A Gift From The Barely Employed: I Read Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth and Summed It Up In The Following Haiku So You Don't Have To!

I am bringing this blog column back. Mostly because writing full-length book reviews is too daunting and How I Met Your Mother is waiting.


Next gen immigrants

Why they all marry white peeps?

Parents, learn to deal.

Now to get yourself into the right Lahirian state of mind watch like, uh, five minutes of Kumar Goes To That Girl From The Real World's Vagina (commonly referred to as The Namesake), get in a fight with your parents by refusing to eat their ethnic kugel and screaming, "I only eat American food now!" before slamming the door and running out to White Castle. Come home, glutted on grease, and ponder the ramifications of your assimilation.

Bonus fun fact: Kal Penn (Kalpen Suresh Modi; case in point!) America's favorite/only go-to Indian actor was a Women's Studies major at UCLA.

OhNoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooes

The. Greatest. Con. Of. Our. Time.

I was color-coding my Hermes, waiting for Yolanda, my personal pubic hair trimmer to arrive, when I got the call.

"What do you mean it's gone?" I said.

"Ponzi? That man from Happy Days? Well, for God's sake, can't they catch him?"

It was explained to me in full over the course of the next few days. I became despondent. My husband asked me what luxuries I could live without. In reply I threw up my rainbow of silk scarves in the air, yelling "Take them! Take them!" while collapsing dramatically on the bed, where I hid a few of my favorite ones under my right breast. In the end I was forced to get rid of two of my cars, and Yolanda, the pubic hair trimmer. But I went further: "Without Yolanda," I said, "I have no need for the Italian villa. I'll not be able to wear a bikini until I hire a new trimmer, so sell it. Just sell the villa."

I tried to garner sympathy for the wealthy but they make it nearly impossible, what with the starched white shirt imperative and brown bagging designer labels. I hereby concentrate all my sympathy on the Jewish charities that were swindled.


As if Christmas time wasn't bad enough for the Jews.

I'm somewhat perplexed by the slew of articles trying to delve into Madoff's psyche to uncover what sort of mental illness brought on this huge financial scam. I mean, sure, the guy's a more virile form of nutty than Burt Reynolds' balls, but concentrating on why he did it evades the simple answer: he could do it.


DEM BALLZ R CRAZY

When you're playing with pretend entities to begin with and someone's like, "Here are five hundred unicorns!" what's to stop you from bragging, "Your unicorns are frollicking in the candy cane fields! They have sweet syrup dripping down their glitterly horns! They're fucking each other like crazy! SRSLY! Big unicorn candy orgy!" I mean technically the SEC is supposed to monitor the unicorns, but who knows what happened there.

It's a system-induced sickness, I tell you! DSM-VI get on that!


Your financial portfolio.

But the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time my friends, is perpetrated by The Hills LLC. I invested emotion in that enterprise. Yes, I'll admit it. In a bunch of dumbfucks I would slap if I ever met them in real life. But investing in dumbfucks on TV is more like investing in principles, since you can't actually personally relate to any of them you attempt to rally around what they represent.

I put my emotions into preventing Heidi and Spencer from getting married on the feminist principle that women shouldn't marry abusive douchenozzles. Yes, Spencer and I both agree that Heidi's friends are all retardos, but you don't stay with someone who isolates you from your F&F! That is like, uh, level one, middle school brochure on abusive relationships.




The only time I ever had a morsel of respect for Heidi was after Spencer proposed to her in Mexico, telling her he had to "take her away from her family" because that was when "they worked at their best." You can actually see the discomfort in her eyes, perhaps mildly registering how fucked up that is, before she says in a fake-Mexican-sounds-like-Italian-accent: "Oh noooo, Monsieur Spencer, I think we should not get maarried."

Then they do. And at that point I was like, "FUCK this shit. I am cashing out." There's nothing left for me. Lauren Conrad's so boring they should use her voice in those sleep machines they sell at Brookstone.

But as soon as I try to rescind my emotion, The Hills just transfers it to Audrina and Justin Bobby, who, in the season finale, are set up to be the new Spencer/Heidi. JB takes Audrina out of L.A. to some sort of Bed & Breakfast, and starts to seduce her on the bed, by, uh, dissing her friends. Apparently the road to romance is isolation? "Now isn't this great, to be here all alone, without your little friends chirping in your ear..."

Um, HELLO, WARNING SIGN. Haven't we learned this lesson before? But still, I reinvest for next season.

Brunette viewers must learn that abuse can affect them too.

Entrepreneurs Dancing

A VC firm asked 70 of its start-ups to submit videos of office dancing for their holiday card this year. I know it's corny, but I find this video so fucking adorable. This is what a year at a small business magazine will do to your heart.

New Twitter Offers Gross Personification of The Unborn!

If My Dog Had A Tumblr, It Would Be One Of Those Hot Narcissist Tumblrs.

CAPRICIOUS LEWDNESS
Bemused animal and docile hearts.

DEC 2

This morning there was light rain as I wandered around the back of the shed, taking my first defecation near the second, most rusted trash can. I find sometimes I have a strange attraction to the old and ugly. The smell of garbage mixed with the cleansing smell of the rain reminded me of my time in Santiago. The dogs, they were always fighting over scraps in the back alleys of the city while the brown women angrily kicked them away from their sitting posts and the children tried to recruit them as friends. A cafe leche only cost a peso back then, and I drank more than a lifetime of them. Time for another defecation. It's one of those days.

DEC 4

The sun is setting and I've spent all day inside reading The Wapshot Chronicle. It left a funny feeling in my stomach, one I will try to alleviate now with some Kibbles N Bits.

DEC 5

Friday Night. I'm going to go dancing. It's the only pure form of joy I can completely lose myself in. This was taken an hour ago after my boyfriend said I should cut my hair like Jean Seberg in Breathless.


DEC 7

Sometimes I really think I am quite pretty. Other times it's like I can't even recognize my face in the mirror. Most of the time, I wish I didn't care so much.
Even so, e.e. cummings always makes me feel better.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

DEC 9

I'm trying to get into a John Berryman state, before my writing time. I told myself I'd commit two hours, no less. I've abstained from water so I won't have to go outside. We'll see how this goes.

But Still, I Just Cannot Stop Loving You

SRSLY

It's time to revisit this thing called Modern Love. Let's just call it a Best Of, after last month's winner:



I hope the author takes that fat New York Times paycheck and goes straight to a bonafide fem therapist.

Is it too much to ask for one column that doesn't completely reinforce the patriarchy? Who is in charge of this operation? Is it edited by Beyonce's crazy Put-A-Ring-On-It roboto-hand?

The overarching theme seems to be "Let's exploit the CRAZ-E ladies!"


EVa's forthcoming ML column: How Rolling Around With A Garbage Eating Robot On Parole Taught Me The True Meaning Of Love.

Other examples:


This author gets raped by a man and yet hates all women. Calls girl on girl fighting "tribal instinct." Wants to teach daughters to distrust women too. Great.


This author displays a remarkable understanding of feminism.


Dating someone on parole for rape. Hmmmm.


Oh, and then crying on a urine soaked floor,engaged in the kind of "female" hysterics everyone loves!

Things You Should Know About Norm Coleman Before We're Stuck With Him Again.

This post is dedicated to you, Lizard Person, you fame whore, who I originally guessed was:


("I Facebook friended Eric van Markovik to see if he was a Minnesota voter; he wrote back "Ur A Ugly Slut Whore With Man Hands" and then poked me eleven times.)


....but is actually this man:

"A friend of mine, we didn't like the candidates, so we were at first going to write in revolution, because we thought that was good and to the point. And then, we thought the Lizard People would be even funnier, and there was kind of a running inside gag between some friends and I."

Happy Recount!

The irony that goes beyond the Lizard People author is that Norm Coleman is in fact a Lizard Person of sorts, a reptilian humanoid to those of us who earned our college degree in shape shifting clanspeople of medieval ages, or who used Dungeons & Dragons to snag nerdy boyfriends in junior high. A New Yorker masquerading as Minnesotan, Coleman shifts form whenever it's politically opportunistic to do so. His master suite is the shape of a lizard's tail. He secretes slime during rom-coms. He's been known to fabricate a pregnancy, destroy the sanctity of eyewear, and wax on about cracking the glass ceiling, then deny you birth control. Oh wait. Still the latter clause is true.



Gleaming Light Hands: A Common Lizard Person Trait.

I first encountered Coleman in a servicing position circa 2002. I was home for the summer waitressing at an Italian restaurant in St. Paul. He came in with a hot leggy blond who was decidedly not his wife. In retrospect it may have been Heidi Montag.


Norm's wife, Laurie: lives in L.A.! Wears lingerie!

(It rapes my goat when a politician who doesn't support widely available birth control-- a position that derives from the notion sex should not be for pleasure but rather procreation---is totally cool with lingerie nudie photos of his wife. Clearly taken for procreational purposes.)

They ordered red wine. I am notoriously terrible at opening wine bottles.


"Your neck smells musky, man hands."

I struggled with the bottle standing over their table for a minute or two trying to pull the cork out. I resorted to putting the bottle between my legs and pulling up. Release came, and with it an outpouring of red wine on their tablecloth, and a few specks on Coleman. "For the blood of the innocents you've shed!" I screamed, or should have.


After winning Minnesota in 2002, eleven days after his competitor Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash, Coleman stated: "I am a 99 percent improvement over Wellstone."

I stammered and began apologizing. He just stared at me with his lizard eyes and then stated coldly, "Move us to a different table." Later, he left me a four percent tip.



The wine spill got me in trouble and led to me peeing in my pants.

Earlier in September, suspicions arose that Coleman had illegally funneled money for his campaign. Shortly after, he filed a lawsuit against Al Franken for defamation of character. He's filed four lawsuits against former rivals, and each time has dropped the suit once elected.

Minnesota law states that if the recount results in a statistical tie, someone basically pulls a name out of a hat to decide which candidate becomes Senator.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

In Which We Go Down Under.

Cruel World Love Connection

Sorry About That.