Things That Get On My Nerves

You are tall and wearing a giant backpack. Why in the fuck are you standing right in front of the subway doors?

The L train stops at Union Square. You shove everyone near you while self-righteously exclaiming “EXCUSE ME!” Fuck you, lady: EVERYONE GETS OFF AT UNION SQUARE.

You are related to Trey and repeatedly ask if we can come over for dinner Saturday, despite the fact that Trey has had the Saturday night shift for FOUR YEARS. “No,” I say, “I’m so sorry but you know Trey works Saturdays.” Trey’s relation then sighs, to indicate how difficult we are being. “Maybe you guys could come over Sunday morning then?” No, I say, seeing as my husband will have gotten in from work at 6 a.m. Another uncomprehending sigh. I want to say that we would love to be there on Saturday, and would Relation mind just giving us 500 dollars in cash? Because that’s what it costs us to give up a Saturday. I swear, when Baby Minou Langtry-Desolay is born, I am tempted to make visiting hours as inconvienient as possible. “We’d love to have you drop by and see the baby! Can you come at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday? No? You are at work? Oh…..oh well. We really thought you’d want to see her. “

You are a Friend of Mine who does not understand that hanging out at Trey’s bar on a Saturday night is NOT QUALITY TIME WITH MY HUSBAND. You are a Friend of Mine who thinks that having a gathering at Trey’s bar on Trey’s shift with your shitty-tipping co-workers is a GREAT FUN IDEA.

You are the Divisional Sales Manager of my company, who, although knowing full well I am a vegetarian because I sweetly refused your gift of dinner at V Steakhouse as recompense for my help with the Divisional Sales Meeting, explaining with a big smile that “that is so thoughtful, but we don’t eat meat” has suggested THREE times that while I am in Virginia next week I treat myself to a “fantastic Virginia ham!”

You are the Television, sporting a graphic that reads: “POST-9/11: The New Reality.”

You are another Co-Worker, inquiring about my Band: “How do you monetize that?”

You are my Ovary, radiating pain-waves into my upper thigh, causing mid cycle bleeding for four days.

You are Five O’Clock, and you are Seventy Minutes Away.

New York Is Officially Over

Who says the terrorists haven't won? That's right, MetLife is putting Stuyvesant Town/ Peter Cooper Village on the auction block.

With a target price of nearly $5 billion, the sale would be the biggest deal for a single American property in modern times. It would undoubtedly transform what has been an affordable, leafy redoubt for generations of Manhattan’s middle class: teachers and nurses, firefighters and police officers, office clerks and construction workers.[...]

“It’s really sad,” said Suzanne Wasserman, a historian and filmmaker who has lived in Stuyvesant Town since 1989. “New York has always attracted people who aren’t just interested in money — people interested in culture and poetry and music and dance and those young people who are the creative capital of the city. They aren’t going to have a place here and probably really don’t already. I think it affects everything about city life.”

[... Many said the people who will suffer most will be younger tenants holding out hope of raising children in Manhattan.

I lived in Peter Cooper Village for 3 years, a struggling actress renting a bedroom from a sweet middle aged reclusive guy who had been born in the apartment and wanted nothing more than to work on his dance pieces in the living room and write at the Blimpie every morning. I wonder what will happen to him: or Gertrude, the 75 year old woman living next door who had me carry her groceries and whose one vice was the OTB?

Moved, No Forwarding Address

As executrix of my mom's estate, I had all her mail forwarded to our house.

I am so moved by this piece of junk mail. I can't bring myself to throw it away.

I Am Tired Of These Mothafuckin Nachos On Tha Mothafuckin Multiplex Floor

At the Union Square 14 theatre. (Did I mention that Snakes On A Plane is AWESOME?)

The Whiteboard In The Conference Room: ?

It wasn't me.

Slouching Towards Sweeps Week

The weather has taken a turn for the awesome in the past few days: sunny and dry and the skies an immaculate back-to-school blue. M. and I figured out at drinks last week that the reason we had been feeling uneasy lately was because this brand of perfect weather that we have come to think of as "9/11 weather". As you may or may not know, the weather could not have been nicer that day, and this particular shade of unmarred sky always me feel a bit antsy and sick. In this regard, the terrorists have won.

I dread the coming plague of “Five Years Since 9/11” programming: I saw something on CNN the other day, using a "softer" font – still somber, but not the “ATTACK ON AMERICA” typeface that had been so popular. I could give a fuck about 9/11 anymore, since it no longer has any particularity or meaning in the public discourse. The ads for World Trade Center make me ill. I can’t help but feel that the fictions that spring up to kitschify the particular event are of a piece with the utter lack of empathy of these times. It is all negation: the Descartes blanche that is one’s birthright in the U. S. of Fuckin-A.

The tiny window of opportunity that this country had to reflect upon itself collapsed into a five year tantrum, a howling fugue of primary narcissism. If there is anything about that event I would remember, it was the immediate outpouring of generosity from one citizen to another, when teenage national guardsmen who had never set foot in our city were trying their best, and when drag queens and doctors lined up with signs along the West Side Highway to cheer for the firemen. It lasted almost two weeks, everyone huddled together in that grace period, that fermata, that caesura akin to the moment the plane goes so fast that the astronauts-in-training catch air and yield to nearly six precious seconds of flight.

Animals

Don't you find it curious that "animal" is often used as a perjorative -- he's a fucking animal, they were treated like animals, living like an animal -- an indication of debasement: yet the root of "animal" comes from the Latin for "soul"? That therefore the animal in question is one into life has been breathed?

When you talk about the crimes people commit, in the language of

they were butchered like animals/ treated like animals/ scorned like animals/ shoved into train cars like cattle

Aren't you really fumbling towards the conclusion that NO animals deserve to be treated "like animals?"

Surprise!

(bangs head on desk)

Knitting Blog

Knitting a scarf surreptitiously under the desk for my good friend who just got ENGAGED!
(Yarn is Cascade, in red and fuschia, size 11 needles. Shoes are Marc Jacobs, purchased at Buffalo Exchange. Legs are slightly unshaven, with mosquito bites, and yes, that is a you-know-what holding my knitting.)