ffffftt

"But it's MY day!"

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:14:46 -0400

Dear Bridesmaids:

Thanks for supporting me and gritting your teeth through all of my hissy fits, meltdowns, passive-aggressive e-mails, inexplicable need for you to wear a hot pink, bulbous dress comprised primarily of taffeta, insistence on an unaffordable bachelorette party in Las Vegas at which I sobbed into my 10th margarita on the first (and second and third) night bemoaning the fact that my fiance was “totes getting lap dances from some bimbo right now — if he cheats on me it’s OVAH! OVAH!!,” five — count ‘em, five! — bridal showers at various inconvenient venues in the tristate area, plan to have the entire bridal party dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (for which you had to take five $100 dance lessons) as we all enter the badly-decorate banquet hall I spent seven months obsessively kvetching over and finally — listening to me say, for the 1000th time in my most plaintive, nasal whine: “BUT it’s MY DAY!”

There’s just ONE more eensy thing you gotta do ladies: see all those unsightly expression lines on your face? They gotta go. And YOU have to pay for it!

This just in from The New York Times: bridepsychozillas are now insisting their bridal parties get botox.

The fashion-conscious French

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:50:17 -0400

Gee.

I always knew the French were a tad more obsessed with aesthetics than most of their fellow earthlings, but this is taking it a bit far: Faiza Silmi was denied citizenship because of … her outfit.

“I would never have imagined that they would turn me down because of what I choose to wear,” Ms. Silmi, 32, told The New York Times.

Her offending accessory? The veil she wears over her face in keeping with her Muslim faith.

Silly rabbits

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:52:43 -0400

They seem so fluffy, huggable and twee. Yet their Arcadian act conceals a cunning, Machiavellian mind that doesn’t fool The National Geographic for one second.

As the glossy histrionically reports, rabbits and badgers may ruin Stonehenge and some 280 other archaeological sites in southwest England alone.

The culprit? Global warming (of course), which has helped more and more tricky tunnelers survive the inhospitable blasts of winter.

Cheers to that

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:50:22 -0400

Wha you say? Wuz zat? Hang on lemme puh on my glasses so ken heer yu biter.

Good news, drunkards: drinking makes you happy and smart. This from an alcohol study center no less – notorious wet blankets!

The Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that stopping drinking – whether you’re a full-blown stumblebum or just an occasional tippler – can lead to health problems including depression. And get this: failing to hit the sauce with regularity (and aplomb!) can actually create a reduced capacity in your dried up raisin of a brain to produce new neurons, aka neurogenesis.

From the press release:

“ ‘This research provides the first evidence that long-term abstinence from moderate alcohol drinking – rather than drinking per se – leads to a negative mood state, depression,’ ” said study senior author Clyde W. Hodge, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and pharmacology in the UNC School of Medicine.

The study also found that the emergence of depression was associated with a profound reduction in the number of neural stem cells (cells that will become neurons) and in the number of new neurons in a brain region known as the hippocampus. This brain region is critical for normal learning and memory, and recent studies show that the development of neurons in the hippocampus may regulate mood.”

The kicker: the study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Good morning!

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:38:33 -0400

My daily commute is a veritable sprint from one unpleasant event to the next. But one person in particular crops on a daily basis to make my mornings (especially when I’ve hit the sauce too hard on a holiday weekend!) EEEEEEEEeeeek!xtra fun.

Her voice reminds me of the caw of a combative crow circling, circling, circling a wounded rodent, with occasional staccato-like undertones of the kind of grating, metal-on-metal violence often heard in subway stations (but usually emitted from the iron horse itself, not one of its dutiful human enablers). Bonus: standing and sweating through her daily, extended soliloquies sends my nervous system into such an overwrought tizzy, I no longer have to buy coffee in the morning. I’m awake!!

Her manner could be likened to that of addlepated street-corner preacher desperately trying to warn the heathen masses that if their blank, wooden denial of his/her vision of God(s) continues, their future as perma-charcoal is a given. She lacks subtlety, a quality I confess that I do find highly relatable.

Who is this meshuga lady? She is the person whom the MTA has chosen to equip with a large and effective bullhorn on the Uptown platform of the 4,5 train at Broadway/Nassau. She has evidently been tasked with keeping commuters “in line.” She approaches her job with the level of commitment seen in many of Stephen King’s classically campy portrayals of determination gone terribly, terribly awry: think Cujo/Chrisine/Annie Wilkes.

She extols riders to “get BACK!” when the subway’s arriving; she keeps riders updated with a constant news feed of delays due to sick passengers, police “activity”, train congestion; she insists that we “make ROOM for DEPARTING passengers thank YOU – that means you missy with the yellow tank top I see you don’t look at me in that tone of voice get BACK!”; she reminds us to “not crowd the damn door – get IN – don’t just stop at the door you in the brown suit there yeah you get IN hello people are you LISTENING TO ME?!” (Memo to lady: YES!)

Finally, if it’s clear that we will all lemming-like attempt to wedge ourselves into the metal cube that will deliver us (two seconds faster! Every second counts!!) to our plastic cubicles situated in large metal and glass cubes on various cubes or “blocks” throughout the city — despite her repeated, increasingly fortissimo orders and the clear fact that our fat asses are so not fitting on that car, she’ll elbow her way into the crowd and issue directives via her bullhorn directly in commuters’ ears.

While she hurts my brain many Mondays (and occasionally on Friday) and she hurts my soul every day (even on the weekends when I think about her) I have never seen an MTA worker who enjoys their work more than she – and that’s saying a lot. Has anyone else noticed Mr. Perky who patrols the Union Square stop? I get tired just thinking about him.

Mixed signals

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:09:00 -0400

These days, actresses are too thin. This just in from Captain Obvious.

OK, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to gather the empirical evidence (Kiera, more than one Kate, Angelina, more than one Nicole — and now even the previously bodacious Kristen Johnston is looking rexi).

The media at large and Hollywood make their bread and butter (ahem) in part by (overtly or not) encouraging actresses and models to “diet” themselves to the verge of malnutrition (how many jobs would Kiera get if her spare frame added 30 lbs? How many covers of top magazines would Nicole Ritchie — whose resume is as thin as her post-partum wasp waist — appear on?) and cashing in on the lucrative advertising, movie, god help us singing and modeling gigs they generate. Not to mention the controversy and increased exposure (and bigger, juicier paychecks) their increasingly wraith-like jutaciousness.

Living in a society where starvation is an issue for very few of its inhabitants, where walking down any city street you’re bombarded with images of bony divas juxtaposed with ads for 700 calorie coffee drinks and muffins could only lead to a justifiably addled perspective on food consumption. So you’ve got your average obese American who hates him/herself (my lanky, hot husband who is the last person who I would expect to fall victim to body dysmorphic disorder just last night referred to himself as a willowy marshmellow when I asked why he was comparing the pros of various local gyms), your American who’s perfectly svelte but lives in fear of becoming obese and obsesses over every last calorie and the miraculous few who are too smart, clueless or genetically blessed to give their love handles a second thought.

I do know that our coverage of dangerously thin models and actresses has to change. I love New York magazine — it’s witty, smart, cool but not overly so — and I rarely disagree with its tone. But a recent review of Get Smart struck me as oddly offensive precisely for those reasons.

Here’s a snippet:

“Like most young actresses, [Anne] Hathaway has dropped too many pounds — in a couple of shots her cheeks have sunken so deep that they can barely hold her giant teeth. But the sleekness, hard lines, the blacks and bright green against that ivory skin — yowza. I also like the scene where she wears a tousled jacket and loosened tie: It says ‘Okay, boys. Deal me in.’ After this and The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway must have designers camping out in front of her co-op.”

Let me get this straight: Hathaway is so skinny, all of the lovely, womanly fat on her face has completely disappeared; in fact, she looks like a horse when she smiles — her scrawny cheeks can “barely hold her giant teeth.” “Yowza.” I don’t know how David Edelstein got from point A to point B, and I’m not even going to address the “Okay boys. Deal me in” bit.

Just out of curiousity, after reading the piece I googled actresses anorexic. I got 459,000 hits. actresses too thin. I got 303,000 hits. actresses skinny beautiful. I got 1,060,000 hits. Boo.

Today, news of a model killing herself was reported — she may have had emotional problems. Surprise.

Fox News showed footage of her shattered body post-jump.

Pissing contest

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:16:00 -0400

Warning: Penelope has launched a borough-wide whiz-bang war against unknown (and possibly imaginary) foes. No fence, grass-patch, fire hydrant, trash bag, flower or front step is safe from her all-consuming pheromone-spritzing effort. She periodically insists on making rounds around various neighborhoods to gather information and assess the enemy’s (enemies’??!) progress.

As a General in her ruthless tinkle army, she often (pretends to) consults me (she’s a political animal and she knows better than to completely snub her second-in-command). Sniffing a suspicious blade of grass or hydrangea bush, Penelope will turn her laser-like attention to my pallid, unworthy visage.

She doesn’t need me to tell her that her pee pee’s in charge.

Lalalalalalala! I can't hear you!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:54:00 -0400

Taking denial to a whole new level (is the entire staff secretly Catholic?) The White House opted to refuse to open a missive from the EPA detailing the negative effects greenhouse gases have on the environment. The policy, known officially as “high-tech peekaboo” put the e-mail in limbo (Catholicism again!) rendering it officially null and void.

The EPA sent the e-mail to The White House in December — in response to a High Court ruling that tasked the agency with determining if the gases pose a danger to health or the environment.

From The New York Times:

“Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.”

Inked

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:43:00 -0400

I just stumbled across a report that nearly one in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 50 has a tattoo.

What’s up with that?

My concept of what tattoos signify has evolved over time, and I wonder if my experience parallels a general pattern in America. (Granted, tattoos date back about 5,000 years – but for most of modern history, tattooed folk were peered at with the same kind of squinty-eyed suspicion one currently summons when listening to Dick Fuld pratter on.)

Now maybe it’s just me, maybe it was the times, maybe it was my age or my conservative upbringing, but when I was little, I associated tattoos with saggy, pallid biceps; prisoners; Wonder Wheel operators; evil-ass grannies; chain-smoking truckers with gnarled hands, orange-leather skin and a scary dash of ’tude.

I don’t have any tattoos and I don’t plan to be inked up any time soon. But now I associate tattoos with two of my favorite blond who happen to be sleek, sophisticated and fashion-forward.

And as globalization flattens the world and renders it into a single Brobdingnagian, weed-choked, patchy asphalt-paved, bullet-proof glassed strip mall and American’s cherished illusion of living in a nation of rugged individualists and exotics dissipates faster than Bush’s favorability rating, a tattoo does seem like a simple, fast way to differentiate myself from the roiling hoi polloi.

A deeply personal work of art on my left big toe/belly button/right butt-cheek in about an hour? Sign me up! (Except don’t: I don’t have a burning desire to commemorate a person or event with indelible ink on my bod – besides, getting a tattoo seems as unique as my own chosen vehicle of “self-expression” aka my chock-a-block, high-low, glitzy-drab, salvation army-barney’s warehouse sale, salvaged plastic bracelet-classic Tiffany’s necklace thanks Uncle Jim wardrobe. Everyone wears a uniform, from Wall Street i-bankers to emo boys.

(Except for a truly special short-bus select. The rest of us can only aspire to wear all-green all-day every day – or dance through the city to a salsa beat with a blow-up doll.)

Two of my best friends (the aforementioned blondes) have a bunch (okay — one has two, I believe soon-to-be three-in-one and the other has more than a dozen. I’ve lost count). Both ladies also have multiple piercings – a state of affairs that tends (empirical evidence only, no stats) to go hand in hand.

Also: both ladies enjoy shiny things. From glinting metallic bikes to sparkling diamonds to ocean water the sun throws a glinting ticker-tape parade upon …

Bottom line: they are bedazzled and bedazzling and enjoy bedazzlement. And their tattoos (and peircings) are lovely, unique and tasteful. The reasons each work was selected may elude me, but I do know they were all carefully considered, highly personal and enthusiastically received (by the ladies, not necessarily their parents or preppier cohorts).

Sprawling, complicated tattoos are becoming as common a sight now – and as bald an attempt at rebellion and/or general sassiness — as greasy long hair on men or singed bras were in the 60s.

A recent piece in Marie Claire explored the issues of tattoos and dating. Would a tattoo on your beau’s “upper left arm of a vibrant, crazy, and most unmistakably skinless man” make you think twice about getting horizontal? The tattoo was “Not a skeleton, mind you; a man with no skin—just organs, graphically rendered in sickly red, orange, and yellow swirls.”

It probably wouldn’t make me blink more than thrice, but then again, I dated a man who lived in a smelly garage in Billyburg with four other “artists”; he had a chicken as a pet. The chicken died about the same time as our relationship. It croaked after ingesting turpentine. Whoops. But I digress.

Christopher Hitchens may be right…. Is Bohemia as we know it dead or on the cusp of squawking to a halt as suddenly and sadly as our erstwhile chicken friend?

So here we are … living in a plasticized ungrungy Panopticon where all of the inmates, er, citizens are forced to attempt to differentiate themselves by submitting to a series of painful pricks? (Insert bad dating in NYC joke here).

I think I submitted myself to enough pricks for a lifetime, thanks … But if my whole snazzy librarian look starts to get stale I may just follow in Queequeg’s steps and express my existential and contradictory need to differentiate, lose and clearly define myself with an inky labyrinth.

Fat?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:06:59 -0400

Diabetic? Got Cancer?

You have no one to blame but your Mom. Thanks, Science!

If you’re anything like me, you already blame poor Mom for your rapidly receding gums (srsly, thanks – I’m literally long in the tooth at 31), unsightly head of frizzy wannabe red but no cigar hair, more than generous dash of crazy-pants, affinity for dirty martinis and preposterously vertiginous heels.

I’m sure my Mom would react to this news like a napping tiger who’d just been nipped on her velveteen paw by a ballsy mouse – in one languorous but fatal move, she’d roar, snap, crackle and pop that mouse before it had a chance to explain itself, but here goes:

A high-fat diet during pregnancy (side note: what kind of deadly dull, self-abnegating sicko doesn’t enjoy a high-fat diet during pregnancy?) leads to an early onset of puberty, adult obesity, insulin resistance, teenage depression and breast cancer. That’s from Deborah Sloboda, a researcher at The Liggins Institute of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I’ve got my eyes on you Debbie Downer.

Space rock: chicken little's triumphant return

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:16:16 -0400

I heart chicken little. His neurotic, furrowed brow … his whining petulance … his self (and erroneously) cast role as Modern Times’ Cassandra … his boundless fear of imagined doom … he’s a chicken after my own heart.

I love him SO much I named my favorite stuffed animal after him (except it was a cat, so “her” name became Kitten Little. KL survived many an actual onslaught from very real enemies, including, but not limited to, semi-feral border collies and corpulent labs — and most notably, my mother, who in her zeal to make KL’s injuries “better”, quickly affixed brass buttons to her forehead with the intention of reconstructing her eyes but only succeeding in lending a crazed, pet-cemetery style gaze to her begrimed little face. Mom also sewed up her violently slashed stomach and hip area with such vigor — and thick black thread — that I can’t recall poor KL without thinking of the also well-meaning but woefully misguided Frankenstein. The terror he unleashed on the world could be likened to the quakings KL inspired in visiting school pals.)

Atlantic Magazine eggheads and geophysicists can also relate to Chicken Little.

It seems about a decade ago, it occurred to Dallas Abbott – a Columbia University geophysicist – that geologists erroneously estimated the number of deadly comets and asteroids that have hit earth in the past and could hit earth in the future. (They were leaving out strikes from space that hit water, which seems laughable in hindsight, but then again, so does my four-year stint as an avid Phish fan).

The Atlantic (and Abbott) conclude that the odds of a “potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10.” So why is NASA not preparing for the impending attack of killer rocks from outer space?

After all: “Abbott believes that a space object about 300 meters in diameter hit the Gulf of Carpentaria [a mere skipping stone compared with other objects that have hit the ocean], north of Australia, in 536 A.D. An object that size, striking at up to 50,000 miles per hour, could release as much energy as 1,000 nuclear bombs. … Still, the harm was mitigated by the ocean impact. … If the Gulf of Carpentaria object were to strike Miami today, most of the city would be leveled, and the atmospheric effects could trigger crop failures around the world.”

Congress asked NASA to mount a killer-comet busting plan in 2005. “Last year, NASA gave Congress its reply: an advanced search of the sort Congress was requesting would cost about $1 billion, and the agency had no intention of diverting funds from existing projects…”

Stay classy, NASA. Just keep on churning out diaper-wearing murderess wannabes and failed rocket launches. I’ll just be under my bed.

http://Discovered! The first WASP plant

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:58:12 -0400

http://Discovered! The first WASP plant:

Possibly creating a tricky moral dilemma for the “I won’t eat anything that knows its mother” school of vegetarianism, scientists have discovered that certain species of plants can recognize its own kin.

The New York Times explains the phenomena in a hilariously somber report found here.

In addition to disillusioning plant-eaters, the humble Great Lakes sea rocket issues a devastating blow to those who would have us believe that nepotism is only prevalent in families with roots on the Mayflower.

“The studies are part of an emerging picture of life among plants, one in which these organisms, long viewed as so much immobile, passive greenery, can be seen to sense all sorts of things about the plants around them and use that information to interact with them,” The Times reports.

Susan A. Dudley, an evolutionary plant ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who carried out the break-through study on sea rockets giddily (ominously?) intoned, “Plants have a secret social life.”

Really? Fascinating ...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:26:56 -0400

I usually just crush to death the myriad bees buzzing around my tight, rumpled, scuffed up li’l bonnet by banging my head against a wall … but this one won’t die and it’s making for a twitchier than usual Friday afternoon.

Whether or not Obama and Clinton are my dream team is totally irrelevant here (and just for the record: they’re not). BUT I am going to be forced to take psychonazilezzierambo physical action against the next pundit, co-worker, random dude with halitosis and a bad wig on the subway reading The New Yorker over my shoulder and muttering to himself, family member, friend or neighbor who blithely declares that “America isn’t ready for a black president and female vice president.”

Now, I’ve deluded myself before (no one with Rosacea should ever highlight their hair, no matter how gloriously golden the shade; homemade beaded shower curtain – need I say more?; live cats never make good pillows; etc.) and I do live in and love Gomorrah, but really? REALLY?

Because even the Mesopotamian City-State of Ur could handle a female leader in 2500 BCE.

And after WWI, things really started taking off what with the Peoples’ Commissar of Social Affairs Aleksandra Michailovna Kollonta in Russia in 1917 kicking off the Party. In 1960, the first female premier was elected in Sri Lanka; in 1974 Isabel Peron became the first female president of Argentina.

In fact, the only two countries in the world that have never had a female member of government – in at least a sub-ministerial post, are Monaco and Saudi Arabia. Even the Vatican’s had one!

Out of the 192 members of the U.N., 19 have female leaders right now. (The presidential line-up is in Argentina, Chile, Finland, India, Ireland, Liberia and The Philippines; the premiers rule Germany, New Zealand, Moldavia (Designated), Mozambique, The Netherlands Antilles, Ukraine and The Åland Islands). There are also reigning queens in three countries.

In 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation freed about 4 million slaves. In 1870, blacks were given the right to vote. In 1920, women were given the vote.

Legislation can’t free minds though — as centuries of race riots, sexism and gaps in wages and education levels sadly prove. But if we’re not ready – as a country – to elect a black man and a white woman, on principle alone, it’s time to re-examine our country’s roots and cut out the rot.

Besides, if culturally conservative countries (not to say they’re more essentially conservative than the U.S.) like India, Ireland, the U.K. and Argentina have been able to handle it, we can too! I realize that the woman/black man double whammy may be a lot to handle for the classic (read: stereotypical) Rust Belt demo, but they wouldn’t vote for EITHER anyway. And other countries (esp. the ones mentioned above) have also had extremely visible, volatile struggles with racism and sexism.

Sitting back and staring mutely at people who drop the “America’s not ready!” bomb just helps perpetuate a pathetic, totally unproven myth, that like anything else, if it’s repeated mantra-like too many times, will become an unshakable belief.

Apocalypse soon

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:14:47 -0400

Apocalypse soon:

Buy one, get one of lesser or equal value free! As our economy burbles ever-lower into a soft n’ succulent muckpile — infused with the scent of swamp cabbage and filled with the sight of drowning kittens fighting each other for a limp Lily Pad and the sounds of moaning, starving orphans — otherwise known as Bush’s legacy, we can expect to see these signs cropping up more and more often.

Generally though – I’d expect them to rear their luscious heads in front of say, Payless Shoes. Or, if we really hit the skids, the make-up department at Saks.

It looks like my head’s been sharing a sandbox with George. In Southern California, real estate agents are now offering a “buy one, get one free” deal for …. million-dollar homes.

As one agent put it: “We thought, ‘Why does it just have to be on Pop Tarts and restaurants? Why not buy one home, get one free?’”

Why just Pop Tarts indeed? Full report here.

For your protection

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:13:23 -0400

Stephen and I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Seattle (my faves: not climbing the Space Needle, drive-through espresso huts, Mt. Rainier mountain, Pho Soup, bikers bikers everywhere, Belltown punk rockers, yoga mats wedged under every armpit in sight, anarchist book stores, Moose Drool Beer, Pike Place, Mt. Rainier beer, gourmet pizza that isn’t excessively so, Pioneer Square, more Pho Soup, gargantuan seafood platters you get to beat with a mallet, Ballard’s dog-filled bars and cafes, Snoqualmie Falls’ beauty and surprisingly ass-busting half-mile hike, more yoga mats, Seward Park’s old-growth forest in the middle of the city!, super-funky white people dreadlocks, etc.) to see if we could live there. Short answer: YES!

On our last night, we dramatically threw up our hands and abandoned our quest to see more! do more! explore MORE MORE MORE! (okay, so Stephen wrestled me to the ground, sat on me, put me in a headlock, bounced up and down, burped, giggled, and solemnly pledged to lick his ring finger and stick it in my ear until I ceased making plans since we had to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a plane etc.)

So we explored the super-classy Sea-Tac hood near our super-classy Best Western Executel. The fanciest place we could find was called the BullPen Bar & Grill — it offered a happy hour from 6 am-10 am, fried turkey gizzards, Texas Hold Em tourneys, karaoke, a sign that reads “We don’t serve women, you have to bring your own” and of course, fake bathroom doors put up to fool tourists that I totally fell for.

Also: the creepiest condom machine in America. Their offerings include: Fingers of Passion; Midnight Stalker; Ultra Rib (how Adam&Eve-esque! sehr Old Testament with a snazzy evocation of creation/protection/boning wrapped in one!); Du-O-Glo Stick Extender.

Grapes of wrath

Tue, 27 May 2008 15:59:32 -0400

Grapes of wrath:

Wine is the world’s oldest and fanciest alcoholic beverage. It’s created by fermenting grape juice and is enjoyed worldwide – in bottle, box and jug form, depending on the level of classiness users would like to project.

So-called oenephiles, stumblebums, moms of toddlers, residents of Fairfield and Sonoma counties in Connecticut and California respectively, priests, writers and former prom queens all enjoy drinking what they often refer to (with varying degrees of irony) as the “nectar of the gods” in higher amounts than the general population.

These groups are also seen by scientists and sociologists as having higher-than-average levels of depression and anxiety and lower-than-average levels of intelligence and almost none of the “coping skills” the rest of the population naturally possess.

Therapists are standing by as researchers unfurl their latest global warming doom-and-gloom to your way of life pronouncement: certain parts of the world are well on their way to becoming too hot to produce wine.

A report focusing on the U.K. predicts that areas currently used to produce wine will soon be suitable for producing delicacies (like raisins, aka the fruit that failed!) usually reserved for the hot climes of North Africa and the Middle East.

Boho dodos

Fri, 23 May 2008 15:14:08 -0400

Boho dodos:

Oh noes: bad news for self-satisfied hipsties. We probably should have seen the writing on the wall when Wal-Mart started stocking organic food, but if you’re like me, you just went merrily on, blithely snapping up $3 mangoes, $6 tubs of yogurt and $10 chicken breasts; gently and solemnly grilling the wait-staff at shabby chic cafes about the source of their dead cow flesh and of course – dramatically glaring at SUVs as they smoke n’ rumble by and mumbling inchoately about their carbon footprint.

About 25% of American shoppers buy organic produce at least once a week – and while the $5 carton of eggs and $7 bunch of asparagus may rankle, the smug sense of moral superiority? Priceless.

But buying organic produce and hybrid cars can do more damage to the environment than a corpulent, belching, cigar-chomping Hummer driver on a cross-country Mickey D’s tasting tour.

Warum? Wired has a great report here.

For starters, farmers who refrain from pumping hormones into their cows produce roughly 8% less milk – so it takes 25 “environmentally friendly” cows to produce as much milk as 23 industrial ones. We all know how environmentally toxic cow flatulence is – and it just so happens that organically raised cows fart out 16% more gas! You do the math, I’m hungover!

Organic birds can really let er rip too: the average organic chicken produces 45% more greenhouse gas emissions than non-organic birds.

So the obvious answer is to go veg – after all, the average American generates 1.5 more tons of greenhouse gas each year than the average veg. But organic fertilizers deliver lower yields of fruits and veggies, requiring more arable land and water to compete with Big Ag.

Oh, and if your organic produce comes from anywhere outside of a 100-mile radius you’ve completely zapped whatever enviro-benefit you were attempting to achieve (avoiding pesticides leeching into ground water, etc.) with the oil wasted on hauling the leafy greens to your sweet, sweat-shop- free American Apparel clad ass.

Re: your rockin’ new Prius. Pound for pound, manufacturing one sends more carbon into the atmosphere than producing a Hummer, primarily because of the 30 pounds of nickel the hybrid requires. You’d have to drive a Prius for 100,000 miles to achieve the carbon savings you’d get by driving a used (1998) Toyota Tercel.

The audacity of hope

Tue, 20 May 2008 16:03:06 -0400

When I woke up on September 11, 2001, it was another typical day for me: I’d been up too late the night before and my head was pounding, I’d already smoked three cigarettes before leaving my dirty, unkempt studio on the Upper East Side, I was running at least 20 minutes late for my crap job at a financial newsletter, my white button-down was unironed and already sporting a brown Pollockian drip series thanks to the Diet Coke I’d clumsily slammed while slathering too-dark foundation on my bloated, pasty face.

In short, I looked like a hot mess, felt like a hot mess and things were about to get much worse.

I’d just extracted myself (barely) from the biggest ego-melting, cortisol-pumping, heart-mushing break-up of my life and I was still writing bad prose poems about the object of my affection, sloshing down discount red wine almost nightly, painting a water-color mural at all hours on the ceiling of my rental while crying on the phone to my Mom and suffering from the kind of self-pity, aimlessness and self-hatred only Irish Catholics raised by laissez faire parents in the plasticized, stone-fenced Astroturf play-land of Connecticut can be forced to / afford to suffer from.

By the time I got to work, it was clear my former roster of “problems” was laughable.

That, of course, is when I started helplessly cackling and crying and smoking and wandering the streets and talking to and hugging bloody survivors in tattered clothes and handing out cigarettes to people who’d quit smoking decades ago and finally getting a hold of my Dad who was in the Pentagon when the planes hit and my barely coherent Mom who was packing up their house in Connecticut that day to move to D.C. to join my father in their new apartment in Georgetown and then talking to or getting reports on my friends and exes and cousins, some of whom had also barely escaped the attacks in New York and D.C., and eventually making a bee-line to a bar to meet my best friend Martha to furtively drink a beer and feel guilty for drinking a beer while our city was in ashes and we could smell the incinerated corpses and just stare in cold shock at each other and then, finally, I slowly, silently, smokelessly trundled home to eat cold baked beans and drink a lot more beer in front of the looping coverage of the day on TV, knowing I had to change my life.

And the wars happened. Then the tsunami; Katrina; countless quakes and other natural disasters.

But again and again and again and again, I hear about and see tiny wild flowers spring up amid the detritus strewn across the (so far) disaster-choked aughts. Blooms that are preventing this decade from becoming a giant memorial to the disasters and the dead, its various dedications and ornaments choked with dying bouquets and weeds.

In the wake of 9/11, I saw scores of friends and associates revamp their lives: get married, change careers, toss toxic paradigms and most of all — look inward. New York took a breath – I can still tell who was here during 9/11 and who wasn’t without asking. And it’s been seven years.

I quit my job to do a documentary about homeless people in Mexico City – and when the funding and insurance fell through, I found a job working for a radio show. It paid peanuts and my more challenging day-to-day duties generally involved buying black silk bikini briefs for my overweight male boss, picking up my boss’s wife’s dry cleaning, sweeping (yes, sweeping!) the office and fetching paper clips for members of the staff too lazy to waddle to the supply closet themselves.

The upside: free concerts. I also met two of my dearest friends there. Oh yes, and my husband! And I eventually got out and got back on my perambulating path through various media outlets.

But that’s nothing: Petra Nemcova, the supermodel survivor of the Tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people has eschewed la vida loca for charity work – she runs the Happy Hearts Fund, which helps rebuild the lives of children who have lived through disasters, natural or otherwise.

But what always inspires me most (more than pampered supermodels or relatively pampered New Yorkers who decide to essentially tweak their various versions of the status quo so it looks better on paper or makes them rest easier at night) are stories about people who have no right to be hopeful or bright eyed, people who from birth were denied the basic right to exceed their way-station in life, but who are anyway – people who have the audacity to hope.

Like a poverty-stricken, estranged, unhappy middle-aged couple who were trapped together in the quake in China that killed 32,000 plus. Their story was recently featured in The New York Times:

“Mr. Wang, 40, had just returned home two days earlier, after traveling around the country for half a year and trying his hand at small businesses. He had lost a lot of money. He and his wife rarely spoke. He spent the Chinese New Year in the city of Guangzhou by himself, skipping China’s most important family holiday.”

They spent hours in the rubble, entwined by the crushing weight of the collapsed factory worker’s dormitory they lived in. At one point, Mr. Wang tried to kill himself by twisting his neck in the rubble, but Ms. Li reminded him of their daughter, of happier times in the past and of the possibility of a new life.

“The only thing we had was each other,” Mr. Wang said. “We encouraged each other to live on, and we said once we got out, we’d live a good life and care for each other. Now we have a new start.”

The full story’s here.

I'm with stupid!

Fri, 16 May 2008 16:20:00 -0400

I'm with stupid! :

Reams of studies have spewed forth in recent years about the problems of bullying at school, work and home (probably because most researchers and reporters are all current or former eggheads who were forced to suffer the indignities of being woken up at 5:00 a.m. on an overcast Friday at age 14 by a red-headed terror of a high school senior, being denied the pleasure of brushing his/her teeth and instructed to ‘chew on this’ this being a wad of already chawed-on Wrigley Mint, being dressed in an adult diaper and t-shirt that read ‘I’m with Stupid’ with the arrow pointing toward his/her crotch, marched passed a cackling family who got up early to witness the spectacle, hog-tied and then thrown into the back of a sky-blue Jeep Cherokee and paraded around Fairfield County up and down the halls of various co-ed public high schools before being dropped back off to his/her single sex school to join the other members of his/her class for ~~four years~~ a day of ritual humiliation known as freshman hazing … not that I know anything about this sort of thing) … in fact, about 33% of people report having been bullied on the job at some point. And almost every stat shot is paired with 101 sob stories about how said bullying has shattered everything from Suzy’s mojo to Eric’s cherished collection of beautiful Lee Middleton Dolls!

So should we all stop whining, pick up the pieces of our various shattered parts, dig in and just take a bite of the shit sammy we’re all dealt at some point in our lives? Probably.

But good news for those of us who fear poop and want some more stats to wallow in / excuse our failure to even approach upward mobility into our late 20s and beeeeeeyoooooooooond: new research (out of Psychological Science no less) shows that merely being put in a “low-power” role may actually IMPAIR A PERSON’S BASIC COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING.

So having a stupid job makes you stupid … and that prevents you from getting a better job and getting less stupid because no one smart will hire a stupid.

That explains my entire career! Thanks, Psychological Science!

U can't haz cheezburger

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:08:38 -0400

U can't haz cheezburger:

In a recent news conference, President Bush addressed the concern over food prices in the U.S. that has led consumers to panic and resort to bizarre and desperate behavior (generally only displayed by agoraphobic octogenarians suffering from dementia and people in the throes of war and/or famine) like rice hoarding — it’s such a widespread problem, Costco now limits the number of bags people can buy to five.

And why have food prices skyrocketed? It certainly has nothing to do with the two wars we’re waging, the environmental consequences of global warming, or our superannuated trading practices … as Bush has deduced, with his widely acknowledged laser-like attention to world affairs and his indubitably brilliant analysis of meta economic patterns, the average American is clearly suffering because the nation of India has succeeded in dragging itself from the brink of poverty and collapse and as a result, its people want to do this crazy thing called “eat healthful food.”

Or as he put it, “When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”

As The New York Times reports, the response from India has been appropriately swift and snappy.

Politicians and academics have cited a laundry list of reasons for our food woes:

The diversion of arable land into the production of ethanol and other bio-fuels.

Agricultural subsidies.

The decline of the dollar.

The average American consumes 3,770 calories a day. The average Indian consumes 2,440 calories a day.

Americans are the largest per capita consumer of beef, the most energy-intensive common food source.

No response from Bush yet.