Let's Talk About Elevators, Baby

GAAH. Once upon a time there was a girl named Lyssa who worked on the 9th floor of a certain building on 51st between Broadway and 7th. On the second floor of this building was a certain dancewear shop, only reachable through the main office lobby on 51st. Every day, in the morning, when she was feeling fresh and generous, she would just smile and nod at the idiots [DANCERS, mind you] who would ride the elevator up ONE FLOOR to the dance shop, before she continued up in the elevator to the 9th floor.

However! The end of the day always arrived with a headache and an urgent need for a nap and a Lexapro [and maybe a Vicodin], so the quickest way down in the elevator, the best. One particularly sullen evening, the clock had no sooner struck 5:30 than Lyssa was out the door of the loud, sweltering, smelly, carpeted, musical-theatre-ppl-infested office and into the elevator. New Pornographers blared satisfyingly into the headphones; she tapped her foot with the beat and with intolerable impatience, come on, come on; the elevator beeped down the floors oh so slowly: 7, 6, 5... AND THEN (oh, she was so close!), the elevator came to a thumping halt on floor #2, the door opened, and a crowd of about 15 people--loud, skinny, northface-wearing, bleached-blonde, gum smacking, CLUELESS TOURIST DANCERS smashed themselves into the elevator, with absolutely NO regard for the quiet, angry 4'10" passenger on her way home from work. O.M.G. OMG. omg omg omg. SHUT UP, GET OUT, TAKE THE DAMN STAIRS YOU LAZY FUCKERS.

That is all. Please tip your waiters.

Spamalot

Last night, on the phone with an old friend, I discovered one of the most deeply meaningful things one person can say to another... "There is noone I'd rather see Spamalot with than you."

You are threadless...

Check me out guys. I am now officially a member of the threadless street team. How cute!

By helping threadless promote, I get points towards a free tee. So if ya ever want to buy something, click here first. Yeah. Ok. Thanks.

Anderson, Indiana

This paragraph from Tobias Wolff's story in this week's New Yorker really could have been written to describe my sort-of hometown:

Burke knew the story—he’d bet the farm on it. Unions broken, or bought off. Salaries and benefits steadily cut under threat of layoffs that happened anyway as the work went to foreign wage slaves, the owners meanwhile conjuring up jolly visions of the corporate “family” and better days to come, before selling out just in time to duck the fines for a century of fouling the river; then the new owners, vultures with M.B.A.s, gliding in to sack the pension fund before declaring bankruptcy. Burke knew the whole story and it disgusted him, especially the workers who’d let the owners screw them like this while patting them on the head, congratulating them for being the backbone of the country, salt of the earth, the true Americans. Jesus! And still they ate it up, and voted like robbers instead of the robbed. Served them right.

Oh, the past...

I was randomly patronizing the Ed2010 site, and look what I found:



Oh, how cute was I at the 2004 Ed2010 intern event. Still, I'm slightly disturbed by two aspects of this picture: 1) My starry-eyed naivete, 2) Why the heck was I wearing black in June? Oh wait, I know...

CHOMP'd!

LYSSA IS GETTING HER WISDOM TEETH OUT RIGHT NOW.

SEND PUDDING.

Don't Press the Red Button

So there's no protesting allowed within the Capitol Building. Ok. So there's a press confrense inside the Capitol Building. Ok. So the press confrense is being held by a coalition of progressive orgainizations working together to block the confirmation of Alito. Technically ok. So there's a about a hundred members of these organizations coming into the Capitol to attend the press confrense. Technically ok. So there's security making them remove thier anti-Alito pariphanalia on the way in. Not exactly ok. So they put the red stickers and buttons back on once inside the confines of the press room. Should be ok. So some more security guards come in and start making people remove things and even confiscating stickers. Not ok. Why? It's not a protest, its an issue up for a vote! Besides, it's futile, there's a giant sign on the podium that says 'Stop Alito', the message that's the whole point of the press confrence. I wonder if they let people wear campaign stickers in there, or if they're really just that uptight and bored today. They have the technology so the visotor-pass stickers they give you on the way in turn blue when you go out in the daylight (which is really disconcerting at first), shouldn't they have the technology-some kind of sophisticated political instrument-to distinguish between a protest and a press confrence? What's the worst thing that could happen if I wear a red button?

slut

Look what Jessa put on the Bookslut.com blog today!!

Are you a college student in Chicago with too much time on your hands? Someone obsessive-compulsive about things like comma placement and proper AP style? If you are, Bookslut needs you.

Bookslut recently lost Kate, intern extraordinaire, who was a genius and a snappy dresser, to a "real" job in New York City. It's all been downhill from there for us. But if you're willing to donate a few hours a week in exchange for books, tea, and connections, please e-mail me.
Posted by Jessa Crispin | link

what to do when your boss has jury duty:

1. water your office plant. it's dying. also dusty. why is that?
2. look at your legs for a few minutes. are they too spindly or too beefy? it's your knees that cause the confusion; what you really need to think about is where to get more opaque tights.
3. go to juan valdez and get a fancy coffee [but not too indulgent! mind the beefy legs! how about a skim latte with an extra shot of espresso? it's every fatty's favorite overpriced beverage.] spend the whole hour reading the latest new yorker, including steven shapin's review of The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict by William Leith, which is really helpful right about now. [remember fat boy slim? RIGHT ABOUT NOW THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER] [Remember that movie with Freddy-something and Rachel Leigh Cook and they all danced choreographically to that song?]
4. read a few blogs. remember to tell jacquie when you get home of course you support her. [for now! don't go overboard! (just kidding)][i think technically brackets go inside parenthesis, but i think brackets are the stronger of the two punctuation marks, and should thus fill the more supportive, outer position.]
5. i hear dictionary.com has a pretty good daily crossword puzzle.
6. you know, you've never actually counted the number of mushrooms on the GIANT PAINTING OF LOTS OF MUSHROOMS in your office.*
7. you could do some work, but what's the point? you'll just have to come in tomorrow anyway.
8. say the word "chauncey" aloud, over and over again. (when someone walks past your office, feign a coughing fit.)


*there are 67.

Here's where life gets weird, folks...

So, I had almost completed a rather long post entitled, "I'm sure this post will get me lots of flack from the ED crowd...", when, accidently, I highlighted the entire post, deleted it, and couldn't get it back. I think this is fate telling me this post would've seriously pissed you people off.

I'll save myself the trouble of dealing the wrath that would've ensued had I posted what I've been musing about since I weighed myself this morning. I'll just say this. I've lost about a pound a day for the past three days, which means I'm seriously dehydrated. I'm also not eating enough. I blame it on AG: I read an article in Allure this morning that said that people lose weight when they're in love because it sets off some chemical in the brain that makes you not hungry. So, in order to keep myself healthy, I'm going to force myself to consume a reasonable amount of calories (I only ate about 800 yesterday (adderall and low-carb diet=bad combination)), and I'm going to drink a shit-ton of water today. However, I'm not going to lie, I'm a little excited. If I lose five more pounds, I will have reached that elusive goal-weight that I've been struggling to get to for about a year now. So, I'm going to continue on the diet (albeit much more carefully) and see what happens. I hope you guys will support me and not make me feel like I'm doing something unhealthy, because this is important to me, as shallow as it sounds.

You'll find this insensitive

But regardless: you know the homeless guy who lives(?) in Astoria, and can usually be found in the eastern blocks of Broadway off the NW stop? (Flannel pants not dissimilar to the pair I sleep in, brown coat, red eyes?)

Well, I see him pacing back and forth his four-block stretch once or twice daily, and he seems very sane albeit sad and smelly. But all I can think when I see him is not "he must be cold" "he must be hungry" "he must be...hmm, I don't know, homeless." Instead, I think, "wow. he must be bored."

My fortune cookie cracked me open

and pretty much did not ask permission before reading my damn mind. What did the happy, crispy little dessert have to say for itself?

"The road to success is often a lonely one."
Lucky Numbers 4, 8, 19, 22, 26, 33

OH FRAPTIOUS DAY CALLOO CALLAY PERIOD SPACE SPACE

Thefting some lines from a long lost friend:

"BUT ours is a love that will span the millenia and inspire cinematic hip-hop musical tragedies, and then I missed you pretty much whenever, so do not to being stopped on the e-mails and all these things. "

Bjork creates a landscape

Why can't Loving be a career? I would have been universe reknowned by age 11.

To all things gruesome

What now seems idiot-level simple to me dawned on me like a fresh face while I was walking through Union Square this afternoon: all things by which we might be repulsed (images or the things themselves) are natural, as in human or animal, living or once living-- the blood, vomit, urine, feces, bones, torn flesh, scabs reopened, dirty tongues salivating, puckered emaciated bellies, stab wounds, rotten food-- I find that I can't even conjure something repulsive that is man-made, that doesn't resemble some carboned based creature of the earth. Who has ever seen a modern or PoMo sculpture that resembles nothing but abstract, cold shapes and been driven to reel back? And even then: the shapes are based on shapes of what's been here all along, so if one is reeling, it is in recognition of something, some triggered memory, of a vile image from the past.

More evidence! Where should we be looking but at ourselves: I knew it! Why are we not all artists? The deepest, most core-tender, searing actions and reactions, emotions across the spectrum, they are all spawned from

i can't look at myself. i am repulsed. but clearly, there's no where but here

plagued with eternal internal inspection, or else really--

--who's learning a damn thing?

Dog Island

This is fake. But supposedly a lot of people think it's real. Be sure to check out the FAQ and the photo page.

www.thedogisland.com

Welcome to freakout-ville, population me...

As I was laying in bed this morning, trying to force myself to get up and start the day, I decided to instant message AG, as I often do, because he's always bored to death at work. I made some offhandedly flirtatious remark and he responded with, "Are you busy Feb 24-28?" So, if I confirm that I'm available, he will be coming to visit in a month and a half. I want to meet him. I do. However, I can't believe I'm doing this. Meeting someone I met on the internet is sketchy enough. Now, I'm going to be meeting someone I met on the internet who's flying up from GA for the occasion. Oh god.

The more I talk to him, the more I like him. And it's freaking me out. What if he visits and we actually click. Then what? Either we have to engage in some exhausting long-distance relationship, or we have to call it off, or one of us has to move. None of these seem like totally desirable options.

To add insult to injury, I'm auditioning for a choir today--the Young New Yorker's Choir. The main draw is that it's performing the Durufle Requiem. Secondarily, everyone in the choir is under thirty, so I figure it would be a good way to meet some people, possibly make some new friends. I'm not TOO nervous about the audition. Yesterday, after I finished practicing in my room, Lyssa came over and said, "Jacquie, if you don't get into this choir, there's something seriously wrong with the world." Yet, I'm a soprano. And for some reason nature produces far too many of us, which means lots of pretty-voiced sopranos like me get rejected in spite of their talent. Right now, I'm pretty confident; however, I will be pretty embarrassed if I don't get in. Keeping my fingers crossed. Trying not to freak out.

Ellie Smeal

I've come back to my old city for a week to stay with a stranger and volunteer my time for a cause that while I do very much believe in I'm not nearly as riled up about is as I should be to be here. Anyway, I'm doing my part for the future of America even while deep in the hole of general apathy. It's truly scary this guy, Alito, and I'm serious. Watch the fucking news then extract the full scaryness of him as a Supreme Court Justice by imaginining what the media would be saying if they weren't so afraid of loosing thier jobs. Dude, this guy thinks like its 1943 all over again. This is the surface on which I can care, but the passion? Nope, haven't felt that in a couple years. Maybe it's the political heartbreak of the 2004 election that I still haven't gotten over, or maybe I'm just so fucking miserable I have lost all sense of a future. Maybe I've even been sucked in to the mass culture mind freeze, pretty soon I'll decide that going shopping is just as good as participating in the political dialogue. If Mr. Smith buys a Plazma TV, the terrorists will give up; if I buy some Diesel jeans, the Republicans will dissapear...

Is the public experience of shame amplified or diminished if you are the only one aware of your shamefullness? Today I was in a small room with about a dozen truly inspired (I assume) young women (and a couple boys) and the leaders of the Feminist Majority Foundation, sitting around a table, talking. This is not exactly what I expected when I signed up for this, its both very cool and very scary. Especially so when the Big Lady is on, leading and rightfully dominating the conversation. I am put to shame by Elenor Smeal, the prez. This woman is fucking impressive. Knows she knows everything about the women's movement and pretty much all of American history but more is adamant than arrogant and her ideas are right on, she's got an answer for everything and she beleives in the most rational way that her agenda is possible. She's seen a lot of shit. She reminds me that I suck. That I'm selfish, petty, lazy, and I talk out of my ass more than my mouth. That I'm doing this to get myself out of a slump more than to fight for what I believe.

So step one in coaxing out the confidence that's absence is ruining my fucking life is to tell the nonexistent readership of this 'blog' thing to GO FUCKING CALL YOUR SENATORS TOMORROW AND THE NEXT DAY AND THE NEXT DAY AND THE NEXT DAY UNTIL THIS PSYCHO RIGHTWING MOTHERFUCKER RUNS HOME WITH HIS GODDAM PISS-STAINED TAIL BETWEEN HIS LEGS. Fucking do it bitches, not to make me feel better, but because it will give you a little thrill (which would be considered cheap if it weren't for a good cause). Work those atrophied give-a-shit muscles just a little, then we can compare notes on wheather it does anything for the soul-sucking void inside.

Another day, another way to hide my shame.

Welcome to the "Land of Unreasonable Reactions"

Emo Lions(!!!!11) and dead christmas trees and a quarter, oh my!

We here in Astoria pride ourselves on tacky decorations. Or at least, the residents all up and down 35th street seem to. What, then, happened at midnight on January 9th? The block turned into a pumpkin?

Out for a late night cigarette, bjork's "Hidden Place" in the headphones, I was psyched for the nightly festival of Christmas lights that has adorned every Greek and Italian home within walking distance... only to discover that not a single, dinky light was left. The Princess Martha (the apartment building across the street) was barren, having denuded itself of a veritable mirage of lights in the entrance way. The concrete Emo Lions(!!!!11) on the pillars of a nearby walkup had been stripped of their festive bows (they have a little bounce in their step tonight). Discarded christmas trees had been laid head to head along the edge of the sidewalk as in a mass grave. Even the fire hydrant looked naked (oh wait; that's just me overdramatizing). Suddenly, a week past New Year's, everyone turns sullen and dark and takes down the adornments simultaneously? Is this a little known city law, or did I miss the memo?

Luckily for me, I found a slightly rusty quarter to cheer me up (the Emo Lions[!!!!11] were little consolation). Perhaps this is New York's way of telling me to buck up and deal with what shall be the coldest, most unfriendly months of the year. Little does New York know that I was already subjected to a fate worse than winter last year... when I lived in Chicago. IN YOUR FACE, BIG APPLE!! Bwahahaha.

On the Ultimate Frustration

Lyssa arose yet another day after yet another dream about scrambling for privacy to masturbate and failing. It's been recurring for years. She wonders: while other people dream about flying and running and other assorted "normal" activities, why is it that I am cursed with something so taboo? She stares into the window of the people across the street, feeling dirty. She always attempts to carry over the sexual need from dreaming life to waking life, to cross the divide with a souvenir, but it is to no avail. Tonight she will dream another dream about lightly veiled failed attempts at being good at life. Because clearly, that's what this is all about.