Not to mention blogging

I know I'm busy because I haven't read dlisted or watched y&r in a week. I am again booked solid from 9am til the trains start running stupid. And when I get one of those one- or two-hour breaks in the middle of the day, I resent the uselessness of it, too much time and not enough. I've decided that I refuse to let the reading group, 2 classes, and 3 jobs take over my life, so I simply accept every invite. Come with me to my friend's send-off to Berlin? Yes. Beckett matinee this weekend? Yes. Drink after class? Yes. Art show downtown? Yes. Wait - is there booze?

Tonight the best plan below 14th street is three buck chuck and delivery Chinese food with Grace. Hands dowwwn.

I am here to help

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News: I may be boring

The other night we were hurrying through the cold between smoking a joint at so-and-so's and going dancing at [place], when my eye caught the interior of some dimly-lit bistro. And I paused to gaze enviously through the windows at the sedate little scene... Then a few nights ago I went to a party and I was lame. I mean, I have no problem with substance abuse and debauch. I'll even throw my back into it. But lately, I don't have the verve. I just want to steadily get drunk while people tell me good stories.

Yeah, it's finally happened

The other night I came home, and there was a very particular kind of rustling sound under the kitchen sink (mouse), and I –– yelled... at.. it.

Oh, I also clapped. But I guess neither of those things worked, because I heard it again a few nights later. There are no mouse poops in my house, there's no evidence of any food being eaten - it's pretty clear this bastard doesn't live here but in the walls or with my neighbour. So what do I do? Should I set traps and kill it, or should I just try to deter it from visiting? Bear in mind when formulating your answers that I am a coward.

Har har, Montrose

It's truly unfortunate that my only camera is a camera phone, but Imma walk you through this one. People rip shapes into the ads posted in the subway stations. Usually penises, obvs. But rarely are they so lucky as to have the ad underneath be flesh-coloured, with fortuitous shading, and a play on the word flute.

Notice, moreover, that it was only handed in a year late

It says: "I would have given you an a+ if such a grade were allowed"

SMS highlight reel, vol. 8

Meet me at my café in EXACTLY 20 seconds.

Haha! Theres a vagina-dentata movie out. Reminded me of your blog.

Oh lady, i dont know what id do without you. Xoxo

Sorry I missed you tonight. Way to stick the knife into what’s-her-name at the talk btw. See ya around.

RIP Heath Ledger. Per New York Times. [sent at an impressive 5:04 pm]

Haha- i dare you to touch his phallus.

I am eating the biggest brownie w ice cream ever!

I an em

Lets do it. ill call [redacted] and its on. I mean shes not single but shes still a whore ya know? hehe. we will do it up!

last night slayed me. Best ever.

Way to go, lady! Keep up the good, self-preserving and self-validating work. !

Surely it is no longer tenable to consider class divisions spiritually hierarchical if idleness is no longer cultivated as an artform.

And you’ve looked bangin the whole time, what a waste. My condolences.

Reversal

Tuesday was awful. Had to put the day out of its misery with half a bottle of leftover wine and a tylenol PM awful. Today, however, was specifically the opposite. Still racing around like a maniac, but no longer wasting my time. Work, errands, teaching my first lecture of the semester. I had been worried, because I had noticed in the ladies' room beforehand that Tuesday was still lingering on my face, and students will hate you 1.5 times as much as you hate being there. But class went outrageously well. I mean, holding forth on logic to a captivated audience of lawyers and investment bankers well. Then I went to a reading thing (that is, of some new books, by their authors) and it turns out, over wine with authors, that everyone else doubts/hates/loves/fears the things that come out of their mouths too. It is a matter of not singing to the deaf.

Oh my god they're almost ready

I cook, right? So gradually I have come to accumulate all of those staples like icing sugar, baking soda, soy sauce, sesame oil, sherry, cream of tartar, red wine vinegar, Chinese five spice, bla bla bla. This is an especially nice fact when the damn grocery stores I go to get even more expensive, because as occurred to me yesterday it means that when I run out of food, I can just build some more. For example: I don't have any brownies, even though I would like some, and I don't know where to buy them though I couldn't justify that anyway but wait - I can BUILD some, because I have cocoa powder and flour and eggs. Likewise, I don't have any quiche what I really enjoy but oh yes - I can BUILD one, from the crust up.

If I didn't think I would bore you I would just post about food all the time.

08: Note passery

Friday night, studying with my friend at a café (okay, it was starbucks), and this boy endears himself to us from across the room, by being adorable and trying to keep it to himself, especially with how he would put on his coat and pack up all of his things and abandon his table every time he had to pee, like his mom had told him to be careful about thieves in New York. The second time he did this, we left a note on his table

“want to come to a party later?”

except that time he left after, and never saw our invite.

Saturday Grace is studying in the recesses of the NYU library. A boy nearby spends a few hours trying to steal her attention from Nietzsche, to no avail. When he leaves, he drops a note on her desk.

"meet me outside in exactly 20 seconds"

Hysterical. That same night, across town, friend and I are at Yaffa in the East Village, lingering over a bottle of prosecco and some chocolate mousse cake. When she leaves to go to the ladies', the boy at the next table works up his nerve to drop a handbill in front of me, then quickly sits back down. Won't even make eye contact.

Random conversations with strangers on Park Avenue South, Friday

guy walking by: “Damn, you beautiful.”
me: “Thanks.”
guy: “What’s your name?”
me: “Marianne."
guy: "Hi Marianne, I’m James."
me: "Hi James."
James: "You from New York?"
me: "Yes."
James: "Me too, Marianne. You have a good night!"

girl: "Hey, can I bum a smoke?"
me: [getting one]
girl: "I’m really sorry – I wouldn’t ask – I hate it when people ask, but I just got off work"
me: "It’s no problem."
girl: "– and I served Giadia de Laurentiis! I went up to the table, and I was like oh my god, it's her! I’m in training, and we’re totally not supposed to do this, but my family and I love her and when her friends got up to use the restroom I just had to tell her!"
me: "Oh, yeah? That’s exciting!"
friend: "What does she look like in real life?"
girl: "Exactly the same as on tv."
me: "She looks anorexic."
girl: "She was so nice."

Meet me at café Asean. It's behind some apartment buildings on 11th

See? Even google finds the West Village confusing.

Make it stop. Again.

NY ppl, skip this post. That's not some reverse psychology to tempt you to read it. Just leave, now, before I ruin our friendship forever.

Canadian people, I want you to watch this. And then I want you to watch it fifty more times. This blog is about my life in New York, and no account of that would be complete without this adorable fucking ad. It comes on at every commercial break, and from the first beckon of its Raggaeton beats, Marianne loses her train of thought, and slowly turns her attention to the tv. She stands there, engrossed, the dish she is still holding now dripping suds on the hardwood floor. Her ears beseech the way the rapper calls her mi hefe, and every time he drops the end of the word "five". She's seen it so many times that it's been etched into her consciousness, like the movies she and her brother used to watch almost daily as children (Ghostbusters, the Neverending Story, Return of the Jedi), and yet she manages to abduct a new detail every time. Like the fact that the way the women run from the pirates implies that they were laying with their heads to the ocean, rather than their feet.



When the ad ends, she returns to herself. Slightly embarrassed, she takes possession of her surroundings, puts the dish back in the sink, and wipes the floor with her sock. She silently thanks God, once again, that she lives alone.

Three buck chuck

The ladies and I killed 5 bottles of wine and a couple of martinis last night. Today at work I am very hangover fug and hangover dumb and I have to talk to contractors all day.

"What is your insurance umbrella?"
"Eleven million."
"Heh, yeah."




Gd, we had fun.

An info bomb for your Monday

This installation piece in Union Square. The numbers roll around and nobody knows what it means. I usually google stuff like this, like I did with the names and dates engraved into the sidewalks on Broadway in the Financial District. Apparently those are the people they have thrown ticker-tape parades for - including Pétain. I guess you have to give them credit for not being revisionist.

Anyway, I found out about the "Metronome" in Union Square from a hobo. He said he figured it out over the course of sleeping in the park for two years. I thought he might be lying about that part but it turns out not because according to the artists' website he's a little bit wrong. He was right about the numbers, though: they count up to midnight on the left - using the 24 hour clock - and down to midnight on the right (reading, two by two, towards the centre on that side).

E Village

The East Village is like one big acid flashback (I guess) seeing as I never hang out there in the day so much, just at night, with other people leading the way. Every time I turn the corner I run into some place I drank or macked at once. Last night we went to Big Bar, down the street from that other little lounge where I picked up some nice queer boy last fall. At Big Bar, I watched the trim, very metro, 50-something owner hit on this late-30s secretary wearing a slip and her best bob blow-out. She, meanwhile, was being watched over by another man, his arm protectively on the back of her bar stool a lot of the time. When he opened his mouth it became clear that she was hag to his fag, there because earlier she had implored him "omg don't let me do anything crazy tonight!" I guess. By the time we left the owner was hitting on her gay instead.

Big Bar has my new favourite New York restrooms.

Soup

I............have spent the last two days drugged and in bed. Something is wrong with my guts, I know not what. I know that I have missed
a) an electrical storm
b) a deadline
c) a free lunch.

When I get sick, I think "I have cancer/aids/an inoperable tumor deep in my brain" because I am a hypochondriac. I follow this thought with something my old doctor once said to me: "You're a healthy twenty-[whatever]-year-old woman. Get out of my office." Whatever I have, people 200 years ago didn't die of it, right? Body, heal thyself. Here is some Tylenol PM while you do that. Because I'm not paying the $150 deductible that goes along with the first time you use your health insurance.

Anyway, I think I feel better, other than the homesickness. It's Friday night and I am listening to the hockey game and making soup.

Grimaldi's

I write this blog to keep the people of Saskatchewan updated aboot what my life is like living in New York, because they ask and I like that, and by now you guys know it's not anything outrageously glamorous what you should be jealous of.

Well, you should be jealous of my life last night. It was well into the 50s well after dark, so friend and I took a stroll along the Brooklyn Heights promenade, which is outrageously quaint in and of itself, but from which you also get a very nice objectifying eyeful of Manhattan.

At the end of the pathway we decided to press on and zen-navigate our way to Grimaldi's - knowing it was somewhere under the Brooklyn Bridge - since according to some newspaper articles and some guidebooks and some lore it actually has the best pizza in New York. No reservations, no delivery, no slices, no credit cards. Just dine-in, packed with people and their hungry pizza-holes, and tiny tables and a coal-fired oven and pictures of famous past diners on the walls (and a poster of Marlon Brando threatening to offer you a pizza you can't refuse). When we joined the lineup on the sidewalk it was only 20-people deep, because it was a Monday, but a minute later Grimaldi himself grabbed us from the back of the q and brought us to a table. A large pizza (I won't try to top all the reviewers' histrionics about the sweet crushed tomatoes, the aromatic basil, etc.) and a half carafe of wine is only $24 so we had dessert and espresso too.

The narrative will arc, I promise

One day I woke up and the toilet was clogged (I know, these posts get better and better, but the hook here is about how I live alone and without even a regular boy visitor for the first time like, ever in my life, so I have to do all those stupid blue jobs like killing silverfish and unclogging drains and arguing with delivery men) which - the toilet being clogged - is a matter of some urgency since I can't even pee until I get that ish sorted out, and I have to go to work and get on with my life (and pee). So I went downstairs to the hardware store and bought a plunger and then came back upstairs and found a video on the internet to explain to me how to unclog a toilet. Step 1 was to wrap lots of towels around the base of the toilet bowl, and step 2 was to reach into the toilet bowl and "bail out some of the liquid." Well, I only have three cups and two towels because I am so effing poor so I just showered, left for work, and called the landlord with a story about how valiantly I had tried to unclog the toilet myself but sadly failed and could they send the super around 4. When he arrived I made sure the plunger I had bought was very conspicuously placed in the bathroom (price tag removed, of course) and that I was really hard at work in the kitchen and not laying on the bed watching Judge Judy and eating leftover Mexican food.