buyblue.org

phew—tangueray, j crew, and netflix gave money to the democrats this year. starbucks and barnes & noble, evil as they are, did too. my mother won't like the news that saks gave $110,000 to the bushies.

eGREgious suffering

it was awful but it is over. i was not prepared for the absurdity of such arbitrary judgment exacted by an unfriendly computer terminal while being forced to sit on my butt for four hours, addled by hunger and frustration at the strange mentality that demanded repeatedly, cruelly, that i answer committee-formulated, whole-picture questions from an uninformed yet well-adjusted perspective.

the inanity of the princeton review's practice tests did not prepare me for the bludgeon that is ets mentality. extra stress on the mental there. here's an analogy to summarize my experience:

princeton review :: ets: cafe lolita :: a) kahlua b) everclear c) franzia d) a kahlua bottle that actually contains...heroin.

the correct answer is d).

ambitions in canary yellow

trying to make everything happen for my nyu app and trying to be articulate at the same time is making my brain hurt. it feels less like a race against the clock than a stampede traced on a flurry of post-its. maybe they would like an all-post-it grad school app.

re: diculousness of corporate titles

Did you know Les Moonves is the Co-President and Co-COO of Viacom?

Apparently he's not the only one.

actual sentence from a GRE practice reading comprehension

from the princeton review's test-prep cd (the novels in question are toni morrison's beloved and faulkner's absalom, absalom!):

"Both are considered by some critics a Bildungstroman, or coming-of-age novel. Morrison's Sethe and Faulkner's Quentin, find self-worth instead of relying on dominant society's values. Also, although using psychological realism plot style, both novels have a complex, experimental structure, using fragmented viewpoints to further the plot and juxtapose perspectives. I call this method psychological juxtapositioning."*

elsewhere in the passage, the author says morrison addresses the 'psychological affects of slavery,' a flub repeated in one of the questions. how disheartening to be trying to beat a test asking me to comprehend writing that belongs on engrish.com.

*this sentence is faithful to the original. i carefully typed all the errors as they appear in the test. just imagine one giant sic over the whole thing.

harper's rejection came in the mail yesterday. even tho i was prepared for it and had even already rationalized it away, it was still totally demoralizing. i had planned to start my nation letter and study for the GRE, but i just couldn't do it. so ed came over and we drank port with holly's theatRE friends and scarfed many varieties of chocolate.

well, i didn't get an elite internship, but i did get cute shoes for a steal on ebay. they are $240 mary janes made by birkenstock (i know! the nerve!), and i got them new for $60.

so really, my evening had happy ending. my dreams of catapulting into secret literary zones where no one makes excel charts were capitulated,* but as long as i'm pumping my meager paycheck back into the economy for identity-reaffirming goods, who cares? it's the beauty of the capitalist machine that you can't have bootstraps without first having boots.

*more slightly flubbed uses of GRE words coming soon

hopped up on coffee and calling insurance companies

i went to the rockefeller center postal service (amazing that i was able to distinguish it from all those mail-delivery-system-wannabe emotronica bands out there. cuz they're so hard to tell apart. just like wilco and those bible-belt fillin' stations of the same name. i never know who to ask for cigarettes and who to boogie to.) to mail some internship applications, and the concourse was crawling with tourists sucking on starbucks and becoming acquainted with the bathroom line and the concept of 'bathroom usher.' most people complain about tourists, but i've developed an affection for them. they are nice, pleasant people who are nearly always happy to be here. they have a sense of humor about being crammed up against each other in the elevator. and they walk slower than i hobble.

today i will do EVERYTHING.

heh heh.

forget liberal bias—butt bias is the real issue

"Astronomers took a closer look at Uranus, and found it stormy, with 'vigorous convective activity in the southern hemisphere'; they described the rings around Uranus as 'a layer of chunks.' " —Harper's Weekly Review

"Earlier human ancestors, like chimpanzees today, had pelvises that could support only a modest gluteus maximus, nothing like the strong buttocks of Homo." —New York Times

strong buttocks of homo . . . could be the tagline for the next abercrombie catalogue, or another suppressed lynne cheney novel going for $1,000 on ebay.

direction

i just registered for the GRE. i'm applying to NYU's cultural criticism & reporting program at the j-school so that i can learn how it's done from former voice and harper's editors. screw internships. i knew i was sluggish on applying to MFA programs for a good reason. writing isn't the thing i need schooling for; it's the body of knowledge cultural critics have that constitutes the gulf between my current job prospects and the ones i want to have. i just applied for an assistant editor job at parenting.com, and i don't think they want to hear about how their advertiser-driven content is part of the slow but pernicious brain-warping that causes people to rely on purchases for emotional meaning.

this morning on the way to work a lady with a headset wouldn't let me get within fifty feet of my building. they were shooting a movie, and i had to stand on the sidewalk until a silver car ostensibly containing matthew mcconaughey pulled up to the 21 club. they stopped all the real pedestrians so that the extras who were skillfully playing new yorkers could bustle past and ignore the movie set. i'm really good at ignoring movie sets, and i'll be good at bustling once my cast comes off tomorrow, so they should pay me to walk and fro in front of work.

activists are normally such understated, delightful people

(from the open newswire) "Students and activists interrupted the launch of Victoria's Secret's 'Angels Across America' tour today with a rowdy protest by people dressed in angel wings and lingerie and wielding chainsaws, and including a large banner reading 'Victoria's Secret: Their Catalogs Destroy Endangered Forests.' "

i've been googling for independent press outfits that look interesting enough to ask for a job. it occurred to me today that although interning at a literary magazine certainly would be more relevant to my interests than my current job, i might have better luck trying to work for some indy paper or indy media advocacy group. unfortunately, alternet is out in san francisco with mother jones, and they're the ones who are really legit and on top of their game. so i googled for ny organizations and came up with indypress.org, whose superearnest populism i recognized from some distant freakfest my memory had muddled with bust, bitch, butch, and all the other self-marginalized media i came across in college. three clicks later the words 'campus alternative journalism awards' brought it all back. russ and i entered libertas my junior year, and after i wrote our application and spent ten minutes on the phone explaining to some indypress fellow in arizona why we didn't just write off the meatheads and the godsquad at our school even though, yes, they were funny—oops, of course i meant 'poisonous'—russell the love muscle and i were shocked by the kind of tripe they hailed as winners. and we were proud to have lost.

i don't think i will ask them for a job. i want to be independent of corporate control, but i also want to be independent of sucking.

discovery!! followed by democracy in scare quotes

the #2 bran muffin in the new york metro area is a four-minute hobble from my apartment. (#1 lives at phoebe's, the cafe that is unassumingly neither too cute nor too scruffy and very assumingly near ed, and is delicious toasted with butter.) this muffin is bran fig, and it has big, spaced apart crumb-units, as though it's made of a larger sub-muffitomic particle, that are buttery but not too sweet. satisfying big rough-textured muffin top, too.

i voted in midtown manhattan this morning. crazylong line all the way down the block, understaffed voting center, mysterious vending machines full of crayons. never a better time to be on crutches. one guy working saw me and said, honey, you sit down, we'll get you to the front of the line. it then took fifteen minutes for him to communicate to the only other person working the lines that he had someone on crutches and could she get through.

my boss voted on the upper west side, where they had only one machine per district and no one to move along the hundreds of disgruntled voters more efficiently. you'd think in a city with thousands of ATMs we could manage voting at least competently. ATMs even give receipts. how hard could it be to write software that would allow the sweet juices of our beloved republic to course through every city's ATM system for one day every four years?

i think kerry will win the election, but who knows if he'll become president.

when i got to work this morning i discovered a big brownish-yellow stain on the side of my blue corduroys. this stain, invisible in the yellow light of my apartment, is glaring and gross in the fluorescent light of the office. mmm, scary to think what i would find if i systematically wore my entire wardrobe to work. i just hope no one notices, because any attempt to explain it would land me in the slob's catch-22. either i know about the stain and a) don't care or b) none of my other pairs of pants is any cleaner OR i have revealed myself as someone who thinks i can get away with avoiding laundry even when i have spilled coffee all over myself.

nothing to be done but eat cookies for breakfast.

last night i went to a book party i was invited to through class. my prof edited this book, food for the soul: selections from the church of the apostles soup kitchen writers' workshop, which has an intro by ian frazier because he runs the workshop. a bunch of the writers read, but it was hard to understand them without a copy of the book because they either stood too close to the mic or too far away, had thick foreign accents, or were retarded. the stories were pretty much what you'd expect from a soup kitchen's writers' workshop, except for one woman with this beautiful voice. she was a tall, striking, mulatto ex–manic depressive alcoholic drug user who was sharp. perfect for an oprah segment only much deeper and more real. she sang her own song about hard times and grace and god in the soup kitchen and everyone cried.

mainly i went to the party to confirm that there was no point in going; otherwise i would've convinced myself that i had missed my chance to meet X harper's or new yorker editor, or at the very least, my mom's friend's writer son who told me about the prof whose class i'm taking now. being connected with him seemed to offer some promise last november when i called him for advice (he said he got my prof her job at the new yorker), and i've felt really stupid for never following up and sending him the piece i said i would. so i was looking forward to asking my prof about him and maybe finally meeting him. after spending most of the reception talking to other students of limited interest, i found my prof and asked her if he was here, and she was like, 'oh him? he's nutso! i love him to death, but last time i saw him, he showed up to a thing with his dog and was flipping out about how the world was going to end.' she then introduced me to a retard writer and moved on.

awesome.

born-again ankle

i just got back from the orthopedist's, where the nurse removed my bigheavy splint and gave me a cast. she tore apart the splint and the buttload of cotton i had sort of suspected was in there, and afterward it looked as if my foot had very forcefully hatched itself out of a giant cocoon.

there were all kinds of crazy used casts lined up on a shelf. there was a little mermaid, a kermit, a green cast with googly eyes and a tongue flap just where the toes come out, and a virgin mary done in sequins. i chose baby blue for mine. if i were a cast-plaster manufacturer, i'd sell wraps in stripes (brown and baby blue, of course) and license designer logos like luis vuitton and the burberry plaid so that sufferers of orthopedic trauma no longer must give up their brand loyalty in such difficult times. when you can wear only one designer shoe, you've got to make up for it somehow.

i just looked at my insurance website and discovered that i have a $6,000 tendon in my foot. whoa. it was itemized under 'prostheses.' my ankle has become my priciest accesory.

first day back at work and it is quiet. i'm the only one who didn't leave for lunch. it's usually the opposite. i didn't expect this, but crutching around the office makes me feel sort of pathetic. something to do with the way the crutches blend in with all the gray plastic in here. and how their rhythmic creak can be heard over the hum of computers and kitchenette appliances.

last week's recovery was an excellent break from work. i got my harper's intern app done friday (ed took it down there for me and, through an entertaining series of snafus in their office's system for receiving packages, actually ended up putting it in the hands of the man who will read it), which astounds me, because i never really believed i would hand it in. this weekend i had dreams about telling my boss i'm leaving. in between dreams involving accidental walking and what my stitches look like.

here you can see a video of jon stewart's appearance on crossfire.

if that link doesn't work try this one.

another friend getting married! let's see, now that's one from childhood, one from high school, one from college, and one from study abroad. i find this awfully...symmetrical. i don't keep up with anyone from summer camp, so who's it gonna be next?

arise, frankenfoot!

is my daily incantation for keeping my new, post-operative ankle elevated. for those of you who knew i was going to have my right ankle surged upon by an orthopedic surge-on this thursday past, i am ok and my new clubfoot and i are getting on fine. on those of you who didn't know, i bestow the relief of never having worried.

the surgery was for ligament repair (i had ligaments so stretched and barely there i needed a tendon transfer, i.e., a tendon from a dead person, hence the frankenfoot nickname, coined by greg, to give all credit where credit is due), took four hours, and will keep me on crutches for 6 weeks. the foot is bigger than my face and will be pacified by narcotics (great buzz when combined with coffee, fyi) for a few more days. i'm taking the same class of hydrocodone that got rush limbaugh in trouble...it was that or the robert downey jr–endorsed vicadin, a prescription i could still fill if i were into spending a week of my life doing some truly mind-bending dvd watching. in all seriousness, i think skipping work, lying around my apartment, and taking federally controlled substances is just the break i need to attack that harper's internship application i keep saying i'm gonna do.

leave comments with netflix recommendations or costume ideas for my foot and me for halloween.

apples without stickers

is just one reason farmers markets are great. another is that they are reliable mealiness-free zones.

although i am glad for the chickens and cows who range free and grass feed, i am disappointed by the absence of organic, which is to say conventional (as opposed to poisoned), foods.

purchased:
one vegan granola raising cookie (immediately consumed)
four punkin scones
raspberry-currant jam
small bottle of cider
three macintosh apples

they also had some goodlookin muffins and pies and whatnot, but renting another stomach is a bit out of my price range. maybe that is the answer to world hunger--if americans could rent space in starving africans' bodies to store their extra flab, everyone would win. instead of exporting mcdonald's and burger king, we could just unload our fat directly on the rest of the world. tho i guess there'd be problems in the event of a fat-transfer defrauding scheme. if the same pounds get bought for multiple people, credited to them, but then taken away months later when the error is discovered, the africans could potentially owethe world pounds, and *poof* they are gone!

uh-oh. i think this plan would actually be very attractive to our goverment. you mustn't let this very workable proposal fall into the wrong hands. it could turn into a vast pound-indebtitude disaster on the scale of subway's notorious diet campaign, which contended that you could have lost 73 pounds last year if you had eaten a turkey sub every day. which translates into 146 pounds if you ate two every day, and so on...

i just walked past a group of black people protesting how rolling stone/miller beer's eight-can series of rock musicians 'white washs' music made great by blacks. they were outside a big business center, which i entered for its starbucks, where i found a black man behind the counter and asked him to make me a white hot chocolate.

behavioral finance?

i just ran across this term in some verrrry interesting media-bigwig bios i'm editing, and it sounds very, very creepy. creepy as in let's take advantage of the way this term mimics the credible-sounding behavioral science, and then let's sock 'em with our catlike cataloging skills when their pants/defenses are down.

praytell, what is behavioral finance? is it the prediction of consumers' spending patterns w/r/t our biological and social profiles? this sounds scary. or could it be the more straightforward practice of giving people money when they behave a certain way? like, prostitutes are financed when they behave in a blowjob sort of way around certain men.

i've been to two doctors today and have two more to go. needless to say, there have been/will be more post-physician icecream treats. well, the chiropractor doesn't count as a physician. have i mentioned i'm going to a REAL spine m.d. next month? i am stoked. smoked. lately i've been asking every m.d. i go to if i can blame this-or-that problem on the chiropractor. they always smile and say sure.

the last doktor i go to tonight is the shrink. yay! i have been waiting for this for a while. and really, it was easier than my insurance-phonecall-avoiding mental block told me it would be. i hope this woman is cool. over the phone she sounded a bit dull. but no worries if we don't work out...there are more shrinks in manhattan than there are people.

this morning the warmly paternal yet brusque orthopedist (#1) diagnosed me with patella-blahblah syndrome, so i am skipping happily (he told me i can skip) back to physical therapy, and tomorrow i will finally achieve what i have been lovingly referring to as my epantsipation (he told me i can wear my mary janes instead of sneakers).

greg is having a dance party on sept. 11. there will be twin kegs. rob is coming up. everyone else come! you can stay with me.

it's time for a haircut when

an intern mistakes you for an older, heavier, blander person she has already met.

my hair has gotten too long to wear down, so i've had it back in boring buns and ponytails, but this is the last straw. why couldn't she have confused me with someone better looking?

really i don't begrudge new people their confusion; i have been guilty of fusing plenty of very distinct faces in my effort to absorb the large amount of information they take for granted. when i was new this older lady would confuse me with another new and unfortunately frogfaced girl with a mop for hair and BANGS, but i got back at her by confusing her with a really spacy older lady who works on the same floor.