eluded for two years. sigh.

Time, you elusive bastard!  You insist on being spent in ridiculous ways.  Well, now I have you.  And I will use you!  Goddamnit.*


I have a half dozen or so unfinished posts that I tried to start in the last six months or so, and they just can't be finished.  It's impossible to figure out what nothingness to write when you haven't written nothing in so long. ...

So, here are notes from my Moleskine from the year (only slightly edited). I'm hoping this will help break the ice between me and my blog.

*I wrote that 3 days ago.
-------------------------------------
Jan. 1, 2013

I meant to do a lot today -- finish a book, order our wedding album,** read some news ... but sometimes it's enough to be able to put another notch in the tree, spend the time with your husband (even if on a couch), and make it into bed again. Here's - cheers - to another year we survive.

Jan. 3rd, 2013

I want to tell everyone that they are brainwashed ... Everyone that doesn't already know this, of course.

Jan. 6, 2013

"Sometimes in life you have to make a choice between success and significance." - Jim Noble

Jan. 24, 2013

Proverbial thoughts from a plane -- I look down and think, wow. And then I think (randomly), my cousin is down there, and my uncle is down there, and everyone else I know. And the're all down there with their stupid ideas, and everyone thinks she's right, and no one's ideas quite match the others, and it's all very stupid.

But, it's the only thing we've got!  And so it's not very stupid at all.

March 2013

Dust is my worst ENEMY.

Mon. May 13, 2013

I am almost to tears @take-off. What a marvel, a miracle flight is!  Commercialization is the biggest paradox of them all.

Tues. May 14, 2013 GST

I'm in London, bitches!

May 19th

up in the air now, presumably flying somewhere over France, or perhaps around it. All there is to see is clouds -- I am above it "all."

But there is so much more! The stars were beautiful last night, stunning. I honestly can't imagine what people thought of the things thousands of years ago. 

The British are such a funny people. I'm flying on an aircraft named Monarch, for god's sake!

I'm 30 now. What to think of it? Not too sure, as always. I had a good decade - those 20s. What a run. Now on to ...?!  It's funny that I've book-ended my 20s in England.

What an amazing thing life can be, and what a dreadful thing it can be. We choose our paths, and we don't. One of the greatest palindromes in the English language is, go hang a salami - I'm a lasagna hog.

These are the things I have learned in the past 10 years.

Also, try hard not to care what other people think, but not too hard. Travel is essential. So are good friends and meeting new ones. Water is also a must. Sometimes just being able to brush your teeth and wash your face are beautiful things. Everything in moderation (unless you have diabetes or some other disease).

May 20th

Poolside

Back to London.

Papa Johns.

WiFi.

June 2, 2013
One of the most interesting parts of my travels hasn't been the novel things I've seen, for example, but the weird things I've eaten with my coffee and the fluidity with which I transition from it to beer. ... What does coffee not go with? It's hard to say.  What does beer not go with. Same problem. Thus, my constant status as a cupholder.

June 5th, 2013
AM/ Isn't it weird that we have a designated hole that food goes into?

PM/ MORE THOUGHTS FROM A PLANE (pt. infinity)

• Getting on a connecting flight, I feel like a rock that's just been skipped.

• No matter how many times I fly, I don't think I'll ever get rid of the ever-so-quick but nevertheless present feeling of impending doom. My brain somehow knows -- this isn't something your species should normally be doing!

• I wonder how many farts have been embedded into this seat.

June 5th, still... last leg of the plane ride

Man sitting next to me on plane... looked at my book*** and gave me a quizzical/you're kidding me look, said, "OK" and that he's interested in books on military history.  I realized that if I ever do make it as a writer, this guy is definitely not in my target demographic.

June 10th, 2013, a Monday.

We are moving. And so in my attempt to pack tonight, I stumbled upon my box of old journals.

And I read,... and I read... Mainly from 2002-2004 time period, most from England.

The best I can say is that I actually, after all that, don't hate myself, current or former.

Also, you think you know yourself, but you really, in some ways, don't.

June 17

"There is bliss in this mess." - Daniel Rossen

**Still have not done this.

***Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, David Sedaris

throwback

It's official. I have slowly gotten worse at writing blog posts. Has it been that long since blogs first existed that this is possible? I guess so.

It seems I peaked sometime around 2007/2008. Albeit, a small peak. Like a mogul, really. Moguls can be a bitch if you don't know they're coming, by the way. Anyway, I was trying to delete some of my Notes from stupid Facebook, so I was reading through some old posts. And I actually laughed at the 2007/2008 me. Which is kind of scary and extremely lame.

So, I'll stop my bad current writing and feature some of the old, for old time's sake:

Nov. 2007:

Heidi & Spencer make me want to projectile vomit all over your coffee table (your coffee table, not mine; I do not watch that show voluntarily, though I concede that I recognize its pop culture significance; I add that we seriously need to try learning a new language or something rather than supplementing our already pathetically dramatic lives with more pathetic drama; though, if it keeps girls away from cross stitching, so be it. Cross stitching is really such a useless, useless hobby.

Jan. 2008:

I'm going to start writing work memos in pictures. ohhh, or smileys.

Dear >:-O :
If you waive the penalty, I will be :-D
If you do not, I will be :-(
You choose.
Kind regards,
:- /

Jan. 2008:

in a file titled 'thought of the day' (an idea which i think i've tried to resurrect at least 4 times):
Life doesn’t remind me of anything. 10/10/05

Dec. 2007:

I want to become a professor so I can make lots of common sense statements, and then be quoted in thousands of articles by underpaid journalists all across America. I will send out e-mails daily to a random selection of lucky journalists with ready-for-print quotes to supplement their paltry instant ramen diets.

Sept. 2007:

I don’t think my friends really have all that much in common.

Except that they all think they’re going to win the lottery.

June 2007:

i swear to god my dad makes the strongest margaritas. i swear to god i'm about to pass out. and it's...... its only 712 721 pm. holylord. why did i come down here.. oh to get cd. oh there it is! i like typing.

links i have enjoyed lately

Ten favorite Wikipedia pages by Gearlog. I cannot speak to the quality of Gearlog as a site itself, but they've picked some fun choices from Wikipedia. I haven't perused them all yet, but I have fun thinking of conversations that include the word "mamihlapinatapai." (Also, who couldn't use a list of space pirates??)

Laura: "Don't give me that mamihlapinatapai."

Sharer of desires: "But you were giving me that mamihlapinatapai, too!"

Laura: "Well, duh. That's why I called it a mamihlapinatapai."

Cleaning Up Windows and Your Hard Drive by PCWorld. Considering how long it takes me to do ANYthing Windows-based at work, I'm willing to try anything (that's free).

Spinner's Full CD Listening Party, Iron & Wine. Not sure how long this actual link will work, but suffice it to say that Spinner is the best thing I've seen from AOL since the You've Got Mail days in the 90s. I've been able to listen to full CDs from the Decemberists, Tame Impala, Mumford and Sons, Caribou, etc. for free - wonderful during work. The fact that they have Iron & Wine's new release, Kiss Each Other Clean, makes me so so happy. The fact that one of the songs is titled "Monkeys Uptown" makes me even happier.

Bad Banana blog. I've had this bookmarked for a while. The new Vintage Godzilla Posters from Poland are fun, as are Schweppes Christmas Entertainment ads, as are, well, most of the posts.

Lanvin's e-store. I just love the mannequins. Oh, and the clothes. It's fun to look, anyway.

uncensored

you know what's funny? is that i write this blog that is basically just notes to myself. there are a few other people that read it; i judge them as fairly nonjudgmental. Yet i still find myself censoring ... myself. There are still things that I legitimately think that I cannot write in the public domain. and not just a few things; many, many things. Things that would hurt others, sometimes perhaps irreconcilably.* And I would never want that. I mainly love these people; i mainly do everything in my power to keep our relationships reconcilable. Which is why i don't write about them. "Them."

We furrow our brows with concern at China for censoring, but then we aren't sure what we think about Julian Assange. We know what is wrong (censoring good things!), but do we know what is right (censoring bad things?)? When is it OK to start swearing in front of kids? When is it OK to talk about sex? When is it OK to censor Huck Finn? When is it OK to ban books from distribution?**

Anywho, writing is a weird thing. It's a lonely thing. Gary Shteyngart wrote, "Writing a book is real hard and lonely, let me tell you." Isn't it so true? But so odd? You're doing this thing where you're required to completely empty all of your heart and soul onto some glaringly white and unforgiving page. Not only will that black and white page lay bare your emptied heart and soul, but it will also remain there alone, without pictures, colors, flash or youtube videos. It will sit there unadorned, staring back at the reader, who stares back at it. And, of course, that place is hopefully where the magic happens. That is where the souls meld, where reflections are seen.*** The writer hopes that the words, the soul of the words, do not merely gaze back; she hopes that they burn holes in each other; she hopes that that person finds something of themselves on that frank page, if soul has truly been laid bare.

Yet writing is such a lonely thing! You must do it alone. I must do it alone. If Joe walked in right now, I would stop writing. It is intensely personal. But then you want someone to read it. It's a weird thing.

*Happened to read a nice little article today about forgiveness.****

**Note to parents: it is never too early to let your kid watch MTV. Because she will just find another way to watch it.
***Like when Simba sees Mustafa in the pond!
****Just finished Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra, which uses asterick-ed footnotes. I'll try them out in lieu of my usual myriad (and sometimes ungainly) parentheses.

favorite posts of the last 2 years

1/18/09

7/25/09

12/21/09

1/7/10

All the rest is pretty much crap. Political ramblings/rants are the worst. My blog before this was on Friendster, which is funny. What isn't funny is that I can't find any trace of that blog anymore. And I know there was some funny stuff there. I distinctly remember blogging about how I had netted negative 2 friends in one day. Yeah, that's mainly the one I wish I could find.

notes from a moleskine

(and also a few from a journal)

6/16/09, tues

Sometimes I can't believe the world I'm living in. Just driving, stopping, obeying red lights, thinking about how much I can't wait to obey green lights. Just life. Eating, crapping, not crapping. Sometimes I even get texts about crapping. And that's all normal. ...

7/10/09

Being in an airport makes me want to write. What else is there to do? Read. Later. You can only people watch so long. All we're doing is waiting. People watch people waiting. How do you spend your free time? It is actually an interesting question. ... I'm hungry but I don't really want to eat anything. Actually, maybe I don't feel like writing. Too little sleep. Stayed up finishing a silly book. Plot revolving around whether to stay with her husband or leave. She made the right choice in the end. It does seem like sometimes there's a right choice. Honesty is sometimes a good choice. Not always.

8/25/09

Why, at 26, have I only accomplished "not dying" while Roger Federer, at 28, has won 15 Grand Slams? Master of nothing. In fact, the last thing I was proud of was "cooking chicken soup from scratch." I told my mom. She was proud; I could tell.

8/26/09

"I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society." - Ted Kennedy

8/27/09

"We knew we had to just tell the damn truth. The truth may be plenty good or plenty bad, but believe me, it's always plenty." -William A. Emerson, Jr., former editor-in-chief of Sat. Evening Post, 2/28/23-8/27/09

8/31/09

Listen. I worry about more nonsense than it's worth. I worry about:

-bad weather

-serial killers

-bad tax policies

-other people worrying about things that they shouldn't worry about

-what to wear

-the Taliban

...

Listen. Can you blame someone for not knowing everything that is going on in the Middle East? in Africa? in Myanmar? In Israel and the Gaza Strip? In space?! How are you supposed to keep up?

9/14/09

"It never ceases to amaze me what people will address and things that they will allow to be put aside." -Rev. Kojo Nantambu, president of Charlotte NAACP

10/21/09

I hate how flight crews think it's really cool to be "the first to welcome you" to your destination city. Yeah, congrats.

11/10/09

"That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion." -Einstein

12/15/09

Why are groups so paradoxical? Somewhere we fit in, think alike. But then you all start to think alike. Humans - a grouping? Should we start sympathizing more w/monkeys? We should do more things that make us uncomfortable.

12/30/09

From the sky, under the snow, Detroit is a grid of white, a city that someone has laid a blanket over, ashamed to show what's beneath.

12/31/09

"If I had to live with my dark side all my life, I'd go insane." - Richard Avedon

2/10/10

People grasp onto what they believe are easy morals and cling to them, never seeing the wrong in it. "I love my country": Aren't I righteous? That should be enough. There are no exceptions. I am right. You are wrong.

2/16/10

Writing is one of the most personal, intimate things a human can do.

It is conversing with oneself. Letting things percolate, letting things, thoughts, theories, ideas, events, facts, opinions, ideas, events, facts, opinions, truths, lies flame up onto the page and quietly die down, smolder, and settle.

It is the transformation of light into ash. Of burning the earth, for what it is, whatever it is, and reducing it to something you can sweep up, hold in your hand, put in an urn. Its rawness, its ugly form is its beauty. You stand and live before fire. You lie down and meditate before ash.

2/18/10

apple cider is one of those things that I love to look forward to but never actually drink once it's in front of me. I am happy just knowing it is there.

3/11/10

I made a mushroom tart tonight. I tried to be one of those people who then takes a picture of it and posts it like in these food blogs that are everywhere now, but honestly my camera was dead, and joe's camera didn't have the card in it, and i didn't want to screw with that since my luck would be that mushroom juice would get into the card reader hole and corrode the camera with fungi ooze. so i took a camera phone picture and sent it to joe. but it did make me think of what life would be like if you couldn't ever take a picture of anything. would we miss it? would our lives go on? yes. but with a little less vibrancy? maybe so.

i just found two quotes, one from my mom: "Don't ever be afraid to apologize." -Mom, 5/31/05

and one from my dad: "Someday you will miss school. I didn't, but I hear a lot of people do." -Dad, 6/1/05

5/11/10

... There is no sense of immediacy. There is day by day. Which is fine for day by day. But we are humans. We are developed humans - of the two-thousand and tenth year of someone's lord. And we have time. This cursed thing called time, during which we agonize over what is the best way to use it, how to prolong it, how to slow it down, how to reverse it, how to fast forward it, how to even prove it as the 4th dimension.

Aug/Sept? 2010

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." -H.L. Mencken

10/4/10

"That's the great tension: We are better at understanding morality than we are at living it." -Elliot Spitzer

Nov. 2010

"(for what is life except activity?)" -Marx

Officially retiring this Moleskine today. 12/29/2010. On to the next.

shoulda woulda willa

just read back on some entries from last year. i should've written more this year. of course. i will write a nice, long entry before the end of the year. i also might try to clean up my act here.. maybe switch blog providers, etc. Make a resolution to write once a month next year, etc. Clean starts. Americans love clean starts, ends and beginnings, so they can muddy it all up and get another clean start. Blame it on Nintendo. Atari? Atarrrrrriiii.

you can be nostalgic about anything

from march 18th --

I took a stroll through uptown tonight. I have to say, I do love uptown. I love living in it; i love that i can walk downstairs and out the door and into the streets of uptown. It's no New York, no Chicago, no London. It's insulting to even list those cities here. But I still love this little urban playground, where feeling attached and detached all at once is the feeling you crave.

I walked up 6th street, which is always vaguely nostalgic of my walks to work at Hearst, proof that you can be nostalgic about anything if you've done it enough times. Cut over before the Holiday Inn parking garage past the Bobcats arena (i am still amazed that Jordan has decided to invest in charlotte hoops like he has. v. good news for charlotte.. or v. bad news for MJ. i have hope for the former..). Walked past the spattering of people waiting for the light rail -- mainly african americans, one white lady reading a hardcover. The smell of cigarette smoke made me laugh at the thought that i also get slightly nostalgic about the smell of cigarettes and day-old beer, a disturbing truth.

Walked up the ramp to the Epicentre. Surprised at the number of people eating outside at Libretto's. Caught a glimpse of the new Kazba place on the 2nd floor - stupid spelling.

ohh, watching Pulp Fiction (intermittently with bball), and travolta just took a sip of uma's milkshake.. "goddamn this is a pretty fucking good milkshake." ah, that has no effect in writing, but so much goodness on screen.

Walked past the Fudgery, wondering how they stay in business, then past the 'secret' back door to Blackfinn that Brett took me through one night (i think that is the last time i've been there.. might stay that way since RiRa is open again), and then past the little CBS studio - looks like they've doctored it up a little since I was last there.

Walked to the corner that still evokes bad memories of getting stuck at the crosswalk with jesus-freak dude yelling through a megaphone. Walked past Aria, peering down into the restaurant, watching innocuous people enjoy their dinner [added note - ate there about a week after writing this - and sat about 5 feet away from MJ himself. Needless to say, we became as giddy as a babies in jumperoos].

Up past the fountain - lots of pennies to look at and an excuse not to make eye contact with a homeless guy. Left at Trade and Tryon onto Tryon. Walked behind a guy that reminds me of an old boss. He stopped to watch the McDevitt video next to the Emerson barber shop place, which Joe and I have done before.

favorite part of pulp fiction on now - uma and john twisting in their socks. i love it.

Walked past the Wachovia Plaza, imagining the throes of yuppies there at old AA5s, the people watching, the boy spotting, the cover bands that were perfect for that type of event.

Walked to the Knight Theatre and said hello to my new favorite thing uptown - the Firebird,

-----

That's it. That's as far as I got. But if I were to add to it, the end of the sentence would be, "which Joe thinks is ugly." We went jogging through Uptown tonight, and it was just as nice as this walk a couple months ago (well, except that I would have rather been walking). Hotter. The trees are filled out, and the smell of cut grass is back. Not bad. I voted in the primary elections today and actually had a candidate picked for every race on my ballot. It'd be silly to deny that I have a stake in this place, and I can't imagine it underwater. So, I feel you, Nashvillians (?). There you go. I'm no CNN, but you got take it and run... you know, like Katrina victims after an incompetent FEMA response.

my city

so, a lot of things are going on in Charlotte.

Jimmy Clausen is going to be a resident here soon, a fact that, as Facebook knows, makes me want to hurl.

In two more months, the Levines will have given enough money to NFPs that all buildings in Charlotte will be called The Levine Somethingorother. Building names will start to become so indistinguishable that Anthony Foxx will decide to ban the name from buildings and change the city's name to Charlevine.

The Bobcats are in the playoffs for the first time ever. The city is honoring their accomplishment by lighting up some of Uptown's buildings orange, including the BofA tower. A true testament to how obsequious Charlotte is to its sports teams - the first day that BofA's tower broadcast that it could, in fact, be a color other than Panther blue, was yesterday. Yep, the Earth, on its Day, got totally snubbed for a basketball team. Michael Jordan had some input, so the tower actually looked red.

Wells Fargo's board, turns out, is incestuous.

Bank of America is still here, helping to keep thousands of bankers from crapping their pants.

Tiger is coming to Quail Hollow.

Tiger's ex-f-buddy porn star friend, Joslyn James, is concurrently coming to to the UC. I predict at least one police blotter story to come of it.

In NC news...

Obama is shacking up at the Grove Park Inn.

Early voting for NC's US Senate seat primaries is underway (no one much cares.. though if you want a good laugh, read the last four paragraphs of this article about Burr's 'competition').

Ends up that the dude who gave up the iPhone prototype went to NC State. Go Pack.

Good goings ons...

Along with Tiger, we're having an influx super-famous black people.. Oprah was here to interview Rielle Hunter (who reminds me of a contestant on the Bachelor); Condoleezza will be here to give Johnson C. Smith's commencement speech; Obama has come and gone, speaking at a company that no one had heard of. Even now, no one has heard of it.

Between tonight and tomorrow, The Light Factory is doing a cool City Block project; Charlotte's version of Amazing Race gets its second run; and hundreds of people will go get drunk in a field that happens to be adjacent to a horse race.

A new Farmer's Market concept will open in South End mid-May; there are bees on top of the Ritz Carlton Uptown, which is apparently a good thing for the environment; it's warm here now -- Alive After 5 is back; Pops in the Park is forthcoming, as is the Whitewater Center's River Jam; the mountains and the beach have beckoned; the lake is beckoning; a new sushi restaurant will be opening soon downstairs.

I guess I won't mention the county budget woes, which are threatening libraries, mental health programs, and middle school football in repeated succession. oh yeah, and the state has problems in that budget area, too. I'd like to see Bev and Erskine duke it out.

oh, charlotte. such a silly place. but you are mine... for now.

zing!

oh, so much to say, but no desire to sit in front of this computer any longer.

so, some links:

i read this article in the paper this weekend (yes, i know, i am the only person under 30 who reads a physical paper). Dionne describes moderates' "wins" rather morbidly and also brings up an argument that annoys me to no end:

"If a bill eventually becomes law -- as it must if the Democrats are not to look like a feckless, useless lot -- "

Annoying because now it's as if the democrats want (need) to pass health care reform just to do it - just to accomplish something. Yes, they're going to look like a bunch of idiotic pushover losers (kind of like the SEC... $150M is enough to get them wet, huh?) if they don't. But come on. Let's not let that become the impetus behind changing a nation's health care system.

Eh, who am i kidding? who am i to be so naive as to think that similar reasons haven't been the impetus behind hundreds of bills, tons of pork?

Anyway, I'd like to hope that, if we get health care reform, it's simply because we need (want) health care reform. A futile hope, perhaps.

In any case, i thought this musing in the article was pretty true, if not, amusing:

"...the conservatives relentlessly made a straightforward public case based on a syllogism: The economy is a mess. Obama and the Democrats are for big government. Big government is responsible for the mess. Therefore the mess is the fault of Obama and the Big Government Democrats.

Simplistic and misleading? Absolutely. But if liberals and Obama are so smart, how did they -- or, if you prefer, "we" -- allow conservatives to make this argument so effectively? Why do the mainstream media give it so much credence?"

Also, Newt and Jon, if you haven't seen it:

Wrong

Wrong Again

Favorite part:

when Gingrich acknowledged that part of his job is to reach out to the emotions of the American people, Stewart shot back, "I think that's wise. And don't let reality get in the way."

inside this life

was taking a tag off a piece of jewelry i bought at forever 21 today, and i thought back to the cashier girl (young, overdone, to no avail) saying by rote, "..but all jewelry sales are final." and it actually made me smile. oh, the freedom of knowing that i don't have the freedom to return something. i'm stuck with it! forever!! this $4.50 necklace - i made a decision, and now i have to live with it! for eternity!

oh, humanity, and your everlasting quest for freedom. don't you know that you are always undermined by a perpetual state of no freedom at all.

wait, did i just attempt to relate a XXI purchase with metaphysics?

hm, kind of, huh? interesting.

by the way, i am intrigued by jersey shore as much as the next slug, but why on earth did they get to go to the grammy's?? not fair. would have enjoyed hearing drake, eminem & lil wayne without the censor ax. ..not sure what the big deal about that is anyway. "i stuck my d-ck inside this life until that b-tch came." what's wrong with that? kind of clever. "you're such a f-cking loser." that's just an honest expression of emotion. (and, yes, i did look up the lyrics, and yes, Eminem can rap faster than i can read. i appreciate that.)

finally, in other random things I can come

up with to say, Roger Federer

continues to machete through Americans, Serbs, Argentines, Swedes, Spaniards, French, and - even - Englishmen without any hint of discrimination whatsoever in his conquest to take over the world with a tennis racquet and floppy hair. Off with your heads, measly plebes!

Ha. Ha.

all right, this is where my silly 26-year-old mind has wandered since the last post...

maybe all this is a good thing. i think the last thing we need in a national healthcare system is one in which (healthy) Republicans get to hold every single story of system missteps and shortcomings over (nauseous) Democrats' heads. I can already see Glenn and Rush and Sarah P. digging into it, and it makes me a little sick. So, you know, that would be a shortcoming in the healthcare system right there.

And, being a true Unaffiliated, i really think that something as broad as healthcare needs to be legislated on common ground. (I realize that there is none of that right now.)

But, being a true Unaffiliated introduces problems of its own. because i like this take on things - I like to think that everything can be debated and reduced (yes, like a balsamic reduction) to a common ground - that a common ground must always exist, and it's just a matter of finding it. However, i have come to realize that i occasionally agree with one side and truly do not agree with the other. For instance, i really, really believe that gay marriage should be legal. If you think i'm going to go into all the reasons why right here, then you're wrong. but let's just say that there's no reason it shouldn't be legal

. Period. Bam!

So... i don't know where that leaves me in my quest for diplomacy and bipartisanship, including when it relates to healthcare. I guess it comes back to: Argh. Because if you agree that insurance cos. shouldn't turn ppl away because of pre-existing conditions, and you wrote legislation to prevent it, then you'd have to account for all the schemers who wouldn't get insurance until they were sick. So you'd have to make having insurance mandatory. So then you'd have to subsidize those who couldn't afford it. Then you'd have to define who couldn't afford it. Then you'd have people right above that definition line who also probably couldn't really afford it. Then... you'd have government healthcare.

I mean, governing is like trying to raise teenagers. effing impossible. no wonder it doesn't work very well.

I will say that this graph from National Geographic was a bit... disconcerting (Click on graph to enlarge, i.e., to see U.S. costs).

finally, i hope there are people in Washington paying attn to this (does anyone else think the hyperlink icon in Blogger looks like a bull? ...??).

Excerpt:

"The conventional wisdom is you can't have back-to-back major financial crises. I think we're going to push that, we're going to have a look and see whether that's true. And the next 12 months could really be exciting. People could be very positive, but we are setting ourselves up for an enormous catastrophe."

ha ha! isn't that funny?? An enormous catastrophe. That's funny. Funny enough for me to stop thinking about healthcare while I laugh.

the aughts

so, my last blog post of the decade was about a 13-year-old girl who writes about fashion. hm, i definitely did not mean for that to happen. if i could think of a less appropriate way to round out my decade, ... well, i can't. don't get me wrong; i still think she's cool. and i do like fashion, but i certainly don't know fashion. i don't discriminate between YSL and XXI. heck, i know more about football than i do about fashion. maybe even basketball. definitely not hockey.

annywho, the decade of the aughts, huh? funny that i never really heard it being referred to as the aughts until the last month of the decade. but i like it. so i will most likely, from now on, refer to it as the 'aughts' even though that's not the way it happened. but it happened. and as i have marveled about it with friends, this is the first decade i truly remember. When the 90s started, i was 6. Don't remember much from 6. When the aughts (heh - by the way, what do you call this decade? the 10-to-12s-and-teens?) started, i was rounding out my senior year of high school. I don't remember a heck of a lot, but I certainly remember more than i did at 6.

i guess it's interesting to look back on a decade, but i'm not going to write about it. it deserves a quick trip down the proverbial memory lane for me, and that's about it. because really that's all it takes for me to realize how much i've changed in 10 years. the difference between 6 and 16 is infinity, and the difference between 16 and 26 is infinity. plus, if i tried to recap the decade it would go something like:

The Past Decade:
Spring 2000 - graduated high school
Sept. 11, 2001 - woke up to raj telling me and beth that the twin towers were falling
Spring 2004 - graduated college
Spring 2005 - graduated grad school
Fall 2009 - sometime between me leaving work and me arriving at AA5, MJ died

you know, pretty standard timeline-y things, plus stuff i remember from the past year, or two, tops. it's hard to fit a decade into, well, anything but a decade, I guess.

there are probably a few things about the past decade that i think are worth mentioning. How about .. ok, my personal opinion on worst new word of the decade: 'staycation.' w(ho)tf goes on a staycation? if you're seriously that overworked that you need to take time off to stay at home and clean your baseboards and watch DVRed episodes of How I Met Your Mother, then you need a new job. And if you seriously want to take a 'staycation', then that's just lame.

on a related note, a close second is 'mancation.' i think Brokeback Mountain might have ruined that one.

eh, that's all i can come up with about the decade for now (earlier, i tried to make a list of people i admire from the past decade, and i ended up with my father and tina fey and anthony bourdain all on the same list, and, well, that was embarrassing and is the last list i'll attempt for a while).

The new year has started out pretty well, i think. I didn't get in any car wrecks on new year's day, or wake up somewhere unfamiliar (in fact, i woke up at the same friend's house that i've woken up at for the last 3 new years' now (umm... where the fook do you put the apostrophe in a plural new year's?)), and i've already been to two pretty good concerts (RJD2's Ghostwriter is v. good live).


and, you know, Blagojevich still thinks he's black, and health care is still a headline rather than an actual working noun, and apparently not only is John Edwards crazy but so is Elizabeth, and Haiti's a sad horrible bloody mess, and Kiffin's in California, and Art Clokey died (who was, by the way, put in an orphanage when he was 10 because his mom's new boyfriend made her choose between him or the kid), and Conan is in network limbo, and the Neighborhood Theatre may close .... which is all good, right? because apparently being sad is good sometimes.

Well, also, the star Betelgeuse (shoulder star in Orion) is so big that if it were at the center of our solar system, it would extend out past Mars. So, you know, it's all relative.

And also, there's this. Again, relative. auld lang syne, y'all.

tavi

dude, this has got to be one of the coolest pubescent girls i have seen in a while (i also like dakota fanning).

here's the transcript of an interview with her from back in march and recent news that she just landed a column in Harper's Bazaar. Something tells me that this first job (i guess besides being a spokesperson for Rodarte) will prove to be much more auspicious than mine as a Siamese girl in the Syracuse showing of The King and I. And here's an article from the Daily Mail that includes the picture of her on the cover of Love magazine that got me looking around the internets for her in the first place.

how nice to see a 13-year-old who has actual unabashed opinions... and a kick-ass sense of style. ahh, refreshing!

probably could if i tried

i can't help that i like whiskey and diet coke with lots of ice. but that i hate that it makes my hand cold, and i'm usually already cold. and that coke v. pepsi doesn't matter to me. but that the kind of whiskey does, but only sometimes. and that i think god is kind of bullshit even though he does exist, whether i believe in it or not, for the same reason that santa claus exists (in black and white, though maybe not in yellow), and for the same reason that hope and all that other stuff exists that keeps animals that have too much time to think from wanting to stop thinking. and that i wish i could be a tall, almost-naked blue cat-person and reach whatever god - or santa - i wanted to with my hair tentacles. and that i like lady gaga because she says things in interviews that are just ass-shit crazy but genius

like: "When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."

i also can't help that i'm quite opinionated but mostly about the wrong things (... 80s hair, toothpaste labels). actually, that's not true. i have opinions about a lot of things like politics and wars and peace and hunger and the correlation between happiness and pet ownership, but mainly i find it too tiring to care in writing. there are a lot of people writing about the wrongs. i am too unimpressed to do it anymore, i think: to care. people say things like, "take your government hands off my medicare" and it's so ridiculous that i get tired just thinking about caring. i am even too tired to fix my own hunger sometimes... but i admit that is rare.

what IS this new free bob dylan christmas song on itunes? holy cow. good proof that everyone makes truly horrible mistakes sometimes. or maybe that drugs are bad.

i can't help that sometimes i count a really good day as one where i make banana nut pancakes and meatball stew and do 4 loads of laundry and read the paper and a book and then fall asleep next to someone who cares. and that's it. but it feels nice.

i can't help that sometimes i count a really good day as one where i sleep in till noon and don't shower till 4 and then go to 2 christmas parties and barely get my shoes off before falling asleep next to someone who doesn't care. and that's it. and it doesn't feel nice, but you can look back and have a good laugh at it.

i can't help that this is all over the place. i think i used to write better. or at least type better. i need to quit this write-every-3-months thing. i can't help that i like this quip by gaga too

"I love the gays so much it's scary. I'm pretty serious about everyone being on time to rehearsal, and the other day my gay dancers ... were late because they were getting their hair cut. It looked great, though, so I didn't care."

that's pretty great. forget health care and global warming; go get a haircut and have irresponsible sex. not necessarily in that order.

ad nauseam

i started writing this a while ago and, after reading this article today, decided that i'd go ahead and post it.

kate moss's admission re: her 'favorite quote' might not be a surprise, and the quote itself ("nothing tastes as good as skinny feels") might not be new. But seriously... that doesn't negate the fact that Barbie standards are freakin ridiculous, and i think i like france's idea (is that legal here?) of putting warnings - ok, at least disclaimers - on pictures that have been retouched. We have to put warnings and disclaimers on all else -- ratings for everything media, skulls & crossbones on cigs and alcohol, calories, trans fats, side effects... I think there's a solid argument that extreme photo touch-ups affect not only the crazies self-disciplined enough to be anorexic (kidding!), but, more pervasively, the mental health (albeit to a degree) of every other girl who follows eons of evolutionary instinct and eats.

The article linked above is littered with links to pictures of crazy re-touchings, one of which is this Brian Dilg guy's imaging site. It is amazing to see some of the photoshopping that is done in general; no wonder models end up looking like ... avatars. Heidi Klum's boob lift and tuck is funny to watch go up and in and down and out, up, down, ad nauseam.

if it is true that we ("we") want to see heidi klum retouched to look even more gorgeous, that's fine. i'm all for art ... let's just give the photoshoppers their dues. :)

what i think about during a CPA ethics class

I feel bad for the women who had to live their 20s during the '80s. Now they're in their 40s and still have their 80s hair. I'm sure most people live in their pasts to some extent or another. But 80s-hair women give their harbored pasts away too easily. There's no hiding behind a hairsprayed swoop. It's like a shark fin. Dead giveaway. You had really cool sky-high hair and then you got knocked up and had some kids and drove them to soccer practice, and by the time you got back, you hadn't left Gastonia or opened a magazine in 20 years, and now you have no reason or need to change. Just know this: I am judging your hair. I'm sorry. It's pretty shallow, yes. But I'm not judging you, just your hair. And no one might have told you yet, but it just might not hurt to finally put the aerosol away. You'll thank me later (I have a yoga video instructor who tells me this...).


And yes, if flat irons go out of style a la the way of hair crimpers, and I end up having 2000s hair in the '20s (ha!), then please, by all means, feel free to judge my hair.

FOR BEST RESULTS, READ AS YOU GO DOWN

oh my god. my last post is such rubbish!

there. i've been meaning to post that for the last ... wow - 3 months. jesus christ. wtf have i been doing?

anyway, don't read my last post. for those of you who don't speak british, it's garbage, and no one should read it. i know this might make some of you try, but i dare you to do it. you won't make it very far.

i only have one comment for tonight... why do toothpaste tubes say,

FOR BEST RESULTS, SQUEEZE TUBE FROM THE BOTTOM AND FLATTEN AS YOU GO UP.

?

and yes, it's in red font AND in caps AND in sans serif (maybe it's just Crest).


Aside from the obvious (what best results are we talking about here?), why is there an article of speech to clarify "bottom" but not "tube"? And why bring ME into it by using the phrase "as you go up"? I feel like i'm being ordered around. Why not "to the top"?

Hey. Don't act like your mind doesn't wander when you're brushing your teeth, too.

as the world turns

as promised, some worldly comments. and by worldly, i mean, 'not about me'. and don't worry; they are v. idiotic and v. inconsequential:

- This headline: "The Pantry ekes out a profit" was actually slightly comforting to me. Not because it's the company that owns my Most-visited Convenience Store (sucks that that title now goes to a public co. and not the cute little korean-owned store that i used to go to in the Hearst tower. The little woman owner used to try to teach me how to say "hello" in korean and, on alternate days, asked me if i was, "married to boyfriend yet?" Heck, maybe that's corp-owned, too? It had the familiar feel, anyway.), but because it actually made $43,000 in q2. How's that for piddly stix? I was relieved to see that it is possible to not swing from multiM/BILLION dollar quarterly profits to multiM/BILLION dollar quarterly losses. I was beginning to believe that all public companies were skipping the thousands altogether and denominating everything in m/billions. To be fair, the companies I'm referring to are mainly banks, and when you're earning $XX Billion each quarter, and then the economy goes on a bad acid trip, I guess that kind of thing happens. But still. It seemed weird to me that you could be making several billion dollars in the span of three months and then be losing your dignity in the next. it's not a problem that skimping on clickable permanent markers will help fix. (Enter: Paulson.)

- why is it the beginning of august, and one of the headlines on espn.com is about the friggin NBA? And it's not even anything juicy, like a Kobe affair. It's just speculation on the upcoming season. guh. AND i have to dig through a drop-down menu to get to tennis. guh!

- #15 on the College Football mock draft?? really? No checkerboard end zones or even standing-room-only crowds are going to get us through the season if crompton doesn't have any reliable wide receivers to throw his crappy passes to, esp. against SEC D. Don't doubt my love, though. I'm a skeptic, but I'll be at the opener. And I do like that we're ahead of Florida in a numbers-based ranking. (the non-ultra-obvious 'numbers-based'...)

- I guess this deserves its separate bullet point. Some dude from Liverpool, New York, where I grew up for the first 10 years of my life, has a comment in the mock draft ranking: "Where's the Syracuse Orange?" I want to ask him if he has mental disabilities. The dude from Troy, Michigan, where Joe grew up, is only slightly better in his praise for Maisel's choice of ND at #9. ND at 9 is like UT at 15: Maisel must have a small penchant for tradition before talent.

- what's with the praise for women who have been 'Wall Street investment bankers'? e.g., Jenny Sanford is SO cool because she used to be an investment banker on the Wall Street. Or, the billion dollar divorcee is super cool too because SHE used to be an investment banker on Wall Street. OK, i get it. They're probably v. smart women (except for when making lifelong decisions such as, 'Who should I marry?'), and they can stand on their own. But, from all I can tell, being an investment banker on Wall Street (or elsewhere) merely entails doing some research on Yahoo Finance! and then... buying what everyone else is buying and selling what everyone else is selling. Ok, maybe I over-simplified that a bit. I'm just saying .. I'm not convinced yet that anyone with a Finance degree really knows what the hell they're doing (when they're not picking out wines at client lunches). Like John Oliver pointed out, Geithner can't even sell his house.

- it is amazing what you can learn on facebook...

- what did we do before the internet, again?

been busy swiffing

so, it's been a while. i think it's been a combination of being busy and the fact that all of my thoughts have seemed pretty stupid lately. I go on a lot about how I can't stand other people's stupid opinions, so it's a little egg-on-face-ish to get caught having a stupid opinion myself. Though..., I can't think of any examples right now...

in any case, there hasn't been too much to write about... OK, there has. there are ten million other blogs to prove it, and the NY times just turned a profit, so apparently people somewhere still care. As far as my life goes, not much to report. I'm not getting married, divorced, pregnant, or accused of any major felonies. Heck, I haven't even gotten a traffic ticket or a cold. I've done a lot of the typical things that middle-class yuppie white people do (yes, white, not asian - though the bewildered looks that I got from two asians I work with over not knowing where the asian market is in Charlotte galvanized me to make a mid-year resolution to learn more about my korean heritage (is that a bad reason?)... no action to report on that quite yet): go to weddings, go to baby showers, go to dinners, go to shows, go to concerts (lots of concerts this year - everything from keith urban & no doubt to DMB & KOL to gomez & death cab & grizzly bear to... pops in the park? to dredge tomorrow & tool on thursday).

Essentially, a lot of organized events. which reminds me that one thing happened - i turned 26. I've noticed a funny change from my early-twenties self to my now latter-twenties self.
Early-twenties: Monday-Friday/Sat/Sun -- work until hourly salary equals minimum wage; Friday/Sat/Sun night -- drink until i pass out, take advil with greasy food, repeat.
Latter-twenties: work requisite hours; attend various events organized with the end purpose of having fun (alcohol is almost always a facilitator), do laundry, swiff the floors, repeat. The organization is mind boggling! Invitations come from every direction - wedding invitations with pockets and ribbons and golden tickets in the mail, evites, facebook events, mass emails and massive email trains. Unorganized social interaction does happen, like when I run into friends at Trader Joe's. I can't even count tennis, really, since playing times are organized. And I've found that even things like dinners have become more organized -- making reservations weeks ahead for steak houses during Restaurant Week, planning dinners with every different constituency of friend groups.

i was going through my phone while waiting (3 1/2 hours) for my car to be serviced this morning and realized a drastic difference in my text messages "Sent" box from a couple years ago to now. Some examples:

Sent 9/22/05 11:36pm: "Wtf darling"
Sent 9/30/05 11:41pm: "Blank" (to which i received "Blank texts. I give you at least a 5")
Sent 10/7/05 11:17pm: "Wayawaybyzwwwy"
10/7/05 11:18pm: "Y'y'wy..y'y"
10/7/05 11:18pm: "Y'w00.wya yay"
(i know that these were all sent re: a UT football game.. i think spurred by a last-minute win? meant to communicate feelings of happiness, maybe even elation.)
10/21/06 12:24am: "Them come to fixidr" (translation: 'dixies')
12/3/06 3:21am: "Home unmo lested"
2/4/07 12:33am: "Listen here d bag. Cans is a homo sexual breeding ground" (i don't know what made me send this or whom it was to!)
2/27/07 6:19pm: "WHORE"
3/17/07 11:54pm: "That's what she said??"
4/1/07 12:16am: "U r a liar and a thief"
4/21/07 11:30pm: "Use john"
4/21/07 11:42pm: "She said up"
7/22/07 1:15am: "U r bangalicious"
9/3/07 12:14pm "Stop word vomiting! Down play the chest hair. It is not THat bad." (a personal favorite..)

Compared to recent texts (I stopped using my Razr while i was freeriding the bberry at pwc... so my next text messages pick up this year):

Sent 4/9/09 9:33pm: "When are u getting in? Cant wait to see you and your belly!" (referring to pregnant friend's belly)
Sent 4/9/09 11:05pm: "Haha its so late! B r us is not good for the baby" (referring to Babies R Us and sent to a different pregnant friend)
4/10/09 7:25pm: "Sounds good do we have a reservation"
4/19/09 1:51pm: "U want me to go ahead and draft an evite? Call if you get a chance"

To be fair, the old ones are ones i made a point to save, and the new ones have some interesting ones too, like "Butt non buddy" (no clue) and "You smell like stinky turtle poop" and texts from Hawaii, but there are also two "Congratulations" text messages to friends who got engaged and at least 30 text messages involving tennis and/or yoga.

It's just funny. I'm happy now; I was happy then. Fortunately, my early-twenties self was just a phase, just as my mom predicted with hints of hope in her voice every time i talked to her hungover on sunday morning (and not at church).

So, that's all for now. I turned 26. Maybe in the next post i'll ramble on about more worldly things, like the idiocy of our reaction to obama's reaction to iran, or the idiocy of obama's reaction to the police's reaction to an angry black man, or the idiocy of facebook quizzes, or the awesomeness of the idiocy of the bachelorette, or all other things idiotic and inconsequential. till next time.