Good Stuff

If your breathing is constricted by the innundation of doomsday predictions in the financial section of your favorite paper/website, take a deep breath and read this; it might help you sleep a bit better at night:

http://www.freep.com/article/20081215/OPINION05/81215022

In the midst of the "crisis" I remind everyone that economics is called the dismal science for its offering of opinions based on data, instead of finite answers, and for its attempt to predict the future based on "science". Fascinating stuff, but not something to set your watch by. It's kind of like the search for the philosopher's stone. Or like the little gerbal running endlessly on its wheel inside the head of your average Joe. I would also urge you, like the author of the article, to keep history in mind. There have been downturns before, and there will be again. Rome didn't last forever (as an empire), neither did Tenochtitlan, and neither will New York. When you accept that everything comes to end one way or another, you can stop worrying about it. Really.

Also, buy the "slumdog Millionaire" soundtrack. It's brilliant.

Urban Dictionary words of the day

I've decided that when I don't have anything to say, I'm going to add in my favorite new words from http://www.urbandictionary.com/.

1. Salsa Fucked
This phenomenon occurs when dining at a Mexican restaurant with a large group and the salsa is not distributed evenly throughout the table. The areas of the table that do not have ample amounts of salsa are "salsa fucked."

"Jeff, all of the salsa is at the other end of the table, yo."

"I know, we got Salsa Fucked."

2. sexting
the act of text messaging someone in the hopes of having a sexual encounter with them later; initially casual, transitioning into highly suggestive and even sexually explicit
In a sentence: "He keeps sexting me saying how hard he is and how much he wants to tap my ass," Cindy said massaging her breasts unconsciously.

Sexting in action:

Nancy: "Wut do u want?"

Bob: "Cum over to my place now."

Nancy: "Is NE1 else there?"

Bob: "No. I need to c u."

Nancy: "K. Will b there soon."

Monday email update

An email I wrote to a friend recently:

My update is that I'm still living on Prospect (obvs), although with the lack of privacy and having to deal with my loser rommates, I don't know if I would call it living. I won't move out of there a minute too soon. Beth and I have pushed back to spring, but I'm going to look casually through the winter in case something good opens up. Thanksgiving was good, I stuffed myself to the gills with food and drink for 48 hrs straight, which took the rest of the weekend to recover from. My job sucks ass, I hate it more each week and, like my current living situation, will also not end a minute too soon. This semester has been easy, but I expect next semester to be a big pain, God willing it will be my last one and I can start to move on from the limbo I've been in the last two years.

I hope I don't sound super negative, all this stuff is par for the course and on a day-to-day basis I feel good. On top of all of that I think my ass is getting bigger and I'm scared it will turn into my mother's and my shopping addiction has made me broke, broke, broke. But I guess it's all about what you choose to focus on and what actions you take. So I like to wrap all of this up in a bundle and focus on the fact that changes are around the bend. I'm sure at some point I will look back on this time as being "simple" when all I had to worry about was fitting in my jeans and the only thing I had to sacrifice to pay my rent was a new dress that I don't need because I already have 35 black dresses.

I'll laud how lucky I was to have such under market rent, how close Beth and I were, how weed was plentiful and so was booze. I'll think of the roommates as "quirky" and "different" rather than half-retarded and hopeless. I might even laugh at the fact that I quit going to my Bodega because the owner creeped me out and wouldn't quit hitting on me. That could be funny someday, right? I'll probably remember him as a kindly father figure who just wanted to talk -- or maybe not. There will be no seedy underbelly to the neighborhood in my memories. Alex will not have killed himself by taking a dive off of the Brooklyn Bridge a week after I saw him last (obviously unaware that it would be the last time we said good-bye), Mikey will not have been such a drug addleded romantic, Robert will be a good guy I let slip through my fingers, and he and Megan will have been happy together. And I'll probably count myself lucky that I had a good, resume building job while I was in school that allowed me a relatively flexible schedule.

I wonder if our sugar coated memories of the past are some sort of primoridal survival technique. If we consciously let all of the fears and disappointmens build up, could we die from them? IDK.