Blogspot, giver of life.

Not to be a jackass or anything, but I love our new house truly, deeply, madly. Let us enumerate the benefits: It is two blocks from the subway. It is three stories tall. It has the cutest kitchen. It has private security. It has 60% redone walls. It is lorded over by an Australian TV executive who formerly worked at Nick GAS. This lack of variation in sentence structure can stretch on ad-infinitum because really, our house is the very-very-very best house.

As a rule, we, as members of the American collegiate population, are highly mobile--much like dandelion seeds or Mongolians. This means we have few possessions, which is the reason (beyond mere passive-aggression) nobody wanted to take the master bedroom, which is the size of a helipad. I, proud owner of little more than a Toshiba laptop and a yurt, could never make such a room bear aesthetic fruit. The barrenness of the room would mirror the barrenness of my future. And really, what college student wants to be reminded of that?

Our friendly neighbors approached us soon after our lease signing and introduced themselves as Maya and Arturo. In addition to being impossibly attractive artists, they also throw parties every Friday (also: they're named Maya and Arturo). When Christmas comes I must remember to bake them a nice fruitcake. We can go caroling.

This is the part where I announce that our house is a Victorian, and looks like the one from The Amityville Horror. The fact that we're only paying $625 for it makes me wonder whether or not we'll end up mysteriously dying one-by-one. The third floor bedroom features a private bathroom with nothing more than an old tub in it. Assuming Michelle Pfiffer doesn't pop out of it and drag him screaming to hell first, Nick can use it to make moonshine.

Blogspot, my lover.

This summer has been challenging--and I don't mean like a good ski slope. I've tried to live in the interphase between the sublime and the nightmarish but at this point, I think it's pretty clear that I've failed. Honestly, I think the only thing giving me some semblance of sanity is my undying love of The Discovery Channel (I Mythbusters, therefore I am).

Besides the catatonia that allows me to lie for hours staring at my nipple-shaped ceiling lamp, my condition affords me many other benefits. You see, I now have an elf-like ability to remain awake through the night for multiple nights. People would think I'd take this time to address why my life isn't worth living, but no. I think about furniture--specifically Ikea furniture--specifically the rugs that look like they were designed by retards.

Why am I still so drawn to them? Well, Trevor thinks it's the influence of nordic black magiks woven into the fine mesh of polyester. Then again, since when has Trevor ever been right?

Now imagine having this two-way monologue in your head at five in the morning. What's that astute, gentle reader? Oh, why yes indeed--you are correct! It does suck.

One night, unable to embark on another of these odysseys of the mind, I started reading anything just lying around: my Organic Chemistry textbook, an issue of Newsweek from 2001, the lunch specials for a Cambridge Taiwanese restaurant named Mulan.

The best, and worst, find that night was my elementary school yearbook. For those of you who have yet to find such a item, let me warn you that it is a document of ironies that exceed the scope of words like rapacious and excruciating. It's natural to expect that some aspiring doctors will grow up to be crack rock addicts. This happens everywhere. However, the trail of Riker Hill Elementary's shattered dreams are so much more complex and stare back at yearbook readers with such smarmy vitriol that you would have expected it to come from Williamsburg.

For example: In 1996, Livingston was a town dominated by Asians and Reform Jews. A quick glance at Mrs. Wertheim's first grade class turns up names like Wen, Felberbaum, Moyal, Finkel, Schachtel, Lin, Tulloch, Lu, Levine. In our own class of 52, there was one Muslim kid. Among all the career goals listed, only one among 52 kids aspired to be an airplane pilot. Guess who?

In the "Imagine If..." section, the same kid imagines if "I was a pilot and I never stayed home." Imagination is cute! In the section entitled "In the Year 2003", even obvious predictions like "I will graduate from high school" managed to not come true.

I wonder at what age children realize they were not born into a blessed world. I imagine it's taken me long enough.