December 2010
11 posts
all of the corners in this city are forgotten
I was at a party once in Manhattan, in the West Village, and a bunch of my friend’s partners from her law firm showed up, drunk. They were older and better dressed than all of us. We were illegally up on the roof, everyone drinking, smoking. I got into a fairly intense (the drunk kind of intense) discussion with one of the guys about the biotech VC he did on the side. After we’d...
City Needs 'Kensington Strangler' Tips, Not... →
Or possibly Rorschach (I’m in the middle of watching Watchmen).
mermaidbones:
fuck those lies, the city needs batman.
commuter karma
Dear SEPTA conductor,
Thank you for giving me a break this morning. The ticket office was unexpectedly closed on Friday, so I couldn’t buy my usual 10-pack of zone 5 tickets (cost each way: $5.80). Thus, I had to pay cash on the train this morning, $14 round trip. But you recognized, in my travel mug and weathered laptop, a regular commuter. And so you only charged me $11, the price of an...
“Between narrow walls we walk — insanity on one side, & fat dullness on...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, as noted in the January 2011 issue of Harper’s.
Some Futures I Thought I Might Have →
Age 4: astronaut. Age 11: orthodontist (hey, I had a really cool orthodontist, though I gave up on this future when I got caught by another kid writing it down for an assignment in fifth grade and was mercilessly teased about it). Age 18: teacher, writer, engineer (possibly nuclear). Age 20: Alan Lightman. Age 26: ImmunoGen scientist, living in the West Village and walking to work every day. ...
“Is there anything worse than seeing a cute girl reading Ayn Rand?”
– “This time, we will only do five: five cafés, five macchiatos.”
Still a Terrifically Bad Idea by Elisha Cooper
best plant biology metaphor in a supporting role...
Our marriage had become like a leaf eaten away by caterpillars, where the petiole and midrib remain with some ghostly connective tracery in between. Not enough to hold even a drop of rain.
unrepentant:
though i am loathe to cite the NYT’s Modern Love column, i found this piece penetrating, honest and remarkably not self-serving, unlike the typical embarrassing and indulgent drivel usually...
“In our world, that’s the way you live your grown-up life: you must...”
– Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
sick day media blitz
I was home sick today, feverish and headachy, for the first time in a long while. I used to get sick all the time as a kid and pretty often all the way through grad school, but since I started running seriously I hardly ever fall hard. Alas, today I did. So I spent the day drinking tea, eating soup, catching up on movies from a decade ago and finishing my book.
So, first: Fargo. I...