in the what?: 2006

Rest in Pieces

I was late to work today and still managed to be the first one here. A little Christmas miracle. Ok, but the reason I was late was because I got up so early and showered so quickly that I had time for a cup of tea and to read the news. But reading the news quickly degenerated into watching all the videos on this one website for a blender.

Will It Blend? dot com captivated me. The Put Shit In a Blender and See What Happens thing is something I've wanted to do my whole life. My favorite was the Barbie one because it was Christmasy.

I love my sister. I do. But she had SO much Barbie shit when we were young that I couldn't help but to imagine doing this in front of her 10-year-old self and what her reaction would be. Part of me thinks she would cry, but just as I'm about to feel bad about that, I realize she probably wouldn't cry anymore. When she was 10, sure, but then an image of my now-21-year-old sister enters my mind, and in this tableau, we can observe the rapid maturity she has since undergone as she laughs heartily and shoves Ken in the blender to join his girlfriend. (Or ex-girlfriend. I lost track, is she still diddling that Blaine character?) Smoke and the acrid smell of smoldering polymers flood the kitchen as Barbie's perfect life is reduced to perfect pink plastic pebbles.

Look at how much we've grown!

Seriously, watching Barbie get blended satisfied this twisted, morbid desire within me. I can't explain it, but I think it's one of those "guy things", which would explain why it feels so foreign to me. I don't have a lot of "guy" urges (don't say it) but one of the earliest that I remember also involved my sister's Barbies, but it was diluted. I was 8, and one afternoon I took great pleasure in sitting in the living room with my sister and her 30 or so Barbie dolls. (Yes, 30. My sister and I didn't exactly lack for toys and games.) We each had a pair of scissors and a Barbie hairbrush. We were playing Beauty Shop, and the rule was if the brush got stuck in Barbie's hair and pulled her head off, she got a haircut.

My sister's idea of playing with Barbies was essentially holding two in her hands and shaking them violently as she made them talk to each other, so the dolls' hair wasn't exactly Thermasilk smooth. About 15 Barbies got chopped that day before our mom caught us.

The mutilation, you see, was partially a "guy thing" (the destruction of my sister's toys, desecrating the feminine) as well as what I now realize was the vastly different (if only by one letter) "gay thing" (Barbie Beauty Shop, I mean helloooo). It was an extremely complex emotion I was feeling that day even if I didn't realize it at the time. I remember it well, though, and I'm fond of it. I'm glad I was able to work out some of these conflicting feelings we feel as gay men. It's not easy to find activities that satisfy both sides at once. Chick action movies are a good substitute

In conclusion, I think if all little boys played Barbie Beauty Shop, there'd be a lot less gender confusion in the world. Think about it. I haven't.

Putting the [fat]as[s] in Christmas

I spent 48 straight hours on the couch this weekend, only taking occasional breaks to sleep and answer the door when my Chinese came. (Once it was sesame chicken and once it was my friend Harry.... because he's Chinese, get it?) My muscles are actually stiff from not moving.

This Christmas weekend left me feeling lazy, fat, eyeball-sore, asexual, and especially Jewish. Sounds like I'm due for a mid-life crisis..

I was excited to go out and see the sun today, but it's raining. I was excited to go to work today and break the routine and do something important, but now that I'm here, the things that feel important are to see what happens next on Smallville, to eat another pint of Godiva mint chocolate ice cream, and to get the power-up and win the game.

But Christmas has also taught me some important lessons. I learned that ice cream is not actually filling, so one should always have another pint on hand (what's a birthday without ice cream?). I learned that beer and hummus is a delightful combination. I learned that not showering for 44 hours is really good for my hair. But mostly I learned that Christmas is all about greedy self-indulgence and I feel bad for all you dorks who had to pay for plane flights home to get socks from your great aunties.

The Hannukkah Spirit!

Next year, I move that everyone screws the gift-giving and family-visiting and maid-milking and sits on their ass for three days. Call your families and say "Thanks but no thanks, I got other plans this year. You have my address, send my gifts in the mail and don't forget the receipt." Forget the stupid lights. That's effort. Forget buying for other people. That's selflessness. Nobody appreciates you anyway.

If we get enough people on board, maybe the economy will collapse. Hell, maybe we'll offend Jesus so much, he'll come back! He might be in a bit of a tiff, but a second coming's a second coming, right? Everybody wins! ....except me and all my heathen gay Jew left-wing aborting lesbian orgymates. But really, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the world's biggest slothfest.

Ok, all that sacreligion left a chalky taste in my mouth. I'm going to Starbucks. Merry Dickmas!

Harry Potter and the.... oh... really?

So, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The long-awaited title of book 7.

Are you impressed?

Sounds like a witchcraft manual to me. Or a vampire book you're not allowed to read unless you wear crosses and eyeliner to your 8th grade class pictures.

Maybe the problem is the other titles were "Harry Potter and a Person or Thing" and this one sound like "Harry Potter and a Setting", which is pretty much less intriguing than the others. It was fun to try to figure out who the Half-Blood Prince or the Prisoner of Azkaban were... or what the Goblet of Fire did besides dry your throat out when you drank from it. The Deathy Hallows? A place. Perhaps a place of some holy evil

So I dunno. It's fine. A title was a nice Christmas Eve Eve Eve present even though SOMEBODY TOLD IT TO ME before I could GO THROUGH THE DOOR ON JO'S SITE TO FIND OUT FOR MYSELF. But still, I think some other titles would have gotten me more excited for the release (not like I need it). I thought of some of my own, most of which would provide much better insights into the plot of the seventh book:

Harry Potter and the Grisly Death of All of His Adolescent Friends
Harry Potter and the Long Overdue Jump in Emotional Maturity
Harry Potter and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day
Harry Potter and the Death of Harry Potter on p. 783
Harry Potter and the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Harry Potter and the Explanation of Why People Keep Mentioning His Eyes
Hermione Granger and the Welcome Shift in Perspective
Harry Potter and the Stuff He Learned After Hours with Oliver Wood
Harry Potter and the Dark Side, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Voldemort

There are more. It's not too late, Jo. You can use one of my titles if you want. You don't have to pay me or anything, just put a link to my blog in your acknowledgements.

Open Letter to an Artistic Failure

Dear Hack Composer Who Can't Get Published:

PLEASE stop sending your music to my library. I'm so serious.

I spent the better part of my morning cataloging this binder filled with your outlandishly stupid songs that's been sitting in a box for 7 years. It came with a Christmas CD that I understand you've sent as a gift to numerous politicians including the President, the governor of New York, and the mayor of Los Angeles, though I don't quite get why you had to send 25 copies of form letters these politicians' secretaries sent you as thank yous for you "generous gift" which they're "sure will bring much holiday cheer". I see the Clintons sent you a nice card wishing you a Happy Holidays and thanking you for your "correspondence", though it is odd they made no mention of the CD. Perhaps they were waiting to review you in the New Yorker.

But probably not.

A word of advice to you and the countless other unpublished composers who send their music as "gifts": 1) Find a new way to disseminate your music, and 2) Don't send copies that you made yourself on Finale if you don't know how to make it so that all the lyrics and notes don't run together. (For the non-musicians out there, it's the equivalent of being done in crayon on notebook paper with the finges still attached.)

The only thing more striking than the mediocrity of your songs (that consist of non-modulating melodies and 3 chords) is your dubious command of the English language. I know ESL classes are expensive, but if you are going to write songs in English, understand that we prefer not to have three syllables on one note. Also, "candy" is not a synonym for "sweet" so describing a canary as "so candy" implies that it is edible, not charming.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Career,
~TH~

P.S. I mean it.

The Grossest Thing Happened on the Way to the Men's Room

Another reason why I never ever go to bars alone ever:

I went out last night with my friend Stuart because Splash does this Broadway thing on Mondays with a 2-4-1 drink special on everything they've got. It's fun, but he left and I didn't wanna. So I talked for a while with the couple at the next table over. They were nice and I ate their pretzels.

Anyway, then I was gonna go so I went downstairs to the bathroom real quick and this guy stopped me by the basement bar that's real quiet with just a few people around it. He was extremely yucky with long hair and about 15 years on me, which isn't a problem really. I'm not agist, I'm yuckyist. He was slimy looking and his shirt was open halfway down, exposing his shorn chest and making him look like he lived in Miami in the 70's. He probably did. The shirt had flowers on it.

But who cares, I'm feeling nice and so I humored him and said hello. But then when I asked that he did, he said he was a porn star and I said "No you're not" but he stood by it. I think he does bad-smelling hair videos. It's a niche.

Also, he talked like a frat boy making fun of gay people.

He was trying to be sexy, so I undermined it be telling him he smelled strongly whisky and looked like he'd had a long day. His response was to order another drink and one for me. There was no way I was touching it, I said "There's whisky in there, I hate whisky, it stinks."

Anyway, it was quickly time for me to leave and never come back, but I knew saying "I have a boyfriend, he's just not here tonight" would not be enough. (Don't ask me how I knew, I just knew.) So instead I said "I have a boyfriend, he's waiting upstairs for me, I have to go. Now. Before it's too late." But he said "No, stay and talk with me a little longer." Jesus. Ok, so I said, "No, I don't think so, my boyfriend's pretty jealous. Plus he's really big and plays football so he'll probably want to kick your ass."

I might tell a lot of lies, but that man is no porn star.

"He sounds hot," the man says. "Oh yes, he's very hot. And young" by which I meant "hotter and younger than you." Anyway, he finally says "Ok, go ahead but how about a kiss goodbye" to which I truthfully replied "That is a fabulously bad idea", which he did not hear because he was busy leaning in. The most terrifying part was that his tongue was already out of his mouth before he was even within striking distance. I lept back, tripping over a stool and smashing the jack and coke he had bought me all over the floor. Successfully attracting the attention of the entire bar, I also firmly and forcefully said "Stay. Away from me" before stalking away, catching the eye of the cute blonde at the corner of the bar who gave me a bemused smile.

Success. This marks the second time I have humiliated a desperate asshole at a gay bar since moving to New York. Well, technically they humiliated themselves, but I'm gonna go ahead and take credit for it.

Moral of this blog: Appearances are never deceiving.

Eragon

This is about Eragon the movie version because I saw it yesterday and I read the book a year ago and I have good taste in men, so I know what I'm talking about.

It stars a brand new and totally lunchable 18-year-old British kid named Edward Speleers. He has sandy blond hair and a charming boyish face and that indefinable sexiness that comes of being a British 18-year-old. He is Eragon, a farm boy (because the only way to make a sexy blond teenager even sexier is to throw him in a farm and make him wrestle with his also-cute, also-blond cousin) and blah blah blah he finds this egg that eventually hatches into a CGI Rachel Weisz Dragon named ~~Izzy~~ Saphira. They have an adventure that's pretty much the plot of Star Wars. I'm not going through it.

Anyway, the book is better, obviously. Let's talk about that for a minute. People bitch about the book a lot because it's kind of a rehashed plot from Lord of the Rings and Star Wars... I guess it maybe is. I dunno. Lord of the Rings is so boring that I can't read it, and I'd use it's pages to proverbially wipe my ass if I weren't afraid the story's dryness would give me a vicious case of proverbial hemorrhoids. As for Star Wars my entire opinion of that movie series is "I like the Ewoks", which should give you an idea of much of the plot I remember. It's been a long time since I've seen them. So I'm not going to sit here and defend either side of the 'rehashed plot' argument because I quite frankly don't care. Eragon didn't change my life, but it's an entertaining read. If it's unoriginal, it's better than a lot of the other unoriginal crap out there.

The movie adaptation did a lot right and a lot wrong. The first thing it did right, which we've discussed a bit, is taking the characters as Christopher Paolini (the author) wrote them and making them sexy. Like this:

Also, the character of Murtagh is played by Garrett Hedlund and his eyeliner, a combination that made me want to jump through the screen and do something.... indecorous.

There was also a hot girl named Arya. She's an elf. A lot of people complained that she didn't have pointy elf ears, but I submit that with cheekbones and eyes like hers, prosthetic body parts are not only unnecessary, but a slight to her frail beauty. Bitch was sexay!

Lastly, I no longer hate Rachel Weisz because of The Fountain. She was delightful as Saphira. It's a huge relief. Hatred of people because they associate with bad talent is so tiring.

That's basically what the movie did right: hot, talented actors. Except for one, and we're going to use him to transition into the negative things. Cover your ears, I'm about to swear.

John Malkovich was so fucking bad!!!!!!! I could put a weight on my exclamation point button and leave for 90 years and that sentence would still not be emphasized enough. Now I'm not too familiar with the man's oeuvre, but I figure if you have a movie based on your brain, you must be pretty good at SOMETHING. But that something is obviously not playing an evil, tyrannical king, a part that--I'm sorry--is so not difficult. King Galbatorix is Eragon's Sauron except in the movies, that flaming eye thing had a bigger range emotions than Mr. Malkovich did. It felt like he was trying to do the Alan Rickman Menacing Monotone that makes Snape so sexy in the Potter films, but instead he sounded like he was annoyed at his wife for putting too much mayonnaise in the potato salad again. It was the most boring, uninspired portrayal of evil I've ever seen, and all I could think was "Didn't anybody notice this? Why didn't anybody say anything to him? Were they embarassed, maybe it's like when someone has something in their nose and you don't want to make them feel stupid so you hope they'll just sniff on their own."

The film also had a bunch of characters who were introduced and never developed and then they disappeared (which I had trouble noticing because I knew them from the book and they were fleshed out in my mind -- my friend Harry pointed it out.)

Other bad things include the glossing over of major plot points, no sense of a unique visual style (the movie doesn't look like the posters), Eragon too often portrayed as a whiny prat, the kids with the mullets who wouldn't shut up two rows back, and too few gay sex scenes between Eragon and his cousin (though I have high expectations for the DVD special features).

Ok, in conclusion, Eragon is mediocre, but if you're gay or 10 you'll really like it.

Where's my Hannukkah spirit?

After such a strenuous morning of a Christmas party and having my computer broken so I couldn't do work for an hour my lunch break was a welcome respite. I wasn't hungry because of the party (and I'm eating at 3:30 at my second library-sanctioned work blowoff a.k.a. the tech services Christmas party) so I wandered around these adorable little kiosks they have set up in Bryant Park.

All there people are selling stuff like scarves, candles, ornaments, baby clothes, and waffles. One woman had a stand with a bunch of clove boxes. That's boxes made of cloves. They smelled like cloves. And also had clove ornaments and a monkey on a spring that hangs from the ceiling.

From her I bought a coat hook with cats on it. It's super cute and now I won't drape 5 coats and 10 scarves over my kitchen chair so that when my retarded cat walks by and touches a dangling scarf tassle, the weight won't cause my entire chair and all my clothes to fall on her. Sort of a shame, really. I like when bad things happen to my cat.

I couldn't decide between the cat hook or a set of hooks with the sun, moon, and a star on them. They were both cute metalwork things, so I tried to think of people's reactions to them. The sunmoonstar one got "Oh, it's nice" because it was, and the cat one got "Jesus Christ, I can't believe you bought coat hooks with fucking cats on them are you in a knitting club?" So I bought the cat one.

Then they gave me a free ornament made out of cloves. In a bizarre fit of psychic awareness, she gave me one shaped like a music note. I'm not sure what to do with it. Now I feel like I have to buy a fucking tree to accomodate her gift.

Oh, and SPEAKING OF BEING UNAPPRECIATIVE, I'm about to be it again. My grandma (dad's mom) sent me my Hannukkah gift, and not only is the check smaller than last year (when it wasn't big in the first place... think "Less than a DVD") she didn't even send a card this year. Like gee thanks, I see you're doing Christmas for the whole family at under $100 this year. And I don't care if you think I'm mean and an asshole because my mom agrees with me and my grandma has a lot of money and please at least write a note or something so I know you Hannucare enough to remember my name.

Oh and my dad's decided my gift will get stolen in the mail, so he's forbidden my mom from sending it and will instead give it to me in the middle of January when he's here on business. So there goes the greedy part of my holiday. This year I got almost enough money to pay for a CD and a travel mug (it just came) with a note saying "Happy Holidays from the Library and if we catch you using anything but this mug you are totally fired!"

You break it we bought it

Library staff holiday party HEY! They had this catered brunch thing this morning that was nice and a bit incongruous. The plates were cheap catering rentals and they provided no knives, but the cute snowman mugs were from Crate and Barrel and we got to keep them. The orange juice was fresh, but the eggs were from a carton. And I was pleased that they had lox and bagels, a giant step forward for the Jews in this year's brutal War on Christmas.

You remember the War on Christmas. Last year, I wrote a blog entry on it. This year, I won't.

There was an announcement today that we're all getting free travel coffee mugs. For months, we've been getting e-mails about having open drinks at our workstations, and we've all been ignoring them. Especially me. So they're solving the problem with travel mugs.

I just wish someone had told me sooner that the way to get things from people is to do things they hate until they buy you something. I'm now investigating other rules I can break to get free merchandise. But all I can think of is standing in the rain and dripping on my keyboard until they buy me a new umbrella. There's one at the asian museum that was kinda cute.

12 Steps is Not a Lot

Look.

Ok. Can we get over it now?

Soy on Boy Action

This article at first struck me as a joke. I mean WorldNetDaily may be useless and ignorant, but that doesn't mean it completely lacks a sense of humor. I thought a little self-parodying might be possible. But no. I realized it was all serious, and as usual when I leave that site, I was filled with the complex combination emotion of amusement, befuddlement, anger, and fear. Also as usual, the anger and fear stick around a bit longer than the others.

Yes, I know it's just another Christian whackjob (NOT to be confused with the regular Christian who is good and fun and intelligent, don't turn this into some comment on Christinanity, it is about ONE freakshow with ONE receding hairline) being ignorant on the internet, but it still bugs me. It bugs me because the number of people who are vocal about stuff like this is rising faster than my estrogen level after my morning Starbucks run. But anyway, back to soy. Let's break it down.

If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

I don't think I alone am of the opinion that this this is a fabulous idea for every man to do.

Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

I kinda think that if hippie babies were dying left and right from soy poisoning, we'd have heard of it by now.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, ...

Whoa! Ok, I can list for you about 100 men who will attest that my penis has not shrunk including one auctioneer who has sworn in a drunken barroom to this fact.

... sexual confusion ...

No, I pretty much get it.

... and homosexuality.

This is one of those logical leaps we were taught against in the 3rd grade. Then again, I can't deny it from personal experience except to say that growing up, my family consumed all parts of the cow, so my gayness cannot be due to the degenerative effects of soy. But that's a logical leap as well. So I suppose I'll respond with "Bullshit!"

Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Ok, I'm thinking really hard, and the only time I can remember this happening is once when I was 6 and my friend wanted to play G.I. Joe and I wasn't in the mood and he said "Wow, your estrogen levels must be high today." But that's it. Once.

Research in 2000 showed that a soy-based diet at any age can lead to a weak thyroid, which commonly produces heart problems and excess fat. Could this explain the dramatic increase in obesity today?

I hope I'm not out of line, but I'm going to posit that the increase in fatness has been caused by people eating more fat. Fast food, huge portions, and our fabulous lack of self-control seems more likely than soy to be the problem. But go ahead if you like. Eat less soy and more meat and see what happens.

P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu.

Thanks. And speaking of soy sauce and miso, people in East Asian countries are huge consumers of soy. Where's their obesity and rampant homosexuality? (I'm going to avoid and obvious and racist joke about penis size.) But c'mon, shouldn't China and Japan be the world's largest producers of sumo sodomites? What does your "research" say about that.

Ok, I'm done. It's time for lunch. I'm going to get this tofu bowl thing from the Japanese place down the street. I'm hoping that with the venti soy latte I had this morning (upgraded from grande in honor of this article), I'll get myself up to a C-cup. My no-milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Are You Of Quality?

Read this headline or even the whole article and then answer the following question COMPLETELY honestly. Once again, participation is mandatory.

Even if you giggled just a LITTLE bit... feel bad, know you're wrong, flog yourself, but don't lie to me. I'll know.

Breaking the Cycle

So I'm finally going to find my damn way to Lincoln Center tonight to reawaken the musician within.

I haven't been to a good concert or recital in a gabillion years. It's bad and irresponsible and I know, ok? I'm a classically-trained music librarian, but I'm not comfortable calling myself a musician anymore. Weird.

I'm going to hear Adriana Songs, a piece by Kaija Saariaho. It's part of a whole program they're doing tomorrow through Saturday, but I don't care about the other pieces on it, so I'm going tonight instead where Saariaho is going to be talking with Steven Stucky, who has the cutest name ever. Should be neat. My last experience with her is from my senior-year opera class where I wrote a paper on L'amour de loin. (I also wrote a paragraph on her in my first-year German class when, for some reason, we were discussing women composers.)

Right, so I have this new campaign, and the goal of it is to spend all my extra money on good music. It won't last, but I'm gonna get tickets to The Magic Flute because the staging shots look awesome and this Ute Lemper performance in February. This is to prove to myself and the world that I do have refined taste in something and that my life is more than work and gay bars and Harry Potter podcasts.

Really, it is. Or it will be.

The Gift of Anal Health

I hate when I'm tracking a package that says "Departed from Jersey City a million days ago at 6:00 a.m." and it still hasn't come to my door. Seriously, Jersey City is so close I could pee out my apartment window and completely clear it (and if I get even one comment about a 20 mile long penis, I'm deleting my blog and never using the internet again.) So what the hell, where is my shit, POSTAL SERVICE?

The package is my Hannukkah present to myself, and I'm not telling you what's in it because you'll all think I'm a loser for ordering a box set of the Harry Potter video games, but there's also a book that I really want to start reading and another book and some other stuff you'd all hate. Anyway there's no way I'd GO to Jersey to get the stuff myself because I don't think my vaccinations are up to date so all I can do is complain.

Speaking of vaccinations, that reminds me of today's blog entry topic. Following the example of countless underpaid 20-something males, I think I'm going to get paid to receive an experimental vaccination. There's this doctor I met who specializes in gay men's sexual health and is administering a vaccine for HPV (human papillomavirus), which is not approved for use in men in the U.S. yet, though it's given to both men and women in Europe and Australia. The virus is sexually-transmitted and has many forms, but the yuckier ones cause genital and anal warts and can lead to cervical and anal cancer. It's one of the most wide-spread STDs we've got, but lots of people ride it out without noticing symptoms. Apparently we've (meaning gay men've) all probably had it at some point, which yucks me out pretty bad. But anyway.

In a lot of places, the vaccine is becoming mandatory for pre-adolescent girls and has been shown to be 100% effective in pretenving certain strains of HPV. Since I'm not ever wanting to say the sentence "I have anal warts/cancer" but I AM wanting $75 and a free STD screening, I think I'm gonna do it. The doctor's super nice, really open, and most importantly, a gay Jew. His name is Stephen Goldstone.

If any of you are in the New York area and wanna get a shot of Wart-B-Gone, let me know and I'll give you his information that you can easily find for yourself on the internet.

Actually, that's a little misleading. The vaccine won't get rid of warts. It only works if you don't already have them.... but I still think Wart-B-Gone is a funny name that I made up all by myself.

Kid's Tip

Since you're all keeping notes, I have something to add to your lists of "Things Never To Do Drunk At 6 a.m." Right after the entry for "Tell your ex-boyfriend you still love him" please write "Feed the cat." When I woke up Saturday morning, my entire kitchen was filled with crunchy cat food, half of which was smashed and stepped on. I didn't even know that much food came in a box, but it was seriously up to my waist.

Luckily my cat is gross and diseased and hates her bowl so she ate the stuff off the floor first before continuing her habit of pushing the food out of her bowl onto the floor. She hates her water bowl too, so I have to keep the toilet open or she'll turn to dust.

My cat is a pestilence.

Oh, and don't order a gigantic rare hamburger with bacon and avocado and extra mayo at 5 a.m. because you probably don't need the calories and your stomach will feel funny the next day unless of course it's because you ate some of the cat food and can't remember. That's the kind of mystery that doesn't make you more sexy.

Attn: Feeders

A quick PSA for my most devoted fans--namely, those who actually subscribe to my feed in an aggregator.

So I recklessly switched to Blogger Beta the other day, which apparently has all these new features including way awesome template options, but to use them involved ditching my current template altogether, and the new options aren't dynamic enough to make my blog look how I want it. Well, maybe they are dynamic enough, but they also require effort on my part, so.... whatever.

The point is, switching caused my feeds to restart themselves. I don't understand it, but it seems to have happened to everyone who switched to Blogger Beta because all their feeds in my Bloglines have the dreaded Exclamation Point of Error next to them. One disappeared from my aggregator altogether, which I don't fully understand.

The point is, my feed is now http://inthewhat.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I kinda thought that's what it was before, but apparently not. Go resubscribe. Bloglines users can use this handy button that I updated:

I also fixed the one in the sidebar. K thx.

Let's put the laughter back in slaughter

Don't you hate it when people blog about their dreams like "Yeah, as if I care" right? It's like cat pictures and weight loss diaries. Keep it to yourself.

I hate it too. But too bad.

Last night I dreamt I was in high school gym class again. Some of my friends and I were all on the same team. The sport was Werewolf Hunting.

Actually, it was more like Don't Get Killed By The Werewolf Until The Bell Rings, similar to how real-life gym class feels to people like me.

So my team was finally able to surround our werewolf target, and that's when the dream turned all emo. As the only one with a weapon (a sharp rock I had found) it was up to me to do the creature in. But upon being surrounded, he got all scared and meek and pitiful, and that's when I remembered it was just a person with a problem he couldn't control. I felt so sad for him that I couldn't kill him.

So I gave the rock to this girl I went to school with, and she went to town on it. She was crazy! I mean she was tearing the animal apart like total gross out cover your daughter's eyes blood and fur and viscera salad! I didn't know my brain could imagine such violence and gore. Way to go brain!

But I wasn't cheering in the dream. No, I was emo, remember? I was crying for all the hurt and pain and cruelty in the world. That Poor Animal, Children Are Starving in Africa, My Mother Never Loved Me, Babies Having Babies! As if that's not horrible enough, I was crying blood. If there were some Rasputina playing, it would have been a scene straight out of a myspace profile.

Oh, and might I add it was all over my favorite white shirt. God knows why I wore that thing to gym class, but I do know that when I woke up, I was genuinely relieved that I had not really ruined it. I was glad my priorities were back in order.

Every now and then my brain plays games like this with me. It gives me a dream like that one or makes me feel all somber and introspective when I see a dead bird on the street. Like it wants me to become one of those kids in eyeliner and a spike bracelet writing poetry for a zine I put out for my friends (read: people whose screennames I can spell).

Well it won't work, brain! The Shah of Schadenfreude won't have it! I like animals and people enough, but I will always laugh at Strangers with Candy when they use the turtle for a hockey puck, and I will always laugh at the scene in Unbreakable where the crippled guy falls down the stairs. Always.

So this is your last warning, brain. If you don't cut the crap, you're totally off my Top 8.

Shalom, shalom

Hannukkah tidings from the last castrato

Adults Take Note

Give me funnel cakes and give me death!

Oh my God, I have so much to write about today. It would seem that New York, I have mixed feelings to report, is to become the first city to ban trans fats from restaurants, a decision I find both upsetting and retarded.

First of all, government, if I want to eat crap food that will kill me by the time I'm 35, let me choose to do that. While I was in grad school I had fast food approximately 10 times a week knowing how bad it was but loving it anyway. My life is 8 years shorter now, but at least I won't spend those 8 years eating green beans, hummus, and tofu.

Secondly, I'm not sure if you've done any surveys on the topic, but we Americans have this bizarre affinity for flavor, and trans fat is a key ingredients in the recipe for flavor. McDonald's doesn't stay open because it cooks its fries in sunflower oil. The Dunkin' Donuts franchise has capitalized exclusively on fatty pastries (and kinda on coffee). We choose these places trans fat notwithstanding, and we're not stupid. It's like drugs, I know what I'm getting into! Nobody needs your mollycoddling! You're ruining gluttony for all of us, Government, just like you've already ruined lust and avarice.

America is a notoriously obese country. It's the one thing we can say we're really good at. I just don't understand who'd want to give that up.

Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden flow?

Come on, everyone, let's all pin a rose on Mary Cheney's nose! A baby? A baby! Awwwwwww.

People are laughing. People are angry. I'm not terribly concerned about it. Personally, I'm betting the hypocracy and cognitive friction between who Mary is and what she represents will cause the child to implode before its second birthday.

No harm, no foul.

On a related note, I'm going to encourage you all not to do a Google Image Search for "lesbian fetus" while your coworkers are walking by no matter how badly you want to include a graphic in your blog entry.

Thank god nobody reads my blog because I would make enemies

Horrible news, karaoke last night was cancelled. It was at this faggy-looking restaurantish bar, right, totally festive, and we got there and talked to the owner, and karaoke was cancelled. Sad destiny, right? So instead we ate (I had banana pancakes and a chocolate shake) and went to Therapy.

Wanna hear my new least favorite thing in the world? It's easy: Gay Talent Show. Apparently this is a normal Wednesday thing there, so ok I didn't know. So these gay guys got up and sang songs. One lip synched in middle-aged woman drag. (Appropriate for a middle-aged man.) But looooord, I about died. You couldn't hear the first guy because he was too busy trying to act shy and cute. The next guy sang "I Am Ready For Love" in jeans my mom wore before she lost 80 pounds.

Oh, but then redemption. After him was this fabulous, beautiful, amazing girl. She totally ate up the stage and sang "Ain't No Other Man" and I couldn't believe that Christina Aguilera has a career and this girl doesn't. Fan, tastic.

I was happy. For a few minutes. Until "Last Week's Winner" came up and sang something I had never heard in a spastic voice that wavered between too soft and jarringly loud. It had lots of little improvised melismas that inevitably ended on a belted high note a quarter tone flat. He was kind of attractive, but I couldn't tell because his t-shirt said "I Heart My Penis" on it. You get the idea.

Right.

Moving on. Blue introduced me to a couple of Abercrombie and Fitch models, which was kinda neat. So they're gay after all! They look more like regular people in person, and only the shorter one really impressed me, but they were fun. We didn't talk a lot. But anyway, I have some advice:

Never hang out with Abercrombie and Fitch models!

Here's why. Of course there's nothing wrong with them. But if they're around, all that time you spent in front of the mirror making yourself look cute was worthless because nobody (not anyone) is looking at you anymore. It's just a heads-up, I mean do what you want. But I'm just warning you.... if you're going to hang out with hot people, expect to look less hot by comparison.

I might just stop titling my entries

Anybody who knows anything about me knows that I love going to sing karaoke. Right, so I went last night to this overpriced drag queen diner called Lips or something that has karaoke on Tuesdays. It was superfun, but they had no country music, so I was mad and instead sang Heartbreaker and All That Jazz and I was pretty good.

I was there with like this whole big group of gay people and one lezzzzbian, and there was this one kid who was this total natural performer. I had a secret crush on him that you don't know about because I only told the kid sitting next to me about it. The guy's name was Blue, and I don't even know what stupid obscure song he sung, but he was totally lovable.

Right, and also, I kinda flirted with our drag queen waitress because she was very tall, but not intimidating, and also, she might be attractive when she becomes a real boy. She had blonde flapper hair.

But right, she told this kid I kinda know to invite me out tonight with them. So now me and Ray (the kid I kinda know) and Blue and Chandelier are going to some other joint to do karaoke AGAIN because I'm such a superstar.

If you're looking for me tomorrow, I'll be in a studio becoming famous with my new friends with the exotic names because that's what karaoke does, it makes people famous if they're good enough and try hard enough and never give up, never!

Reader Survey

Since I now have a record 3 regular readers of my blog, I thought I would get some input. Everybody has to answer the poll, I mean it! I'll know if you don't because I check my site statistics every 90 seconds!

Your opinion matters. You matter.

The one with the spores

Warning: This entry contains libraryspeak that I am not going to translate because it's not important that you understand.

I'm feeling all accepted and knowledgable because people at work are coming to me with special projects. A couple days ago, I started learning to read Russian cyrillic so I could start sorting through old Russian and Hebrew save records in RLIN to prepare for the OCLC conversion in July. My only experience with hearing Russian is from watching overexcited, panting pre-teen gymnasts on the Olympics who just stuck their landing, so that's what it all sounds like when I read it to myself -- high-pitched and fraught with gasping pauses.

Also, an energetic old woman just came to me with a bunch of brittle books that need to be queued for microfilming. I'm not altogether sure what this entails other than assigning microfilm call numbers. Apparently this task was given to me because the books are about music, but the thing sounds like something better suited for a tech because it requires no actual knowledge of cataloging or music, but fine. I don't mind. I like to touch old, falling apart books. They smell like history, and sometimes they release an entertaining cloud of spores when you open them.

Those are spores.

I'm not going to talk about the library anymore because you're all bored and all this talk of spores has made me feel lonely. I'm going to go play.

The Fountain Spews

I am happy to report that my mouth sore is finally going down. On Friday, I bit the inside of my cheek real hard, and it bled a lot and prevented me from performing oral sex this weekend, but it's finally healing a little bit. I am glad of this because it allows me to focus on healing another oozing, disgusting wound that I suffered on Sunday. This one was caused by watching The Fountain, which won an unexpected underdog victory, stealing from M. Night Shayamalan's entire oeuvre the Veronica Moser Shittiest Movie In History Award.

I guess I should put a spoiler warning here because I might give away the... ending? Actually, I'm not sure the movie had one, but there was this part where the credits came on, so that's when I left. The presence of a plot also remains under debate. Anyway, this is your spoiler warning, though I submit that it is not possible to spoil a movie that was never fresh in the first place.

Ok, here's the synopsis. In the beginning, Hugh Jackman is bald and living in a giant floating bubble with a tree that whispers to him. The tree's name is Rachel Weisz. Then suddenly, Hugh Jackman has a beard and armor and is starring in the movie King Kong... not the Peter Jackson version, I mean the one that takes place in 15th-century Spain. You know the one. Right, and lastly, Hugh Jackman is also a doctor that studies brain tumors in monkeys because his novelist girlfriend, Rachel Weisz is dying of a brain tumor herself, and he's going to save her by saving the monkey. The monkey's name is Donovan.

It's hard to say whether the three plotlines are Jackman and Weisz reincarnated or whether the doctor line is text, and the other two are horrible transparent subtext. I think it's supposed to span 3 lives, though, and in each one, Jackman (Tomas the Conquistador, Thomas the Doctor, or Tom the Bubble Boy) is trying to save Weisz (Queen Isabella, Izzy the Writer, or Izzy the Hairy Tree of Life and Patron Saint of Static Cling) from dying. There's a nebula involved and a lot of whispering.

That's the movie. It was like some stupid student project at a pretentious film school done by an undergrad who hasn't realized nobody in the real world cares about his vision... and that his vision is shallow and poorly-executed.

Anyway, the message of the movie was that death is appealing. I'm being serious. It was one big rah-rah for euthenasia and suicide, calling death "the great awe." I'll avoid the obvious joke about this movie doing a good job of making death look good by being so horrible you want to kill yourself. We're supposed to believe that death is good for its regenerative power. The only evidence that really makes this clear is at the end when Tomas the Conquistador drinks the sap of the tree of life and turns into an attractive flowerbed. The problem is, he killed a ton of soldiers and a some holy sacred guard to get there, and none of them turned into flowers. It all seemed like an awful waist to me, and now the Queen will never see him again and Spain will not be saved. Thomas the Doctor plants a dead seed thing in the snow on his girlfriend's grave (he doesn't save her, it's actually kinda funny) so that Izzy will become a tree, but you just know the stupid thing won't grow, and if it does, it's on Ellen Burstyn's farm, and you know she'll just plow over it. Lastly, Bubble Boy gets the tree to the nebula, but it died before it got there. I'm not really sure what happened to him, but it involved yoga and lots of floating around. The whole thing was such crap.

The monkey was pretty good. Oh, and there was a shot where Rachel Weisz's hair looked nice. That's it for the positives.

This movie gets no stars because it already used its quota to make a lame-looking nebula. I swear, you'll see more awe-inspiring space art at the planetarium.

In all seriousness, I've read a lot of reviews on this movie, and everyone seems to have some facts wrong. It's not because the movie was intelligent, it's because it was incoherent. The plotlines didn't work together at all, the characters were lame and stereotyped (and Hugh Jackman cried a lot). There was nothing good. Nothing. Well, almost nothing. Man, I really wish the monkey had a bigger part.

To conclude, this was a movie even Veronica Moser wouldn't do a scene in.

Won't you please my neighbor?

Yesterday I met my neighbor to the right, the one who's not a middle-aged Indian woman. I hate meeting my neighbors because I always assume they overhear embarassing things like when I sing and dance in my apartment or when I play video games for 5 hours straight on a sunny Saturday afternoon or (for shame) when I am scouting X-Tube seeing if I can find anyone I know.

So I was looking in my man-bag for my keys when this guy comes up behind me and is all "Hey, you live here?" and I thought CRAP i'm getting robbed or else this is that guy from the summer who was convinced I flooded his apartment even though I don't live above him and I'd have to flood my own apartment for that to happen, and I'd remember that.

Anyway it wasn't either of those things. Instead, it was this attractive 20-something boy in a tie and sport coat. He had light brown eyes and curly hair and kinda rosy cheeks, and I decided he must go to the gym 3.5 times a week, and he is my neighbor and has been for about 2 months, which explains why I haven't heard that horrible yapping dog in about that long. I noticed he was wearing black socks with brown shoes, and they were ugly shoes, so I wasn't surprised when he mentioned a girl coming to live with him in a month. So hopefully he and the girl will have frequent sex so I won't feel guilty about my midnight Pat Benatar cravings anymore. I always pray for neighbors to have sex just because it breaks down that barrier and allows me to live my sometime-kinda-loud life without guilt or embarassment. If anyone ever complains, I can always bust out the "You only last for 3 minutes" or "You like your girlfriend to strap it on" or "You sing the songs from Cats while you're fucking" to put them back in their place.

It's fun to have a sexy neighbor and it's fun to know that I'm not the only person under 35 living on the Upper East Side.... except that his apartment is bigger because he has a bedroom, and I imagine he wears a tie to work because he makes more money than me, so I kinda still feel alone.

I told him to let me know if he ever needed anything like milk or sugar or oral sex, but something tells me I won't see him until he's moving out in 10 months. That seems to be how it goes in my building.

"We don't got no gingerbread."

What? What do you mean you don't got no gingerbread? It is 10:45 on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Of all the Mondays in the year, this is the one on which I second-most expect a cup of Christmas cheer! I hold in my hand a Starbucks gift card. This is $100 of pre-paid gingerbread lattes. So I know that when you say you don't got no gingerbread, what you actually mean is that you got some gingerbread in the back and you will now go get it for me, right? Right?

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Hello. Welcome back to my blog. As I sit here nursing a distinctly non-Christmasy vanilla latte, I am caused to reflect upon my festive holiday weekend.

Actually it wasn't festive. Thanksgiving was pleasant, mostly because I fell asleep in the living room before everyone started getting rambunctious and annoying. There's never tension in my family, but they mock-fight and horse around a lot, and I always end up with a headache. Before that was nice, though, in the way reading old issues of People magazine at the dentist is nice: it's kinda mindless and the gossip is interesting (if a tad irrelevant) but you know something yucky and torturous is about to transpire, and you're trapped in there waiting for it.

In this case, the dentist is my mom's brother, who this year announced his arrival louder than ever. We were all talking quietly in the family room with the hors d'oeuvres when suddenly: "HEY FAGGOT!" My uncle had arrived. Oh, and he was talking to the dog, not to me. We don't tell Uncle Nate about me.

So dinner. My (other) uncle's turkey is always awesome, and I get a leg. The stuffing had no mushrooms this year, which earned it an A+. And of course, we had my favorite food: can-shaped cranberry sauce. I ate so much. My cousin refuses to touch it. I tried convincing her of its merits by saying "It's like Jell-O, but gritty", but she didn't understand.

The conversation was peppered with disparaging comments about other cultures and races from my charming uncle. You know the one. Although, there was considerably less "chink" and "nigger" talk this year, which surprised me until I realized he was focusing on gypsies.

Gypsies. I was thinking "Is this the Byzantine Empire, Nathan, do we even have gypsies anymore?" But I came to understand that he was using "gypsies" to refer to "Various peoples of color when that color is not black." It was a catch-all term for Middle-Easterners, Indians, Native Americans, Mexicans, et al. Also Russians. In addition, certain individuals of the Caucasian persuasion may be classified as "gypsy" if they also fall into the category of "People Nate Doesn't Like."

We discussed the gypsies living in my grandmother's building (a nice Pakistani couple), the gypsies that my uncle arrested the other day (he's a cop), and the gypsies causing all sorts of problems in Iraq (sometimes the word "Arab" was substituted in the interest of variation). Charming, really.

So that's what was happening across the table from me. To my left, my grandmother (my dad's mom) was letting me in on America's best-kept secret. She didn't want to tell me if I was going to make fun of it because she didn't want to waste her time on people with closed minds. When I finally assured her I have the most open mind at the table, she told me. I'm going to share this with you guys because I trust you all. Here's what you do.... invest in real estate on Mars. It's going to be a hot commodity soon because we can't live on Earth very much longer. So buy land on Mars. And Jupiter too. Pluto's too far away to be profitable.

I listened. I tried my very best to keep a straight face, but I accidentally laughed a little, but I masked it well by turning the sound into the beginning of a question: "But, isn't Jupiter made of toxic gas?" At this point I was labeled as a "close-minded fool like the rest of them" and I had to convince her that it was just a question and that given enough effort, Jupiter could be made habitable as well. I finally admitted that I have no significant savings to invest, which prompted my cousin Janice to ask me about my job and salary. I could have hugged her for providing the escape route, but I contained myself.

Things looked up when dessert came because my Aunt Donna works at Starbucks, and she brought in a tray of cranberry bliss bars, which I consumed with great abandon. I even got to take a bunch home. I have one in my bag right now, but it's kinda squished. A cranberry bliss lump, really.

Then it was nap time.

So... best Thanksgiving in years, really. The rest of the weekend was spent reading 4 novels, watching How to Marry a Millionaire (on which I took notes) and sitting doing a jigsaw puzzle while watching old episodes of Charmed on TNT.

I never do my Thankfuls on Thanksgiving because it never works. I always wait until the week after. Here goes:

I'm thankful for living in New York, far away from my family. I'm thankful for cranberry bliss bars and can-shaped cranberry sauce.

I'm thankful for 2 hour lunch breaks during which you get piss drunk and then go back to work and write in your blog.

Like right now.

I'm thankful for not getting fired.

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Open Letter of Thanksgiving

Dear Nonexistent God in False Heaven,

Thanks for the America. It's really great. It fits perfectly, and it goes with just about everything I have.

Thanks for making my family totally weird. Without them, I'd have nothing to write about in my blog.

Thanks for alcohol, without which I would not have fallen asleep and survived Thanksgiving. Nor would I make it through this work day.

Yours,
~2H~

U P Yes

From Overhead in New York:

UPS Guy: I swear to you, Joey, I seen a lot of movies in my time, and this movie is not to be missed. I swear, it's definitely one of the ten best I've ever seen. And I'm a big movie buff. They have it at Blockbuster -- you have to rent it. It's called Nanny McPhee. You got that? Nanny McPhee.

--34th & Broadway

Don't you love it when sexy, manly men do and say geeky, non-manly things? Biggest turn-on ever, right? I know!

We know the guy is manly because he works for UPS, and in my experience, UPS guys are all studly, masculine men with great asses. Only UPS. FedEx guys are kinda touch-and-go, and they wear those awful 1988 polo shirts. But UPS... mmm. Just watch Legally Blonde if you don't know what I mean. (What I suggest you do not do is a Google image search because you will find out how wrong I am.)

So you can understand why this quote caught my eye. He hit that magic level of unmanly adorableness that makes me all fuzzy. It's not a "sensitive guy" thing because a chick flick place of Nanny McPhee would have been lame. I don't have time for that.

I tried analyzing why this sort of thing does it for me, but I couldn't figure it out, and it makes for a really boring blog entry that I just deleted.

I will say, though, that it's easy to go too far, and that's when "adorable" turns into "faggy." For example, men playing the flute are hot. Men playing the piccolo? Not. Guy at a baby shower: Cute. Guy enjoying a baby shower: Not. A man fussing over his hair: Yay! A man fussing over his wife's hair: Gay. Understand?

Maybe it's because liking Nanny McPhee implies that this is a guy who's comfortable with his sexuality in some convoluted way, but whatever it is, my new fantasy is opening the door to find a delivery man there holding a bottle of wine and the Chronicles of Narnia DVD.

P.S. This only works on straight guys... or, y'know, the real masculine gay ones.

P.P.S. Nanny McPhee really is awesome, and you should all go see it immediately.

I'm like the dog if you imagine the dog has only three legs and an arrow through its liver

Everything is such crap. The world is such crap.

Among things that are crap are half-million-dollar salary hikes for the president of an organization that can't seem to give it's professionals a 2% raise without a fight, dropping half of your delicious frosted snowman cookie on the dirty ground, and breaking out the one day you really wanted to look good for somebody.

Today sucks, and I really want to blame it on someone, but there is nobody to blame it on because it was I who did not shower until mid-afternoon on Sunday causing my breakout, and it was I who dropped my delicious frosted snowman cookie on the dirty ground, and I can't really blame the guy who gave himself a huge raise because hell, if I had the resources to give myself an extra half-million dollars a year, I'd do it. I love money!

But I made up a bright side! Wanna hear it? Ok, so I don't mind being poor because I love my job and the satisfaction that I am contributing to the educations of millions. Yeah, that's a good one. And I didn't need a cookie because I haven't been to the gym in 5 months and have started to let myself go. That's great too! And lastly, now the acne on my face matches the exzema on my hands! A trifecta of optimistic delusion!

I should be a grief counselor, I'm so awesome at the Bright Side. It's too bad nobody believes in that crap.

Everything is such crap.

Happy Feet

I saw Happy Feet yesterday. Here goes.

All penguins have a "heartsong", basically this one song they sing during mating season. Oddly, despite their complete isolation from human popular culture, their songs all seem to be pop hits from the 80's and 90's. Some of them rap. Anyway, there's this one penguin who's born without the ability to sing because his father dropped his egg into the ice accidentally. Instead, he does this freaky dance thing, and everyone things he's deranged, which he kinda is.

While obviously not Movie of the Year, it was still super cute. It started out kinda crappy, and then Hugh Jackman Penguin started doing this Elvis thing to try and woo Nicole Kidman Penguin, and I was thinking "Christ, please let the whole movie not be like this." And then their baby penguin started tap dancing, which is fine. A little unimpressive. After seeing the previews, I was expecting the movie to be more Stomp and less Ruby Keeler.

But anyway, the baby was sad that he sucked at everything except tap dancing, but I just couldn't seem to care. So when he got attacked by three predatory birds, I was kinda on their side and thought "Eat him! A 20-minute movie!"

But obviously, he didn't get eaten, and then the movie got better. He grew up into a post-pubescent penguin, as all penguins eventually do -- except for some reason, he didn't really develop right. Nobody ever commented on it (perhaps because it made them uncomfortable), but the dancing penguin never matured out of fuzziness, and he had this weird baby head the entire time. I spent the entire movie thinking "I bet that's like what penguin Downs Syndrome is like" and I proceeded to refer to the main character as "Chromosome" because I couldn't understand his real name. It was Mumble or Mambo or something, but nobody said it clearly enough.

But either way, the movie dealt with some neat themes. The penguins were a society of crazy, conservative religious nuts (worshipping the Great Guin, a name I found endlessly adorable.) They even went so far as to call the guy's dancing "pagan", so... yeah, I wonder what religion they were comparing it to, hmmm.... And they also dealt with conservation and being yourself and all the stuff you'd expect from a cartoon movie about penguins.

Robin Williams made the movie awesome like he always does with things. He plays this tiny penguin named Ramon and says "Let me tell ju someting" a lot.

So, cute movie. I give it a million stars.

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Ok, but the real reason I went to see this movie was because it was the first release to carry the teaser trailer to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and in all geekiness, I'm confessing that I've never been more excited about a movie ever.

Helena Bonham Carter looks amazing as Bellatrix Lestrange. But I knew she would. Hermione's still pretty. But I knew that too. The movie looks dark and awesome. There were no shots of Imelda Staunton or the Room of Requirement or Emma Thompson or the veil, but... fine. The flight over London was neat-looking. Sadly, I think Angry Dumbledore will be back.

Dear World, I am a Harry Potter dork. I've read the books 50 times, I can practically recite the movies, and I've had inappropriate dreams about Emma Watson. Whatcha gonna do about it?

The Looking Glass Wars Review

Have you ever read a book that you really wanted to like and that even told a good story, but there was something about it that just.... sucked? I mean you try to ignore the problem(s) even though you noticed them early on, but they just keep coming back. A stupid name. A character with a corny speech impediment. Comma splices. Annoying series of sentence fragments.

I present to you The Looking Glass Wars by... ummm.... Frank Beddor. I'm about halfway through it, and I want to suggest to the author that he change his name to Frank Actuallykindaworse.

I say this because it is impossible not to compare him to Gregory Maguire (Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister), and I'll tell you why. The Looking Glass Wars is based on the presumption that Lewis Carroll totally screwed up the Alice story. The premise is that Wonderland is real (and kinda scary) and that Alice Liddell is actually Alyss Heart, heir to the Wonderland throne until her Aunt Redd killed her family and took over as the new evil Queen of Hearts. For those of you familiar with it, I secretly call this novel American McGee's Alice: The Book.

So you get it? A reimagining of a classic children's story. Fleshing out the world and making it deep, mature, and political. Gregory Maguire! Moving on...

Anybody who knows anything about me knows that I absolutely love the Alice books and have read them more times than you have. Usually such feelings about a work make people judge related and derivitive works more harshly because there is much to live up to. I'm the opposite and pretty much automatically like anything having to do with Alice (or Harry Potter, Buffy, and Matthew Rush for that matter). So I dove into The Looking Glass Wars with extremely open arms and minds. Mind. And I'm still totally into the book. The plot's a little two-dimensional, giving it a one dimension lead on the characters, but it's fine, I'm over it. It's still Wonderland, after all.

But there's just so many little things that piss me off along the way that I can't recommend this book to anyone with intelligence. First of all, Couldbe Beddor is not a writer. He's a professional skiier. In fact, if you check imdb.com, you'll find that he's also a stunt man. So he can't write... like at all. His style is impossible. To be perfectly honest, it reads a lot like my blog.... kinda off the cuff, a little cliche, and every now and then, you have to go back and reread a sentence a few times because the grammar and syntax are so confusing. And when I say "cliche", I mean horribly corny. Upon receiving news of her husband's murder, the current Queen of Wonderland exclaims "Oh, my sweet king!" C'mon, nobody says that. Barf me out, man!

Furthermore, he has no sense of children. Alyss is 7, right, and her best friend Dodge is 10. Whatever, I'll buy it. But in this one scene, Alyss is making him dance with her, and he's having what can only be described as perverted, lusty thoughts about her. It's totally disgusting. He wants to marry her so bad, and he's smelling her sweet perfume... he puts his hand on her waist.... he had never touched the princess in this way before. I already said "barf me out" so now I'm going to go with "Gag me with a spoon!" Ten year old boys, in my experience, do not even play with seven-year-old girls for fear of cooties and getting their asses kicked by the other boys on the schoolyard. This scene was out of hand.

Ugh, and one of the things have the stupidest names! Hatter Madigan? Fine. Wondertropolis? Please. Outerwildbeastia? Get away from me. And if I see one more reference to people eating "tarty tarts" I might kill myself.

It's stuff like this. I mean, the book is SO bad, but it's an actiony, engaging story nonetheless. I don't get it.

Oh, but check out the website. It's right here. The guy's got trailers and commercials and plans to make a movie series and a card game and I just wanna say "Dude, calm the fuck down!" Authors need to have humbler beginnings. His books were released in America like two seconds ago, and he's all what? Wanting to be the next J.K. Rowling? Be patient, man. (Although... I have to admit, it would probably make a kick-ass movie. Especially because we wouldn't have to suffer the guy's writing style.)

Wow, this is probably my longest entry ever, and it's on a book that none of you care about and I don't think you should read. But it's Alice-based, so I had to obsess. I'm going to finish it. Obviously. And then I'm going to read the second and third books in the trilogy when he finishes them. Obviously. And I'll do it wrapped in a blanket of disappointment. Don't be like me. Read something else.

He-brew

There's not a lot for a Jew to get excited about with the approaching Christmas season. I mean, the lights are nice. The windows at Marshall Fields have those creepy moving dolls, which is pretty neat. They'd tell a story if my family didn't inevitably see them backwards every year. It's interesting... you find that once you know Pinocchio becomes a real boy in the end, you don't much care about his humble, splintery origins anymore.

But mostly, the Christmas season is just filled with horrible repetitive music at every store and restaurant in America, idiot shoppers literally trampling and killing eachother for a bargain on a DVD player, and people proudly advertising their multi-cultural awareness by singing the dreidel song incorrectly. "Oh, I love Jewish boys, you're sexy in all the right places. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel is what I like to play. I mean... wait, something about clay? That's like you guys's only Christmas song, right?"

Oh, and before you ask, no, we DON'T still put up a Christmas tree.

So Christmas doesn't really have much going for it in the eyes of a lot of Jews. And don't go saying we have Hanukkah because everyone knows Channukah's lame compared to Christmas, at least in the "according to the rest of the world" sense.

But there's one thing that makes this season my favorite time of year. That's all it takes. One eensy little addition to my daily life that can sustain my happiness through the middle of January at least. I'll tell you what it is. Are you ready? Ok. It's the Christmas menu at Starbucks!

Ok, right, I know. Starbucks is evil bad imperialist corporate blah blah all the same, McDonaldsization of America and their coffee sucks too. I hear ya, and I'm on board 10 months out of the year. But from November something to whenever the menu ends, I don't wanna hear it.

My mom asked me what I want for Hannukkah this year, and the answer is a Starbucks gift card large enough that I can subsist exclusively on peppermint mochas and cranberry bliss bars for as long as I live... with the occasional soy gingerbread latte for variety. (The gingerbread lattes are awesome with soy milk, trust me.)

If for some weird reason you don't like peppermint mochas or the singularly delicious cranberry bliss bars, you can click the X button in your web browser because you don't need to be a part of my life. Then you can click the X button on your existence because it is clearly an empty one.

Last year around this time, somebody I kissed told me I tasted like Christmas. I immediately thought "Oh, yes, I had Starbucks today!" As it turns out I just had gin on my breath, but the point is that the Starbucks menu has become such an intergral part of my holiday experience that it's where my mind first turns for explanations about the taste of my... self. ...at least when I'm drunk. But I think that says something! After he realized it was gin, though, he didn't really want to kiss me anymore. ...which ended up not being a problem..... but I digress.

So anyway, there's no real good conclusion or moral to finish up with. I just wanted to pay tribute to my favorite time of year. I've been in the best moods for the past two mornings, and the Starbucks Christmas menu has just about everything to do with that. Go order something right now. If you can't or don't drink coffee, get a peppermint hot chocolate. If dairy makes you... less than fresh, I'll suggest the aforementioned soy gingerbread latte. There's something for everyone on the Starbucks Christmas menu... except the Jews, I guess. But we're used to it.

You guys know I'm allergic to peanuts, right?

So I got this raise today. It's a raise that was supposed to have come through over a year ago before I even started working here, so we got these nifty little retroactive paychecks too, which should be like a great Thanksgiving bonus unless you know my raise was like .05%.

I exaggerate, but not by a lot. From what I hear, our union kinda sucks. Yes, union, it surprised me too, but they made me join. My raise doesn't even cover my monthly dues.

On the plus side, I'm finally making 4 digits every two weeks after taxes. Yes, I know, big money. Almost like what a real grown up would make. Have I complained before about the utter bullshit that is my economic tier?

My employer emphasized our great benefits to compensate for the horrid pay scale. And they're pretty ok, I mean there are about 10 doctors in the tri-state area who take my insurance, 2 of whom I have learned are total idiots. And I get a break every day. That's pretty neat, I guess. Y'know, I can stretch my legs. And there's some sort of retirement fund, so every time I get paid I can think "Ooh boy, another 2 minutes at the rest home!"

That retroactive check will cover the jacket and sweater I shouldn't have bought this weekend with maybe a little left over to take myself to a nice meal by myself. Or maybe pay my internet bill, I can't decide which.

But for those of you who are thinking "You shouldn't have taken the job if you knew how badly it paid and how expensive it is out there", I'm gonna say "Eat it, I'd rather be poor in Manhattan than rich in the rural province of Whereinthehell."

What gets me through these crappy moods (in case you haven't noticed I'm in a crappy mood) caused by my uniquely abysmal pay rate is reminding myself (or deluding myself into thinking) that I'm just biding my time until my inevitable stardom takes affect. Not celebrity stardom, I'm not stupid enough to think I'll be famous... but professional stardom. I feel like something's going to drastically change and relatively soon too. It's part of my unshakable optimism that tends to get masked by an often cynical demeanor and tendency to criticize people's outfits.

I'm just not sure what to do to make this change happen because I don't know the direction in which I want it to be. New career? Back to school? Supplimentary job that don't suck like waiting tables does? Surprise inheritance from long-lost biological uncle (every adopted kid's secret daydream)?

I dunno, it doesn't matter right this second. And it's difficult because I do love my job and the people here. We're all smart and fun, and most importantly, we're all underpaid for our talents and educations. So there's solidarity in that, which helps a bit too. Granted, 99% of them are two-income families living outside of Manhattan, but I don't let that get me down. I'm also 10 years younger. And as much as I'd love the financial stability, I'm really ok not being a Mrs.

I forgot what my point was. But it's 5:00, so I'm gonna end this without one. They don't pay me enough to stay late for any reason.... or to quit blogging during business hours. And y'know... I'm really ok with that.

Entry about the elections

[Statement of general satisfaction regarding election results.]

[Statement of more acute satisfaction at watching Rick Santorum's son crying for some reason on national television. Liberal use of the word "pussy."] [Suggestion of where Santorum should go, what should be done to him there, and what he should eat.]

[Liberal celebration of Katherine Harris's slaughter.] [Expression of surprise that breasts did not get their own votes.] [Plastic surgery joke.] [Ironic misogynist statement about ugly women.]

[Link to alternate celebratory blog post by like-minded, attractive homosexual man.]

[Rah-rahs for Montana.] [Disappointment at voter turnout among macacas in Virginia leading to delay of results and possible election of total disaster.] filler

[Cynical discussion about nothing getting better as a result of the elections because democrats can be so useless, but at least there are enough people to pitch a fit that things probably won't get worse.]

[Pithy conclusion.]

Good work, America.

Yes.

I love hunky man!

What I really really want

This is the fourth time I've started this blog entry because I have nothing to say, nothing! I'm hyper and in a good mood, but every story I start runs itself into a festering pit of boring despair. I was going to talk about how I learned some Latvian today. Then I was going to talk about the Borat movie and how excited I am. Then I was going to ask everyone if that the only reason I'm seeing Happy Feet on opening night is to catch the Harry Potter trailer makes me a huge dork. But it never started right and all I did was sound like a boring, stupid, pitiful loser with no personality and a weird mole on my face and maybe some hideous skin affliction where I'm not allowed to go out in the sun.

And that's not who I am at all.

So I'm thinking of making up a story about the fabulous evening I had last night where I met, I dunno, Julia Stiles and Mark McGrath or something and then went to a new club that only lets you in if you're famous but I got in and then I got cast in the next Superman movie as Lois Lane's intelligent yet superficial gay nephew intern. And Kevin Spacey didn't hit on me. Because that would be a cooler night than you had.

But I respect you too much to lie to you.

So I'm not going to say anything today and instead wait until tomorrow after I've had my fabulous date with Johnny Depp and David Beckham shows up so they can fight over me, and while they're duking it out, I become best friends with their wives and then become the 6th Spice Girl. Because that's what I'm doing tonight.

Guilty Pleasures

Raise your hand if you like sexy, blonde, masculine 18-year-old Australian boys in tight pants.

Keep them raised.

Ok, now keep your hand up if you like obscure, badly-written television shows that barely lasted half a season for good reason.

For those of you with your hands still in the air, I am about to make you very happy because I am going to tell you about my new favorite DVD. It's this show called Roar, right, and I love it in the same way I used to love The Adventures of Sinbad, Young Hercules, and Beastmaster.

Roar

Heath Ledger plays this Celtic prince trying to unite the disparate tribes of 3rd-century Ireland against the encroaching Roman military. The show is kinda bad. It doesn't matter what it's about. Keri Russell's in a couple episodes because it's B.F. (Before Felicity... and she even has all that hair.)

Mostly, the show is my new favorite because I like the grass, Heath Ledger is so hot especially with a fake sometimes horrible Irish accent, and sometimes the music's pretty cool. Oh, and he wears these shammies the whole time. They're sorta too small because he hasn't killed enough animals, I guess, so it makes his butt look real nice.

Beastmaster

There's just something appealing about these programs, but I don't know what it is. The plots are simple, the characters are a little transparent, the villains and sidekicks are really over-the-top. The special effects are very often special... in the new "retarded" sense of the word.

So why did I spend hours of alone time staring at these on TV. Yes, I was always alone... I never shared it with anyone.

Sinbad

I'd watch Sinbad real late at night on UPN or something when I was in junior high and high school. I was totally obsessed with it, though nothing memorable sticks out anymore. I don't even know what it was about, but I remember one episode where he was in this harem with all these gorgeous women trying to seduce him. That sticks out.

Beastmaster aws on during the day sometimes, and I never caught the schedule, but whenever I found it on I was hooked. I know less about this show, but it was enthralling. My sister liked the animals. Again, I have no idea what this show was about, but I know it wasn't good.

Young Hercules

Young Hercules I didn't discover until grad school (last year) and I could only watch it with a friend (never alone), but I still associate it with the others anyway.

Right, so despite being really bad and useless, there's something so awesome about these programs that would bring me to a very special place. I'm just not sure what I liked about them.

It's the weirdest thing.

Show me the light

There are some trends that just shouldn't be. We all know this. Ugg boots, popped collars, garden shoes, obsessively belting otherwise cute clothes... historically, we're talking wallet chains, leggings, huge flannel shirts, anorexia... With all the horrible ideas attractive people come up with, it's a wonder anyone has sex at all anymore.

But there's one trend that I'm totally on the fence about, so I'm hoping to work out my feelings towards it by improvising a blog entry and seeing where I end up. I'm excited to see the result.

Today's topic is Old Lady Sunglasses.

My mom used to wear these things about 12 years ago. They were huge and dark, and she'd wear them with a big green winter coat with a huge fuzzy collar, and then she'd be chewing gum with her trademark wide toothy grin. Now that I'm older, I think my mother is beautiful when she smiles, but at 12, I was mortified when she picked me up from Hebrew school looking so bizarre. But I'm going to try to push aside those memories of the past in evaluating how these same sunglasses function today. It is, after all, a new millenium.

The Good:

The Bad Ass:

The Bugly:

Let's examine these closer.

Sarah Jessica Parker IMveryHO looks super cute in giant sunglasses. Her face is narrow, she has that nose that only I like because it's the same as mine, and the look just works, ok? It just does.

Carol Channing is the shit and looks so awesome in giant sunglasses that it makes me want to put her in a box under my bed and keep her forever. But that's mostly because she's totally crazy and if there were no giant sunglasses, there would be no Carol Channing... and vice versa. Carol Channing is the peas and giant sunglasses are the carrots. Giant sunglasses are the cream and Carol Channing is the coffee. Carol Channing is the bran and giant sunglasses are the gelina.

Now the flipside. Yes, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and you have NO idea how fortuitous it was for me to find one image file where both of them are looking stupid. They are always the two examples that come to mind when I think "What are the cons of giant sunglasses?" (Well, and Mary Kate Olsen, but I don't even want to get started with her. ...maybe it's Ashley.) Paris Hilton especially looks like a giant, round-faced bug, like the one that would be the eccentric, senile, toothless grandma beetle in A Bug's Life 2. Lindsay just looks screwed up. Granted, I am one of those people who thinks Ms. Lohan has only been hot twice: The Parent Trap and the party scene from Mean Girls.... and I understand that giant sunglasses are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the aesthetic dementia of these women, but that's not the topic of this blog so all we are focusing on today is their role as "Hells no!" in the eternal giant sunglasses debate.

So you understand the problem I have.... Two awesome people in giant sunglasses. Two...sub-awesome people in giant sunglasses. The answer "Maybe it depends on the wearer" is too easy, I want to love these things or hate them. What do I do? This is a delicate situation. Advise.

Library of the Poison Mind

Today's topic is celebrity look-alikes.

I don't get compared to a lot of celebrities. I just ddn't look like anyone. One time, someone told me I look like Marilyn Manson crosses with Tina Fey. But normal Marilyn Manson, when he's not wearing makeup to look like an alien goth fetus. I've also been told I look like David Bowie on more than one occasion... again, when he's looking like a weirdo, but at least he was pretty cool.

So recently, I was on an elevator at work with one of the cleaning guys. Custodian? Janitor? I never know the proper terms for people, I grew up calling Asian people "Orientals." Anyway, he's friendly and somehow decided I look exactly (exactly, not just a little bit) like Boy George.

Boy. George. You've got to be kidding me.

He backpedalled a little and said "Well, a young Boy George, you look just like a young Boy George."

Now will somebody please tell me because I really want to know just why do people always compare me to men whose identities are firmly grounded in gender-bending and cosmetic experimentation?

Look at this picture. Does something about my person, who I will remind you is today a librarian in a cardigan, that screams "Viva glam?" In college one year around Halloween, I lost count of the number of people who recommended I go as Hedwig because I was already half way there.

So I'm walking into the library after lunch last week, and this particular custodian is talking to another outside, and I distinctly heard him say "Oh, right there, he's the one" to which his companion replied "Hey, you're right!" So apparently my appearance inspires water cooler conversation and now the entire cleaning staff is in on my secret identity. "HEY BOY GEORGE!" he yelled. "Yes, hello, do you like my new sweater. It is from Zara" is not really the way to answer that so instead, I just used "Hey, what's up" and accepted my new reputation.

So I guess that is the way of things. I'm the only person I know who can wear brown hair, a beige sweater, Kenneth Cole shoes and a Michael Cors shirt and be told he looks like a glam rockstar.

No, not a glam rockstar. Every glam rockstar.

If my blog had any actual readers, I'd ask them to comment and name someone I look like who is NOT a glam rocker, but alas, you'd probably just say Marcel Duchamp anyway. You wouldn't be the first.

So I accept it. At least I have something to look forward to:

This entry sucks, we'll say it's because I was sick

This week I was able to cross something off my list of Things Never To Do In New York.

Basically, right, it's a list of things I never will ever do if my life is at all what I want it to be. And if I accidentally do one, it gets knocked off the list because... well it's too late. So, there's now a big ol' blank space between "pee on the third rail" and "make out with a homeless guy". Why? Because on Wednesday, I totally passed out on the subway. Yes.

It wasn't some drunk thing like half of you are probably thinking. I don't have enough of a life to drink during the week. I was just standing there at 8:30 in the morning on my way to work looking, I might add, super biz cas adorable in a zip-up sweater and shirt from J. Crew, which I never wear.... but I look even cuter today, you should see what I got at Mexx last night.

Wait, what?

Ok, so I was standing there and suddenly BAM nausea, light-headedness! Then we kick it up a notch with a little garlic I mean some stars and suddenly the really sweet young couple sitting near me is helping me into their seat and I was hoping they'd have some Vitamin Water to give me, but instead I had to settle for nothing. It was really freaky because I wasn't thinking of Emeril at the time and who just passes out like that? I didn't know what was wrong with me.

Emeril wasn't really there, but there was a Rachel Ray poster on the wall, and I think that's where the symptoms came from.

So I got myself home and slept for 8 hours.... then I ate Jello and watched Charmed like the doctor would have told me to do and then slept for 8 more hours. The next morning I felt fine but didn't go to work anyway ~~because I had the perfect excuse~~ just to play it safe. I sat around and then went shopping.

I think it was some sort of virus. I hope it was. It had better have been because I feel better and am not doing anything about it except maybe telling my doctor who I am meeting next week for a physical. I hope he's cute and young and gay (I already know he's Jewish) but he's probably not.

Right, so now I've passed out on the subway, which isn't scary and horrible anymore because I feel better. Now it's just embarassing. On top of it all, now I'm out of sick days and I had to cancel my haircut appointment.

This weekend it's gonna rain, so I plan to spend the whole time in my apartment making my list of Things Never To Do In New York even longer so I feel better about myself.

Girls! Girls! Girls!

And the George W. Bush Idiotic Idea of the Year Award goes to the Education Department for their fantastic contribution and solution to idiocy in America.

Boys have trouble with math because there are girls in there... what... befouling the information transmitted from the teacher's mouth? Or are you implying the girls hold the boys back because they're only good at shopping and cooking and couldn't possibly grasp the concept of an integral? Exactly what studies were these that suggested a gender fender would help kids do better?

I just watched Mean Girls the other day, y'know, where Lindsay Lohan is a math genius but fails quizzes on purpose to get the attention of that hot boy with the eyes. Basically I'm thinking this plan was based on that movie. But I mean, the movie was based on a book, so it's totally ok.

My favorite part of this plan is that it completely eliminates the threat of blame. Oh, it's not our fault education sucks, it's the mixing of genders, it's passing out condoms in health class, it's the spectre of gay marriage!

How about this? If there's a problem with education, there's a problem with the people in charge of it. So instead of throwing out gimmicky little solutions like gender segregation and the Atkin's diet based on a couple of little studies, why don't we go straight to the source (parents? I dunno, probably the government) and fix idiocy where it originates? But I dunno what that would imply or anything, hell, I don't know anything about politics. I think it's because I sat next to Irina in government class senior year.... y'know, and she was a girl and all.

Or maybe it's the Russians.

Make a wish it's post #111!

Y'know those days when you're totally not feeling the diligence vibe so work and other important things are not only undesirable, they're impossible? This is today.

All morning I cataloged tango music in Portuguese, and it was boring and I don't even speak Portuguese except I know this one song about a bird and an orange and feet from this capoeira class I took. I'm totally not feeling the diligence vibe.

So I'm sitting at my desk looking for a distraction and the nearest thing is this long article called "The Geometry of Musical Chords" filled with math-heavy music theory all about voice-leading and counterpoint. It's actually really interesting, and my copy is a printout of the stuff you can find here if you're interested. I'm supposed to be cataloging it, but cataloging things people randomly print off the internet is a pain. Anyway, I read this article, but seeing as though I haven't studied theory or done an ounce of math in the past 3 years, it was heady work to get through and understand it (which I do, I'm pretty smart y'know) so now I'm all worn out and really not feeling the diligence vibe.

Furthermore, almost everyone's gone except this one coworker that I had a really strange dream about the other night, and I know it's dumb but I feel awkward and dirty around said coworker now and don't want to talk to this particular coworker, so I'm kinda burying my head and pretending to be busy every time the coworker comes by to chat, which is usually a nice distraction when I'm not feeling the diligence vibe. It makes screwing off hard work to have to be so fake about it.

To conclude, I can't wait to go home where wasting time isn't so stressful and draining.

*UPDATE* P.S. It wasn't a sex dream so don't be all "oooooh, he had a sex dream" because I didn't god you're all so immature.

Cravings

I'd give my boyfriend's left nut for a bucket of chicken and a 2-liter of Dr. Pepper right about now.

Any takers?

Like a cooler

I'm wearing this shirt today that I have had for years but have only worn once because I don't know how I feel about it. I got it at Lucky in Chicago.

You're probably wondering why I would pay exorbitant Lucky prices for a shirt on which I am not 100% keen, so I'll take this opportunity to remind you that I'm a spoiled semi-rich kid, and I got the shirt in college when shopping was all done on daddy's credit card.

Whatever, so I've trucked it around through 3 or 4 dorm-switches and apartment moves across 4 states, so I decided I would put it on again today. It's long-sleeved and the weather told me "Wear the cowboy shirt." (It's kind of a cowboy shirt, it has a collar and a sort of rope thing embroidered on it, but it's also a zip-up. It's hard to explain.)

Anyway, I put it on and decided to gauge people's reactions to it to decide whether the Salvation Army needed it more than I do.

So the Russian woman I work with likes it a lot, so that was points in the positive column because she has this odd glamour about her that I think they only make in Moscow. Then, Olga da Polga liked it and told me it was semiotic.

I was like "What the fuck are you talking about, nobody knows what that bullshit word means."

Actually, I just said "huh?" and he explained and I still didn't get it (I mean, I get the word now but it still doesn't make any sense.)

So I'm not sure whether to put a few points in the "Good Shirt" column or a million points in the "Bad Shirt that Only Freako Guinea Pig People Would Wear" column, but you can see why it's so important that I find out.

What do you think of the title?
	it sucks
	it is awesome
	i don't care as long as Ron and Hermione hook up
	i don't care, stop writing about Harry Potter in your blog, you loser

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The entries where I talk about boring library stuff are:
	soporific
	sporific! (that means good)
	just ok, I think you should post yourself naked

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