Blogspot, ofenfrische croissants.

As anyone who has even remotely kept up with the state of American healthcare knows, McDonalds' profit wagon has been pulled by a largely Black and Hispanic population for whom obesity rates have been setting records once every ten seconds.

For a long time I wondered how someone could let themselves (or their children) become so strikingly fat. Sure, salads and whole wheat cost extra, but I had always subscribed to that old saying--that even with the ex-boyfriend who just dumped you for another man, even with the dead-end job, even if your teenager has burned down your apartment building: you still have your health. It's a truism, one that is infuriating if any of those things actually happened to you, but it's a truism that always seemed close to universal: staying physically alive comes first.

(Cool people are, naturally, exempt.)

This was before I realized what I was missing. I've just found out that the McDonald's Dollar Menu features, among the usual 6-piece McTurds and medium frozen McBilgewaters, the Double Cheeseburger. This is a deal that is simultaneously breathtaking (for the as-of-yet-unemployed 20-something in me) and unspeakably horrific (for the flamingly liberal pre-med in me). Suddenly I understand what effect such sinisterly cheap junk has on the psyche. When I see that 99 cents next to 'DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER', I become every peckish twelve year old Latino kid that has ever walked into a Mickey D's with $1.43 in pocket.

The only thing keeping me from stuffing my face is the knowledge that burgers are just glistening oil-cakes sandwiching patties that would have made Upton Sinclair cry. Fast food is scary. Poorly educated on nutritional topics, the communities most adversely impacted by the fast-food being marketed to them lack this paradoxical safety net of fear. So while I'm not saying that maintaining an unironic Morgan-Spurlockian diet does poor people any favors, I at least find that type of behavior more understandable.

Blogspot, flavored with dill and love.

As I open my eyes and crane my neck to check the time, the display of Joe's digital clock sears my eyes like a miniature arrangement of rubidium flares. It is 7:47 as I rouse myself to urinate--it's an apt time, given that I feel like an economy class passenger on a jumbo jet who just spent a trans-Pacific journey across the aisle from a particularly needy and lachrymose child. Despite a full six hours of sleep last night, I cannot remember a more zombielike trip to the toilet except for that time in 1995 when I actually did fly to the other side of the planet.

It is a testament to my weariness that, despite literally passing out with my shoes on, I had imbibed nothing so much as a goddamn hard lemonade last night. Fatigue alone whisked me off to a completely dreamless sleep with all the efficiency of an elixir of Nyquil, Ambien and Sodium Thiopental.

I had arrived at Joe's apartment a little before midnight, after a four-hour marathon of laboratory work performed to a backdrop of our TA's mid-to-late-90s musical sensibilities, that is to say: Pantera. Before that, I had an interview with an unapologetically terse hiring manager at Memorial Sloan Kettering--a Republican Guard style interoggation which stretched my ability to detail how to pluck out tiny murine lymph nodes with a set of talon-like tweezers (in essense, stealing mouse souls). That was the third morning interview of the week and*, on the way home, I missed my subway stop after falling asleep to the beguiling, wistful voice of David Rakoff.

The inability to understand this newfangled "rock" music. The exhaustion. The unabashed enjoyment of NPR contributors' audiobooks. These are the signs that I really am seventy years old already.

...weakened by the relentless sun and his exertions in digging out the Gastonia corpse, Raptor Red's mate sank inexorably into the pit. As the tar flooded his nostrils, he gave out a little burble--and then he was gone.

(If you get this reference, marry me.)

Blogspot, open bar raffle,

Reading my blog, the inadvertant publicizer of my deepest joys and fears, it's likely that people think that, in real life, I am as emotionally transparent as a forest stream refracting the kiss of an early summer sunbeam. Sadly, the truth of this matter is not unlike The Truth About Cats and Dogs (or the truth about the much less joke-conducive Cyrano de Bergerac) in that what you see is rarely what you get. Nobody can ever tell what I'm thinking.

What I possess is less of a inclination towards acting and more of a talent for deceit. Despite its intrinsically evil nature, my Kremlin-like knack for being unreadable does its part in maintaining my image. This mechanism is of paramount importance partially because, in reality, I am actually a thirteen-winged beast dispatched from the Netherworld (and nobody likes those).

Lately, what with the prospect of an upcoming graduation, the uncertain job hunt, and genetics lab worries all gnawing at my sanity like so many tapeworms of the brain, I have woken up in abject panic too many times to count (4). In these moments, my facade is set to crack, and I am in danger of tearfully revealing both the benthic depth of my insecurities and the bourgeois monstrousness of my sense of entitlement.

My only consolation then is the bearded, disco-loving Catholic next to me, upon whom I pour my frustrations like a lava flow of anguished gravy. His unequivocal support for everything I attempt, his invitation to Easter dinner, his forgiveness for my drunken jewel case hurling trespasses, his pleas for me to lay off the chocolate covered espresso beans--they keep me stable. They keep the illusion alive.

Joe, I love you!

Blogspot, best email ever.

So I'm writing an article about the combination Asian cultural exposition and runway show I attended last night. I open my email to send a draft to a friend for proofreading, and I get possibly the most wonderful message ever to grace my inbox from a mysterious "Valeria":

hey walked along listening to the singing of the brightly colored birds and looking at the lovely flowers which now became so thick that the ground was carpeted with them. There were big yellow and white and blue and purple blossoms, besides great clusters of scarlet poppies, which were so brilliant in color they almost dazzled Dorothy's eyes.

I`m bored :(
wanting a friend for L0VE, kiss, touch, lick and f*ck me!
my photos, phone on my homepage here
:) :) :)

"But I thought you had gone to visit the Wicked Witch of the West."

The glorious confusion that followed: indescribable. Somewhere in Eastern Europe, a porn-obsessed hacker has earned his wings.

Blogspot, parenthetical attack!

The following is my singular real-life brush with the Plamegate brouhaha. In condensed, Powerpoint-ready form:

• It is last October.
  
• Joe needed to look super gay because he was attending a Halloween party as Charles Nelson Riley.
  
• So we went to Rags-a-Go-Go.
  
• I found a button down shirt from the 70s with asterisks and red squares that was totally adorable.
  
• That happened to be the same day Scooter Libby got indicted. Joshua Suzanne, everyone's favorite thrift store proprietress, was overjoyed.
  
• I got a 25% discount on it because I knew that Libby had been indicted on five counts.
  
• I save money. Scotter Libby goes to jail. Best scandal ever.

The reason I tried to avoid mentioning Valerie Plame in any context earlier (say, last October) is that, like a million other things (skew-Hermitian transformation mapping, the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a slab of concrete), politics is completely opaque to me. I figure most people don't like being lectured by the uninformed. In my case, this distaste for clueless pontificators (and pontiffs) borders on mania. Knowing this, I put in the extra effort to blog only about items that fall squarely within my knowledge base (ex: Top Model, biotechnology, emotional terror).

However, I'm beginning to feel like there are no unseen circumstances which can help explain the Bush Administration's actions. Thus, there is nothing more to understand and any prez-bashing on my part is free of "unfounded" in "obnoxious, unfounded liberal whining"!

So here, again in a pre-chewed form, is my understanding of the scandal:

• The Administration, in addition to being incompetent, is genuinely sinister.

Could I possibly have wronged those unshaven Union Square protestors? Only Time (and possibly a Senate inquiry) will tell.