Notes from the Under...stimulated

What a Difference a Day Makes... 24 little hours...

alright. so. i'm not so good with change. it's taken beaner 15yrs of friendship to understand this and take my stress related moodiness in stride. and let me tell you: lots of change lately, LOTS of mood swings. i need a list to parse through my life. bear with me.

1. new[ish] job. i mean, i've been at this job now for almost 5months. but all of a sudden i'm supposed to be a trader. basically, that means now instead of noticing other people's mistakes, i can create my own million dollar debacles. cue the heart attacks... NOW! CLEAR!

2. new apartment. which is great. in a great hood. except my room's still a mess, i haven't unpacked yet, we need to paint the joint, boxes are sill in the hallway, apparently we owe the landlord a mysterious $700 that i've called her about like three times. she's yet to call me back. no call = no money, honey.

3. oh. on top of all of this, i thought it'd be a good idea to get A DOG. A FREAKING DOG. a living thing that needs food, water, love and attention. and will become obscenely neurotic if i continue to leave her home alone for 12hrs a day everyday. i mean, i don't think those little piles of poop are terms of endearment... or are they?

a few other less important things that are stressing me out purely because i am at such a high level of stress already that the marginal amount of pressure needed to Send Me Over The Edge is quite small, infinitesimal, even

4. i have no clothes. for real. i keep forgetting to pick up my laundry, and my favorite pair of "work pants" ripped yesterday. awesome.

5. i re-started going to the gym, but feel the regime crumbling beneath my treadmill as i type.

6. i have a leg waxing appointment saturday, already obsessing over the pain. anyone have a pill [or two or three] for me? PLEASE?

hee-whoo. hee-whooo (deep breaths). i'll have that pill now please.

in other news, this was a bberg article today, i guess some people out there are more stressed than i!

MOST GREEK WOMEN HAVE SEX INFREQUENTLY; STUDY SHOWS
2004-09-30 07:20 (New York)
Athens (dpa) - More than half of all Greek women have an infrequent sex life, saying they are often without a partner for up to two years, according to a study released Thursday.
The study conducted by the Institute for Male and Female Sexuality found more than half of women aged 18-54 years to be without a partner for up to two years, while one in ten women said they had no partner in the last three years. Abstinence was also high, from six months until two years for 47 per cent of women between the ages 25-34. Nearly 10 per cent said they had not had sex for more than three years.
Of 400 married and single women interviewed, nearly 70 per cent said they did not have a sexual partner, while two out of ten women said they did not find sex to be satisfying. Roughly 44 per cent of Greek women said they had their first sexual experience between 15 and 18 years of age.

Sergeant X...OXOXO
[UPDATE: her name is Esme, as in For Love and Squalor... google JDSalinger if you're not up to speed on Sgt. X, The Glass Family, and little precocious Esme... Ezzy for short in our household. although, i may be naming my next pet Yogurt (see comments below)]

Well. after weeks of hemming and hawing. and hawing and hemming. and hamming and hewing... i finally decided to TAKE THE LEAP and get that puppy! well, not that puppy, but this puppy:

i mean, with a face like that... *heart melty*

sometimes when i think about the committment and the money and the responsibility i get a little freaked (OK. A LOT FREAKED. ALOTALOTFREAKED.) but she's so unbearably cute, that i lose all ability to continue rational thought. all i want to do is go "look at that little smushy face, come here little puppy, GOOD GIRL! GOOD GIRL!"

sigh. this could turn ugly.

Falafel: Nature's Chick-Pea Patty!

oof. falafel for lunch ≠ good idea.

last night was was the Autumnal Convening of Hardcovers: Book Club Extraordinaire. but rather than discuss the wine, the book and the bizarrely heated argument we had on dodging the draft, i'd like to discuss the Korean Bodega by the subway stop in Brooklyn Heights.

When i got out of the subway last night on Clark street in that other borough that's NOT manhattan, and after i looked around and thought "too cute!", i noticed the friendly korean bodega. and then i noticed the friendly sign in the korean bodega's door:

"We Sell Home Made Kimchi! KIMCHI: NATURE'S YOGURT!"

ok. friendly or not, there are just so many things wrong with that statement. let's start with the obvious.

1. Kimchi is so not nature's yogurt. Kimchi is spicy pickled cabbage. Yogurt is fermented milk product. there's no cross over on THAT venn diagram.

2. now. let's suspend our disbelief and pretend that on some level, kimchi and bacteria had something, anything, in common. ok. EVEN SO, kimchi STILL wouldn't be nature's yogurt. you can only say [something] is nature's [something] if the second thing is in fact NOT natural. like, for instance, RAISINS: NATURE'S CANDY. that works, see, because raisins are all natural, and candy is not! whee! it's easy! you can do it too! WATER: NATURE'S GATORADE! YERBA MATE: NATURE'S CRACK-COCAINE! see!? try it! the problem here is that yogurt is natural. so really, nature's yogurt IS yogurt. you could even argue that kimchi isn't nature's anything, i've never seen a pickled spicy cabbage growing in anyone's yard, have you bunny rabbit?

3. is yogurt even all that appealing? ever since beaner got a moldy yogurt (go nature!) in telluride, the thought really turns my stomach. you've got nature's candy, emphasis on candy? i'm in! nature's yogurt... pass. gimme the chemical stuff.

anyway. that's enough asian bashing for today. soon i'm going to have to go to a racial sensitivity class. BIGOTRY: NATURE'S MENTAL LAZINESS.

The Good Times Are Killing Me.

Today is so one of those days where i just looked around and realised, "whoa. i pretty much hate everyone."

i think that's your cue to back away slowly...

Was the party at the Star Wars Cantina?

so. this a.m. i get in the elevator to go upstairs to work, and the Dorkiest Chinese Guy Ever that we work with (like. no joke. puts pickles to shame. He's very reminiscent of Hans Greedo - looks only - except with an almost debilitating stutter...) gets in with me. This conversation ensues:

Stuttering Greedo: "How come i never see you at any of the MIT parties???"
ME: "How much time you got?"
SG: "T-t-t-there was one last monday, everyone who went to MIT was there. EVERYONE"
ME: "Everyone? What does that even mean?"
SG: "Well, everyone except for the boring people..."

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn.

Capital I Can Read This, Can u?

As if the following sentence (yoinked from a bberg article on the damage inflicted by hurricane Jeanne) wasn't disturbing enough, i now have to sit and contemplate the horrors of Illiteracy with a Capital I.

"Haiti, afflicted by corruption, drug trafficking and Illiteracy, had a per capita income of $361 last year."

When 24/7 means NOT 5:30am on a Monday morning.

so, last night i couldn't really sleep. i had grand plans to go to the gym this morning, but i always have grand plans to go to the gym before work, and in truth, it's happened like 5x total. ever. so this morning when i was kinda up at 5:30, i thought "hey. i should actually go to the gym this am. WHY NOT! the gym down the street's open 24hrs!" so i get up, get dressed, walk there in the cold, dark dawn. and let me tell you: 5:30am is a whole different world than 6:30am. 5:30am is when all the cracked out crazies wander the streets. so i get to the gym, and the DOOR IS LOCKED and the LIGHTS are OFF. WHAT HO?! the sign says 24hrs! i believe that 5:30am is an hour, is it not? alas, my knave, it isn't. when the said 24hrs, they meant from 6:00am on monday morning. foiled again! i stood there, dumbfounded for like 10minutes. then i was all "FUCK THIS." and went home and washed and blew dry my hair instead. that's a work out in and of itself. but. i gotta say. this doesn't really speak volumes for being Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. i'm freaking BEAT right now. goddamn exercise. i thought going to the gym was supposed to give you energy. not leave you standing on the corner like just another homeless drug addict. and yes. i was also muttering to myself. i fit right in.

It is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it, and all it's supporters are...

Happy 5765. that is a whole lot of years. that's liiiike almost 5766 years. and 5766 years is REALLY a lot of years!

so. here's the thing. this morning when i woke up i thought my alarm was saying "vegetable lasagna". which, granted, is weird, but isn't actually The Thing. The thing is that on NPR, they were talking about how the US is advocating the forgiveness of the 30 poorest nations' debt. Their debt to the US, the World Bank, the IMF, etc. and some lady from The Jubilee USA Network was on praising the plan. and i was so intrigued/torn that i sat on my bed and wasted precious morning minutes (before 7am minutes are more like hours) thinking about this. here are some of my thoughts:

- at first glance, from a liberal, help the under privaleged POV, releasing these countries from the debt burden that they are saddled with seems like a win-win situation. these countries are free to advance without having to cater to the multi-lateral organisations that are holding the loans over their heads, and with their hopeful and new-found prosperity the entire world benefits, including the US, the nation behind the benevolent foregiveness of the debt.

- but wait. these are STILL the 30 poorest nations, debt or no debt. and not just financially poor. there's such as thing as energy poverty, among other things, too. they are so not going to be prospering anytime soon, and no doubt need much more aid to even move forward an inch. while i'm a big fan of free trade, it doesn't do much for the economies of the poorest nations, and that's part of the reason why they need LOANS from the US, the WB, and the IMF. if the debt is forgiven, who's going to release the next tranche of aid to these countries to help with things like AIDS medication, energy programs, and even small micro-loans to sheep farmers?

- and this is what it boils down to, i think. in the short term, debt foregiveness seems like a very altruistic act. we are helping these poor (literarlly and figuratively) nations. but are we really? because that's pretty much it. after this, no BANK (the IMF and the World Banks are BANKS after all, and banks are in the business, lest we forget what it is, of loaning money. no one's advocating we forgive the debt of the 30% poorest people in the US, because GUESS WHAT, that's our money that the banks are loaning out to them. if you forgive that debt, next time you go to the ATM, you might not have any money. and when YOU need a loan, or a grant as the case may be, because once you've gotten money for nothing you're always going to want the sex for free, there won't be anything to give you because no one's putting their money in banks anymore because the banks are GIVING THEIR MONEY AWAY. i mean, that doesn't make sense, right?) will be loaning nations money any more. and in the long term, it seems like this would WIDEN the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest nations, non?

- now. lest i sound too one sided, let me muddle the argument here a little bit. i think that a lot of times the loans are used to incur some potentially debilitating economic restrictions on these nations, or like in the case of Turkey, as a bribe to use their, say, airspace. there's a lot of things wrong with the multi-lateral lending system as is, and i'm pretty sure Ann Krueger of the IMF has heard quite a bit about it. (just rent Life And Debt for a quick view of the downside of being a debt ridden island nation, mon.) BUT. i don't think forgiving the debt is the answer, Bono. and it scares me that the knee jerk liberal reaction might be to support such a cause just because it sounds "nice." it scares me even more that the Republicans are the ones proposing it.

OK. i'm off to read more about this so as to be more FACTUAL and less GUTTERAL. forgive me my debt of knowledge...

"Hello, Labor Day? Hi. Yeah. MEET SNOW."

so. last tuesday, before i went to the US Open twice and almost bought a puppy*, i went to the Telluride Film Festival in picturesque Colorado. it's always a fun time, not ALWAYS so snowy. for lack of adequate time to construct a cohernt narrative, i shall resort to the ever lazy numbered list format.

10 Things I Ate About tellUride: both a literal and proverbial list.

1. Annette Benning's height. DAMN. THAT CRACKER IS TALL, let me tells you! we saw her upcoming movie "Being Julia". it was recommendable. based on a Somerset Maugham story. i also overheard someone pronounce his name "MAUG-ham." always fresh, the intellectual faux pas one can over hear on line waiting for a movie in Telluride.

2. Todd Stolondz's new film "Palindromes semordnilaP" ok. it's just called "Palindromes," but i thought it needed a much missing sense of symmetry. the movie itself, was, uhm, yeah. it was. it was such that if i were a movie critic, i'd definitely use the title "Palindromes casts a PALL over the theater..." and then laugh laugh laugh at the leverage a bad movie gives me in being punny. and this despite it being ellen barkin's self-proclaimed "Best. Movie. Ever." more fun than the movie was reciting all our favorite palindromes before the house lights went down. "A Man. A Plan. A Canal. Panama." "Rise to vote, sir!" and my personal fav, "Lisa Bonet Ate No Basil!"

3. it snowed. a picture's worth a thousand unique snow flakes:

4. it snowed. then it snowed some more. then for good measure there was some sleet, and also a little more snow. then there was some french wine. THEN IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND 80 DEGREES AND THERE WAS NO MORE COMPLAINING AND ONLY BASKING IN THE CLEAR, BEAUTIFUL [THIN] COLORADO SUNSHINE.

5. There also were rumors that Johnny Depp was in town. They were good rumors, because i like to think a good rumor is one that everyone believes despite all concrete facts pointing to the complete opposite (liiiiiiiiike, the fact that there were pictures of the European dwelling Johnny Depp at the concurrent Venice Film Festival...). i whole-heartedly wanted to believe them. i even made L and J wait on line a SECOND time on the off chance that Johnny Depp FLEW OVER FROM VENICE to this remote Coloradian town to promote his already distributed film "Finding Neverland" (which was ruined for me anyway, despite it's being quite good, because a woman was crying, NAY blubbering, from minute five of the movie. to the point where i almost turned around a told her to get up and pull herself together, heartstrings be damned.).

6. Michel Gondry is french. interviews with people who only really speak french are not normally good ideas. pas bonne idee, oui? also: ground control to Elvis Mitchell, interviewer pas extraordinaire: dreds don't make you cool, and using the phrase "kool and the gang" CERTAINLY DOES NOT.

7. high altitude can be blamed for almost anything. almost anything that is except for buying rasberries from some amish people (who are far, far, FAR away from Pennsylvania Dutch Land) and not washing them (the rasberries! not the amish people!) before eating the entire box. them and all the little bugs that infested them. *VOMIT*

8. Laura Linney seems cool.

9. henceforth my life shall be broken up into BG and AG. Before Gael and After Gael [Garcia Bernal], that is. *swoon*. i'd say more, but i'm afraid of opening a flood of "he loves me, he loves me not" babble. so i'll just post one [of the 6,132] picture[s] i took and sit back and sigh. *sigh*

10. as always, depsite Apallingdromes, Snow, PISS POOR Chinese Cinema, and bug infested raspberries, telluride was an Amazing trip. and that list of "despites" would otherwise be quite forceful.

-posted on 9/13/04, AG.

*i still might! so cute! i never use exclamation points in earnest! but i am right now! what do you think?! too much responsibility?! or does love conquer all?!

oof. projectile IM-ing.

last convo of a Friday afternoon
Fallegar: coworker vomiting
Fallegar: help me
Fallegar: HELP ME
Fallegar: vomiting with door open
Fallegar: what do i do??????????
GermL: uhm uhm uhm...i'm leaving, bye!

as a friend i might suck, but at least i don't blow...chunks!