It's like Playboy-- you don't read the Fashies for hard-hitting articles. It's slightly obnoxious when a piece on suffering Afghan women is sandwiched between a swimsuit fashion spread and an interview with J Simpson. That's why I was pretty surprised when I was flipping through Allure this morning during pretend-to-workout time at the gymy to find that the Editor's note was dedicated to the preponderance of Lolita styles appearing on grown women. And it wasn't an 'oh how cute' ode to the trend. It was well articulated, perhaps still misplaced, but it won me over to the idea that maybe discourse can appear beside fluff. Here's an excerpt:

"I do not like pink-velour hoodies, bath gels that smell like watermelon, edible lip gloss, initials like BFF and LOL, or the word "yummy." I also think there's something creepy about grown women who collect dolls....Everywhere I look, otherwise grown women are acting and dressing like adolescents. They are stuck in cutesy, wearing baby-doll dresses, Peter Pan collars, Mary Janes, and makeup in jelly-bean colors. All of this may look perfectly fine on 16-year old runway models (what doesn't?), but on a 25 or 35 year old woman, it's jarring. And it doesn't stop with hair, makeup, and clothes....

But perhaps during uncertain times some women find comfort in regressing, sticking a lollipop in their mouth and a bow in their hair and hoping someone big and strong will protect them."


Okay, she's obviously wrong about the initials. Abbrevs are completely empowering (post below). And I didn't like that she insulted her coworker who's "adopted the look", that seemed a little Anna Wintourish. Trends could very well just be trends, but I think she makes valid points, especially in light of the recent NYT magazine article on how the children's toy market is dominated by Princess gear, so much so that little girls don't have many other options. The NYT's piece made me sufficiently afraid to have babies, but didn't really go into why exactly Princess inundation is so bad or what the adult version of a Princess child would look and act like. There was a little hypothesizing based on a study that girls raised on Princess gear would be more acquiescent to unprotected sex because they feel a need to please everyone, but it seems just as likely that there are Princess roleplays that could go the other way: prim and prudish, spoiled and demanding. The Allure editorial kind of filled in what the NYT's left out, maybe these girls raised as princesses just turn out to be weird women who collect dolls and wear pigtails, and carry a purse filled with pyschological problems.

Then again, my high school friend was apparently not allowed toy guns or army paraphernalia when he was a kid and figured out a way to play guns anyway-- by taking a naked barbie, setting her legs at a 90 degree angle, and holding her as a gun. It may be not so much the toys, but the predominant culture that has the most influence. I also remember being obsessed with playing "House" though I can't recall my parents every getting me a toy kitchen set. And I'm not walking out of the house today in a tee that reads "Nuthin' But a 'G' String Baby!"

Hannuka presents:

History of Love (sister)

Roth IRA ('rents)

Electric Guitar (me)


New Year's Resolutions:

Read more.

Save more.

Play more.

(The Holiday spoiler below) Not that you care.

I've been saying "besties" since my womb days. Then twenty four years later, on Dec 16th, 2006 a word of the day email featured the newly validated-as-a-real-word "besties," which if you're not one of my besties you probably don't know what it means, so here's the urban dictionary definition:

Short for "best friends".

Me and Jill are [totes] besties.

Then, in no small coincidence, the next day I perchanced to go see The Holiday with SarahGo, a cherished bestie, and a really pretty one at that. As a disclaimer I must say we ONLY saw the movie because my Grandma said there was a surprise ending. We were betting that one of the couples ended up single; and from there it was pretty simple to deduce that the fat chick, i.e. Kate Winslet, would be the one who dies with cats. But apparently Grandma had a working definition of surprise that included the real scenario of the movie: all the characters get together with their respective romantic interests in a Different City than from where they originally lived. Whoa.....surprise.

Anyhow, I'm veering. During one of the movie's many date scenes between Jack Black and Kate Winslet, the two are in a video store and Black is doing his funny guy schtick picking up movie titles and singing the theme songs to them in a way that makes one torn between wanting to immediately bone him or punch him in crotch screaming 'Get over yourself!' At one point he picks up The Graduate, does a little beatbox version of Mrs. Robinson, and then puts the movie back on the shelf and says:

"No seriously though. This movie is totally brill."

(Had I been the screenwriter it would have read "Seriously though- this moves is totes brill.")

SarahGo and I both immediately and figuratively wet ourselves. How did Hollywood get a hold of our language? Are we just chimps in a cage, being studied and sold to? The answer is yes, but that's not so important. What is important is that abbrevs are finally beginning to be recognized for the concise and energy-conserving language tools that they are.

And so, with no further ado, I present a starter list of functional abbrevs for your everyday life that even Al Gore would be proud of:

Abbrevs, or Abbrevsies-- as in what I'm writing about.
Lush--as in "what a lush dress"; or Luscious, the restaurant that my housies subsists on.
Housies--affectionate term for living partners (singular or plural)
Totes-- as in "She's totes cute."
Amaze-- used as an adjective in "Dude that old lady was amaze in that moves."
Moves-- those good ole Hollywood concoctions
The Boyf-- as in the guy you sleep with regularly
The Girlf-- as in the girl you sleep with regularly
Din-- as in your last meal of the day
Boobsies-- an affectionate title; as in "Dear Boobsies."
Vagsies-- an extremely affectionate title, one step up from boobsies
Skins-- the tight jeans that are currently trendy
Logsies-- the logical reasoning section of the Lsat (maybe not so day-to-day useful)



Of course this is just a beginner's list that one should slowly incorporate into one's daily vocabulary. I myself have become such a master that I spontaneously invent language as I speak. Givesies became short for Thanksgiving and elicited a lot of "Whaaaaat?" responses. The most infamous abbrevs occurred at work one day when I wanted to go downstairs to the dumpling bar and buy their specialty dessert, prompting me to shout to SarahGo in front of mingling coworkers: " I need to get a chocolate dumps now!"


Perhaps these abbrevs will make you seem a smidgen less intelligent than you are. But might I remind you, besties, their ignorance is your power.

It was pointed out

That I should mention I'm a Jew and not an extremist Christian in regards to the previous post.

Merry Christmas!

In time for Christmas: A death and rebirth.

Two nights ago I took a second look at the baby I hadn't breast feed for almost two months and decided that the 4.95 monthly fee was too much of a strain to keep pages of pages of ramblings alive. That was fucking dumb. Granted most of the writing wasn't top notch, done under the influence of something or as a joke shared solely by four cubicle mates in The Nation pig pen. But still. Sadness. As one nice PR reader emailed:

I wish you hadn't killed it.

Worst. Channukah. Ever.

Then to rub sting into my already devastating remorse, Typepad sent me this cancellation email:

Dear Perfect:

This message is being sent to confirm the cancellation of your account on the TypePad personal publishing service with the domain of 'perfectratio.blogs.com.' We're disappointed to see you go, but we thank you for taking part in helping TypePad to become the best weblog and photo album tool possible.

Your account and billing information has been deleted and you will not receive any service-related emails from us.

Dear Perfect. Dear Perfect. Dear Perfect.

Man. If only I got emails beginning this way often.


And so in one of those supposedly meaningful full-circle thingers, I made another drunken decision tonight to begin anew. In the spirit of Christmas. In the spirit of Jesus. In the spirit of Mel Gibson, Perfect Ratio will be reborn. And from what I know about rebirths, they're a lot nicer, hotter, and more sexed up.

There will be pointless crap, hard hitting news, and lots of lots of abbrevs.