November 2010
29 posts
No. 39
Siblings are a strange thing to have. They are also a strange thing to not have. It’s a “the grass is greener on the other side” issue, I think. If you have siblings, chances are you’ve wished them away at some point, and if you don’t have them, chances are you’ve wished for them on occasion. Being of the sibling nature myself, I couldn’t vouch for that...
No. 38
A brief review of public snogging etiquette: there is none. Because there is no right or wrong way to snog in public. Because snogging in public is something that should simply not be done. Am I old-fashioned? Depends. Is common decency old-fashioned?
Making out conspicuously tends to annoy to everyone around the couple in question. It’s not like fiddling with a zipper or bouncing a ball or...
No. 37
THE MECHANIC
Rules of the game: it must rhyme.
You must also keep it in time.
So ready yourselves,
Pull dictionaries from shelves,
And make me a limerick sublime.
.
THE MAESTRO
Your face looks like an Ottoman…
Empire, working like it can
to keep my feet
off its puffed wheat
grain of a nose in the French Sudan.
.
MAN IN BLACK
Why do I even bother to
spend time trading...
No. 36
My first true foray into The Big Apple. Yes, Times Square happened. Yes, my eyeballs left my head to go make love to the blinking, flashing mania that is advertising gone mad. Yes, my brain overheated and crept off into a corner of my skull to nurse itself back to health. Yes, I acted like I had blinders on after the initial few seconds of awe. I attribute my surviving the crush of human bodies...
No. 35
Technically, I am not in New England. New England starts in a small town two miles to the north - or so my friend whose house I am sitting in informs me.
Geographic nitpicking aside, this neighborhood feels exactly what I imagine New England to be like. The trees, the people, the place I’m staying, the air. Everything. I can almost taste the WASPiness swirling around me. I find myself...
No. 34
Today is a day of travel. And I do not appreciate it.
Fun fact: my least favorite mode of transportation is bus. I love bikes. I love walking. I love trains. Planes are okay, cars are kind of okay for short periods time on good days, but oh man do I hate buses. I hate the way they smell, the way they look, the way they move, the way they sound, and the way they feel when you’re sitting in...
No. 33
Day three of The Sick.
Woke up hacking up buckets of phlegm. It was satisfying, in a strange way; I felt like I was finally getting germy things out of my body. My appetite was still hidden away wherever it runs and hides to when bacteria armies come knocking at its door, but I felt as though victory was just around the corner. I napped, worked, napped, ate small amounts, napped, and in general...
No. 32
Being sick is no fun.
I woke up yesterday morning with a head full of cotton, congestion, and crap. My throat felt like California wildfires and walking was something best done carefully, with as little bobbing as possible. The opera I’d bought tickets for in advance was a nice afternoon distraction, but mostly, I spent yesterday doing my best to get better fast. Thanksgiving is soon....
No. 31
It is before noon on a weekend and I have already been awake and functioning for hours. What is this madness.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I got up before nine on a Sunday morning. I also can’t remember the last time I was cordially invited to a diner breakfast with a friend’s relatives, either, so there you have it. This morning was the first time in living memory I...
No. 30
Today, I saw an adaptation of Molière’s “Scapin.” My neighbor happened to be the lead (because he’s an excellent actor), and my roommate was a stage hand, so going was basically mandatory. Not that any of us in my friend/neighbor group minded - it was a brilliant production. The adaptation tended toward the absurdly comedic, and the student director is an outstanding clown,...
No. 29
Today, I am running on slightly less sleep than usual. “Usual” is eight hours or so, so this isn’t destroying me - and it was well worth it, anyway. The reason I am running on slightly less sleep than usual: Harry Potter 7, Part 1. Oh yes. My first midnight premiere of a movie.
Where I live, there is one movie theatre. It is, shall we say, cozy. My friends and I bought our...
No. 28
If I could write a list that would sum up this morning from the point of view of a friend and neighbor of mine, it might look something like the following:
1. Things one does before kissing a girl for the first time:
a) Brush one’s teeth
b) Lots of awkward pausing
c) Much hesitating
d) Feel colossally nervousness
2. Things one does while kissing a girl for the first time:
a) Follow...
No. 27
I can’t post right now because I can’t think right now because I keep getting distracted by bedspring noises from the room above mine. I would say “get a room” but they’re totally in a room. “Get a room further away from my room”? “Please”?
People can do whatever they want, don’t get me wrong. Their joint endeavors aren’t harming...
No. 26
Candy Bombers.
That’s what the pilots from the Berlin airlift were called.
As the story goes, there was one pilot who, on a whim, decided to stow away as a passenger on an airplane going to the blockaded part of Berlin. In his wandering around the airport, he met some kids, and, through broken English and German, struck up a conversation with them. Before he left, he pulled out some sticks...
No. 25
I love books. I love holding them, opening them, closing them, looking at them, putting them down, and picking them up. I love lifting the front cover and turning one page after the other until I reach the back cover. I especially love holding old books to my face and flipping their pages with a thumb so a burst of book-smelling air jumps out at me. My grandfather was a bookbinder, and I have a...
No. 24
“Identity in Mashpee” by James Clifford is an interesting look at what it takes for a group of Indians - the Mashpee - to be declared a tribe, thus enabling them to sue for land.
Really, what it boils down to is how you want to see tribes. Are they political entities, governed by a chief? But then aboriginal Indian communities often had different kinds of government. Are they...
No. 23
Creating portraits of people you know is hard. I’m not sure why this is. In the past, I’ve stuck to what I call representational portraits - pictures of my friends loaded with symbolism, drawn in a fairly cartoony way (because I can’t draw objects realistically. Textures are the bane of my existence). The other day, though, I got a request for a realistic sketch, so what could I...
No. 22
When I was younger, I used to sleep with all my stuffed animals in my bed. This is because I was convinced they came alive at night and had feelings and personalities. (Which led to a crippling fear of hurting their feelings by playing favorites; it eventually drove me to carefully plan out my time spent with them so that no one stuffed animal got appreciably more attention from me than the...
No. 21
They’re small. They’re brightly colored. They fit your ass - no more and no less. Welcome to spankies.
If you’re a girl, you probably know them in their volleyball uniform incarnation. Workout shorts, under-short-skirt-shorts, really really tiny shorts for the less modest; there is nothing that spankies cannot do (except cover your legs).
This is all good and well for those of...
No. 20
MTR Part II. Our problem:
50% of the energy the United States uses comes from coal consumption; it’s a cheap and easy way to get power for manufacturing, so it’s used widely in, for example, plastics and steelworking. If the whole world were able to completely eliminate coal burning this instant, it would take care of 80% of the climate change problem, says Columbia professor and head...
