so most of you have prolly gotten emails from me about that 'video games that help you focus' story i'm working on. i have spent 2+ weeks thinking about this stuff, and so it has dawned on me that journalists lead strange lives. here are some highlights:

i heard from an equipment salesman that fortune 500 companies (which he would not name) and the accounting firm ernst & young have had these programs in place to help their employees' business performance. after i got off the phone with him i realized he was just reading off the sidebar on his website. he wouldn't give me any more details about what these companies had been up to. so i, like a freak, called up ernst & young and said, 'so, there's this thing where you play a video game with your mind, and you do it by sticking electrodes on your head...no, i'm not kidding. this is real...did you ever have a program like this for your employees?' she had to get back to me on that one.

and that, strangely enough, happened not to be the most out-of-left-field question this PR lady had been asked recently.

i also ended up calling an indiana funeral/medical services company that another equipment website claimed would appear in a harvard business review article about their success with the technology. no luck their either. not sure what's up, but maybe these salesmen just make stuff up, not expecting the mothers of ADD children to call Polly PR to confirm.

i've also been getting hundreds of message-board postings via email, mostly from professionals on a yahoo forum. they are a wild bunch, posting robustly even at 11pm on a saturday night during the holiday season. [and i, the shut-in journalist, was close at hand to read them.] aside from all the expected internet-forum backbiting and mudslinging, one of my favorite dr.s must use bartleby's quotations like a thesaurus. there are like 3 mentions of historical figures, along with the quotes they are most famous for, in every email. george santayana, fdr. it's the email signature as email. this person also wedged in a comparison of the group's debate about licensing to the christian reformation. just as luther proclaimed that all should have direct access to god through personal readings of the bible, so too should neuroscientists be generous with their prefixes: ph.d.s and other fancy-degree holders shouldn't monopolize the administration of brain training.

here are kt, me, & D at homecoming, behind summit, which is where we spent most of the weekend when we weren't at the depot. all had homework/projects to do, and it was a little bizarre to be back there doing work, walking around the same places, and yet being strangely disconnected from everything going on.

"if i start having marxist thoughts about elvis, you start having technological solutions."

i miss the quoteboard aspect of communal college living. the heading is what i said to ed when he kept having those shower-inspired good ideas while i was busy working on an assignment.

you've probably never desired to read a marxist essay on elvis, but i have just finished one, on the day of the birth of my Mother, no less. and though she may not remember to call herself such, she may indeed be a bit of a marxist and maybe even an elvis fan?

the assignment was to find a way to write about the most-written-about figure in pop culture from our own critical angle. it took me about twelve minutes to open the only book that they actually had at the library out of my list of twenty and find my hook. i use it in a paragraph about clearasil. really--i consider myself lucky. i've never been a savvy researcher. things just happened to go my way this time. and now i can't sleep because i got so jacked up on caffeine to finish this thing (dragged ed on a 2am walk around park slope), and it's only kicked in now that i'm finished.

so i'm drinking a beer and posting halloween pictures.

i was a corkscrew for halloween, the anthropomorphic kind with the head that twists and the arms that you push down. terrible thing was, i brought a bottle of wine to the party in williamsburg, and there was no corkscrew to be found. so i walked around dumbly with the unopened wine, dressed as the very thing i was missing. i even had a bit where i spun around and jacked my arms up and then sprung through the air. meant to drop a cork when i did it, but i couldn't open the wine to get it...

first pic shows my headpiece and 'wings' (made out of a fresh direct box, tinfoil, and foam coil), the second my legs as the twisty stick-in-the-cork part (foam coil wrapped in aluminum tape).

wasabi peas may smell like cat food, but they set your nose aflame

update since the last time i posted:

school.

that is all. oh wait, and rain. now cold.

i have been hunkered down all weekend making a dent in work incredibly slowly. i definitely feel that good writing and good grooming are mutually exclusive.

here is a review of shopgirl by one of my profs. also amusing are the letters he got in response. i like the one from bashir.

also don't miss the new yorker talk of the town on harriet miers.

subway wit

must give emily credit for noticing this. i walked right by it. must be because she is randier than i? or i am dislexicer. disexlic. i am afraid of what that means. which is why i will dream about it. or did. last night. uggh.

diaries of a painfully inexperienced reporter

i've been out on two reporting missions for my intro class—one to a polling place in alphabet city last week for the democratic mayoral primaries, and one today, at a meeting in protest of VA hospital consolidation. i find that it is easiest to get old men to talk to me. they slow down because they see a nice young lady, which is when i swoop in and...ask nearly incoherent questions while scribbling sloppily in my notebook. i think i need a tape recorder so i can go around brewton-style.

at the conference today i met a man without a bladder. he was very nice despite his bladderlessness, which i suppose indicates that a bladder isn't a crucial component of congeniality, tho it must surely help. i did wonder, as i sat in that overly air-conditioned hotel ballroom for two over hours, how in the world all those senior vets managed to stay there without a trip to the bathroom. perhaps they are all lacking in bladders.

vegan mac&cheese is gooey cardboard

i just made one of those boxes of vegan convenience food that is so freakin unexploitative it calls into question its very existence. the box contains nothing you might remotely associate with dairy or dairy alternatives; not only is there no lactose, whey, or egg, but also no soy or nut products, and no candida albicans, whatever that means. the box is made from 100 percent recycled paperboard and was printed using soy-based inks. aside from the soy disparity, i'm pretty sure the box and its contents are one.

the pervasiveness of vegetarian- and vegan-friendly convenience foods puzzles me. the whole point of the original convenience foods was to make replicas of homemade dishes so high in starch, animal fat, and salt that it doesn't matter how preserved and freeze-dried and pouchified they are—you still have the important conveyors of flavor. to then go and replace the animal products with something unfatty and unflavorful becomes an exercise in masochistic deprivation. all for the sake of what? having an imitation of something that is itself an imitation of a home-cooked meal? i'm sure if plato could've foreseen road's end organics' dairy-free mac & 'chreese' (cheddar style), he would've been furious. we're talking shadows of shadows here.

i once picked a fight with a soy-yogurt product representative giving out samples at my health food store. i informed her that nondairy foods should give up the fight, accept their unsuppressably unique flavors, and go and develop foods that work with, rather than against, these foreign textures and tastes. manufacturers of nondairy goods, i call on you to untether yourselves from the hegemonic reign of dairy and to adopt an adventurous new approach of culinary medium specificity! if it does not look like cheese or yogurt, i promise to still try it.

except keep making soymilk and those tofutti cuties, because they are good. rice dream can go fuck themselves.

last day of freedom slash boredom

school starts tomorrow. soon i will find out if my brain still works.

yesterday ed and i went to coney island. i've been in new york for two years and three summers before that, and yet i had never gone to coney island. craaazy place. you can get on the F train downtown and an hour later emerge, alongside throngs of people carrying towels and pails and impatient children, at a giant raucus yankee carnival on the beach. we walked along the boardwalk and then sat on the beach and went swimming (water very cold) and ate a mango on a stick carved both to enhance its bitability and its resemblance to a flower. then we looked at the games and rides and walked up to neptune ave for pizza at the famous totonno's, which has some or other claim to being the oldest pizza in new york. it didn't taste old, but did happen to be a little bland. the crust found great favor with ed, and the cheese was quite fresh. i prefer the spicier, greasier varieties myself.

les achats sur (ou avec?) l'herbe

for my last day in austin dorothy and i took a little nude shopping trip around the city. very popular with the kids these days. what better way to ensure that you come home in some new duds than the threat of getting arrested? i just love the way strapless dresses make pictures far more suggestive.









this is dorothy and travis's cat marilyn, who likes to climb in the 'cuties' clementine box. shown here with human-assisted mohawk.












here we are at the airport, properly attired. sad to leave dorothy and her city's perfect union of egg muffin and soy latte.

in austin the icecream melts really fast

here are dorothy and me modeling our skirts, together for the first time since d made mine last year. we have just eaten a very elaborate fish dinner with two sauces and wilted greens and are now waiting for our starlight-mint-doctored icecream to re-harden in the freezer. it melted after like 5 minutes in the 90+-degree kitchen.

have gone swimming twice, in two different spring-water pools. this is a bike-friendly town with plenty of trail access to the colorado river. and margaritas and barbeque. the only chorizo i've had so far tasted like cat food (but was compensated for by the 'STERONG' prickly-pear frozen margaritas), so we'll rectify that situation soon. PIE HEAVEN party is friday. ed'n'i'll be making my improv blend of chocolate peanut-butter oat-cereal bourbon ice cream goo with a graham-cracker crust to hold it all together and qualify it as a pie. dorothy will finish solidly inside the category with her two-time hit, the corn and tomato savory pie.

mother earth plies her trade

for sale at the health food store in gainesville, fl:

consumer hobo

look at this hat i found on the street. i think it may actually be a pink fluff-muff (with a black velvet reversible inside) or even skank tube top for a very small person, but i have chosen to wear it as a hat. when i first picked it up (off of a fence displaying free stuff here in the slope), along with a very large multicolored satisfyingly nubby scarf covered in cat hair, it was to be a hostess gift for dorothy or b, but, sorry girls, it would look adorable with your blond hair, but this one is mine. it probably makes me look like a tripped out hopper chick, but maybe that is what i am going for here.

ed and i made a giant trip to bed bath & beyonce today, an excursion which gave rise to my carrying a supersized shopping bag on the stick of a mop, hobo style. hence the title of this post and all of its i-ronic implications.

also we have wireless now, so i am blogging from bed while drinking beer. surprisingly easy to get used to. it is now easier for me to take a photo of myself on my cellphone, text it to gmail, and post it on my blog than it is to get a glass of water. the other day i was in the gap's underwear section and they had a bra promoted with the tag 'wireless.' i find this substantially more amazing than my technological feats. i mean, if i can put my boobs to work in terms of connectivity, how much better off wouldn't we all be?

blithe abuse of consumer technologies

with this post i join the ranks of indulgent and shameless bloggers who subject everyone to low-res cameraphone documentation of their lives. ahh it feels good to succumb. this is of ed and me on our way to a party in carroll gardens, where we ended up knowing everyone twice over through two separate paths of connections: the prolific brooklyn–austin exchange program, and ed's workmate jordi, who had extended the invitation.



on saturday lacey and her friends invited kt and me to the beach. we ended up going to the rockaways, in queens, which was quite close thanks to l's car and quite beachy thanks to water and sand and neighboring mexicans who taught us how to say bottleopener in spanish when we asked for one (forgot the word). it might've been a dirty word which is why they laughed at us, but kt said the woman, not the man, told her the word so it was less likely to be dirty? who knows. here are kt and lacey posing. immediately sent to dorothy, which prompted a call from her. see cameraphones are great.



here are josephine and holly after dinner the other weekend at a yum i-talian place in park slope.












and here are the trees and fire escape outside my kitchen window. maybe i will take another without the screen.

salaciousness in the NYT

this is pretty fun:

first read the new nanny diaries are online (sunday styles, 7.17.05)

then read the blog in question, instructions to the double

onesies for little rebelsies

ok, since ed hasn't posted about this i'm stealing it. a few times we've walked by this boutique on 5th ave that sells these che guevara onesies. if there can be said to be a heartbeat of park slope, this is surely it. it has everything: decadence, preciousness, rebellion via materialism, baby-centricity—this little playsuit is the locus of park slope identity.

sometimes when i walk around and see all the little kids here against the backdrop of lovely brownstones, trees, cafes, and gay-friendly shops, i wonder where they will go to rebel and be edgy once they are teenagers. their parents already patronize all the coffeeshops and alt-looking places here, so they'll grow up seeing the slope as a firmly entrenched establishment, whose tropes they will feel compelled to kick sand at using whatever style of boot is popular by then. i mean, if you wore che when you were still pooping yourself, you are obviously going to have to find your own style of heroes to commodify.

oh my god saturday night i dreamed i was being turned into a bug. a SCARY bug. i was still me but i had bug features stuck on, particularly my left arm and abdomen, which were so gross i don't even want to describe. at first i thought it would go away, like with physical therapy or something. but then it wasn't and i was noticing weird antennae everywhere and i slumped and was like oh god god god please make it go away. ed woke up and assured me that i was not a bug. still it was bad. THEN last night i was making a salad and tossing it and noticed something moving and there was this big spider/not-spider bug crawling around covered in berry vinaigrette, moving slowy and creeping through the organic spring mix. it had to have been in the lettuce bag, eating and shitting the lettuce since being packed away at earthbound farm and barely surviving the journey through those microengineered eighteen layers of semipermeable plastic. otherwise i would've seen it crawling on the counter and scaling the slippery pyrex upside-down. which, judging from its motor skills, was not so plausible. i am now afraid to eat the lettuce (and too lazy to wash it) even tho ed promised that no spider eggs would hatch in our stomachs and eat away at us from our insides.

please no kafka jokes.*

*unless they rule. (unlikely)

cleanliness and grooming aren't necessary, but they make you feel better

been doing an okay job not descending into total slothitude at my one-month mark of unemployment. managed to email some stuff to the profs in charge of my program, doing this new gyrotonic thing (via work-study a.k.a. cleaning so i don't have to pay tons of dollars) under the aegis of this really cool girl i met at the co-op, watching admittedly too much pirated gilmore girls, reading some things, and trying not to run up the daytime minutes on my phone. might try kickboxing at the gym tomorrow. ed and i are about to embark upon a sunday-night pizza retrieval operation.

post-employment: phase 1

been unemployed for nearly two weeks now. this state of grace began, after my last day of work, at a karaoke bar, where ed and i performed a drunken but still well-coordinated 'billie jean' for my ex-coworkers.

i have spent the two weeks capitalizing on intro offers for various forms of exercise, being victimized by three different cell phone companies, and reading things that i've been meaning to read for a while. ed and i found a new copy of the dvd outfoxed for the taking on a stoop, so we will watch that sooner than i will finish reading the vinland (icelandic) sagas, also from the stoop.

i also, through no fault of my own, am now the owner of a cameraphone, so be expecting gratuitous and low-res pictures of me and/or my possessions and habitat to appear in your inboxes.

cumming attractions...

new to our apartment: the moving image. yesterday ed and i found a large nice-looking but old tv sitting on the sidewalk next to our place (since monday is trash day, the sunday evening walk takes on new furniture-acquiring dimensions). of course it acted busted when we (he) took it upstairs and turned it on, but he figured out what was wrong and tonight soldered something onto something else after taking the bad thing away. and now there is an aqua teen dvd playing in our 'parlor,' a.k.a. 'the five-thing room,' since only about five things (not including people) can fit in there at once.

'a-' is the new 'homo-'

lots of people are now claiming an 'asexual' identity and asking that others not try to 'fix' them, says the nyt.

thought this was interesting, tho it would probably make a better premise for an onion article. some bleary-eyed porn producer could lambaste the new brand of sexual deviants for not being up to anything kinky. or they could do a series of people claiming new identities left and right. the noisemakers, the outdoor adventurers, the people who like to eat sandwiches mid-act. they should all run out and form a club before they can be stigmatized, or worse, studied by graduate students.