This day has been coming for quite some time. The movement started when my dad sent me a friend request on facebook, which I promptly ignored.
It gained momentum when my dad, undaunted by my deliberate 'ignore' and my subsequent elevation of hostilities by putting a 'block' on his attempted friendship, then created a 17-year old alter ego on facebook – complete with pseudonym email address – and sent me another request.
I wasn't as shocked by the request actually so much as by the fact that his new avatar had already accumulated three friends (probably alter egos of other desperate relatives reeling from 'blocks' by their own children).
I've put up with a lot of poor behavior by the pre-1980 set on facebook, including but obviously not limited to:
• excessive, non-insightful and/or downright ludicrous comments re others’ wall posts or pictures (honest to God example: “So good to see pictures of your old friends. I invented this site after Ben introduced me to it…”) (emphasis added);
• attempting to incorporate internet shorthand into posts only to confess later that he or she has no idea what LOL actually means;
• signing of comments or wall posts with his or her name, or worse, familial descriptor (e.g., “LOL! Love the post! - Aunt Judy”); and
• over-posting pictures of children and grandchildren when everyone knows the only children anyone actually really wants to see on facebook are the bastard ones your high school classmates had out of wedlock and that caused them to get really fat and go on food stamps.*
*Ancillary to my thoughts on the hilarity of watching other people inadvertently prepping for a future appearance on The Maury Show, I really enjoyed the following clip about a mom running amok on facebook:
http://cfc.katv.com/videoondemand.cfm?id=62505
That accent put me in a great mood for a surprisingly long time. Think I'm going to start pronouncing "in.ter.view" like that too. Heh.
Anyway, my unrest with facebook randomly erupted into action today. I’ve decided not to post on facebook anymore and force people to check out my blog if they want to hear me rant. So far got no compunction about my decision. I may have scraped by barely under the generational cutoff of who ought to be on facebook without feeling deep crippling moral shame, but let no one forget that facebook wasn't exactly designed for someone my age either.
I only ever created an account years ago because I needed to monitor whether greasy, career-destroying pictures of me were being sent into the privacy-violating abyss that is photo tagging by my much younger and exponentially hipper volleyball teammates.
"If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em," I said to myself, and created an account right after checking a dozen entries on urbandictionary.com to figure out what the fuck the junior set were talking about in addition to facebook.
Thanks to those hos, now when someone talks about “Alaskan Pipeline” in the same breath with “Sarah Palin” I’m allowed a solid chuckle.
Because I know better.
no fish for the weary
Triumph! After two consecutive years of making failed New Year's resolutions to increase my consumption of healthy fish to four times a week, I may have finally experienced a breakthrough.
By Thursday of most weeks, I can be found holding steady at a cumulative fish unit deficit of (-4), made all the more deleterious by the fact that I'm usually also running cumulative alcohol and salt unit surpluses of (+4) and (+4 to an order of 10) respectively.
But today I am in the piscine red no more! I am actually on pace to break my pro rata fish ingestion quota.
In fact I've got a fantastic portion of mahi mahi in the sink defrosting right now. They say (and by "they" I obviously mean my mom and other dubiously accredited experts on food safety) that thawing frozen food at room temperature rather than in the fridge allows bacteria to grow at an unsafe pace.
But warnings be damned. One of my mahis is glued to another mahi right now and the whole thing is a big giant impenetrable block of ice. I imagine that must be how the town commissaries of the less affluent former Soviet republics dispensed each family's bimonthly ration of milk in the long harsh wintertime.
I'd rather like my fish block to defrost, as a character on 24 might say urgently, "within the hour!" Reading about all those earthquakes in Baja California the last couple days has left me with fish tacos on the brain, and I'm going to make some tonight.
The last time I had real great fish tacos was a couple years back in a little city called San Felipe in BC, where a group of us gringos drove down the peninsula and dragged out a tarp across the beach to camp out overnight and watch the sun rise.
Ultimate party foul? Hrmmm. Seeing as how earlier that afternoon I had tripped and spilled my bucket of re-purposed Coronas, as well as walked right through an actual screen door at the cantina, my own glass house is a little underinsured to start a stone-throwing contest.
*I think I got sick from accidentally swallowing tap water while brushing my teeth. Or, you know, maybe from eating a) alpaca steaks and b) guinea pig (left). Probably that water. Right.
By Thursday of most weeks, I can be found holding steady at a cumulative fish unit deficit of (-4), made all the more deleterious by the fact that I'm usually also running cumulative alcohol and salt unit surpluses of (+4) and (+4 to an order of 10) respectively.
But today I am in the piscine red no more! I am actually on pace to break my pro rata fish ingestion quota.
In fact I've got a fantastic portion of mahi mahi in the sink defrosting right now. They say (and by "they" I obviously mean my mom and other dubiously accredited experts on food safety) that thawing frozen food at room temperature rather than in the fridge allows bacteria to grow at an unsafe pace.
But warnings be damned. One of my mahis is glued to another mahi right now and the whole thing is a big giant impenetrable block of ice. I imagine that must be how the town commissaries of the less affluent former Soviet republics dispensed each family's bimonthly ration of milk in the long harsh wintertime.
I'd rather like my fish block to defrost, as a character on 24 might say urgently, "within the hour!" Reading about all those earthquakes in Baja California the last couple days has left me with fish tacos on the brain, and I'm going to make some tonight.
The last time I had real great fish tacos was a couple years back in a little city called San Felipe in BC, where a group of us gringos drove down the peninsula and dragged out a tarp across the beach to camp out overnight and watch the sun rise.
After a couple of ridiculously inexpensive and fresh fish tacos and a good deal more of cervezas, one of our number yakked in the sand without ever leaving his sleeping bag (actual picture below. Not sure why I didn't think to help ease his discomfort rather than capture the moment for posterity on camera).
So we all had to pick up the tarp and re-set up camp a good few hundred feet on down the beach.
Ultimate party foul? Hrmmm. Seeing as how earlier that afternoon I had tripped and spilled my bucket of re-purposed Coronas, as well as walked right through an actual screen door at the cantina, my own glass house is a little underinsured to start a stone-throwing contest.
Anyway, back to my fish: as much as I'd like to go to Mexico right now and have some of those magic tacos, I think I'm going to insist on higher standards of food sanitation. After all, I have no desire to reprise my gastrointestinal nightmare from last year when I got back from Peru with some super bug even two rounds of Cipro couldn't kill.* Even if this time I don't find myself inconveniently between health insurance plans.
*I think I got sick from accidentally swallowing tap water while brushing my teeth. Or, you know, maybe from eating a) alpaca steaks and b) guinea pig (left). Probably that water. Right.On that note, I'm going to go check on my fish cube and get started on some guac and other taco essentials.
By the way, you wouldn't guess it because a disturbingly high percentage of my meals consist of reconsituted a) fake soup (ramen) and b) fake juice (Crystal Light), but I'm actually a pretty fair chef.
My greatest ambition is that when I die and they discover (and by "they" I mean my mom and other rogue scientists) that my internal organs are actually pickled from ramen and Crystal Light, they can look at each other and sigh, "well at least she could cook better than that Rachael Ray skank."
Driving Under Idiocy
It's Cherry Blossom Season in DC. The city is awash in allergens and the stupidity of tourists. Driving has become intolerable, thanks to the cumulative incompetence of drivers with out-of-state plates inching along at ten mph staring slackjawed at our monuments...
or balking at the flow of cars in traffic circles...
or spinning the steering wheel desperately back and forth like a scurvy-weakened sailor navigating choppy seas in a vain attempt to bring one's tires parallel to the curb.
In tourist season, everyone is an Asian Woman Driver.
Every once in a while though, my annoyance turns to mean-spirited joy. Today I saw a driver in a convertible, with the top down but the windows rolled up.
What was most puzzling was that driver wasn't, as I would have predicted on first glance, a middle-aged white guy wearing Tevas or Birkenstocks with white crew socks (socks plus sandals, I guess, being the sartorial equivalent of driving a convertible with the top down and windows up).
The driver actually turned out to be a college-age girl with pretty long blonde wavy hair -- the kind of white-chick hair that smells like dog fur when it rains.
She looked style-conscious and superficially self-aware. In all respects, she could have been an extra on The Hills. Which made it all the funnier that she would be rolling down 23rd Street in her slick ride with the cool breeze in her hair and pollen-coated windows at full mast.
Maybe she was motivated by safety?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1264535/Muslim-woman-strangled-burkha-freak-kart-accident.html
or balking at the flow of cars in traffic circles...
or spinning the steering wheel desperately back and forth like a scurvy-weakened sailor navigating choppy seas in a vain attempt to bring one's tires parallel to the curb.
In tourist season, everyone is an Asian Woman Driver.
Every once in a while though, my annoyance turns to mean-spirited joy. Today I saw a driver in a convertible, with the top down but the windows rolled up.
What was most puzzling was that driver wasn't, as I would have predicted on first glance, a middle-aged white guy wearing Tevas or Birkenstocks with white crew socks (socks plus sandals, I guess, being the sartorial equivalent of driving a convertible with the top down and windows up).
The driver actually turned out to be a college-age girl with pretty long blonde wavy hair -- the kind of white-chick hair that smells like dog fur when it rains.
She looked style-conscious and superficially self-aware. In all respects, she could have been an extra on The Hills. Which made it all the funnier that she would be rolling down 23rd Street in her slick ride with the cool breeze in her hair and pollen-coated windows at full mast.
Maybe she was motivated by safety?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1264535/Muslim-woman-strangled-burkha-freak-kart-accident.html
Sleepy Time
Just got back from a long-awaited appointment at the Center for Sleep and Wake Disorders. I'm officially one of those people who jumps on the bandwagon of fictitious pharma-industry-manufactured diseases that are impossible to say out loud without employing exaggerated air quotes, like "Restless." "Leg." "Syndrome." Robitussin and Windex just don't do the trick anymore, so figured I'd get my sleep issues checked out.
What a fascinating office! As soon as I walked in, I was given an individual dvd player and told to sit quietly through a video of the wonky-eyed doctor in charge of the clinic giving a brief description of some disordered sleeping issues.
Then, based on my answers to a series of questions, the doctor hypothesized that I may be suffering from narcolepsy. Narcolepsy! A condition that ranks behind only maybe Tourette's or Foot-for-a-face syndrome (spokesperson: Sarah Jessica Parker; discovery credit: Peter Griffin) in hilarious tragic-ness among diseases.
I mean to say, narcolepsy! I call confounding variable. I can hardly be faulted, after all, for replying, when asked me if I had been having trouble staying awake during daylight hours: "yes, during your video presentation earlier."
Anyway. I have to go back for an official overnight and daytime sleep study in three weeks, during the leadup to which I have to regulate my sleep patterns and keep a sleep journal complete with drawings for sleep duration, waking time, exercise, caffeine and alcohol units.
This should be a useful task. Although I am slightly worried because I'll be attending a beer festival during the journaling period. Based on my past behavior at similar events I'm probably going to have to supplement my journal with a hand-drawn legend explaining a couple new symbols.
Like regurgitation of alcohol units, and/or non-restorative hours of sleep obtained while lying blacked-out in a ditch by the side of the road.
What a fascinating office! As soon as I walked in, I was given an individual dvd player and told to sit quietly through a video of the wonky-eyed doctor in charge of the clinic giving a brief description of some disordered sleeping issues.
Then, based on my answers to a series of questions, the doctor hypothesized that I may be suffering from narcolepsy. Narcolepsy! A condition that ranks behind only maybe Tourette's or Foot-for-a-face syndrome (spokesperson: Sarah Jessica Parker; discovery credit: Peter Griffin) in hilarious tragic-ness among diseases.
I mean to say, narcolepsy! I call confounding variable. I can hardly be faulted, after all, for replying, when asked me if I had been having trouble staying awake during daylight hours: "yes, during your video presentation earlier."
Anyway. I have to go back for an official overnight and daytime sleep study in three weeks, during the leadup to which I have to regulate my sleep patterns and keep a sleep journal complete with drawings for sleep duration, waking time, exercise, caffeine and alcohol units.
This should be a useful task. Although I am slightly worried because I'll be attending a beer festival during the journaling period. Based on my past behavior at similar events I'm probably going to have to supplement my journal with a hand-drawn legend explaining a couple new symbols.
Like regurgitation of alcohol units, and/or non-restorative hours of sleep obtained while lying blacked-out in a ditch by the side of the road.
McGlovin
My brother has graciously invited me to join a recreational softball league that starts up in May. McGlovin is our team name. Hawaiian organ donors represent!
I’m near certain that he only invited me because they’re short on girls -- but the joke’s on him, as I’m entirely certain that I only joined for the post-game drink specials.
Oh...and for the free league t-shirt, with which I plan to augment my collection of ugly free t-shirts that even poverty-stricken children in remote destitute villages would be embarassed to wear even for the sole purpose of covering oozing bodily lesions.
So last night in a frenzy of excitement over the new league activity, braved the pollen outside to roll to Sports Authority and get me some equipment. Too bad I don’t need an athletic supporter, because they come in some pretty neat colors.
At the baseball/softball section of the store, got into an unexpected tussle for shelf-viewing space with some fat kid who was trying on all the adult-sized, rather than youth-sized, softball gloves.
Though I should have just dismissed him with a simple “Get outta here, your hand ain’t that fat… YET,” I settled for tossing the ball to my glove-buying partner so that it sailed dangerously close to the kid’s head.
He didn’t get the point at all, or else refused to be intimidated, and stood his ground. What is wrong with children these days?
At last I managed to pick a glove that was suitably sized and not ridiculously overpriced. Shockingly, there were some gloves that cost in the range of several hundreds of dollars! When I join a beer league to play some softball, my equipment shouldn’t cost as much as my bar tab.
This is the model I settled on. Isn't it a beaut? I hope I don't embarass it with my sure-to-be-sorry fielding.
I’m near certain that he only invited me because they’re short on girls -- but the joke’s on him, as I’m entirely certain that I only joined for the post-game drink specials.
Oh...and for the free league t-shirt, with which I plan to augment my collection of ugly free t-shirts that even poverty-stricken children in remote destitute villages would be embarassed to wear even for the sole purpose of covering oozing bodily lesions.
So last night in a frenzy of excitement over the new league activity, braved the pollen outside to roll to Sports Authority and get me some equipment. Too bad I don’t need an athletic supporter, because they come in some pretty neat colors.
At the baseball/softball section of the store, got into an unexpected tussle for shelf-viewing space with some fat kid who was trying on all the adult-sized, rather than youth-sized, softball gloves.
Though I should have just dismissed him with a simple “Get outta here, your hand ain’t that fat… YET,” I settled for tossing the ball to my glove-buying partner so that it sailed dangerously close to the kid’s head.
He didn’t get the point at all, or else refused to be intimidated, and stood his ground. What is wrong with children these days?
At last I managed to pick a glove that was suitably sized and not ridiculously overpriced. Shockingly, there were some gloves that cost in the range of several hundreds of dollars! When I join a beer league to play some softball, my equipment shouldn’t cost as much as my bar tab.
This is the model I settled on. Isn't it a beaut? I hope I don't embarass it with my sure-to-be-sorry fielding.
high spirits
In the past three years, I estimate I flew approximately half a million miles, mostly on American Airlines, the airline that many recall took approximately half a million tons of shit for being the first US legacy carrier to charge passengers for the first checked bag. I’ve checked only one bag during the past three years, and only by constraint of the 100 mL rule for liquids imposed by the TSA.
So you would think the news yesterday that Spirit Airlines is furthering the unbundling of air travel costs by charging for carry-on bags would be disturbing to me.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303411604575168153573631826.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
But I welcome the change. In fact, I hope that major airlines follow suit so that such charges become standard practice. And I hope that carriers enforce these theoretical written policies in empirical practice by restricting the actual sizes and weights of carry-on and checked bags to make sure that they will actually fit easily into overhead bins without assistance from the Jaws of Life. Bitch, that giant second suitcase you’re lugging is not a “personal item.”
Ryanair, a leading low-cost carrier (LCC) in Europe, has taken unbundling even a step further by announcing plans for pound-a-pee onboard toilets.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264006/Ryanair-hikes-luggage-charges-summer-toilet-tax-phased-in.html
By the way, for anyone who’s never had the pleasure of flying Ryanair or any other European LCC, suffice it to say that Ryanair is to Southwest (the US’s best-known LCC) what Kmart is to Nordstrom. In other words, when Americans post outraged comments about how airlines are going too far in charging for onboard snacks or other amenities, they really have no fucking clue what they are talking about.
(packing: is it really that hard not to bring your christmas turkeys to the airport?)
I’ve read some pretty great comments in the past 24 hours, and just for giggles I’ll summarize the camps of thought as follows:
1) “Airlines are sinking to new lows! I’m not flying anymore!”
Fine. Take your disgruntled ass to the nearest Amtrak station and train or, when you realize the monopoly Amtrak has on rail travel allows them to charge as much for a train ride as for a flight, slink on over to the Greyhound depot.
Or drive your giant SUV to your destination – I’m sure your personal vehicle, unlike a commercial aircraft, is not affected when the price of oil is three digits a barrel.
2) “They should stop nickel-and-diming for bags and just raise the price of the ticket.”
WOW. If only airline CEOs could just read your comment and in so doing make obsolete the jobs of entire departments of airlines devoted solely to the immensely complex process of determining ticket prices.
I personally prefer that charges be a la carte; if I’m capable of packing a 10 kg, 55x40x20 bag for a trip of duration up to 14 days, why should the total cost of my ticket increase just because my fellow passengers want to pay implicitly, rather than explicitly, to port their giant oversized trunks?
3) “This is outrageous! What next, charging passengers by how much they weigh?”
I’ve not met Jonathan Swift, but you, commenter, are no Jonathan Swift. Verbal irony fail.
Charging passengers by how much they weigh is a fantastic idea.
At least next time I fly with a morbidly obese seatmate oozing past the armrest’s inadequate barrier and belaboredly mouthbreathing or sweating while snacking on his foodcourt McDonalds value meal the whole flight, I’ll take comfort in knowing for sure his ticket cost at least twice mine.
And it's not like I'm some sprite myself. I'm just saying, if I had to pay my weight to fly somewhere, you can bet I'd be making love to my treadmill with far greater frequency, which is a great positive side consequence anyway.
Air travel, like everything in life, is a choice. If you’re outraged by airline pricing structures, join NetJets and own a fractional timeshare of a private jet.
Can’t afford that? Behavior, like anything else, can be changed with enough incentives.
If you don’t want to pay Vueling’s exorbitant bag fees (Vueling being somewhere around a Target in the Kmart/Nordstrom spectrum of LCCs), then walk through security wearing all the belts and shirts you own to lighten your luggage. The enthusiastic frisking by Spanish transportation safety officials is worth the money savings.
If you have to throw away some old socks or books in order to fit more bottles of cut price vodka into your suitcase, then remember you made an informed choice to fly WizzAir (on which passengers by custom burst into applause when the pilot touches down on the runway, presumably because they are overcome with gratitude that their aircraft has not burst into flames) -- after your communist-era train between Warsaw and Krakow broke down without explanation and stopped dead on the tracks fifteen minutes from the city for more than two hours.
If you don’t want to pay extra to choose your AirAsia seat in advance, then be prepared to visualize your plane as that last chopper out of Saigon and outrun the stooped old lady next to you carrying two crates of chickens tied together with twine.
Or instead you could solder a homemade sampan together out of scrap metal and sail your way through Southeast Asia.
Life is all about choices. Figure it out.
So you would think the news yesterday that Spirit Airlines is furthering the unbundling of air travel costs by charging for carry-on bags would be disturbing to me.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303411604575168153573631826.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
But I welcome the change. In fact, I hope that major airlines follow suit so that such charges become standard practice. And I hope that carriers enforce these theoretical written policies in empirical practice by restricting the actual sizes and weights of carry-on and checked bags to make sure that they will actually fit easily into overhead bins without assistance from the Jaws of Life. Bitch, that giant second suitcase you’re lugging is not a “personal item.”
Ryanair, a leading low-cost carrier (LCC) in Europe, has taken unbundling even a step further by announcing plans for pound-a-pee onboard toilets.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264006/Ryanair-hikes-luggage-charges-summer-toilet-tax-phased-in.html
By the way, for anyone who’s never had the pleasure of flying Ryanair or any other European LCC, suffice it to say that Ryanair is to Southwest (the US’s best-known LCC) what Kmart is to Nordstrom. In other words, when Americans post outraged comments about how airlines are going too far in charging for onboard snacks or other amenities, they really have no fucking clue what they are talking about.
(packing: is it really that hard not to bring your christmas turkeys to the airport?)I’ve read some pretty great comments in the past 24 hours, and just for giggles I’ll summarize the camps of thought as follows:
1) “Airlines are sinking to new lows! I’m not flying anymore!”
Fine. Take your disgruntled ass to the nearest Amtrak station and train or, when you realize the monopoly Amtrak has on rail travel allows them to charge as much for a train ride as for a flight, slink on over to the Greyhound depot.
Or drive your giant SUV to your destination – I’m sure your personal vehicle, unlike a commercial aircraft, is not affected when the price of oil is three digits a barrel.
2) “They should stop nickel-and-diming for bags and just raise the price of the ticket.”
WOW. If only airline CEOs could just read your comment and in so doing make obsolete the jobs of entire departments of airlines devoted solely to the immensely complex process of determining ticket prices.
I personally prefer that charges be a la carte; if I’m capable of packing a 10 kg, 55x40x20 bag for a trip of duration up to 14 days, why should the total cost of my ticket increase just because my fellow passengers want to pay implicitly, rather than explicitly, to port their giant oversized trunks?
3) “This is outrageous! What next, charging passengers by how much they weigh?”
I’ve not met Jonathan Swift, but you, commenter, are no Jonathan Swift. Verbal irony fail.
Charging passengers by how much they weigh is a fantastic idea.
At least next time I fly with a morbidly obese seatmate oozing past the armrest’s inadequate barrier and belaboredly mouthbreathing or sweating while snacking on his foodcourt McDonalds value meal the whole flight, I’ll take comfort in knowing for sure his ticket cost at least twice mine.
And it's not like I'm some sprite myself. I'm just saying, if I had to pay my weight to fly somewhere, you can bet I'd be making love to my treadmill with far greater frequency, which is a great positive side consequence anyway.
Air travel, like everything in life, is a choice. If you’re outraged by airline pricing structures, join NetJets and own a fractional timeshare of a private jet.
Can’t afford that? Behavior, like anything else, can be changed with enough incentives.
If you don’t want to pay Vueling’s exorbitant bag fees (Vueling being somewhere around a Target in the Kmart/Nordstrom spectrum of LCCs), then walk through security wearing all the belts and shirts you own to lighten your luggage. The enthusiastic frisking by Spanish transportation safety officials is worth the money savings.
If you have to throw away some old socks or books in order to fit more bottles of cut price vodka into your suitcase, then remember you made an informed choice to fly WizzAir (on which passengers by custom burst into applause when the pilot touches down on the runway, presumably because they are overcome with gratitude that their aircraft has not burst into flames) -- after your communist-era train between Warsaw and Krakow broke down without explanation and stopped dead on the tracks fifteen minutes from the city for more than two hours.
If you don’t want to pay extra to choose your AirAsia seat in advance, then be prepared to visualize your plane as that last chopper out of Saigon and outrun the stooped old lady next to you carrying two crates of chickens tied together with twine.
Or instead you could solder a homemade sampan together out of scrap metal and sail your way through Southeast Asia.
Life is all about choices. Figure it out.
social networking: a mixed bag
Over the weekend I learned of the existence of a new, way-funner-than-match.com dating/networking site called plentyoffish.com. Resolved to check it out. The site features profiles of some of its members, and right away I can see a couple of promising characters:
• Hunt4whitetails? Alright, he must like playing drunken Big Buck Hunter as well!
• Tryjustme? Hmmm. I don’t know how he’ll feel about joining my polygynous cult and moving to my compound in the Ozarks….
• Looking2bwithu? Aw, maybe he and restraininOrdr4u can hook up with Justin Bieber and form a gender-ambiguous pop group.
It looks as though the site is more than just a venue for desperate males to troll for desperate males pretending to be females. In fact, plentyoffish is aimed at forming and even cultivating deeper, meaningful relationships. The site promises:
And the promise of a “customized action plan?” Why, making a relationship work for life sounds as easy as going on that Jenny Craig diet fat celebrity has-beens keep yammering about. And since dieting is obviously so effortless and permanent…
In order to see beyond the superficial publicly accessible pages, I must sign up and create a profile. Because I have no desire to be murdered in my own home and my skin harvested to tailor a nice summer suit, I think I might use an alias at first, just to get a lay of the land. Let’s see….
Username? I’m going to go with an old standby, MaleOrderBride.
Age? 1/1/70, which conveniently makes me a 40 year old virgin and will allow me to discuss in great detail my religious convictions and why I am saving myself for the husband I hope to catch on this site.
Ethnicity? Apparently I can choose between “Caucasian” and “European,” a distinction I’d like a pop-up to explain. Confused, I settle on “Mixed Race.”
Country? Wow. I can specify Iraq or Afghanistan but not Iran. Or I may travel back in time to the days of the Yalta conference and designate Yugoslavia. What a powerful platform.
Immediately upon agreeing to the terms and conditions, I get an email from the founder of plentyoffish:
However, now that I know that my responses to this form may very well leave me indebted for eternity to Markus and plentyoffish, I think I might need a couple beers to take the edge off before I return to the deep questions the site requires me to answer, including without limitation my hobbies, goals/aspirations, what makes me unique, and my taste in music.
More intrusively still, I need to reveal whether I have a car.
• Hunt4whitetails? Alright, he must like playing drunken Big Buck Hunter as well!
• Tryjustme? Hmmm. I don’t know how he’ll feel about joining my polygynous cult and moving to my compound in the Ozarks….
• Looking2bwithu? Aw, maybe he and restraininOrdr4u can hook up with Justin Bieber and form a gender-ambiguous pop group.
It looks as though the site is more than just a venue for desperate males to troll for desperate males pretending to be females. In fact, plentyoffish is aimed at forming and even cultivating deeper, meaningful relationships. The site promises:
Discover Your Relationship Needs. We will tell you what you need in a relationship, where you screwed up (with out [sic] knowing it) in past relationships and a customized action plan to make your next relationship successful. We will also give you 33 topics to discuss that are important for long term success.I’m heartened by the presence of a typo in this ad. It seems a sure sign the site is so confident of its algorithm for relationship success that it need not employ proofreaders.
And the promise of a “customized action plan?” Why, making a relationship work for life sounds as easy as going on that Jenny Craig diet fat celebrity has-beens keep yammering about. And since dieting is obviously so effortless and permanent…
In order to see beyond the superficial publicly accessible pages, I must sign up and create a profile. Because I have no desire to be murdered in my own home and my skin harvested to tailor a nice summer suit, I think I might use an alias at first, just to get a lay of the land. Let’s see….
Username? I’m going to go with an old standby, MaleOrderBride.
Age? 1/1/70, which conveniently makes me a 40 year old virgin and will allow me to discuss in great detail my religious convictions and why I am saving myself for the husband I hope to catch on this site.
Ethnicity? Apparently I can choose between “Caucasian” and “European,” a distinction I’d like a pop-up to explain. Confused, I settle on “Mixed Race.”
Country? Wow. I can specify Iraq or Afghanistan but not Iran. Or I may travel back in time to the days of the Yalta conference and designate Yugoslavia. What a powerful platform.
Immediately upon agreeing to the terms and conditions, I get an email from the founder of plentyoffish:
My name is markus. I'm the creator of Plentyoffish and sole employee. Plentyoffish gets over 2 million visitors a day, far more then [sic] any paid dating site. Over 500,000 relationships were formed in 2007 as a result of pof.com.Forget any of those other profiles, now I sort of want to hook up with Markus! Sole employee of a site with 2 million visitors a day? Sounds like quite a catch…. Emboldened, I proceed to the next page for registration. It boasts:
More dates result from plentyoffish than all other dating sites combined so make the first impression count! I know its [sic] a pain to fill out forms like this but its [sic] well worth it and you will thank us your whole life! (emphasis added).Excellent. More typos to signal confidence and quality. And a dubious, speciously-reasoned statistic thrown in as well.
However, now that I know that my responses to this form may very well leave me indebted for eternity to Markus and plentyoffish, I think I might need a couple beers to take the edge off before I return to the deep questions the site requires me to answer, including without limitation my hobbies, goals/aspirations, what makes me unique, and my taste in music.
More intrusively still, I need to reveal whether I have a car.
plenty of fish
Oh goody! An aquarium in Rockville has recently received a new shipment of puffer fish. Made plans to go out to pick out a new one and then go to grab sushi later.
I like the poetic-ness of taking my newly acquired pet fish to a raw fish consumption orgy. Sort of like bringing your new puppy to a Chinese restaurant. Or taking a fat, meaty travel companion on an inadequately fueled plane and flying aimlessly over the Andes.
Currently I have two puffer fish and a whole bunch of other fish, none of which have names of note. In a previous tank, I had a school of five angel fish:
1) Fishy Cent – the one that started it all… a big black angel fish with a giant chunk missing out of his top fin. Seemed fitting.
2) Ludafish
3) Swim Shady
4) Ja Pool
5) Lil’ Fin
Apparently you’re not supposed to put angel fish together in the same tank because they’re territorial and/or fight and kill each other. In hindsight, maybe it was sort of racist to give the fish rapper names and then set them up for turf war and east/west tank rivalries.
When we moved and had to give the fish away, we put an ad on Craigslist. The guy who responded was this cut black guy who rolled up to our little apartment with his hoochie rap video extra of a girlfriend. Was it progressive or apologetic of me to be sort of embarassed by the fish names in front of their new owners?
For some reason I always feel as though black people have a rightful monopoly on all things hip and cool. Even though I am a “woman of color” for the purposes of distinguishing me from the type of white men I tend to work with (golfing, brandy-swilling lawyers wearing pleated trousers belted at nipple height), I’m constantly reminded that I’m not what the coiners of the term had in mind. Kind of like when my mom got all excited by a shampoo sale at CVS and bought a dozen bottles of New Pantene Hair Care for Women of Color, then had to shuffle shamefacedly back to the store and return them all, explaining to the store clerk in her broken English that she thought the line was for dyed hair.
Well, all this talk about fish and Craigslist brings me back to my original task that I had gotten sidetracked from: exploring a dating site that my friends introduced me to this past weekend, plentyoffish.com. I’m going to go check it out – stay tuned…
I like the poetic-ness of taking my newly acquired pet fish to a raw fish consumption orgy. Sort of like bringing your new puppy to a Chinese restaurant. Or taking a fat, meaty travel companion on an inadequately fueled plane and flying aimlessly over the Andes.
Currently I have two puffer fish and a whole bunch of other fish, none of which have names of note. In a previous tank, I had a school of five angel fish:
1) Fishy Cent – the one that started it all… a big black angel fish with a giant chunk missing out of his top fin. Seemed fitting.
2) Ludafish
3) Swim Shady
4) Ja Pool
5) Lil’ Fin
Apparently you’re not supposed to put angel fish together in the same tank because they’re territorial and/or fight and kill each other. In hindsight, maybe it was sort of racist to give the fish rapper names and then set them up for turf war and east/west tank rivalries.
When we moved and had to give the fish away, we put an ad on Craigslist. The guy who responded was this cut black guy who rolled up to our little apartment with his hoochie rap video extra of a girlfriend. Was it progressive or apologetic of me to be sort of embarassed by the fish names in front of their new owners?
For some reason I always feel as though black people have a rightful monopoly on all things hip and cool. Even though I am a “woman of color” for the purposes of distinguishing me from the type of white men I tend to work with (golfing, brandy-swilling lawyers wearing pleated trousers belted at nipple height), I’m constantly reminded that I’m not what the coiners of the term had in mind. Kind of like when my mom got all excited by a shampoo sale at CVS and bought a dozen bottles of New Pantene Hair Care for Women of Color, then had to shuffle shamefacedly back to the store and return them all, explaining to the store clerk in her broken English that she thought the line was for dyed hair.
Well, all this talk about fish and Craigslist brings me back to my original task that I had gotten sidetracked from: exploring a dating site that my friends introduced me to this past weekend, plentyoffish.com. I’m going to go check it out – stay tuned…
crippled by technology
Lost my phone this weekend. I've long refused to carry a purse of any kind when I go out, and so relied on the pockets of my jacket to contain my cell phone, some cash, one credit card, my ID, lip gloss, eyeliner, gum and a pen. By the end of the night everything was gone except for the two cards, and only because I had evacuated them to the relative safety of a friend's purse. Imagine I must have been trailing my possessions behind me all evening like a piggy bank leaking coins out of its anal region.
What to do about a replacement though? Wish merely for a Zach Morris style phone in order to make calls reliably and clearly. And maybe to tell Kelly Kapowski that her spandex shorts are way too long. In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have SMS capability, so that anyone who texts me would get a standardized reply of the sort you receive when you send a text to a land line:
"You have attempted to reach the equivalent of a coconut phone. pick up your end and dial, you lazy fuck."
On the other hand, it might be nice to have a phone with some sort of functionality beyond dialing. It seems like everyone else I know owns the iPhone, or maybe the Google Droid phone for Verizon, but those just feel so intimidating with their functionality overkill. I don't want a phone that can launch intercontinental ballistic missiles or do my taxes or locate the nearest bloodbank that is currently stocked with B+, I just want to hear some damn Madonna tunes as I'm walking to my car. Is it wrong to eschew an iPhone and wish there were a uPhone instead? A phone that someone else has already loaded with apps and music that I'll just happen to like, and that I can learn how to use instantly upon seeing it like the way Neo learned all those implausible fighting moves in The Matrix. I mean, can't u do it for me?
What to do about a replacement though? Wish merely for a Zach Morris style phone in order to make calls reliably and clearly. And maybe to tell Kelly Kapowski that her spandex shorts are way too long. In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have SMS capability, so that anyone who texts me would get a standardized reply of the sort you receive when you send a text to a land line:
"You have attempted to reach the equivalent of a coconut phone. pick up your end and dial, you lazy fuck."
On the other hand, it might be nice to have a phone with some sort of functionality beyond dialing. It seems like everyone else I know owns the iPhone, or maybe the Google Droid phone for Verizon, but those just feel so intimidating with their functionality overkill. I don't want a phone that can launch intercontinental ballistic missiles or do my taxes or locate the nearest bloodbank that is currently stocked with B+, I just want to hear some damn Madonna tunes as I'm walking to my car. Is it wrong to eschew an iPhone and wish there were a uPhone instead? A phone that someone else has already loaded with apps and music that I'll just happen to like, and that I can learn how to use instantly upon seeing it like the way Neo learned all those implausible fighting moves in The Matrix. I mean, can't u do it for me?
facial hair fail
Congrats to the Duke Men's Bball team, which managed to eke out a slim victory against a school of which no one had ever heard and whose location everyone still doesn't know!
Watching the game at Public Bar last night, found my view of the biggest screen constantly being blocked by the freakishly thick necks of a posse of Phillies fans. The worst of these guys was a redhead (strike one -- unless you are Prince Harry or Conan O'Brien) sporting a scraggly, long, tufty beard. It wasn't even a full, mandible-covering expanse of beard obscuring his jowls and sideburns like moss or vegetative growth... it was a localized, obviously groomed and lovingly maintained patch emanating only from the point of the chin. Why?! What would have possessed this guy to think this an attractive look? Is he a wizard? Gandalf the Ginger?
A full bush of firecrotch on the face is not acceptable in any situation.
Watching the game at Public Bar last night, found my view of the biggest screen constantly being blocked by the freakishly thick necks of a posse of Phillies fans. The worst of these guys was a redhead (strike one -- unless you are Prince Harry or Conan O'Brien) sporting a scraggly, long, tufty beard. It wasn't even a full, mandible-covering expanse of beard obscuring his jowls and sideburns like moss or vegetative growth... it was a localized, obviously groomed and lovingly maintained patch emanating only from the point of the chin. Why?! What would have possessed this guy to think this an attractive look? Is he a wizard? Gandalf the Ginger?
A full bush of firecrotch on the face is not acceptable in any situation.
a change of environs - new york city
Just realized I need not have split my inaugural post in two. I've unfortunately replicated the style of my aunt on facebook, who: a) should not be on facebook as she is in her fifties, and b) posts individual pictures as discrete albums on facebook, such that she has a gazillion albums, each with titles like "Christmas dinner with family" and "Christmas dinner: family gazes hungrily at turkey." Forgive me.
I've just returned from a lovely spring weekend in NYC celebrating a birthday with friends. It's the first road trip I've taken in a while; I'm still recovering from the forcible expiration of my indulgent love affair with, and some might say prolonged abuse of, American Airlines' employee non-revenue flight benefit.
With its cheap cabs and unabating action, New York is in some regards the greatest city in the world. Nevertheless, i have compiled the following short summary of things to hate.
ubiquitous stickiness. I can't pinpoint the cause to be atmospheric humidity trapped by tall buildings, or the unavoidable pollution caused from overpopulation, or hair product fumes wafting to and fro between the five boroughs and jersey.
But it seemed like everywhere we went, things were... sticky. Grimy. Coated with film. It was as though a horde of unruly, messy children had been let loose in the metro area and run wild with their icky pb&j/gluestick/playdough/booger-coated little fingers and touched everything in sight.
Glass doors were translucent, or worse, opaque with oils and other unthinkable secretions, so that all too often a group of us would come to a door and stop, at a dead impasse, none wishing to touch the door first, until finally a brave soul kicked it ajar. Subway seats adhered to the backs of pantlegs.
In clubs, the floors grabbed hold of shoe soles so that navigating between the multi-leveled dance surfaces resembled a difficult round of q*bert -- and persistent and aggressive mopping by barbacks did nothing to relieve the stickiness, merely leaving stiletto heels coated in mop juice. Even the grass in central park is stickier than non-nyc grass. yuck.
fancification. Why is it that everything in NYC (and this is happening everywhere, but New York as usual holds a vanguard position in the movement) is 'fusion' or fancified? I can't just get Chinese food, it comes with Latin influences. Ravioli has pears in it. A ten-dollar cup of hot chocolate contains lavender, which, last time i checked was the scent of my toilet bowl cleaner.
We stayed at the London Hotel in midtown; the lovely suite had generally a minimalist style, but the bizarre bathroom decor was a mix of:
Is all this advancement really for the better? If I wanted to shower in an uncompartmentalized chamber, I'd sooner stay in a beach hostel in Phuket, or visit a state penitentiary, than pay $400-a-night again.
overwhelming options. I'm duly impressed with the sheer expanse of things that NYC has to offer. Nowhere else in the world stays open as late, nor offers as diverse an array of products and services. But I could certainly do without the value judgments that seem to attach to selection.
We decided to go to a karaoke joint on Friday night, and there were over half a dozen to choose from, each with its relative merits over the others. Which one you preferred, it transpired, reflected upon you -- from your taste in music, to your tolerance of a particular selection of songs, to your knowledge of what other patrons might show up.
So is it my fault from among the 273 small fruit kiosks in Chinatown I patronized one that's not the freshest? Or that of all the clubs to go after 2:30 am we pick one where a flashmob of eurotrash discotheque escapees has, unbeknownst to me, decided to convene?
A part of me is grateful for the availability of anything and everything in New York. After all, it wasn't too long ago that I lived in a suburban area of North Carolina and it was clear which of the bars in town was the "coolest," the "best," the "happening place" on any given night -- since it was the sole establishment with a liquor license nestled among 2 Winn-Dixies and 14 furniture stores. But fuck, wouldn't it be easier to live in a world where each selection wasn't fraught with danger of appearing uncool?
Ruminating about our hotel shower Holocaust architecture makes me think about Anne Frank, and how straightforward her life must have been:
Dear kitty,
Well, not found, avoided gassing. Guess it was a good day! =)
Yours, Anne
not
omg Kitty,
So it turns out my friend Rachel is hiding in an attic in Tribeca! That's where all the cool kids are. I wish my parents weren't such douches so that we'd have to stay here instead. I wonder what camp is the hottest right now and if there's going to be a long queue for the VIP shower. Should I get my name on the guest list?
No more NYC for a while for me. Can't take the heat.
I've just returned from a lovely spring weekend in NYC celebrating a birthday with friends. It's the first road trip I've taken in a while; I'm still recovering from the forcible expiration of my indulgent love affair with, and some might say prolonged abuse of, American Airlines' employee non-revenue flight benefit.
With its cheap cabs and unabating action, New York is in some regards the greatest city in the world. Nevertheless, i have compiled the following short summary of things to hate.
ubiquitous stickiness. I can't pinpoint the cause to be atmospheric humidity trapped by tall buildings, or the unavoidable pollution caused from overpopulation, or hair product fumes wafting to and fro between the five boroughs and jersey.
But it seemed like everywhere we went, things were... sticky. Grimy. Coated with film. It was as though a horde of unruly, messy children had been let loose in the metro area and run wild with their icky pb&j/gluestick/playdough/booger-coated little fingers and touched everything in sight.
Glass doors were translucent, or worse, opaque with oils and other unthinkable secretions, so that all too often a group of us would come to a door and stop, at a dead impasse, none wishing to touch the door first, until finally a brave soul kicked it ajar. Subway seats adhered to the backs of pantlegs.
In clubs, the floors grabbed hold of shoe soles so that navigating between the multi-leveled dance surfaces resembled a difficult round of q*bert -- and persistent and aggressive mopping by barbacks did nothing to relieve the stickiness, merely leaving stiletto heels coated in mop juice. Even the grass in central park is stickier than non-nyc grass. yuck.
fancification. Why is it that everything in NYC (and this is happening everywhere, but New York as usual holds a vanguard position in the movement) is 'fusion' or fancified? I can't just get Chinese food, it comes with Latin influences. Ravioli has pears in it. A ten-dollar cup of hot chocolate contains lavender, which, last time i checked was the scent of my toilet bowl cleaner.
We stayed at the London Hotel in midtown; the lovely suite had generally a minimalist style, but the bizarre bathroom decor was a mix of:
- Japanese (wood sliding door per an opening to the champagne room in a geisha house);
- Greek (auxiliary detached shower head loosely affixed to pipes);
- Prison (lonely toilet in corner of tiled bathroom without dividing apparatus from shower and sink); and
- Amazon rain forest (giant powerful disk suspended overhead to deliver a high-psi stream of water that, because there were no shower walls to contain the flow, soaked all towels in a 9 foot radius).
Is all this advancement really for the better? If I wanted to shower in an uncompartmentalized chamber, I'd sooner stay in a beach hostel in Phuket, or visit a state penitentiary, than pay $400-a-night again.
overwhelming options. I'm duly impressed with the sheer expanse of things that NYC has to offer. Nowhere else in the world stays open as late, nor offers as diverse an array of products and services. But I could certainly do without the value judgments that seem to attach to selection.
We decided to go to a karaoke joint on Friday night, and there were over half a dozen to choose from, each with its relative merits over the others. Which one you preferred, it transpired, reflected upon you -- from your taste in music, to your tolerance of a particular selection of songs, to your knowledge of what other patrons might show up.
So is it my fault from among the 273 small fruit kiosks in Chinatown I patronized one that's not the freshest? Or that of all the clubs to go after 2:30 am we pick one where a flashmob of eurotrash discotheque escapees has, unbeknownst to me, decided to convene?
A part of me is grateful for the availability of anything and everything in New York. After all, it wasn't too long ago that I lived in a suburban area of North Carolina and it was clear which of the bars in town was the "coolest," the "best," the "happening place" on any given night -- since it was the sole establishment with a liquor license nestled among 2 Winn-Dixies and 14 furniture stores. But fuck, wouldn't it be easier to live in a world where each selection wasn't fraught with danger of appearing uncool?
Ruminating about our hotel shower Holocaust architecture makes me think about Anne Frank, and how straightforward her life must have been:
Dear kitty,
Well, not found, avoided gassing. Guess it was a good day! =)
Yours, Anne
not
omg Kitty,
So it turns out my friend Rachel is hiding in an attic in Tribeca! That's where all the cool kids are. I wish my parents weren't such douches so that we'd have to stay here instead. I wonder what camp is the hottest right now and if there's going to be a long queue for the VIP shower. Should I get my name on the guest list?
No more NYC for a while for me. Can't take the heat.
brave new forum
four months into the new year, i've finally decided to make a resolution: to document formally all my misgivings and gripes about the world in which we live. there is, after all, plenty of fodder; my new blog will allow me to capture and muse on these important issues, unhindered by others' inappropriate facebook behavior. i'm irrationally afraid of technological advancement and new media...but blogger seems thus far pretty easy to use.
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