The most wonderful time of the year

Do your holiday shopping here. I went to high school with this girl.

Weekend Update

So I spent Friday night eating tiramisu in celebration of Luke's birthday. Then Saturday my mom came up and we had a fine Peruvian lunch with Carolyn and her crazy family before seeing Carolyn's crazy Havel show. If anyone other than Carolyn is reading this and is in New York, go see a Havel show. They're cheap and good. Just do it. And wear Nike. After the show we wandered aimlessly around Williamsburg until my mom left and then we sat aimlessly around our apartment. At about 11pm I started reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and didn't stop until 5:30am when I was finished (which brings my count up to 72). I was so devastated by the end that I just stayed in the fetal position bear hugging the book for about 20 minutes until I finally fell asleep. It isn't perfect, but it is very powerful. All day Sunday I was unsettled by the book and the lack of sleep and so I never quite managed to motivate myself to get dressed. I had orange juice and chex mix for dinner, watched Manhattan and went to bed.

Weekend Update

So I had an okay weekend. Friday night we watched the first three episodes of the most inspiring doctor shows ever. Saturday I babysat for a new family that I am hoping will hire me to work part time for them. The kid, a three year old boy, is cute and I really like the parents, so hopefully that will work out. Then Saturday night we tried to have a rockin Halloween dance party, but failed. Thanks much to the people who did show up, it was fun, but not all we had hoped for. Sunday we brunched at a yummy place called Supper that happily serves more than their name suggests. Afterwards we tried to see Babel, but it was sold out so instead we saw my new favorite movie Old Joy. See it. It is not the best made movie or the most original movie but I just loved it. Really really really loved it. Of course it helps that it stars Will Oldham, but it is more than just that. I don't know. See it. Sunday night we worked at the coop, which we never want to do beforehand, but always feels good afterwards. So yeah, that was my weekend.

Head in the Oven

So I usually try to write this while my young charge is napping, which means that by the time I've read all the Salon I can handle, she's awake and I only have time to copy a few links into an entry. That's why this will show up as being posted sometime Wednesday afternoon even though it is now 12:30 am on Friday. That is also why there are 19 Broadsheet links.

But anyway, first things first. Tuesday night I went to the screening of my friend Katie's "episodic saga" at UCB and I think you should all check it out because who doesn't think suicide is funny?

Some other suggestions:

When Big Brother tackles domestic violence
Turning back the clock on single-sex education
Equality in New Jersey
Men munch on carcass, women pick at salad
The kindness of strangers (EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS)
Which restroom should transgender people use?
Older mothers rock
John Spencer's lesbian avoidance plan of '06
Losing their voting virginity
The politics of veiling
Calling Hillary Clinton Ugly
Thank Mom for smoking?
Not your mother's election cycle
Putin goes too far
Atlanta's underage sex-trade
Reclaiming hip-hop
Math gap mythologies
Deaf woman walking
To bleed or not to bleed?

Weekend Update

So I had a pretty dull weekend. The most eventful thing that happened was that Jim left the narrow confines of Cornell to consult with the council on the lastest trends in Rolling Stone. It was great to see him. The rest of the weekend was mostly spent sitting around. Sam and I took turns being dissatisfied with our lives, then watched The Beach with Lauren. It is better than you think.

Check out the new Grab Bag.

71 out of 1001, and counting

So I was alerted to this list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, and, as an English major, I was immediately interested and skeptical. The debate over which books 'should' be read, if any, is old and interesting, I think more interesting to discuss than to decide, but since someone has made their decision, here are my results:

1 The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
2 White Teeth – Zadie Smith
3 The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
4 The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
5 Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
6 Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
7 The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
8 The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
9 Beloved – Toni Morrison
10 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
11 The Lover – Marguerite Duras
12 The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
13 Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
14 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
15 A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
16 Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
17 The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
18 A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
19 Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
20 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
21 The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
22 The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
23 Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
24 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
25 The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
26 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
27 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
28 Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
29 All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
30 Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
31 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
32 A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
33 The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
34 Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
35 Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
36 The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
37 Summer – Edith Wharton
38 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
39 The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
40 Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
41 Howards End – E.M. Forster
42 A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
43 The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
44 Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
45 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
46 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
47 The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
48 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
49 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
50 Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
51 Middlemarch – George Eliot
52 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
53 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
54 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
55 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
56 Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
57 The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
58 Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
59 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
60 The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
61 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
62 Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
63 Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
64 Persuasion – Jane Austen
65 Emma – Jane Austen
66 Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
67 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
68 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
69 A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
70 Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
71 Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe

Not bad, but also not great for an English major. I will say this, I think that contemporary and modern works were over-emphasized, I'm not sure why some authors' entire works were listed while other authors of equal standing were under-represented and it was a Western/white/male heavy list. I would love to see other peoples' results. And I would just love to have more comments in general.

Ouch!

So I am completely 100% obsessed with Project Runway right now, even though nothing on this season could compare to Jay from the 1st season. Also, while reading Broadsheet today I thought, "Oh get over yourself." I am clearly turning into a brainless Upper East Side bitch.

I also thought this was funny:

Hobo: Sorry to disturb y'all! If you look at me closely, you will see some red marks. I was sleeping on the ground for a couple of days and I did not know that if you smell like food, those big rats will bite you.

--B Train

Weekend Update

So I should probably put up something about myslef, other than my love of Salon. This weekend I went home to B-more for my parents' birthdays. My dad turned 60 on the 9th and my mom turned 56 on (Friday) the 13th. Sam and I got in late Friday night, had lunch with my grandmother Saturday afternoon, went shopping at the cheapest thrift store around, and then the festivities began. Okay, they weren't so much festivities as my family going out to dinner, at a the fabulous Sacha's, and seeing a concert, at the fabulous Peabody featuring the fabulous Eduardo Isaac on the guitar and the even fabulouser Daniel Binelli on the bandoneon. Then we went back home to have some fabulous French dessert thingies from some fabulous French dessert place downtown. On Sunday we left. So yeah, that was my weekend.

Salon Revisited (and Revisted and Revisited...)

So I am just going to keep putting up links to my favorite Salon stories until yall are reading them without my encouragement. So here goes:

This is a great article about Hillary Clinton and feminism.

This is good if you're voting in New York, Massachusettes, Pennsylvania, Maryland or Florida, or are just interested in politics and the environment.

Here's a nice RR-apologist piece. Make sure to check out the FHM photos.

Bill Maher's spot-on take on the Foley scandal.

This will make us all proud of Carolyn's Murphy Brown costume. (via Broadsheet)

To fish oil fortify or to just eat fish?

Pro-life and pro-choice

So I didn't mean to have so many women centered posts, but Salon just has so much good stuff I can't help wanting to share it. I once had a really good and interesting conversation with Lee and this article is what I probably should have said instead of whatever I did say. These other three are Broadsheet posts that are good supplements to the article.

Don't tell Salon, but if you want to get into the site without having to watch ads, you can sign in as KaSam with the password scissors.

Un sandwich, s'il vous plait

So I looked at Overheard in New York for the first time today, after having heard about it often over the past year. Most of it was kind of meh, but I thought this one was hilarious:

Tourist girl #1: You didn't want to go to the Star, the Times Square or the Roxy... so what are we supposed to eat for lunch?
Tourist girl #2: Well, I don't care, but none of these French food places.
Tourist girl #1: French food?
Tourist girl #2: Yeah, all these places are delicatessens... That's French food!
Tourist girl #1: No, it's like sandwiches and stuff!
Tourist girl#2: Then why don't they just call it a deli?

--Outside the Roxy Deli, Times Square

For Broads, and people who care about them

So I caught up on my Broadsheet reading this weekend and here are a few of my personal favorites:

Does this mean we can also love the sophomore, junior, senior and first year in the real world 15s?

Time to start applying to grad school.

"Does [this Barbie] perform a self-exam when you push a button on its back? Are the breasts and hair removable, to prepare them for future operations and let them know it's okay?"

Four states Carolyn (and other people, I guess) shouldn't move to.

Yes, children. The human body is a dirty thing.

Mom's just can't catch a break.

A change of scenery

So I had a friendster blog, but it has ads in it now and I don't like that. Considering my past posting performance, I have no idea if I will keep this up, but I obviously hope to. We'll see.