Accidentally pro-ana?

Just a question: has anybody else noticed that people who are recovering from anorexia frequently get terrible acne all over their faces? I haven't known many anorexics, but the ones I did know, their skin was fine until they started eating again, and then they got major acne. I did a Google search for "anorexia acne correlation" but only got that sometimes people become anorexic because they have terrible acne. Has this really never been studied? I feel like it should have been - everyone's always going on about how you live longer on a calorie-restricted diet, so someone must have noticed that restricting calories affects skin. Or did I imagine it? Maybe it's just that you're not supposed to go up to a recovering anorexic and say, "Oh, I'm glad you're feeling better, sweetie, but your skin used to be so much better..."

On the futility of trying to reason with a boy

Yes, this is another entry condemning boys! I never tire of these; I doubt you do either. This one has to do with boys and relationships, specifically, their reluctance to enter relationships. As I see it, being in a relationship is in their best interests sexually: they get more sex than if they were single, the sex is kinkier, they don't have to work for it, and if they have sexual problems, women will help them work through those problems rather than never speaking to them again. Plus, being in a relationship is just nice; it's nice to be in love and have someone love you, nice to be able to count on someone to help you out when you need it, nice to be able to tell your family, "I found someone," unless your father is Hugh Hefner, in which case I suppose he'd be disappointed. I guess this is why I like older guys: they're willing to be in relationships and they are, on average, less retarded. The problem is that if you fall in love with one of them, you start worrying about them dying before you... and that when you're with them, you look like a hooker. I guess the problem is that boys think that if they commit to a relationship, they won't be able to fuck all the supermodels that will start to approach them. Whatever. Boys are so irrational. Only a retard would trade constant, kinky sex for the remote possibility of convincing someone else to have sex with him. I can't say this really upsets me too much, except in the sense that stupidity is always frustrating, even if it doesn't directly affect me.

Spending time with my relatives in Connecticut wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. My dumb bitch cousin started talking about how she wanted a lap band; I guess she knows that without a nice bod, she's useless. But I also want a lap band, so I really shouldn't be condemning her for that. Then my other dumb cousin described going to college in the South. Apparently, he's been shooting squirrels and eating them. He got himself a BB gun and then decided that the best place to hide it from his mom was... under her sofa. The cousins I actually like didn't show up; they're upset that their parents are getting divorced and they're avoiding their dad. It turned out my uncle's been having an affair for many, many years, and the woman finally decided to leave her husband for my uncle. Damn, Uncle Jon is a homewrecker. But this divorce is actually working out pretty well for me - I got presents from both my aunt and my uncle this year. When in doubt, cash is always a nice gift.

The Christmas Tradeoff

The Christmas tradeoff is where in order to get presents, you have to visit your relatives, and good LORD I hate visiting my relatives. First, my dumb bitch cousin starts talking about McCain and she's all like, "His wife is sooooo put together. I hate Obama. I mean, I have to vote for my best interests, right?" like, bitch please, your fiancee just lost his job at Lehman Brothers and had to take a sucky JP Morgan job for half the money, and she keeps going on and on about her Hawaii wedding and, "Whenever I go to the Four Seasons in Hawaii, they bring me mini Rice Krispies treats as I sun myself on the beach," and "My housekeeper is the cutest little thing! Her name is Naire but we call her Narnia! I think she's Brazilian or something." She's so fucking noveau riche it makes me gag, and you six readers all know I destroyed my gag reflex years ago. I don't hate her, mainly because I never have to see her, but when we do collide, it's exhaustingly annoying.

Anyway, my cousin was obnoxious, but what my aunt did was bizarre. My brother and sister and I were talking about how much we want Hirohito to go away and never come back, and my aunt gets red in the face and she's like, "It's hard for him! You're ganging up on him! He's in a foreign country and it's so hard," and all I could think was, If you want him, you can take him, but until then, you have no idea what you're talking about.

But enough with my stupid family stuff, tomorrow I get presents!!!!! Tradeoff worth it!!!

My Love Life, or The Opposite of Sex

Oh man, I forgot to write about my terrible date from last Wednesday! It was my own fault, really. Nobody wanted to hang out, so I went on Craigslist and found a guy who did. We went to a bar and it was okay, he was whatever, we had fun, it got to be 2:30 and I was like, OK, time to go home, and he was like, wait, I want to go to the Boiler Room and trade some Klonopin for cocaine, and I'd had a couple drinks and I knew I couldn't get myself home, so I was like, OK, and we went to the Boiler Room and I collapsed in this comfy leather chair and watched him approach guys and whisper in their ears. You'd think that in a gay bar, I could at least watch some cute guys making out, but they were all kind of fat and old and I found myself not aroused. And I tried picturing them doing it and everything. So that was pretty bad, being abandoned next to the bathroom in a gay bar while my date went around looking for cocaine. Then some guy came up to me and kissed me, just like that, without even saying anything, which was gross. He smelled bad and he made my mouth smell bad and I threw water in his face, but I don't think he got wet. I should have been more outraged, but really, I was just disgusted. Eventually my date came back and started begging me for $2 to buy beer and I was like, NO, I'M THE GIRL, and he was like, but I bought you all that alcohol before, and I gave up and I was like, just take a five from my purse, and he said he'd give me change but he didn't, he was like, I had to tip the bartender, blah blah blah, I'm stealing $3 from you. On the plus side, I met some very nice gay guys and they all said I was cute. I got one guy's name and I tried to find him on Facebook, but there were like a hundred people with the same name and I couldn't go through them all. (Aldo, if you're reading this, friend me!) The weird thing is, even though it was, objectively speaking, an awful date, I didn't really have a bad time. It was kind of an adventure.

Anyway, the dating gods made it up to me that Friday by giving me a good date with an interesting guy. I don't want to say much about it because I don't want to jinx it and also I don't know if he reads this blog and I don't want him to get a swelled head. It's important for boys to know their place.

The Vampire Who Captured My Heart and Bled It Dry

Mischa and I are writing a Twilight-esque young adult book (plot TBD), and as research, I just read the first 100 pages of Twilight. I know everyone hates it, and I know all the feminist blogs say it's disgusting, but really, I'm not hating it. That's not to say it's not a piece of shit. It reads like some seventh-grade brat got dumped and to soothe the terrible, terrible pain, she spent two days writing a story about a girl who has guys chasing her all over the place. So the writing's distractingly bad, but as you go on, it's less narrative and more dialogue, and Meyer's not terrible at dialogue. As for all the critics saying it's sending a terrible message to young women about how you should give up everything for a boy, I don't know. I only read the first 100 pages. But I'm not too worried. My impression is the only girls who are into this shit are the ones who would have let a boy run their lives even if they hadn't read this book. Is it wrong of me to dismiss an entire group of the young adult population just because they kind of suck? Creo que no.

This counts as my book review. Again, I'm sorry for the non-updating, but things have been going pretty well for me lately, and I don't want to jinx them by gushing.

Cabbies

I haven't been writing much lately. It's because I'm translating something that may be published and I don't want to jinx it by talking about it, and it's basically all that's on my mind. I keep picturing myself being interviewed, even though I don't think anyone interviews translators. But maybe...

You meet the nicest cab drivers in New York. The other day, I had this Bangladeshi cab driver who was telling me all about relationships. He was like, "Marriage... is like quitting smoking. If you don't really want to succeed, you won't." I thought that was actually pretty smart. The last cab driver I had gave me some pamphlets on Jesus and Islam, and I read them when I was on the toilet. The thing about these pamphlets you get is that they try to convince you to join their religion with evidence that it's the real thing, but their evidence is always from their holy book. It's like, this is your proof? This does nothing for me.

Travel: Bratislava, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg, Barcelona

I'm going to continue with this travel stuff, but I'm not going to put in so much detail anymore. It's exhausting and it kind of showcases my no-life, which is not something I'm looking to make public. Anyway.

Bratislava
We were in Bratislava for a total of about 6 hours, so there's not much to say. I never felt very comfortable, but in fairness, that's really because my sister's boyfriend told me that it was super-scary. He travels a lot for fencing and apparently he went to Bratislava with his dad and his black friend and people were really unfriendly because they hate Jews and black people, and they had to bribe a lot of people to not get killed, and the police were unhelpful. The truth is that I think he always stays in the shadiest neighborhoods, and that's why he's always meeting unsavory characters. He told me Budapest was the sketchiest city he'd ever been to, and I was like, "Okay, well, what should I avoid when I'm there?" and he was like, "Well, if you see a hotel with a whole bunch of prostitutes in front and guys approach you and ask if you want to bang one, that's where I was." I feel like if he avoided the red-light districts, he wouldn't be so nervous when he traveled.
Back to Bratislava. They didn't really accept credit cards anywhere, so that was kind of a drag. I bought a really cute puppet there. Eh, I'm going to say I liked it.

Prague
Prague is the most beautiful place I have ever been and I'm going to get married there. When we went, it mostly rained, so we ended up staying inside a lot, in cafes and stuff. Our favorite was Cafe Louvre, which had delicious food and pool, and we spent hours just holed up in there. They handed out maps at every hostel we stayed in, and these maps all had recommendations on them, so we would go to the recommended restaurants and they were mostly good. Sometimes they sucked, though, and we'd end up eating french fries or ice cream for dinner. Irma is a vegetarian and I don't really eat foreign meat, so we didn't have so many options. There was this one place we went where I asked how big an 800-gram plate of french fries was and the waiter was like, "Are you asking me how many fries there are on a plate? I don't have time to count." He gave us free ketchup, though. A lot of places make you pay. Based on my (scant) experience, in Europe, they're really reluctant to give you tap water, and if they do give it to you, it's in a shot glass, and there will be times when you're looking the waiter right in the eye and gesturing for the bill and he'll just keep talking to his friend.
As for sightseeing, I liked the Old Town Hall Tower with the astronomical clock on it. It reminded me of the campanile in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The synagogue package (you pay a certain amount and you can see like six Jewish sites) is a rip-off. We went on a walking tour, which was pretty cool. They also have really nice stuff to buy. I loooooooooved Prague.

Dresden
Another city we visited for like six hours. Dresden was pretty boring-looking, but I had a nice omelet. Like every street corner has a plaque that says, "This was destroyed during the war," and while I sympathize, I feel like at a certain point you have to stop harping on it or nobody will want to be your friend.

Berlin
Berlin is ugly as fuck. It was basically destroyed during the war and they rebuilt it in this depressing 1950s Soviet style. That being said, I had a good time there. Everyone talks about Berlin having a good vibe, and it's true. Irma and I spent a lot of time in pubs - the Olympics were going on and I loved watching them. Nobody else did, though. They were pretty into soccer.
We went on a bike tour of Berlin, which was really fun. I can't ride a bike, so the guide rode a tandem bike with me. That was special. We rode through this really pretty park, and that was nice, but other than that, everything we saw on the tour was like Holocaust memorials and East Berlin suckage. There was this patch of dirt in the middle of an apartment complex with this metal sign next to it and that was the Führerbunker. Irma thought they shouldn't point it out. I don't know.
We also saw prostitutes in Berlin! It was kind of sad, because we were sitting in an ice cream shop and eating and watching out the window, and there was this lady standing out there on the street with thigh-high boots and a short skirt and a fake-fur jacket and Irma was like, "I think that's a prostitute," and I was like, "No, she can't be, foreigners just dress weird," but we stayed in that shop for like 45 minutes and she just stood there, in the cold, approaching men and getting rejected over and over and over, and there was this group of high schoolers who went up to her and talked to her and then ran away laughing like a bunch of brats. She was not making any money.
If you go to Berlin, I would recommend not staying in the Odyssee Hostel because I got bedbugs there. These places wash the bedsheets, but not the quilts, and I itched for the rest of the trip.

Amsterdam
We weren't here very long and the entire time I was stoned, and when I'm stoned I just fall asleep, so I don't really know about Amsterdam. It was gorgeous, of course, and I think I would have appreciated that more if I hadn't been falling over myself.
We stayed near (or in?) the red-light district, so of course we saw prostitutes! They weren't depressing like the ones in Berlin. For one thing, they were indoors, and the other thing was that they weren't young or above-average pretty, and for some reason, I liked that. I will never forget this one woman's face, she was like 40 or so and her hair was dyed blond and she wasn't fat, but her skin was kind of jiggly, and she just looked totally comfortable hanging out in a window wearing lingerie. I think Amsterdam has laws against pimping, which is of course the way it should be.

Brussels
Brussels is gray and ugly. Everyone's into the waffles, but I don't eat waffles, so I don't know. We met some nice drag queens there, and an idiot diamond trader. I asked him if he traded blood diamonds and he was like, "You're ignorant. You're listening to the media," and I was like, "Okay, so, tell me how it really is. Who mines your diamonds?" and he was like, "I dunno." Retard. I had a good time, but I don't think I'll return.

Luxembourg
Clean, good food, etc. Basically, it's what you'd expect. Everything closes early.

Barcelona
It's a weird-looking place, but being there was fun. I guess the only problem I had was that their fruit is very bland. The ice cream was great, though, and there was some very imaginative food, which I liked, and of course we all love art. I doubt most people make it a priority to visit the zoo in Barcelona, but I had a great time there. We were sitting next to a white gorilla cage and this one gorilla got mad and charged us, then ran into the glass and fell back. It was cute. My dog does the same thing. I loved the Boqueria, which is this creepy outdoor food market with lots of pretty fruit stands next to skinned carcasses in giant ice-filled display cases. People brought their dogs, which made me miss my dog, because she would have loved it.

Anyway, that's where I went this summer, and that's my little travel guide. Maybe later I'll remember more stuff, but considering how many places I went in such little time, I'm going to give myself a pat on the back for remembering anything at all.

Travel: Budapest and Vienna

Last summer, Irma and I went on a Eurotrip. We visited 9 cities. I've decided to write mini-guides to each of these. Keep in mind that as the trip went on, I sort of lost energy, so I remember a lot more about the earlier countries than the later ones.

Budapest
Budapest kind of reminded me of Barcelona - lots of pretty old buildings alongside ugly 1950s-style buildings. If I were in charge of Budapest, which I'm sure will happen soon, I'd demolish all the ugly buildings (I guess the residents would have to just fuck off) and let trees grow there and soon it would be gorgeous.

Budapest Pros/things that were fun:

• The people were really friendly. If they see you looking lost or confused, they help you right away.
• Everyone in the service industry spoke English
• It's very walkable
• You don't find a lot of religious crap here. The statues are mostly of kings, not Jesus. I like that.
• The Semmelweis Medical History Museum was fun, and it was in this very pretty residential area. It's a small exhibit, but they've got some really gorey stuff, like a chastity belt and a birthing belt and weird models. You're supposed to pay to take pictures inside, but I did not, and this fat lady heard my camera snapping and ran up to me and I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, and then she started following me from room to room. How ghey. The best thing about this museum by far is that they act like the Hungarians basically discovered medicine, like, "And here is some medicine that the Hungarians invented, and these famous Hungarian doctors were the first to treat any disease ever." You find that attitude everywhere in Budapest, like, you go to the Hungarian National Gallery and it's all paintings by Hungarians I've never heard of (to be fair, I really don't know much about art), whereas our National Gallery has all kinds of crap in it. (Can you tell I like linking things?) Anyway, their outlook is hilarious and awesome and of all the countries we visited, Hungary had the foreignest people, which I feel is the whole point of traveling.
• The labyrinths were super-creepy, just like labyrinths should be. They're under the castle and they're all damp and gross and at the end, there's this imprint of a sneaker and a sign that says it's an ancient footprint that can teach us about early civilization and then another one that asks what people 2,000 years from now will think of us. It's supposed to be meaningful, but I don't care.
• Margaret Island was pretty and crawling with Goth kids. We took some boat ride along the Danube that ended up there, and along the way, we had these audio guides we were supposed to listen to, and the whole thing was this educational dialogue between a British woman (Pest) and a Hungarian man (Buda), and Buda kept saying stuff like, "If you look to the left, you will see a beautiful new building," and Pest was like, "Oh, Buda, you always go for the younger buildings when you and I have been together for so long," and it was hilarious and not very informative.
• Their money is pretty. I saved a 200-forint bill because the guy on it was cute.
  
• The Gellert Bath was so wonderful. They've got some thermal spring and the water just made me tingly all over. Irma and I went to the women-only baths and floated around naked, and I got the greatest massage where this lady kneaded my butt and played '90s dance music.

Budapest Cons/Things I didn't like

• Their subways are retarded. I can't believe how retarded their subways are. First of all, the one you take from the airport is in this building that looks like an abandoned warehouse. I was standing right in front of it and I had to ask someone where it was. And there are no signs.
• There are too many cars, compared to other cities. Maybe if their subway didn't suck so hard, people wouldn't need cars.
• The food is disgusting. They just cover everything in paprika. There is no reason for pea soup to be red. My advice is to never eat at a place that says Etterem on it. Those places serve Hungarian food, which is inedible. Only go to places that say Restaurant.
  
• Nobody goes out at night. Irma and I would be walking back to the hostel and the streets would be completely empty. Every now and then you'd run into a group of scary-looking men, but they never noticed us. They were pretty involved.
• They're not attractive. Even the kids aren't pretty.
• They try to rip you off all the time. Everyone assumes you won't do the conversion from forints to dollars because it's kind of awkward, something like $1 is equal to 350 forints, but if you actually do the math, you get overcharged all the time.

Vienna
I don't have nearly as much to say about Vienna. The food was delicious, it was very clean, I really liked the Imperial Crypt (it was underground and it had these really pretty coffins with skulls on them and it was totally creepy), a million people dressed as Mozart roamed the streets selling concert tickets, and the Imperial Silver Collection at the Hofburg Imperial Palace is astounding (what is a duck press?). Generally, though, Vienna was pretty boring. It was too clean.

Anyway, I'm pretty tired now, and I guess I'll continue this some other time, maybe.

Stuff I think is bullshit

Everywhere I go, they're selling stuff with Obama on it - photos, hats, T-shirts, etc. I don't know. It's like, we haven't seen what he'll do yet, and all this sending troops into Afghanistan business is bullshit, and his team of rivals seems like a disaster, and I just feel like everyone's going to get let down. I think before he was elected, he made a lot of deals with people, and a lot of what he may do as president could just be repaying his debts. I'm just not sure about this guy anymore.

Yesterday at dinner I asked what everyone thought about legalizing corporal punishment in schools and my brother was like, "You're going to give kids the electric chair for messing up?" He's so retarded. But his friends are worse. His bitch friend came over yesterday and asked me if all vaginas smell the same, like, don't talk to me about your stupid 17-year-old sex life. I also realized that I have no idea how other vaginas smell. It's weird to think that (heterosexual) men know more about vaginal diversity than I do.

Tutoring is super-depressing. On Tuesday I went over to this kid's house and I was like, "Okay, today we're going to do a little math and a little English," and he asked me, "What's English?" I was like, "What language do you speak?" and he said American. It was so weird. And there were roaches swarming all over his bedroom, coming in and out of dresser drawers, like, what could possibly be in a dresser drawer that would attract a roach? I had to leave early. I didn't even have him sign the paper that said I'd been there. It was just so gross. I can't handle roaches. I don't think I can help him. I don't think any tutor can give him long-term help. The only thing that could help is just completely changing his family. I think public schools should have mandatory parental volunteerism. There would be some parents who would skip it, but I think if you nag enough, a lot of them would show up. I think this kid's parents would show up. They want what's best for him, they just don't realize how to do it. I would be like the awesomest education reformer.

Buy me a chateau

Yesterday was a good DIY day. I made myself a face mask out of honey and crushed aspirin, which actually left my skin a lot smoother, and I cured my yeast infection with garlic. I don't know when the smell is going to go away. I personally don't mind it, but I don't know how strong the scent is. I don't know if people on the street can smell me. I guess it's okay. I don't go out much.

My one-woman retaliation

I'm turned off of alcohol and coffee. They know why.

As all five of you know, I barely have a job. This leaves me with a lot of free time on my hands. I spend a good portion of that time getting to know myself, but after a while, that gets old, and I turn to the internet for entertainment. I use StumbleUpon. Sometimes I stumble upon interesting stuff, like feminist blogs and celebrity gossip, but usually it's people's wedding photos or gardening tips. Lately I've been getting a lot of photos of naked women, though, and it annoys the shit out of me, so I spent most of my morning finding pictures of sexy guys and adding them to my favorites. It's sort of an if you can't beat them, join them thing, like how I started calling all men "boy" because I don't think they'll ever stop calling adult women girls. I wonder what would happen if all women did this. Chances are, boys (heh) wouldn't care. But maybe...

The criminal element

So I applied for this private tutoring job on Craigslist and the guy said I got the job and I was really happy... but then he said he was going to Fed-Ex me a package of money and I'm supposed to give some to some guy in Florida, his son's nanny. My mother says this sounds like the work of the Russian Mafia but I don't think they're this clumsy. Who uses Craigslist to find a stranger to launder money for them? You always hear about people committing Craigslist crimes, but it seems like it would be so much easier to launder money and prostitute yourself in the real world, where you don't leave a paper trail. Anyway, I wrote back and said I didn't understand why he couldn't just give the guy the money himself and now I'm wondering if I should call the police. A part of me wonders if my fictional employer has a noble reason to filter money through me, like, maybe he's the one being victimized by some criminal element and he's just trying to save his family but nobody can know where the money went, so he needs to get a stranger to send it to kidnappers in Florida, et cetera. He could be a basically good guy who needed money and ended up getting sucked into something seedy. Or maybe he's a ruthless criminal mastermind. Whatever he is, using Craigslist really makes the whole thing much less cinematic, like, will the new gangsters wear sweatpants and live in their mothers' basements? I guess the way I should be looking at this is, At least someone wanted to hire me.

My weekly one-paragraph book review
Brave New World sucked.

A Japanese Thanksgiving

Things my brother has mixed up:
Jane Eyre and Jane Goodall
Bolivia and Bulgaria
Coup de grâce and coup d'état
Gestapo and gazpacho

Tomorrow is Hirohito's first Thanksgiving. At his first Rosh Hashanah he kissed the Torah, but this time there won't be any uppity religious folk to get all offended, so things will probably go better. Still, we're all surprised that he's still here. He was supposed to have moved on to another family a few weeks ago. Inexplicably, my dad wants to keep him. He's already talking about, "Well, in January we'll get Hirohito moved to the international school," like, January? We're keeping him until January? Ugh. This kid drinks my orange juice and eats my brother's curry and he always wants help with his homework when I'm watching TV and I think he's given up on ever learning English. His sporadic cultural mistakes aren't funny enough to justify how burdensome he is.

Mad in America

I didn't put up my weekly one-paragraph book review this weekend because I was hoping to have finished La heredera del mar by now. Unfortunately, I read Spanish very, very slowly, so no go, and I'll have to review a different book.

My weekly one-paragraph book review: Mad in America, by Robert Whitaker.
So, this is about how the mentally ill have been mistreated throughout American history. It starts with the basic 18th-century torture treatments (wet sheet packs, restraints, et cetera), then goes through EST and lobotomy, and ends with antipsychotic drugs. The author is pretty critical of all of these treatments - his argument is that the mentally ill should just be nurtured and cared for. I guess he has a point, but I feel like this whole book is very one-sided. For one thing, not everyone who got lobotomized became completely blorg, and I've read lots of personal accounts of EST that described it as very beneficial. He quotes Sylvia Plath's negative depiction of EST in The Bell Jar, but if you actually read the book, she goes on to say that the first one was just performed incorrectly and when it's done right, EST is just like going to sleep. I'm too lazy to find the quote. But I'm just arguing for argument's sake; nowadays, EST and lobotomies are mostly considered barbaric. My real problem is that Whitaker super-hates antipsychotic drugs. The first time I read his book, I was like, Wow, these medications are terrible, and I thought that until I talked to people who had first-hand experience with them. These people were definitely pro-medication. My conclusion is that Whitaker is being a bitch and he's not telling the whole story. That being said, I do think an integral part of recovery from mental illness is being treated with respect. I suppose he's right about that.

Of course, I really have no experience with psychosis, so it's entirely possible that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I may take a nap soon.

More periods, please

The strangest thing happened to me yesterday. I can't imagine what came over me.

I was in Barnes & Noble, in the medical section, reading the Jerome Groopman book (B+), and when I finished it, I was worrying about the length of time between my periods, if it was too long, and I picked up some gynecology handbook and looked up menstruation, and there was an entry for premature ovarian failure. The entry was about a paragraph long and not very detailed (I don't think it even listed symptoms), but I started freaking out, like, What if I have this? I'll never have kids. All the time I spend looking at baby clothes and thinking about babies and finding pictures of cute babies online, all of that will go from silly to tragic. I got myself so worked up, I thought I was going to cry in the middle of the bookstore. So I went to my gynecologist to set up an appointment. I wanted to see her that day, and when the secretary asked why, I told her the truth, and all the other secretaries turned around to look at me all agape and she was like, "Let me leave a note for the doctor to call you," which I think means, "I'm doing this to appease you, because I think you're insane."

My periods have always been kind of far apart (around 30 days), but for the past couple months they've been like 32 days apart and they last two or three days, and I know this is weird, but it just sort of makes me feel like less of a woman. All my friends are like, oh, you're so lucky, mine are every 28 days and they last like a week, but I don't feel lucky. I feel masculine. And of course I know that the period doesn't make the woman and I am a woman regardless of how frequent my periods are. I don't know why this makes me so upset.

And now no man will ever read this blog again because it mentioned periods.

Scraping the bottom of the job barrel

I got a job offer! Teaching English in Kiev! At first I thought that sounded promising, but then I Googled Kiev, and now I don't know. It turns out that they "think" the radiation from Chernobyl is no longer a threat (but you're still not supposed to drink the tap water unless it's been boiled - since when does boiling get rid of radiation?). It's also ugly as fuck and the country is experiencing major political upheaval. Plus, most of the Kiev tourism sites emphasize how hot and willing the women are, which is all well and good, except I'm not looking for a wife. On the upside, they mostly speak Russian, so maybe I could learn Russian. Probably the best way to get a legitimate job teaching English abroad is to take one of those TEFL courses and then let your language school place you somewhere. I'm very interested in Eastern Europe. Ever since I fell in love with Prague. (I know, Czechs tell you that they're part of Central Europe, not Eastern Europe, but there is no such thing as Central Europe. There's east and there's west. No matter what you call yourselves, you're still in the sketchy, discontent part of Europe. Embrace it.)

Monday Struggles

The New York City Health Department has created something called the Rat Information Portal, a website dedicated to rat control. You can find out if your neighborhood has a rat infestation problem by clicking on a map (ominously labeled RIP Viewer) that's supposed to show which buildings have been investigated. Chances are, if your building is so overrun with rats that the Health Department actually declares it a problem, you already know about it, but maybe this is for prospective home buyers. Anyway, I can't figure out how to work this map, because none of the areas I click on show any rats, even though I see them all the time.

It's over with Fatty and I think I'm going on a break from dating because it drives me crazy. So much deception, so many annoying habits that just get harder and harder to ignore, and in Fatty's case, so many violations of basic personal hygiene rules. It's a sacrifice, my dating sabbatical, because it's essentially taking a vow of celibacy, which I've heard can lead to psychosis. Luckily, I have a substitute: my Eroscillator, which, unlike a man, is consistently satisfying.

The All-Consuming Baby

Is it that time again? My weekly one-paragraph book review
Last week I read Tina Cassidy's Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. It made me visibly wince on the train, which may have freaked out other passengers, and even though I love babies that look like me, this book gave me a reason to seriously consider adoption. I don't plan to read a single book on childbirth while actually pregnant. Do those books actually prepare you, or do they just freak you out so much that you start clenching up every time you think about the baby coming out? Anyway, to sum up, this is an interesting but extremely graphic book.

I want a baby. They're cute, they've got great skin, they smell nice, they're cuddly, and if it's mine, it'll look like me. I want a boy and a girl and I already have names picked out and written down and someday, when I have a baby, the father can pick out a name off my list. I also have a list of possible middle names, but those are more flexible. I'm really looking forward to having babies, which is why I'm not reading Ms. Cassidy's book ever again.

Busy busy busy doing very little

I just finished another tutoring session with LE. He passed the math assessment, but had trouble with word problems because he can't read the questions. His mother is now walking with a cane. I was looking over the reading assessment and it struck me that the passage he really had trouble with was about some girl named Mona who's bad at drawing and throws a hissy fit over it, while he did pretty well on the sections about animals. Now, I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to put more stories about girls into the curriculum. They're trying to make it about things girls can relate to, like crying and art. A whole bunch of assholes think that there's some vast scholastic conspiracy against boys and part of the reason girls are graduating at a higher rate than boys is that boys can't comprehend stories about girls and they should only read about sports and barbecuing and such. I'd argue that maybe it's not the sex of the protagonist that's tripping kids up (I say kids instead of boys because I doubt that any child would find this story interesting); it's that the protagonist is a fucking brat who needs to get a grip, and stories like Mona's teach kids that girls are a bunch of crybabies who need constant reassurance.

Irma and Selina are sad because I haven't written about them yet. I've been friends with them since high school and we all decided to start blogs together. (We have a lot of free time because not one of us has a full-time job.) As a group, we enjoy Irma's mother's cooking, Selina's baby girl, brunch, and parties, especially those with alcohol. Don't worry, Selina has these strips that tell her if there's alcohol in her breast milk, and before she has any alcohol she pumps a couple bottles of clean milk for the baby (official name: The Baby), so everything's good. Having a baby has made Selina's breasts so nice, I'm contemplating having one of my own. The only downside is that even though they don't do much besides sleep and eat, they take up a lot of time (who knew?). Irma is currently spending a whole lot of time on her five hundredth novel, which is probably about me even though she says it's not. She and I go on many adventures, including our European adventure in August and our Bronx adventure in July.

I'm paying extra-special attention to police officers because I had a dream that I fell in love with one. He looked kind of like the guy who took Sean in on "Boy Meets World" - i.e. kind of cute but not really. I saw a whole bunch of police officers in Barnes & Noble today, but they were all ladies. Barnes & Noble is fun. I was reading about "the patient experience" in the medical section and some woman came along and she was like, "I'm looking for books on STDs. I want them to have really graphic pictures, because my daughter's been asking me about sex." At first I thought that was fucked up, but then I looked at the books she had already picked out and it was stuff about relationships and sexual fulfillment, which is pretty cool. Also, it's nice that this girl felt comfortable talking about sex with her mom. My mom has counseled me on sex twice. The first piece of advice she gave me was that you should always have sex with the person you're going to marry before you marry them to see if you're sexually compatible. The second was when I asked her if she'd ever had an orgasm and she said, "Who would have sex if they didn't?" Even though that put bad images in my head, I thought it was pretty awesome.

A bachelor's degree in Spanish qualifies me to give nutrition advice, right?

I never hung out with Bachelor #2 last night. He called, we talked, we didn't hang out, which is pretty cool, because it gave me a chance to catch up on Season 2 of "South Park" and eat Cheerios out of the box. You can eat an entire box of Cheerios and you still won't have consumed a whole day's worth of calories, but you will have gotten fiber and vitamins. That's a good tip, kids.

Last night I had my first assignment, this kid from Prospect Heights. He got a 47 on the reading evaluation, which is of course terrible, and I was talking to his mom about it and I was like, "He doesn't seem like he has a learning disability or anything, I think he just needs practice," and then I looked around and I was like, Hm, this house has no books in it. And his mom started talking about how she had lots of doctor's visits because of heart problems and how she was diabetic and got lightheaded a lot and her foot was kind of giving her trouble, and I thought, "Lady, you're five feet tall and you probably weigh 200 pounds. They are going to amputate the shit out of your foot." And I don't wish it upon her or anything, cause she's really nice and accommodating and she really cares about her kids, but it's like, I wish I could say, "You have health problems because you are fat. Your kid has trouble reading because he doesn't read. He doesn't have ADD, he just spends too much time watching TV and playing video games." But even if I said all that to her, it wouldn't make any difference, and who am I to give parenting advice? And she probably knows all of this already. It's just frustrating. These problems are so avoidable.

On a brighter note, I had feta salad for lunch today. It's delicious and in my head, it has less fat than regular cheese. You know how skinny those Greeks are.

Cross one out, move on to the next one

I've kind of got a date tomorrow, and it's not with Fatty. It's with Bachelor #2 from before. I told him I would date him and Fatty until I figured out which one I liked more, then that would be the one I'd go with. That's why he's taking me out instead of trying to get into my pants. Fatty knows nothing about this, and he's looking less and less appealing. He called me a few hours ago to tell me about his day, and apparently he spent a good chunk of it yelling at Best Buy employees and getting thrown out by security. The thought of security guards shoving a fat man out onto the sidewalk cracks me up, but you can't keep a man around just because his stupidity is entertaining.

So, yeah, tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Bachelor #2, who probably needs a new nickname, and we'll probably have a drink and talk about something stupid. He's got such a nice smile. He also has quite the reputation for being completely slimy. I hope I'm not playing mind games with him. He really doesn't deserve that, unless the rumors I've heard have any truth to them.

Santa says shape up!

Backstory: This year, my family has a sixteen-year-old foreign exchange student from Japan. We'll call him Hirohito for anonymity. A few weeks ago, he got in trouble for graffiti (read: writing his name on a building in chalk) when he went on a trip to see a waterfall. This is the letter we got from his grandparents:

"Just when I started to write a letter to you, I heard a kind of scandal caused by Hirohito. My daughter seemed to try to keep this shameful secret uninformed to us but as a bad news runs fast we couple got to know it. We have been greatly depressed to hear the news. I am guessing that Hirohito had been overwhelmed by the breathtaking scene of the waterfall so he might have lost himself and driven to leave his memory or true impression at some place around there. This is only our simple imagination because we don't know the details yet. But, of course such a mischievous and unethical conduct is never permissible. We are really ashamed of the incident and don't know how deeply we apologize to those people... Please accept our sincere apology for our grandson's careless conduct. We are thinking of sending a warning letter to him instead of a Christmas present and having him resolve to concentrate on his initial purpose."

Hirohito's been getting in a lot of trouble, mainly because my brother likes to demonstrate Asian Flush Syndrome to his friends. Still, I can imagine my parents' reaction to my brother writing his name in chalk on some Japanese building:
"Don't do it again. Here, we got you an iPod to replace the six that you lost."

Est. Dollar Value of a BA: $0

I submitted around fifteen resumes this week, some of them for jobs I'm actually qualified to do, and I got three responses, none of which led to interviews, which makes me think I may need to embellish my resume. "It says here you were a dancer for the American Ballet Theater." "Yes, that was after I finished up my MBA at Harvard." Seriously, some of the requirements these people have are retarded. Part of the problem is that I live in New York City and everyone is qualified, so they have to sift through applicants somehow, and of course the economy sucks right now, and then there is the fact that I don't try very hard.

In happier news, I do have a job now (it turns out I always had this job, it's just that things are kind of hectic for them right now and they hadn't gotten around to giving me any assignments, so I thought I'd been fired) and I start work on Monday. I also have my translation work, which is nice. But oh man, I want money. I will get money, by hook or by crook or by working. You'll see.

And now, for my weekly one-paragraph book review (this may or may not be weekly):
I just finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I'd read the short story version before and liked it, so I had high expectations, but they were shattered because this book sucks. For one thing, all the footnotes about Trujillo are distracting. Your readers will understand who he is from context, so stop treating us like idiots. Then you have this blatant misogyny, which every single character exhibits. That's another thing: all the characters are the same character, and they're all one-dimensional. And that's all fine, whatever, but this won a Pulitzer, and if this book deserves anything more than a spot on the $1.99 rack at Duane Reade, then my dog should get a Nobel Peace Prize for puking on the rug.
As a side note, I've heard that Mr. Diaz is a complete asshole. I can believe it. He certainly looks like one in the jacket photo.

Easy women get the best men

I can't believe I'm writing two posts in one day. I hope this doesn't become a regular thing. I just have to process this while it's still in my head.

I went to Bachelor #2's house tonight. (First mistake, I know. In December I learned that if a guy invites you over, he wants sex, but it's so difficult to remember, especially when it's raining and you want to hang out. Am I making excuses?) Inevitably, he tried to pull something, and I said no, and he asked why, and then I thought, why, indeed? I find him attractive, after all, and I'm not really dating SpongeBob XXXXXLPants, and it'd probably be fun, so why not? What I said was, "I don't want to sleep with someone if we're not in a relationship," and then I started wondering if every time I say that, I force somebody into a relationship they don't want to be in just so they can get laid. Is it better to just have sex right away and take the pressure off? After all, it's not like a guy is going to show you who he really is before you've had sex, so even if you think you're getting to know him, you're just getting to know whatever aspect of himself he thinks will most appeal to you. And does waiting encourage men to just stay with you because they want to get laid and not because they actually want a relationship? The most successful relationships my friends have had are the ones where they have sex on the second date. Do people wait just because they don't want to think of themselves as easy? Is it because they don't want to sleep with somebody and then end up not liking him and wondering, Why did I ever sleep with that douchebag? (That's actually my reason - how messed up is that?) Should we all be having sex on the second date?

Anyway, I did not have sex tonight, and it's probably for the best, because Bachelor #2 is kind of gross. An outside factor.

Why can't he just lose weight?

I feel a little bad for John McCain. Like, I hated everything he stood for and I support Obama, but McCain's just this little old man who was humiliated in front of the entire country and when he dies, he'll be this big famous failure. He seemed so hopeful. It's like when you go into a nursing home and there's someone waiting by the door and they're like, "My children are coming to see me today!" and then when you leave, they're still waiting. That's what his campaign reminded me of. Sarah Palin, on the other hand... I have no sympathy for her. She's a jerkface.

I may have to ditch Fattie for reasons besides his fat:
1. He's pretty lazy
2. He snores
3. He's basically half-deaf, so he never gets what I'm saying and he watches TV with the volume turned all the way up
4. He keeps saying really disgusting things and then he says he's kidding but he's probably not.
5. He turned his air conditioner on last night. Just open the window, retard, it's like 50 degrees out.
6. His apartment smells sort of like a sweaty vagina.
Oddly enough, though, the fat is growing on me. He's squishy and I like hugging him, but he keeps asking for sex and what do I say? "No, you're too fat"? Sometimes I feel these waves of tenderness for him - can I take those and turn them into sexual attraction? This is a bad situation. Why do I have such terrible taste? The thing is, I really have no taste. I've been thinking about the guys I've dated, and I don't have a type. All they have in common is that they've all got dark hair and with the exception of one, they've all been smokers. Short, tall, fat, thin, muscular, artists, professionals, Ivy League, community college, rich, poor, extremely poor, old, young, well-dressed, sloppy, pale, swarthy, American, foreign-born, smart, dumb, I've dated them all. I have no standards. I simply have no standards.

My civic duties

So, I had jury duty yesterday, and if I'd been a little more goal-oriented, I think it would have been a great place to meet men. There were at least four hotties, and two of them were definitely checking me out, but alas, nobody said anything. I found out their names and occupations and marital status during voir dire. They got picked. I was rejected. The judge asked us if we'd ever been the victim of a crime and I said that when I was four, my house was burglarized and even though the police knew who the perpetrator was, they did nothing to nab him, and then I got to go home. Other than the occasional cutie, jury duty is pretty annoying and people gave all kinds of excuses to get out of it. This one guy said he was a Moravian Christian and it was against his religion to pass judgment, but I googled Moravian Church and their website didn't say shit about jury duty. Plus, it seemed weird that a black guy was part of a Czech church, but I guess there are plenty of black Lutherans and Anglicans and whatnot. Another guy got out of it by saying he couldn't be impartial in a murder case because his cousin was awaiting trial for killing two people. Heh. I don't know if I'd admit something like that, or if I'd care if any of my cousins were awaiting trial. My cousins mostly suck.

Also, I had a super-fun time voting today. I got to wait in line and then pull a lever for Obama, then worry that I'd accidentally pulled the wrong lever, then not care because I live in New York and my vote doesn't really influence anything. Everyone says Obama's a shoo-in, but I prefer not to jinx things.

Chunkmonster

Okay, so, this is an odd topic to start with, but it's what's been on my mind, so: I've been seeing this guy for about a week (four dates). He's really smart and nice and fun and weird and also wealthy, which is cool, and we really click, which is rare for me, but the thing is that he's really, really fat, like, fat as a cow. He must weigh almost 200 pounds and he's only 5'8" or so. It's like I'm dating Seth Rogen, and I know he likes to pretend Katherine Heigl would go out with him, but she'd probably throw up at the sight of his fat-surrounded penis. (Note: Seth, I like the movies you've been in and I have nothing against you personally and we should totally have coffee sometime.) I'm embarrassed to be seen in public with him. The other day, we were at a concert and I was looking around and there were all these cute thin boys and I wished I could be dating one of them instead. And I felt like everyone was looking at me and judging. It's sooooo shallow of me to be saying things like this. It's really terrible. But I keep thinking, if I stay with him, my children will be fat, my family will laugh at me, and I'll be sexing a fattie. I don't even know how sex with a fat person works. Maybe from behind? Or can I make him lose weight? How long do you have to stay with someone before you can make that kind of request? Long enough so that by then we would have had sex, right? Whenever I go outside with him, I worry that I'll run into people I know and I think, Can I pass him off as just a friend? And the thing is, there's also another boy I like, but he's pretty depraved and has no money and is still in college. He's not a realistic prospect, but he's probably the one I'm going to choose. Why? Because I like to make myself miserable.

I'm not really sure what this blog is going to be about yet. Hopefully it won't all be my retarded dating life.