This year, I will actually get around to mailing the carefully written, enveloped, and stamped thank you notes I’ve been writing since I got home from Essex. They will not, I swear, sit on one of my spanky new bookshelves for another few days and then another few weeks until they’re so...
What About Their Legs?
Having seen The Two Towers, finally, and then having seen it again, finally, I think the only criticism I have of the film that is not one shared with the book is that it isn’t long enough. I realize it’s more than a little absurd to say of a three hour movie that it’s too short, especially once you add in half an hour of ads and previews, but that’s honestly the impression...
That Sneaky Propaganda
I hate to sing the praises of NPR yet again, but WNYC’s On The Media recently brought to my attention a literary anthology called Writers on America, published by (of all things) the State Department. It’s being distributed overseas, and only overseas, because of the Smith-Mundt Act. As a work published explicitly to influence foreign audiences, it constitutes official propaganda, and...
Home Again Home Again
I’m off to crawl into my cozy little Brooklyn bed again shortly, but I just wanted to note that I’m back again, thanks to my ever-patient folks. After an excellent breakfast with my big brother, we stopped at Bowl & Board in Cambridge to pick me up some kick-ass bookshelves and kitchen miscellany, then piled into my Dad’s truck and headed here.
A few hours later and I’ve got a less-imposing...
Oof
Now that there aren’t any little kiddos scampering around the parental abode, Christmas has become a much more relaxed affair. I’m the baby of the family, and since I’ve moved out we’ve gone back and forth between completely ignoring holiday ado in its entirety, and making it as big a deal as it was when I was still knee-high to a grasshopper. I think this year we may have...
Twas The Night Before Christmas
My brother and I are still up doing a little last minute wrapping and baking, in an interesting twist on days of old. We sent my parents off to bed a while ago and told them that if they fell asleep soon, Santa will have come by the time they wake up.
Today has been a moderately relaxed and exceedingly pleasant sort of Christmas Eve. I created whole forests of gingerbread trees and swathes of...
Better Not Pout
This evening’s All Things Considered had an interesting segment on the German figure of Weihnachtsmann, or Christmas Man, which (apart from sounding like a track from an And One holiday single) has actually generated enough discontent to spawn the opposing Anti-Weihnachtsmann-Kampagne. Weihnachtsmann borrows heavily from the American version of Santa Claus, which is a strange enough concept...
No, Really: The Best Spam Ever
emma VP-RX Penis Enlargement Pills
emma Click Here
emma Finally!! A medical emma breakthrough in science has enabled a team of doctors and sex experts to create a pill that is designed to enlarge the male penis by length and width. emma Our tests show that out of 1,500 test subjects, the emma average gain after 4 months on emma DP-RX was 2.94 Inches! Amazing, Permanent results that will last.
...
Half Past Ass
Another semester down, three more to go. I arose in the chilly predawn (earlier than ass o’clock, even) this morning and took my C final at 8am (which is just after ass o’clock), then Genetics at 10am. After visiting the philosophy department, whose poor departmental secretary is I’m sure by now getting quite sick of me throwing schedule-related temper tantrums in his office, I got my classes for...
It's Christmastime In The City
Nothing says Christmas like a White Stripes Christmas 7” and a box of candy canes. And exam week, that too. By this time tomorrow, my little buckeroos and buckerettes, I’ll be knee deep in post-finals festivities, and then on Sunday: off to Massachusetts to do the family thing. Hurray!
Puff Puff Give
These are trying times for smokers in New York City. It began over the summer with that monumental tax increase that left crappy-ass regular cigarettes at upwards of $7 a pack, and my ridiculous lung-searing cloves started going for $8 or $8.50. I wriggled out of that one in August by ordering a carton from esmokes.com, which has served me rather well – I was concerned that having an enormous...
I Hate You, Milkman Transit Worker
I managed fairly successfully to avoid thinking about the threatened transit strike until yesterday afternoon. I didn’t dwell on the fact that either of the two places I would normally spend a Sunday night required a good forty minutes to an hour on at least one train in order to deposit me safely at my first final exam the following morning, but as Crispy and I watched the same footage of...
Can YOU Handle The Pressed Powder?
Fuck action movies, there is no greater source of nervous tension and seat-gripping excitement than watching a Capri-panted commuter do her makeup on a Manhattan-bound Q train going over the bridge. It’s not like that irresistable car-crash-fascination phenomenon because while it’s true that you can’t stop looking even though you might have been caught staring twice already and...
No Train For You!
I was going to write something insightful and perhaps mildly nostalgic about how this semester is more or less over, if you don’t count the exams next week, and I seriously wish more people would get in the habit of not counting the exams next week because boy howdy, there’s a lot of them. But I mean, that’s the gist of it right there.
Also, I generally don’t mind living...
Nutritious And Delicious
From now on, when I’m on the train home, and it stops on the bridge so long that entire galaxies die out and their replacements are spawned anew, and I’m hungry and my stomach is making weird yeti noises and the train is seriously not moving at all ever, I will remember the guy who survived for a week on Taco Bell sauce packets. Thank you, Morning News!
Five Factors Contributing To The Rather Festive...
1. Okay, so, I’m not really a huge fan of egg nog – I prefer my beverages and eggs to exist in peaceful segregation, thank you – but the egg nog candles at the Illuminations store were too tempting. They smell like egg nog but require no actual nog consumption of any kind. I mean, there’s less rum, but more burning!
2. Incidentally, don’t buy the evergreen candles from Illuminations because that...
He IS The One
I’ll admit I was a little wary walking into Equilibrium - the NYT review called it “a movie that could be stupider only if it were longer” - but at least it turned out to be stupid in a so-bad-you-have-to-laugh kind of way (which is somewhat worse than so-bad-it’s-good and somewhat better than so-bad-you-have-to-leave). I wasn’t even that fond of Brave New World when...
Best Email Sent To My NYU Inbox, Part One: Navy...
From: <nrotc1_ny@cnrc.navy.mil> Subject: Navy Officer Opportunities
Have you ever wanted to travel the world? Work with some of the best, most highly trained people in their fields? Have responsibility over men and equipment at a time when your peers are still climbing the ladder? Continue your education with your employer picking up the tab? Have you ever thought about serving in the...
Since We've No Place To Go
I realize I’m going to get beaten for punking out last night - I know I generally find it irritating when someone tells me “Oh, you should come to the bar, I’m definitely going to be there,” and then they don’t show - but. I mean. The weather outside was frightful, and the snow in my socks was really not so delightful. When the friendly weather man told me there would...
Brrr
What’s with this weather - you’d think it’s, like, December or something. Thanks to The Moms, I’ve got a fantastically long and deliciously soft scarf that I’ve taken to just wearing all the time, but I don’t know. I feel like I should go buy some thermal underwear or something.
However, I still prefer this cold - yes, even this cold, which when compared to...
Especially The Pornography
Seriously, though, as much as I harbor a deep and abiding hatred for my Linguistics class, I can’t help but have a soft spot for a TA whose parting, heavily-accented advice to her section is: “When you are study abroad, do not let other students say that you are stupid, because some of you are very intelligent. All of you should go to grad school and stay away from the drugs, all of...
I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More, Baby
It’s December, which means I’m reading. What? Well, yes, I guess I was reading in November and I will still be reading in January, but that doesn’t mean it’s not December now. Leave me alone. No, you shut up.
The Sportswriter (Richard Ford): I’ve read some of Ford’s short fiction in various anthologies, and someone loaned me Independence Day, which I guess is...
Big Fleece Blankets Are Also Nice
Five old little pleasures rediscovered over the weekend:
1. When I lived in Massachusetts and still had a car, I listened to the radio. By which I mean I listened mostly to NPR. New York isn’t really a car-friendly kind of place unless you’re a cab driver or enormously wealthy, so I left my adorably ugly little Volvo behind when I moved and I haven’t really listened to any...