Raining McCain

Are you like me? Sometimes, do you think, man, I've reached the end of the internet? There's nothing left in the vast, oblong hollows of these tubes to amuse me. I had that feeling earlier today, as I avoided reading some reply brief that made its way onto my desk. But then I learned about this guy, who I really want to meet now. Maybe I could fly to Idaho and we could get brunch. And maybe this other guy could join us. And, maybe, just maybe, we could talk about how fucking killer the video above is, especially because no one told the old lady she's not supposed to where clothes the same color as the blue screen.

don't stand so close to me

some of my fellow subway riders i see as "commuter friends," y'know, they hold the door open for you, they let you sit down before them, they read the post within your sightlines...

there are "commuter foes," of course, they hold the door open for others, they listen to their music too loudly so all you hear are tinny drumbeats, they magically fold the times into those nice rectangles...

then there are those who somehow find their way next to me. the other day, a woman sat down and started furiously brushing her hair. i mean, c'mon. i don't know where you've been or if you have headlice! granted, she was well-dressed and clean cut looking-ish, but in a city of bedbugs, you just never know.

this morning a woman sat down next to me and started to apply nail polish! people, this is not your house. it's a very confined space with limited oxygen. i finally had to ask her to stop, breaking that sacred fourth wall between me and every other commuter.

thought you'd like to know...

here is a list of notable things from my firm's holiday party (which was held at the UN a few nights ago and, thankfully, not at the hard rock cafe again).

1. it featured "cuisines around the world" - "asia" (moo shoo pork or something, which was tasty, some type of noodle dish which was not. inexplicably, the sushi was in a separate room), "americas" (mini burgers, quesadillas containing what i said was chicken and what my officemate said was potato), and some others, but who am i kidding? i'm at a party with coworkers: more alcohol, pleeze.

2. people are really into the electric slide.

3. somehow they got the rights to put on a display of fireworks over the east river. i was pretty impressed. well, mostly because they coordinated the fireworks to music, including some michael bolton song i couldn't place (something about "belonging here" or "living the dream" - couldn't google it either) and...chariots of fire. very totalitarian. or maybe olympian?

4. i had a good time, but there will be no photos of me dancing by myself on my firm's intranet this time around, as there were last year. slowly i'm winning my dignity back, one fewer hip gyration at a time.

on a semi-related note, i thought that "left behind", that popular series of apocalyptic christian books, was just that, religious. well, who knew it had such a pointed political agenda? i read in an article (was it here?) that apparently, according to these books, after jesus' second coming the secretary general of the UN is the antichrist? is ban ki moon aware of this?

super sad statements made to me by people who have no idea how sad they sound

i think this is going to be an ongoing series of posts. i used to post about awkward moments at work, but they've not occurred as much of late. not sure why. stockholm syndrome? drinking the kool-aid? who knows. i hesitated with this line of posts at first because i thought, in one of my more paranoid states, that omg a) people at work is going to read this, b) they are going to recognize themselves and c) be upset with me.

well, let's hope (a) never happens, shall we? okay.

this guy i work with and his wife just had a baby recently. i knew he'd been working a lot so i said to him, "oh, i bet you don't get to see your new baby much, eh?" he actually said to me in response, "yeah, it's true. but i tell myself that she [Ed note: the baby, not the wife] doesn't know the difference yet."

and this one comes courtesy of "anonymous": this partner at his firm was walking with his kid down the hall in the office and the kid says, "daddy, how come you live here?" so the partner, without missing a beat points to anonymous's friend (who regularly works around the clock) and says, "i don't live here. he lives here."

ps if you can come up with an apt photo for this line of posts, lemme know.

l. paul, you gotta lotta splainin to do

la latina and i, misguidedly, find l. paul bremer rather handsome, despite his complete shadiness. what the hell is wrong with us?

anyway, has he been back in iraq? where did all the money go??

for the awkward moments of our lives...part 3

they recently renovated my floor and have begun hanging up "artwork," i.e. things that resemble castoffs from a hotel auction from the 80s. photos of car interiors, paintings that look like those fruitopia ads from the mid-90s, pastel renderings of benign new york landscapes. heinous stuff.

i was walking down the hall with someone who's more familiar with these parts and i said, "[redacted], can't we get better artwork around here?" he replies a few seconds later, "E, you said it right in front of the woman in charge of buying the art."