You'd Think Saying "I Told You So" Would Get Old

Dear American Women Moderates,
I don't know if you remember me, but I'm the one who said that your lukewarm opposition/nonplussment/indifference to a woman's right to choose would have repercussions. I tried really hard to convince you it wasn't about the scarlet-A abortion, but rather about you, as a human being, getting to decide your own medical destiny. You didn't quite see it that way. You only saw abortion which you though was icky. And that is totally your right. Lots of lefter-than-you women think it's icky. You're the Tipper Gores if you will, the "it should never ever happen, but if it does, we should acknowledge the tragedy and work to prevent it" people. And with such a contentious issue, many on the lefter-of-you were content to let you think it was icky while you didn't press to make it illegal. That way no one had to have an uncomfortable conversation.

But somewhere in the liberal elite bunker, someone who looks an awful lot like I do (this was a while ago, so fatter), was saying crazy paranoid doomsday stuff like: one of these days some idiot is going to try to limit access to contraception. "Don't be ridiculous!" You ALL said, "that would never happen. They're two entirely different things. No one could ever think that contraception should be up for debate!" Both you middle-of-the-road Tippers and you coastal hedonists.

I am so, so tired.

It was too difficult for all of you to separate your personal feelings and choices from what the letter and spirit of law should be. Because you, personally, wouldn't choose to have an abortion, you thought it was important to tell people that, to get that moral superiority bump. You didn't think it was hurting anyone because you still allowed that other women, the morally inferior ones, could choose to do it, but an upstanding citizen like you wouldn't. And you needed everyone to know that. Otherwise we could have mistaken you for one of those abortion-happy 10-stamps-and-the-eleventh-is-free people. I hope you feel really superior. I hope you are pleased that you took the high road and didn't stoop to saying something like, "medical decisions are private regardless of gender." You know, the way we do for Seventh Day Adventists. You didn't see it as a medical issue because you were so concerned about what people might think of you.

Welcome to the slippery slope. Now you have people in nearly normal states like Virginia proposing that before you get an abortion, you need an ultrasound. You know, the same way as when you go to the hospital to get a nail removed from your foot, you need a chest x-ray; the way you need a prostate exam before you can get a scrip for penicillin for your strep throat. And, I mean, only a crazy tin-foil hat person could have seen this coming. To say nothing of the resuscitation of a fifty-year old argument that The Pill is only utilized by women of loose morals (who, by the way, need fewer abortions).

So, I kind of want to know: how do you feel now? Are you able to continue feeling morally superior because your abject laziness has permitted this? Do you feel any sense of responsibility for prizing icky over equality? I kind of hope you don't.

I know, you weren't expecting that. But I am so beyond apoplectic about this that I've gone in the completely opposite direction. Ban everything! Allow any state that wants to turn a tax-paying, voting woman into a second class citizen because she has a uterus. Heck, propose that a woman can't even see a doctor without a male family member (father or husband) present. We women cannot possibly be expected to make those kinds of decisions on our own. We might choose incorrectly. Much like the mandatory ultrasound, having dad or devoted partner come to the doctor with me will make sure that someone understands what is about to happen to me, whether or not it's cancer treatment or drops for an eye infection. Those are heady issues that are way too difficult for me, with my uterus, to understand. It's the chief reason I'm so glad to have a husband.

I don't know how many years it will take before you revolt - I'm guessing somewhere around a Qadaffi-number of years, but perhaps you've had it too good until now and you need some serious oppression to make you rethink your priorities. You didn't realize that every time you personally denounced abortion that you were arming the enemies of all women with the weapon of: "polls have shown that most women disapprove of abortion, so no one cares if we outlaw it." And you laughed in the faces of the people who pointed that out.

I look forward to laughing at you.

Yours laughing maniacally from a pharmacy in Montreal,

Yelena

What Have You Done During My Absence?!?

I know I don't live in Manhattan anymore. Even as I still consider hizzoner my mayor, and Mimi's my pizza place. But while I've been gone, something absolutely silly has happened, and you might not be aware.

I speak of something I discovered, purely by accident, yesterday: select bus service.

I attempted to board the M15 at 125th and 2nd and was told the bus did not accept metrocards. Wait for that to sink in. No. Instead, I was told to put my metrocard into a metrocard dispenser-looking thing outside the bus, by the bus shelter, and get, wait for it, a receipt. Then I could board the bus and, again, hold your breaths, not show anyone my receipt. Of course, by this time, I had missed that bus because, well, there was a substantial line of other people waiting to get receipts from the metrocard kiosk.

WTF? doesn't even begin to cover it.

I realize that I am of the old school that clearly remembers tokens and their phase out, but I also remember that metrocards were designed to be easier. Have metrocard, have access to public transport. Now, less than 20 years later, and the metrocard WON'T gain me access to public transport? Explain to me how this makes anything easier - to say nothing of the fact that I had no idea where this "select bus" planned on stopping and was just happy that I wanted to go to a two-way crosstown intersection which I felt sure would be a stop.

Devoted partner attempted to make sense of this by saying that it was, perhaps, designed to prevent long lines of people waiting to insert their metrocards into the slot on the bus - strangely enough, the MTA sort of agrees by claiming that you can now board at the front or the back of the bus. Hallelujah, praise jeebus. But explain one tiny thing to me: would it not have been ever so slightly easier to, I don't know - have a second metrocard reader at the back door of the bus? Wouldn't that accomplish the same thing and save me from a multi-step process to RIDE A BUS? After all, there was a second MTA employee on my select bus, presumably to check that I had a receipt (also, do you know how easy it is to misplace a receipt the second you receive it? Am I supposed to clutch this wispy piece of paper in my hand like it's a treasure map on the chance the receipt police come a-knockin?).

This is, easily, the silliest technological backstep I've seen in a while, and I can only assume it was allowed to happen because I moved away. And before you start to make it out like I'm the crazy one, how about this gem of information from the MTA website:

"Neither machine sells or refills MetroCard; they are not vending machines, and do not make change."

So to board a select bus you need to 1. Go to the subway station and buy a metrocard; 2. Walk to the bus stop and insert your metrocard into a kiosk that serves to only print a receipt; 3. Not lose said receipt because 4. Someone maybe perhaps will ask to see it.

Sorry, fellow New Yorkers, this is clearly my fault for leaving. But since I have no sway with your mayor, perhaps this is something you'll have to fight without me. Mention my name, though, I like to feel like I'm still relevant.

Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed To Read The Internet

It starts, innocently enough, with a link on facebook. Then I read one article which links to another which links to another which gets me to this.

And then I get all aggro again.

"Real Bodies Unite is appealing to all those women fed up of being bombarded with unrealistic imagery in the fashion and beauty industry, by launching a global campaign to raise at least 10,000 signatures for the use of body diversity instead."

Flashback: the year is 1991. A certain young feminist author with a hot, new, provocative book comes to talk to our eighth grade class (yes, I just outed my age). She talks to just the girls in the class about how Vogue and, I don't know, Beverly Hills 90210 are forcing us to hate ourselves and how we look and how those are the reasons we have poor body image. A certain student in the class raises her hand and politely (ok, probably not that politely) asks the feminist author if she is smoking crack. How on earth can a magazine make us do or feel anything we don't want? Vogue doesn't make this young lady feel bad about weighing 150+ pounds at 14 - she feels bad about her weight because she looks bad. Objectively. Whether or not Anna Wintour exists. It is possible that said young student is forcibly escorted out of the room and counseled by a teacher to maybe stop with the talking because the feminist author's message will be important to some of the student's classmates and she shouldn't ruin it for everyone.

20 years later and this theory has become widely accepted and a cottage industry.

It is neither the anorexic model, nor the agency that employs her, nor the magazine that prints her, nor the designer who hires her, who is at fault in the tiresome lady-body-image debate. We, the ladies. We're the problem.

Yup, I said it. Wanna be taken seriously, ladies? Accept responsibility for your own complicity in this. Reading the Real Bodies Unite mission statement (which I sincerely hope was written by a teenager, otherwise I cannot excuse the poor grasp of the English language) would have you imagining that the media (capital-M, lowercase-M, whichever) puts thoughts into your head. Thoughts you can't un-put there. Like Son of Sam and his dog. She/we are powerless when the media speaks. The thoughts are unthinkable. Good thing it's only telling us to hurt ourselves emotionally and psychologically, otherwise the courts would be jam-packed with defendants saying "Glamour made me do it."

Even as the crusaders admit that they know the representations of women in the media are "not real," they seem powerless to separate fantasy from reality. Herein lies another gripe: designers don't design for "real women." (For real we should assume heavyish.) Sadly, there's a Freakonomics problem here: heavy women aren't wealthy. Only wealthy women buy designer clothing. Ergo, designers have slender women modelling their clothing. Take a look at the society pages and you'll notice that those women (possibly real, even) are similarly sized and shaped to the women in the fashion magazines. If you are 300 pounds, statistics suggest you do not have $7,000 for a dress. Why would the person selling a $7,000 dress care if you identify with his model if you're not the intended audience any way? The $7,000 dress is a fantasy just as the model is. Why isn't there a movement whose mission is to compel couture houses to make dresses that cost $70? After all, by the same logic, it's unfair to the rest of us that they don't. That we expect women to understand that ownership of a $7,000 dress is a fantasy, but ownership of the body modelling it shouldn't be, is a leap I am unwilling to make.

Women in fashion magazines, movies, television, are professionally beautiful. Being beautiful in an unattainable way is their job. They work every day to be that beautiful. Were that my job, I would lift more weights, clean my face on a regular basis, not consider exfoliation to be "a hassle," and never eat a carb. But since I don't get paid to be attractive, it's bread and sleeping in eyeliner for me. If you, personally, don't like their occasionally boyish figures or outsized busts, it shouldn't matter to you that you don't look like that. There is a serious disconnect between complaining about how unattractively thin models are and then complaining that the selfsame things you find unattractive about them, being unattainable for you, make you feel unattractive yourself.

Does anyone really, truly, honestly think that if there were women of all shapes and sizes in the media, that we women wouldn't find something else to be self-hateful about? Is it really that simplistic? Get a bunch of regular sized and lumpy chicks on the pages of InStyle and we'll all live in Utopian body satisfaction world? To quote the girl from 1991: are you smoking crack?

Want a great example? This photo. Oh, look, girls who also have rolls in their stomachs when they lean over. Bravo! But do you notice what these "real" women don't have? Here's a cursory list:

Cellulite
Scars from ingrown leg hairs
Any body hair whatsoever or the razor burn/waxing bumps to prove they ever had any
Thin hair
Split ends
Visible stretch marks
Wrinkles
Grey hair
Weird moles
Uneven skin tone
And so on, etc. etc.

Also these women may be non-thin, but none is fat. Also none is over 30. If you want to pay money to look at a non-thin-but-not-fat, over thirty woman with thin hair, stretch marks, scars on her knees from summer camp, broken blood vessels on her nose, and the remnants of a manicure from October, I'll start telling you where to send the checks. The women in that picture are no more representative of the rest of us than Kate Moss. They're merely 40 pounds heavier than Kate Moss. Everything else remains the same (it should be noted that I have no idea if there are Supermodels anymore, and Kate Moss is the last one I remember who was very skinny - I realize Kate Moss is now well over 30).

So putting beautiful women 40 pounds heavier than Kate Moss, but whose skin, hair, etc. is equally airbrushed, who have spent the same number of hours in the stylist's chair prior to being photographed, in magazines, as opposed to only showing women as thin as Kate Moss will do absolutely nothing to improve women's self-image issues. And anyone who says otherwise is an imbecile.

A dangerous imbecile who is doing exactly the same thing to women as he/she claims the media is: reducing an entire gender to a group of mouthbreathers incapable of making decisions -good and bad- for itself. Oh, don't blame that woman for her poor self-image; the magazine made her do it. She couldn't possibly be expected to stand up for herself on her own. We need to change the magazines so that the poor thing can get out of bed in the morning without wanting to take a razor to her fat, hairy wrists.

These purported feminists are doing more to halt women's progress than any fashion magazine could ever claim to do. I don't want my raison d'etre as a woman to be perpetual victimhood, nor am I comfortable with the notion that until some third-party changes its ways, I will be unable to change my own.

There is a self-image problem that exists for women, but the hard truth is that in many cases it is created by women. We are the consumers and the judges of other consumers. Beauty as a status symbol is a tenet upheld by us all and no amount of media manipulation alone will change that. Belief that we are all equally beautiful negates the very idea of beauty. Admitting that beauty is both subjective and rare doesn't hurt the feminist cause. Attempting to deny subjective beauty makes us both naive and fatuous. The actual challenge is creating a hierarchy where beauty is not the only barometer of success for women. Ignoring beauty as a factor in how we evaluate others does nothing to broaden the scope of our evaluations; it reinforces a narrow view of worth in women. If we, as women, are only evaluating ourselves and others by their beauty, we're the problem. And we need to change. Otherwise, the magazines could print blank page upon blank page, and we'd still be no better off.

Dear God, Why?

As we rattled up the Garden State Parkway from the beach Sunday evening, something distracting occurred (and it wasn't our attempt to validate stereotypes regarding the owners of white pickup trucks and priuses by checking out the traffic beside us). I hit one of my radio presets, 101.9 and was greeted by a playlist consisting of No Doubt, TLC, and John Mellencamp, as well as informative listener call-ins describing how much women love chocolate. This was unusual as I rely on 101.9 for a steady diet of STP and Soundgarden, making me feel oh-so-high-schooly. Since there is literally no other radio station in the tri-state area that plays Soundgarden (dear 104.3, the very words "Get the Led Out" and "Out of the Led and into the Pink" give me palpitations requiring immediate mental health intervention), this was quite distressing. Still, I held out hope that this was a special Sunday Night Suckathon of Top-40 hits from a 1997 BC sorority house.

Then I listened more closely, specifically to the station identification. The numbers were right, but the call sign wasn't. I was no longer listening to 101.9WRXP. I was listening to 101.9WEMP which played, please don't be scared, adult contemporary. [Insert stream of expletives]

Because what the radio landscape needs, second to more Top 40, is more adult contemporary.

Sure, the old-timer in me did have to occasionally change the channel when some young whippersnapper hard rock band came on the station (or when they played Nirvana), but on the whole, I was mightily satisfied with my Temple of the Dog and Jane's Addiction fixes. In fact, if pressed, I would have said 101.9WRXP was my favorite radio station.

Now it's gone. Gone gone gone. And I have no defensible reason to shell out money for satellite radio as I just don't spend hours a day in the car. Devoted partner makes fun of the fact that I can listen to 1010WINS's 22 minute coverage for more than an hour, but now there seems to be no other choice. Much like when MTV stopped playing videos and VH1 only played adult contemporary ones, and I just stopped watching videos altogether, I fear that this marks the end of my brief FM radio experiment.

Won't Someone Please Think of the Children

Oh, those words that get tossed about until they are rendered meaningless. The news had two non-default related things to talk about recently and, strangely, they both got the same word: tragedy. They got it right. Once.

If you are a Norwegian, you experienced a tragedy. In fact, you experienced a Tragedy. We're with you 100% as you try to come to terms with this.

If you are a highly publicized drug addict who is no longer alive, however, you are merely an inevitability.

Let's reserve tragedy for actual tragedies.

While perusing people's responses to said inevitability, something ungracious occurred to me: when a smoker dies of lung cancer, no one calls it a tragedy. That's because we all expect that smokers know they're going to die of lung cancer when they start smoking.

Pardon me, when they CHOOSE to start smoking.

Why, then, is one death brought about by a conscious choice less tragic than one, say, brought about by the CHOICE to do heroin?

If addiction is an illness, and I am not getting into that debate here, surely both the addiction to heroin and the addiction to cigarettes are both illnesses, right?

In only the most bizarre of instances is anyone forced to try a cigarette or try heroin the first time.

Yet the addict who overcomes an addiction to heroin is a hero and the addict who succumbs is tragic. Whereas the smoker who quits is an "it's about time," and he who dies "should have known better."

Where are the accolades for he who never tried heroin in the first place? Shouldn't there be some kind of prize for that?

Surely the collective fascination with drug addicts can't be attributed to their not knowing better. We can't possibly be saying that the smoker should have known better than to start smoking in the first place, but the tweaker couldn't help himself. After all, there was a day in both of those people's lives when they, for the first time, chose their poison.

And I'm not saying it isn't hard, once attached, to break up with one's addiction. But people do it. They're not heroes, they're making the right choice belatedly. And good for them!

Conversely, those who never make the right choice don't really get my sympathy, which I'm reserving for Norwegians.

Suing My Friends For Damages

I've been a little under the weather this week, but thanks to the glory of Netflix on demand, I haven't been alone. Which brings me to the problem:

you people who have suggested I watch the series Damages must be seriously smoking crack!

I have now completed season 1 - and you might ask why I watched all the way through a season of something I didn't like. 1. I was bored. Seriously bored. 2. You guys said you liked it and I like and (mostly) trust you. So now that we've all watched season 1, I need to know what you liked about it. To help you formulate your answer, I will tell you what I didn't like about it.

1. There is not a single redeeming thing about any of the characters. Seriously. They all suck. I'm rooting for none of them. They are all legitimately BAD people. And not The Godfather bad. One-dimensional bad. Porno bad.
1b. Which made me (not a spoiler, you see it in episode 1) not at all sad that Rose Byrne's fiance got offed. Because he was a douche. Who was so clearly, stereotypically, threatened by his high-powered lady even before it was discovered her boss was a psychopath. He just sucked. Trust me, the fireworks that would have befallen this relationship had she been a rude bitch at a dinner party held by his Chief of Residents...

2. The Friends problem. The Friends could never have afforded the Friends' apartments. Never. The first-year associate and first-year resident were making 200K tops (I googled). They lived on Riverside drive in the 90s in what appeared to be at least a 3 bedroom pre-war apartment. Here you go 190 Riverside Drive and the too far north 222 Riverside Drive. I'll take the average: $3,399,000. EVEN IF Glenn Close got them a bitchin' deal or chipped in a mil on the down payment, they would still be in the hole over 14K/month on just the mortgage (assume the maintenance on a place like this would be in the neighborhood of 2500-3000). Or 17K/month all in. $200,000 salary after taxes = 120,000, give or take. 17K/month x 12 months = $204,000. See where I'm going with this?

Which leads to 3. If you have such an amazing house. I mean such a stellar deal of a lifetime house, wouldn't you LOCK THE @#&*()^$()&*($^)( DOOR?!?!?! Ok, I get people can be complacent about safety in a doorman building. After all, the doorman is there to make sure uninvited guests don't get in. But after, oh, I don't know, THE SECOND stranger ends up in your apartment, wouldn't you lock the door then? Or change the locks? Or both? I'm not saying creepy people couldn't still get to you, but they'd have to work at it.

I have as much sympathy for the victims of unauthorized home entry who don't lock their doors as I have for the victims of car crashes who don't wear their seatbelts. And these people went to many many many years of school (note: in addition to their 204K/year in mortgage and maintenance payments, one would assume that, together, they had somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-500K of student loan payments, just saying).

But the biggest gripe comes after watching more and more of the season. It's like one big M Night Shamalamalamalamalamalan movie. Oooh, everyone is involved, everyone is in on the conspiracy, trust no one, don't feed the gremlins after dark, it's a riddle wrapped within an enigma wrapped within a taco bell chalupa. Mwahahahahaha.

Adding more people to a conspiracy does not make the conspiracy more interesting. For an example of how to smartly add more people to a conspiracy, rewatch All The President's Men. Also, while watching, notice how assiduous Robert Redford is vis a vis door locking. You know like someone would be when freaky-ass shit keeps happening to him. Also, notice how shabby Robert Redford's apartment is.

So I don't get it, y'all. I've seen Glenn Close act better and be more convincing and have a haircut that looks less like she and Martha Stewart groom in tandem. That other guy, who's in all the tv shows, who's kinda cute, but always always flawed (wasn't he the guy from the O.C. who loses all his family's money?), isn't actually a good actor and, a la Clive Owen, only has that one face. Speaking of one-faces. Rose Byrne has one face as well. Eyes-staring-out, slightly-deer-like, but also in a way that is supposed to make you think all is serious and already figured out, face. Which is boring after thirteen episodes (two episodes). And you know what? As crappy as lawyers are, no one is this crappy. Suspension of disbelief when in the context of the real has to be at least a little believable. This isn't an alternate universe. This is Manhattan, circa 2007, and while there are lots of seriously bad stories one could find to tell, stories that would flip you out, make you reexamine your neighbors, etc. etc., this isn't one of them. This is too much. Too unbelievable. Too too too.

If I get sick in the future, I'll try my hand at Season 2, but only because a) I've already watched every single episode of Law&Order: SVU and b) No matter how many damned anime series Netflix adds, I won't be watching them!

NY FGF 1312

Though the calendar proves I am demonstrably an adult, I still play the license plate game on drives long and short. I am always amazed how, between my house and the Stamford Town Center 10 miles away, I can generally pick up at least 10 and often as many as 20 states - and not just because I-95 is a massive truck corridor. So it is always amusing to me how, on longer drives, the farther I get from NY Metro, the less diversity of state plates there is.

And I took some longer drives this weekend - to and from the greater DC area. By the long way. All of my mother's family lives in the Baltimore-Washington area and for years we have gone back and forth from NY Metro to DC Metro via the world's single least interesting corridor: I-95 between NY and DC. I mean the interminable part on the Jersey turnpike would be enough, but when you finally reach the Delaware Memorial Bridge, you're barely half way there. So in October, when we went down for my cousin's wedding, devoted partner and I tried something different: the long way. For road nerds, that would be I-95 to Newark, I-78, then PA 222 to PA 30 to I-83 and then I-695 to I-70 etc. etc. Google will tell you this adds anywhere from 30-45 minutes to your drive. Google does not tell you that even though there are some single lane bits in there, there is no pile-up by exit 8.

It is definitely longer IF the turnpike was never congested. However, the drive is gorgeous - through Pennsylvania farm and Amish country (the former does smell like cow poo, I mean a lot like cow poo, but it's bucolic), and, for the penny pinchers among us, CHEAP! The roundtrip via I-95 can set you back close to 60 bucks in tolls. This way: $13.45. That's one of the tanks of gas you'll need in savings.

But every route has its frustrating drivers. I'll attempt to spare you the by-now-unpleasantly-cloying description of where I learned to drive and how the rules of the road are better there, and instead point out the following to any of the people I shared the road with this weekend: if our route contains more than one lane and you and the car in the lane to your right are going the exact same speed, there is no reason for you to be in different lanes. I will grant you that speed limits do exist if you will grant me that they are considered guidelines, more than rules, to the majority of drivers, many of whom would enjoy getting in front of you. You have the power to facilitate this simply by moving to your right. Going the speed limit in the left lane when there is no traffic is just poor manners.

You know what else is poor manners? BMW 5-series with the drug-dealer tinted windows, NY plate number FGF 1312.

Dear sir, you seemed to be in such a hurry from nearly the PA/NJ border to the Jersey Turnpike toll entrance. I mean, the kind of hurry that would have led a casual observer to think that you were running for your life. Only in such dire circumstances would a man (and you HAD to be one) veer so dangerously in and out of lanes multiple times in an attempt to get ahead of all the other cars, even at the expense of those other drivers' lives. I mean, we all know that if there is already only one car length between cars, there is no room for your car to get in, but you had a different idea of the limits of geometry. The funny part was that the speed of traffic was about 76 MPH and for many miles. There was just no going faster. There was a critical mass of cars all progressing at the same speed and no break up ahead for a single driver to pull away. So, in point of fact, all of your life-threatening lane changing didn't get you ahead of anyone. You pulled in front of me, in the left lane, twice, then tried to better your luck and ended up behind me again and again.

Which is why what happened next is so perplexing. Once you got through the toll plaza at Newark and on to the turnpike north, you stopped. You were at the toll booth directly next to mine and then you were just in the right lane at 50 MPH, way below the average speed of traffic until I left you in my wake heading towards the bridge.

What gives? Why were you trying to kill your fellow motorists all along I-78 only to slow to a relative snail's pace once within spitting distance of home? It really did confound me. So much so that I decided to memorize your license plate so I could write about you today. Also, in preparation for the Next Big Thing, I have taken ownership of fgf1312.blogspot.com for the future home of the world's largest traffic griping website. In your honor. Because you scared a lot of people on that highway. Because you are a douche. With an ostentatious car. That isn't cool.

You know what's cool?

The guy in the vintage Corvette Stingray, color yellow. Driving in the right lane. On PA 222. Just being cool.

Women's Issues

Despite my best attempts to appear disinterested and aloof, I would actually confirm that women's issues are important to me. After all, I am a woman, and a highly opinionated one at that. Since devoted partner has shown a waning interest in my post-Law and Order: SVU tirades, I thought I'd widen my audience to talk about this recent news tidbit that has my proverbial panties in a bunch.

Let us dispense with the obvious: rape is horrible; there is no excuse for rape; no one should be raped; people who rape other people belong in jail. Have I covered my bases? Good. Let's move on, shall we?

Once upon a time, New York City was considered a dangerous place. People disembarking from elsewhere were to be on their guards or suffer the violent consequences. As a result, many many people were wisely suspicious. Since the city became one of the safest big cities in the country, it seems to me people have become lax in the common sense department. This woman, who is a victim, showed remarkably poor judgment and I think there should be some significant acknowledgment of that.

Issue #1: The woman in question is 27. Not a 16 year old runaway, nor a wide-eyed recent high school grad coming to make her way in the big city. This person is a grownup (I would also take the other two examples to task for their decision making, but I think it's important to highlight that this person is a de facto and de jure adult). While searching for an apartment she discovered that a strange man she had never met wanted her to live for free in exchange for cooking and cleaning. Yes, I know New York is expensive, but did nothing about this "free lunch" strike her as OMGDANGERDANGERDANGER?

Issue #2: Let's pretend that this arrangement seemed normal to her. How about when he offered to buy her plane ticket? Had she never watched a Law and Order, or CSI, or any crime show ever on television? Does she not have the internet? Or cable? Or, I don't know, access to a newspaper? I know she's from Wisconsin, but people keep telling me that just because a person doesn't live in New York, that person isn't doomed to ignorance. Does she not have family or friends who said to her, "are you out of your ever-loving mind? You are so totally going to be raped and likely murdered by a psychopath!" Or how about, "this sounds really really suspicious. Give me all this man's information and make sure you call me as soon as you get there to let me know everything is ok, or I'm going to call the police because if I don't hear from you withing three hours of your plane landing, you are likely dead." (Come to think about it, why didn't this happen?)

Issue #3: He let her leave the house to go to work! Now, I know that if the woman had gotten this far she was probably so mortified by her own words-can't-describe stupidity that she might have been embarrassed, but I would wager a little embarrassment is preferable to returning home to your rapist and the handcuffs he hooks you to the radiator with.

Words like empowerment get tossed around to the extent they mean very little now, but the woman's issue that is most important to me is making women less f#$%@%@3ing dumb. There is no excuse for this having happened (which doesn't excuse the perpetrator). None whatsoever. This is a case of someone being so irretrievably stupid that she risked her life for no reason. And I don't know where this stupidity comes from, but this is not an isolated case. Whatever the disadvantages of being the second sex, there must be some way to make women smarter. At least smart enough to not get into these kinds of situations. Violence against women can't be solved merely by making women smarter, but it can make THIS PARTICULAR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN go away. Everything she did was stupid. EVERYTHING. And it makes me very very very ALL-CAPS mad.

And what really gets me is that this kind of story detracts from women victims who couldn't have prevented their victimization. This is a great story: salacious, tv-worthy (for the record, at this point in time if you are a poor woman from a developing nation and you DON'T KNOW that if you accept free illegal passage to this country, you are coming to be a forced prostitute, you are stupid too). Victimized women whose stories are more heartbreaking and less glossy get forgotten.

I'm sorry Miss Wisconsin had such a horrifying experience moving to New York, but Miss Wisconsin did everything in her power to ensure the horrifying experience. She did nothing to prevent it and now she'll probably get a book deal. For being stupider than your average urban 6-year-old who knows not to accept candy from strangers.

Snowbound

IMG_5456
Originally uploaded by reallyct

Trying not to go on and on about the weather this winter is an onerous task; after all, it does seem to be begging for attention. And today is no different. Except that today is different.

We were heartened this morning when we woke up to see that our driveway had been plowed - life would be normal. Until we realized that due to all the accumulation thus far, Devoted Partner's side of the garage was, well, blockaded by snow. True, our trusty snow removal man will be by later this morning to fix that problem, but in the meantime, offices needed to be reached. My car was used. And now I have no car. And not really a way to get the other car out of the garage (forgetting, for a moment, that the other car is a monster truck that I would be hard pressed to feel comfortable driving). But it seems that doesn't matter because Devoted Partner called from the office to tell me I didn't want to be out on the roads in any event.

And that's ok too, because I can't get into Manhattan anyway - the trains are down.

This is something I only thought about in the abstract: weather related imprisonment. It's just not a condition of the urban experience. Not really. I remember blizzards where streets were closed and subways were suspended, but some enterprising store owner still made it to his place of business which meant I could walk to his place of business and transact. Now I'm starting to realize that my snowboots are a) not 100% waterproof and b) not nearly tall enough to compensate for the snow drifts that are everywhere. So even if I wanted to walk the half mile or so for an emergency Snicker's bar or similar at the gas station, it would be an unpleasant walk - the kind of walk not even nougat can save.

I do not wish to jinx myself, but the saving grace of this winter's storms has been the resilient nature of the local power company. Whether through luck or extensive tree branch pruning, we have managed to keep power throughout all of the storms - which means that imprisonment in my home means eating of pantry staples and watching West Wing, not huddling freezing in the corner by the light of candles. However, I would like to lay some responsibility elsewhere, specifically on the gorp-y shoulders of LL Bean:

You people have been out of long underwear since November. You're LL Bean - long underwear is your bread and butter. What gives? I might, theoretically, enjoy kitting myself out for snow activities, but I'm not going to be able to because some of the basic prerequisites for such tomfoolery have been out of stock since before first snowfall. This may eclipse my frustration at the Gap for ever being out of stock on jeans. Get it together, LL Bean, it looks to be a very long winter.

Anticipation

Far be it from me to give Carly Simon any more airtime, but she seems to have cornered the meme-o-sphere on this word, and sadly, the word is apt.

Gift giving is tough in our family. Not because we don't want things, more because we don't want things that fall within the gift giving budget. My mental wish list has several sub $20 things - that new nail polish color, 12" circular knitting needles - and expensive things - furniture, electronics, trips to Thailand. In the middle there's not much.

So we've gotten in the habit of pooling financial gifts to come up with the thing we wanted - even when that means, like this year, my brother and I will be exchanging envelopes with the exact same amount of cash in them. And, in the spirit of making sure the thing I wanted wasn't sold out, I pre-ordered it and picked it up last night.

And now, like the adult I am, will stare at it in its packaging, until we open gifts on Christmas (the day we'll also be celebrating a very late Chanukah). Which will be very very difficult to do and draw on the reserve of willpower I am currently using to not eat.

Because the gift is a colornook.

That I want to open and play with and customize and mess with like the gearnerd I am.

But I will not, for I has adulthood. And I will spend the next (oh my god) month thinking about how much fun I will have with it in January. But if you have spent any time in a Barnes & Noble recently playing with the nook, you will know how much fun it is RIGHT NOW. My salesperson, Erika, helped me a great deal by refusing to open the packaging to put my anti-glare plastic thingy on the screen, saying that once the box was open, temptation would prove to great, but then she put the whole kit and kaboodle in a bag with photographs of the colornook in action on the outside.

So now I have a very compelling bagvertisement in my house that contains the very item the bag is bagvertising.

Fine. I'm going back to thinking about food and how much I'd like to eat some that isn't composed of finn crsips and chicken breast.

ChickenFail

I have mentioned before that Dan is the motherplucking chicken whisperer. It may have been his beef that was served at Chelsea Clinton's wedding, but I feel his chicken transcends poultry in ways that are still not fully understood. I will not lie, though, these are not inexpensive chickens. In fact, given that you can probably pick up a purdue roaster for like $5 (honestly, I don't know, I've never had one) and Whole Foods will sell you a cooked one for like $10; Dan's are $7 a pound.

Believe me when I tell you (though, frankly, it's not important until next year since the chickens are done for the season) that it is worth $7/pound. Yes, there is something unsettling about not really getting change back from 30 bucks when you're buying chicken, but I am happier about eating this chicken than I am about eating 98% of the rest of the stuff I eat that I have decided price is unimportant.

For the most part the chicken comes to our house to be prepared in a most basic fashion. Specifically, the Amateur Gourmet's fashion. It has never not been good. Generally speaking it is out of this world. Two weekends ago it was exceptional, as were the veggies, fingerlings and cippolinis which were absolutely pwned by Maillard reactions.

This past weekend I bought my last chicken of the year. I even emailed Dan to make sure I could get my hands on one. Devoted partner and I decided jointly to try something new. He wanted something that utilized herbs, a more traditional recipe if you will, and I had seen a recipe that used root veggies in this month's Bon Appetit. It sounded fine. And as I had learned, it's really difficult to mess up Dan's chickens.

Until now, that is.

Scratch that, the chicken is fine, the meal sucked.

We threw out the pan juices that I was told to add lager to and reduce because the resulting concoction tasted exactly like skunked beer with meat in it; the root vegetables released too much water during cooking and as a result nothing caramelized and everything was bland. The saving grace? The cup or so of the previous week's pan juices that, when drizzled over this lackluster meal, went a long way to salvaging it.

I know every recipe won't be a winner, but this one was a real loser, the kind of loser that, coupled with my magazine malaise, is really taking Bon Appetit out of the running for renewal. I just can't believe that I messed up the recipe to such an extent that it was my negligence that made it taste bad. I think it was simply a crap recipe.

Tonight we'll give the folks at Saveur a try with a cardamom chicken curry. The chicken has been marinating in salmonella yogurt since yesterday, so if you don't hear from me tomorrow, you'll know why.

iDone

Once upon a time I was a loyal Apple user. The school was chock full of them and when it came time for your family to buy one for home, it was the obvious choice. Ed was the only person I knew who had a PC and DOS was frankly frightening. We started with the ridiculous Apple 2GS which became immediately obsolete due to the introduction and adoption of the Mac, rendering all Apple models about as useful to home computing as a toaster. College arrived, and with it, a Mac whose name I don't remember. This computer was fine until I started noticing devoted partner's PC. There was something, well, strange about it.

It was really really fast. It didn't need to allocate virtual memory to programs to keep them running at anything approximating reasonable levels. And while it was confusing to learn at first, I soon go the hang of it - what with the confusing start menu and such.

Then after college when my Performa (I just remembered) was more useful as a heating element than a computer, it was time to buy my own computer. Using my own money. And here's where things got interesting. For $1500 I could get a bottom-of-the-line Mac. Double that amount would get me a usable one. For $800 I could get a faster-than-the-usable-3k-mac Dell. Start taking guesses what arrived at the house!

That Dell lasted a good 5 years or so before it was time for an upgrade. This time, under the expert tutelage of devoted partner, I built my new computer. And continued to upgrade it with orphan parts until the present.

In the meantime, though, the folks at Apple had found a way to re-ingratiate themselves with me via the indispensable iPod. Sure, I was a late adopter because I couldn't countenance a $300 walkman, but the price came down, I had a birthday, and devoted partner swooped in the fill the MpVoid in my life. That was around 2005.

By 2008, the iPod was behaving very strangely. As in not working all the time. And then not working at all. But I really didn't want to buy another. When the nanos came out in all those pretty colors, I debated one, until I saw them in person. The colors were icky and shiny and not at all as lovely as they looked on TV or in print ads. Eff it, I said, I don't NEED an iPod, it's just nice to have.

When the DuYos moved out west, they had a sale of their old crap, including their first generation iPhones. I swooped one up thinking I could just use it as a replacement Mp3 player. That was a mistaken assumption. You see, without the AT&T contract, the iPhone is merely an ineffectual paperweight. Devoted partner again came to the rescue and spent the better part of the weekend hacking the iPhone so that I could use it to listen to music without paying AT&T for the privilege.

It also ran apps.

Delicious, unnecessary, and yet quite addictive apps. The iPhone and I had a good 6 months or so. And then the screen stopped working. Not entirely, just enough to make typing impossible. Apparently I had dead pixels. That's ok, it still plays music. But those apps were fun. I'm totally missing out on the cultural phenomenon that is foursquare.

So now what?

I could buy the silly new Nano for $179; the midrange touch for $299; the boring, app-free classic for $249; the monopoly-friendly iPhone for 50 bucks a month for the rest of my life; or the shiny and utterly useless, memory-insufficient iPad for $499 and up - unless I want to also give AT&T $50/month, in which case my iPad suddenly costs a minimum of $629.

Now, in a vacuum, some of these are not so much money that I would have to forgo food or rent, but while discussing it with devoted partner, I realized something: since 2002, he has owned 4 separate iDevices. FOUR. IN EIGHT YEARS. He has needed to replace his iThing every two years because the bloody things are totally unreliable. Funny, though, because the extra 60 bucks Apple asks you to shell out for extended warranty protection is good for how long?

2 years.

So I'm putting my foot down. I will not be buying a new iToy. Yes, I will snoop around the internet to see if there's any kind of wild scheme that would enable me to cure my current iToy of its dead pixels but, as cool as they are, I will not ante any more money into the gaping maw that is Apple. I didn't buy an American car because of the horror stories associated with planned obsolescence and my suspicions that Apple, too, employs that savvy strategy are going to prevent me from adding to their coffers either. I had my first digital camera for about 6 years before it stopped working, and I wasn't exactly gentle with it. The nice folks at Canon offered me a new camera for the same cost as the repair. You bust your iToy after 2 years (or 1 if you don't pay the extra 60 bucks) and it's another $300 out of pocket.

Canon will continue (and has continued) to get my business; Apple...we're breaking up.

Like Finding Kryptonite

If you were a child of the 80s If you were a child of the 80s exactly like me, two things were true: 1. CandyLand probably did exist and your crap parents just weren't telling you where it was and 2. You pretty much anticipated this kind of underground camaraderie to occur with frequency (NB: I realize this is a film made in the 90s, but taking place in the early 80s)



Now that I'm a grown-up, I understand that these youthful fantasies were arrived at after less than logical argument, but the little girl inside of me still hopes.

And, in fact, one frequently does encounter boisterousness on the subway, but the person singing out loud is either a) soliciting things or b) crazy. C'est la vie. Sometimes you want to shake your ass, but embarrassment prevents you. Also, if you're anything like me, the ass-shaking in question isn't exactly fly girl-ready.

Well, the other day, devoted partner showed me a video. Easily the best video I've seen since Oh, Son, Your Missus is a Nutter (worth watching, but there are bad words and adult humor if you're in on of those offices where people notice such things)



The song was so good, it made me spontaneously break into dance. So good that I gladly paid my 99 cents for the privilege of having it on my iToy. So good that I listened to it on the way to the station, walking from my car to the platform, and thirdly while on the train. It's the kind of song you can not help but tap your feet to.

Apropos of an earlier post this week, I am ready to declare a winner in the World Series of Poor Breeding that is the New Haven line. It's not gayporn guy, muddy feet on seat girl, nosepicker, doucheoncellphoneblabbingaboutderivatives, Fran Drescher soundalikes talking about how tacky cousin Morty's Bar Mitzvah was. No. All of those able contenders have apparently been left bloodied on the field of battle by

Excessive Foot Tapping.

I swear to effin jeebus, the overly tanned J Crew dad sitting behind me actually tapped me on the shoulder to tell me my foot tapping was bothering him. I stopped, obviously, but not before marveling at what does and does not pass for appropriate behavior. It also gave me powerful ammunition for the next time someone does something that bothers me: my foot tapping might well drive cellphonedouche out of his skull.

But that's not important. What's important is that I've won something. You might think it's not that special, but knowing that my, and only my, behavior was so detestable that it merited intervention is special to me. After documenting the truly tasteless behavior of everyone else, it's nice to know that it was I all along.

So rather than give a lengthy victory speech, I thought I would let the song that started this whole mess speak for me.

Fellow commuters, this one's for you (if your office is unfriendly to the f-bomb, please watch this at home - but WATCH IT, IT'S AWESOME):

The Ferry Crossing Problem

I first encountered this logic problem in a book, probably sci-fi, probably in 4th or 5th grade, which is why it has made such a lasting impression. The long and short of it is there are 6 people, 3 good guys and 3 bad guys, and a boat that seats 2 people. Bad guys can never outnumber good guys and all the good guys need to get to the other side without the bad guys. How do you do it. I've always liked this problem even when, like this morning, I frantically IM devoted partner asking him what it's called (doesn't actually have a name), and if you don't want to take the time to figure it out, at the end of the post and after some carriage returns, I'll print the answer.

Now I like math and I like logic and I like to be smug about my skills in both. Which is why the personal ferry crossing problem that I am struck by is so horribly humiliating. And it comes up a lot.

I cannot cannot cannot wrap my mind around the math associated with two cars and two drivers and catch myself almost weekly abandoning logic in my mind for reasons I cannot explain. For some reason I find myself thinking: if devoted partner and I go to a bar in separate cars and I get too drunk to drive, devoted partner can drive us both home and then go back to get my car. I think this, in one way or another, ALL THE TIME. Take our upcoming solo airplane trips. I have thought: ok, I'll drive my car to devoted partner's office, then he can drive me to the airport in his car, and then take my car back home. I simply cannot comprehend that devoted partner is unable to drive two cars simultaneously while also being unable to understand why the idea begins in my head as a good one.

And frankly it's starting to drive me a little crazy. I mean even the dullest crayon in the box figures out AFTER A YEAR that two cars require two drivers. But then there's me, happily plotting impossible itineraries.






Solution
G=good guy
B=bad guy

First crossing: G + B
Return trip: G
Second crossing: B + B
Return: B
Third: G + G
Return: G + B
Fourth: G + G
Return: B

Commuting Nopropos

Merely since yesterday I have encountered a startling number of commuting-related consternations, yet none of them really warrants a dedicated post. Therefore, please enjoy these four:

1. If your teenaged son has a learning disability/drug problem/run-of-the-mill teenaged angst issue, perhaps the best place to discuss with your older daughter how much you can't wait for him to get out of the house, how you're putting him on Adderall and how if he doesn't get into any college he'll have to go into the military and you don't want him fighting, is NOT the train. Kudos to your daughter for explaining that perhaps, prior to drugging your kid up, you might consider sending him to therapy - at least you didn't mess up both your kids. Also, if you're the guidance counselor at GHS where I now know this boy goes to school, please find him and give him some guidance.

2. If you absolutely must give someone instructions, over the phone, as to the precise precise location of the spare key he can find to gain entry to your house, you might consider giving such instructions sotto voce. See, the thing of it is, now that I, and everyone around you, know where your spare key is, you run a greater risk of someone other than the person you're speaking with finding the key and robbing you blind. It wouldn't really be all that difficult to sneak a peak at your license when you hand the conductor your ticket, nor for that matter would it be all that difficult to pickpocket you - especially were the robber a professional. Show a little discretion and you might get to keep all of your nice stuff.

3. It is politically incorrect to make fun of the sounds of foreign tongues - that's akin to making fun of the culture itself. However, if you are speaking English very loudly and it sounds like this or this, then I'm sorry, politically correct or not, I will not be able to stop myself from giggling.

4. If so few people ever help you get your stroller down the stairs that you looked at me with tears in your eyes as you said, "god bless you," there is something seriously wrong with everyone who isn't me. People, help women or men, frankly, get their strollers down the stairs. It literally took me 30 seconds and this poor woman reacted as if I had saved her kid from a burning building. Don't those subway ads say something about courtesy being contagious? Unless you are actually en route to save babies from burning buildings, you have the 30 seconds.

Speechless...Well, Not Really

I like to think of myself as having a thick skin. Yes, there's a lot of really really bad stuff out there in the world, but I find little of it truly surprises me. And when it comes down to it, if I'm not surprised, I can't really be all that up in arms. After all, my Hobbesian view of the world anticipates truly bad stuff and considers it normal. But once in a while, something gets through and after reading the incriminating piece, I stand up from the computer and actually pace, feeling tears of rage well up in my eyes and the tiny particles of idealism I have left rupture.

And this one almost didn't reach me, a fact that my conspiratorial side is going to repress because it's not germane to the story, though I find it interesting that this didn't warrant a passing mention in the paper of record.

Read this. (Think the folks at the Guardian are a bunch of dirty pinkos? Fine, read this.)

No. Really. Read this. READ IT!

Seriously.

Then come back.

...

...

...

Now for the only important part of this case. The only part it seems both parties agree on: there was sex and it wasn't forced.

She says it. He says it. There was consensual sex.

After the fact, when she discovered he wasn't what she thought he was, it somehow morphed into non-consensual sex. The kind that sends people to actual prison where they can experience the gamut of non-consensual sex.

Now, before you reverse the ethnic makeups of this story and decide whether or not you think this argument would hold water then, please try, as I am DESPERATELY TRYING TO DO, to think about examples where race or ethnicity have nothing to do with it and ponder the validity of the following claims. It was rape because afterward I learned he was:

short

an a$$hole

a scientologist

a vegetarian

a meat-eater

a wwf fan

a bmw owner

a republican

a communist

in love with someone else

homeless

missing a toe

missing a kidney

not a member of mensa

not a graduate of an ivy

not a doctor

an undertaker

a gas station attendant

your best friend's ex-boyfriend from high school

Yeah. I'm done. This list could literally go on forever.

And before we get all high and mighty that this kind of nonsense would never happen here in our land of the free, let's make sure we truly believe it (he didn't tell me he was muslim/an illegal immmigrant/in favor of Obama's socialist policies). Cause I can't say with any assurance that I couldn't see some judge, somewhere in our great country pronouncing the same verdict which, while striking a vomit-inducing blow against equal rights SIMULTANEOUSLY weakens the definition of rape and, when the blowback comes, will negatively affect the actual victims of rape.

Rape is serious. And perilously open to interpretation. After all, if you punch someone in the face and later on that person discovers something about you he doesn't like or realizes he had one too many drinks, the punch doesn't suddenly become attempted murder. And as pissed off as I am at this woman and this judge, I am equally pissed off at women's groups who, in order to preserve the rights of actual rape victims, blindly side with any woman who changes her mind after sex and chooses to call what happened rape. Bad decisions are not actionable offenses. And, for all parties concerned, consensual sex after a 10-minute discussion in a convenience store is a bad decision. Women who don't own up to their own bad decisions shouldn't complain when they're not treated equally in other environments; after all, they just said they couldn't be held responsible for their decisions - they made themselves unequal.

Frankly, I don't even know what to do with this information. Yes, there's a lot of horror out there, but I expect most of it. In war, there will be war crimes. It doesn't make them any prettier, but it doesn't shock me to learn of them. This: a woman accusing a man (and a judge convicting him) of rape because she later discovered she wasn't keen on his ethnicity? Never saw it coming. Cannot even conceive of it. Which is my fault and naivete. But, jeez, what do I do now that I have this information? It turns out I bitch and moan and conceivably make myself ineligible for any job in the future that would find my opinions on this matter questionable.

I can only hope that when the dust clears, Saber Kushour has the mother of all civil cases against, well, anyone involved in his prosecution. After all, that's the American way!

I Hate Kate

This is, of course, patently untrue. I love Kate. I love her like the little sister the boy would never let me dress him up as. I love her like the prettiest doll in my collection, the one I give all the nice clothes to. I love her greatly.

But she's not good for your wallet, that Kate.

Kate is the in-the-knowingest person I know which might not be saying much, but I would wager she is the in-the-knowingest person most people know. And yet Kate has timeless style. It doesn't hurt that she's simply gorgeous and looks good in everything and even when her hair looks like shit it still looks good.

However, Kate has a knack for introducing a person to needless things that fast become needful. For years, or at least since Giorgio and 7th grade, I wore men's Fahrenheit cologne. I know that now that seems frankly awful, and, frankly, when I smell it on someone else, I have to suppress a gag or two, but at the time it seemed like a good idea (see also Zima). I wore it throughout college and might have worn it still today had Kate not taken me to Barney's that one time in 1999. Damn you, Kate!

Now I am madly addicted and totally loyal to Creed's Neroli Sauvage (but don't buy me any now, I have 3/4 of a fresh bottle). What's the problem? you ask. Well, do a quick google search. Better yet, I will. And if you don't use it over the course of, say, 5 years, it does go bad. I don't actually know what perfume costs, I just know this feels expensive. Very expensive. And now, of course, very necessary.

So I was overjoyed when, for Christmas (Christmakah, whatever) Kate got me a gift certificate to a nail salon that specializes in some weird-ass gel stuff that's supposed to be better for your nails than polish blah blah blah. Not only do I rarely have my nails painted (because my lifestyle: cooking, knitting, etc.) is not conducive to maintaining a manicure, but also because such a uselessly trendy thing couldn't possibly be my bag.

When we went together a couple of weeks ago, it just got better. These women were charging upper class ladies of Manhattan upwards of $60 bucks to manicure their nails in, I'm not kidding, polyurethane. Also known as sealant. Also known as the stuff you can buy a gallon of at Home Depot for 8 bucks. Do you know how many nails you can paint with a gallon of anything. I half-giggled through the entire manicure because I thought it was such a gas that women were lining up to fork over 2x and more the cost of a regular manicure to have their nails painted by glorified contractors.

hahahahahahahaha

doh!

You see it's now been two full weeks. I have: knit, made 360 chocolates, washed countless dishes, stuck my hands in raw chicken parts, gardened, fumbled with pointy parts on my shoes, you name it. I have done all the things that generally render my manicure hideous in a matter of hours. Well, my polyurethane nails? Yes, obviously, they're perfect. Not a scratch, not a dent, nothing. Initially I was going to have them take off the polish (oh, did I forget this tidbit? They CHARGE YOU $20 TO REMOVE THE POLYURETHANE!) before the wedding I'm going to this weekend, but hell if they don't look just fine.

This is an awful conundrum. The reason I don't paint my nails is that it's not worth the trouble. But, while the polyurethaning process takes an ungodly amount of time, it really effing works! And yet I think I would sooner shoot myself in the face than spend $60 to have my nails painted and then $20 to have them unpainted (though I think if you do both at the same visit i.e. unpaint then repaint, it only costs $70. Only.) and that's without the tip. Do I really need to tip $12 on this? On the rare occasions I do get a manicure it costs $10 for which I am all too pleased to leave 20% - here that $12 ONLY COVERS the tip.

And yet, my nails look so so nice painted. And this is worry-free paint. I'm going to see what, if any, horrid damage the stuff does to my nails once it's removed before making any major lifestyle modifications but, damn you, Kate, you've done it again!

Service Takes More Than Smiling

I freely admit that I have felt a little rageful lately. I could blame the weather as I did yesterday or simply admit that if my default position is rage, it will, from time to time, escape my well-meaning oppression. In preparation to detox once again, I feel it necessary to give a little vent to smooth the way. And I will not be talking about cellular communications.

I think I am a little more sensitive than the average person when it comes to service because my brother is in the service industry. I have seen him on more than one occasion chastise an employee for minor infractions but in a jocular way. The result is, through his efforts and the tone he sets for his workplace, a finely oiled machine of good service. So it's not like it's a difficult thing to accomplish. I would venture to say that, for the most part, restaurant service in Manhattan is of a high standard. This is necessary since the diner in Manhattan has literally thousands of choices and restaurants would like you to choose them again and again. I feel, however, that all places of business that rely on people paying them for goods and services (so all businesses) should make it a point to encourage lots and lots of repeat business yet, sadly, few do.

Smaller boutiques suffer the most. Whether due to inexperienced employees and owners (in the case of independent vanity shops) or due to the misguided notion that cache is doled out based on how poorly one can treat one's customers (in the case of high-fashion), there are a wealth of small stores that simply do not know how to make money more than once. The disclaimer I would like to make here is personal: I have extreme difficulty, after repeated polite suggestions, saying a definitive 'no' without it being, well, rageful; if I have demonstrated through words and body language in a polite society way that I am not interested in something, I find it very difficult to, when pressed, not say something to the effect of, "you retarded cow, I said no about a million times. Are you effing deaf?" This is my problem and I continue to work on it. In the meantime, however, as I have been searching mostly in vain for a knitting store I wish to return to, I offer some advice to current and future owners of craft stores:

1. Your genius pattern designer who looks and acts like one of Nikita Kruschev's mistresses? She should be in the back not speaking to or looking at anyone. She's scary. And pokes at newcomers' projects with a finger that says, "in Communist Russia you would be shot for making such abomination." This does not inspire repeat business, nor does it make me think, "gee, she's right. I'm total crap. I'm so glad I know this now."

2. New customers should not be immediately encouraged to buy your most expensive product in place of the type of product they inquired about. When I walk into Tiffany's and express an interest in a, say, $500 silver bracelet, the salesperson NEVER suggests that, instead, I might be interested in the diamond and ruby encrusted gauntlet for $72,000. Assume until told differently that I did not come into your store to purchase beaded endangered yeti cashmere for the tank top I intend to wear to the beach. In fact, let's go one step further: only I should mention the word cashmere; when you suggest it, you seem like a money-grubbing [expletive deleted].

3. It's nice that you have a coterie of loyal customers. I like walking into a shop and seeing people happily knitting away at the table. But if those people look up at newcomers and make faces like they just stepped in shit, it doesn't help new customers feel welcome. Similarly, if you are sitting with your existing customers and don't so much as raise your head and smile when I walk in, it is highly unlikely I will become one of your loyal customers.

4. If you can't satisfactorily help me make the plain black sweater I'm interested in, it is not logical to assume that instead I would like to make a fuchsia, orange, and green horizontal striped sweater instead. When you are explicitly told this information, do not view it as a challenge: it's not that I want you to convince me that I really, deep down, want that monstrosity, it's that I want a black sweater. This is an instance where going to any department store would be instructive. When there are no more size 12 black silk v-neck dresses, the salesperson, if he or she is being helpful, will generally steer me to other a) black, b) silk, or c) v-neck dresses, and generally in a similar or similarly neutral hue; he or she will not, in the absence of the size 12 v-neck, lead me to the pink victorian lace high-necked ruffle and pleats ballgown. Since clearly that wouldn't be a good replacement for the black v-neck.

5. I might be coerced, cajoled, shamed, etc. into spending some money at your store even when you have nothing I want. This is clearly my fault for succumbing. However, you can be absolutely positive that it will be the last $60 I ever spend at your store. And I'll probably tell other people about the crappy experience you provided.

Which is why I would now like to say something nice: Katonah Yarn Company in, you guessed it, Katonah, is awesome. I went in there, they didn't have what I needed, I ended up buying a pair of needles and that was it, and they were super super nice about it. Even though it is 30-35 minutes from my house, it is the only yarn store I've been to that I am eager to return to, and will buy yarn from (even at the markup - internet is bad for yarn stores, the undercutting is amazing). The people were nice without following you around suggesting you buy everything your eye lights upon, it was suggested to me that I look online for a yarn they didn't carry before getting them to special order it for me, because it would be cheaper that way. The women in the shop were friendly in an authentic way, and it authentically made me want to spend money there. And if I ever decided to make the beaded endangered yak cashmere shrug, I'll source the material through them!

I Have Literally Nothing

You've all been really understanding about what I will term my summer malaise. It's simply too hot or beautiful or muggy to think much less think interesting things. My thoughts proceed as follows: I like the beach; I like ice cream; I like central air conditioning; why can't I have a puppy?; devoted partner looks nice; I want to make ice cream and I have all the ingredients but I just can't seem to make it happen; oooh, look at my tomatoes.

With this in mind, and with apologies, I give to you this. The single awesomest video to ever grace youtube and which made me whimper with delight. Totally safe for work!

Oh, You're One Of Those People

Those people that have jobs.

When we moved I was very enthusiastic about joining: the knitting circle, the French conversation club, the bridge group, the scuba dorks, whatever. I was ready to be a joiner. To meet my new neighbors and learn their mysterious suburban ways, buy girl scout cookies from their children, and trade casserole recipes. Except no one told me that the first rule of Greenwich:

Working is for other people.

Now, while husbands may be included in the subset of humanity known as the workers, women certainly are not. Why? You may ask. Oh, ok. Because if you wanted to do ANYTHING in the town of Greenwich you would not also be able to have a job. Knitting circle: 1:30-3:00pm. French club: 11:30-1:00pm. Devoted partner and I wanted to take Spanish class at the high school in the evenings. Yes, well, I don't know how many people you know who are able to be out of work and sitting in class by 5:30pm, but the only ones I know are unemployed.

But the final straw came yesterday when, at 4:00pm I went to Town Hall to get our beach passes. Leaving aside, for a moment, that the amount of documentation needed to get a beach pass dwarfs both the documentation needed to buy a house or, say, gain legal entry to Libya, and come with me to the sign that typifies why I don't think we'll be living here for the rest of our lives. Greenwich Parks and Recreation. Open Monday - Friday 8:15am-3:45pm.

Imagine, for a moment, that you and your living partner are both gainfully employed. Chances are 9ish is the time of day you start being employed. If, like EVERYONE in Greenwich, you work in finance, chances are 9ish is when you are finishing your 4th cup of coffee. Greenwich is approximately 22 miles from Manhattan, or 45-60 minutes to Grand Central by train. People work in Manhattan. When, pray tell, is one supposed to get one's beach pass? Should one take a day off work to do so?

Ahhhhhhhh. Wait. Now I understand. If I am one of those deeply disturbed women who chooses to work despite my husband's massive, throbbing paycheck, thereby preventing me from doing those household chores that Greenwich deems to be daytime chores, I must encourage my domestic to do those chores for me. I send Consuela to Town Hall armed with a dizzying array of personal information and 60 bucks and she gets us our beach passes.

Right?

This is how the rest of you did it?