In case you’re not already reading datingisweird.com (which is absurd to even consider), you’ll want to check out this post from yesterday.
It’s my assertion that single people are single for a reason but with comments by people who don’t know me and can therefore call me names. If you thought the comments on it here were fun, imagine how much better they are when left entirely by snide single people. Yay!
I mean, not that anyone could beat your comments, you clever, clever darling babies. <3
The man said, “Get ready for the show!” and began rhythmically pounding the seat beside him with his hands. Two little girls on the seat across from him hopped up and gyrated down the empty aisles in matching green-striped t-shirts, hands on their hips and in their braided hair. Their skills were straight out of a hip-hop video, and I was embarrassed for them when their dad had to tell them not to move so sexily on the metal poles in the center of the train.
Read the rest here, IF YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE IT.
“More to Love” is my favourite/most hated show on television right now. I was torn between it and “NYC Prep” on the first Tuesday night it aired, but after watching 20 fat women cry nonstop for an hour, I knew I made the right choice, and I’ve been making it every week since.
I’m not a person who believes weight has anything to do with love. I’m not thin, and I’ve loved and been loved in return by all sorts of men, thin and not-thin themselves. (But mostly thin, because fat people are gross. (Kidding.)) These big-boned ladies all truly believe, though, that their one shot at love is this 26-year-old spike-haired real estate developer who likes to eat and doesn’t want a woman who watches her weight.
And they all cry about it throughout every episode. Their skinny friends get hit on at bars. They’ve never had serious boyfriends. They’ve never been on a single date. And there’s a reason for that.
If you’re single–if you’re perpetually single–and you don’t want to be, there’s something wrong with you. There, I said it. Don’t blame it on men being superficial. Blame it on you being a crappy date. Unless you live in the middle of smalltown Iowa, in which case I’m a little more sympathetic, but seriously, it’s probably still your fault, especially if you’re one of those assholes who scorns Internet dating. Whenever I hear some fat chick say, “I have no idea why I’m alone!”, I want to go through a laundry list for her, because it’s always so obvious. Even the guys who are willing to look past your weight can’t deal with your jacked-up face, your total lack of humor, your junior high vocabulary, and your skank clothes.
For instance, not a single one of the women in the two episodes of “More to Love” I’ve watched has said something funny. In fact, when Luke asks each of them in turn if they’ll wear the ring that signifies their staying on the show another week, each of them in turn says, “Of course.” I’ve been waiting for even just one of them to say “bitch, please” or fake like they don’t want it only to throw their arms around him and snatch it out of his hands a second later, but they’re all so worried about losing their “one” chance for “true” love that all behave like robots. Whiny, sobbing robots.
My boyfriend called the show depressing, but I really delight in watching these pathetic women mope around. None of them are actually the least bit interested in this guy specifically, as far as I can tell, and are only interested in him being interested in them. And he’s too pleased with the opportunity to grope 20 fatties to care. I mean, MAYBE the producers are hiding the parts where Luke and the ladies have deep, meaningful conversation about politics and religion, but it seems like the most intimate information the group has about Luke is the name of his dog.
I had a long-distance relationship like this once: the guy would want to talk about how interested he was in the sinking of the Titanic every single time he called me–I mean, he really, really loved the Titanic–and I just wanted to talk about how in love we were. But I realized I was using him, whereas these girls are planning their weddings.
And the worst part is that they make absolutely none of this secret to him. They tell him that they’d pursue their music careers if only they had better images. They tell him that they’re virgins. They tell him, “You’re my first second date.” And he uses these confidings as teachable moments where he gets to build their self-confidence by calling them sexy and telling them to believe in themselves. And they cry.
It’s pretty clear that in the end, Luke’s going to pick the thinnest/prettiest girl in the house regardless of her personality, and all the other girls who were using his choosing her as sole proof that there’s hope for fat girls are going to kill themselves.
I finally asked my boyfriend why I’ve been able to find love when these women haven’t, and he said, “Because you’re not psychotic.” Win.
(Also check out Noel’s thoughts on the show.)
An Examiner article that’s about Michael Jackson simply to get Google hits.
A donuts4dinner post that you know I wouldn’t have to link to you if you’d just subscribe to my feed over there. Just sayin’.
A restaurant review that includes kiwi sorbet with kiwi seeds in it whoa.
An Examiner article about Manhattan as a parking lot.
So I’m walking up 43rd Street after work to Kamran’s apartment the other day. I usually walk up 41st, but I’m feeling lazy, and the incline on 43rd is much smaller. There’s an old woman on the sidewalk twenty feet ahead of me, and I’m thinking about how sad it is that her body has really lost all signs that it was ever attractive. I realize that a simple underwire bra would make all the difference in the world in keeping her boobs from making a slope down to and then blending in with her protruding belly underneath her grey t-shirt, but I suppose you get to an age where even having your Victoria’s Secret shipped to your home in an unmarked box seems like too much to bother with.
I’m feeling a little sorry for her, because you know her husband ran off with some Russian hussy years ago, and she’s really let herself go with only the dog at home to judge her. But then, just as I’m two feet behind her, she turns on her wooden cane and begins walking up the sidewalk. I swear this happens to me all of the time. The slowest-moving people–the gimpy, the elderly, the crippled–they all suddenly decide they have somewhere to be as soon as I’m about to pass them. A man who’s been wheelchair-bound for fifty-three years will without warning gain feeling in his legs the moment he sees the whites of my eyes simply to block me from walking by him. It’s incredible.
So I’m slugging along behind ol’ Droopy Boobies, thinking that I don’t really have anywhere to be and won’t bother her to move aside for me, when she starts talking to this guy ahead of her on the sidewalk. He’s perched on one of the low fences that surrounds all of the trees in Kamran’s well-manicured neighborhood, tapping something on his cellphone. He’s fit and in his late 30s, dressed in a clean t-shirt and jeans, with nicely styled hair that’s tossing in the breeze. I figure they must know each other.
Until I hear that the old hag is saying to him, “These goddamned illegal aliens. They move here and steal our jobs and then sit around on their fat asses talking on their phones all day.”
I’m . . . surprised. This man is very much white, very not fat, and entirely American-looking. And it’s nearly 6:30 p.m., so I’m not exactly sure why she’s upset about him not working. Although I suppose that when your life revolves entirely around the administering of your daily suppository, you lose track of time.
Just as she steps beside him, she says, “Illegal aliens think they can sit on their fat asses and we won’t notice,” but he doesn’t even look up. I take that moment to pass by her and hold my BlackBerry–which I happen to have in my hand, because I’m obsessed with it–up in the air so she can see it and press a bunch of buttons to spite her.
I’m walking fast enough to be a few feet in front of her at this point, so she hollers, “Fatass!”
I never want to be one of those people who thinks she’s better than the place she came from. I want to always think Columbus and the village (seriously, village) where I was raised in Ohio are unbeatable.
For the longest time, I fought the word soda. I was raised on pop, and soda sounded funny to me every time I heard it used. No matter how many times people told me I gave myself away as a Midwesterner, I refused to switch. Why should I feel bad about where I’m from?
But after about a year of living here, I found myself saying soda automatically. And when I went home to visit and my best friend said pop to me, I accidentally made fun of her without even realizing what it meant for my heritage.
Seriously, though, this picture from my last trip home still cracks me up:
Not only does it say pop, but it only costs 35¢! How adorable, right?
I’m still not buying into other NYCisms like stand ON line (instead of IN line) or call OUT sick (instead of IN sick), though. I still have some standards.
(Also.)
I love Kelly and her adventures in independence over at Bachelor Girl, but I’ve always thought people who live alone are crazy. Whereas I seem to go home to Ohio once a month these days, Kamran only gets to visit his family in California about twice a year because of work and law school, so I’m not used to being here without him. When he scheduled a trip home for this past weekend, this whole week, AND next weekend, I wasn’t sure I’d last ’til this morning. And then my best New York friend, Beth, announced that she was leaving for vacation, too. And then my best best friend, Tracey, announced that she and her husband were going to visit their in-laws and wouldn’t be available to chat. THE HORROR.
Kam and I took a cab to the airport on Saturday morning, where we enjoyed hot dogs wrapped in soft pretzel material, and then I creepily watched him go through the security line and waved to him and blew kisses every time he dared to look out of the corner of his eye to see if I was still there. And then I rode the bus and the subway back into Manhattan (because I’m cheap), decided I might as well cook for myself without someone there to take me out to dinner, and actually bought groceries for the first time in . . . so many months I can’t count. It felt terrible.
Other Things I Did Without Kamran Here to Entertain Me
1) Went to the gym on both Saturday and Sunday, allowing me to watch a whole lotta “Lost” season 5 on my iPod, and allowing me to grow to hate Ilana even more.
2) Whipped up some vanilla pudding, decided it was too plain, and swirled powdered Nesquik in for flavor. Don’t tell Kamran.
3) Watched the episode of “Degrassi: The Next Generation” where Alli decides to give it up to Johnny in the back of a van down by the ravine, only to discover that she totally wasn’t ready. When she confides in Johnny that she’s not going to DO IT again for a long time, he admits that he was a virgin, too. SWOON!
4) Cooked pasta, made pasta sauce, seasoned sausage to put in it and DID NOT HATE IT.
5) Saw District 9 with Jack, Eric, Eric’s girlfriend Christine, Nik, Jack’s friend Chris, Chris’s sister Vanessa, and Jack’s friend Andrew. Jizzed in my pants a little the first time we saw the aliens up in the ship.
6) Didn’t leave Kamran’s apartment building a single time on Sunday, but did leave the apartment itself to get a bag of Doritos (Cool Ranch, of course) from the convenience store downstairs. Planned to finish them all myself just to spite Kamran but sadly couldn’t hang.
7) Began watching season 2 of “Mad Men” without ever watching season 1. Felt like I may have missed out on some important stuff–Joan being a bitch, Peggy giving her baby up, a whole lot of women cheating on their husbands–but enjoyed it nonetheless.
8.) Caught up on “Big Brother 11″, which is not embarrassing, and I refuse to feel guilty about it.
9) Realized that watching so much television is a little bit sad without Kamran there to make me feel like I’m being social.
10) Slept diagonally across the bed and found myself waking up with a smile on my face. (Sorry, Kam.)
So all in all, it wasn’t the worst weekend of my life. However, in less than 48 hours, I must have texted Kamran 15 times to tell him I missed him, so it’s probably safe to say I couldn’t make a lifelong go of this. And here’s the great thing about being alone for a week versus being alone for life:
When a nerdy-yet-pompous grad student across from me on the train in Queens started telling his nerdy-yet-pompous friend about a dream he had where he was making out with some chick (who was no doubt too hot for him) at some party (that he’d never actually be invited to), I got to put on my headphones and let Hot Hot Heat block them out instead of hanging onto their every word while trying to decide if giving up all of my self-worth was worth it for a date with one of them.
I’ve only seen this guy a few times before on the bus, but I’ve felt sorry for whoever was next to him every time. He’s The Talker, the stranger who doesn’t shut up and doesn’t realize that everyone’s secretly plotting his demise. The first time I saw him chatting some lady’s ear off in the front seat while she sat flipping through a magazine, I thought, “What a jerk! How could she just ignore him like that?!”
But then he came and sat by me on Tuesday. I didn’t recognize him at first and didn’t think anything about it when it took him an abnormally long time to board the bus because he was talking to the driver. People ask the driver questions all the time. But then I watched as he talked to apparently no one all the way back the aisle to the seat right next to me. I quickly considered my options and decided that moving away was ruder than simply pretending I didn’t hear him, so I stared straight ahead until he was silent.
A minute later, he looked over at me and said perfectly-sanely, “Excuse me, I hate to bother you, but do you know how many stops it is to 6th Avenue?” Thinking I had misjudged him and that it was safe, I answered, “About five.” And then the floodgates opened.
Kamran’s about to start his third year of law school, and I’m ten seconds from breaking up with his ass every weekday when I find myself alone at his apartment, eagerly awaiting his arrival instead of going out with my friends or spending time with my roommate, because I’m so pathetically in love with him. So after two years of begging him to get a DVR so I’ll have something to hold me between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., he finally went and did it two weekends ago.
My best friend’s husband said, “Welcome to 2002!”, but I’m going to ignore the naysayers and maintain my amazement at how new and different life is when I don’t have to plan it around TV. It used to be that if I wanted to spend time at my own apartment, where there’s neither cable nor Internet because my roommate is such a cheapskate, godlovehim, I had to go on a night when there wasn’t anything on cable. And there’s always something on cable, you know? So I basically never spent any time at my own apartment.
But NOW . . . well, I’m still not going to spend any time at my apartment, but now it’s because there’s always something on the DVR. Of course, up until last night when we realized that only one episode of “Colbert” was being saved, I apparently didn’t know how to use the thing, but that’s not the point. I still have enough “Mad Men”, and Kamran enough “Sopranos” to last a lifetime. I would have probably never seen the last episode of “The Sopranos” without the DVR, actually. And now I realize why everyone was so up in arms about it.
And the pausing live TV! Kamran and I do laundry every Sunday night, and we always end up putting it off too long, so by the time we really have to do it or sleep on dirty sheets, we’re smackdab in the middle of some show we love and have to race down to the basement of his building to the laundry room during commercials. But two weekends ago, in the midst of the “Next Food Network Star” finale, we simply paused the show and carried the laundry down at our leisure.
It’s weird how the lack of commercials really changes TV-watching, though. There’s no painful anticipation of what’s to come now that segments are mere seconds apart, much like watching entire seasons of “Lost” in one sitting. And shows like “Project Runway” that feel the need to repeat whatever was said right before the commercial break when they return suddenly seem extra-ridiculous. However, I’m really pleased at how my fast-forwarding timing skills are progressing.
The one unexpected negative side effect is that now Kamran knows he can have my undivided attention when he comes home from work. It used to be that when he told me he was leaving the office at 6:30 but actually left at 7:45, I could shush him when he walked in the door due to the important nature of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey”. But now that he knows I can pause, he spends hours telling me whatever patent-related nonsense he feels like. Oh, the horror.
Although I absolutely can’t get behind Charlyne Yi’s weak chin, there’s one reason I’ll be seeing the movie Paper Heart, and it’s this clip from the trailer:
I am a hot wing fiend. But only boneless wings. And only the ones at Applebee’s, really. Sitting in a booth with my best friend in Ohio during Applebee’s happy hour, when a basket of wings will run you $3.50, is my idea of heaven. I once knew someone who worked at Applebee’s, and when I asked him if he could get me a bottle of the buffalo sauce, he told me it comes in a 20-pound bag. And while that should be disgusting, it only made me love it all the more.
However, there’s one thing that may keep me from ever eating a buffalo wing again, and it’s these photos of my friends Jack and Jeff from our recent outing to Leisure Time Bowl. This should not in any way dissuade you from going to Leisure Time, though it may dissuade you from keeping your lunch down:
I pass these barriers every day after work on my way to Kamran’s apartment, and I never could figure out why they creeped me out until I realized the other day that
ONE OF THEM IS CALLING MY NAME. Albeit backward.
I write my roommate a note telling him that I need some monies for our bills, that I’d like him to return the lamp he inexplicably removed from our living room, and that the haircuttings on our bathroom floor are a little bit creepy:
He returns my note with the following:
We really have an ideal relationship, don’t you think?
I host my main blogs on Bluehost, use the WordPress blogging platform, and love both of them. However, it takes a little work to set up a self-hosted blog, so when I wanted to start a side project recently, I chose Blogger for its supposed ease of use.
I purchased my new domain from Bluehost and found Google’s directions for using a custom domain with Blogger. They seemed fairly simple at first, but when I actually tried to follow them, I found that they didn’t make a bit of sense to me.
And so I present my own directions for using a Bluehost custom domain with a Blogger blog:
1. Log in to your Bluehost account and scroll down until you see Register Domain.
2. Choose your new domain and purchase it as an add-on. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.
3. Click on the Help tab in the upper-righthand corner of your screen.
4. Choose Open a Ticket from the Main Menu on the lefthand navigation.
5. Click the radio button for the first option, A Record/MX/Cname Changes.
6. The ticket form will automatically load. Fill in your e-mail address, your full name, and the domain you’ve just purchased. (Example: newdomain.com)
7. In the Message box, write something like the following:
Hello Support,
My main domain is [olddomain.com], and the last 4 digits of the credit card I used to purchase my domain are [- - - -].
Please make the following changes for me:
A record: [newdomain.com] –> 216.239.32.21, 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21, 216.239.38.21
CName: [www.newdomain.com] –> ghs.google.comThanks,
Your Name
In my case, olddomain.com would be unapologeticallymundane.com, because that’s the original domain I purchased with Bluehost in 2008. www.newdomain.com would be the one I recently purchased for my side project.
You can change the www.yourdomain.com to blog.yourdomain.com or whatever subdomain you may have set up with Bluehost. Google’s instructions tell you that you must use a subdomain, and I had no idea that www is considered a subdomain at first.
8. Submit the form, and in a couple of hours, you should hear back from Bluehost at whatever e-mail address you entered at the top of the form to open a ticket.
9. Bluehost says the domain will be ready in 1-4 hours. If you’re impatient like me, you’ll begin checking after about 5 minutes, but it’s best to wait the full 4 hours if your Blogger is already up and running and has visitors.
10. Log in to Blogger and go to Settings –> Publishing –> Switch to Custom Domain –> Switch to Advanced Settings.
11. Type in your domain name, complete with www or blog or whatever subdomain you chose. Type in the word verification at the bottom of the page, hit Save Settings, and you’re finished!
It seems easy now, but I had no idea if I was doing anything right the first time around. Please leave a comment if you have any questions; I won’t judge.
After work the other day, I was heading to my boyfriend’s apartment and exited the train at Grand Central. There was a throng of people gathered at the staircase on the platform, being inconsiderate to each other as usual. A man with a guitar case had been waiting by the stairs for someone to let him up for as long as I’d been waiting patiently toward the back of the mass, so when it was my turn to step onto the first stair, I held back for a second and motioned for him to go ahead. He smiled and thanked me, and I was left feeling like the greatest American hero, as my boyfriend says.
Then, on my way up the staircase from the station to the street, a woman was coming down on the wrong side. I find that sort of thing ridiculous in normal polite society, but in a city where we’re all two centimeters from colliding with one another, it’s totally inexcusable. I was going to give her the what-for, but then I thought, “Hey, it’s raining, and if I’m nice to the guitar guy AND the wrong-side lady, my karma will be off the chart.” Not that I believe in that sort of thing.
But as soon as I was through congratulating myself on being a true humanitarian, the woman thrust her Strawberry shopping bags in front of her, lifted her chin, and said haughtily, “Clear the way! Clear the way!”
She’s lucky she didn’t say it ten seconds earlier, because you can bet I would’ve planted myself right in front of her until the smell of the halal cart outside the station became too tempting around nightfall, but as she was right beside me by that point, I could only say, “You are a bitch!”, but she kept on walking down the stairs, and people kept on moving out of the way for her.
Funny that the only time New Yorkers are nice, it’s for people who don’t deserve it.
(also posted on Examiner) (who pays me when you read my articles, I should mention) (in case you were thinking about not clicking on that link)
This morning when I left Kamran’s apartment, there was an adorable little squirrel hanging off the side of one of the trees near the garden outside of his building. It scampered off as soon as it saw me, and just as it hit one of the top branches, something plopped down onto my head and shirt.
Figuring it was water, I kept walking, but then I remembered a day a couple of years ago when I walked under a scaffolding near Kamran’s building just as the construction crew dropped some planks onto it from above. I had felt some debris shower down on me but hadn’t thought to look at myself in the mirror to check on the damage. After my 20-minute subway ride to work, some visitors were already waiting outside of the office door, so I got them settled in and then finally caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom and realized that I’d had black dust all over my face the entire time from the scaffolding.
So to be safe this time, I felt around on my shirt for the water spot and came up with a fingerful of bird poop instead. I stopped where I was, popped open my compact, and found the splotch of it in my hair, as well. Now, bird poop in my hair doesn’t really gross me out or anything like it should. Somehow Kamran dropping his feces in my hair or something seems weird, but bird poop in a walking city seems inevitable. The problem is that I don’t have normal girl hair that would allow me to simply pull the stuff out of my straight, flowing tresses; I have very soft curly hair that I’m basically afraid to touch for fear of making it uncurl–as someone once told me it would as a kid–and after living with curly hair for a lifetime, I would have no idea what to do with straight hair.
So I sort of patted the poop out the best I could, hoping that the remaining golden streak made it look as if I’d gotten highlights. And I went on to work, rubbing the poop between my fingers as I walked to dry it out. After riding the train and talking to a couple of my co-workers, I sat down at my desk and got out a mirror to reapply some lipgloss. And that’s when I saw that I had black hairs all over the side of my face. The side that I hadn’t looked at when I was searching for bird poop. I couldn’t remember walking under any scaffolding this morning, so I retraced my steps in my mind and realized that shortly before I said goodbye to Kamran this morning, I saw him trimming his sideburns in the bathroom mirror. Which means that when he hugged me before I walked out the door, he slathered my face in hair and didn’t bother to tell me.
This is going to be quite a day.
On Saturday evening, Kamran and I reached the M15 stop at 42nd Street to see we’d just missed the bus. As we were the only ones at the stop, we entertained ourselves with rhyming games and musings about what sort of present we could buy at a convenience store to bring to the Williamsburg birthday party we were on our way to.
After a few minutes, a woman with a very stylish short haircut made her way down the street and politely stood a few feet away from us to wait. An older gentlemen in a pink button-down dress shirt and an orange tie came and stood beside her a few minutes later. A couple of grannies rolled up together a second later and pretended to be looking at the map on the bus stop pole, but it was pretty clear they were just trying to ditch us to be first into the bus, so Kamran told me to be wary of getting hit over the head with a purse or walking cane when the bus pulled up.
We all spotted the bus as it popped over the hill at 43rd Street at the same time, and the unease in the air was palpable as we all prepared ourselves for the inevitable chaos of boarding. Usually I appreciate it when the bus driver doesn’t pull all of the way up to the pole that marks the stop, because the people standing there are rarely the ones who have been waiting the longest, but this driver didn’t pull up far enough.
He stopped right in the middle of the crowd, leaving us to separate ourselves into two groups on either side of the door. On the left side was the nicely-haircutted woman, the old man in pink and orange, and this other man who had appeared out of nowhere in rolled-up jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt. On the right was the potentially-lethal pair of ladies, Kamran, and me.
Haircut went into the bus first, which was, you know, incorrect but acceptable, considering that she arrived shortly after we did and perhaps didn’t remember who was there first. I took a step forward to make it clear that I was next, and I know Sleeveless T-Shirt saw me, because he stepped forward after I did and then looked at me for my next move
My next move, of course, was to step onto the bus. Apparently he wasn’t pleased with this checkmate, though, because he took advantage of the extra-wide doorway and clambered onto the bus right beside me. I was totally weirded out. I mean, I may curse about people who hurry past me into the bus during rush hour, but this was 8 p.m. on a weekend. And it was a double-long bus, so there was no chance there wasn’t going to be room for him. Plus, I was there first.
I didn’t even have a chance to think about what to do. What came naturally was to shove all 145 pounds of him back out of the bus, all the while saying, “Oh, excuse me! Oh, pardon me!” in my sweetest voice. The adrenaline rush was insane.
But as fun as that was, the greatest part of the situation was that the guy then turned to Kamran, evidently unaware that we were together. (Or aware and unafraid.) He made a face of incredulity and yammered something unintelligible that was clearly meant to convey how much he wanted me dead. Kamran, of course, didn’t sock him in the jaw as he should have, but he did politely remind him to mind the other people in line first next time.
(also posted on Examiner)
Tracey and I philosophize about whether or not I can actually label an Asian guy on the bus as Asian:
Seriously, how many times a day do you think about this? I never had to worry about there being anything but white folk in my stories back when I lived in Ohio.
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