The Rapture can't come quickly enough....

Just to let you know that we're still in hell and handbasket mode, sex robots are the new black. From an article in Der Speigel:

"Levy (ed. artificial intelligence expert, a.k.a hardcore gamer) is convinced that women, in particular, after initial misgivings, will welcome robots as an alternative to their sweaty husbands. The fact that their sexual appetites often go well beyond the mediocre performance of many men is reflected in the "staggering sales figures" for vibrators, says Levy.
...
Men are willing to "have sex with inflatable dolls," says Henrik Christensen, the coordinator of the European Robotics Research Network. It'll be easy to do one better than that. According to Christensen, "anything that moves will be an improvement.""

Even though humans have had a long and varied relationship with mechanized sex implements, I'm guessing it's still going to take a certain kind of person to choose sex with a robot (even if she can blink) over sex with a human. It reminds me of Dave Chappelle saying this: "You're not going to get some monkey pussy on Tuesday and on Thursday be like, I'm going to call Charlene." Once you start dating Roboblink 2005, I think you're out of the human pussy game altogether. If this seems crude, just think of the technology, brainpower, R&D money that is being poured into this project, all because men want to avoid talking to women. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that robot-cuddler has always been outside of the dating pool anyway. Maybe scientist dude wants to create a robot woman because real women are disgusted by real men a lot of the time, which I really can't disagree with. What with the wars, gun violence, and robot vaginas. ugh.

What a dork dreams...

My alarm clock is set to NPR. If you knew me 10 years ago, you would have know that I needed two alarms, one halfway across the room, and the other, loud and honking, right beside my ear. But since the elderly are light sleepers...I now wake up to the gentle sounds of world news delivered in quiet, respectful tones. So, Nicolas Sarkozy was in town, and they're talking about it on NPR, and I'm interested, but it's 6:58 and so I'm also interested in sweet sleep. I ended up having the most awesome dream. I was to address the U.N. General Assembly because someone really important asked me to give the preamble to Sarkozy's speech, basically a short history of France. So I'm thinking to myself, hmm, I wonder if I can overcome my fear of public speaking before this speech thingie in a few minutes (Ms. Entitlement Jones never questioned that she was the most qualified to deliver a treatise on the awesomeness of France), and with the wonderful relativity of time of dreams, I really was about to conquer that fear. But at at the last moment, they decided it was a security risk and my services weren't needed. And I had a few friends in the audience (like my jazz-dance recital when I was twelve) who were seriously bummed that I didn't get to speak. I think the Ayatollah Khomeini might have been there too, and behind it all. Stop oppressing women from the grave.

Razors of love

the speech bubble says, "i dig my toes into the sand the ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a big blue blanket." so true.

Sometimes I feel conflicted about graffiti, you know when some poor nona has to spend her fixed-income money to get rid of the huge penis that someone has painted on her garage-door? But not this morning. When I walk down the stairs of the G train (usually hurtling down the stairs because my entrance to the G is on the short side of the tracks) there's a new poster right at the bottom of the stairs that I actually have to avert my eyes from, because it causes a physical reaction. It's a huge K-Rock ad, featuring the band Incubus. I hate this band so much, but maybe I hate that guy's face even more, with his blank, bland look (at least look guilty for making such horrible music) and his horrible ear plugs. Well, this morning, some had razored his face out. Just his face. The rest of the band was intact, everything else was fine, and the poster wasn't even tagged. Major joy, and that never happens on a Monday morning.

Put the razor down, soul mate, and call me.

Prodigal shame

It's hard to get back on the horse...so I'll just say that everything is good, still smoke-free, still watching Murder She Wrote on a Sunday night. I've been cooking a lot more, so here's a good recipe for the cooling weather.

Dhal

• 1½ cup moong beans (red lentils, masoor dhal)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 slice ginger
• 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
• 1 tablespoon turmeric
• ½ teaspoon cayenne
• 1½ teaspoon salt
• 1½ teaspoon lemon juice
• 3 tablespoon ghee
• 1 pinch asafoetida (optional)
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds

Put beans in large pot, add 5 cups water. Bring to a boil. Remove froth & add garlic, ginger, cilantro, turmeric, cayenne. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. When beans are soft, add salt & lemon juice. In a skillet, heat ghee (olive oil if you don't want to use clarified butter!). When hot, add asafoetida & cumin. Pour oil over the dhal & serve

I'm back!

So kiss the ring? No, there was a whole mixup with various blogs, one identity being split, horcrux-like between many blogs...so like the good 77-year-old woman afraid of technology that I am, I decided to retreat from the threat of the internets and do some luddite things instead. So I've been doing work at work for a change, crossword puzzles, still not smoking (what what!), and trying to perfect my downward dog. Clearly that was boring as all hell...

Is there a Moral Majority in the Lake of Fire?

Because he spent most of his life suggesting that gays, women seeking abortions, Tinky Winky, atheists and Muhammed were going to hell, I sincerely hope that Jerry Falwell had a chance, in the split second second before his huge, congested heart stopped, to reflect upon his life full of vitriol and hate and wonder if he was headed in that direction too.

Farewell, Falwell (Ha ha, alliteration puns. What a perfect parting gift for a hated man, my most hated form of humour.) , you crazy bastard. I hope you made some people happy in your lifetime because for a lot of people, you were a a beacon of racism, religious intolerance, and insanity. But hopefully your dog and grandchildren liked you.

I have to believe this is not true.

Apparently smoking and drinking coffee protects you from Parkinson's disease. How can this be?!!
I know that compared to smoking-related diseases, Parkinson's is quite rare. And it might have something to do with dopamine: the great neurotransmitter associated with food, sex, drugs, etc. People who develop Parkinson's tend to have a low-level of dopamine-creating cells in the brain, and consumption of coffee and cigarettes (that sounds so nice) stimulates dopamine production. Does that then mean that depressed people (sigh), who sometimes have an imbalance in their dopamine levels, also have a greater chance of developing Parkinson's?!

Couldn't they hide that little scientific finding? Don't give smokers any more reasons not to quit, for god's sake.

Clearly, day 46 of quitting smoking has been a hard one for me. I'm double-fisting coffee.

Read the article here.

In Memoriam

I remember reading Cat's Cradle when I was about 14, and I barely understood all the allegory and strange flights of fancy, but I have always been a science geek/groupie, so I really dug it. There was a collection of short stories too, Welcome to the Monkey House, that I loved. Mostly because there was a seriously mushy love story called "Long Walk to Forever" that I made everyone I knew read; I remember that my sappy-hearted friend E.A. cried her eyes out... I just read an article in the Post in which Vonnegut said that he wished more adults read his books. So in his honour, I just bought Slaughterhouse-Five and will read it and love it as an adult. Anyways, because he was a great writer, irreverent, and brilliant, he will seriously be missed. Hope you're hanging out with spacemen, Kurt.

Dark Victory, or a list of good things from the past 12 hours.

yes, i know this is from Now, Voyager.

I like Dark Victory because of all the cool smoking and melodrama. Just because I quit smoking doesn't mean that I don't still love it. (Pause to pop a Commit lozenge in my mouth.)

I like the candy that has a hard candy/utensil that you lick and dip into a bunch of crystalline, flavoured sugar. Lick, dip, tweak!

I opposite-of-like puns (shut up to boyfriend, Blackfoot, and Will), lamb cooked in any form (sorry, newly-risen Jesus, for eating your flock) and any perfume that is supposed to smell like the 'Orient'.

I like Nightmare on Elm Street and flan and maybe, I like the Sopranos a little bit.

I thought that my first blog after having my identity corrupted by Google's lame bid to take over the world would be hard to write, but I forgot that I just have to talk about myself.

I like talking about myself.

It burns!

Things that give me a burning sensation:


1. Commit lozenges
2. Park Slope


Because no one gets tired of Park Slope douchebag stories...I was sitting on the 5th ave bus (urgh) and the twat next to me was talking on his cell to a 'friend' (like he has friends with his adidas tearaway pants and Muscle Milk (I tried to peek inside his shopping bag for confirmation of douche status; that's what I imagine was inside)) about how his other friend's girlfriend was 'SO annoying'? Why was she SO annoying, you ask? Well, apparently she looked like trailer trash trying to look posh (for Park Slope?) and even though she had been to Europe, she had the gall to order 'pie-ella' at a Spanish restaurant. Muscle Milk's girlfriend was horrified. I was horrified that he had a girlfriend. What's more, he was apparently shopping for a ring for her today. So if anyone out there is a snob about paella and is dating a snotty loser with no neck and a bag full of steroids, watch out. You have a lifetime of bus passes and misplaced elitism waiting for you.

Yeah, I'm a chronic eavesdropper/judgmentalizer...what of it?

clambering to the top of the moral high ground...out of breath

lame, I know. But maybe it was cigarettes that made me cool?






I just quit smoking. 4 days! Doesn't sound that impressive? Well, it's not. But it's something.

Things I am grateful for (not an AA-higher power way):

1. Super-great smelling room
2. Sarah not getting lung cancer (I bet her stupid rotten tooth was because I smoked) 3. Only 10 years until my lungs are almost all healed, hoorah!
4. That if I ever make it to 80, I'm totally going to start smoking again. And maybe I might develop a hardcore drug addiction. I totally thought of this before stupid Alan Arkin. I would never wear a leather vest. 5. Commit™ lozenges. Though they taste like poison, they are precious to me.
6. Crossword puzzles. I do them to occupy myself, obsessively. My mind will be a well-honed ('hone' is a very good crossword word, as is, strangely, the German city Essen) Trivial-Pursuit fighting machine! 6-letter word for not just a river in Egypt.

At any rate, another one of my very closest friends had a baby. Clark! Welcome. Wilkommen, as in Essen. We love you with your perfectly-round head, swirly hairline, and oily eyelids. You were the same day I quit smoking, so stop being so self-centered and focus on me. You would if you could focus, you little underachiever.

Apocalypse watch: Sign #23249

I think I'll watch the skies for the rain of fire after reading this.

Resolutions

No, I'm not quitting smoking...quite yet. But I do resolve to blog more, just for my own sense of consistency and responsibility. And also my loyal readership (2. Small, but vocal!) is scandalized at my slackerness.

So I've really been trying new things lately. Like yoga almost every day, a financial budget for the first time in my life (v. pathetic) so that's good, right? I thought about trying to be a nicer person and not write mean emails about amputees on the subway who take off their prosthetic legs and then talk about their raging infection sites, but then I realized that it was my horrifyingly confused Christian upbringing rearing its ugly head again so I beat it into quietude. Resolution #34242: Suppress Christian upbringing more regularly.

Om, shanti shanti.

snapshots from the north

I'm back from the great white north and back to my old habits of drinking wine on a Friday night and watching an ANTM marathon. Thank god. My parents are major health freaks and keep saying something about cigarettes and exercise. I don't remember exactly.

Home was great. It's funny, I thought I could never live anywhere else, but now Toronto seems kind of foreign to me. It made me very sad, because my best friend and my sister both live in my old neighbourhood and they know all the good sandwich places and I really feel like life is going on without me. Queen St., which used to be the mini-Williamsburg of Toronto is now filled with glossy Zara storefronts and there's a whole new minimall that popped up across from my parents' street in the burbs. Well, minimalls do pop up I haven't been home for a year, but still. And today, when I was perspiring on the F train in 62 degree weather with some old woman giving me dirty looks because I was trying to share her pole, I felt pangs for the TTC. This picture was taken at around 11pm on a weekend. Sigh.

I'll just continue on with my nomadic lifestyle, I guess. Maybe in a few years I'll look back at Brooklyn, from my perch in the hippest neighbourhood on Mars, and think it's way over.

Yay Caridee! Go on with your crackhead self.

Happy Day!

I'm around for another little while longer! Thank you, American government (words that usually taste like ashes on my tongue). I'll keep spending, paying my taxes, having terrible health care coverage and loving it, and not be able to vote and living in a hovel in Brooklyn (what what) and you keep approving my visa applications, okay? Clearly a higher power wants this (see above).

For menorah's sake...

I'm trying to find an appropriate Hanukkah present for a middle-aged couple who have everything. I don't know them well enough to give them this, but wouldn't it be fun if I could? I'm just going to end up sending them a big bag of chocolate candy
(gelt, I love learning new words) that will invariably melt in the mail into a big pile of golden-flecked chocolate seeping through packing materials and then they're going to shake their head (middle-aged couples only have one head), wipe smeared chocolate off their hands and shiny floors and think of the many Jewish girls their son could be dating instead but I'll be laughing because I'm totally converting him into a Zen Buddhist. What a shanda.

Shamefully excited

Anton Corbijn is making a biopic about Ian Curtis and Joy Divison. Some kid, Sam Riley is going to play him. He's a bit too dishy, but it works.

I think "Love will Tear Us Apart" is one of the most-covered songs ever. This is kind of awesome, but then I read that U2 touched it with their tentacles of lameness and performed it with Arcade Fire. Shudder.

You know it's time to do some wikiresearch...

When your company is installing RSS readers on your computer and you don't even know what it means except for trying to panicked-ly trying to close Firefox and iTunes before Sparky with the clipboard erases my hard drive. Our IT department gave an indepth orientation on Outlook when I first started here, to give you an idea of their tech-savvy.It's like reading Rolling Stone for the latest in indie music.

Even though this week is the CareBears National Care Week, today I:

1. Got yelled at by an unCaring author.
2. Got almost knocked over by an old lady in front of Whole Foods, causing me to stumble into my own hair with my cigarette. I lost a 2-inch tress.

According to the Care Calendar, I was supposed to hold a door open for someone today. Instead, my hair smells like burning hell.

the gayest thing I can think of...


Alright, enough already. There's a NY Post cartoonist, Sean Delonas, who is seriously burning my ass. I won't do him a service by reposting his cartoons here (for my legions of readers, holla!) but his homophobia manifests itself in low-quality art that is:



1. Sophomoric.
In a ruling on Wednesday, October 26th, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexuals. To commemorate the occasion, Delonas busts out with some sophisticated, subtly-messaged comic art...Really? Gay people fuck sheep? Or do frat boys fuck sheep?


2. Unfunny.
It's very creative to dismiss a woman's qualifications for office by making reference to her physical appearance. Yes, Jeanine Pirro is pretty vile (and Republican (!)), and is under investigation for misappropriation of public funds (she wiretapped her philandering husband to find evidence of his philandering), but it's comforting to know that a bigot like Delonas will always get personal, in the least interesting, easiest, and most insulting way. At least bigots are consistent. In their fear of women, that is.


3. Very wise.
He seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of gayness. For example, in this cartoon, we have a mincing Jim McGreevey (foot up in the air, apparently wearing a ballet slipper) trying to comfort a weeping Mark Foley (fucker). Now for the real genius, which, as always, is in the details. There is a cocktail with a supergay umbrella in it on Foley's desk, a painting of the Village People on the gay-amoeba-flocked wall, a gayly-empty hamster-cage (hamster suspiciously absent), and the pièce de resistance . . . through a doorway, a darkened bedroom is visible and on the bed is what appears to be a teddy bear (gay) or sheep (spouse/partner, see above) with a big black dildo. I kind of like the teddy-bear/dildo imagery, it's like something out of a high-school zine my friend used to have. Delonas's id is a frightening place, filled with frothing waves of crazy.


Now, write a letter to the Post that won't get read, get drunk on the pinkest cocktails you can find, wear a feathered boa and red heels on Halloween (like I don't always wear a boa and red heels), drive up to Westchester, and shit on some Republican lawns. Film it, call it "Oppression No. 3432: Proustian dreams", post it on your blog. Thanks to viral video, you get discovered, get a book deal, and get paid. Now that is gay.