like "journey or bon jovi," but with an appetite

I love me some frozen meals. I honestly think I could live forever on nothing but these:

(But chicken, not turkey.)

I'm at the office, but rather than working, I'm trying to strategize: on my way home, do I get off at the stop before mine so that I can stop at the green grocer with the enchiladas, and then walk that extra distance home, or do I go to the supermarket by my apartment with the pot pies, which I've had, oh, three or four times this month?

I AM SO TORN.

ideas

I really want to post about all the good (sometimes in a bad way) ideas friends of mine have had lately - websites, podcasts, movies, more websites - but I don't want to publish people's plans before they bring them to fruition (or fail. But at least, you know, come to some sort of end). Suffice to say that between Trent Lott's porch, Burma Shave, hurricane jokes, Bon Jovi and Meryl Streep, there's plenty of room for creativity in this world.

just like x-tina said

With some exceptions - during accidental glimpses into reflective buildings on a slim day, with the help of exceptional photographers and, from what I'm given to understand, for a significant enough portion of my earliest months - I have never been a beautiful person to behold. Over time, this has come to matter less and less, as I've gotten more comfortable with the face I have, as I've learned that I shouldn't smile too big, as I've come to grips with the fact that finding well-fitting clothes isn't a piece of cake, as I've tried to manage the skin that Intelligent Design (ho, ho, ho) has given me.

Before I come off as really sickeningly self-pitying, I hasten to add that neither am I ugly. I take it seriously when people say nice things about my looks, and I recognize some truly pretty aspects of myself at times. If I see an unflattering reflection of myself, or notice that my gait betrays a certain self-consciousness about the way my body is constructed, or try in vain to cross my arms discreetly over what every woman will understand is a stomach that will always, no matter its actual size, be too large - at each of those moments I also recognize that my dissatisfaction is only to a small fraction grounded in reason. I know this because I see my beautiful friends point out flaws in themselves that exist only in their own imaginations all the time.

Still, for some reason I still have this old bitterness toward beautiful people, something left over from childhood, I guess, and kept alive somehow through a mixture of painful memories, an exasperating predisposition toward self-pity, and an unshakeable tendency to think in terms of power.

The last bit is something I acquired during my long, heartfelt and disastrous college relationship, a relationship I look back on mainly as confirmation that your worst fears about someone really can come true. (This has a really irritating way of encouraging me to nourish insecurities, but that's a different story.) Displaced in my boyfriend's heart by someone better than me in every conceivable way but brains (and maybe without even that exception, which I only mention anyway because my intelligence is the one asset I know I have) - taller, better hair, more beautiful by a hundredfold, cheerier, slimmer, and able to do the splits - I have since struggled under the experience of knowing the pretty ones win.

I'm not really attracted to pretty. By this I mean that almost never in my entire life have I been attracted to someone without having interacted with him or her personally. I think I have pretty good taste, and I know good looks when I see 'em, and I myself feel that the men I have dated would make quite an attractive lineup. But show me a handsome man on the subway, or in a store, or somewhere else with scant possibility of interaction, and I won't feel anything.

Meanwhile, show pretty much any straight guy a long-legged looker, even from ten yards distant, and you can almost smell the saliva building up in his mouth.

And somewhere in my twisted brain, where this sort of perversion gets me nowhere but confused and malcontent, I think this puts me at a disadvantage.

It's the same sort of thinking that made me wish I'd been cheating on my college boyfriend. You know, to even the score. And the fact that I hadn't sure didn't make me feel like a good person - given the opportunity for a lunch date with a good-looking grad student, I bailed after twenty minutes; and even now I can't even bring myself to wish we'd just gone home and done it, but that makes me feel like a loser, not a traveler on the moral high ground.

So it has been my spectacular and bewildering fortune to find myself completely in love with someone not only more beautiful that me, but more convinced that I am beautiful than anyone in my whole life (possibly excepted by those present at my birth). My boyfriend, someone I love so strongly and who loves me so strongly in return that I have actually managed to overcome some of the mental roadblocks put in place by that great heartbreak a few years back, gets truly annoyed when I have issues with beauty. His exasperation when I am disparaging toward my own looks, forgiveable because of his utter inability to comprehend what he sweetly considers total wrongheadedness, has led to honest to goodness arguments. Amazingly, I have actually reconsidered my physical self as a result of his conviction that I am not, in fact, a zit-faced fat-ass. And while I still think I am the less pleasing half of the couple to look at, I can at least console myself with the fact that I am, by exceeding quantities, the smarter. Just kidding, baby!

two things

1. Watching the HBO movie The Girl in the Café didn't do a ton for me in the way of intellectual edification, but it did remind me that I needed to get around to listening to "Staralfur" by Sigur Ros on repeat until it was the soundtrack to everything I did. Now I'm in danger of morose-ifying myself to death.
2. Last night I saw part of a West Wing rerun (presumably from last season? I haven't watched past season four). SO DISAPPOINTING. I give you the following:

   Bureaucrat: Mr. President, blah-blah-blah is worse than blah-blah-blah.
   CJ: And sir, "worse" is a relative term in this case, since we're talking about blah-blah-blah.

   Worse is a relative term? Seriously?! WORSE IS ALWAYS A RELATIVE TERM.

   
   
   
   . . .
   
   
   

   Ok no seriously, I can't get over this. Isn't the definition of worse, like, "relatively more bad?" How did that get written in? The mind boggles.

   September 21, 2005 07:54 PM · comments (7)
   

in re: chlog

Positive comments below notwithstanding, I have gotten a lot of negative feedback on the last post (mainly from this guy and this guy). Loathe as I am to heed the opinions of people who name their websites with puns, or after SLANG FOR A VENEREAL DISEASE, I feel obliged to say a little something.

Chick lit has to be the easiest writing style on earth to imitate. It really lends itself to imitation. A brand name here, a little Harlequin flavor there - voila.

Oh, and a shitload of identifers. Chic places, chic clothes, chic companies, etc., etc. It's what bothered me about Helen Fielding's most recent (I think) novel. I loved me some Bridget Jones, but Olivia Joules was like a fourteen year old girl's dream life gone horrible awry. And when I say awry, I mean NOT AT ALL AWRY. When you're fourteen and want to be simultaneously gorgeous and smart and oh also have thousand dollar outfits and make out with surfers and oh yeah also you're a journalist AND a secret agent and oh my god you killed Osama bin Laden and went to the Academy Awards! - those dreams aren't supposed to come true. Let them lie, Helen!

Not that I'm unaware that there's good chick lit out there. I haven't had much exposure, but I've heard from smarter and more voracious readers than I. And I'm sure even the crappy stuff is very, very readable, for better or for worse. I mean, hey, it's a niche market made in large part of what I'm guessing are relatively new consumers in the book market (not former consumers of other types of literature). So, great. I'm all for that.

Too bad it sucks so hard sometimes. So hard, in fact, that my rendition apparently came off as sincere, and as a result my own boyfriend was unable to distinguish whether my lust for MTA employees was part of the satire of the genre, or real. Let me be clear on this point. My lust for MTA employees is fictitious. Not that Conrad's actually been making an Issue of it or anything. No.

So, um, in conclusion ... Well ... Ok, basically this post is a vehicle for me to point out that those guys' websites are named with puns or after slang for venereal disease SO JUST WHERE DO THEY THINK THEY GET OFF, etc. If I had a point of some kind I would've assembled it a couple paragraphs ago.

i await the fanatic throng

Going back and forth with a work friend about how our future romance or chick lit novels might start, I realized there's no good reason I shouldn't have a chick lit blog (chlog? anyone?). Sample entry:

- - -

jeudi, le 8 septembre,
or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Local

I like express trains. I like peering out over the top of the latest Helen Fielding to watch the lesser-used stations whiz past. It's the closest thing a New York girl can get to flying. I avoid the local if I can.

But last night, after several hours of French martinis, French waiters and French kissing, I found myself sans cab money in the Meatpacking district, my new jewelled clutch sorrowfully empty and my Manolos clacking mournfully on the cobbled streets as I teetered toward the 23rd Street stop.

A local stop.

Perched delicately on the dirty wooden bench, I felt the eyes of strangers wash over me. On the opposite platform, three drunk guys stared; one waved. I looked demurely at my toes. Ooh, must remember to touch up pedicure.

Three A trains passed, their passengers looking blankly out of the windows. I realized how I must look, staring self-contentedly out of my express train every day. I heard turnstiles echoing in the silence between trains.

A whiff of Man made me turn my head. An unusually good-looking MTA employee was standing a few feet away, gazing appreciatively.

"No cab for you tonight?" His voice was husky; his words were few.

"I like the subway," I lied. I haven't the cash didn't seem alluring enough.

"Then my career isn't a waste."

He grinned out of the corner of his mouth; his MTA badge flashed in the fluorescent light. I could make out muscle definition beneath the reflective vest. A cab's backseat suddenly seemed even more appealing than before. Seeing this man's eyes glint, I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

A C finally pulled into the station and I rose from my seat, balancing myself carefully on my four-hundred-and-ninety-five-dollar heels. I turned and saw my new friend staying in place. Surprised, I asked, "No train for you?"

"I'm on the E," he said. Then, patting the subway car that had just rattled to a halt: "She'll take good care of you."

As the doors slid shut and the man faded into darkness, I thought, I must remember to blog about this.

something to think about

I will probably spend the next four hours straight wondering why my boyfriend just signed off his email with "Love, Pat Sajak."

slate, you're not helping

katrina and race

Almost painfully typically, Slate got it early but published a crappy piece, and the Times was late but better.

Of course, 80% of my saying that is because they also got the best quote, from NYC Congressman Rangel, on the failure of the federal government to plan for the worst: "I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence."