Ruminations

Adorable Avery

2005-05-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

As many of you have born witness, I am infatuated with my precious, precious neice. (Mere-- I love Owen just as much, but he doesn't make me laugh the same way...yet.) So I thought I'd share a little story from last weekend that show's just how endearing she can be.

She was trying to make her 7-month old brother laugh so that all the stupid grown-ups could sit around and go ga-ga. None of her tricks were working, despite her best efforts in her very clever and creative invented language. Finally, she reluctantly ceded the battle, put up her hands and said, "Owen, I have nothing more to offer." Look for yourself: http://www.kodakgallery.com/PhotoView.jsp?&collid=905969293205&photoid=805969293205 . She was trying so hard to make him happy and looked so defeated you couldn't help but think her the most loveable creature on earth (or smartest-- she's not even three years old.) So here's to darling Avery, who reminds me of the genuineness of being a child-- one who wants to please others without selfish motives. You tried your best, kid.

Mr. Wendell would be so disappointed

2005-05-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

So last night I was having dinner with some friends, and afterwards, one of them had to "relieve" herself very badly. Why she didn't go in the nice restaurant where we were eating is beyond me, but she couldn't hold it and actually succumbed to going in a McDonald's in Union Square. Fine. So they're in the bathroom and I'm parked at a table by the door, checking my messages, as we all do to keep us looking somewhat occupied and semi-important. This guy comes up and asks me if I have a quarter. I tell him no, I don't (I truly don't, by the way. Quarters are a hot commodity in the world of token-operated laundry machines) but probably have 25 cents if that's what he's looking for. (Note: even to a man begging for money, I somehow have to correct his diction. Oh, so typical.) So while I'm digging for the change, he says, "Give me two." WHAT? Beggars can't be choosers, buddy. I tell him no, but he can have 30 cents (since I'm feeling particularly generous, and I use generous synonymously with increasingly frightened). Know what? Not even a thank you.

Out come my friends. He stops them and asks them for a quarter. For some odd reason, I feel possessed to yell across the restaurant, "But I just gave you some money." Still, my friends dig deep in their hearts and in their little change purses, too, and fish out a small donation. As we leave McD's, there's another man at the door bouncing his paper cup full of change begging for money and I said to him, "Ask that guy (gesturing to the man to whom we had ALL given money who was following us out of the restaurant). We just gave him all our money."

This story is anti-climactic. No, we didn't get yelled at by either beggar, didn't get followed or robbed. But it makes me really think about what sort of person this city is turning me into. $2 just means a snack to me, and this was only an eighth of that, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with money purely out of principle. How do I know when I’m being charitable and when I’m just being scammed? I hate being skeptical. It makes me feel stingy and it makes me feel small. I consider myself a sympathetic and charitable person. I’m all for helping out your fellow (wo)man when they need it (Kristin, enter ATLAS SHRUGGED rebuttal here) but I can’t for some reason do it when I think I’m enabling people to continue to live their lives from quarter to quarter without sincerely needing it. So some people are getting money for nothing, some are still suffering, and I’m still scratching my head to figure out who is who. Anyone want to offer his/her two cents? (I’m sorry, don’t feel obligated. I just couldn’t resist one more financially-driven cliché.)

Wel what do you know...

2005-04-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not dead. I'm sure some of you were holding your breath, but people, blog productivity is not a lifesign indicator. I've changed jobs and there was drama before that and drama afterwards, so I'm just coming back to life. What brought me out of blog hibernation, you ask? The freaking Ipex.

This entire campaign has been generated around a bunch of claims that say...wait for it...nothing. The parent company, which shall remain nameless (I realize this only makes a difference for men), claims that the Ipex is the "world's most advanced bra." What? Does it produce dollar bills? Solve the national debt? Solve rubix cubes between the cups or even, lift and separate? Who knows? Not I. And not any of the other million consumers who witness the frequent commercials. The company has created a campaign that makes claims without backing them up and lo and behold, we bought it. Literally. Because now, they tell us, it is also the world's most popular bra. I love it. Stick Giselle standing on a podium waving her hands around in a commercial and you have millions of women rushing to said manufacturer to purchase the same bra. Sorry ladies, we ain't gonna look the same, no matter how advanced the bra is. But props to you, genius advertiser, for honing in on the fact that the American consumer doesn't care about facts and substance. We don't need to know WHY something is the most advanced or the best or the newest or the cleverest. We just need to be told so and we believe it. (Well that, and it has to look pretty.)

Those Crazy Victorians

2005-03-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

So I'm reading THE VICTORIANS by A.N. Wilson, a book about Victorian Britain (insert joke here). Guess what I learned today? That death certificates used to be called "bills of mortality." Isn't that so much more romantic? I know, death isn't really a romantic thing, but there's something more poetic about being issued a bill of mortality rather than a plain ole death certificate at the time of your (hopefully timely) expiration. Plus, it's just more appropriate. I'm not sure why people stopped using the phrase but my guess is that we (typically) wanted two parallel phrases for simplicity: birth certificate/death certificate. I don't know what the equivalent of a birth certificate was in the olden days. Perhaps it should have been a "bill of possibility." How inspiring would THAT have been?

James Taylor said it best

2005-02-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, I just want to say how great friends are. Of course I think this often, but my weekend just happened to be filled with friends from very different periods in my life and it made me realize how wonderful substantive friendships are. I won’t get into touchy-feely details, but let’s just say that in a period of 24 hours in Washington D.C., I was able to spend time with a friend from high school who never ceases to amaze me with her ambition and classiness; a friend from college who is as obliging and upbeat as ever; a friend from London who is quite honestly one of the funniest people I’ve ever met (who else would leap—literally leap—into a room in Superman underwear?); a friend from New York who is quickly becoming one of my best friends; and a friend I've known my entire life (ok, this one's obvious) who is incomparable. I’m not trying to give ‘shout outs,’ but simply illustrate the point that people will come and go in our lifetimes and we should cherish those who we can truly consider friends.

Anais Nin said that “each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” I LOVE this. We surround ourselves with people that bring out things in us that might otherwise get buried forever. Yin and Yang, my friends. And ever notice how you have different friends for different things? In turn, you most likely fulfill a specific need to your friends. (Why do I feel like a daily devotional right now?) Everyone has the “going out” friend, the “call when you’re upset” friend, the “drunk-dial” friend, the “good news” friend, etc. Often times we may try to encompass many things, but inevitably succeed at some more than others. In this way our true character is revealed. Look at your friendships and they will truly show you what type of person you are.

So even though National Friendship Day isn’t until August 7th (FYI—in 1935 it was created by Congress to recognize the value of friendship. God bless Google.) take a second to just be thankful for friends. What a lonely, pitiful world we would live in if they weren’t there to sustain us.

2005-02-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen HOTEL RWANDA, you should. I have mixed emotions in the sense that though this story definitely needs to be told, there's something grotesquely disturbing about sitting there drinking Coke and popping Goobers while watching an entire nation suffer through a massacre. But maybe Hollywood is the best vehicle to reach Americans. We--myself included--would rarely choose to pick up a book on the subject and a newspaper or magazine article here or there most certainly wouldn't do the story justice. To be fair, two hours of heart-wrenching, graphicly realistic film doesn't do it justice either, but what it does do, is make you think, which is a lot more than most films do these days. So, granted the film might not motivate you to write your congressman to address genocide in Africa, it might persuade you to check out a book from the library on the horrific acts that happened 10 years ago across the world (which, by the way, brings me to another upsetting realization that despite the fact that we live in an electronic world of fast-and-far-reaching news capablities, I had never even heard of this unbelievable--and I do mean unbelievable--period in history) and maybe that's all we can hope for. Or maybe it will motivate you to donate to the Red Cross or Unicef. I don't know. To each his/her own.

But I do hope you'll see it and walk away with whatever moves you. And I also hope that you won't be stuck to some slobbering ingrate who had the audacity to TEXT MESSAGE and then proceed to FALL ASLEEP and snore during the film. I wish I knew that man's name so he could be shamed across all the internet (or at least to the readers of this). La ti da... let's watch 1 million people get murdered and take a nap. Disgusting.

Billingsgate...

2005-02-18T06:50:00.000-08:00

"Coarsely abusive language."

Etymology is fascinating, I think. Not in all cases-- a couple of college courses were PAINFUL--but for the most part, it is.

Case in point: From the time of the Roman occupation until the early 1980s, Billingsgate was a fish market in London notorious for its crude language. In fact, the fish merchants of Billingsgate were so famous for their swearing that their feats of vulgar language were recorded in British chronicler Raphael Holinshed's 1577 account of King Leir (which was probably Shakespeare's source for King Lear). In Holinshed's volume, a messenger's language is said to be "as bad a tongue ... as any oyster-wife at Billingsgate hath." By the middle of the 17th century, "billingsgate" had become a byword for foul language.

This comes to you courtesy of Merriam Webster's Word of the Day. What a beautiful thing. I hope your lives all feel a little more enriched.

A disclaimer

2005-02-14T14:30:00.000-08:00

I want to first say before we go any further, that I WILL NOT TYPE EVERYTHING CORRECTLY. I feel the need to preemptively defend myself because Elizabeth suggested I name this blog "Don't even think about posting unless you type everything correctly." Am I really that bad? Eh, probably so. But that's why you love me.

And while we're on disclaimers, let me just say that I'm beginning to think a blog is so not worth the effort.
1. You have to be funny. (Aim for witty, settle for funny.)
2. You have to be consistent.
3. You have to come up with a clever name. (Neil Diamond IS a genius, btw, for all you naysayers.)
4. You have to open yourself to all sorts of ego-diminishing critiques (most obviously, a lack of responses in the comments section and most probably, a number of "Who actually says that?" coming from my ever-so-sweet other half).
5. HELLO? Has anyone else realized that a blog is a lawsuit waiting to happen? I mean, I get hesistant just writing dirty words in my emails from work, but now I'm willing to subject myself to future courtroom documentation?

So why do it? Because I'm funny. And because I can't let Elizabeth one-up me. And because I need some way to tell the world about Typhoid Mary (the chosen few know to what I'm referring). So here goes, for better or for worse--in honor of Valentine's Day. And in further observance of this revered yet pointless holiday, I leave the singletons out there with the following advice for the evening: Ask someone if they have any raisins. No? How about a date?

Happy Valentine's Day.