Huckleberry Flynn

I am not hungover anymore.

2011-12-06T00:46:00.019-05:00

I am a half Irish, 20 something young woman with many years of imbibing under her belt, who also possesses much more faith in her liver than her liver probably merits. I used to be able to drink. Maybe I couldn't drink as much as a frat boy at Ole Miss, but for a 5'5" 130 pound woman, I could hold my own.

My first real drinking experience came when I was sitting on a wooden log around a bonfire in the woods off the old train tracks in my hometown. We called it Beaver Pond. Every Friday afternoon, a mass text message would come through on the cell phone that I shared with my twin sister, usually when I was in statistics. It was pretty much the only thing that got me through those Friday afternoon statistic classes.

At Beaver Pond, I had my first taste of Goldschlagger, a peculiar cinnamon-flavored schnapps that I haven't seen since I was 17. Maybe it's only sold to underage kids, I don't know. But on nights around the bonfire, where my friend Paul would play Oasis songs on his guitar, we slowly sipped at the cheapest alcohol our part-time jobs could afford. Milwaukee's Best ("the beast"), Pabst Blue Ribbon, Popov in its clear plastic bottle. It was a simpler time, then. But those formative drinking experiences ingrained in me that if I was not a good drinker, at least I kind of decent at it.

In college, I pretty much drank anything that anyone handed to me out of one of those ubiquitous red solo cups. It is the exact opposite of what the lectures proselytized to us during "First Days," my college's equivalent to freshman introductory week. There weren't any classes, there were lots of lectures about life on campus and how to avoid date rape (tip: don't be drunk! ever!), and then at night we'd party. It was camp college, and to us, it made perfect sense. Though alcohol is often framed as a sinful, motivating factor behind everything indecent, the worst things I ever really did during this time was to race around campus with my friends, hopping from gathering to gathering and laughing a bit too loud. I danced on a couple of tables and allegedly stole two boxes of Trix from a dining hall after it had closed. In my defense, if they didn't want people to steal the Trix, they shouldn't make them so delicious.

The night before I graduated from college, my friends held a meet and greet for their family and friends on the porch of my senior housing. It was a barbeque, with tons of good ol' fashioned family fun. There were hot dogs and hamburgers, corn husking, and games of beirut. It was there that I played my first (and last) game of beer pong with my mild-mannered, alcohol-abstaining mother. My mom was the MVP of the game. I would like to throw in the caveat that the night of the barbeque, I had an undiagnosed case of Swine Flu and a raging fever, but the fact of the matter remains that my mother sunk more cups than I. And it was awesome. Clearly I got my liver from one side of the family, and I have my suspicions as to which side it was.

That night is important for a few reasons. One, I was one of only a handful of kids at my school to actually contract Swine Flu, or as we called it, "the swine," because that is a story in and of itself. But that night is also significant because of a conversation I had with my friend's father.

We were talking about everything you'd expect on the night before graduation: graduation itself, life, my plans for next year, and then he got kind of quiet for a moment. And with a kind of passive longing, he looked at me and said, "You know, you won't be able to drink like this forever." Then he gently placed his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly way, as if to impart such great knowledge in a more delicate manner. "You get hangovers like that." He said, he snapping his fingers. And the moment was gone.

Upon reflection, I remember thinking, "Huh. That'd suck." But the rest of the night was a feverish, beirut-y kind of blur. I was told I graduated the next day, but I only recollect some flashes of the hot sun and my fever finally breaking around 10am. Then I went home and slept for 4 days.

When I awoke, I could no longer drink.

It's not that I didn't drink, it's just that I couldn't. Suddenly after only two drinks, I would just get rather sleepy and the next thing I know my body would be steering itself around the party, trying to find the most comfiest place to nap. "That's a nice tuft of grass," my mind would tell my feet, urging me to plop down. "Just for a moment!" I tried to fight against those urges, and sometimes it was successful. It's kind of been like that since graduation. Oh sure, I go out at night. But when you live in a sleepy New England city where the public transportation shuts down a full hour before the bars have last call, it's kind of like everyone just wants you to go home, anyway. So why fight it? When I did drink, I would get hangovers at the drop of a hat. It was like a big switch was flipped (most likely by my mother) after graduation. You like partying? Well, too bad! WHA-BAM. Now go to bed.

This past weekend was one of my best friends in the whole entire universe's 25th birthday. Twenty-five years, a full quarter of a century. Such momentous birthdays can and should be celebrated with all of the joy and wonderment that one can muster. To celebrate, we decided to go out dancing. We settled on one club that had so many wonderfully distinctive characteristics it was the clear winner. It had: soft red lighting, reminiscent of what I envision it must have been like to be in the Moulin Rouge (only Baz Lurhman's cleaner, Ewan McGregor-ier version); a mechanical bull pit; and 4 (4!) stripper poles lining the dance floor.

That night, we drank. And we danced. And it was good. Soon, we had had enough of the drinks and the large-ish women who seemed to be the only ones hopping up to display their talents on the stripper poles and the sweaty men gyrating anonymously behind us for an hour and a half. It was like college, only much more expensive. So we went to a different bar. There, we drank different drinks. Then we went back to her apartment and continued with the drinking in ways in which neither I, nor my liver, were fully prepared for.

Then, suddenly, it was Sunday morning. Between the bouts of nausea and cursing at the sun's rays for so existing so brightly, I remembered the words of my friend's father, all those years back. With every fiber of my saturated psyche, I wanted to rue his name. But I couldn't. The fault lay mine, and mine alone. That was a bitter pill to swallow, much harder than the rum and cokes (which, by the by, were free and delicious).

It is now Monday night. As the last throbbing ebbs of my headache recede, I am sitting quietly on the floor of my bedroom, reflecting on how good it feels not to be hungover. I think you should, too. This is a feeling that I would like to hold on to for longer (but maybe while avoiding the process of the actual hangover). I'd like to wake up every morning, look in my mirror, and think, "Gosh, does it feel good to be not hungover today!" And I want to really mean it. I want to mean it so much that I'll remember it come dance time when I find myself at a red-lit club somewhere downtown with expensive drinks and loud top 40 blasting out from behind the mechanical bull.

But, in all honesty, I'll probably have a glass or two then, too. Because drinking is just one of those that,as long as you don't take random solo cups from strangers and you feel comfortable and you're friends, you should probably do. Shake loose that repressive side before the subway shuts down. Maybe dance on a table every once in a while and rediscover how tasty Trix are. There are always more birthdays to celebrate and mechanical bull riders to make fun of. And, on the bright side, at least this hangover gave me material to get me blogging again. But more importantly, at least I'm not hungover anymore.

Boredom

2011-08-25T10:55:00.014-04:00

Boredom is a pervasive problem for much of America’s youth. Sure, there are wars and shit, but that’s all going on somewhere else. Did you know that we had an earthquake two days ago? Boy, was THAT news. Thankfully twitter was there to report on the situation a full 17 minutes before other “news” outlets broke the story. The first I read online about the earthquake came from twitterer @Reefa_LeGrand with “Sorry for the earthquake yall... I dropped my wallet! #MyBad lol.” Hard-hitting news, indeed. Thanks, Twitter!

The word “boredom” was first recorded in a Charles Dicken’s novel in 1852. Now there's a guy that knew about boredom. First of all, he lived in 1800s Britain. And then he worked as a child laborer pasting labels onto shoe polish. ‘Nuff said.

But back to boredom. Boredom is an affliction most notably carried by the American teenager who has been coddled all of their lives: they have had food on the table, a roof over their heads, decent medical and dental care, and all technology to keep them entertained up the wazoo. I was one of those teenagers. And now, with the passage of time, I am one of those adults.

We have grown up being told that boredom is bad, very very bad indeed. “Idle hands are the devils playground,” say our Puritanical friends. “Go outside and do something!” said my 6th grade English teacher, Mrs. Goodrich, when I just wanted to sit inside at recess. And then there are the lyrics that haunt me to this very day: the song is “Flagpole Sittah” by the band Harvey Danger. The lyrics go, “…but if you’re bored then you’re boring.” Dear God, no one wants to be boring! And I always try to take advice from bands who got their name from a phrase graffitied onto the side of a building. They know what's up.

In my short time playing around in this age called “adulthood,” I’ve gone through some ups and some downs. There was that time when I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life or myself. There was that long time when I was 60 dollars too rich for food stamps (damn you, third job!). But it’s funny. After the basic needs are met (food, clothing, etc.), and before one settles down to create miniature replicas of oneself to feed and clothe, one finds oneself with an unnatural amount of free time.

I think it's important to state here that: I am not complaining. I just wonder what other normal adults do with their time. And, because I’ve been been wondering this question for some time, I've observed some rituals I'd like to share with you. The vast majority of adults that I interact with on a regular basis seem one of three things: attend trivia night, discuss politics, or drink. All of which are usually accompanied by more drinking.

Trivia matches around Boston are wildly popular. There are so many things to love about trivia! For one, with the exception of the drink you have to buy to avoid getting the stink-eye from the waitress who was hoping for a 6-person dinner party, trivia nights are free. Then there’s the fact that you can finally put all those bad song lyrics and pop culture facial recognition skills to work for you, since they are so woefully underutilized in your daily desk life. Lastly, there are the prizes. In regular life, you would never go out of your way to purchase a yellow muscle tee with the logo for the fifth Fast and the Furious movie emblazoned in glitter puffy paint across the chest. But on a Tuesday evening, surrounded by other fully-formed adult-like persons getting slowly drunk off a drink that splices two seemingly unrelated words together (i.e., "Bostonjitos") while thematically appopriate 80's music wafts in from the background, that muscle tee embodies everything you could ever want from life, and more. And don't forget about the already opened copy of the soundtrack to Ashton Kutcher’s movie “No Strings Attached?” It has Leona Lewis on it!! And, before you know it, you (I) are (am) hooked on trivia.

Politics is another pastime that many people seem to engage in as a past-time. In a magical world where everyone is an open-minded and rationale citizen, engaging in political discourse over drinks will lead to the those involved walking away with a renewed sense of their own beliefs that have been enlightened and improved because of that night's exchange. But in the real world, you end up arguing the ideological beliefs of a party that you don’t actually vote for, on a Friday evening after you’ve had one too many "Bostonjitos." and the conversation ends with everyone involved slurring the phrase, “I know, but listen,” at each other about forty times before someone jumps in with a, “It’s just what I believe!” Ninety percent of the time, you’re not going to change anyone’s mind in events like this, because you lack the specific facts, figures, full names, and sometimes even the very talking points of the issues you’re trying to argue. And yet, week after week, I see people enter into this dangerous game with Fox News and Daily Show clips at the ready on their smart phones.

The most popular adult activity is drinking, which is sometimes (but not always) done in the presence of other people. You ever think about the fact that we spend so much time at our jobs longing for the second the minute hand strikes 5pm, only to have a whole mess of us immediately seek out the very thing that makes time pass more quickly and memories float to the background of our consciousnesses? I do. You’d think people would want to remember those free moments and stay sober more, but no. Humans are weird.

The best part about drinking- besides the fact that it is SUPER FUN!!!?!- is that you can combine it with almost every other adult activity. There's Trivia nights and drinking, discussing politics and drinking, Monday night football and drinking, taxes and demure glasses of wine, being awkward in bars while holding bud lights, dealing with a bad boss by sneaking a little something special into your coffee mug, watching your kid’s sporting activity behind a beer cozy, playing a sporting activity yourself in between sips of the Rockies, recouping after you injure yourself because you were drinking whilst engaging in a sporting activity with a cold one, watching other people lead their lives on reality television by playing a drinking game based off specific catch phrases... the list goes on and on and on. Drinking is so darn accommodating!

But that’s the problem with people my age, a 90-year old version of myself would say to today’s version of me, if time travel and/or dark magic did exist. The conversation would take place on an old wooden porch with a creaky rocking chair, and there would be a stern look in 90-year-old-me’s eyes as she’d say “You drink, you idle away your time with nonsense engagements. You can do anything, and yet you choose to do nothing!” And then she’d spit, for ninety-year-old-me is a straight shooter. I also imagine her having a Russian accent, which I have yet to acquire but have high hopes to do in the future.

There is a lesson here somewhere. Puritans would say it’s time to put those idle hands to good work. Jimmy Buffet would say it’s five o’clock somewhere. I say maybe it’s time for me to get a real hobby. Something that doesn't involve drinking on a Saturday afternoon. Or rewards me for knowing the lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up." Something that 90-year-old-me would enjoy from her porch.

A Daisy in Starbucks

2011-07-01T00:09:00.010-04:00

Many people throughout time have adopted aliases. The Beatles wore technicolor ensembleswhen they transformed into Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Mary AnneEvans’ took on the nom de plume ofGeorge Eliot to get her literature published in the 19^th century, ClarkKent took off his black plastic frames and saved Metropolis as Superman, Dr.Jekyll morphed into Mr. Hyde to live out his deepest and mostdangerous urges, and W. Mark Felt tipped off Watergate investigators under theguise of “Deep Throat.” An alias can be a very useful thing to have.

In thehistory of me there has been no real reason to create an alias. I wasn’tlooking to escape any kind of religious persecution, or unveil the true stateof corruption in the quest for political freedom, or start a new life free ofmy past and damning indiscretions. I created an alias because I was just kindof bored. Boredom is the plague of a simple girl in a small town.

Sometimeduring my tenth year on this planet I decided I was going to go by a new nameand identity, Abigail. Abby to my friends. For nearly a week, I told familymembers, friends, next door neighbors, and random strangers I that passed onthe street to call me Abigail if I happened to be wearing jean overalls andpigtails. “Abby” always wore overalls and pigtails- it was her poker tell.

Me, pre-"Abby" days

Onewould think that being a twin already I would have been content to switchplaces with her and call it a day, but no. The large part of my seeminglyconstrained ego felt that it wanted to forge its own path and entirelyre-imagine who “I” was. So from a mild-mannered 5^th grader in a ponytailand jean shorts grew an an outgoing, bossy 5^th grader in jeanoveralls and pigtails with a “come-get-me-world!” attitude. It was a bigchange.

If Ihad been older this kind of behavior might be classified as “insufferable” or “schizophrenic.”But on a 10 year old, these grandiose displays of ego seemed “imaginative” and “endearing.”Unlike little ol’ me, Abby didn’t do her homework- she hung out with the boynext door until way past her bedtime instead. Abby sat in the back of the busand talked back to her teachers, or as she called them, “teach,” when she felt that there weresome wrongs that needed to be righted, classroom-wise. Abby was a short-lived concept. She splutteredand faded away amid a generous dose of after-school detentions and a month’sworth of groundings.

It wasn’tuntil my sophomore year of college that I even thought of re-adopting analter-ego. It just sort of came out of nowhere. It was a Tuesday.

I wasat a Starbucks in Chicago, buying an iced soy latte, a drink that I thought andstill think is equal parts adult-like and delicious. At this particularStarbucks I was asked to give my name in order to retrieve my drink. I’d neverbeen to a Starbucks that had asked my name before, and I was intrigued by theopportunity. Seconds passed, the sort of seconds that might indicate that someonehas either had a severe bout of memory loss or someone is concocting adastardly plan. I was undergoing the latter. In those moments, I was searching fora name that sounded creative, as though my parents were brilliant artist-typeswho didn’t want their youngster to be constrained by a common or predictablebaby name. I needed something that was grounded, yet free-spirited. Uncommon,yet accessible. Above all, it needed to be plausible. It was down to the wireand I knew it. So I told the cashier, “Daisy.” He looked me square in the eyesand responded, “Whatever.” And that was that.

As Iwaited for my latte, I ruminated over how easy it had been to lie about who Iwas. Why hadn’t I done it before? No one was fact checking me here. No onecared if I was Emily, or Daisy, or Henrietta, or Marguerite. I could be fromany city, any state, and concoct an entirely new backstory about who I was inthis world. Sure, I wasn’t very good at accents, but that didn’t negate theidea that my parents could be born in exotic lands and had relocated to theUnited States to start a brand new life for their baby, me. There were so manynew possibilities that, waiting for my latte, I lost track of time.

It took a full three times for the barista to callout my name before I realized that "Daisy" was "me." When I walked toward thecounter to retrieve it, I was a little hesitant that some passerby would seethrough my rouse and call my bluff. They’d start cackling in that trulymaniacal way that many devious cartoon villains and middle school queen beeshave, that can make you feel two feet tall. Social ostracization, even if froma stranger, still sucks.

The longwalk to the counter put me face to face with the barista, and there was a long momentwhen she looked me up and down. "Yeah,you look like a Daisy." She remarked, to nobody in particular. Shewasn’t necessarily looking talking to me or co-workers; to her, it wasn’t a big deal. To me, I was Thomas Crownand I had just stolen the San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. It felt good, real good.

Withthat, Daisy was born. Birthing an alter-ego is much like birthing a real child,I suspect. Once it’s out there you can’t exactly shove it back in or pretend itdidn’t happen. There it is, ripe with opportunity and waiting for you to cutthe metaphorical umbilical cord and let it develop on its own now.

Since that Chicago latte, having an alter ego inmy repertoire has done nothing but good for me. Daisy is my handle of choice for coffeeretrieval, nametags for events that I’m not particularly keen on attending, andboring bar conversations in need of some salvation. When I’m being bothered byan over-eager bro intent on striking up a conversation at a bar, I just deferto Daisy’s wide-eyed naivete. But to make myself feel better about openly lying,I like to imagine that these people’s lives have somehow been changed for thebetter. Perhaps later on in the evening, if Daisy is still fresh on his mind,that frat bro might try to facebook her and inadvertently message the wrongperson. From there, they begin a tentative yet flirtatious conversation, and eventuallydecide to meet in person. She makes him want to rip off his puka shell necklaceand become a better person. They start dating. One thing leads to another andthey get married and produce lots and lots of little babies. Sure, I might notget invited to the wedding because I haven’t given any real contactinformation, but who says lying can’t be beneficial? I get to be entertained,and people find true love. You can’t prove that they it hasn’t not happened. And that is air-tight logic.

Tape Is Reusable

2011-06-28T00:34:00.006-04:00

This one goes out to my friends that work in the environmental movement. I say this with the utmost love and respect from the deepesttrenches of my adoring heart: you’re crazy.

Hitchhiking in the middle of a lightning storm with anumbrella crazy? No. But definitely wacky Uncle Al type of crazy who is always a good timeat Thanksgiving but doesn’t exactly warrant an invite to meet your girlfriend’sfamily. Nuts crazy. Loony crazy. A screw is loose somewhere and probably won’t be found crazy.But well-meaning and fun-loving enough to earn him a seat next to your AuntMartha and right by the cranberry sauce year after year.

Full disclosure: I work in the environmental sciences, so this includesme as well. I am ok with that.

I’m coming up on the end of my first year at anenvironmental nonprofit in Boston. I’ve acquired many skills and life lessons includingbut not limited to: nonprofit strategy, networking tips, the ability to be ontwo phone calls at the same time, and enough business cards to make an ugly anduncomfortable quilt for a 2-D man. I’ve met incredible people, made some amazing friends, and at times felt as though I was living in a tv documentary about wackyoffices and their workers, or as though Ashton Kutcher had given up punkingcelebrities and decided to target an ordinary young woman. This ordinary youngwoman was especially concerned last Tuesday that there had been a full 20minutes of a company meeting spent talking about Justin Bieber, a topic ofwhich she was uniquely and ashamedly equipped to contribute.

It goes without saying that as an environmentalorganization we are a bit more plugged into the sustainability movement. I’ve alwaysconsidered myself qualifiably crunchy. I went through a long vegetarian phase, a laughablyshort vegan phase, a tendency to unplug all the appliances not in use phase,and, like other plaid-loving hippies, developed an undying devotion to the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth”series. But this last year I’ve come torealize that I can’t hold a candle to some of the people in my line of work. Inmy mind’s eye I thought I was Captain Planet, but really I was just a cuter versionof Hoggish Greedly.

This past year, I have been yelled at for throwing away adhesive stickytape because, and I quote, I could “use it again.” I’ve had my nostrilsovertaken with the rich aroma of fruits and veggies being broken down by theoffice vermiculture bin. (For those of you who don’t compost, vermiculture iscomposting with worms. You’re welcome.) I’vebeen questioned about the amount of water I use while washing dishes, and I’vebeen openly chastised for using a space-heater in the middle of winter eventhough the building’s heat had given up somewhere around the middle ofFebruary.

One especially enlightening event happened the day Iwalked into work and realized that the office garbage can was missing. Afterasking around, I soon discovered that it had been recycled. Not our garbage,mind you- the garbage can itself. I was told that it had been a "health hazard"and that by not having a garbage can so readily available would help me reduce theamount of waste I produced.

For the next week, I grew a rebellious pile of my leftoverfood and assorted sundries on the corner of my desk. Part of me wanted to make a social statement , and the other part was too lazy to walk it to the trash can next door. There were stacks of stained plastic coffee cups from the times I had forgottento take a mug with me to the coffee shop, individual greek yogurt containers- because buying a large container and dishing it out every morning seemed to betoo much of a hassle-, gum wrappers and candy wrappers and banana peels and foilfrom lunches and scraps of paper that were filled with many underlined andcircled words and small pictures of stars.

There is nothing like feelingrighteously indignant until you realize that, hey, the other person was kind ofright. I do consume a lot. Maybe getting rid of the garbage can was a touchextreme, but I rarely ever forget my coffee mug now. For some situations, it reallycan’t hurt to drink the kool-aid.

Perhaps we’re all a bit nutty because we care toomuch. There’s a strong sense of pride in being over-worked and under-paid, ofcaring passionately about something and actively trying to change all those badthings that keep you up at night. Does getting rid of a garbage can or stackingbanana peels on your desk so you can feed your plastic bin of worms at the endof the week really make a difference? I’m not sure. But even if I have to walkoutside to throw my trash away, or use my beloved space-heater less often in theharsh Cambridge winter, I like to think it’s all worth it. I’m a little lessbright-eyed and bushy-tailed than when I first began. But, at the end of theday, come hell or high-college-loan interest rates, I love what I do. If I haveto be a little crazy to do it, then yee-haw.

The Reformed Vegetarian

2011-05-24T00:27:00.007-04:00

I have become a traitor to the animal kingdom. Though once a vegetarian, I now eat things that used to be living creatures. And I am trying to come to terms with it.

My first foray into the world of bean sprouts and protein product came during that time of great social and personal experimentation: college. As with many colleges, my junior year was a time to travel the world, to jump off cliffs in Fiji, to down a chocolate brioche and espresso on a romantic morning in France, and to test out some special brownies in a shady cafe in Amsterdam (from what I have heard). Instead of doing those things, I signed up for a maritime studies semester based out of the wildest of all American cities: Mystic, Connecticut.

In that small town I lived with a motley crue of young adults interested in questioning the impact they made on the local environment. Because of this, the overwhelming majority of kids did not eat meat, and hadn’t for many years. But I had. I was an outsider.

Yes, please.

You see, I didn’t just eat meat- I relished eating it. It is embarrassing how much I had. My family would tell stories to new boyfriends about that time in Outback Steakhouse when I ordered a full rack of ribs and inhaled it before my dad had even finished his salad. My friends consistently notified me via text message any time corned beef was offered in our campus dining hall. There are some traits that one just cannot deny in themselves, and before Connecticut, eating meat was one of mine.

That’s not to say I wasn’t open-minded. I listened to my new friends as they talked about the evils of the meat-packing industry, and animal cruelty, and the dangers of antibiotics in the foods we eat. It sounded awful. But that didn’t stop my friend Dave and I from sneaking out to the local grocery store to buy contraband bacon and stuff it into the back of the freezer with a tape label that said "?" with the hope of warding off curious housemates in search of that frozen tofu dog.

But slowly, over the course of the semester, I started to change my mind. Maybe I did not need to order three sides of bacon or double-stuff my turkey melt. After considerable thought, I decided to give up turkey for Thanksgiving, and right then and there I knew I was a changed woman.

When the semester ended, I gave a considerable amount of thought to my role in the food chain. When I went back to campus, I reunited with my friends and found that many people had changed in significant and substantial ways. I was a vegetarian, my friend Katie had a rediscovered a fear of heights, and my friend Sarah adopted a rather convincing French accent. While many of these attributes faded faster than the tans of those who “studied” in Australia, my vegetarianism stuck. And I was rather proud of it.

But I suppose that, deep down inside, I knew the whole Not Eating Meat phase of my life would not last; there were signs. It began with a dream.

For most people, dreams are a way for their subconscious to work out issues that one encounters during the day. (Or is a random series of unconnected events that mean nothing to your waking mind. Whatever you're inclined to believe.)

I started to dream of ham sandwiches. And not just any ham sandwich, it was the mother of all ham sandwiches imagined in exquisite detail: the “how did you get them so thin” slices of ham folded back perfectly onto itself, the way it does in Hormel commercials on television; slices of Land ‘O Lakes cheese delicately layered with pieces of the freshest of lettuce greens, drops of moisture clinging to each and every verdant leaf; whole wheat bread, and, to top it all off, Hidden Valley ranch dressing. The weird part is, when I started to make this sandwich, it was wholly at odds with the rest of the dream. Previously I had been flying from roof to roof, trying to find some missing gem that was really important to me. And then- BAM. Ham sandwich time. It was as though my brain was like, “ho hum, let’s give her the standard boring life metaphor, I guess… no wait. Wait. What if we have her make a ham sandwich!? Scrap that first part, we’re doing this!”

Blissful ignorance

The kicker is, before going meat-free, I had a take ‘em-or-leave’ em attitude towards ham sandwiches. But remove my conscious desire to eat them? Suddenly I was fiending for them in dream form. I could no more control these dreams than one control the direction of sand blowing in the wind.

This is apparently a fairly common phenomenon amongst vegetarian types: you end up craving the foods you didn’t even think about before. I have a friend who talks about cheeseburgers the way one might talk about an old boyfriend. Sure, it may have been a few years, but when the timing was right… anything could happen.

Once the ham sandwich dreams started coming monthly, I knew it was time to start eating meat again. My family was delighted, and no one more so than my twin sister. She decided the best way to celebrate was to dive right in and hit up this classy little BBQ place in downtown NYC where they sold ribs by the pound and offered tiny plastic umbrellas in their pomaritas.

I knew I shouldn’t have done it. But there I was, tiny umbrella in my hair, country music wafting in the background, 34 different options of ribs and sauces and all-you-can-eat cornbread, blissfully ignorant of the havoc I was about to wreak on my intestinal system. Twelve hours later, after the migraine had worn off and I was able to stomach more than just triscuits and gingerale, I became a vegetarian again, temporarily.

If there were to be a lesson here, it would be that maybe you should declare the first day of the week “meat-free Monday,” and think more about your behaviors and how they shape the state of food in America. Be a conscious consumer! The other, more obvious, lesson would be not to eat 3 pounds of ribs after a few years hiatus. I cannot be the first reformed vegetarian who has learned this lesson the hard way. But at least now I can wear this shirt, purchased for me by a high school friend during my veggie stint, non-ironically. And I no longer dream of ham sandwiches.

Love Me Some SkyMall

2011-03-20T15:14:00.010-04:00

One of my favorite parts of a plane ride, aside from the body scanning by TSA, is SkyMall magazine.

THE TELEKINETIC OBSTACLE COURSE I know no one who has ever purchased something from SkyMall, and yet, everyone, at one time or another, has definitely wanted to buy something from SkyMall. How, you may ask, are they still in business as a company? Its because they have cornered the market on the unusual and the exotic. And, if you do end up buying those things, they charge you a pretty penny for the privilege. Case in point: the Telekinetic Obstacle Course. A hundred dollars to test out my psychic prowess? Thanks, I think I'll stick to the spoon-bending thing. But with a name like Hammacher Schlemmer, the people who single-handedly introduced the world to the transparent kayak and the dogbrella, you know you can trust them. Even if their company name sounds like another way to say shiksa. ("That little hammacher schlemmer has got a lot of chutzpah going after our David!")

THE WASP TRAP

SkyMall also sells the Wasp Trap. Wasps are scary, that much is true. They don't die when they sting you, which means that if you are unfortunate enough to disrupt their nest, their scariness is both painful and infinite. So this product makes sense to me in its real-world applicability. (At least it does, compared to the Telekinetic Obstacle Course.")

What causes me pause is the Trap's tag line. "Wasps Traps double as yard art." Perhaps I don't understand art yet.. Yes, they seem to be pretty to look at, but so are many other things that don't double as death tombs for the local nature. I find the trap's dual- functionality of art/death tombs to be a bit unnerving for my vision of backyard suburbia.

THE RELAX 'N NAP PILLOW

In the bedroom comfort category, SkyMall offers customers the "Relax 'N Nap" pillow.

It must be very hard to be a pillow model. Not only do you have to look both alluring and asleep, you have to look natural. Judging from this photo, it is especially hard if you have to be lying in the prone position like one of the victims in CSI. Do you add a photo like this to your portfolio? What sort of constructive criticism can you expect from your modeling agency if they can't even see your face? "You really worked a good shoulder angle, Betsy. Keep up the good work and you could be a great pillow model one day!"

Naming a product must be difficult, too. For me, a lowly consumer, the "'N" in the Relax 'N Nap Pillow seems more than a little forced. Why is the "n" capitalized? Why couldn't they just have written the whole "and?" Would that have taken away from the name in a substantial way? Or they could be trying to target the young 'N hip crowd who is too cool for anything but abbreviations 'N acronyms. And also is secure enough in themselves to be able to fall asleep knowing that you were hit in the back of the head with a lead pipe.

There is the Comfort-U Pillow, which allows you to "rest face down in blissful comfort." There are a few problems with this photo.

1) The model is not face down, which is the very first line of the product description. Did you think we would not notice, Comfort-U? Well, we did! Egg on your face.
2) How many times have you fallen asleep in your rose-colored nightie clutching a single rose in your hand? Too many to remember? Then this pillow is probably for you.
3) Barring the fact that this woman supposedly fell asleep by herself while clutching a rose, just how are we supposed to believe that those rose petals fell off so very far away from the actual rose? Did she bang it before slipping into this supposedly graceful sleep? Did she gingerly space them evenly on the pillow next to her to make her feel a little less alone? So many thoughts, and so many questions left unanswered.

THE SARESS:

There is nothing wrong with sarongs. In fact, I think they can be kind of pretty. But to claim that traditional sarongs are both "difficult" and "awkward" is slightly melodramatic. You don't often hear about the difficulties of sarongs as a trending topic on Twitter, and since that's where everyone goes to complain, I think we can safely say that no one feels this way.

Sarongs are a niche market. They are worn by a select few of women who fall into two categories: women who grew up in tropical places that warrant the carefree nature of the sarong, or rich women who travel to those same areas on vacation and come back with a tan and a lot of island-style clothing. In spite of its blatant exaggeration, the Saress is the product I would be most inclined to buy. If only I had a SkyMall gift card!

STATUES!

Statues are unique way to add a certain je ne sais quais to your yard. They can really class up a joint, like if you wanted to incorporate a little greek mythology into your outdoor experience and place a statue of Artemis in your backyard. Then people would be able to see just how cultured, intellectual, and accepting of archaic, polytheistic beliefs you are!

But erecting a statue in your yard can send an unintended message, too. For example, let's say you wanted to purchase the "Meerkat Gang" statue. What kind of a message would that send your neighbors and the assorted passing motorists? It would say that you have a love for the unusual, are whimsical and fun, and probably have seen every episode from seasons 1 through 4 of "Meerkat Manor" on the Discovery Channel. Which is maybe something you don't, or shouldn't, want to share with the world.

To the meerkat's right is the "Bigfoot- the Garden Yeti" statue, which retails for for $98.95 plus $15.95 for shipping and handling. But how can you put a price on pricelessness?

The Bigfoot- the Garden Yeti says one of two things,"I have no problem shelling out big bucks for a statue of a mythical creature that for all intents and purposes probably does not exist" as well as saying "I enjoy terrifying the small neighborhood children." If you believe the hype, Big Foot and Sasquatch are different names for the same thing. The abominable snow man and the Yeti are different names for the same thing. But Bigfoot and the Yeti are not the same. I, too, cannot believe I made an argument about that.

This statue is heralded in its product description as having, "startling realism," because can be more realistic than an artists sculpted depiction of a mythical man-beast? Nothing.

Lastly, there is the "Zombie of Montclair Moors" Statue. This is either a) the most expensive Halloween decoration (90 bucks!? Oh hell no.) or a really effective way to scare an ex-girlfriend by installing it in her front yard in the middle of the night. The kicker is that the statue arrives in multiple pieces. Just like a real zombie! Boy, was that company committed to the whole idea. Sadly, Montclaire Moors does not appear to be a real place.

THE PASSENGER SEAT OFFICE
Because texting while driving has just lost that dangerous edge.

Look, I know we live in America. Where, if you were to believe our movies and television show plot lines, our career ambitions have the tendency to push away friends and family in the pursuit of the big year-end bonuses and sandy beach houses, but the idea of a passenger seat office still seems dumb. If you have a passenger seat office in your car, this also means that you have a car with which to drive back to your office or even hit up one of the 9 Starbucks in the half-mile radius. There is no need for the passenger seat office. No need.

THE FACE TRAINER

Aside from looking like you've escaped from the psych ward, the face trainer can double as a bandit mask next time you decide to hold up a convenience store. So that's cool. But this needs to be said: you should not buy products from a company with a name that can be an answer to the question "should I really buy this product?" That is why Chevrolet's Nova was not popular in spanish-speaking countries. Would you buy a car who's name literally meant "no go?" No, no you would not. There you go- now you can't say this blog never taught you nothing.

Though those were the products that peaked my interest, there are countless more whimsical oddities that Skymall offers the general public, many of which can be found here can be found here. No need to thank me now, you can just feel free to send this along as an early Easter present. You can't tell me you wouldn't want one, too.

New Frustrations in Old Chinese

2011-02-20T17:48:00.006-05:00

I do not know Chinese. Most of what I know about Chinese culture I learned about in my kindergarten classroom's Chinese New Year lesson. We threw a big party and said "Gung hay fat choy!" to each other while wearing crudely-taped together paper robes with crayon dragons drawn on them, which I'm sure was adorable if you were a parent and pretty offensive if you were actually Asian. But growing up in my small town, we only had one Asian person, and she was only half. So everyone seemed ok with this because we were "learning." (If I dressed up as a paper Inuit now, would everyone be cool with this? Probably not. It's cute if you are 4 and ignorant, less so if you're 24.)

I open with this statement because I am writing a novel. Or rather, I am working on my third novel that I shelved about a year ago, and recently decided was good enough to dust off, re-work, and see what could become of it. My first two novels did not merit such a dusting, the first focusing on the story of a lifeguard that I wrote in high school when (surprise!) I was a lifeguard, and the second that I wrote as a satirical memoir when I turned 23. Every person that I have told this to so far has laughed. Apparently you have to be older to write a memoir, even if it's humorous. I disagree.

I am writing this novel on my trusty mac computer. This computer has stayed up with me many a late night, writing brilliant college essays that, including myself, a total of two people have read. This computer has traveled to the West Coast, the South, and many mid-western cities on a 30 day road trip seeing the sights of America 2 years ago. It has stored numerous terrible poems and short stories, and a laughingly large amount of haikus from back when I thought that people could become real writers by working within the constraints of 5-7-5 syllable form. This computer came with me to the Bahamas one winter where I half studied renewable energy and half worked on a different story on the beach and learned the hard way that salt water, sand, and technology are not the best of friends. This piece of technology has kept me looking busy on innumerable commuter rail and subway rides across the city. This computer has run the gamut with me, but it has seen better days.

While dusting off this most recent of novel endeavors (double entendre!) I was going back through some old stories when I came upon the delightful discovery that my computer, no longer able to process word documents properly, had started to interject Chinese characters into the text after certain word and punctuation combinations.

Exhibit A:

"泥epends on where you were when you died, I guess." I told him. He laughed.

展hat would be the worst place to die?" He asked, glancing over from the driver's seat.

溺ini-golf.”

展orse than the Dairy Queen?”

泥epends. Was I eating a Blizzard?”

哲ah. Unless you were choking on it or something.”

泥id I choke on an oreo, or butterscotch?”

的t'd have to be butterscotch, right? That shit is sticky.”

展ell I'm not really a butterscotch kind of girl. So I guess that'd be pretty bad."

Barring the clearly meaningless conversation and the blatant Dairy Queen reference, I did not write this. I do not know what it now means with it's new Chinese characters. Does it make more sense now? Is it offensive? And yet I'm tempted to keep it because maybe this is an opportunity to explore the creative boundaries and new frontiers of bi-lingual writing!

Or maybe my computer is just dying.

Either way, at least my writing has improved. I would never write about Dairy Queen anymore. I've grown up, and am a Cold Stone girl, through and through.

Bruno Mar's "Marry You" Lyrics

2011-02-19T13:07:00.022-05:00

Peter Gene Hernandez (aka Bruno Mars to all you radio listeners out there) is an enigma. He has proven to be a prolific songwriter, able to write sweet, fun-to-sing-along-to songs about being yourself (Just the Way You Are), loneliness (Talking to the Moon), and the throw-yourself-in-front-of-a-train sentiment when your love goes unrequited (Grenade). He co-wrote K'Naan's "Waving Flag" as well as Cee Lo Green's super-hit "F**k You," the song that Time declared the top song of 2010. So this "Bruno" clearly has the talent and the accolades to mop the floor with pop music's super sexxxified auto-tuned atrocities that seem to be clogging the airways nowadays. (C'mon, no one listens to Ke$ha for her singing ability.)

And then he made "Marry You."

Many artists have attempted songs about marriage, but only a select few have succeeded. There is Darlene Love's classic "Today I Met the Boy I'm Gonna Marry," B.B. King's soulful "Marry You," Martin Sexton's sultry-folk tune "Marry Me," and even Train has gotten in on the action with their own song of the same name. Despite Bruno's excellent track record (hehe, music pun), his attempt to tackle this most illustrious of genres left much to be desired. What it lacks in classic appeal, soul, and sultry-folk, it makes up for in saccharine-sweet melodies and tinkly church bells. Lots of tinkly, tinkly church bells. Let's explore.

(A big thanks to astute reader and fellow pop-music critic, Katie Frances, who forwarded me "Marry You" for a quick lyrical look-over. I'm sure the world of pop culture thanks you as much as I do.)

"Marry You" by Bruno Mars

It's a beautiful night, we're looking for something dumb to do.
Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you.

Things that rank high on my list of dumb things to do on a beautiful night: find a big fountain to run through drunkenly. Go streaking in a public park. Try to bribe a city cop to get a free ride around town with nothing more than the five dollars in my pocket and pure sex appeal. The idea of holy matrimony falls very far down this hypothetical list, ranking somewhere above "voluntary colonoscopy" and below "self-inflicted kidney trauma." Maybe that's just me. Or maybe I just don't want to contribute to an already high divorce rate. (Happily, the U.S. only places twelfth internationally, ranking behind such divorce-riddled nations as Belarus, with 68%, and Moldova, with 52%. Oh, those Moldovans with their tempestuous love-affairs!)

Is it the look in your eyes, or is it this dancing juice?
Who cares baby, I think I wanna marry you.

Mars' lyrics makes me ponder: what is this dancing juice? Is it like Lil' Wayne's sizzurp? The Clovers' "Love Potion No. 9"? Regardless of the ingredients, under the right circumstances I think I would try some. Though I might ease up on it before it gets strong enough to induce any personal desires to be randomly wed to the person who happens to be sitting in front of me that night.

Secondly, he thinks he wants to. He's like, almost really sure you guys. After all, it's only marriage- what's the big deal? What's the worst thing that could happen, divorce? People get divorced practically every second, especially for weddings that follow a night of boredom-induced drunken-ness, with the lethal combination of "dancing juice" and the knowledge of a little boulevard with a chapel on it.

Well I know this little chapel on the boulevard we can go.
No one will know, come on girl.
Who cares if we're trashed got a pocket full of cash we can blow.
Shots of patron, and it's on girl.

Girl, I'm not so sure you should believe Mr. Mars here. "They" will know; parents always do. It's like they have this weird 6th sense. Not the Haley Joel Osment kind but the kind that says, "I'm sorry, did somebody have some of that dancing juice and get married around here? It sure smells like a freshly signed marriage license.*" (*Because marriage licenses smell like commitment and the shattering of youthful ignorance.) But I suppose the "they" could also refer to friends. Maybe even society? Not sure why they'd care, unless it was because they knew you were drunk on Friday night. But who cares, there's patron!

Unless you're in the city of sin (aka Eugene, Oregon) there are very few boulevards with 24-hour drive-thru chapels. But at least they are going to take shots of patron. Because, yay marriage! Celebrated with the #1 drink in rap songs! (Besides sizzurp.) Do you think it's because the word patron is just so easy to rhyme? I do. Beefeaters just doesn't quite have the same ring to it. (But the icon sure is cute.)

Don't say no, no, no, no-no; Just say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah;
And we'll go, go, go, go-go. If you're ready, like I'm ready.

I may not be a fully credentialed detective (yet...the online form said it would come in the mail next week!) but that sure sounds like an awful lot of peer pressure. Just listen to his what he is saying: the fast talking, the repetition of words that go in one ear and out the other before you're all like, "Where am I? What is that a marriage license? Darn that dancing juice!"

Cause it's a beautiful night, we're looking for something dumb to do.
Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you.

Because the chorus is repeated so many times, it's made me contemplate other dumb things I could do on a beautiful night: try a cheap indian restaurant with no food critics ratings, go to the airport and buy the next plane ticket to who-knows-where and hope that your credit card company won't cancel your line before you're able to call them, go shopping-cart racing. The options are limitless. Marriage still ranks low.

Is it the look in your eyes, or is it this dancing juice?
Who cares baby, I think I wanna marry you.

I care, Bruno. I can't be the only one.

I'll go get a ring let the choir bells sing like oooh,
So whatcha wanna do? Let's just run girl.

Excuse me, Mr. Mars, but bells do not "sing". They make a sound that's sort of like, "F'TAAAANG" depending on the size of the bell, the type of instrument that is striking the bell (a mallet? the meatier side of your fist? a small child who happens to be nearby?) and who is striking it (Bruno? Quasimodo? Snookie? LOLJK those last two are the same thing!)

If we wake up and you wanna break up that's cool.
No, I won't blame you; It was fun girl.

If you're gonna marry the boy, at least stick around through breakfast. What if there were waffles?? At least Bruno redeems himself here by confirming what we all were suspecting: that the dancing-juice fueled wedding was a meaningless bond to carry him through one boring night. I'm not saying his morals are in the right place, but his self-awareness is not entirely lacking. So that's... good.

Don't say no, no, no, no-no/Just say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah;
And we'll go, go, go, go-go/ If you're ready, like I'm ready.

Since Bruno has to coerce her that much, she might not be feeling it. I wish they followed this up with a reluctant, "....okay-ay-ay-ay" from the girl's point of view. Maybe Rihanna could sing it?

Cause it's a beautiful night/ We're looking for something dumb to do.
Hey baby/ I think I wanna marry you.
Is it the look in your eyes/ Or is it this dancing juice?
Who cares baby/ I think I wanna marry you.
Just say I do/ Tell me right now baby,
Tell me right now baby, tell me right now baby

Cause it's a beautiful night/ We're looking for something dumb to do.

Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you.

Is it the look in your eyes, or is it this dancing juice?
Who cares baby, I think I wanna marry you.

I think we all need to give Mr. Mars a big round of applause for just being so real. So he gets drunk sometimes and wants to marry the pretty woman who happens to be in front of him on some beautiful summer's night, who cares. You can't tell me you haven't been there at least three times in the past ten years. Stop being such a prude, American public.

I always envisioned my first proposal as being ever-so-slightly more romantic than this. But if the majority of my age group is singing this song so fervently, maybe I need to start lowering my expectations.

Public Transportation & Me

2011-01-30T23:04:00.012-05:00

Taking buses is kind of like casually dating someone who also happens to be dating 50 other people. Sometimes things are going great: we take road trips together and it takes me to the places I want to visit. Sometimes there are funny things that happen on them that bring us closer. Remember that crazy woman that started yelling about overhead storage space? And what about the time that you broke down on the side of the road and we had to wait 2 ½ hours for that tow truck? Oh, buses, you are too funny. We have so many memories together!

But after several dates, the honeymoon glow begins to fade. Then some of the uglier aspects of the relationship start to make themselves known. How come you lied to me about having internet? Why do we have to hang out with your other 50 “friends?” Why do we always stop at the Arby's on 684; can’t we try someplace new this time? Just WHAT is that weird smell? You know what, don't tell me. Let's keep some mystery in this relationship alive.

Despite this love-hate roller coaster, I still find myself going back to them, month after month after month. It is the same way that one might keep crawling back to a boyfriend that they know is cheating on them, yet the appeal of convenience and familiarity is too good to let go forever. You might convince yourself that it is not the worst option out there. It has to be better than being stuck at home alone, right? Besides, you have already done it so, so many times before. So I find myself buying another ticket, telling myself that it is only going to be like this until I get my own personal chauffeur. Or a segway. Or a segway driven by my own personal chauffeur while he drives me piggyback style over the Brooklyn Bridge. But I digress.

I am a better traveler than I used to be. When I was little, a 20 minute ride felt like an expedition, and I prepared for it as such. Any trip longer than the drive to the grocery store required no less than five activities with which to be entertained by: a game boy with at least five games, two books, a deck of cards, a miniature magnetic checkers board game, and a stack of Brainquest trivia flip-style questions. Never mind the fact that playing cards in a moving vehicle is one of the most impossible activities to successfully do, just having them there in my backpack was my pre-teen form of Prozak. I was seriously concerned about even the slightest possibility of being bored, as though there were no worse threat to my *Nsync-riddled mind.

Today, I packed a computer. Seeing as a computer encompasses 1,000 activities in one, I will conceivably never get bored. I can even play cards without the mess that occurs when physical playing cards inevitably meet the card-flinging effects of deceleration. (Let's be honest- 52 pick up was the lamest game, ever.)

Traveling by bus can be an unnatural experience because humans, by nature, are noisy. There are things to chatter about, plans to sort out, gossip to discuss, things not going right that need a proper complaining, etc etc etc. There are ample opportunities for loudness. But on the majority of buses I’ve taken, it’s been silent. Eerily so. The kind of silence where you might possibly hear the lower levels of a dog whistle if you try hard enough. Today is no exception: the other passengers around me have their multiple gadgets to entertain and pacify them. Only a select few are reading or napping.

How can 50 human beings in the same 300 some-odd square foot area be quiet for 4 and a half hours, you may ask? Because though we are all smushed together into an area no larger than your average New York City apartment, we are all being entertained by no less than 3 gadgets. This is exactly how I picture Fahrenheit 451 to be, minus the government-restricted education and the smoke from the pyres of burning books.

One day, I might look back on this experience as emblematic of a simpler time, a time where one had to sit on a bus for hours but with the convenient luxury of wireless internet. Where one could go onto a virtual site and “post” on the “walls” of our “friends” from the slow-moving, gasoline-powered machines of yore. Before the weekend trips to the moon and eating food that comes in easy-to-swallow pill-capsules.

“When I was young, there weren’t none of these fancy-schmancy teleportation devices,” I will instruct the youths, throwing in a slight country twang to help flesh out the down-home nature of my point. “Riding the subway only cost $2.50. And don’t even get me started on how cheap those buses were. And quiet, so, so quiet.”

We may not be there yet, but I can see that horizon line fast approaching. And by fast, I mean 45 mph "fast" due to traffic. There is nothing like that extra hour of enclosed space surrounded by strangers on that most special of all places, el autobus.

Cultural Drinking

2011-01-06T20:34:00.007-05:00

Not counting toes, which have a tendency of getting caught between the rungs of the antique furnaces that used to line the walls of my parent's house, the only bone I every really broke was my wrist. It was my right wrist, to be exact, and a spiral fracture, to be graphic.

These type of fractures, I soon learned, are caused by torque. For those of you who have been out of a physics classroom for a couple of years, when torque is applied along the axis of an object there are two results: either the force stops or the object fractures. In this instance, the force (the Rialto Bridge) was greater than the object (my wrist). That, my friends, is how one ends up in an ER with Italian doctors looking at my wrist, concerned that I was in an abusive relationship.

"I fell down the stairs."

"Would you like to speak to someone? It's entirely confidential..."

"No, no. There's no abusive boyfriend. I am just an idiot."

"Well. Here's a list of services we offer that are available to you, if you choose..."

"No, it's not like that. I swear. It's just...look, I'm really embarrassed about it, ok?"

It was a lose-lose type of situation, because the only way to assure them that I wasn't involved with a man that took his anger out with his fists was to assure them that I was just abroad and drunk one night. Yeah, I'm that American. The doctors did eventually let me out of the ER with black flexi-cast and a stern warning about alcohol. "But it wasn't even really my fault." I told them. "It was the mojitos!"

The summer of the "mojito incident," my twin had been taking courses for college credit in Venice, Italy. By the time I visited her, she told me that she was "cultured," having exhausted the Piazza San Marco, the Basilicas of both Saint Giovanni and Paolo, and all of the Catholic iconography tours, at least five times over. She informed me that Venice was fun for a week, but "there is only so much gelato you can eat, Em."

During my stay, I discovered that she had learned a maximum of five Italian phrases. They mostly centered around how to order a chocolate brioche for breakfast. ("Vorrei una brioche.") A very important skill, to be sure, but perhaps ever the slightest bit shortsighted.

We played scrabble in cute little cafes off the canal, or walked down random streets just to see where we would end up. At night, we drank with a lot of Americans. It was Italy, minus the Italians. It was that trip that made me start to recognize why Americans abroad are so reviled. We ordered traditional Italian cuisine like "tagliatelle al nero di seppia" only to discover, a minute too late, that it's name means "squid ink pasta." (A marine creature's defensive excretion as my pasta? Really, Italy?) We asked for ice in our water at restaurants, and were taken aback by the confused looks we received. (Do only Americans like to be refreshed by the temperature of their beverages?) We get drunk off of the poorly mixed mojitos from the one Spanish bar in Venice and fall up the Rialto Bridge in front of every Venetian citizen who happens to be out for a late night stroll to get some gelato along the canal. We are suddenly happy that we do not know enough Italian to understand what they are saying.

No, that summer I did not help promote positive international relations on behalf of the red, white, and blue. But I did learn a valuable lesson: when you're visiting a new and exciting country, just don't drink. But if you must drink, you stick to the cultural beverages of the land that you happen to find yourself in. Would I have broken my wrist if I had drank red wine or spritzes instead of those mojitos? I can't definitively say yes, but it's not a clear no, either.

But I can tell you one thing: no Italians were physically harmed on my fall up the marble steps of the Rialto. And that has to count for something, international relations-wise.

Yes, I Have A Few Concerns

2011-01-04T17:05:00.020-05:00

Life today confuses me.

There are ugly sweater parties popping up with plague-like popularity, so prevalent that there are entire sites devoted to providing you with all your ugly Christmas sweater needs and, of that weren't enough, even the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. One time, not too far back in my generation's past, we would have inwardly (and perhaps even outwardly) cringed if some distant family member (with all the best intentions, we're sure), sent us a sweater from someplace where sheep might have a greater domination over the road than cars. The type of place where the temperatures were so cold that people didn't care how bulky their sweaters were, but they still tried to make them festive with pom poms and glitter thread, anyway.

These are the sweaters that I'm talking about. Such a sweater would have been buried way deep inside our collective closets, hidden beneath the XXL tee shirts our mom's wanted to get us because we would "grow into them" one day and thus, fully grown and still too large, we will never actually wear be able to wear them. But now, thanks to my generation's inclination to think that it is suddenly incredibly hip to look like the kind of uncoordinated dork that would have never been invited to Stephanie Miller's no-adult-supervision-7th-grade-make-out party, there are very real opportunities that prompt us to dig that sweater out of the back-of-the-closet obscurity and don it publicly in front a group of our peers. Perhaps we might even take a few photos and post our favorites on facebook, so that other people will be able to see how cool, ironic, and refreshingly un-self-conscious we have become.

But I ask you, when does this "ugly-as-cool" mentality end? Will one day Ke$ha be slipping on shin-length socks, suspenders, and shoes without laces, the kind traditionally chosen more for their time-saving nature and utility than their fashion forwardness? Will it one day be cool to, instead of looking like a 40 year old in the 1980s as we strive to now, to look like an 80 year old in the 1940s? I see the future, and it's all too real.

Then there are some old conveniences that have stirred up new guilt. Since the early 1800s, modern refrigeration has afforded our species a whole new level of nutrition that can be accessed year round, a technology that has tacked on years to our average lifespans. But this convenience brings with it a whole slew of new concerns. Should one even be buying tomatoes at all, since it is the winter season and present day opinion pressures us to "think global" but "buy local"? But, on the other hand, if New England-ers were to strictly buy local, the only available foods would lean heavily towards the less-than-nutritionally fulfilling winter squash, leeks, and potatoes, prompting the potential new marketing campaign of "buy local, get scurvy." Though you are not an 18th century sailor, should you be concerned with getting scurvy? Possibly, quite possibly.

There is the national health care reform that can provide everyone with access to medicine and health services, but it may be a sign of the apocalypse. I'm all for everyone getting access to a doctor, but do I personally want to be a playing piece in the end of the world? Deodorants might give you cancer, but not wearing deodorant will label you as the "smelly kid" and may also damage your health. If research shows that stress can play a big role in overall health, should I now feel stressed about being stressed? Where do I go when I start feeling guilty about feeling guilty?

If we were to take a look at what our music is telling us to do, Katy Perry instructs us to show the world what we're worth by shooting fireworks out of her breasts. Ke$ha's chooses to hide her inner firework by forgoing conventional dental hygiene and "dancing like she's dumb," but at least she's trying to not be such a douchebag. Then there's Bruno Mars who insists that because we happen to be young and bored, we should all just get married.

We're told over and over again "don't sweat the small stuff," and we get books for graduation like "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" (though the only places most of us ever seem to go are our homes, offices, public transportation, and back again). Was this what Dr. Seuss was talking about? Where are my rainbow-striped hilltops and banners flip-flapping?

There is lot of talk of "c'est la vie" when we meet with something we can't overcome, and "carpe diem" when we get discouraged. However, because of the under-funded public school education system, we might not have learned any language besides Spanish, and studying about that culture is apparently pretty frowned upon in certain parts of the country. (These are the same parts of the country that grow the tomatoes that sparked the think global, buy local concerns.)

And lastly, there's our fashion trends which, much like the in-vogue ugly sweaters, have taken a turn into the world of glitter and unexpected adornments. (This is most definitely an influence from MTV's tv show the Jersey Shore.) At first blush, I thought that this purple beauty (found in an aisle of a favorite local discount clothing store) read "Lobe Kills Slomly." Tell me you didn't, too.

I stared at this top for a full 3 minutes before I realized that it was supposed to read "Love Kills Slowly," words more clearly scripted in the upper left hand corner, above the heart on the skull-n-crossbones glitter decal. While tempted to buy it as a Christmas present for my older sister, I ultimately decided against it, because at the end of the day, I just couldn't justify New Jersey Shore as a local source. I just couldn't.

But don't worry, if it all gets too much for you there are anti-anxiety meds for that. Even though you probably shouldn't be taking them.

UPDATE: I received this article from a friend who had a former student who actually contracted scurvy. And then that same student won an award for it from the Washington Post. So now, through the transitive property of equality, I know someone who got scurvy. The threat is real, people.

My friend, Babor

2010-11-16T23:51:00.006-05:00

Living in this communication-saturated world, unsolicited commercial email (UCE or "spam") is pretty much inevitable. It no longer shocks me when I receive emails from one "Kesha Willow" advertising the sale of "Incredib1e penislong pill" or emails from a person who is named "me" with the subject line "mr. emflynn, get super prices." Why would I address myself with a formal title in my own email, and an incorrect one at that? That's just ridiculous, Mr. Spammer.

The majority of this spam is simple, penis-enhancing messages or codeine offers (discounted at 99 percent!) that don't humanize the sender in any way. I can deal with these types of emails. (And by me, I mean google's spam folder, which neatly disposes of nearly all of the spam within 30 days. Simple, efficient, hands-off. Spam me all day long, spammers! I gots my google team on it.)

But then my facebook messages were infiltrated, and it touched me in a way I didn't fully anticipate.

It was October 2nd, 2010. A Saturday. I received a private message from one "Babor" with the simple subject line, "business letter from Babor, Retired principal officer, Grameen Bank." Here is what Babor told me.

"To: Emily

From: Md. Babor Ali
Managing Director
RASHEEQ FASHION
House-177, Road-10, Block-F,
Bashundhara Residential Area,
Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Email: baborali@gmail.com,
Phone: 01190298727

Dear Emily,

How are you? This is Md. Babor Ali I was your coordinator during your internship at Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh. I got retirement on August, 08, 2010. I start garments business. I am exporting garments from Bangladesh to USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and Africa. As you were my intern please help me to find a buyer from your country or you could start business. It’s a profitable business.
I am providing my business profile bellow.
Profile of our Organization

RASHEEQ FASHION
House-177, Road-10, Block-F,
Bashundhara Residential Area,
Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Email: baborali@gmail.com,
Phone: 01190298727"

"Wow," I thought to myself. "That is a lot of contact information. Seems legit..." I mulled it over for a second. Then I called my sister.

"Did I ever have an internship at Grameen Bank?"
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Oh, nothing. Just curious... have you ever heard me mention the name Babor Ali?"

The fact that this guy had actually found me on facebook is impressive enough. All those privacy settings I set up long ago have to mean something, right? (...right?) Maybe I should be one of the first investors in his budding garments business. Whenever you are on the cusp of the opportunity of a lifetime and yet, at the end of the day, ultimately decide against it, there is always that nagging question: what if? What... if?

What if I invested some of my non-existent money in an out-of-the-blue solicitation from an internship that I never held in a country I've never been to by a man I've never heard of? What if I legitimately became his intern, and helped him build a, as he put it, "business profile," a profile that has more substance than just the name of his "business" with its address? This could be the opportunity of a lifetime. All thanks to Babor!

But, as it usually goes with all things on facebook, I got distracted. I spent an embarrassing amount of time sifting through other people's facebook photos. Sometime later, I signed off. I went about my life.

Because the power of the facebook is stronger than us mere mortals can resist, later that night I signed back on. I checked out the "top news" section that always brims with the daily inanities from friends and acquaintances both close and... not so close. While scoping about, I noticed something. It was a message, a new message for me! What could it possibly say?

"Emily this is Md. Babor Ali. I was doing my job at the Nobel winner organization Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. On August 08, 2010 I got retirement and start garments business. Here in Bangladesh people are poor. For that a lot of man power is cheap here. People established garments factory and sending their product to USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and Africa.
After getting retirement I started this business here and collecting product from factory and sending to those countries. Above mentioned organization I established and doing well. Now I need your help. I have a lot of interns of the globe, they could start importing garment product that produced by the hand touch of the poor people. So now my new initiative is also with the poor people.
Objectives:
• To eradicate poverty,
• To create employment opportunity.
• To meet the appropriate expectations of clients.
• To add substantial contribution into the national exchequer.

Product:
• Knit Fabric: Single Jersey, Heavy Jersey, Pique, Lacoste, Interlock, Eight lock design, Rib, Pleated design, Rib, French terry, Fleece, Collar and cuff of Cotton, Viscose, Modal, Cotton viscose, Viloft, Polyester, Cotton Polyester, CVC, Synthetic, fiber & micro fiber, x-static, and also made of polyamide, tactel, Coolmax, Suplex etc. by making order to renewable garments factory.
• Garments: T-shirt, Polo shirts, Sweat-shirt, Golf-shirt, Tank tops, Kids wear, Jogging suits, Runners pant, Skirolly, Functional wear, Fashion dress, Under garments, Sports wear etc. by making order to renewable garments factory.
• Garments: long sleeves, shorts sleeves, Denim long pants, Kargo short pant for mens, ladies, boys, girls, kids by making order to renewable garments factory.

I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Thank you once again.
Best Regards,

Babor."

How, in the name of all that is good and holy, could I attempt to deny Md. Babor Ali my assistance with his new initiative, "the poor people?" Only a truly selfish person would deny importing such "garment product" made by the "hand touch of the poor people" to the United States. Isn't that what our grand country is based upon? But yet, if his cause was so right, why did it all suddenly feel so wrong?

This new email brought forth too many questions. What was a "national exchequer?" Why would he assume that I would know what a "Viloft" or a"Skirolly" was? Why did he spell the word cargo with a "k?"

The more I read, the more I started to notice other things. Why didn't his verb tenses match throughout the sentence? Why didn't he mention my alleged internship at the Grameen Bank anymore?

"Babooooor!" I shouted, shaking my fist at the heavens above. "Why must you do these things to me!?"

I did not respond to his request. And ever since, my facebook messages have been eerily absent of one Md. Babor Ali from Grameen Bank. Did I mean nothing to him? Did he take me for a fool? Since it's notoriously difficult to get any direct answers from Facebook, I may never be able to answer these questions for myself. I suppose I could try to contact him directly. I mean, I do have all his contact information. I'm just not sure I am ready to trust again...

So if you're interested in investing in a "profitable garments business," let me know. I know a guy.

The Jaded Writer

2010-11-14T20:56:00.022-05:00

Though I haven't been doing a lot of actual writing lately, I've been thinking a lot about writing, and that has to count for something. As a soccer coach once informed me, the mental game is 90 percent of the whole thing. So, by the standard of sports clichés, I'm practically all the way there. The tangible evidence of this writing habit of mine comes in the form of one half-written coming-of-age novel, one fleshed out sketch of a dystopian end-of-the-world type novel, and one nearly complete but as-of-yet unedited satirical memoir. There are also the thousands of scraps of paper that are currently falling out from my desk drawers into my lap. They contain scribbled turns of phrases in blue and black (and sometimes pink!) ink that I wrote on bits of newspaper and backs of programs as a reminder of some intriguing story idea or polysyllabic word that I thought sounded fancy. With all this inspiration literally spilling out around me, what more could a fledgling writer possibly need in order to produce that dream of the next great American novel?

The answer, my friends, is whiskey. As a housewarming gift, my friend Tyler bought a bottle of Johhnie Walker Red. Being more of a connoisseur of the Trader Joe's 2010 Charles Shaw variety, I recognized that I may not encounter such a thing anytime again in my near future. So, upon receiving the gift, I promptly hid it from the other house guests in a tall, out-of-reach cupboard behind a container of glow sticks and some unused plastic plates. While I may not have earned the "shares well with others" sticker that day, I had big plans for that Johnnie Red, things far grander than simply being used as shots before the customary Saturday night excursion to the local chinese food restaurant slash top-40 dance club.

For the record, I neither condone nor condemn drinking. Alcohol, when used responsibly, can be a fun, recreational, and (let me emphasize) social undertaking, especially when it comes in the form of five colorful straws inside a dragon-painted scorpion bowl at the aforementioned "restaurant." But with this bottle of Mr. Walker, I wanted it to be different. More meaningful. Less Bieber lyrics, more Brontë prose. Like many other great writers before me, I decided that whiskey was going to help get me there.

In college, my friend Lori convinced me that whiskey and water was the drink of choice of college students, hardened alcoholics, and fledgling writers alike.

"The water hydrates you, and you still get drunk," she told me. Her logic was sound. My hangover-free Sunday mornings were pleasant. Everyone won.

Then there's Faulkner, who was quoted as saying, "the tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey." What kind of young writer goes against nobel-prize winning American novel-writing William Faulkner? I may be young, but I'm not stupid.

But, you might ask yourself, aren't you just romanticizing hard alcohol because you are a 23-year old with too many hopes and dreams and not enough real world practicality to know that you shouldn't be drinking alcohol by yourself on some random Tuesday night? To which I would reply: absolutely. Sure, whiskey is not always unicorns and rainbows, but everyone deludes themselves in some form or other. It's like when teenage girls layer on dark eyeliner to make themselves feel like they look older, or when one of my ex-boyfriends used to put on dress shirts when he had to write a final paper. Everyone subscribes to different ways of thinking that help them to transform who they are into who they want to be. For me, a glass of whiskey conjures up the vision of hunkering down over a pad of paper on a snowy wintery night, a drink on the table in front of me, a fireplace at my back, and the entire night free to pretend to be a hardened, wizened, jaded writer exploring the world through words and letting my inner muse wander where she may. Being presented with a bottle of whiskey moved these visions from the back of my mind to my kitchen table.

So thank you, Tyler, for enabling and abetting my writing habit through whiskey. One day, you just may have a book dedication aimed at you in the form of cryptic inside jokes. I'll just have to drink more whiskey to become clever enough to think of something first. And before that, actually finish a novel. But first things first.

Everyone's an (Anonymous) Critic

2010-11-09T11:41:00.011-05:00

Yesterday will forever go down in history as the day that this blog received its first negative anonymous comment. Oh sure, you might say, I've been fortunate to fly relatively under the radar and to have all of my fantastically hilarious anecdotes and genuine insights be hidden from popular society on some obscure pun-inspired blog nestled deep inside the google blogosphere. It might even be considered surprisingly lucky, astonishing really, if one were to compare the comments that have appeared on this very blog against a standard Youtube-style comment riddled with amusing mis-spellings and racist undertunes. The fact that I have written for this blog (relatively) regularly for over a year and have survived with only a 151:1 nice-to-mean comment ratio is nothing to shake a stick at. In a way, anonymous comments legitimize this blog. Someone, somewhere, cares enough to post! And it's not my mom! (Sorry, mom. I love your comments.)

The original post, a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the lyrics to Taylor Swift's "Love Story," was intended to be funny (or at least mildly amusing). Even if (especially if?) the comment was anonymous, that first internet betrayal still stings. As Sheryl Crow so wisely croons, "the first cut is the deepest."

However, holding myself to be the type of person that strives for justice above all else, I thought to myself, "Hey, Em. Let's get a little crazy up in here. What if this anonymous commentator was right. Why don't I step back and re-assess my role in the inundated drivel that is the world wide web? What would be the harm in fact-checking my lyrics analysis with a specific Act and Scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet that was provided by the anonymous commenter, an Act and Scene which might reveal my wrongful interpretation of Taylor Swift's pop-country classic?"

And so, dear reader, I did just that. Thanks to the marvel of the modern age, SparkNotes can give all the literary answers that a girl with a blog could ever possibly need (or want). Now, instead of drawing upon my less-than-kodak memory from when I read that most notable of Shakespeare's plays way back in junior high, all can be explained to me in clear, concise, bullet-point form. Thanks, Sparknotes!

Before we get to the comment, let us first review that original offending post that triggered an anonymous single-entity backlash. In the analysis, the only resources used were the lyrics to the aforementioned pop song, "Love Story." At more than one point in my analysis, I implied that Taylor Swift's literary allusions were perhaps ever the slightest bit off the mark from the literary references' more commonly understood meaning. To save you, fellow reader, the time, here were my main points. (I am copying what I said in the original blog post, because a) I had it right the first time and b) I am lazy.)

Taylor Swift lyrics, Love Story:

And I said, "Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone./ I'll be waiting, all that's left to do is run.
You be the prince, and I'll be the princess,/ It's a love story, baby, just say, 'yes'."

The commentary that was originally posted alongside the lyrics:

"If you follow Shakespeare's logic, unrealistic expectations will only end in double suicide. Take heed, young Taylor. Also important, princes and princesses are an entirely different metaphor from Romeo and Juliet. Most princes and princesses had arranged marriages that were intended to unite kingdoms and promote royal agendas. Yes, now there's a love story to base your life around."

Taylor Swift lyrics, Love Story:

'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter,
And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet."/ But you were everything to me,
Begging you, "Please don't go".

The commentary that appeared alongside the lyrics:

"I may not have been the happiest with the Romeo and Juliet metaphor, but those emotions feel like puppy love compared to how I feel about the Scarlett Letter reference. Starcrossed lovers- fine. Ok. You're a teenage girl. But has the girl, or any person in her family or friend circle, even her staff for that matter, ever read the Scarlett Letter?

Let's review: the Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Protagonist Hester Prynne committed adultery and then carried the resulting child while being marred by an outcast reputation and trying to repent for her sins. Hawthorne sure enjoyed himself a good love story.

It's not just the fact that the whole Scarlett Letter thing was just a completely ill-used metaphor, it is the idea that it written explicitly to be an interchangeable allusion with the Romeo and Juliet and prince/princesses lyrics. My IQ, it rolls along the floor, slowly, away from me. "

Now, for your viewing pleasure, here is the anonymous comment in full.

"You are entirely wrong romeo and juliet would have had arranged marriages hence paris and capulets Act 3 Scene 5 outrage of Juliet not following this. shut up"

Let us, as scholars, attempt to dissect it. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the words "not following this" was intended to be a separate statement from the "arranged marriages" critique. Here, I am forced to dock one point from Anonymous Commenter (AC) for their complete disregard of conventional sentence structure and possessive forms. (Even if they did use the word "hence.") However, I cannot deny AC's point that Romeo and Juliet, though not princes and princesses as the Swift song hints, would have had arranged marriages. So one point awarded back to them. If you're following, AC has a total sum of love. (Deliberate double entendre tennis/"Love Story" pun. Carry on.)

Let us go to the action of Act 3 Scene 5 that AC references as the crux of both their argument and my wrongful interpretation. Here's 11 pages of Shakespeare condense into one riveting paragraph:

Romeo and Juliet wake up the day they got secretly married and after Romeo kills Juliet's cousin, Tybalt (even though she didn't know that. Marriage dealbreaker.) Juliet wants Romeo to stay. Then Romeo wants to stay, but Juliet wants him to go. Romeo leaves so the Capulets won't kill him. Juliet is sad. Juliet's mom comes in and breaks the news that her dad arranged a marriage between Juliet and Paris later that day. Juliet says no, they fight, and Juliet weeps a lot. The Nurse tells Juliet that Paris is better than Romeo. Juliet gets mad. She tells the Nurse that she's going to Friar Lawrence's to repent for her sins, but as we later find out (SPOILER ALERT) Juliet actually goes there to commit suicide because she thinks her life with Romeo is over. End scene.

Hm.

While I do agree that Juliet's dad asked her to stay away from Juliet, as Taylor Swift did sweetly sing about, I still fail to see the deeper connection to Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Forbidden love, perhaps? Still, the details of both relationships seems like apples and oranges to me. And how does it fit into the the prince and princesses allusion? The fact remains that just because they sound relatively romantic when you sing about them and your target audience doesn't really know what they mean, it doesn't mean the lyrics actually make sense. So if an anonymous commenter on some unknown blog argues that a certain lyrical analysis doesn't make sense, but offers an argument that in itself does not make sense, does that mean I win?

Of course it does! It's my blog. I hope we all learned something today, kids. I know I sure did.
And that lesson is that SparkNotes has amazing "study break articles" like PDA: When Is It Ok? and The Secret Crush Test. Screw Shakespeare and Swift, I'll be here for hours.

Stop, Look, Wave

2010-10-18T21:07:00.008-04:00

Spotted: on a lonely pedestrian walkway, somewhere in a sleepy cattle-town of New England. A pedestrian crosswalk that states, "STOP LOOK WAVE."

This is a new development. I lived in this town for four years and yet, in all that time, one (eins, uno, one) person got hit by a car. The car at fault was, it should be noted, traveling at less than 10 miles per hour. The man that was hit was only slightly bumped, a little rattled, and mostly embarrassed. In the scope of vehicular accidents, this one may not have even registered. And yet, here we are given irrefutable proof that there was a committee who decided to assuage their deep concern for pedestrian safety in that one main street two-thousand person town through explicit written directions about how to cross a street. STOP LOOK WAVE.

I would like to point out, for the record, that if one were to follow these directions of "Stop Look Wave" exactly, then they would be putting themselves in a situation that has them staring directly at the ground and not, you know, oncoming traffic. Some people can't walk and chew gum, what if you can't walk and read words at the same time? Then what? This would be especially difficult to do if you're not expecting words to be there on the ground to read in the first place. And what if you're a slow reader? There you are, walking across a nice, bright, well-lit, seemingly safe pedestrian walkway when, hark! What are these strange new symbols affixed on the ground? Why I bet someone wants me to read them... BAM. Log-loader truck.

I would also like to point out, for the record, that these instructions don't actually tell a pedestrian what to do after one has properly stopped, looked, and waved. Now what? Clearly, if I've taken the time to read the words, I am simply trying to obey the letter of the law. If some city councilman is going to go as far as to tell me how to properly cross the street through explicit written directions, at least take the time to make them a complete set of directions. How long has mankind been crossing the street as a pedestrian? Since the invention of the automobile? Since the dawn of time? (Woolly mammoth crossings. Real threat.) I hate to be one advocating survival of the fittest here, but if at this point in the history of humanity you can't safely cross a street without something hitting you, then maybe you just shouldn't be passing on your genes. You know? It's not like there are directions dictating what to do about revolving doors, and people seem to manage those just fine on their own. Well, almost.

Guest Appearances by: the President & the Bieber

2010-10-06T23:50:00.021-04:00

Some things in life you only really think over as you are idly drifting off to sleep one random Tuesday evening. They may be light daydreams or beautiful visions, ones that may never come to pass but, with enough hope and prayer, you feel that one day, maybe, in some distant universe, they just might.

Justin Bieber has never been in any such moments for me. Yet now, as I welcome him as the newest addition to my household, a feeling that is nothing short of glee comes over me when I pass him in my house. He's usually in the dining room or the kitchen and he hasn't seemed to move on his own accord yet, as cardboard cutouts tend to do. But sometimes we give him a little help around the house and place him in the upstairs bathroom, or the walk-in closet, or even Ryan's bedroom. The Biebs has proven to be entirely too effective at freaking out at at least one (if not both) of my housemates.

"Bieber in my bathroom! Bieber in my bathroom!" Ryan screamed last night when she went to brush her teeth and found Bieber instead. Justin didn't flinch, but I guess it is because he is so used to being near screaming and crying girls.

It's one thing to wake up in the middle of the night and see the unexpected silhouette of a person standing there motionless, but it's another thing entirely to flip on the lightswitch and be met with the uncomfortably sultry eyes of one underage Canadian pop sensation. It feels more than a little wrong. (But, in the words of Ryan, also a little right?) Recently, all the roommates (myself included) decided that the sight of one of the cutouts in someone's bathroom or closet late at night or first thing in the morning was probably not a great idea in terms of avoiding attacks. Even if the cutout's hair is perfectly coiffed.

The Biebs' recent Cambridge adoption gives some much needed company to our previously singular dining room loiterer: President Barack Obama. For now, the Prez. and the Biebz spend working nights together staring off at walls across from each other. (On the weekends, we pimp them out for photo ops.)

To make things more festive, we've given the Biebs some mardis gras beads. (Did he take his top off in New Orleans? Would he? We may never know). We left Pres. Obama without any accoutrements. We might be young, but we're not disrespectful.

Even without the pranks, simply having the cutouts around is enjoyable.

"Morning, Biebs." I say to him as I grope my way around the kitchen for coffee. As he has yet to respond, I'm just going to assume that he's not a morning person. (Yet.)

"He's too tall!" Denise told me tonight as she stood on tiptoes trying to kiss the President. See? Super enjoyable.

But having them around has also raised a few questions. Does President Obama actually wear glasses? Is Justin Bieber's head really 60 percent larger than the president's? What are we going to do with the cutouts after the novelty wears off? ...Will the novelty ever wear off? Am I actually in bed with Justin Bieber? To all of the above, a hearty yes. (Except for the novelty question.)

Once Upon a Time I Had a Blog

2010-09-22T21:45:00.008-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl. After college, this girl found herself "funemployed," which is really just an optimistic way of looking at life without a salary. With too many aspirations in her heart and not enough change in her pocket, she did what she thought to be logical next step: she moved to the the nearest metropolitan area. And then that was where she got stuck. "What now?" she asked herself as she poured over the Globe's scanty helpwanted page. "What now?"

Then she fretted. She fretted about not having enough money, about not pursuing a fulfilling career. She griped over not having enough free time, but mysteriously she did not know what she did the other hours of the day. Not a small amount of times was spent fretting over not having enough space on her DVR, though initially she had her doubts whether she actually needed it. She didn't, but she was now so heavily ensconced with the tv shows that she fervently watched during her funemployment period that she could never give it up now. She started a blog. She wrote often about the riveting minutiae of her everyday existence. And sometimes about macaroni.

Then, a year later, she found herself employed. She had a job that she looked forward to waking up in the morning for, she had career prospects that she could really get behind. She found herself surrounded by colleagues who shared not only similar hopes and dreams but pandora stations. Along with this introduction to a more "corporate" world came regular hours of operation and semi-regular paychecks, ones that that credited her not with "experience" or "character building opportunities" but good ol' legal American tender. She was content, more than she had been back in the dark ages with no job prospects and a lot of recorded television. And it was good.

But, she recognized, it was also bad. She could no longer watch hours of youtube a day; she no held the (self-proclaimed) title of being the "most culturally tuned in" among her peers. There were Tosh.0 references that she did not understand. She no longer had a shocking amount of free time with which to write down her super important thoughts regularly, as her adoring 13 fans have most definitely noticed and probably fretted over. (For that, she is truly sorry.)

But that girl, that idealistic empowered young girl, she made a promise to herself one fateful Wednesday night. She would still blog- oh yes: she would blog. She would blog the blog out of blogger, she told herself. But this girl was concerned- would the everyday minutiae of a more excel-spreadsheet driven world be less exciting to read than the world of the unpaid-intern-living-on-a-nickel-and-a-prayer? She did not know. But she would try- by god, she would try.

So let me tell you a little bit about me over the past few weeks. I journeyed by Uhaul van away from that big metropolitan city to a little village across a river. In this village, coffee shops abound and bike racks clutter store fronts. Bicycling is so common here that on the first day that my roommates and I moved in my landlord handed us a pamphlet on proper bicycling etiquette. The pamphlet was 8 pages long. And after playing the not-super-fun game of "dodge the biker" day after day, I am pretty confident that I am the only person in Cambridge to read up on proper bicycling procedure. (But am confused why they still have the pamphlet.) In my new home, there is a significant community focus here on "supporting local businesses" and buying from "eco-friendly stores," you know, the kind that purchase foods from pesticide-free local farms and sell vegan footwear. As a vegetarian, I am decently ok with these places of business. But even for me, I think it's pretty crunchy.

Speaking of crunchy, I work at a sustainability firm. Fun fact! In the course of one day, I get to say the word "sustainability" in all its various forms ("sustainable initiatives," "environmental efforts," "green [insert noun here]...") approximately a quintillion times. There aren't that many ways to say it. Trust me- I've tried. It's my job.

Because of working, I firmly suspect that I have started to develop carpal tunnel in my right pointer finger. I blame this weird and singular ailment on the poorly taught typing lessons that my (very public) middle school forced every student to take. I passed the typing class with flying colors, though I left the class being able to type with all of the fingers of my left hand but only the pointer finger on my right hand. (Yet, in spite of this handicap, I can still hit 84 words per minute on Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. What now, Mavis.)

I now live in a real neighborhood with neighbors who not only know my name but stop and say hello. It's a change from the no-named floor-waxers in apartment 7 last year. I can look out my window and be met with not another brick building as before but the trees and the yard that belong to the French family next door. Their three little French children play outside in the street and shout cute little things at me that I don't understand. My only french phrases besides "hello" are "Je suis un ananas" ("I am a pineapple") and "Donne-moi tout vous croissants," ("Give me your croissants.") The first was taught to me by my (usually) trustworthy older sister, and the second was learned on the fly when traveling abroad and trying to obtain breakfast. (Emily Flynn: working to promote the negative international stereotype of Americans, one mangled croissant-demand at a time.)

On my new morning commute, I have to walk through the Harvard campus. This commute is one of my favorite parts of the day because the people-watching options are endless: the frazzled freshman, clutching campus maps and asking strangers like me where specific lecture halls are; bikers dodging innocent pedestrians with their eco-friendly tote bags; stately-looking professors gliding across the yard in flowing skirts and tweed jackets. (You think I am kidding- I've seen three tweed jackets. Clearly not an unfounded stereotype there, Harvard.)

So while I don't get to play with jellyfish or octopi as often as I did once before, I hope that you will stay on with me on this wild journey through young adulthood. Because, for lack of a better reason, my mom still thinks that I am funny, and therefore you should too. And besides, I'll even tell you the story about how I had a near brush with death with a four-and-a-half foot long barracuda last week in the Gulf. But that's for another time.

The Night I Tried to Save a Mouse

2010-08-19T20:09:00.002-04:00

This is the story of a baby mouse. A baby mouse, silver-furred and maybe three inches in length, went off in the search of food one day. He crawled underneath an old stove in an old apartment building in an old neighborhood of Boston. He inched forward, whiskers brushing bread crumbs and stray macaroni noodles that shared the space underneath the stove, and then he got stuck. Stuck on a strategically placed sticky pad. This sticky pad was installed against the tenant's will after a recent cockroach threat befell the building. But this baby mouse was not a cockroach, and as he tried to escape, he got more and more stuck. He squeaked his little squeak aloud for nobody. This baby mouse, too small to see how he fit into the bigger picture, couldn't contemplate his existence or wonder where he went wrong. Also, he was too far away to eat the fallen macaroni noodles. So, he continued to squeak his tiny baby mouse squeak. That is how I found him when I got home from work.

There are many aspects that I love about my new job: the people, the actual work itself, the fact that my commute has been cut in half. It's great. But perhaps the most novel and satisfying aspect is the flexibility to get home by dinnertime, a new tradition. Hours of free time now exist in the evenings, stretching before me every time I cross the threshold of my apartment after work. I could go to the gym! Or hang out with friends! Or spend hours getting caught up on television! I could even (gasp) go to bed early. (Which I almost never do! But I could!) All of which excites me. 9-5 never felt so good.

So today, when I got home, I did my ritual. I flipped open my computer to send some emails. I put on some music intending to de-stress (today's choice being sultry blues a lá Keb Mo'). I went on facebook, and then rummaged around the kitchen for a snack.

And then I heard a squeak.

More than just a squeak, it was a outright cry. It would start and stop, depending on my movements. I thought it was me. But then the squeaks would start again. I stopped. The squeaks stopped.

"Please don't be in the ritz crackers. I really wanted hummus with those." I muttered to the mice at large in my kitchen.

I swooped into action. I pulled on rain boots, rubber that is impenetrable to mice and other small critters. I grabbed a sizeable knife. I worked my way around my kitchen, opening cabinet doors slowly and holding my breath. The mice weren't in the ritz; I breathed a sigh of relief. I waited out the squeaks, using a type of eco-location not unlike that of a dolphin, to try to find the crying mouse. I finally found him: stuck and lying on one side, freaking out underneath my stove. I called my mom.

"Flush it down the toilet."
"MOM! I can't just flush it down the toilet." I exclaimed, shocked. "It's alive!" I was looking down at the baby mouse; it seemed so helpless, so stuck.
"Fine then. Put it in a garbage bag and leave it outside."
"And let it suffocate? It is a baby. Don't you understand?!"

She didn't. I was torn: I couldn't bring myself to kill the mouse, that much I knew for certain. So I took the baby mouse, sticky pad and all, to the street outside of my apartment. I sat down and placed the mouse gingerly on the ground. And then I attempted to extract it from what I can only assume was an industrial-strength sticky pad. I cursed exterminators everywhere. I looked up at the skies and cried, "Why?" I tried to offer the mouse words of encouragement.

"You have so much to live for!" The mouse stopped squirming, perhaps internalizing my words, and squeaked. It twitched its whiskers agonizingly. "Please stop making that sound, it is breaking my heart!" I said as I attempted to unstick its tail first.

There were other people on the street, too, on their way home from work or taking an evening stroll. A few stopped to talk to me.

One lady scrunched up her nose. "Oh my god, is that a... is that a mouse?!"
"Uh, yeah." I told her as I worked.
"Why would you bring that out here?!"
"As opposed to... inside?"
She walked away, shaking her head.
"I'm saving a life here, what are you doing with your life today, lady?" I responded, mostly to the ants.

I gave a frustrating grunt to no one in particular, trying to ease a plastic knife soft side up gently underneath one of the mouse's hind legs. As Horton the Elephant taught us in Dr. Seuss's seminal, "Horton Hears a Who," "a person's a person, no matter how small." I didn't care that other people thought I was weird; I felt I was right. Personal conviction is all I've got going for me, lately.

Enter stage left my roommate's boyfriend, Eric. Eric was stopping by to pick up things for my roommate, as she was currently on vacation. At this point, my path and the roommate's would not cross for another 11 days due to a wacky series of overlapping vacations and weddings. Eric borrowed my keys to go upstairs and get more tools to help with the baby mouse extraction. He came back down with a paper towel, a cup of water, and a fork from a silverware collection that was given to my parents when they were first married. I thanked him for the fork, deciding that maybe using a nice fork to try to remove the mouse was not inappropriate, but actually karmically right. Nice things for all beings, no matter how small.

Eric stuck around for another ten minutes, offering encouragement in the form of calling me a crazy hippie and telling me that this was one of the craziest things he'd seen in a while.

"Then you need to get out more." I told him. He stayed a bit longer, but left to head back home, wishing me luck with the "mouse problem." Minutes passed.

And then I looked up. I didn't have my cell phone. I didn't have my wallet on me, nor my ID. Or my keys. What I did have was a baby mouse stuck to a sticky pad on the sidewalk outside of my apartment. And flip flops.

I sprinted to the subway faster than I ever thought was possible in flip flops. Looking back on the scene, I envision something like the ending of "The Graduate,": Dustin Hoffman pounding on the windows to get the attention of the girl he loves at her wedding. "Elaine!" he screams, pounding on the windows. "Elaaaaine!"

I was shouting: "ERRIIIC!" A man, who I can only assume is also named Eric, turned around. "Sorry, not you!" I screamed at him, scanning the tops of heads for a tall guy in a blue button down. Nothing. Eric was gone. And with him, my keys.

That walk home was the longest walk home of my life this far. I entered into a brief spiral of despair. I walked up my street to my mouse, still very much stuck. 'Please don't die on me', I willed it. 'Please don't; then all really is lost.'

I sat outside my apartment. Water started to drip down on me from three flights above, potted plants fresh from a recent watering. I don't move, and resign myself to wait for the next person to walk by to ask for help. A woman strolls past angrily on her cell phone, but I decide to try my luck anyway. "Excuse me!" I say to her, explaining my situation in one breath. She wishes me luck without stopping. I glare at her back. I entered into another brief spiral of despair. To pass the time. No one walks by.

Twenty minutes later a man comes outside to smoke a cigarette. I appraise him from a distance: he seems decent enough. I approach him slowly, hands open in the universal symbol of "I'm a hapless female, please help me!" I learn his name is Matt. Matt listens understandingly, and then runs inside to grab his phone. He offers me a cigarette while I wait. And while this is a family blog, I have to tell you- I truly contemplated beginning smoking right then and there. If anytime is a good time to start smoking, it might have been then. And there. But ultimately I decide against it, because karma is already apparently against me. I don't need to give it definite reasons to keep me on its bad side.

Using my new friend Matt's phone, I call the first four people who came to mind that might have my roommate's number, cursing myself for not having committed her number to memory after years of friendship. Not one person picks up. "Some friends I have!" I attempt a laugh and walk away, thanking him.

But Matt tells me that he feels bad for leaving me without a solution, and offers to be with me to ring all the buzzers on my apartment. So we do. No one answers. "Some neighbors I have!" I only have one joke, and no plans to get out of my situation become apparent. I take a moment to have an abbreviated talk with God.

"So... this seems unfair. I tried to save one of your beloved creatures. And this is how you repay me? Creating a series of unfortunate events to lock me out of my apartment? I'll keep that in mind for the future."

Matt offers to stick with me until someone walks by again. I promise to bake him cookies, many many delicious cookies. Serendipitously, not long after a neighbor comes home. With his help, I call our landlord and arrange for him to come let me into my apartment as soon as he can, in "probably an hour and a half." I thank him profusely. I quietly feel guilty for cursing his name aloud more than once over the past year. I do not tell him about the mouse situation.

I thank all my new friends, reassuring them that I will be just fine. I want them to leave so that I can continue setting free the baby mouse, which neither of them has noticed yet. It is probably for the best. Ten minutes later the mouse was free, and I still had an hour and twenty minutes to kill. No computer, no cell phone, no iPod. Just me. It felt more than a little unnatural. And kind of liberating.

I sat on my stoop. It was a nice night, if one were not sitting underneath dripping plants. Having nothing better to do, I watched people pass by. I wondered if the girl in the polka-dotted dress knew how nervous she looked walking down the street. I wondered why she might be that nervous. Maybe she got locked out of her apartment, too. I wondered why the big man with the surly demeanor was carrying a feminine-looking purse. Perhaps it's his wife's? Maybe he's just really that comfortable with himself. Now that I'm done with removing a baby mouse from a sticky pad, few people glance my way. A biker happens to look in my direction and then almost gets sideswiped by a car. At this point I've given up on stoop-sitting, having decided that since my karma is apparently already rough, I should probably move on before I take out a biker or kill someone. I walked to the local library; it was closed. I walked around my neighborhood. I was bored. The Starbucks at the corner of my street was still beautifully open and mostly empty, so I headed there.

Trying to avoid the appearance of loitering, I asked the guy behind the counter if it would be alright for me to hang around for the next hour or so. "I got locked out of my apartment." I repeated, for what feels like the hundredth time. I apologized for not being able to buy anything. He tells me it's no problem, make myself comfortable.

I sat down at a table and the minutes proceeded to inch along. I literally twiddled my thumbs, just to see what it feels like. Does anyone actually twiddle their thumbs when they have nothing better to do? I did. It didn't seem to make the time pass by quicker.

"Here." The man behind the counter appeared behind me, handing me a New York Times. "How about a coffee on the house? Sounds like you had a rough day."

Because Joshua from Starbucks was kind enough to make me a cafe au lait, I tell him about the baby mouse. I'm not sure this was equal compensation, but he laughs all the same. He said he would have done the same thing. For having been so lost in the world not an hour ago, I found myself sitting in a coffee shop, making a new friend, reading the newspaper, and sipping at a coffee while soft jazz played in the background. "Ok," I admitted to myself. "So this night was not all terrible."

All at once, my landlord arrives, Eric arrives again with my keys, and I am back reunited with my cellphone in my now mouse-free apartment. And, with the exception of my mother's wedding fork, everyone and everything ended up free, safe, and happy. And well-caffeinated. All is well that ends well.

Demands From A Tiny B.B. King

2010-08-09T20:38:00.014-04:00

Some days, it's the little things in life that lift your spirit. Like when you reach into your fridge and discover that the frosting you bought for that birthday party back in November has not yet begun to exceed its expiration date, and, by god, it is delicious! Or like the moment when you learn that for every human being in the world there is approximately one chicken. (Tip of the hat to snapple facts for that one.) Or when you are called a princess by your nephews simply because you are wearing a dress and happened to remember to shower that day. Little kids are so easy to please, and they understand this concept of appreciating the little things of life fully. Two of the main little kids in my life these days are my nephews, Quinn and Cole. They are 4 and 2, respectively, and I find them hilarious.

When I first moved to Boston, I had just moved out of the unnatural realm of college. The majority of the people I had interacted with were eerily all my age, and many of them liked to go streaking. But in the real world there are all sorts of people old, young, and somewhere in between, who wander the streets and maybe are waiting for you to interact with them. And streaking is highly frowned upon. So the addition of Quinn and Cole to my life was a welcome change. When I go over to their house I am subjected to their interesting perspectives on life, their constant stream of conversation that yields some fabulous quotes, and maybe the occasional bubble liquid in the eye mishap, which is a small price to pay for such amusement.

Because they are not my children, I thoroughly enjoy how blunt and unintentionally insulting little kids can be. "I like your moustache, mom!" "Auntie Rachel has a penis!" "Your legs are sharp, Auntie Emma." Not exactly statements that one wants voiced in polite company, even if the one voicing them has yet to pass a roller coaster height restriction. But personally, I love when Quinn and Cole say stuff like this. It is not only endlessly amusing, they also come up with some brilliant insults that I can store away for future altercations. Next Tuesday when the rude lady on the subway platform yells "Out of my way!" I can just be like "Yeah, well, I like your moustache!" Burn. Thanks for that one, Quinn and Cole.

For some reason, it is not all that offensive when little kids say such things. They really do just want to compliment you on your moustache, whether you actually have one or pray at night that hair never grows above your upper lip. But there they are, little kids with their high pitched little voices looking up at you, their eyes shining with curiosity and trust and earnestness, and suddenly it's no longer offensive. It's delightful. I guess Bill Cosby was right, kids really do just say the darndest things.

Cole and Quinn have a breathtaking exposure to contemporary adult rock throughout the decades. This is due in large part to their Aunt Keely's tendency to create mix c.d.'s for any and every occasion. (Birthdays! Valentine's Day! Summer! Anniversaries! Break-ups? Tuesday!) Cole and Quinn have been subjected to all the greats, from the Beatles to Boys II Men. A long-standing favorite for them is the legendary blues guitarist, B.B. King.

The younger nephew, Cole, is an avid role-player. For Cole, every day presents a new opportunity to play a different character. Some days he feels a little like Roley, the green steamroller from Bob the Builder. Others days he leans towards Thomas from Thomas the Train, or a train conductor named Conductor Dave, or even (a few times) a man named Sean, a friendly neighborhood bug exterminator.

A little while back Quinn, Cole, and I were playing outside. Cole was whacking a stick into a bush. Then he stopped and held up his hands to me.

"B.B. King wants some milk, please."

I was a bit taken aback. As of one second prior Cole had reprimanded me for not calling him Bob. But there he was: tiny, endearing, and obviously more than a little thirsty. So off I went into the house to pour his royal bluesy-ness a full sippy-cup of milk.

When I came back outside I was ready to play along. "Here you go, B.B. One milk on the house, just the way you like it." And I reached out to hand him his cup.

But Cole didn't grab for it. He didn't even look up at me. Instead, he said aloud, "Hold on. B.B. King has a phone call." And then he proceeded to reach into his pocket to pick up a phone. An invisible phone. Cole held up the "phone" to his ear, and stood there, face set with intense concentration. He made me wait two minutes until he was done before he looked over to thank me. And then he grabbed the sippy cup, picked up his stick, and started to whack the bush again.

Yes, it may have hurt my pride just the slightest bit. But who was I to deny Cole his right to creative role play and a taste or two of milk? In the larger scheme of things, it is totally hilarious when my nephews say and do these things to other people, so I can learn to stomach these jabs when they happen to my ego. And frankly, if I could choose who I had to be insulted by, I'd much rather it be from a mini-sized B.B. King demanding some milk. It's way cuter.

A Ghost In Boston

2010-07-31T14:32:00.020-04:00

Specters, spirits, ghosts. Things that go bump in the night. Regardless of what you call them, and whether you believe in them or not, something hit me in the face in the middle of the night last Tuesday. My money is on ghosts.

Let me go back. I grew up having a serious curiosity with "the other side." When my parents thought that I was old enough, they allowed me to watch the old Nickelodeon series, "Are You Afraid of the Dark." Mistake #1. My parents would also buy me books about kids that solved old mysteries and interacted with historical ghosts from civil war-like time periods. Mistake #2. After I turned thirteen, my parents more or less let me control what I watched, read, and was entertained by. So, because I was fascinated by the idea of ghosts, I sought books about them. The more I read, the more scared I became. The more scared I became, the more I felt I had to read more of them in order to confront my fear of ghosts and move on into the brave world of adults. Mistake #3. There have been few peaceful nights since.

After all of this learning about the undead, for my own credit I'd like to state that it's not that I'm scared of ghosts, really. I just have an incredible aversion to getting maimed by things that I cannot see. Which, really, is not such a unfounded fear to have. And though I like being entertained by them in television shows, books, and movies, I'm still not entirely sold on the idea of whether or not they actually exist. However, I would never voice these thoughts aloud, especially not late at night when it is dark and I'm alone. There is always the fear that nearby spirits could hear me say these things, become angered, and kill me. It could happen.

To be honest, they wouldn't even have to be that proactive about killing me; I'm pretty sure my fight-or-flight instinct is misfiring somewhere. My bodily reaction to extreme fear is not the adrenaline-inducing sprints or punches of species survival, but total body freezing, not unlike that of a fainting goat. Not exactly a life-saving skill. There is very little chance that my genes would have been passed down to future generations if I were to, say, have been born in the middle of the Amazon in the 1600s. Red-bellied piranha swims past me? I'll save it the trouble- instant heart attack. Anaconda in my bed? No need to squeeze me, I'm long gone. A sheet floating by me, however cliché, would more than do the trick. So I like to hedge my bets and avoid any and all discussion of dead things after sun down. Just to be on the safe side.

When I was twelve, my parents abandoned my beloved childhood home for a bigger one across town. I'm sure there were very good reasons why we moved there. It was a fine house; it had a pool and a large backyard, and even access to a pond that harbored enough mosquito eggs to ensure that the rest of my summers I would be covered head-to-toe in attractive bites. As though middle school wasn't hard enough. Thanks, parents. Unbeknownst to my parents, our new house also included the addition of invisible things that made rocking chairs move in the middle of still nights and gave a seriously eerie sense that you were being watched. In other words, a ghost.

Depending on who you ask, there are a few front-runners for the title of first ghost in my house. There was Colonel Eaton, the man who used to own the estate that my house sits on. While my house was located in the cattle-pasture area of his estate, he could have felt a unique affinity for the barnyard and decided to haunt there after he passed. This is all just educated guessing on my part, but it seems probable. Then there is my grandmother, who came from the Old Country and was just stubborn enough to avoid passing on into "the light" and instead chose to forever sit in her favorite perch, a rocking chair by the fireplace. Lastly there was Moody Brown's wife, the woman who died in the house before we moved in. A big part of me wants it to be the wife, because "Ol' Moody Brown's wife" is quite possibly the best name for a ghost I could ever have imagined.

With four daughters, my house had seen many a gentleman suitor on its grounds. Many boyfriends have been relegated to sleeping on downstairs couches at night if they were to stay over. A few of these boyfriends have had not so normal nights. My boyfriend, Dan, lives in New York. Whenever he comes to visit he claims a space on the living room couch. He swears that during one of these nights the rocking chair next to the couch started to move on its own accord. The rocking was slow, steady, and continuous, leaving very little evidence that it could have been made by a rogue wind. The rocking chair was my grandmother's favorite, so this would seem to solidify her as the pre-eminent ghost of the house. Personally, I never want to get close enough to find out.

Sometimes, when I'm home and it gets late, I latch onto nearby family members. I'm not too proud to admit that this is a desperate attempt to avoid being alone with who or whatever else could be out there. In nearly every horror movie known to man, if you're in a scary situation and you get split off from the group, you die. If you're a female, you get chased, and then you die. If you decide to be brave and fight back, you die. So while I may have terrible fight-or-flight instincts, I will never be the one who says, "Hey, what was that scary noise? I'm going to go check it out all by myself!" and so, I have at least a solid chance at survival. What am I supposed to do, go upstairs alone and be forced to expose my back for an attack from behind? Simple math suggests that stairs + ghosts = instant death.

My twin, a night-owl and fellow late-night person in her own right, is usually my latch-ee. Sometimes I do feel a bit bad for her since we are the same age and I should at least pretend to be brave. But on certain nights after dark I regress back into a 12-year old girl. But in my opinion, feeling regret and still remaining alive is preferable to death by invisible ghost. Rachel and I will inevitably be watching television, and then she will move to get up from the couch.

Me: "Hey, where ya going?"
Rachel: "...The bathroom."
Me: "Cool. Can I come?"
Rachel: "No."
Me: "Well, how about you just leave the door open like a foot or two and we can talk."
Rachel: "What? Why?"
Me: "No reason. I just love you. Please do it."
Rachel (already down the hall): "You're weird."

At which point I grab the nearest blanket to give my body some semblance sense of protection. Everyone knows that ghosts can't penetrate the sacred fortress of a quilt.

Me (whispering): "I can't believe you left me here alone to die."

It might be easier if I did die, or at least get knocked unconscious for a little while. The fear itself is somehow worse than actually meeting with a ghost and getting it over with. I think, if I were to meet one, I'd just be like, "Oh. That's it? Ok, whatever." But it's the fear of the unknown that is intensely horrifying. So I count the seconds 'til she returns, turning the volume of Tosh.O up higher and higher to scare away any menacing spirits that (god-willing) can't stand to be around loud noises or internet memes.

Rachel returns. "Em. We're in our living room."
Me: "You mean Moody Brown's old bedroom where he died."
Rachel: "Stop watching tv."

And then I force her into having a sleepover.

Which brings me back to today. My apartment building is located in a historic Boston neighborhood which was settled nearly four-hundred years ago. Whether or not it is related to the ancient settling of my 'hood, my apartment, most likely, is haunted. Not even haunted, really, just a presence. A presence that is mostly focused around my bedroom.

At night the pipes rhythmically click click until I courageously decide to overcome my fear and inspect it. But then the clicks stop. So I get back into bed again. And the clicking starts anew. It's like invisible chinese water torture, but less insanity-inducing. (At least, so far.) One night, out of severe frustration, I exclaimed aloud, "C'mon ghosts. Clicking? That's the best you can do?" But then my door opened by itself, a poster fell off my wall, and my light burnt out. Two seconds later I was in my living room, after scrambling out of the room like the Road Runner and apologizing into the air profusely. Even if they don't exist, having a ghost mad at me is not high on my list of priorities this year.

That was the last time I tried to talk to them. Now I've resigned myself to the fact that there may be a ghost in my room, but I like to think of it more as a cohabitation with a roommate that I don't particularly like. If I leave them alone, they leave me alone, and everything is cool. The clicking I can deal with, as long as they leave my lights on. I just wish they'd kick a little in for rent. Because if I have to share my space, I should at least be able to enjoy some financial perks, too.

Pittsfield Loves A Parade

2010-07-28T08:21:00.009-04:00

The 4th of July is no small celebration in my hometown. The fireworks are legally (and not so legally) set off around the city starting from the 1st of July and lasting to at least the 6th. Patriotic anthems spill out of amazingly be-flagged homes and American flag tee shirts, on sale from the local Old Navy, are proudly donned by the masses. The proverbial icing on the flag cake of the 4th of July holiday is my hometown parade.

This year saw the 185th celebration of the Pittsfield Parade. The city honored this tradition by putting on nearly two complete hours of back-to-back sparkly dance troupes, peppy cheerleaders and brass bands, beaming local politicians, the obligatory Shriners with their comically tiny cars, and the red, white, and blue-shirted gaggles of senior citizens who sing oldies 'neath a waving flag. Most interestingly, the parade was held on Monday, July 5th. Apparently this observance day was a state-wide phenomenon. (Because Massachusetts loves itself a three-day weekend, especially one in the name of freedom.)

To give you a frame of reference for how long this has been going on since Pittsfield began the grand ol' parade tradition, the United States of America had just elected its sixth president, John Quincy Adams. In that same year, Walter Hunt had patented the safety pin, and the Erie Canal, that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean, was opened. But we were having a parade. We might just love America a little more than you do. I mean, did you get the 5th of July off? Probably not.

Pittsfield's peak in the highly competitive field of parade-dom occurred in 2004, when live parade footage was linked directly into nearly a million homes in eleven different states across America. Even parts of Montana and Texas received the satellite feed. (I'm sure at least one person out there tuned in. Maybe two.) Since that golden year, Berkshire-ites (and the select few Montanans and Texans) have seen a scaled-down parade. But even in 2010, with the mercury eking up past the 90s and humidity hanging heavy in the air, thousands flocked to the main streets of Pittsfield to observe our illustrious parade. Myself included.

My twin, who has borne witness to and been involved in more than her fair share of parades, sadly found herself in Amish County during this greatest of all American days. With naught but a horse and buggy and the giant SuperWalmart to entertain her, in addition to the mental anguish that comes with not having a Pittsfield parade satellite feed, I (along with my boyfriend) took it upon ourselves to document snapshots of what I like to think of as the Best that Berkshire County has to offer. These are not things that will be covered in your glossy travel guide.

Dan and I thought of this journey as small-town America parade-side bingo. And this is what we saw. (But first, this is us: two stalwart young heroes who enjoy themselves a good ol' fashioned parade and the occasional American flag tee shirt.)

Here's a sample of what would win our bingo game.

Costumed Pre-Parade 5K Race Runners
The parade always starts off with a 5k race. I used to run it annually with my brother-in-law, before I came to the realization that, on the one hand, I could wake up at 6am and run a race in 90-degree heat, or on the other, I could sleep in and celebrate our nation's birthday in my own quietly unconscious way. I think our forefathers would understand.

Even though I didn't run it, the race was still the best way to open up the parade, mostly for the many characters that enjoy running through downtown in the blazing mid-summer heat. Like these runners pictured here who bravely put on baseball caps over their skintight green and yellow jumpsuits. Hey, I'm no running coach, but that has to impact your oxygen intake. There is also the man who runs as Santa Claus every year in full velvet Santa regalia. This year he had the innovative addition of two young-ish runners that wore antler headbands. While refraining from a pedophile joke here, I do hope there was some compensation for them. Lastly, my favorite of these characters is the old man who runs every single year v e r y v e r y s l o w l y. He is easily pushing 85. We can all only hope to be that active in our 80s.

Uncle Sam Sightings

A parade just isn't a parade without a showing by Uncle Sam, who, for 198 years old, looks remarkably spritely. (Fun fact: my dad has those very same pajama bottoms. We force him to wear them at Christmastime. While we're still working on him to grow an Uncle Sam beard, I'm holding out for the blazer and the neckerchief. Baby steps.)

Uncle Sam's Chorus

While already hilarious, it would be so much better if they, too, were dressed as Uncle Sam. Or at least wore the patriotic neckerchief.

Historical Child Re-Enacters

Every year without fail, there is a legion of children soldiers. What is it about costumed kids en masse that is so terrifying? Is that just me?

Bored Teens!

The creme de la creme of any parade experience for me is seeing the teens that participate in them. Observing bored teens in an this environment is endlessly fascinating, because watching someone try to look so cool while being flanked by a band of geriatrics belting out the classics from the back of a wagon and Bowey the Clown playing with his hand puppet is an epic undertaking. As a former teen myself, I was not immune to the very real goal of trying to look as bored and aloof as possible, regardless of what you are doing. Even if you're holding a banner in a parade. (Especially if you're holding a banner in a parade.) Most wonderful of all, these two incredibly bored teens are holding the banner for my alma matter, Taconic. Amazing memories of previous parades and recitals flood back in, especially involving those events that I didn't really want to be involved in. ("I just want everyone to know that I am far too cool for this chorale concert.")

Mildly Disturbing Clowns

I wasn't kidding about Bowey the Clown and his hand puppet.

Amazing Mottos

First, let's be clear about my public school education: I loved it. That being said, the Pittsfield Public School system has to have one of the most uninspiring mottos in the history of public school systems. The motto reads "Small enough to care about kids, but large enough to be comprehensive." Really, Pittsfield public schools? That's the best you could do? Seriously?

Inaccurate Depictions of the 60's & 70's

Because this is what love children actually did, rode around in their technicolor vans with highlighter-colored tie-dye tee shirts. Somehow that's not the image I took home from Berkeley in the '60s.

Things I've Wanted Since I Was Old Enough to Want Things

This I am adding because I have always wanted the blue dolphin balloon from the parade street vendor. My parents deemed it (and all like balloon/parade-type things) too expensive, and I have never fully justified spending seven dollars on something that in all likelihood will float away. But still, how can you really justify the desires of one's own heart?

Like this. Some little kid's heart just broke into a thousand tiny pieces.

Seeing Parade People Out of Parade Formation

I assume this rogue tuba-player was part of the parade initially, but seeing him all dressed up and lost without his band-mates was both tragic, and kind of inspiring. You go, glen co-co.

Hilarious Costumes

This section of the parade is put on by the local hospital. For all of those that didn't comprehend what this man is dressed as, let me save you the minutes of confusion I suffered through.

He is dressed as a cancer polyp. A walking cancer polyp being wrangled by a gleeful nurse in purple. It is unspeakably awesome. It takes a lot of guts to dress up as a polyp and parade around downtown, and for that, Berkshire Medical Center, I applaud you and your out-of-the-box thinking. Brava.

Hilarious Costumes Pt. 2

As I didn't catch the sign for this woman, I'm not sure who she is or why we should applaud her. But by god, did I love her and her panache.

Bonus Sighting: Usage of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

We "are" the people. Because we aren't really the people, you see. Think that one over.

Free to Be You & Me

It just isn't the 4th of July until you have at least one sighting of a random man without a shirt on. There was an excellent opportunity to take a picture of three bored teens walking around the parade without shirts on, but I was too slow on the draw. It will forever haunt me as the one that got away. (But there's always next year.)

Oh, the fourth of July and all your goodness. God bless this great little nation of ours, and hometown parades everywhere.

A Noodle That Knows You Love It

2010-07-25T13:53:00.016-04:00

Chicago has the Bean. Cincinnati had Touchdown Jesus. Long Beach, Washington has giant frying pans. And now, on a smaller scale, Boston has the noodle.

More specifically, Faneuil Hall has a noodle. The noodle is a fiberglass structure that is large, bright yellow, and more than a little random. To place such a giant statue of a noodle in a public place is a puzzling act by itself, but in conjunction with the aggressive statement of "you know you love it" painted on one side, the whole thing is jarring if you haven't had your morning coffee yet (as I discovered last week when walking to work). But if you're going to have a noodle, why not have one that assertively states that you already love it? Confidence is attractive, even with elbow macaroni. But I was more than a little baffled about Quincy Market's most recent installation.

The noodle sits on a large white platform not fifteen feet from the three-story Abercrombie & Fitch. This probably was an intentional choice, as the pounding base from Abercrombie's über-hip tunes and the noxious cologne smells wafting over the square mix together to make one feel more than a little disoriented. Which, when you're standing in front of a giant noodle, is probably the right effect. Aside from the words "you know you love it," the noodle lacks any discernible branding and, at least the first time I walked by it, anyone besides other curious tourists to answer my questions. But later on that same day, I had the opportunity to walk by again. This time, there was a man standing conspicuously close to the noodle, holding a clipboard in his hand and wearing a tee-shirt that said 'you know you love it.' I was fairly confident that this man was either a) a promoter associated with the installation of the noodle, or b) just a really big noodle fan. Either way, I was going to get my answers.

And I had so many questions for him. Who put up this noodle? Are you giving out free noodles? Is this modern art? How do you know I love it? This is how the conversation went.

Me: Hi there. I see that you're wearing a 'you know you love it' tee shirt. Do you work with the noodle?
Noodle Man: Yes, I do.
Me: Great. Why is it here?
Noodle Man: It's a promotion by Kraft.
Me: So why doesn't it say Kraft on the noodle? Why does it say "you know you love it? I mean, I do- I just want to know why.
Noodle Man: That's the Kraft motto. You can log onto facebook and be entered in a chance to win a lifetime supply of Kraft mac and cheese.
Me: Who decides how much Kraft a person can eat in a lifetime? Does a lifetime supply mean noodles once a week, or every day, or every meal?
Noodle Man: I don't know.
Me: Can I have a 'you know you love it' tee shirt?
Noodle Man: No.
Me: Please? I love the blue box.
Noodle Man: No.

So there you have it. Sadly, the people at Kraft placed a sign that states "no climbing, sitting, or sliding down the noodle," but they do let you take your picture with it. These kinds of publicity events make me realize that I would be perfect in the world of marketing. Someone in an important meeting at the Kraft international headquarters somewhere legitimately pitched the idea to both build a giant noodle statue and then install it in downtown Boston for all the commuters and visitors to be confused by and later google on their smartphones. And other people thought this was a great idea! I could totally be that person. Why stop with noodles? Giant food statues everywhere! Cheese-steaks in Philly, crabs in Baltimore, giant lobsters along the Maine coast; the possibilities are literally endless. But with my statues I'd let people crawl on them. Because seriously, if you're going to randomly put a giant food object in the middle of someone's path to work, at the very least let them climb on it. Why would you just want a picture of a noodle? I want a picture of myself sliding down a giant noodle; that's truly facebook worthy.

Look, ma! I'm accomplished!

2010-07-14T18:58:00.028-04:00

It's been a year since I left that safe little haven called college and lately I've been feeling reflective. What do I have to show for it?

Well for one, I have a brand new Aquarium-sanctioned fleece with the Aquarium logo officially emblazoned on the left breast pocket for all the world to see. Over the course of the past ten months I have elbowed and pushed more than one fellow intern out of the intern applicant pool and into the literal penguin pool to become the Aquarium's: July Intern of the Month. Success. My dad thought that there should be a monetary reward attached and asked if there was a salary that came with the distinction. Why does there need to be a salary, Dad? I don't need a salary. I got a jacket. Jackets are cool! Parents just don't understand sometimes.

My previous boss put me up for the award, highlighting my "energy," my "eye for the finer details" (ah yes, that's me), and the fact that I left a few cds behind in the lab that inadvertently created what he calls the "theme music for the Wet Lab work day." (Can't go wrong with Kings of Leon and Lady Gaga, friends. You just can't. Now a literal scientific fact.) My favorite part of his write-up was when he talked about my ability to keep up with him during my previous internship as well as the "monumental task of taking directions" from my current boss. Because it's not a real accomplishment unless you can cut someone else down first.

I am determined to wear this fleece until it becomes physically unhealthy for me to do so, it being humid and the middle of summer. However, I have the mental fortitude of the last airbender and an unusually low body temperature, so I will be wearing it for at least the next few days.** And I will signing autographs as the special "Intern of the Month" until the end of July. When I will be forced to take off the fleece by my mother.

Then there's my modeling career. Oh, you didn't know I was a model? Before today, neither did I. I suppose that I should say that I am the "face of a marketing campaign" for that is more accurately what it is, and sounds so much more sophisticated. I would know, for I am a model.

I discovered this poster advertising my study "abroad" program this afternoon while walking down the hall to my desk at the Aquarium. (Here, "abroad" is used in quotation marks because during my "study abroad semester," when most of my friends traveled to such exotic locales as Fiji, Amsterdam, and Ecuador, I chose... Connecticut. It was a maritime study program, or as they spelled it, programme. And it was awesome! But, sadly, not so abroad.)

For the record, I am the person on the left and not the lion on the right. (It's an honest mistake.) And yes, I am wielding tongs holding a piece of metal that is on fire. The programme was exxxtreme. The picture was taken during my brief but brilliant stint as a blacksmith during my study-away time. While I was not what one might call "a natural," points in my favor are that I didn't seriously injure anyone and I gave out some pretty damn fine bottle openers as Christmas presents that year. (And you are welcome, Kate & Tom.) This marks the second advertising campaign that I have been involved in with nary a retroactive kickback nor a free tee shirt thrown my way. Though I guess one time I did get mixed nuts and non-alcoholic beer. So I can't say I didn't get anything.

In important news (news that is contingent upon whether the dark spirits of unemployment rain down their black curses upon my uncertain future) I have a new job. Really, a new job. No, seriously. I'm not going to jinx it by putting its name up here to be search-able on the giant forum that is the world wide web, but I've been told I start Monday. As in, this Monday. Allegedly. About 90% of me expects them to call at any moment between then and now.

"Hello?"
"Hello? Is this Emily?"
"Yes, this is she."
"Oh!" (Hearty laughter) "We were just kidding about that whole job thing last week. Whew, we really had you going, didn't we? Well, it was great to meet you. And best of luck on your job search!" Click.

But apparently, allegedly, incredibly, happily, I start next week. And then they're going to start paying me! Which is the part that I am the most excited about. I have a brand new space to visit every morning, Monday through Friday, and that thrills me to no end. There are new friends to make and things to do like "fighting the good fights" and hanging around the coffee machine griping about "the economy" and "politicans." I cannot wait. Notably, the office is so eco-friendly it doesn't believe in air conditioning. (It's like they read my blog posts!)

I'm sure there's other stuff in my life that I should mention, too. I danced at a few bars, cooked some new recipes, drank a lot of wine, hiked once, and took a nap or two. I also may have killed Lazarus-the-Jesus-plant for the very last time. (I said I was sorry.) But my friend Sarah sent me a new plant in the mail who I have lovingly christened Jesus 2. Perhaps naming it Jesus 2 is a bad legacy to bestow upon another plant ("He died six times? Six? But... how?" Answer: 'cause he's the Jesus Plant.) and yeah, it perhaps is the slightest bit sacrilegious. So I welcome any name contributions you can send my way. If it will make you more inclined to vote, I can make it a contest. I can't exactly give you a jacket, but how about I mention you on the blog? That's pretty cool. And you obviously get the satisfaction of helping a friend and of a job well done. So get on it, friend.

** Hip and timely airbender line credit goes to REF. Because she is always both hip and timely.

Hot Child, Summer in the City

2010-07-08T01:42:00.023-04:00

It's hot. It's hot hot, the kind of heat that doesn't cool off at night and causes you to lay awake and contemplate the deeper mysteries of life. Will I be successful? Is there a God? Why didn't I buy a bigger fan? It's the kind of heat that makes anyone standing within three feet of you be viewed as seriously encroaching upon your personal space, and the kind of heat that my mom complains about if she were to catch you wearing anything more than a tee shirt in this kind of weather.

"What is that? Why are you wearing that?
"This hoodie? It was a little chilly inside, Mom..."
"I don't care! Take it off, I'm hot!"

The ability to generate my own body heat is not something my mother passed down to me.

For nearly ten months of the year New England is not what one would consider to be a tropical climate. We have long expanses of winter, a few weeks of a chilly and muddy spring, some stretches of short but brilliant real summer, and then we dive into a too-quick fall and another long expanse of winter. Winter feels like it lasts thirty months, and it gets longer every year. And while there are different changes sometimes, that's more or less how it is. At least as far as I remember it.

New England's inhabitants, like me, have been raised since birth to be prepared for drastic swings in temperature. People used to joke, "Don't like the weather? Stick around for another five minutes!" because people like to repeat weather anecdotes as though they are fresh and funny. They usually aren't, but the weather does have a tendency to shift pretty quickly. My professor Glenn once said, "If you're cold, you're stupid" in terms of being prepared for the weather. While I'm not sure that Glenn grew up around these parts, he sure is a quick student to the weather of the Northeast coastline.

Two weeks back I was contentedly wearing my skinny jeans and sneakers with socks, perhaps even a light jacket at night if I was feeling a little chilly and trying to coordinate an outfit. (By this I mean trying to not wear a tee-shirt to a bar. Again.) That outfit is but a distant memory after these last few nights where the thermometer barely docked below 80, with the mercury soaring up to 95 during the day. It's hot hot.

I'm sure others might disapprove, but because I am fully prepared to death-grip New England's fleetingly few beautiful weeks of summer, I gaily and with song welcome these days of 90-degree weather. After six months of hard winter, we've earned it, people. We have earned it.

Both metaphorically and literally, I embrace the warm weather. Because my arms are forced into the confines of long sleeve shirts and because our society strongly enforces me to wear pants for too many months of the year, when warm weather finally hits I spurn the idea of carrying warmer clothes with me, just in case. And why should I? All year long I've been longing for this kind of warmth harder than azaleas on the tundra, so why would I want to separate myself from the elements? I love the elements! They are awesome. I love the sun! It is bright and beautiful. I love the humidity! It makes my hair curly and allows me to sleep without a blanket at night. (Which I would do if I didn't have a quiet but real fear of vampires). But things I don't love (besides vampires)? Air conditioning.

Air conditioning is stupid. There, I said it. Yes, air conditioning can be useful and relieving and I'm sure it helps to save lives somewhere in the world. I get it. But while I am, admittedly, very stubborn, I thoroughly dislike the unnatural feeling of being inside an air conditioned office building and shivering while a heat wave rages on outside. When I need to wear pants and a cardigan inside a building lest I become hypothermic, and then have to leave aforementioned office building after a socially acceptable time to deal with the 90-degree heat radiating up from the sidewalk underneath me, a little part of me dies inside. Dies. Being cold during a heat wave just seems so fundamentally wrong, and more than a little cruel. This is Massachusetts: I'm cold ten months of the year. Don't take away my two months of glory.

Therefore, I have undertaken my own personal stand against air conditioning. It being the middle of July, I refuse to carry a sweater with me in anticipation of the inevitable Arctic breezes from the temperature-moderated buildings of the seemingly sweltering office workers of Boston who crank their all-too-effective air conditioning units. Even the commuter rail isn't safe from over-eager air conditioners that, with great intentions I'm sure, try to keep their passengers nice and cool by lowering the thermostat to mid-March temperatures. No really, no thank you. If I'm on a train and shivering in shorts and a shirt, and then can look out the window and see a man in shorts and no shirt who is visibly sweating, I am not going to make your day pleasant, monsieur train conductor. Even if you have a cool hat and let me ride for free. (Just kidding, Conductor Seth who probably doesn't read this blog. But if you do, I think you are incredibly nice and thank you for all those free rides! Now please turn down your air conditioning.)

It should be every person's right to decide how hot or cold they want to be. I will dress appropriately for the weather; I can trust others to do the same. And while in Texas there may be a definitive need for air conditioning, this here is the Northeast: don't thrust your air conditioning edicts on me. After 23 winters, all I want is some good alone time with that familiar stranger, the sun.

Aside from the cardigan hassles, you may ask yourself what effect these heat waves have on my day-to-day life. (And I shall tell you.) This recent temperature spike has had unanticipated detrimental effects on my apartment decorations. As I am only a full year out of college and I haven't learned better/ can't afford better, many (...all) of my photos and frames are hung on the walls with sticky tack. My sticky tack color of choice is blue. Sticky tack helps me to hang my collection of postcards that have been sent to me throughout the years, my crazy photos from wild nights in college (...Sawyer Library), the Twilight New Moon poster behind my closet door (because I am secretly a pre-teen) and my Red Sox banner (because I am trying to blend in with my fellow homies. Let's go, Big Daddy! ...Big Papi? Whatever.) Sticky tack is rather awesome, because even though it's not actually all that sticky (misnomer!) it has an amazing capacity to temporarily suspend seemingly too heavy objects, like the thick cardboard-like Jason Mraz poster on the wall above my bed. This poster-hanging tack worked for about 10 months, which is a pretty decent track record. But even sticky tack has its failings.

Now, I love Jason Mraz with all that I love. Because of these strong feelings over the years, one or two fantasies may have crept into my late-night dreams. For example, there's this one that involves Jason Mraz falling into my bed. It was a great dream. But this fantasy was less cool when a) Jason was a 2-D poster and b) it didn't even happen to me, but to my boyfriend. It was one of the hottest nights to hit Boston so far, and even the fans circulating air around the room felt oppressive. Allegedly, the sticky factor that is oh-so-crucial to its name was compromised in the heat, causing the tack to degrade and the poster attached to the tack to fall directly on top of my boyfriend's face. No one was more surprised than Dan, let me tell you. While I did feel a little sorry, inside I was just the smallest bit jealous. Because even in paper form, it's still Jason Mraz. And that's enviable.

So now, with Jason tucked safely underneath the bed until the heat wave passes and the sticky tack can restored to its previous tacky-ness, and the sheet tucked securely over my body (lest I leave my neck exposed for vampires), I can't even sleep because it's so hot. Irony. But there is something rather soothing about the whir of air conditioning units buzzing in the night air outside of my window. If I close my eyes hard enough I can almost imagine that the noise is really just the crash of a wave hitting the shore line. A constant, metallic-sounding wave. Or it's a swarm of bees, which is slightly more disconcerting but still an interesting thought-experiment to undertake. Living downtown and listening as everyone cranks up their air conditioning units is at least an amusing way to pass the time until I can fall asleep. Yes, maybe I'm a little jealous that my neighbors are cool enough to actually sleep in this weather, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bring a cardigan with me on the commuter rail tomorrow. I've got my pride.

Conservation in the City

2010-06-14T08:44:00.014-04:00

My New Year's resolution for 2010 was to produce less trash. I started collecting envelopes that I received in the mail to make into new postcards for friends and family. I reused scrap pieces of paper until they were wrinkly and illegible. I ate questionably dated yogurts and unidentifiable meals in tupperware to avoid throwing away food. Most importantly, I started using recycled bags for food shopping, and tried to keep every plastic bag I came into contact with: shopping bags, the little plastic slips that newspapers come in, the plastic bags over bread, plastic I saw on the street. It wasn't pretty, but I was a woman determined: by producing less trash, I wanted to know I was making an impact in the total volume of trash in the world. That impact may be small, and yes, my friends would probably make fun of me. But my mind was made up, and with that attitude I set about reforming my ways.

The only person this vow actually affected was my roommate, Ryan. She held a polite but critical eye on the increasingly tall stacks of plastic that I was going to "re-purpose," a fancy term conservationists throw around to refer to the act of recycling trash by turning it into something new and useful. Or at least new. (I'm mostly thinking of recycled bag friendship bracelets here. "New," but "useful?" Meh.) Ryan was the only one that had to deal with the ever-growing pile of plastic bags in the corner of kitchen, Plastic Bag Mountain.

"What are you going to do with all those?" Ryan asked me back in February, pointing at the stack of plastic bags crammed together between our garbage can and the window.

"I'm going to turn them into a plastic tote bag." I told her. "It'll be a giant plastic bag, made up of many smaller plastic bags, all ironed together. Very meta." I wasn't quite sure what meta meant at the time, but I had heard it used on television, and it just felt right.

As it turns out, the word "meta" is used to indicate a concept that is an abstraction from another concept, and is often completed or added to from the latter concept. Huh. But more importantly, what I really discovered was that there are very real considerations one should take before embarking on this kind of conservation adventure. (Conser-venture). On that fateful New Years night when I pledged to reuse all of my plastic bags, I couldn't visualize just how many plastic bags that volume might amount to. 50? 100? 200? But it's hard to imagine that one girl can collect over 500 plastic bags in just a few short months. It's even harder to fit those 500 bags into a small, two-bedroom, zero-closets kind of apartment, even if one were to account for the fact that plastic bags can be squished and stacked together inside other plastic bags. And so, Plastic Bag Mountain was born. While the roommate was not exceptionally pleased with my collection, I was a woman on a mission, set on “re-purposing” every plastic bag within my reach. Some work on their opus. Some write a novel. I was going to tackle Plastic Bag Mountain.

Regardless of how easy they make it seem on conservation blogs, making a plastic bag tote of other plastic bags is not a walk in the park. After 10 hours of forcibly willing plastic to meld together with only a lukewarm iron as a tool, I decided that I could make just as much of an impact by recycling them at our handy Whole Foods plastic bag recycling bin. If there were some way to gauge this, I would bet good money on the fact that I am the largest single-time contributor to the Cambridge Street Whole Foods Plastic Bag recycling bin. And while I felt slightly defeated at the time, it was reassuring to know that at least those bags got recycled. And in the absence of Plastic Bag Mountain, our kitchen not only looks fabulous, but my roommate is much happier with me. So it's really a win-win.

I have tried to look at my material consumption in other ways, too. Working as a nanny, I come into contact with many stickers that fall by the wayside during sticker time. I began collecting these cast-away stickers and thought that maybe they could have some use in scrapbooks or homemade notes. Admittedly, it is a very small gesture, but I think this quote by Hannah More that was sent to me a few months back sums up my thought process nicely:

"One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire can help to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act."

And with that, the sticker crusade began. I set about collecting the ones that were discarded, the torn stickers, the smushed stickers, the stickers awkwardly stuck to themselves or to the undersides of socks, and the stickers stuck on backpacks that are discovered hours later after you've already taken public transportation home. I kept a box in my bedroom that I affectionately thought of as "Sticker Graveyard," like the elephant graveyard in the Lion King. But with stickers. (So therefore happier. Or more tragic, depending on whether the song "Tears of a Clown" makes you sad.)

Again, as with the plastic bag adventure, I learned that even if one is to collect only the unwanted ones, in six months time one can collect an impressive amount of stickers. After decorating my favorite mug I hit an artistic block. So for now, Sticker Graveyard lies under my bed, waiting to be re-purposed.

Then I shifted my focus to the idea of plants. I didn't only want to take away trash, I wanted to add something into the world, something beneficial and maybe even beautiful. However, living in a city there exist certain ordinances and regulations against people planting trees and flowers willy-nilly. Working within my restrictions, I decided that I would get a plant instead, and then try to plant some bigger plants outside once I could work out the paperwork. Baby steps.

As a vegetarian, you would think that I would have an innate connection with plants. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? I wasn't envisioning a world where anything that my fingers grazed would grow magically fruitful and abundant like I was some King Midas of plants, but it didn't cross my mind that I would be a brown-thumb, either.

My small plastic pot of delicate purplish blue petunias sits in the sunniest spot of my apartment, a windowsill on the north wall. In the past four months I have killed those petunias six separate times. Each time, the plant has appeared beyond saving, demonstrating a complete lack of color, worrying signs of decay, and a questionable odor. Each time, I have been overcome with guilt. And each time, in a last-ditch attempt to save its life, I've spent ten minutes huffing on those very same petunias with the hope that massive amounts of direct carbon dioxide would remind them that there was so much to live for, don't die on me now, little plant! I'm sorry! Again! It felt especially cruel to purchase a plant under the guise of adding some beauty and oxygen to the world only to maim it repeatedly. That was probably worse than never buying a plant at all.

Miraculously, each time I thought that I had killed it for sure this time, the petunias would revive. Not just revive, they would thrive as though nothing had ever happened at all. This little marvel not only absorbed any guilt I had about killing my plant (again), it also gave me a sense of pride and power; if I could bring back plants from the dead, why- I could do anything. Anything!

As it turns out, that is not the case. But it is still a cool parlor trick, and I make a point of telling all our apartment's visitors of the plant's special vitality.
.

"Jesus plant," I whisper to it, late at night when I remember to, “you are a true survivor.”

He is the Lazarus of the floral world and he is helping me with my New Year's resolution, one day at a time. As a token of my gratitude I will remember to go water him right now, even though any plant that survives death six times in its life should probably try for a seventh. It's a much more impressive number. Just saying.

Lyrical Analysis: Miley Cyrus' "Can't Be Tamed"

2010-06-09T00:25:00.020-04:00

In the typical pop progression of a Disney star, after Disney releases you from their glittery clutches of happy colors, song-and-dance numbers, and purity rings, it's expected that you immediately embark on a journey of sexual empowerment. No one teen plays this game better than the recently liberated Disney golden girl Miley Cyrus. Cyrus, born Destiny Hope Cyrus but more widely popularized as her alter ego Hannah Montana, has a new single out called "Can't Be Tamed." The song just might be called the modern sexual anthem for teenage girls who feel trapped by society, their own constructs of sexuality, and (rather ambiguously) those trying to "change" them. Like Miley I, too, rebel against oppression (imagined or otherwise).

Cyrus's dramatic career shift from playing the wacky blonde-bobbed pop star named after a state to her newest alter-ego, a sexual being, is a big change, to be sure. She is donning more risqué ensembles, seeming to channel wild animals, and singing about reclaiming her life and taking control of those who want to change her. She talks about this fact a lot in her newest song. In the video, we are given Miley as the rare exotic bird, Aves cyrus, trapped in an overly giant cage with bars wide enough to walk (or if you're Miley, to dance) through, that serves to sets her up visually as a rare, sought after, and highly trapped creature. (Side note: In Latin terms, Aves cyrus literally translates into Bird Cyrus. In the binomial nomenclature of birds, Aves is technically a Class distinction and not, as Miley's people would have you believe, a Genus. Ergo, Miley doesn't have a genus name. Ergo, it's laughably made up. And stupid. Moving on.)

Though the way in which Miley chooses to express her sexuality is a departure, her career follows in the footsteps of some great Disney predecessors. We have the pop icon Britney Spears, who in 2001 produced her masochistic (and awesome) "I'm a Slave 4 U," as well as Christina Aguilera's romp in 2002 as an underground dancer who needs a major shower, a dye job, and some clothes in her song "Dirrty" (double r her choice). To both prove their sexual mettle and shake off the last of that pesky Disney purity ring, BritBrit and Xtina's both dabbled in progressively sexual lyrics, engaged in brief moments of lesbianism, and stripped down what was left of their clothes to become liberated beings. Now, with the powers that be off her back, it appears that Miley has already thrown the gauntlet to enter into the land of pop princess-hood and all that it entails. But young Miley, take note; at the very least: please remember to wear underwear.

Now let's look at the lyrics behind the tune in Miley Cyrus' "Can't Be Tamed."

"Can't Be Tamed"
For those who don't know me I can get a bit crazy
Have to get my way, 24 hours a day 'cause I'm hot like that
Every guy everywhere just gives me mad attention like I'm under inspection
I always get the 10s 'cause I'm built like that

Being Miley sounds hard. Firstly, you are conscious of the fact that sometimes you can get "crazy." That's tough to deal with for a lot of people, but here it sounds like a point of pride. Then you demand to get your way at all moments in the day, which means that not only are you crazy, but you might just be spoiled, too. And then "every guy everywhere" critically inspects you and won't leave you alone. So you're telling me that you're crazy, your emotions can range when you don't get your way, and you have the feeling like you're constantly being watched. I'm no doctor, but that has all the classic earmarks of a psychological disorder. Maybe it qualifies for undifferentiated schizophrenia? But webmd is so unreliable these days.

Secondly, you should serious consider the types of guys that are giving you mad attention and 10s 'cause you're "built like that." Are they over 18? Because I'm pretty sure that's illegal in, oh, just about every continental state. Maybe even Hawaii too. Also of importance, relating to others that it's not your fault you're so hot, you 're just "built like that." No really, don't hold back- tell me how you really feel about yourself. Humility is a virtue, Miles. Let's not go crazy here.

[Lyrics]
I go through guys like money flyin' out their hands, they try to change me but they realize they can't
And every tomorrow is a day I never planned, if you're gonna be my man, understand

Confusing metaphor. If one were to "go through guys like money flying out of their hands," that implies that they keep throwing you away quickly because you don't mean anything to them. Unless after they "realize they can't change" you, they become frustrated and throw you away, that would make sense. I'm not positive that this is exactly the feeling that you were meaning to evoke in the listener. I could be wrong.

Additionally (as Dan pointed out), it is highly doubtful that a pop superstar doesn't plan her day out. "Every tomorrow is a day I never planned" is a beautiful line, it really is. But you must have things you plan to do. It's 2010, blackberries were invented for a reason. So therefore I must infer that you are a very boring person. I once read a book that chronicled a boy named Milo's quest for perfection after he found a book in the library called "Be A Perfect Person in 3 Days." By the end of the book Mile was just sitting in an auditorium sipping iced tea and being perfect. And you know what? He was bored. (The boy's name was Milo Crinkley, eerily similar to Miley Cyrus. Just saying.) For instance, you have to eat food, right (unless they don't eat in the world of the famous?) There you go: breakfast. Instant plan. But seriously, don't you have interviews and stuff to go to? Good Morning America appearances? Red carpet events to try to conjure up some Robert Pattinson rumors? You must.

[Chorus]
I can't be tamed, I can't be saved, I can't be blamed,
I can't, can't, I can't be tamed, I can't be changed
I can't be saved, I can't be (can't be)
I can't be tamed

Following the song's chosen rhyme scheme, aka things that sound like "tamed/saved/changed," here are a few other things that Miley "can't be," but might have been under consideration for the chorus:

I can't be claimed: The song takes on a fiscal slant.
I can't be framed: She didn't do it! You can't frame her!
I can't be flamed: It's not nice to burn people. Anyway, human skin burns at 480 degrees. (Why am I not the first one to ever type that into Google?)
I can't be maimed: Yay! Immortality!
I can't be named: Or shouldn't be named at least, since the people that birthed you christened you with the name "Destiny Hope." Hippie.
I can't be shamed: This is clearly evidenced by the bird porn ensemble featured in the music video.
I can't be behaved: 'Cause she says the line, "she gets her way 'cause she's hot like that." Super not behaved, I agree.
I can't be engraved: 'Cause life can't be like Tiffany's.
I can't be enslaved: 'Cause slavery is illegal.
I can't be shaved: And deprive her of all those beautiful raven-like feathers?

Lyrics:
If there is a question about my intentions I'll tell ya, I'm not here to sell ya, or tell ya to get to hell
I'm like a puzzle but all of my pieces are jagged, If you can understand this we can make some magic
I'm on like that

If someone questions your true intentions and your response is to tell them to go to hell, then you are seriously going to raise an awful lot of questions. Or at the very least, miss out on a friend-making opportunity. As West Side Story teaches us, "just play it cool boy, real cool."

The jagged puzzle piece line doesn't intimate what you think it intimates. To me, it just sounds like you yourself can't come together as a whole person. Like how a puzzle can't be completed with a bunch of jagged pieces. If you're a puzzle and all of your pieces are jagged, then you're just a really bad puzzle. Following that train of thought, if you're a singer/dancer/entrepreneur (as your wikipedia page suggests) then you are implying that you are a really bad singer/dancer/entrepreneur. Hey, I didn't make the metaphor. You did.

You finish this little vignette of pop heaven with the statement that you're "on like that." On like... what? I missed a step. But now it's suddenly on. Which part? The sex? The feathery outfits? The dancing excursions through the National History Museum? I'm just going with what's being thrown at me here!!

I wanna fly I wanna drive I wanna go, I wanna be a part of something I don't know
And if you try to hold me back I might explode
Baby, by now you should know

Trust me, everyone knows. You're a misunderstood sexual being who seeks the thrill that comes from bucking societal norms and dressing like an animal. We get it. But you might be getting just a wee bit dramatic with the whole "I might explode" line. Spontaneous combustion is a serious illness. There have only been 200 unverified instances of probable Spontaneous Human Combustion worldwide in the past 300 years. You're not going to die, you're just feeling a bit oppressed. In the history of the world, Miley, you really do understand true oppression.

To finish, let's talk over the line "I want to be a part of something I don't know." Listen here, kid- life is tough. But it's a heck of a lot harder when you don't know what exactly it is that you want. Nobody really likes listening to stuff like that. Sure, we all might have had a Dashboard Confessional phase song when "Vindicated" or "Screaming Infidelities" came on and we maybe didn't shut it off. 16 times in a row. But as many a middle-schooler has quoted in their instant messenger profile, "stand for something or you'll fall for anything." Take heed. If you can't articulate what it is that you want from life maybe- and bear with me here because I'm shooting from the hip- *maybe* it's that you don't actually want anything? Or you're just a bit overtired? Or undersexed? Or both? You know what, forget I said anything. I could forgive you for most anything you release from 2007 on because that is when you gave me "See You Again." That is a song for our generation. "Can't Be Tamed"? I can let that slide.

[Chorus]
I can't be tamed, I can't be saved, I can't be blamed, I can't, can't
I can't be tamed, I can't be changed, I can't be saved, I can't be (can't be)
I can't be tamed

I'm not a trick you play, I ride a different way/ I'm not a mistake, I'm not a fake, it's set in my DNA
Don't change me (x4), (I can't be tamed)

Besides laughing over the "trick" line (lolololol tricks are played by hoes, Ms. Miley) this part is kind of blasé: it rhymes, it's ambiguous, it fits the voice of the song. Ho hum.

I wanna fly I wanna drive I wanna go
I wanna be a part of something I don’t know
And if you try to hold me back I might explode
Baby by now you should know

The [Chorus]. The end.

Looking at the positive and negative forms of the verb "can," the positive form appears twice while "can't" gets sung 35 times. That's pret-tee darn negative there, little Mopey Mabel.

But what can I say? She's just being Miley.**

**DP, enjoy the cop-out ending.

To Catch A Thief

2010-06-03T21:17:00.016-04:00

I had always thought that the idea of crime was intriguing. With the right person crime can be romanticized, made to look both unavoidable yet still noble. Take, for instance, the former cat burglar John Robie, played by Cary Grant in Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief. Reformed yet debonair, courtly with a hint of an edge, Robie uses his knowledge of the criminal mind to get the bad guy and, naturally, to woo the girl. Then, of course, there's Robin Hood, who depending on which version of the story you ascribe to, is either a metaphorical or a literal fox, stealing jewels and money from the less-than-deserving bourgeoisie to give to the humble and deserving poor. Now that is crime I can get behind.

Even when it's not intriguing per se, crime (or the attempt at criminal activity) can be downright hilarious. Have you ever seen Chris Hansen's "To Catch A Predator"? Chris and a band of intrepid police officers set up sting operations to snare would-be criminals by their own bumbling gullibility. (To really get a feel for the nature of the program, the naked cookie-eating pedophile is, in my opinion, award-winning reality television.)

Though my notions of what crime should be are largely dictated by what I have seen on television or read in books, this past Memorial Day was disillusioning. Identity theft has a way of doing that to you.

Why someone would want to steal the identity of a college-loan laden 23 year old who lacks both a steady income and a firm grasp on reality is a complete mystery. You're supposed to steal from the rich and give to the poor; the poor ain't got no money. Choosing me as a target is the first indication that this criminal was perhaps not the smartest to ever graze the interwebs. What amount of time would it have taken to discover my background information on that crazy little site called Google, four seconds? 0.1?

The first red flag came while I was casually perusing my online statement (as you do). I noticed a recent purchase for some StubHub tickets. Though I was fairly confident that I hadn't, in fact, purchased any tickets recently, I still reserved a bit of hope that maybe they would be for an event that I would want to go to. Was Ray Lamontagne coming to town? Jason Mraz? Did I blindly purchase double Lady Gaga tickets for each night she was in Boston? I called Stubhub and discovered that the tickets were for a Jets game in September.

Let's play the hypothetical game. Even if I were the type that watches football, I wouldn't be watching the Jets. And even if I would want to watch the Jets, I wouldn't have purchased tickets to an actual game. And even if I were to be the type that actually attended football games, I would almost never have the foresight to purchase something four months in advance. I barely have this weekend mapped out; September is but a comically far away blip in my future. So it's safe to say: I did not purchase those tickets.

My curiosity sufficiently peaked, I felt the need to look back through my statements. There, I found out that "I" had also purchased a domain name, network software, and various other internet accoutrements. But why would I purchase that stuff when Google Blogs gives it to you for free? Honestly, my mama didn't raise no fool.

The bank later informed me that my accounts had been "compromised," which is just an official way of saying that someone had hacked into my account and bought some stuff. But "compromised" sounds so much more Jason Bourne, I just might go with that. "Compromised" makes it sound like my account was something that needed to be defended at all costs (...it wasn't.) Commander, the account has been compromised. Activate the deflector shields!

Stealing my passwords and credit card was a neat trick, I will give him that. I can't even hack into my boyfriend's Facebook account, and I actually have all of his passwords. But to be perfectly honest, I am a little disappointed in my thief's apparent stupidity. He left a mailing address and an IP address, thusly identifying his computer and a potential pick-up spot. Could these things be fake? Yeah, probably. But obviously they will lead the police a little further down the path towards swift and righteous justice. And as my bank assured me, they would do it in ten-to-twelve business days. (That's how the rest of the American legal system works too, right?)

My disappointment was not limited to just the fact that money was stolen from my bank account. I was also a little crushed when I learned his alias. Though my name was attached to the credit card information he had stolen, the name that he had chosen to give out with the purchases he made was one Jonah Flower. Jonah. Flower. He had christened himself in the likeness of the biblical prophet that for three days and three nights was swallowed whole by a whale, as well as the one thing that people give when they want to express love and/or regret for mistakes made. Jonah Flower. The name Jonah Flower conjures up images of innocent little barefoot children born of former hippies, not internet fraud. Jonah Flower would never steal your lunch money, but he might bake you oatmeal flax cookies and have a deep affection for all things tie-dye.

It's actually a shame. Choosing a love-child alias is something that I totally would do, assuming I might ever find myself in that situation. (Ed. note: I probably wouldn't, mom.) Theoretically, I'd go with something like Daisy GoLightly, or Sunshine Marley, or better yet, Apple Flynn. Mr. Jonah Flower and I seriously had the potential to become friends, if one were to overlook the whole "money stealing" thing.

Illegal credit card purchasing? Cary Grant would never do that. Robin Hood would never do that. Shame on you, "Jonah Flower" from "San Francisco." As my dad told me, "welcome to the real world." I think I'd prefer Cary Grant's reality, thanks.

Celebrating Memorial Day. With Zombies.

2010-05-29T22:53:00.011-04:00

The biggest perk about living in a big city is that there are so many people around and so much going on so that at any given time all you need to do is wander around and you will inevitably meet up with at least one cool unexpected thing.

Today's cool unexpected thing was witnessing a zombie strike. Yes, a strike. Put on by zombies. Zombies that were striking for zombie rights. Their cheer: What do we want? BRAINS! When do we want it? BRAINS!

You gotta give them points for cleverness.

This is Jeremy. Jeremy is an articulate undead spokeszombie for the Zombie Rights Campaign (ZRC). In spite of the gaping wounds made by a broken record in his skull and chest, Jeremy stopped to talk with me about the march. He told me that they, the zombies, were marching down Boylston Street to raise awareness for zombie rights everywhere. The zombies weren't asking for much, he said. They just wanted the simple right to exist, and to maybe eat the brains of their children. Who was I to deny them that? Speaking with Jeremy made me realize, "Hey Em, why are you so anti-zombie? Sure, you don't want someone to eat your brains, but should that allow you to judge or dictate the pastimes of others, even if those others happen to be undead?" I think we can all agree that the Zombie Rights Campaign represents a powerful undercurrent of prejudice against the undead and maybe even backlash against the Twilight phenomena. And these modern-day teen wolves, too.

There were a surprising amount of people that marched for Zombie Rights, and they easily numbered into the hundreds. Marching side-by-side were the undead and, counter-intuitively, zombie hunters. (Many zombie hunters were equipped with plastic swords and nerf guns. Not what I'd want in a zombie raid, but to each their own.) The fact that they marched together down the main thoroughfare of bustling Boylston on a busy Saturday afternoon is nothing short of a grand gesture of unity. If the zombies and those who seek to kill them can put down the (literal) hatchet, why can't Republicans and Democrats become party-blind and reach across the aisle to collaborate on an end to America's precarious dependency on non-renewable energy sources?

Though a non-traditional way to acknowledge the Memorial Day weekend, America is founded on the basic rights for all of its citizens, be they black, white, gay, straight, dead, undead. God bless America.

EarthFesting It

2010-05-29T13:01:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, May 22nd, local awesome radio station, 92.9, and local sometimes awesome grocery store, Whole Foods, hosted the free concert series they called "Earthfest." Earthfest was held on the lush Esplanade of the Charles River, the most perfect place to sit down and enjoy a concert in Boston. Tie-dye and teenagers ran amok, reminding me of photos I've seen from Woodstock, though happily Earthfest had both clean bathrooms and a full water supply. Another fundamental difference was the presence of many young families with little children rocking out on their parents. Notably (and deliciously), there were dozens of environmental (and pseudo-environmental) companies on hand to promote their cause and give away free food, stickers, and tattoos. Well, except for the sausage stand that was both not free and was only there, as the sausage guy told me, "bug the vegetarians."

Many concert attendees did not seem to notice nor mind that the event was held exactly a month after the real Earth Day. I like to believe that this is because people live a little bit of Earth day in their lives, everyday. But the rampant marijuana usage could have played a role in the feelings of social harmony and environmental respect, as well.

Though hailed as an event to celebrate the Earth, the free samples, many of which were encased in a nice layer of thick plastic, was a bit counter-intuitive to the event's truest aspirations. But it's hard not to feel happy and earth-loving when you're given free ice tea, bread, hummus, greek yogurt, and even (slightly randomly) green peppers. But one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, even if that gift horse is wrapped in non-biodegradable plastic. Besides, I like to believe that Mother Earth would want me well fed, so that I am fully energized to go forth and do her bidding. Or something.

Earthfest had an awesomely rad set list if you ever were a radio lover during the years of 1989-1996. Collective Soul, Gin Blossoms, and Marcy's Playground. My seven year old self was ecstatic. Sadly, the only reaction to Marcy's Playground for some was "who?" An actual conversation:

Friend: Oh, they were the people that sang that song about sex and candy or something, right? What was it called?
Me: Sex and Candy.
Friend: Right.

Excellent 90s music, free food, hours spent lounging under the sunlight (with only minimal sunburns), and a slight contact high: everyday should be earthfest.

Bravado Can Only Get You So Far

2010-05-20T23:08:00.012-04:00

Back in my reckless youth I went on a few really cool trips. I battled waves on a tiny schooner in the waters off Nova Scotia, swam through shark-infested channels on a remote island of the Bahamas, camped near absurdly prolific spiders up in Canada, and bushwacked through trails in middle Appalachia. I fancied myself a true adventurer. And while I thoroughly enjoyed doing these activities at the time, I am very happy that they are in the past. For you see, the past is a delightful thing you can play around with and mold to how you see fit. The distance between the time of the event and now provides a safe comfort zone that takes away the sting of the very real danger and the youthful ebullience that will probably get you into trouble in the real world.

There is something profoundly satisfying about telling tales of death-defying danger and intrigue when you yourself happen to be wearing your favorite tee shirt and sipping on a Corona. There is no secret as to why Man Vs. Wild with Bear Grylls does so well on the Discovery Channel. And while I sincerely hope my future holds many more adventures for me, at the moment I am perfectly content to live in an urban center where the biggest risk of my day involves getting hit in the face by an over-excited toddler. In addition, this downshift in real-life risk makes the "dangerous" adventures that beckon around every corner at the Aquarium seem that much more dramatic.

One of these adventures involves a snake. A few months ago at the Aquarium a mature anaconda, Kathleen, gave birth to 16 squirmy baby snakes. (Initially my boss said that there were 17 snakes accounted for, but with the official count topping off at 16 he just told me that I should be on the lookout around the gallery where I worked. I am pretty sure he was kidding.) While doing some research at the desk in the Freshwater area, my friend Jimmy came over to ask me if I wanted to play with the baby snakes. It helped them get comfortable and acclimate to human contact. (What, this doesn't happen to you at work?)

I needed to stretch my legs, so I welcomed the change of pace and wandered off towards the closet in the intern lounge that is currently home to three baby anacondas. The snakes are inventively named A, B, and C. I'm told that they won't be named until they are shipped out to their next home, another aquarium where they will hopefully be loved enough to named. The babies are still three to four feet in length but nowhere near their mother, who clocks in at 15 feet. "Babies" is a relative term.

"Want to hold her?" Jimmy asked, baby "A" held ever so gently in his hands. Her tongue flickered a little too much for my pleasure, and I was sure she was staring straight at me, taunting me. Jimmy told me that she was the tamest of all the baby snakes, and therefore the least likely to strike. Her eyes suggested otherwise.

"No thanks, I just wanted to see her." I lied, thinking to myself that simply being in baby A's presence surely was enough of a risk for one day. But then I thought over the fact that saying no to Jimmy was, in effect, denying the full advantage of my aquarium experience. My friend Ko always talks about the importance of being, as she calls it, "open to the universe." How many times in my life will someone ask me if I want to handle an anaconda? I could probably count it on one hand. Maybe one finger. So against an instinctual yearning to walk away, I forced myself to walk forward. "Actually, sure." I told him. "Why not."

Though I wouldn't necessarily want to have a sleepover with one, I wouldn't say that I had a big fear of snakes. It's more like a healthy respect. I am quietly fascinated by an anaconda's amazing musculature, its ability to eat a capybara (fun fact: we feed them guinea pigs and baby bunnies) and, of course, the alien-like tongue flickering. This fascination is the same kind of fascination that one might have with a tsunami. While I would prefer to not be intimate with one, I think they are fantastically captivating. But I just prefer to be fascinated by them when there is a distance of at least ten feet or more between us. More so with the snake. That's just how I roll.

Immediately my heart switched from reticent exhilaration to adrenaline-pumping terror. My thought process, though colorfully punctuated with silent shrieks of nonsensical horror, went more or less like this:

"This is gonna be pretty awesome. It's totally no big deal... Oh. Oh. I don't like this anymore. I was just kidding. I was really just kidding. Ok ok don't freak out, just play it cool. It's just a baby. But maybe babies can't control what they bite. What if my hands smell like food. Does my hand smell like lunch? No no no, just play it cool and breathe. Snakes can sense fear just like bees. Oh my god, my heart is starting to pound. Stop it, heart. Stop it! The snake can sense that. Oh my god, can the snake sense that? Deep breaths. Oh my god it's going up my arm, oh my god oh my god. Dear lord just stop freaking out oh my god it's squeezing my upper arm oh my god oh my god it's looking at me play it cool play it cool playitcoolplayitcool. I can't do this oh my god I will start going to church again, just please do not bite me pleasedonotbiteme pleasedonotbiteme."

This inner monologue took approximately 10 seconds, or .42 seconds longer than Usain Bolt ran the 100m in 1999. That's fast. Throughout those absurdly long ten seconds, I tried to maintain my composure as best as I could. Freaking out doesn't help anyone, and in the world of unpaid internships an intern that's freaking out because of a snake isn't exactly the one that you want to bring on a collecting trip to Brazil. So I tried to joke around with Jimmy. I talked about snake maintenance as though I had studied the subject. I used a lot of unfamiliar words and may have broken into tongues at some point. I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention. I was just desperately trying to convince myself that I wasn't holding a snake. And the snake that I definitely wasn't holding definitely wouldn't bite me. But there is a fine line between being cool with something, just trying to play it cool, and then crossing over into the realm of not caring how calm and collected you seem anymore. I gave myself away a little when I practically yelled (much too loudly for the little closet) "Jimmy, just take it away takeitaway takeitawaytakeitaway." I know I scared him a little bit. But at that moment I just wanted it off me, so I could resume being fascinated safely from a distance.

The more I learn about wildlife, the world at large, and my own fallibility, the more I just want to stay inside on my couch, safe and cuddly under my snuggie*. It's nice to be able to say that I handled an anaconda, but the anaconda-free zone of my apartment feels like pure heaven right now. At least, it will feel this way until the horse of adventure beckons again, at which point I will probably join that collecting trip to Brazil. Where there most definitely will be anacondas. But an adventure is an adventure, and you can't exactly say no to Brazil.

*I do not have a snuggie. Yet.

We're gonna need a montage

2010-05-18T21:33:00.027-04:00

There are some moments in my life when all I want is a fast-forward button. Though I try to be a great proponent of living every minute to its fullest, of throwing off those bowlines, of carp'ing the diem and saisir'ing the jour (if you will), there are just times when I look at the situation I find myself in and think, "pass." Unavoidably, there are times in every person's life that aren't particularly enjoyable. Standing in lines. Riding the commuter rail. Grocery shopping. Any period of time that you wouldn't be able to relate to someone else in a funny and engaging can qualify. "And then corn was on sale, 5 pieces for $2 dollars! And I bought an artichoke!" It's not exactly the stuff of which dreams are made, but they are the basic inevitabilities of day-to-day living in this busy world of ours. I understand that, I do. I just believe, down in the deepest depths of my star-gazing soul, that there should be a montage option.

Years before I paid good money to see Team America World Police, I grew up feeling that there had to be montage capabilities in my life. There just had to be. I thought that, if I just concentrated hard enough, I would have the ability to transform the next few moments (hours, days, whatever) into a condensed, effective, and inspiring bit of bite-sized life. A slice of life, where I could glean the important stuff, take home all the take-homes, and then come away a bit more inspired than when I started. Add in a few sweeping panoramas, some dramatic scene cuts, a background song that really encompassed the feeling of the moment, and voilá: perfect montage. It would make life so much better.

There is nothing more inspiring than a montage set to "c'mon guys, we can do this!" kind of music. Think the montage scene of all montage scenes, the fight scene from Rocky III. We get Rocky training, boxing, losing, becoming determined, and then winning, all in 3 and a half minutes. Do you know how long a boxing match takes in real life, let alone the whole training process and finding that inner resolve to work and train harder? I don't, but I would bet good money it's longer than 3 minutes. (Probably?) THIS is why montages are great: I want to live my life, but live it in a more exciting way. A montage would enable me to fast-forward the boring stuff, with the added bonus of possibly making the boring stuff even better. Because how much faster would you type out that report if "Eye of the Tiger" was playing in the background? How quick and excellent would your walk to work be if "I Believe I Can Fly" by R.Kelly swelled in from the background? When "My Name Is Lincoln" by Steve Jablonsky starts up as you do crunches, clean your bedroom, write cover letters, even taking a nap, would anyone have any question in their mind as to whether you will or will not succeed? No. No they would not. And with a montage, you won't even have to endure the endless tedium of crunches. It's a win-win.

This is why I violently want the montage option to be real. If I will it into existence, it will come. Studying, walking, and even washing some dishes- by god, it will all seem suddenly heroic. Though I can't find any homemade youtube videos out there that support me in this belief (really youtube? really? nothing?) one day I hope to make my own inspiring montage out of really boring menial tasks. Washing windows. Swiffering the floor. Standing in line at the bank. Reading a newspaper online. If you'd like to help me in this endeavor, let me know. (Here is what youtube did give me, and for that I am thankful.)

In lieu of an actual montage button (sigh), my music player does get me halfway there. By acting as my own personal soundtrack against the world at large, listening to (good) music makes any long-ish task seem suddenly incredibly important, introspective, worthwhile, and dare I say it, epic. And because good music should be shared, I've compiled a few of my favorites.

The Bravery, Believe. I've been using it when applying to jobs and/or the search for meaning in this crazy world of ours. When lead singer Sam Endicott sings, "So give me something to believe 'cause I am living just to breathe/ and I need something more to keep on breathing for/ so give me something to believe" my heart pangs in a kind of kindred spirit recognition. It pangs.

Sometimes when I'm commuting I need a little reinforcement. Jay-Z provides that, with his collaborative cover of Linkin Park "Numb" called "Numb/Encore."

Elton John, My Father's Gun. Aside from my undying belief that Sir Elton can do virtually no wrong (and thus naming my iDog in honor of him) this is a perfect song to listen to if you are forced to undertake any superfluous chore. When those first few chords come in you suddenly feel a bit more bluesy, a bit more to-hell-with-the-world, no-one-understands-you. But then you realize that it's all going to be ok. (Or so the song makes me want to feel, anyway.) Hypothetically, if you are forced to shop at Whole Foods (because hypothetically it's the only supermarket within a 20 minutes radius and you don't have a car), this is an incredible song to feel a "no one can understand you" kind of unique, setting yourself apart from other organically-minded high-end food-shoppers. Are those spandex-wearing young business professionals going to be listening to the Tumbleweed Connection on their ipods? Doubtful. Very doubtful.

Kaiser's Orchestra, Maestro. Alternative rock straight out of Norway, sung in Norwegian. It doesn't matter that you can't understand the words. For instance, I listened to it perhaps 4 or 5 times before I thought to myself, "hey, are they singing in English?" and would have been convinced of any language you told me. The words don't matter. Kaiser's Orchestra demonstrates that all you need is a catchy chorus and passion. And maybe some subtitles, too.

Back in Black calls out Beck

2010-05-14T14:30:00.004-04:00

Lewis Black delivered quite possibly the best "Back in Black" segment on John Stewart's The Daily Show on Wednesday night. Two thumbs way, way up.

(at 4:10)
Lewis Black: I'll give Glenn Beck this. He's got style. He can even make a paranoid Nazi comparison using poetry.
Beck (footage): You ever heard the old poem, 'first they came for the Jews'? Well, first they came for the banks, then it was the insurance companies, then it was the car companies.
Lewis Black: Glenn- get a grip. There's a difference. They came for the Jews to kill them. They came for the banks and the car companies to give them 700 billion dollars. If that's coming for them, then come for me! Hell, for 700 billion, I'll go to you!"

A simple exercise in gratitude

2010-05-12T17:10:00.009-04:00

There are many days when I take my relatively clear vision for granted. In fact, I'd say most days, nay- nearly every day has fallen into this category. It's always that way with the essentials- you don't realize how good you have it, until you don't. Cheap food (damn you, Whole Foods supermarkets), clean drinking water (damn you, Aquapocalypse scare), and good vision. Never, ever will I forget to be grateful for you again.

It all started Tuesday morning on the commuter rail. As some other train passengers riding the rails do, I fell asleep on my morning commute. Napping on the commuter rail is an innocuous, simple, and usually satisfying pastime. This Tuesday would be different in a terrible, terrible way.

I fell asleep somewhere between the Bravery's "Believe" and the Antlers "Kettering" playing on my shuffle (thanks Jon!) When I woke up twenty minutes later, riding through the greener pastures of the North Shore, I made a terrible discovery: I could not see. As in a blurry, eye-blinkingly painful lack of vision. While there are very few places in the world where I would prefer to have this happen to me, public transportation does not rank high on the list. I panicked.

Struggling to the front of the train, I blindly groped around for the edges of seats that would propel me forward and off the train car at (what I hoped) was my stop. I tried to do this while maintaining an air of grace and sophistication, but I could feel other passenger's eyes on me. I am sure it was not a pretty picture. So I shot looks that said "maybe I am just too cool to keep my eyes open, okay?!" at what I hoped was a person and not just someone's jacket hung over a seat. Glaring at a jacket, I'm sure, would not help my case.

The conductor on my regular morning train is jovial man, known for winking and occasionally letting me ride for free. Today he laughed at me, "Hey there, Lucky. You tired today?" (Side note: he calls me Lucky for my history of hopping on the train seconds before departure. Regardless of whether I leave my apartment 5 or 20 minutes before the train is scheduled to leave. This ability amazes even me.)

"Must have got something in my eye." I laughed too loudly, overcompensating. If I had been able to see, I would have been met with a confused, possibly scared look. "Public transportation is never safe!" I continued. No, I am not sure what I meant by this. At this point I was running on blind auto-pilot.

My day only got worse from there. Driving on the road, trying to play "airplane," coloring inside the lines, and playing hide and go seek were not in the cards for the nephews that day. (It's not so fun to play Hide and Seek with a blind person.) So that day I was the sad creature in the corner, eyes closed, responding to what I thought the boys were doing, and trying to act like it was all normal.

Quinn (choking his little brother Cole by wrestling him to the rug.): "Ha ha! Auntie Emma, look at me!"
Me: "That's great, buddy!" I told him, staring off somewhere into the kitchen and saying a silent prayer to not step on anyone.

Finally, after avoiding any sunlit spot in the house and squinting in sightless agony like some weird sort of bat pirate, my sister and I decided I should just go home and try to sleep it off. I drove to the station, maxing out at around 5 miles per hour and using all my willpower to keep at least one eye open and avoid anything pedestrian-like. To add insult to injury, a complete lack of parking spaces had me cursing the sunlight and circling the station until I missed the train. I was forced to sit in the car for the next two hours waiting for the next inbound train to come, lest drive back to the boys and risk hitting something/someone. It was not a shining moment in the history of me. I fell asleep, my eyes watering extravagantly, as I tried to sing along with the words to distract myself from the pain. When a person came up to me to (most likely) ask me to move my car, they were met with a crying girl, rubbing her eyes and singing CCR perhaps a bit too loudly. While they didn't exactly run away, they didn't stay long enough to make a new friend, either. And that was okay with me. Better them thinking that I was going through some deep emotional life crisis through song than to know the real, pretty lame truth: my eye really, really hurt. No, I am not proud.

After mercifully falling asleep, I awoke up two hours later, clutching my chest and gasping for air. As my brain usually works, I was confident that my eye problem had manifested itself into some full body infection that had traveled to my lungs and would effectively end me. But a minute later I soon came to the realization that I had only failed to leave the window open a crack. A bright sunny May afternoon spent in a black car would suffocate anyone, but now at least I can empathize with dogs left out in the car during grocery shopping. Talking with my sister later, she told me she was positive that she was going to get a phone call from the police about a suspicious dead person parked for hours in her car in the train station parking lot. It was not a moment that I would want to be depicted in the movie of my life.

But I made it onto the train successfully, and somehow, after staggering and tottering through downtown Boston like a hung-over reveler in the wake of mardis gras, I made it back to my apartment where I now reside, using my sense of touch to leave my bedroom and get to the fridge. Though I may look like a drunken bat, I think I can ride it out from here.

It's not all bad. Besides a total crushing blow to my ego, I've learned to enjoy music in a new way. Last night I was so bored of not being able to see anything that I turned on my iTunes and just closed my eyes. It was a way more interesting experience than simply playing music in the background. Then, when I was so fed up I declared my lack of vision would no longer hold me back, my roommate and I watched Glee. Watched is a very generous term for what I did, but I think I got more out of the images I saw in my mind than Ryan did by actually watching the show. At the ripe old hour of 10pm I turned in, for lack of any useful activity that didn't necessitate vision.

Today, as I sat in my apartment fearful of the sunlight and hoping that the worst was over, I decided something: I needed to make a big gesture to the gods in order for them to restore my eyesight. That was why it hadn't come back yet! So, in the name of eye health everywhere (and especially in me), for the next thirty days I will not consciously take my eyesight for granted again. And by taking it for granted, I mean the hours I spend looking at foolish and foolishly addicting websites. Goodbye, chatroulettetrolling.com. Au revoir, graphjam.com. Adios roflrazzi.com. Ciao ciao, thesuperficial.com. You shall be missed. Hello, vision. How I have missed you.

Lyrical Analysis: Justin Bieber's "Baby"

2010-05-07T13:27:00.019-04:00

Today we're going to take a look at Justin Bieber, the 16-year old Canadian who's mother once upon a time put videos of him singing up on youtube and the rest, as they say, is history. He now rules the air waves with a Disney-esque vibe, dreamy side-swept hair, and a very high voice that the girls just dig. Bieber has had seven songs from his debut album, "My World," on Billboard's Hot 100, being the the only artist to ever have done so. This is a true testament to the power of tweens everywhere. His song "Baby" comes off his "My World 2.0" album, and has given him international pop clout. Let's take a look at the lyrics behind the hair that makes underage hearts the world over swoon.

Justin Bieber's "Baby"
Ohh wooaah, ohh wooaah, ohh wooaah
You know you love me, I know you care/
Just shout whenever and I'll be there
You want my love, you want my heart/ And we will never ever ever be apart

That's a lot of "-evers". Personally, I find independence rather attractive and need my own space every once in a while. But then again, I was not born in the 90s and am not the target demographic for the Beebs. But as I prefer boys to spend less time on their hair than I do, I'm ok with that.

Are we an item? Girl quit playing/ We're just friends, what are you saying
Said there's another, look right in my eyes/ My first love broke my heart for the first time

It does make sense for your first love to be the first to break your heart. Gotta hand it to him though, he is striving for lyrical clarity. He could have just said that his first love broke his heart and I would have been all, "but did he have his heart broken before?" Now I don't have to.

[Chorus]
And I was like baby, baby, baby ohhh, like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohh, I thought you'd always be mine, mine
Baby, baby, baby ohh, like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohh, I thought you'd always be mine, mine (oh oh)

No offense J. Beebs, but maybe she broke up with you because you didn't actually say anything to her. You were "like" "baby" 18 times in the first chorus alone, so she was probably getting out to save her sanity. Valuable life lesson: pet names are useful, but they don't actually work better when they are compounded. It rings a bit insincere. As Shakespeare said, the lady doth protest too much. What are you trying to gain, dreamboat?

For you, I would have done whatever, and I just can't believe, we ain't together
And I wanna play it cool, but I'm losin' you/ I'll buy you anything, I'll buy you any ring
And I'm in pieces, baby fix me/ And just shake me til' you wake me from this bad dream
I'm going down, down, down, down/ And I just can't believe my first love won't be around.

Justin Bieber inadvertently provides a cautionary tale of how not to act in a relationship. Keep calling her "baby," even if she has already broken up with you. Suggest that her love can be bought with jewelry. And because women of all ages love the smell of desperation, tell her you need her to "fix" you. You may be only 16, Mr. Bieber, but you've clearly endured a lifetime of relationship advice and self-help books. Brava.

[Chorus]
And I'm like baby, baby, baby ohh, like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohh, I thought youd always be mine, mine
Baby, baby, baby ohh, Like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohhh, I thought you'd always be mine, mine

Dear god, we get it. This song is a bit boring by itself, so I found the music video to watch instead. The video follows the trials and tribulations of J.Beebs while he chases a girl, who we can assume to be his old love interest, around a super club-y, super awesome, totally realistic looking bowling alley. There is excellent lighting, sexually tense bowling-a-strike competitions (inuendo?), and dance-offs in the bowling lanes, though none of the dancers seem to be wearing bowling shoes. What kind of bowling depravity is this!? But Justin Bieber is clearly the coolest kid in the alley, and ergo- the world. Now back to the song.

[Ludacris solo]
Luda! When I was 13, I had my first love, there was nobody that compared to my baby,
And nobody came between us or could ever come above, she had me goin' crazy,
Oh I was starstruck, she woke me up daily, don't need no Starbucks
She made my heart pound, and skip a beat when I see her in the street and,
At school on the playground, but I really wanna see her on the weekend,
She know she got me gazin', cuz she was so amazin'/And now my heart is breakin'
but I just keep on sayin'...

I love that Luda always says his name before he starts speaking. LOO-DAH! How awesome would it be to be able to do this in real life?

At a bar:
"Hi there, can I buy you a drink?"
"EHM-LEE! Gin and tonic, please."

At the store:
"Paper or plastic?"
"EHM-LEE! Actually I brought my own bags, thanks."

At the park:
"Excuse me, are you done with the swings?"
"EHM-LEE! Im'ma be another ten minutes."

In terms of the lyrics, I love when people say things along the line of "nothing ever came between us," after they have already broken up. Something was clearly amiss then, no? Discontinuity aside, this is the best part of the song. But then J.Beebs comes in again.

[Chorus]
Baby, baby, baby ohh, like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohh, I thought youd always be mine, mine
Baby, baby, baby ohh, like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohh, I thought youd always be mine, mine

I'm gone, Yeah, yeah, yeah (6x)
Now Im all gone, now im all gone, now im all gone
Gone, gone, gone, gone
I'm gone.

How meta: Justin Bieber says that he is "gone," and then he really is gone 'cause it's the end of the song. He, my friends, is operating on another level entirely. And that level is sheer genius. In the last fourteen seconds of the song he says the word "gone" ten times, an average of once every 1.4 seconds.

Justin Bieber song tally:
"Baby": 54 times
"Yeah": 18 times
"Oh": 17 times
"No": 6 times

54 times for the word "baby." Wow. If we assume that it takes approximately 1.5 seconds to sing the word "baby," if one were to randomly tune in at any point during the 3 minutes and 28 seconds of the song "Baby," one would have a 38.9% chance of hearing Justin Bieber singing the word "baby." Over one out of every three times. That is a lot of babies. And an extremely aptly named song.

Related and amusing website: Lesbians who look like Justin Bieber. It's the hair thing.

Surviving the Aquapocalypse

2010-05-03T14:19:00.020-04:00

We are three days into the Boston water crisis of 2010, or the "Aquapocalypse" (because it's not a real crisis until the media foists said crisis with a clever name). An underground pipe that was funneling water from the Quabbin Reservoir in Weston to basically everywhere else burst apart on Saturday morning, prompting Governor Deval Patrick to issue a "state of emergency" in the Boston and the greater Boston area. More than 2 million people are without drinking water, myself included. The pipe is being worked on around the clock, but Gov. Patrick was on record yesterday stating that it may be "days, not weeks" before water could be tested and hopefully given it the clean bill of health for drinking. Or cooking. Or brushing your teeth.

Governor Patrick's statement of "days, not weeks" is a little disconcerting, because it implies that the timeline including weeks was, at one time, on the table. (Gah.) So at the moment, it looks like our immediate futures will be heavily dictated by availability of bottled water. While boiling water is a viable option, boiling requires the use of a stove, and the burst water pipe is flawlessly timed with the arrival of summer in Boston. 80 degree weather, humidity, and a small old fourth floor apartment without air conditioning does not a great equation make. So while the inner-environmentalist in me dramatically dies a little bit each time I use bottled water to wash a dish, I persevere. Because personal sadness is almost always preferable to personal projectile vomiting. Sorry, nature. You seem to be on the losing end, lately.

Water concerns are on the minds of the multitudes and has made urban living strange and eerily dystopian. As I was setting out on Saturday evening to meet up with some friends I met a city truck that was driving five miles per hour down the main road, lights flashing, and a man yelling into a bullhorn alerting the (probably already intoxicated) citizens of the area to not drink the water. People were flocking to local marts and food stores to buy water bottles en masse, and the giant local 24-hour CVS was already out of them. I was forced to buy a seltzer. But in spite of the impending obstacles in the hours after the water pipe debacle, spirits were high that evening. Many times I overheard people advocating alcohol's sanitizing effects proudly and loudly. Though hardships came in the form of a few ice-less drinks, many people that night danced and were merry in the face of adversity. And then most likely woke up hungover as they weren't supposed to drink the water. Irony.

The water crisis is affecting business as well. As shown in the first photo, Boston-area Starbucks are not brewing coffee. Let me say that again- Starbucks is not brewing coffee. We might as well just shut down as a city. As Anton Chekhov said, "any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out." And a day without coffee is barely a day at all.

I live near three CVS's. (Urbanity at its finest.) This picture is from the one located across the street that had just received a huge shipment of only one thing: Poland Spring water. Crates upon crates and stacked wall to wall of Poland Spring bottles, inside the cargo load of an eighteen wheeler truck. And this was their second shipment of the day. You do the math. It's a great time to be in the bottled water industry. It's a less good time to be... most everyone else. Water is flying off the shelves, as are paper plates and plastic forks and cups due to the recommendations not to ingest anything that was touched by the contaminated water. My roommate and I were forced to buy higher-end plastic plates, adding to a painful stab to my inner environmentalist's last dying breaths.

Though we are, for the good of society and general interaction, allowed to shower, it is highly recommended that we don't do many crucial daily survival tasks. I'll break it down for you.

Things We Can Do:

Buy bottled water.
Boil water, risk heat stroke via stove top, be forced to drink bottled water.
Whine.

Things We Can't Do:

Drink water from the city.
Brush teeth.
Wash dishes.
Wash/eat produce.
Be caffeinated in any form by the life-altering 15th century gift out of Yemen, the coffee bean.
Avoid hearing the word "Aquapocalpyse" at least once an hour.

My roommate and I have come to terms that our probability of projectile vomiting in our future is nothing short of incredibly high. We helped a friend move into her new apartment and thus required water to assuage our collective thirsts from the aforementioned heavy lifting. Regrettably, we learned of the water contamination hours too late, as did many friends I have talked to. But science says water-born illnesses can take a week before they present symptoms, so there are reasons to remain hopeful, at least for the time being. We have been boycotting anything but boiled or bottled water since Saturday afternoon, so the only real threat lies in running on autopilot and forgetting to not brush your teeth with faucet water. (I've had three near misses and one successful failure the morning after the state of emergency, because it's hard to be cognizant in the morning, especially hard when I haven't had any coffee.) We remain cautiously optimistic about our health because the media says that it won't kill us, just incapacitate us for a little while. Most importantly we have each other, (hopefully) robust immune systems, a case load of bottled water, and netflix. We'll be doing just fine.

This crisis is maybe a scratch on the surface in terms of being an actual life-or-death crisis for most people, but it has raised some issues for me. Never before have I experienced first-hand how crippling life would be in a world where water access is restricted, which was only brought to my attention because of the extremely mild inconvenience of having to go out to purchase some cheap and fully available bottled water. But there are cool organizations, like The Water Project, which you can donate to for only $10 dollars and that provides one person with drinking water for 10 years. So instead of spending money on yet another case of bottled water, I'm going to donate and then risk the heat stroke by boiling my water instead. Because life is infinitely more interesting when there's an element of danger. And when you're living through any kind of crisis where the media feels the need to add the suffix, "-pocalypse."

Lyrical Analysis: Rihanna's "Rude Boy"

2010-04-27T13:56:00.007-04:00

Lyrical analyses are a great way to pass the time on the commuter rail (or as the cool kids call it, the crail). Lately I've been venturing into a musical genre that is characterized by driving dance beats, prominent musical break numbers, and mostly nonsensical lyrics. No, not High School Musical. (Jess- looking at you.) I'm speaking, of course, of the songs that call the top 10 countdown their home. This is music that has been gifted to me by my flatmate and all-around hip music-person, RJ.

The best of these artists, in terms of making time go quicker on the crail, is Barbados-born Rihanna. Rihanna is the girl that moved to the States to pursue a record career when she was just 16 and sang that classic song about rain gear. She has had no less than eleven top-ten Billboard hits in her relatively young 5-year career, which, for a 22 year old, is not just a little bit impressive (and most likely a major contributor to her 'tude).

Rihanna's label, Island Def Jam, released her most recent album in 2009. They named it "Rated R" (Get it? ...Ha.) Off that album comes the recent hit that has been flirting with the number one slot on the Billboard Hot 100, "Rude Boy." Some backstory: a 'rude boy' is an affectionate slang term for juvenile delinquents, originating in Jamaica in the 1960s.

I first heard the song "Rude Boy" in a bar downtown, when everyone immediately flocked to the dance floor. So strong is the power of Rihanna. But as with most top 40 (coughKe$hacough), to be a hit on a dance floor relies less on what the song is saying and more on the rhythm behind it. But even acknowledging that some (...a lot) of pop music today avoids silly little things like lyrical content, I was still a bit taken aback with "Rude Boy." There's an excessive amount of repetition, yes, but mostly it was the feeling that listening to this song was like subjective myself to narrative porn, (but narrative porn set to a compelling reggae-inspired beat, which clearly has a large market in the states).

Keep in mind that this is a Billboard hit song. Therefore, these lyrics are probably being sung by twelve year olds the nation, nay- the world, over. Is it catchy? Of course it's catchy, it's a song by Rihanna, the woman who could make you want to dance to a song about domestic abuse, "Breaking Dishes." Should this song be heard by anyone under the state-dependent age that one can legally consent to sexual relations? Survey says: no. Even with today's relaxed attitude towards sex, the lyrics to "Rude Boy"make it the porno of the mainstream pop world. I liken it to Ke$ha's "song," "Blah Blah Blah" where she uses the line, "Don't be a little bitch with your chit-chat, just show me where your dick's at." Aw, warm and fuzzy feelings all over. Yay American pop.

Back to Rihanna's "Rude Boy." The beginning of the song starts with the chorus, which, if you miss it, is played another 8 times. You have time.

Rihanna's "Rude Boy"
[Chorus]
Come here, rude boy, boy; can you get it up?/ Come here rude boy, boy; is you big enough?
Take it, take it baby, baby/ Take it, take it; love me, love me [x2]

There are few things in the world that bug me more than improper verb conjugation in songs. You're taking the time to tell me a story, can't you take the time to make sure the language checks out, too? Here, the intentional use of the second person usage of "to be" comes in the lyric, "is you big enough?" Not only is Rihanna trying to demonstrate her connection to the cool kids by deliberately casting away grammar rules, she is also asking an entirely personal question. At first blush the line could be an innuendo that could refer to her sexual partner's stature, moral high ground, or, ahem, endowment. But the phrase is prefaced by "come here, rude boy: can you get it up?" Can you get up your... posture? Moral aptitude? I don't think so. So we, the listeners, are led to believe it's the third option, the biological endowment of Rihanna's sexual partner. Is there no mystery left in the world, Ri-Ri?

Also, I thought I pretty much understood the mechanics of sex. But the line "take it, take it," when sung by a girl, causes me to pause.

Tonight I'ma let you be the captain/ Tonight I'ma let you do your thing, yeah
Tonight I'ma let you be a rider/ Giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up babe
Tonight I'ma let it be fire/ Tonight I'ma let you take me higher
Tonight, baby, we could get it on, yeah, we could get it on, yeah

Oh, he gets to be a captain! That's exciting. Then he gets to "do [his] thing," (which I'm gathering is to "get it up"?) You have to be a pretty sexy person (and/or *Nsync) to sing the lines "Giddy-up" three times in a row and still be considered cool. (Anyone? Bueller?) I like that Rihanna uses the conditional, "tonight, baby, we could get it on," though after she just commanded him to "get it up," I'm not fully convinced there's any doubt left about what could be happening later. She's not so full of smoke and mirrors, that Rihanna.

Do you like it?/ Boy, I want, want, want whatchu want, want, want
Give it to me, baby like boom, boom, boom/ What I want, want, want is what you want, want, want
Nah nah-ah

Ho hum, typical pop song about sex. Though I haven't heard the words "boom boom boom" in a song since the Vengaboys, and it makes me giggle. Aside from the stereotypical lecherous non-english speaking men, does anyone actually say "boom boom boom?" C'mon, Rihanna, there have to be cuter allusions out there. Know your demographic.

[Chorus]
Come here, rude boy, boy, can you get it up?
Come here, rude boy, boy, is you big enough?
Take it, take it, baby, baby, take it, take it, love me, love me [x2]

Tonight I'ma give it to ya harder/ Tonight I'ma turn ya body out
Relax; let me do it how I wanna/ If you got it I need it and I'ma put it down
Buckle up; I'ma give it to ya stronger/ Hands up; we could go a little longer
Tonight I'ma get a little crazy, get a little crazy, baby

Boy, but that is explicit. If you were to judge Rihanna's sexual preferences only by the lyrics in this song, here's a summary of what she likes so far: pretending to be a horse ("giddy-up"), safety ("buckle up"), commanding others to do her bidding ("hands up," "come here," and "take it"), as well as sharing ("I'ma let you be the captain") and saying onomatopoeias ("boom"). So after this consideration, I ask you- Rihanna: super hot sex god? Or elementary schooler trapped in pop prodigy's body?

Like it?/ Boy, I want, want, want whatchu want, want, want
Give it to me, baby like boom, boom, boom/What I want, want, want is what you want, want, want
Nah nah-ah

[Chorus]
Come here, rude boy, boy can you get it up?
Come here rude boy, boy is your big enough?
Take it, take it, baby, baby, take it, take it, love me, love me [x2]

I like the way you touch me there/ I like the way you pull my hair
Babe, if I don't feel it I ain't faking, no, no
I like when you tell me 'kiss you there'/ I like when you tell me 'move it there'
So giddy-up; time to get it up: you say you a rude boy: show me what you got now
Come here right now/ Take it, take it, baby, baby, take it, take it, love me, love me

We are literally just listening to Rihanna sing about her impending sexual experiences. I like how I'm saying that as if it were a new thing in modern music, but really people- put this in a magazine and it's Playboy. (...'cause people read it for the articles.) Again, yay American pop.

The song ends in the [Chorus]
Come here, rude boy, boy, can you get it up?
Come here, rude boy, boy, is you big enough?
Take it, take it, baby, baby, take it, take it, love me, love me [x2]

Obviously, there is a lot of repetition in this song. But just how much repetition is there? As seen in the following chart, the nine most common words and phrases of "Rude Boy" are shown in descending order of occurrence.

Bet you weren't expecting "love me" to be the fourth largest contender of air space in the song. Here is the same breakdown in a pie graph.

Food for thought: there are about 522 words in "Rude Boy," depending on how you count combination words like "I'ma" and "giddy-up." (...one word?) Most of it is aggressively sexual. There are a few references to love, and the phrase "love me" was the fourth most common word/phrase of the song, repeated 17 times. This reference to love is a good way to divert the focus from the much more animalistic approach to desire, as seen in "take it," "i'ma give it to you harder," etc., etc. The word "boom" was used 6 times, about 6 times too many. Sadly, the phrase "giddy-up" was not used nearly as much as I had hoped it would be at the outset of the analysis. And I'm pretty sure the pie graph won't hold much water, but I know Georgie will like how it looks.

Surreality is a real word because Chel says so

2010-04-22T08:23:00.015-04:00

There have been a few times in the past couple of months when an ominous and powerful sense of surreality has come over me, a feeling that has caused me to ask myself, "No, but really. Really. This is my life now?"

Yesterday it became especially noticeable when I got hit in the face with a vuvuzela. A vuvuzela is a kind of blowing horn that is used at sporting events in South Africa. This vuvuzela was being swung by an enthusiastic toddler, one who was also trying to blow raspberries to the tune of Tom Cochrane's 1991 seminal hit, "Life is a Highway." The toddler then proceeded to pat me on the back and say he was "sowwy." Which was nice of him, I guess, but surreal all the same.

Example Two: when I was in a liquor store with some friends, I was entertaining the idea of a "splurge" by buying a bottle wine with the Barefoot label, instead of the usual Charles Shaw. That extra dollar could be used for laundry!

Or last night when, after the splurge, I didn't have enough quarters to wash my clothes in a traditional washer and dryer (oh, life); instead I did it by hand in the kitchen sink, MTV's classic 16 & Pregnant playing in the other room. Because, if I have to pay that much for cable, Comcast, I am going to get my money's worth. (And then who will be laughing?!) Perhaps this is not so much surreal as unfortunate, but it is definitely telling.

It's after events like those mentioned above when I boggle at the fact that these are the events that now occupy my days. For some reason, the events that fill up the lives of people in their "twenties" on television seem rather different than what I'm currently experiencing. (Though, happily, I do finally look old enough to belong on the types of shows that are being targeted at teens because I am now the same age as the actors portraying them. Does that mean that my real-life thirties will actually look more like my twenties in tv years? Will I have to turn fifty before I appreciate CougarTown [if ever]? Is television perpetually just a decade ahead of real life? I digress.)

Last weekend I peered at the piece of paper some call my "college degree," my name all nice and scripty, as well as some elegant latin that I don't understand. The "degree" was hanging on the wall in my parent's house, and it looked very imposing and awfully pretty, sitting up there all important-like like it meant something. And such a nice frame, too! Though I've yet to discern it's true purpose in my life, maybe it will be worth more in time, like a fine wine. That's what people keep saying to me, anyway. But I wouldn't really know, as I'm pretty sure Three Buck Chuck doesn't follow the normal vineyard aging process, and that's my main frame of reference these days.

People also have told me that personality is the winning factor in job interviews. So, on recommendation from monster.com, I have made a list. But instead of the traditional list of "qualifications," I've noted some stories that have made a lasting impression on me, and that (maybe) could be used as potential ice-breakers and charming anecdotes to secure the high-paying, jet-setting job of my dreams. This is a way more interesting list.

Things that set me apart from the crowd of job-hungry applicants/ reasons I am awesome:

At my peak, I could hula hoop upwards of 5 hoops at one time. (My peak may or may not have been 4th grade.)
With an unbelievable amount of luck and star-alignment, I won the Western Massachusetts Free-Throw Competition and a shiny trophy half my height in 7th grade. I then competed in the state of Massachusetts Free-Throw Contest, and lost. Badly.
I was a blacksmith one year in college, and made enough sculpted metal bottle openers to supply a small, drunken army.
I can play the piano, guitar, alto sax, trombone, flute, drums, and violin all decently well, due to amazingly supportive parents and, most likely, undiagnosed childhood ADD.
I was once a promotions model at a historical museum. They paid me for use of my photographic likeness in non-alcoholic beer and mixed nuts.
I lived on a boat for 4 weeks, clocking in a personal record of being seasick for 23 hours straight. If you don't think you can be seasick while you are sleeping, you are wrong.
I once swam with sharks in the Bahamas, but found out only after my friends and I had gone cliff-jumping onto a deeper local reef. A local teacher, who was also swimming, told us about the sharks once we had already jumped in the water. The cliff was 20 feet high. The man was laughing.
Under the duress of the "double dog dare," I have swum nudely in the Northern Atlantic, Southern Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Lake Michigan. (Why isn't swum a word? It is fantastic.)
As is the case of many other idealistic young persons, I have written a novel. I like to tell people that the concept is "a modern take on "The Sun Also Rises," but after three failed attempts to finish that book, I'm not really sure if this is the case.
I can identify popular songs throughout the decades after just 5 seconds of listening with a deadly 89% accuracy, according to Sporcle.com. The last one won't really help me secure a job, but it will make me a highly entertaining travel partner, and that's what really counts.

The Food Revolution & KFC's Double Down

2010-04-17T14:07:00.013-04:00

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Know what I'd like to eat with my meat? More meat." Kentucky Fried Chicken has just the thing for you. But first, let's go back to two important food movements that have taken place this year.

A little over two months ago, on February 9th, 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama launched a movement that she has stated to be her White House Legacy, the "Let's Move" campaign. Let's Move encourages better food education for parents and children, promotes physical activity in kid's daily lives, and importantly wants to ensure healthier food options in school cafeterias across America.

Also in February, activist and chef Jamie Oliver received the TED Prize at the TED convention in Longbeach, California. Oliver spoke on the pitfalls of American food culture and his desire to start "an all-out assault on our ignorance of food." Jamie, like the First Lady, is quickly building up support for his Food Revolution, helping many in America, especially kids, to start inquiring about where their food comes from and combating the very real epidemic of childhood obesity.

So, on April 12th 2010, two months after these two fairly large social movements hit the general public, KFC decided to unleash their newest diabolical creation, the "Double Down."

KFC's the Double Down

Just what is a Double Down?
It's a sandwich, but a sandwich that gets rid of that pesky, carb-loaded bread, instead replacing it with two pieces of breaded and fried (or grilled) chicken. Its purpose is to have you "taste the unHungry side of KFC." Between the layers are the Colonel's"secret sauce" (why so secret, colonel?), two types of cheese, and bacon. Because if you've already made to choice to eat fried chicken, what harm is a little bacon going to do?

The nutrition of the Double Down
Topping off at 53 grams of protein, the Double Down contains 71% of an adult's daily recommended dose of sodium. It's being promoted as containing a shockingly low 540 calories, (which is practically a reasonable number for a single meal, calorie-wise. Not factoring in the french fries...) Compared to Burger King's a longtime staple the single Whopper, with 670 calories, the Double Down seems to be a slightly better choice. (Especially compared with the meat-packing wonder, the Triple Whopper, clocking in at 1160 calories = heart attack city.)

What's more, KFC does give the protein seeking diner an option of grilling the chicken instead of the deep fryer. While this change of fry to grill saves (shockingly only) 80 calories, it also unexpectedly adds in 50 more milligrams of sodium. The grilled (code word for "healthier") option has a total of 1430 milligrams of sodium, or 95.3% of one's daily recommended dose of sodium. The MayoClinic's website recommends not exceeding "the range of 1,500 and 2,400 milligrams (mg) a day for healthy adults" and to "keep in mind that the lower your sodium, the more beneficial effect on blood pressure." But what do they know?

KFC, for its part, does dedicate a page up on its website called "Keep It Balanced." Their Keep it Balanced statement:

"We believe eating sensibly, combined with appropriate exercise, is the best solution for a healthy lifestyle. KFC offers a variety of menu items for those that want lower fat, lower calorie choices, including Tender Roast and Honey BBQ Sandwiches, corn on the cob, BBQ baked beans and green beans."

For obvious reasons, the Double Down is not mentioned here (or how I like to think of it, the 'double the sodium, down for the count.') While this statement does seem like a considerate and healthfully-minded gesture, in this day and age it would be actually kind of shocking if they didn't have some sort of a balanced diet campaign. KFC's partnership with eFit4me.com, an online and customizable resource helping signed-up users to make healthy eating choices as well as get into shape, feels like a step in the right direction. Efit4me's mission statement says that their primary goals are to "educate our users on how to change their fitness and nutrition behaviors as they work toward achieving enhanced lifelong health and wellness." Here's a educational tip that you don't even have to sign up for: maybe try to not eat so much at KFC. And perhaps you should steer clear of the Double Down. Just saying.

The eFit4me and KFC cooperative comes across as mainly strategic PR backpedaling and efforts to avoid an legal persecution, such as Pelman v. McDonald's Corporation and whether McDonald's was legally responsible for teenager Ashley Pelman's health problems caused by her obesity and the family's history of eating at McDs.

It's not news that there are some Americans who can't afford or don't have the time to not make eating at fast food places like KFC, a McDonald's, a Burger King a regular occurrence. The Double Down's commercials show men in their 20s and 30s, so it is mostly clear that the "sandwich" is not being targeted at children, which is decently good news and not totally at odds with combating childhood obesity. But will some kids still order it? Probably.

There are many who will even seek out this sandwich just for its sheer novelty, like its predecessors of Angus Bacon Burger at McD's and BK's Bacon Double Cheeseburger. At the end of the day, KFC's newest promotion is not only a missed opportunity to saddle up with two movements that will be hugely influential in the next coming years but also a step backward in terms of securing a place in the shifting world of fast food options. And that's something that will have a long memory in the collective American consciousness, if Oliver and the First Lady have anything to say about it.

Lemon Laws

2010-04-14T22:38:00.016-04:00

Genetics are a peculiar concept. Sometimes certain genetic combinations can come together in such a way that you get amazing results. Albert Einstein. Alessandra Ambrosio. This kid. But sometimes such a meeting of the genes can create unexpected results. How are parents to know what could possibly happen when they procreate? They don't. They just marry and hope for the best. Genes are a crap shoot, and some aren't as lucky as others.

I qualify for the latter category, as I am basically a lemon. You know how a car can look fine on the outside at a dealership, but if you buy it and take it home you discover that it has all these physical problems that weren't advertised? That's a lemon. I'm like that, but biological.

The whole lemon thing started to show when I was two with an eye condition opthamologist call "strabismus." Imagine a lazy eye. Now imagine it's exact opposite, an ocular muscle so powerful that it can totally counteract all the other muscles in the eye. Instead of one eye lolly-gagging around and staring at the periphery, a lá a fish, my left eye just kinda chills around staring inward at my nose. Like Groucho Marx. (But cuter?) And it's only my left eye. You know when that type of movement is useful? When you're an iguana. But when you're a human? You only see that stuff at circuses. (Albeit a very lame circus.)

Thus, growing up I avoided focusing on any object and all objects too close to my face, lest my "special" eye cross in. For the most part this tactic worked, but it also meant that I met with more than my share of doors, chairs, and small children who dared cross my blurry, unfocused path. Luckily with the passing of years, this eye trait only shows itself to the world when I am overtired and don't have enough energy to focus on not focusing. Weird? Perhaps. But people know how to handle someone with a lazy eye. They laugh appropriately. Since mine did unexpected things (Why only one eye? "Was I doing it on purpose?" Yes, because I just think it looks super cool) I usually just got a mixture between fascination and disgust. Disgust was not exactly a sentiment I was going for in middle school, especially as everyone else was getting their first kiss.

"Hey Em, want to go see that movie... ew nevermind, what's wrong with your eye?!"
"Nothing!!... love me?"

Thanks, parents. Hours of my life that I will never get back were spent fretting over my first kiss. (What if I forgot and try to actually look at him?!) In reality, my first kiss went over decently well, happening at a birthday party at my friend's backyard barn where I nearly choked on a twizzler. But that's a different story entirely.

Now, I love my parents. They are great. They fed me, attended all of my soccer games, put me through school, and still laugh at my jokes. (Because they are FUNNY.) And I am, for the most part, healthy and normal. Well, except for my jaw. But that isn't entirely the fault of the gene's of my parents.

If you didn't know, apparently there are repercussions to signing your signature on that little waiver that the hospital makes you sign before anyone performs any surgery (and one should always take the time to fully consider the consequences of such surgery). With my wisdom teeth surgery last spring, all four- the whole she-bang, I was one of the rare statistics of "people who have had bad things happen to them during surgery." PSA: Kids- it could happen to you. I lost the feeling on the right side of my jaw, lip, and tongue. As in, I lost all the feeling. Fun for poking yourself with sharp objects as a parlor trick? Definitely. (Also another characteristic of a pretty lame circus.) But except for the very real potential to drool on people when I'm not paying attention, it's not wholly bad. I did learn to chew food in a whole new way. I've read somewhere that doing old tasks in a new way is mentally stimulating. Would I have rather just rearranged my room? Maybe, but beggars can't always be choosers.

My friend TP mentioned my jaw to her professor (as any person would, I suppose) and he told her that the same thing had happened to him. (I'm not alone!) And that the feeling had even come back. (There is hope!) ...after only 27 years. So. There's that.

So I am a cross-eyed, drooling lemon. But I am a healthy cross-eyed, drooling lemon. And my mom loves me. Because she has to. And will likely be the only comment on this post. Hi, Mom! I don't really curse your genes.

...Most days.

Editors note: I realize that these two things alone do not a lemon make. I just didn't want to go on and on about my own ailments. But since some believe this to be whining (coughDancough), I will continue on and prove the lemon-ness. For example, I am also mildly allergic to most things under the sun. Not anaphylactic shock allergic, but just an ever-present undercurrent of allergic reactions to most things on God's green earth. So, that's cool. Most preservatives give me migraines, even the ones in the medicine that is supposed to alleviate migraines. I'm even nauseously allergic to the smell of peppermint, the very thing that is supposed to soothe upset stomachs. I can induce an asthma attack after only one dance to a Lady Gaga song. (Rah rah oh la wheeze... wheeze.) My hearing is pretty wonky from the years of ear infections, infections that can easily be traced back to a maybe not so incredibly hearty gene pool; my left ear is shot in terms of the upper and lower register. I can't remember anything short term, but the daily happenings of hollywood stars is something that always seems to stick. I also have no feeling in my left pinky toe. There now, Dan, I feel much better.

I think.

Roaches in the Keyboard

2010-04-09T09:51:00.041-04:00

Yesterday, as per my Wednesday schedule, I went into the aquarium to work. I sat behind the only computer in the Freshwater area, an old beat-up Dell stashed behind-the-scenes. The Freshwater area houses piranhas, turtles, carp, anacondas, and all your riverine aquatic creatures and/or charismatic Amazonian megafauna. Freshwater has a very clubhouse feel: there are a lot of wooden planks, plants, and wet floors from some overflowing tanks. The air hangs heavy and damp due to the continual spray of "rainwater" that drips down to the trees and bushes in the exhibits. It took a little while for me to be able to say goodbye to my old department and the sweet, sweet Jellies. But now, Freshwater is my own little personal tropical rainforest.

Usually at work my routine is to turn on some tunes and type 'til my heart's content, pumps and water-sprays clicking on in the background and providing perfect ambient noise. However, after lunch yesterday the other intern Jimmy was "doing work" at the computer (checking his fantasy baseball roster), so I took the opportunity to take a short break.

It was late afternoon. I was tired. As he typed, I zoned out by staring into the space, gazing without seeing towards the computer area. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, a movement caught my attention. There, underneath the Enter key on the keyboard, a small pair of antennae were poking out. They tentatively scanned the surface of the table. The antennae were long, maybe three quarters of an inch. They felt around the keyboard and, suddenly frightened by Jimmy's tap tap tapping, popped back in from whence they came. Jimmy saw them, and then turned to me with an astoundingly nonchalant tone.

"Have you met the roaches yet? They live in the keyboard. I think Marion named some of them."

Jimmy pulled the little roach out by its long antennae and proceeded to walk over to the turtle tank, where a group of businesspeople were getting a walking tour of the exhibits in Freshwater. Jimmy tossed the roach into the tank and waited to see if the turtle would take it. The group barely acknowledged the action and he shrugged, walking back and hopping up to the computer.

"There's a whole family in here." Jimmy told me as he shook the keyboard against the old wooden desk. Little bits of white fluff and black things, that I can only assume were roach poo, fell out from between the cracks in the keys. "The turtles love them."

This is what most days are like at this place. And, I'm assuming, most nonprofits. There's a whole slew of unusual characters, clad in severely unflattering khaki, who work together on so many large and unconventional projects that the little things don't even phase them. After spending an hour siphoning out orange anaconda feces from the Amazon river exhibit, a couple of live baby roaches barely register. The discovery of roaches living in one's keyboard becomes useful as potential fodder for the turtles and merely a gently amusing anecdote.

There are other interesting discoveries that happen here, too. The deep sea fish exhibit recently had to be shut down for reasons that bring me nothing but endless amusement. You see, the exhibit was veiled behind curtains that visitors had to walk through to view special deep sea fish. The fish are (were) phosphorescent and could only be found in the deep benthos of the ocean. To see them in all their colorful phosporescent glory, you would need near-complete darkness. Hence the curtain. Upon the discovery of a pair of panties in the deep-sea fishes exhibit, the higher ups had recently decided that the exhibit was a hazard. The panties' discovery prompted many to speculate about the exhibit's possible uses by other opportunistic sex fiends, and maybe even pedophiles, that could conceivably infiltrate the aquarium's unsuspecting and kid-friendly displays. This is a family institution. The pair of panties brought the ultimate end to the really cool (albeit dark) deep sea fishes exhibit. Damn you, horny youths.

In character-building news, have you ever walked by a person holding a clipboard in the street and looking at you with eyes that shine with hopeful enthusiasm? Did you then avoid any and all eye contact with said person and turn up the volume on your headphones instead? Congratulations, you are a terrible person. On Wednesday that clipboard-carrying person and was me. Me, desperately trying to get people to answer three painless questions for aquarium research. I was supposed to get 200. I got 24. Even after I switched to a more aggressive approach ("Non-committal survey! No purchase necessary! For the good of science and your children!"), the response was less than overwhelming. Though brimming with the aforementioned hopeful enthusiasm, I got very few takers.

We, the clipboard carrying peoples of the United States, are good, hard-working samaritans. We have feelings. We just want to study the wealth and diversity of the local populace through simple, innocuous, and virtually painless question-and-responses, the results of which will likely support the greater good of all humanity! How dare you.

Nah, I'm just kidding. Besides being completely demoralized, it wasn't so bad. And when people weren't giving me and my clipboard a 20 foot berth, their responses (besides the No thank you's, I'm all goods, and so sorry's) were, at the very least, entertaining.

Sometimes I got lessons about different parts of speech.

"Hi! I'm doing research with the New Engl-"
"Got to go get back to working. Doing work... at work."

Ah, I see. Please go on about this "work."

Sometimes I got encouragement, without the added benefit of any actual data for my survey.

""Hi! I'm doing research with the New Engl-"
"Wish I could help you. Good luck getting people to talk! Perfect day for surveys."

Don't give me any false hope by engaging me in conversation, sir. You just crush my dreams.

Dude, I'm not going to lie: doing surveys is not something I'd wish even upon a frenemy. But on my commute home I walked past a "Save the Children" petitioner stationed a few blocks away from my apartment. I still felt an impulse to leave my headphones on and keep walking. I just wanted to get home; they had to understand that! But then I remembered with shame the feelings of inadequacy I developed from being rejected by nearly every working man, tourist, and Benjamin-Franklin impersonator alike.

So I made myself stop. And I chatted the guy up. I learned that this boy Jules, like me, had just graduated. That Jules, like me, wanted to make a positive impact in the world. That Jules, like me, abhorred asking people questions on the street. He hated the rejection. Amen, brother. We shared a moment and almost laughed together, reminding ourselves of the utter importance of the data we were collecting. And how much it all would mean, one day.

I want everyone to stop and take a moment to talk with that person on the street today. You know where they are. Remember, they could be just like you. And they probably need more than a little bit of encouragement right about now. Maybe you should bring a beer. And mention the roach story; it was a good ice-breaker for me and Jules.

Innovation meets indie folk

2010-04-06T13:07:00.006-04:00

If anyone is in the Berkshires this Friday, I totally objectively, not in any way biased at all recommend that you go catch this show. Coincidentally, I may have written an article about them for the Berkshire Eagle. The world works in mysterious ways.

Innovation meets indie folk
Band and singer with Berkshire roots to play Mission

By Emily Flynn
Special to The Eagle

PITTSFIELD - "We've got a cool mix of instruments that allows us to push boundaries," said Auyon Mukharji. " We'll put some mandolin and sixstringed cello-violin duets all in the middle of a hard- hitting rock song. There's lot of flexibility, and we're using it to push how we're looking at music."

Darlingside is a string- rock quintet based out of Northampton. Caitlin Canty is a Vermont- raised singer- songwriter who has found new roots in New York City. Together, the joint tour-de-force will be playing at Mission Bar and Tapas in Pittsfield on Thursday, April 8.

"There's so many different types of songs and so much collaboration. Our shows are cool because you get good variety; singer-songwriter performances and a string rock show, with a ton of collaboration between," said Canty.

She has been compared to artists Patty Griffin and Norah Jones and says that her sound is mellow, singer-songwriter folk with acoustic guitar. Others have called her voice "maple sugar on snow," a nod to her Northeast roots and sweet, pure vocals.

"They've brought so much to my music," says Canty, praising Darlingside's incorporation of non-traditional instruments and upbeat rock influence.

Darlingside and Canty have been collaborating in concerts since November of 2009. "Darlingside [has] some of the best voices I've ever heard and gorgeous songs. Their electric cello and string-driven sound is full of life and energy. They are brilliant," she said.

Darlingside is made up of five multi- talented 20- somethings: Auyon Mukharji, Don Mitchell, Sam Kapala, David Senft, and Harris Paseltiner. Their indie rock sound, they say, is "characterized by elegantly crafted cello-violin duets, soaring harmonies, catchy hooks and compelling beats." Each band member comes from a background that impacts his music, from Mitchell's training as a classical vocalist to Kapala's experience with celtic and jazz. Between them, the members of Darlingside play the violin, guitar, mandolin, cello, keys, drums, bass, and the saz, a type of Turkish lute that Mukharji picked up last year when he was living in Istanbul.

The band met as undergraduates at Williams College while enrolled in local folk singer-songwriter Bernice Lewis's winter study course, "Contemporary American Singer-Songwriter." Lewis called them "a powerhouse of vocal, instrumental, songwriting, and performing talent."

Canty also studied with Lewis while at Williams. She has a wide range of influences, from the bluesy Keb Mo' and Ray LaMontagne to more folkminded Allison Krauss and Lyle Lovett, with Led Zeppelin thrown in. She took a headfirst plunge into music when she quit her day job in May of 2009. She had worked behind-the-scenes in music production and background vocals before moving into sustainability consulting, all the while keeping her own music on the side.

"It made me miserable, not playing music. So I felt, 'it's all or nothing.' I'll make the leap," she said.
She has been well-received ever since and recently, with Darlingside, performed at the Paramount Theater in her hometown of Rutland, Vt., to raise money for the Haiti effort. Like Canty, Darlingside also made the executive decision to focus on music. They converted their basement to a studio, Oxbow Records, and use professional recording equipment to record and produce songs. There they also recorded and produced Canty's latest album, "Neon Streets," which will be available May 6. Canty's previous album, "Green," was released independently in 2007 and is available on iTunes.

Darlingside views being in the band as a full-time commitment.

"It's like running a startup," said Mukharji. "We all have our own jobs besides the music." In addition to writing and recording their own music, the band handles the production, booking, show promotion, and even merchandising to help cater to all current and future fans.

"There's always music in the house," said cellist Harris Paseltiner. "There will be people downstairs playing around, upstairs harmonizing, or outside sitting and playing banjo by the banks of the river. It's like a songwriters' retreat."

Like many as-of-yet unsigned artists, Darlingside and Canty utilize new media, like Myspace and Facebook, to build a grassroots fan-base. Darlingside has one song available for download on their website, the track "Surround." They plan on releasing live tracks that were recorded live at their Paramount Theater performance in Rutland through their Oxbow records in the coming months.

"It's a party, that's for sure. Living with a bunch of best friends, doing what we love to do," Paseltiner said. "And it's absolute treat to be working with Caitlin."

Lessons from our youths

2010-04-05T23:03:00.017-04:00

Alcohol does interesting things to people.

On Thursdays I take the commuter rail from the North Shore to the big city, and am typically one of the only poor souls traveling inbound. But it's nice and quiet, and I use that time to call my family and friends, take a quick power nap, access the free wifi (whee! public transportation!) and all that fun stuff I don't normally get a chance to do (besides accessing the internets. I do that constantly.) Last week there was one other couple on the train, seated a few seats away from my middle of the train perch (for it's the most spacious, psychologically).

So my knowledge of the french language is limited. I can say most of the bare minimum language requirements: hello, goodbye, let's go, and "je suis anana," what my older sister taught me to say before a school field trip in high school. (Literally, "I am a pineapple." Family is the best.) Though I lack a definite fluency with the French language, there are certain nuances of any language that become apparent to even an untrained ear. For instance, starting each sentence off with "Je suis" ("I am") is perhaps not the best way to demonstrate one's command of the French language. Apparently, this is not a deterrent for certain types of people. (Annoying people.)

"Je suis bien. Ça va?"

"Je suis fatigue. Ça va?"

(Laugh laugh laugh.)

"Je suis malade. Ça va?"

"Je suis desole."

(More raucous laughter.)

"Je suis prest."

"C'est bien!"

And so on, and so on.

For thirty whole minutes. It was sort of like listening to a parrot, but a parrot with less intelligence and way more alcohol. (But then again, I haven't met very many parrots in my life.) That was the key factor in their exchange, I discovered; the shared brown paper bag between them with, what I can only assume based on their content of their conversation, to be alcohol. It actually made me feel better to come to this realization, because I wasn't exactly grasping what was so uproariously funny about someone saying they were tired and sorry. And it's hard not to listen in when people are laughing so loudly. My curiosity got the best of me, but lesson learned. Alcohol: can make you seem pretentious and dumb, even if it's just from the point of view of that one lone girl judging you on the commuter rail.

In related news, there comes a point in any evening (or dance party, or bar mitzfah) when the most perfect end of the night drinking songs come on. Call on Me, by Eric Prydz. Don't stop believing, by Journey. Piano Man, by Billy Joel. Most anything by Cascada. Those kind of songs that have an catchy, easily learned, repetitive chorus that people can sing loud enough to forget the fact that they don't know the verse. You know, the good songs.

In college, the last call song of choice was Shout, by the Isley Brothers. It could be have been an iPod, it could have been a cover band, either way everyone kicking their heels up, throwing their hands up, throwing their heads back, and dancing. Especially towards the end of my junior year, going to a party on a warm spring weekend was sort of like attending a wedding. A wedding without the formal dress code and free cake, but with the addition of a freakish amount of twenty-somethings rhythmically flinging their bodies around like they were performing a tarentella. (I.e. an awesome wedding.)

The point I'm trying to make here, I think, is that faking French conversation while drinking during the daylight hours on a commuter rail? Pretentious. Drinking and dancing around to Shout with a ton of friends? Most awesome.

In sum (and Ale's words) just carp the diem and dance. There it is, your lesson of the week. One that we should have learned in kindergarten. Minus the drinking.

Martenitsa

2010-04-01T08:09:00.004-04:00

Martenitsa is a tradition that my friend Tanya, born in Bulgaria, keeps alive in the States through the handing out of red and white yarn bracelets. The story goes that one is supposed to wear the bracelet until they see the first sign of spring, a stork. As storks are relatively few and far between on the North American continent, the tradition has been modified to include the act of viewing a first sign of spring, typically a blooming plant or tree.

Every spring for the past couple of years my goal is to try to keep it on as long as possible. (Much to the chagrin of Tanya and her cultural traditions.) This is apparently against the Martenitsa spirit. It's hard for me to voluntarily remove it once she has tied it onto my wrist. I love my bracelet.

So this morning, on an early walk past the Commons, I (begrudgingly) acknowledged, after the tenth blooming tree I passed, that it was finally time for me and my bracelet to part ways and to usher in the coming spring by tying it to a blooming tree.

I like to think that I choose the prettiest blooming tree in Boston Commons. Happy spring, e'rybody! Celebrate accordingly.

Life in These United States

2010-03-29T22:29:00.022-04:00

I've always tended to be a hands-in-many-honey-pots kind of girl. There can be really cool and unexpected cross-over between two seemingly unrelated activities. Recently, for example, I learned a little bit about dinosaurs from kid's book during the course of a normal day nannying for my nephews. Later that same week I was able to casually contribute a little something into a conversation that just happened to lean towards ancient aquatic ancestors. ("Oh, like the diplosaurus. Ha ha, how do I know? It's just a little something I picked up.")

I wear many hats lately. I have been interning at an aquarium-based startup company focused on sustainability and poverty alleviation in rainforest communities. I nanny for my sister and the two cutest nephews known to man. I also freelance write for my hometown paper, reporting on all the hard-hitting kind of news that can be written from two and a half hours across the state. Life is just more interesting this way.

But being interdisciplinary in the "real world" can lead to some potentially embarrassing situations if one is not paying as careful attention as one probably should. Like, for example, (hypothetically) walking into a meeting with one's boss with a sticker of Mater, the tow truck from the movie Cars, affixed to the back of one's hair. For many, this situation might pose a problem. For me, I put the sticker in my pocket and carried on with the conversation. These things happen. Later on, I wondered if my nephews had purposefully placed that sticker in my hair. I thought over how long it might have been there. And I toyed briefly with the idea of showering more often. (But then, what would I have to write about in my blog?)

The variety in jobs does help to pay my rent check, as well as keep my spirits high. Whenever I have a poor performance day, say writing grants or researching potential donors, I can just head to my nephew's house, where I get commended for taking little bites at the dinner table. "Yay! You did it, Auntie Emma!" said Cole today, clapping his hands and then pointing to the strawberry in my hand that I had, successfully, taken a bite from.

I did it. It's little motivations like these in life that keep me going.

I also like to think back to where I was a year ago, in college, writing "thought papers" on pressing and critical issues affecting the modern world, so pressing and critical that they currently reside in the back of a closet at my parent's house. I did some important work, people. If someone had asked me to spend 10 hours researching a topic that would culminate in a page and a half article, dollars to donuts this girl wouldn't have even gotten past the first wikipedia search before my attention had wandered. 10 hours of interviews and research and writing for a total of 700 paltry words, are you joking? But now, when there is even a slight monetary incentive, ain't nobody gonna stop me. And this besides the sheer satisfaction I get by just seeing my name in print, published. It's pure vanity, but it helps to pay the bills as well as pave the way for a future being able to continue pursuing more interdisciplinary lines of work. Lines of work that hopefully involve less stickers in unconventional places. I'm not saying none, I'm just saying less.

Vecinos

2010-03-23T23:59:00.029-04:00

It is pretty much inevitable that, once you move away from home, you will be forced to interact with those randomly selected people whom you happen to live by: your neighbors. If you're lucky, you might end up with a wacky Seinfeldian type or one of the cast from Friends. You could move in next door to a totally cool couple, your future ex-girlfriend, entirely too-nosy neighbors, or even bird collectors. The world is a crazy, dangerous place.

Technically my first "neighbor" was my twin sister. Growing up with her gave me a lifetime of neighborly experience. When I was trying to study she felt the time was right to start singing show-tunes. When I wanted to nap she moved onto power ballads. When it was time to sleep she started singing pop tunes, slow, bluesy, and ironically. Life is all about learning and taking the small lessons offered to you by others to better yourself. Thus, I learned to completely tune out any and all surrounding environments. It was, and remains, a life skill. By the time I graduated high school, I felt that this learned adaptation of 'tuning out to tune in', as my mom calls it, would give me an almost unfair advantage in the loud, crazy, sex-ridden dorms of college.

But I was wrong. There are some things that you have to be physically deaf to avoid hearing. And you can't un-hear them once you do.

Though I escaped my freshman year of college virtually unscathed, aurally or otherwise, I moved into my upper-class dorm on the 28th of August, next door to a boy whom I'll call "Guillermo." Guillermo, it seems, had a zest about life. Guillermo was a lover of the ladies. As it is only natural when you live in close proximity to another, you almost subconsciously start to discern your neighbor's unique habits, routines, and musical preference. From my perspective, Guillermo napped. Guillermo, at his leisure, attended a class or two. Guillermo enjoyed mo-town. But most interesting was the fact that Guillermo had a consistent and inexhaustible slew of women who desired to share his bed. It was college, after all. These things happen. While I had anticipated this scenario once upon a time back in high school, I felt that my ability to block sounds was not only strong, secure, but virtually impenetrable. I scoffed, unconcerned, those first couple of weeks of my sophomore year, confident that this living situation would prove to be but a blip on my radar.

And I would be very wrong.

Though Guillermo and I rarely exchanged anything besides the passing pleasantry, we did acknowledge each others' existence in the quiet moments of the co-ed bathroom, brushing our respective teeth. I knew we weren't going to be besties, mainly because our friendship was precluded by the fact that my bed was against our shared wall. Between that, there existed not an iota of soundproofing between the plaster, Guillermo, and I. So Guillermo and I felt close, very close... too close. My room was not palatial and the bed could only fit against that one Guillermo-y wall. (It was college, after all.) I heard everything. (Everything.) Thus, I spent many a night in the common room, tossing and turning on top of the high-backed "post-modern" "couches", viewing Lifetime original movies late into the night through tired eyes, and trying to hum loud enough to block out the sounds drifting in from down the hall. In some parts of the world, this treatment might be considered torture. In America, it's just another night in higher ed.

When the year ended, Guillermo and I went our separate ways. I thought I came out with a great story about terrible roommates ("The sex-obsessed college boy! So rare! So terrible!"). I said aloud (to myself) that I could now put my most interesting roommate experience behind me.

But I soon discovered: I could not. One year later...

It started with the house pick senior year; my friends and I chose to live in a cool, old, retired fraternity house. Big lofted ceilings, dark wooden fixtures, a fireplace, a marble kitchen, a double-wide winding staircase, a guy to girl ratio of 22:7; the house was perfect. This year my new roommates were my friend, recently back from abroad, and a new dorm-mate, "Horatio." Horatio and I had opposite schedules, and we would sometimes pass each other in the hall as he was leaving and I was entering. But the one thing we did share in common was our late-night activities: we both listened to Horatio sing, deep from his very soul. One was voluntary, one- not so much. Horatio would start singing some gospel, then maybe sample some R&B. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye might even make an appearance. I have to admit even now that he had a great voice, but there are some times of the night when blessed angels on high could be singing the gospel and I wouldn't exactly be in the most benevolent frame of mind to appreciate it.

Now that I'm living in an apartment building I'm discovering much the same interactions and frustrations that come with living near other people, but these are in entirely new and way more boring ways. Instead of being woken up by gospel singing in the middle of the night, I am now woken up by early Sunday morning floor waxing.

I understand that people celebrate Sundays through their own special rituals. Mine is catching up on sleep. Jesus understands that; we're cool. For others, there are different ways of celebrating the Lord's day, aside from attending church and participating in silent prayer. For example, have you ever considered marathon floor-waxing? I know a few people who can give you some pointers: the people above me. They have thusly earned the moniker "the Serial Waxers." (Which would also as double as a great indie rock band name). As is standard in most 19th century urban building construction, my neighbor's floor is my ceiling with entirely no soundproofing between. It sounds like they are in my apartment waxing, which would be a terribly frightening way to wake up, really. (Who are you? How did you get in?! You missed a spot!) In reality, I just lose the sleep without gaining the benefit of a good floor waxing. But one day I hope to be invited up to their apartment, just to touch their floor; there is no way that it doesn't shine like St. Peter's gate.

To be fair, three colorful neighborly experiences are not something to go crying over. They are even fun tales to tell, and something I might just add to my resumé. I'll put it under the heading "Life Experience," for they have given me "interpersonal skills,""character," "compassion," and most importantly,"sleep deprivation." You know, life experience.

Luck o' the Irish

2010-03-19T00:16:00.007-04:00

There is one day every year when four out of five people on the street will be wearing green. And by god, that green will be bright. There will be green top hats, green sunglasses, green glitter, faux irish-red beards galore, and shamrocks will be worn without shame. In fact, there is more than a little pride. I am speaking, of course, of Ireland Appreciation Day.

Depending on just who you believe, the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, broke the paganistic Irish of their polytheistic ways through Christianity and/or drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Either way, he clearly did great things for the Irish.

St. Patrick's day is one holiday that the city of Boston absolutely relishes in. And with good reason: after the potato famine hit Ireland in 1847 the previously anglo-saxon city was flooded with the gaelic-speaking, Guinness-loving Irish Catholics. (What what.) Though at the time it was not a exactly a "happy" welcome for the puritanical community (...massive cultural ostracization), St. Patrick's day has gained so much popularity that it is practically against the law in Boston to not be Irish. (And we're the liberal state.)

Our Irish ancestors settled their large freckled families into the crowded neighborhoods of Boston: the South End, Charlestown, mostly anywhere along the waterfront. These brave men and women did whatever it took to feed their families: they pushed carts, they unloaded ships, they did a variety of other thankless and unskilled labors to put clothes on their backs and food on the table. And on the 17th of March multitudes of their descendants and jovial imposters acknowledge their bravery through shouting "éirinn go brách!", donning comically large (or small) green hats, parading down the streets drunkenly, and swigging Irish beer made in America that is dyed green. Just what they would have wanted, I'm sure.

This year the holiday fell on a Wednesday, but that didn't stop the bajillions of Bostonians and Irish-appreciating tourists from flooding into the streets, green blurs wobbling tipsily over cobblestone. There were vendors hawking all sorts of furry green hats, green mardis gras beads (only a dollar!), sausage (...as the Irish do?) and a thousand other green-themed unneccessaries. Hundreds and hundreds of St. Patrick's revelers milled around the entrances of Irish-sounding bars, hoping to pay a cover to get in at places that normally advertise two dollar beer. The Black Rose. The Kinsale. The An Tain.

In all honesty, it was a great way to spend the evening. Saturated by traditional Irish drinking songs, sipping cheap Guinness, and admiring the host of people decked in green: I have never felt so Irish. An bhfuil tú dálta fós?