ORNAMENT OF MY MIGHT

2011-08-23

CULTURAL STUDIES

T-Pain’s bar logic (“Ooh, she made us drinks to drink, we drunk ‘em, got drunk”) bears a striking resemblance to one of the early New York tabloid police report subjects I read about last week:

William Smith (alias Fitz), “got drunk by drinking too much.” The magistrate informed him that this was the way in which people always got drunk, and admonished him to lead a sober life in the future; after which he was discharged.

Here I am on the phone with my mom last Saturday, providing some visual analysis of this weird pod we found. She thought it might be carob, so I emailed her a photo for confirmation— just in case. Her response:

Hi Hon,

Not sure what it is. What I thought it might be rom [sic] your description wold [sic] have been much skinnier in proportion. Cool though but don’t eat it!

Love,

MOM

Molly was even less helpful.

2011-08-07

Heh. That’s the best I can ever hope to be.

What? A mess of contradictions?

No! A “reticent crowd pleaser.”

2011-07-20

This sign is currently on display in front of the Tenement Museum. It gave me a great business idea: charging desperate dieters an astronomical fee for grueling, day-long walking tours that don’t include any snacks. The no-snack part would be historically accurate, and everyone would learn a lot.

2011-07-10

.

I sent this to myself on the train to Hudson on Friday. It’s what the guy-behind-me said his job was.

2011-07-06

Copying sentences from university program websites into open emails can result in what to me is indistinguishable from most contemporary poetry:

Sociologists
refer
to
the
practice
of
connecting
with
like-minded
individuals
as
“homophily.”

Complex systems scholars
refer
to
ant hills
and
epidemics
as though
both
were just
two
drops of water.

2011-06-28

SMART.FUNNY.NICE

When I meet a person, I often plot their personality into a mental Venn diagram that I call SMART.FUNNY.NICE. We can all agree that the best people are the ones who display all three of these virtues, to a high degree, with great consistency. We can also all agree that the worst people are the ones who display none of these three virtues, to a high degree, with great consistency (“The disposition on that guy is really terrible.” “Yes, and so much of it too.”)

But here’s the rub: what’s the second-worst? No, but you have to choose. It’s so hard! Sometimes, when I just can’t pick, I generate synonyms for all of the permutations and am able to arrive at a temporary verdict.

2011-06-22

NULL SET

It’s when I’m walking that I think of the good ideas that will not pay me and see the bad ones that will; shoes wear out quickly when you operate this way. I don’t know what the alternative is to constant repair, so I keep going back to the same barking men who don’t recognize me at first without my glasses and then tell me I look better without them.

It’s one of the greatest occupational hazards of being young and lithe and alert in New York— the amount of time you must spend getting your shoes re-soled in exchange for all that pedestrian activity. In the summer especially, the number of hours squandered this way can begin to feel like a real, irrecoverable loss.

2011-06-16

KILLING BIRDS

It’s an utter disgrace that I was forced to construct my own visor while in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. I was always under the impression that if Boston was good for anything, it was visors. Apparently not: they’re nowhere to be found up here.

Visors are a non-negotiable summer accessory if you have blonde hair and know anything about multi-tasking.