the chair that no one wanted

Originally uploaded by grammar lammer.

tonight i got a call from a giddy holly, who said, 'you'll never guess what i found.'

me: what, holly, what?

'the most fabulous chair. in the street,' says holly, who has a history of adopting chairs she finds on the street, particularly in the west village. there are four of the armless orange velvet variety currently inhabiting our apartment.

me: where are you?

holly: [giggling] the west village.

me: of course you are.

holly: it's blue corduroy and it's darling. as you know, i have no more space in my room for chairs i find in the street, so this one's yours.

me: ok, stick it in a cab and i'll pay you back. if i love it, great, if i hate it, we'll just stick it back on the street.

i hated it.

it's a component of a la-z-boy set. has that tier of fat floppy cushions, which holly described as 'vaginalike.' i took one look at this pathetic beast of a chair, grimaced, and there was much laughter. a photo shoot with Reject Chair and a somewhat baffled ed ensued. holly insisted on thoroughness before we parted with the chair, and so i was ordered to assume such poses as 'whistler's mother' as well as make various lovey-dovey faces at ed. five minutes after the chair was back in the street (which confused our brazilian doorman very much), the photos were transferred onto my ibook and i was winging it with the .2 iphoto skills i have to make a slide show. itunes automatically opened and allowed me to select a soundtrack, and so i picked what was already highlighted—the magnetic fields' 'absolutely cuckoo'—which, i must say, matched the mood of the chair photos quite well.

it's sort of sick that we have all these technologies set up so smoothly that i could instantly, effortlessly create a multimedia presentation about the chair that holly brought home from the street. and here i am posting it to my blog before the chair's even had time to get cold out there.

so, to see all twenty photos of the chair and us, click on either photo, and it'll take you to my flickr account. i'll get them up tomorrow, because all this instant gratification shit has gone too far.

so happy:

thanks for the sympathetic emails. it seems like things are straightened out. i went down there and got to talk to a reasonable woman. it's comforting to know that behind the formidable wall of the bureaucracy is a nice human being happy to sit down with me. i probably overreacted, going down there with a prepared speech (including the smart-alecky thinks i shouldn't ever say, like 'it would be lovely if i could see the future so that i could've known the post office would screw up, but if i could see the future, i wouldn't be applying to journalism school now would i?') and every piece of documentation i could think of, including my passport, but i am glad i can rest assured and start thinking about more interesting things. like the next book i want to read, on bullshit, by a princeton philosopher. see the new york times article.

so crappy:

my nyu app is being counted as late. when i called i got the troll of the graduate admissions office. you know the type--the unresponsive, dead-sounding admin lady whose every answer is constructed so that you'll hang up asap. she told me it was late and that i could send post office documentation but that it would only be 'added to my file,' end of story. i called back but i got her again, so i hung up.

i'm going down there during lunch with my whole pile of stuff to try and sort things out. i only hope i can get through to these people...my boss said you never know, sometimes screwups like this can help in the end because my application might land under the nose of someone important. eh. i'd like to think that. if i were of the 'footprints' mentality, i'd say it's all part of god's plan, but i'm much more of the onion mentality ('bullshit, god, those were my footprints'), and i can't shake the feeling that i'm pretty much fucked.

i'm a cock, i tell ya

my mother called just to tell me that it's the year of the rooster and therefore my "power year." you know, i thought i'd been so damn hyper because only this week did i return to all those postsurgery hallmarks of normalcy (going to the gym, walking more than four blocks at a time, packing a full pair of shoes when i go on trips), but you know, my recent emancipation from the binds of apapthy and juvenile tantrums must just be because the year of the rooster began yesterday. i mean, duh.

poll: has anyone ever heard or used the expression "no doykee" (pronounced "no DOY-kee") as an intensifier of "duh" and the slightly more confrontational "no duh"? it was common in my elementary school, and i want to know if it was a florida thing, or even a tallahassee thing, or even just a fad insult at my school? i.e., has anyone besides anna ever heard of it?

this came up because i have the occasional but very strong urge to use this phrase in formal situations, like, say, the meeting i'm about to go into here at work. adults, who didn't so much grow out of immaturity as learn how to sublimate it effectively (or ineffectively, as evidenced by the daily show's "great moments in punditry as read by children"), should really be more forthright with their disdain for others' opinions. except it would be dumb if i said "no doykee" to someone who didn't know what that meant. i mean, no doykee.

look at my adorable friends

brewton and ginny at joshua tree 12.20.01
Originally uploaded by grammar lammer.

finally, a photo hosting service that allows me to post directly to here, without those lame links to fotolog's weirdly sized pics and maddeningly backward apostrophes.

here are brewton and ginny at the joshua tree bar, near santa maria novella in florence. those are [brewton's host mom] manuela's fingers as she gestures at freddy, not shown.

this morning i was listening to NPR (guess i'm an adult now), and the news segment was an analysis of bush's proposed $250,000 "hard cap" on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice suits. the segment was brief without sacrificing nuance, and it even suggested the kind of underlying cause that most newscasts avoid, the systemic kind that can't be swept away by one tidy piece of legislation. i could feel a deep love for public radio, nurtured by kodak-style dream sequences of our future together, taking root in my heart. the main point was that the malpractice liabilities that drive up doctors' insurance costs are not pain and suffering, but the actual fuckups that they make in treating people. this is not because the formerly rugged individualist physician archetype has been hijacked by a bevy of incompetent liberal ninnies unfamiliar with the maladies of jus' folks, but because medical advances over the past fifty years have created a lot more situations in which doctors can be blamed. (the example the newscast cited was that fifty years ago, diagnosing cancer early didn't matter; you were going to die anyway. now, in some cases, it can mean the difference between life and death.) in short, bush's proposed cap trivializes the problem and fails to remedy anything other than his shortage of policy initiatives to thump his chest over. all of which you could read in any times editorial, except they then played a statement from paul o'neill about how we live in an adversarial society where people think of misfortune as the fault of malevolent (suable) perpetrators.

brilliant. it is so true. i was at peace with the world this morning as i drank coffee and listened to my beloved NPR until, on the walk to work, some asshole (see? see? delusions of others' malevolence) gave a big rude honk, directed at the car in front of him, which was turning but letting me (the wronged victim, the girl in the legbrace) and others cross the street on our walk sign. angry at this small injustice even though the honker couldn't have known he was lashing out at the handicapped, i tumbled irretrievably into the me-first indignance of every pedestrian and motorist and everybody in new york, and now another day has been contaminated by arrogant suspicion of my fellow citydwellers. it's hard to go twenty feet without experiencing or even witnessing that emotion in others, which is a big part of my problem with new york. it's a hundred times more adversarial than any other place i've lived (which, admittedly, isn't so hard to do, considering i come from small-town florida and went to school in even-smaller-town davidson). i can understand how it happens here, because we're nine million people, all with our own agenda, crammed into such a tiny space. but i still don't like it, especially when i see it in myself.

i've started drinking my coffee black. amazing. my father told me this would happen, and i didn't believe him at the time, which was when i was like three and, although (involuntarily) not a coffee drinker then, i could not fathom a time when i would elect not to add sugar to something. i also am getting gray hairs, which i don't mind at all, but all i ask is that my body stop producing pimple-causing hormones. pimples AND gray hair is unreasonable.

eh. interview was yesterday. i'm not sure if i'll make it to the next round. this one was a preliminary with HR, and as i'm sure you all know, HR ladies are demons who think you need to be metaphysically aligned with whatever job they happen to be offering. when prodded, i will always admit that i prefer editorial to production. that is what HR ladies are there to do. prod.

the other day i saw a job ad for a copyeditor for something called mediamatters.org in dc. they correct and re-spin conservative misinformation in the media. i like the idea of promoting accuracy (see the institute for public accuracy), but it sounds like they only do it when it's to their advantage.

ah. and. once again, the onion presents a dark vision of what my life could one day be like: Someday, I Will Copyedit The Great American Novel.

also don't miss The Fabulous Friends: Conservative Christian Groups' Least-Favorite All-Star Cartoon. it's a bright day out there on the internet.

yeow

days when i actually do my job are taxing. which, nowadays, is many of them. which is why i'm in the market for a new job. if i'm constantly uninitiated, i'm never responsible, eh? i wouldn't mind being worked hard if it were something i cared about, and then this bourbon here i'm drinking (i never drink bourbon) would be celebratory rather than habit-forming.

so my newsgeek interview's tomorrow, and i'm going to find out exactly who these people are who put all the damn subscription cards so loosely in the magazine pages so that they fall out at all the wrong moments. i wonder if they are creepy or dignified. or artless. or look like litterers. or if they're just like the people at the museum, and if so, are they the nice reasonable ones or the scary bulldozing nincompoops?

i may be a newsgeek!

next week i'm interviewing for a production assistant opening at newsweek, which is, like, closer to my apartment than the museum. and pays much more. it's basically my job here but for their circulation dept (i.e., those pesky blow-in cards and other satellite pieces), but i figure it'd be wise to move to a magazine, and not a terribly embarrassing one at that (yes, i admit to scoping out elle decor when i saw an editorial opening there, but i just couldn't bring myself to apply). as for the voice internship option, i'm realizing it's merely a context for networking and wheedling assignments out of editors. in theory a job at newsweek provides the same context, as long as i can manage to hang out with editorial. or move there after a year.

not sure why my nyorker subscription notice is asking me what i've been doing this week to combat the despair of the nation and the world

i've been scurrying around trying to organize my head and my priorities by shuttling objects and bits of paper around my room. i feel inundated by Big Questions and i'm attempting to get a handle on them by controlling the messy little piles that consitute my life.

all i've really done is reconfigure the piles from my desk into slightly different piles on the ironing board, which is smelly and wasn't much help last night when i was facing off against two pairs of indefatigably wrinkly pants.

my pants are still wrinkled and i don't have any solutions.

i've determined that the world is both more and less arbitrary than i thought. more arbitrary because all of my striving produces nothing but sweat and illusions, and if it yields nothing, i'm more comfortable blaming my hair and not what's under it because i can change the former but not the latter. striving is more about self-esteem and getting through the day than willing into reality some idealized lamar who lives in the future. my thank-you note to the village voice will have no effect on the world or my place in it, and neither will the resume i just sent to newsweek....less arbitrary because there is logic to how things happen, it's just not always the logic i prefer.

why aren't there peppermint lollipops?

is it because peppermint was originally consumed in stick form, and the transition just never happened when the rounded starlight mint swept the nation?

the application is done and gone. now that i'm no longer fussing over personal statements and GRE absurdities, i can go back to fussing over (or putting off fussing over) bills, bank statements, cleanliness, orthopedic woes, food, items i can't afford, my netflix queue, and grammar. eh. maybe i should find more grad schools to apply to.

home stretch

soon my personal statement will be finished and i can go back to exercising and drinking beer. until then, i am fidgety sack of bones hell-bent on picking my brain for brilliant things to say.

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.