Breaking News: Big Pile of Snow Super Fucking Big

NYC--People have been paralyzed by the recent blizzard in NYC; they can't go to work, they can't buy shit at hard to reach locations like TriBeca--they can barely leave their apartments.

Dominating the streets are intolerably larger than average piles of snow, some have even mentioned piles of snow which are "super fucking big." The following have been sited: steps with snow, streets with snow, cars covered in snow, trees in the snow, tops of trees covered by snow, awnings with snow, doorways with large snow piles outside, windowsills with snow, benches in snow....the list could go on, and no one is pleased.

"I went outside my apartment," said Donna Wright, "and there was just snow. And it was everywhere." Initially unprepared for the shocking conclusion to the previous night's blizzard, Ms. Wright found comfort on the local news: "I turned on my TV and the weather man was like, "Here is the snow. You can also find it here." I was particularly relieved when he showed me different piles of snow, which he pointed out by saying, 'Look, snow,' and I thought, 'You're right.'"

Further reports indicate that these piles of snow are "fucking everywhere."

Dear Bruno Mars,

Dear Bruno,


I think we all need to relax here. Maybe take a breath and reassess the situation because, to be honest, I think you're getting a little carried away.

In the beginning of the song when you say, "Your eyes were open. Why were they open?" Maybe people like kissing with their eyes open, why do you get to decide? Stop being so critical.

To continue, I see the following situations as problematic and also fucking weird:

1. I'd catch a grenade for ya
2. Throw my hand on a blade for ya
3. Jump in front of a train for ya
4. I would die for you but you won't do the same.

This girl probably just wanted to go out to dinner and you were like, "I will fucking cut myself for you," she accurately read the situation, and left. Do actually envision someone propositioning, "Look, I'd love to be with you but first I want you to catch this explosive, cut yourself up--pretty badly--and then jump in front of a train, preferably the downtown 6."

Ok, so we have that problem and then this: "I would die for you but you won't do the same." Um, hi, Bruno, this is NOT a cult. I feel like your new message is "You're perfect just the way you are but unless your ready to die, this is not for me," and I'm not really feeling great about that.

There has got to be a way

Jonathon Franzen and I are likely soul mates. Once, when I was at The Paris Review, he called and said, "Hello, this is Jonathon Franzen" and I said, "Hi, one moment please." It was awesome. Anyway, in his recent interview with The Paris Review he describes discovering Don DeLillo (who is the best), "I'd finally found somebody who was putting on the page the apocalyptic, postindustrial urban aesthetic that I'd been looking for in film and photographs and had found expressed in music, particularly by the Talking Heads."

This has been my favorite song of ALL time, since middle school:

Love, The Clarks

I'm guessing your first reaction was, "Wow, how fucking pensive are these kids?" I guess that's what we were going for. This is a picture from an old family Christmas card we sent out.  I think it says, "Hi, Merry Christmas, I'm looking into you SOUL." I've always been deep--especially when in black and white. Last year,  we sent out a sarcastic card that said "Oh, Happy New Year." I'm not sure it translated well. The 30 rock Christmas special perfectly captured the card aspect with this conversation: Jack: What Christmas card did we send? Avery: "Happy Holidays" is what terrorists say. Merry Christmas, Avery and Jack. 

Whenever people send out cards they always have "sincerely" printed before their names and then the cross it out and write "love." Why don't you just start out with "Love, The Clarks." I'm never convinced by the re-write and I will not be manipulated especially on Christmas. 

The great thing about cards is that they give you an opportunity for unequivocal judgment. Obviously the situation truly presents itself when people include self-congratulatory epics. Sometimes, if you are super observant, you can pick apart the whole card, which is really just a mosaic of euphemisms.  Other times, they are not fucking around: "Oh yes, Charles just graduated from this really prestigious school your kid didn't get into. We are still super fucking rich. Like really, really rich. Little Sue just graduated from medical school. She hasn't cured AIDS yet (HAHAHA) but she has been working with orphans in Africa. Follow her journey at helping-poor-kids-is-what-i-love-doing-what-are-you-doing?.blogspot.com" 

Happy Holidays

I'm sorry I didn't post on Saturday. I'm a liar, what do you want from me? ITS A BLOG, SORRY. I've started going to "work" during the day. It's been a revolutionary experience but I haven't quite figured out the blogging aspect yet. Anyway.

It's that time of the year: I think you know what I'm talking about. It's the holiday season and don't you dare say "Christmas," because you don't know what jews are going to say, "Um excuse me. I don't celebrate Christmas. Don't you force your Christian ideologies on me with this "Merry" "Happy" bullshit." You have to be super careful, even when you're part jewish which I am.

A good example of this is Secret Santas. We used to have secret santa when I was in middle school and then my super white preppy school decided that believing in Santa wasn't quite delusional enough so we switched over to believing in our non-existant diversity scheme with "Kwaharamas Mammas". Yup: Kwanaza-Hannukah-Ramadan-Christmas. We even sang, "We wish you a happy Christmas" switching in Kwanza, Ramadan, and Hannukah. Maybe I'm incredibly ignorant, but don't people fast on Ramadan. Hey! Have fun being starving! Yah! Happy Hunger! You'll love it! It's great! Jesus did it too, but he was in the desert and THE DEVIL was there. It was a worst case scenario, hopefully that doesn't happen to you. We'll just celebrate his birthday, and that semi-shared element, with this song here.

I will be back on Saturday

I promise.

Holy Ghost!

I can't take credit for this song--not that I ever "discover" bands. It comes from elsewhere.  Anyway! Here you go, it's great.

Good luck!

My friend is studying for the GREs right now, and it reminded me of my highly successful GRE experience. The problem with taking any test that has vocab is that you have to make flashcards. Because, once you've made one million flashcards, it's kind of like, "Okay, I'm done." Sometimes this happens with printing stuff out too. I was creating part of a website and someone sent me a bunch of material, so I printed that shit out--I even did 2 per page--and then I looked at it for a bit.

Nothing makes me feel more successful or organized than buying stuff. Like before middle school started, I would go to Staples and go wild. "Did you get a three ring binder?" "Fuck yeah, I got those sweet folders too. I can only imagine that I'm incredibly prepared to learn."

Academically speaking, there is one thing that tops supplies in terms of reflecting absolutely nothing. Have you ever been in the library studying, or writing a paper, and someone else finishes before you and they go, "Good luck." "Good luck with your paper!" What does this even mean? You know what. I don't need luck. I don't need luck because I'm so very smart and do you see this folder system I have going, as well as this multi-color highlighter pack and post-its? I'm thinking my chances for an A are pretty good.

Go, go, go, go

Sometimes when I'm driving in the car with my Dad and we're stuck in traffic, he'll say, "Go, go,go, go" kind of sort of quietly. Like, you know what these cars need? They need encouragement. I do this too--talking to non-responsive entities--but I usually ask questions. Maybe it's my fact-checking background, who knows, but a car will cut me off or the light will change, and I'll say, "Are you kidding me?" as if God is going to pop down and say, " HaHaHa! YES! I've just been fucking with you YOUR WHOLE LIFE."

People love provoking inanimate objects. Like if you're waiting for the subway and it refuses to come, people start looking down the tracks, as if the train is a fucking dragon and only responds to temptation. So this will happen, and then everyone immediately starts to justify their actions, "Where is the train?" "It should really be here by now." When what they really mean is, "Did you see me just now? I was acting with a purpose. When I looked down the tracks, that was motivated. It was motivated by both a curiosity and an annoyance. That's why I did it. "

I just wanna dance

You know when you hear a song for the first time and you go insane, and you listen to it on repeat, and you play it for everyone, and you ALMOST kill it, but like you can't kill it because it's just so good. That's how I feel about Rihanna's new song. ( FYI The sound quality isn't that amazing anywhere on youtube, sorry about that). IT'S THE WEEKEND!

Sorry to bother you again

An old New Yorker cartoon titled "Low Self-Esteem," by Mike Twombly, shows a man writing in a notebook, "Dear Diary, sorry to bother you again." I remember thinking this was one of the funniest comics I had ever seen. Sure, I might feel bad about myself sometimes but I could still write in my diary about how my greatness was suffering at the hands of others and, on the plus side, no one could condemn my solipsism. Then I started blogging.

When blogs first started I was steadfastly opposed: Why does anyone want to read about your personal life? Twombly's comic now becomes, "Dear Readers, sorry to bother you again." And now, of course, I have to ask you to: Please read while I continue to write about myself, don't stop, and then write about myself writing about myself. One comic said blogging was like video tapping yourself masturbating in front of a mirror and then masturbating to the tape. He was probably right, or he just loves masturbating. We'll never know.

In this week's Time, Joel Stein discusses "How my self-obsessed writing changed journalism." He argues that while initially his first person narrative style was rejected, now, "all bloggers write in first person, spending hours each day chronicling their anger at their kids for taking away their free time. Every Facebook update and tweet is sophomoric, solipsistic, snarky and other words I've learned by Googling myself." WE DO NOT. We do.

Every time I blog, I write about myself, I mention how fucking annoying everyone else is, I use curse words, I inundate the internet with sarcasm. I've been told that I write exactly as I speak. This is true--except that I write how I speak to my friends; not my grandparents, not all of the people that can't stop hiring me for a well paid job. You jump right to casual conversation. I'll speak with someone I don't know very well and I'll mention my mother, or my dogs, or something else incredibly interesting, and they'll go, "Oh, I feel like I know exactly who you're talking about." Or I'll tell a story and realize I've already blogged about, and I start to worry whether or not I have anything to contribute outside of "Living with my parents is cool."

I think blogging is both self-indulgent and self-effacing. Yes, you're writing "Me, me, me" but, at the same time, you aren't necessarily watching yourself do it. I started writing my blog the morning after my mother and I got in a fight. I was upset about not getting a job (again) and frustrated that I was living at home as all my other friends moved out and had real "grown up lives." As I sat there feeling sorry for myself, she said, "Why don't you just write about it." So my blog started out of a desperation and out of a desire for structure and commitment. When you write a blog, and when you convince yourself people just might be reading, you are creating unacknowledged accountability.

In some ways, you give all of yourself out to people you may not know. You break down every wall and "get intimate" pretty quickly. I might not blog about my riveting and multifarious love life (probably bc I don't have one...), but I do share a lot about my family, my devastating job search, and other things I might not use to pick up guys. I like knowing that I need to blog on Mondays or find a music video on Fridays. I feel dedicated to something, since I can't be dedicated to getting to work early. Another blog once denigrated my blog (BLOG WARS: the wars with the least consequence in the world), saying I was just trying to get a TV show or a book deal, and that this was a sorry attempt to function in the real world. Actually, for me (me!me!me!), I blog because I love writing and, since there hasn't been an occupational opportunity, this is what I do.

I think blogging provides structure for writers who might otherwise stop. A lot of times, it's a self-indulgent, self-promotional activity. I'll be the first to admit that I try to be funny in my posts, they're not an attempt at in depth political or social analysis. They're just me. Blogging makes you vulnerable, critical, and moronic all at once.

Anyway, I just wanted to provide my take (or defense?) of blogs. If you've made it all the way down to this last line I'm impressed. I probably would have stopped reading once I realized this was going to be pretty long. So, dear readers, I am SO UNBELIEVABLY SORRY to bother you again. Get ready to groove on Friday.