New Frustrations in Old Chinese

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.