Procrastinating Earth

You know how on those days when it's really hot and the sun is beaming in from the window adjacent to your desk, you get antsy and you're unable to focus, so you start reorganizing your papers, sometimes two or three times, setting up arbitrary piles of three or four documents that would be easy to find piled or not, then you glance at your galleys and decide to re-highlight things you've already highlighted, and cross out easy proper names like "New York" avoiding actual work as much as you can, but still creating the sometimes convincing illusion that you're doing something?

Well, that's pretty much what Bush did today when he announced his "conference" on global warming-- some gentle sit down discussions with other nations about meeting a common emission goal, a substanceless act that features no actual goals, unlike the Kyoto treaty Bush so promptly passed up during his first term, and really only serves to make it seem like the man cares about the global crisis, a cause towards which he's appointed many industry lobbyists to so eagerly deny.......


Scientific announcement that will probably be refuted immediately by the Bush administration: The world is still rotating every 24 hours. And it's really freakin hot out.

I'm going to be related to someone quoted in Newsweek.

Spitzy, my sister's fiance, is quoted extensively in a Newsweek article about Beta males, because he is a genius TV writer and he wrote a genius pilot entitled "Beta Male."

Schools for Pregnant Girls

"Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 stated that schools were allowed to create separate educational programs for pregnant students, but that they must be of comparable quality to standard high schools."

Didn't we establish that "separate but equal" never really works out in the "equal" category like a decade earlier than that?

OMG, there's a profile of Pee Wee in the New York Times! Now I love that Pee Wee with a fierce Tyra-ish love, a love that was only intensified after the Pee Wee penis incident (it was humanizing!), so don't fault me for pointing out a few unfortunate turns of phrase used throughout the piece:

"With cockeyed dream logic, the answer occurred to him."

"For survival it’s much easier to not stick out."

"Mr. Reubens, as a rock concert promoter, gets to pop his cork, spewing"

Okay and this is just gross:

"His girth expanded, his hair gray-flecked, his adenoidal whine modulated to a grainy croon."

But, uh, the article's really good, and Pee Wee is really weird, and his picture is so crotch-covered debonair.

As I was walking to Whole Foods for lunch today, I found myself walking in line with a man, who was a dwarf (midget? What's the PC term?)

He looked up at me and asked, "How does it feel to be tall?"

I squirmed uncomfortably and simply smiled, not wanting to rub it in by squealing "It's great! I can see at concerts! I run fast! etc...."

Then he said, "I bet I could climb you."

"Uh....."

"Yeah I'll just grab onto your nice handles there in front."

OMG, WHAT CAN YOU SAY TO A PERVERTED MIDGET?

I called Gaby right away and she maintains I should have given him a piggyback. Now I feel strangely guilty for not letting him do the monkeybars on my boobs.

Tomorrow is my first and last date until the year 2014, based on the good ideas of my roommate Riesling, who keeps me satisfied in all ways non-sexual, and my own extraordinary willpower (Did I ever mention I received an email from a heartbreaking ex and deleted it AND emptied the trash before my worse half gave in to the desire to read it? I even impressed myself there.) And for the purposes of dating science (fuckatomology) I am going to dedicate this last outing before the seven year drought to experimentation.

No, pervert, not putting candles in my ass. I meant dating experimentation. I've been a big reader of The Rules lately, thanks to Moutarde who found it abandoned on a Park Slope stoop. The Rules are pretty lame in that the main goal is not to find love, but rather a man who will adore you and never divorce you. The book is extra lame and hilarious because both of the chicks who wrote it are now divorced. The general theme is maintain an air of independence, mystery, and beauty, without really possessing any of it. Read headlines that your man is interested in so that you can converse about his favorite topics. Don't see him every night or call him back right away. Get a nose job if you need one. Get a nose job if you don't need one. Wait five seconds before answering his date proposal (I tried practicing this and it made me seem like either an Eastern European mail bride who didn't understand English or just a plain moutarde). Incidentally, the authors claim that following the Rules will ensure that no man will beat you-- of course, men hit women because they just aren't mysterious enough.

So The Rules are out. But I'm equally intrigued by awesome music writer-turned-douchebag Neil Strauss's dating book for men, The Game. Strauss found as an ugly man who wanted to date beautiful women, all he had to do was feed them vague insults which, because all women are insecure (duh!), puts them on the defensive and makes them want to prove themselves by bedding down with the insulter. This process is called "negging" and results are best obtained with something not too harsh and slightly confusing (i.e. "Oh it looks like you inherited your father's hands.") This at first made me super mad and want to kick Neil Strauss in the crotch, even though he writes really good articles like this one, but then I came around to "negging", turning it into a skewed and incorrect contrapositive: If someone insults me that means they want to bone me! So I've been affectionately calling people "neggers" all the time (something I should not be saying with my Midwestern accent), genuinely enjoying any insults thrown my way, and most of all enjoying NOT sleeping with my insulters. Strangely, after "negging" Strauss recommends performing a magic trick. I don't know what else to say about that except: how weird.

Anyway, these techniques have been the butt of moutarded jokes for the last three weeks and I figure it's time to put them to the test. I'm sorry dear date if you turn out to be a very nice kid, but I am going to Rule you, Neg you, and probably perform an atrocious magic trick. Get ready for the worst date of your life!

Back to Work

Alysha to me
show details 5:02 pm (4 minutes ago)

I can't keep my eyes off of you


Lauren to Alysha
show details 5:03 pm (4 minutes ago)

you're just too good to be true


Alysha to me
show details 5:06 pm (2 minutes ago)

you'd feel like hell to touch



Lauren to Alysha
show details 5:06 pm (1 minute ago)

i want to punch you so much

Good Stuff

Everyone should read Rob's New Orleans blog. Duh.

Giddy!

Arcade Fire tonight, Dawn tomorrow, birthday this weekend. No posts til Monday, obvs.

One problematic aspect of growing up in the Midwest is the preponderance of alien abductions. It hasn't happened to me, but it happens a lot, and I heard enough about it growing up to make me sufficiently terrified (my 6th grade final paper was entitled, "Did Aliens kill JFK?" Not. Even. Kidding.)The moment that really cemented my irrational fear of beings from another planet was a program on PBS I watched late one night when I was about 9. The program was animated, so being the naive little girl that I was I assumed it was something akin to Animaniacs, but no, it was the animated stories of alien abduction survivors. I sat riveted, unable to take my eyes away from the screen as a cartoon man who looked a little like Einstein described how the aliens told him they took him because he was smarter than most humans. They told him they wanted to understand how intelligent humans act and placed him in a burning building to understand the concept of fear. I started shaking and I wet myself. Then I composed this note to the aliens and hung it on my door for the remainder of my ninth year of life:

Aliens,
I know you think I am very smart and special, but I am not smart or special. I know I won the spelling bee, but Brian Finklestein really did know how to spell 'amoeba' too, he just messed up. Please take him to study. He is the smartest person in the class. I will not provide any interesting information.

It's easy to forget about UFO sightings living in New York (I tend to concentrate my anxiety mostly on terrorism and Republicanism) but when I was back in Minnesota this past weekend, alien anxiety came back in full force. I was sleeping in my childhood bed and I had a dream that my name was Roberta, I was 14, and my mom and sister were taking me into space for my birthday. For some reason, once we were up in space I felt an insistent urge to go to Mars for the greater benefit of humankind. I jumped through a wormhole before my mom could stop me, and I remember the vivid image of landing hard on my knees, dust floating up from the planet floor upon impact, then a big pair of slimy red feet right before me coming into view as the dust cleared. It was a Martian. He grabbed me, his talons digging into my arm, and he telepathically communicated with his cohort that "the plan had worked." It all became clear once we were in the Martian cave: The lead Martian had come to Earth two years earlier and impregnated me in my sleep, but my mom had foiled the plan by getting me an abortion. This time, however, would be different--The Martian was going to rape me then keep me on Mars for the full term of the pregnancy. I woke up before the big scary Martian penis was about to.....you know.

Upon waking I took double birth control. Just in case.

I'm now one degree closer to Al Gore: My clip on Partial Birth Abortion airing as part of a segment on CurrentTV!

Who Doesn't Like 'Happy Endings'?

Randall Tobias, Deputy Secretary of State resigned a few days ago, confessing that yes indeed he was a client of a Washington D.C white-collar "escort" service.

But of course, Randall was only having "some gals come over to the condo for a massage."

PHEW! Sweet relief.

I was really scared for a second, REALLY SCARED, that he might be doing something else with said 'gals.' And we all know that could be construed as--I don't know, maybe hypocrisy is the right word-- since Tobias has been pushing abstinence-only education abroad ever since he arrived at that clean, sparkling, pristine WHITE HOUSE.