Kablooey!

So, here I am whiling away my morning, waiting for the plumbers. My sink has decided that it's a fountain, and is spewing crap everywhere and generally behaving badly. Also, there's a horrible smell, and I've spent all morning trying to figure out the worst possible explanation for it.

These include:

1) Cheese build up, similar to what's probably going on in my arteries.
2) Sink schmutz, which, if you've ever worked in food service, you know is the vilest and most toxic substance known to man.
3) Rat. Dead rat.
4) Pipe rot, or similar. Something that would require me not to use my kitchen for a month, which would give me an excuse to continue not cooking. (Hey! That rules!)
5) Severed fingers of previous tenant, preserved zombie-style in the elbow of the drain, just waiting to creep out under cover of darkness and pinch my nose shut while I'm sleeping.

Probably it's cheese, though. That seems a safe bet.

Ladies and Gents

I'm not the world's best blogger this week. It's the end of the quarter, which is not so bueno for those of us who are operating on a quarterly system. It means that there's a lot of work to do.

While I'm doing that work, which pays the hosting and all, I leave you with the following question: Would you date someone who had a blog? Don't rush to answer. This is important.

Question for a Sunday Night

Addendum

Seriously, I'm still traumatized over the flashing incident. One must be prepared to see a naked man. Naken men cannot just be, ah, thrust upon one.

FLASH!

Um, I hope it's OK with all of you that there was a NUDE MAN sitting in his first floor window, WAVING AT ME as I walked home from the train tonight. NUDE, in case you missed it. Also waving.

Also, FYI, he found it extremely amusing when I shrieked and ran. I suppose that's just about everything a nude, waving, first-floor-window sitting maniac could hope for.

Shut Up, Jared Leto

The Feed, via Salon:

Jared Leto: "The blog is yesterday's parachute pants. It's here now but it's gone tomorrow."

Everyone Else: "Nice Crocs."

Yes, Yes, I'm Going to Hell

Me: OK, celebrity dead pool. Who will die first, Kate Bosworth or Nicole Richie?

Ma Smash: Um ... Kate Bosworth!

Me: Wrong! Nicole Richie will be dead as mutton by Christmas.

Ma Smash: Dead as ... you're a crazy person.

Me: Wrong! I'm a terrible person. There's a difference.

You Know It Will Take You Where You Want to Go

I love the subway. When I moved here, people told me not to take it after a certain hour. They told me not to take certain lines. I listened, because I'm not foolhardy most of the time. But I resented it. I want a world where I can take the subway all the time, at all hours, without any fear.

New York is supposed to be one of the country's safest cities now. What that means is that there's only one crime for every 37 people. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound all that safe to me. Although it's probably accurate. I did a count tonight in my head, and I probably know about 30 people well enough to say I know them, and two of them have had their pants pockets cut open on the train, and one has been mugged at gunpoint.

It's not safe here, is my point. But there are attractions. Tonight, I rode the subway home from Hell's Kitchen, where I met my old friend Jes for drinks. We hadn't spoken in 5 years. When we knew each other, we were young and soft and dumb and worried, and lived in Boston. She's married and has a baby now, and I'm ... older and tougher and hopefully less dumb. Anyway, I live in New York.

She got on the bus at Port Authority, which used to have homeless crack-addicted teens living there, and now has a bowling alley (or maybe always had both.) I got on the train, and sped back to Park Slope.

If you ever look look out the window on my train, you'll see a lot of interesting things. For one, you see your real face, not your mirror face. I have thin lips, so I make a dreadful draggy mirror face most of the time. It's only when I catch myself unawares that I see my real expression.

You also see, long about Bergen Street on the F, the underground. The tracks opposite plunge down a level, and if you're looking out, you can see lights beneath the platform, and trash collected beneath the tracks. No mole people, but it's still a world no one lives in, as far as I'm concerned. Like a snowglobe, only not pretty.

Ms. Jes asked me this evening if I was happy I moved here, and I gave her my platitudes. I told her about my friends, and my apartment, which has more than one room, and my job.

"You think you'll stay?" she asked. She lives upstate now, has a house.

"I think so. Although, you know, it's only been a year. Ask me when I'm 35. I might have a different story for you."

Not smiling, she looked me over. The thing I forgot about Jes is that she actually looks at people. "Some people get here and they stay forever," she said. "It's just where they belong."

"Yeah, I dunno about that yet," I glugged my beer. "But I'll tell you. It's better here for me, so far. It suits me. Everyone's obsessive and crazy like me, so I don't seem strange. I can work as hard as I want without being weird. Also, I'm cuter here than I was in Boston, as far as boys are concerned."

"That doesn't surprise me. You're a New York girl."

Nice to have confirmation of that, after a year of thinking so.

I Need My Secret Decoder Ring

The woman at the laundromat is trying to tell me something. I don't mean psychically, and I'm not cracking up. I mean that she's actually trying to speak to me, but due to the fact that she is Haitian and I don't speak patois, I have no idea what she's saying.

She seems to think we're friends though. She's always delighted to see me. And I can sort of tell from the inflection of what she's trying to say that she approves of my sartorial choices.

We did have a bad patch there, when I threw an empty box of Tide into the trash outside instead of the indoor trash at the laundromat, but I think we've moved past it. She spoke English that time, for a couple words. I managed to make up out "NO" and "BUSINESS TRASH" and "INDOORS." I'd like to reciprocate, and learn a couple words in patois, just in the name of politeness.

I'd start with whatever the translation for "I'M READING" is, or maybe: "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. PLEASE GO AWAY."

Ahhh! Baby Without a Face!

I spent most of today nursing a hangover. Thankfully, I have cable now, so I could watch horrible cheesy movies on Sci-Fi all day long.

Unfortunately, at some point I switched to TLC and they were showing some documentary about a baby who was born without a face. That's right: No face. Just a toothy slit where her mouth should be.

I might never be the same again. I might need to sue TLC. I'm not sure I can really deal with a world in which babies are born without faces.

I'm sure all of this would be easier to cope with, were I not exhausted and vitamin deficient.

Hey, I Can Try Something New

Me: So, I have a date on Wednesday night. At a place with tablecloths. There might also be candles.

Dad: There are supposed to tablecloths and candles.

Me: Well, you know, I don't like to be that girl.

Dad: Mmmmph.

Me: But I have to say, I like this better so far. Usually the boys I date are less, "how about dinner on Wednesday?" and more "so, I'll call you when I get out of Kinkos, if I'm not too high."

Dad: (Dryly.) Dare to dream, Peaches.

Where's Smash?

Blogging Fashion Week. So, um, please read it, please? Thank you.

At the Beach With Ma Smash

A beautiful (windy) day at the beach. Mrs Piddlington stands before the tossing waves, smiling gamely as her loving sister fiddles with a camera. Shortly before the shutter clicks (assuming digital cameras have a shutter, what do I know) Mrs P falls over into the sand.

Mrs P: (Standing up, shaking sand out of her clothes.) Ah! I have sand in my pants.

Ma Smash: Oh, that's nice, Jennie. Make sure you get a good picture of your sister's SAND ... BOX.

Truly, there's no hope for me.