An Open Birthday Letter to Shira

Dear Shira,

Happy birthday! I bet right now you’re reflecting nostalgically upon years past and contemplating with cautious excitement what experiences and adventures are in store. That’s what birthday celebrations are for, after all. That and presents. Upon further reflection, I bet you’re mostly just thinking about the presents. Specifically the one you’re getting from me. I bet you’re thinking to yourself about all the great presents I’ve given you in years past and contemplating with cautious excitement what I could possibly have in the works for you this time around. Well, unfortunately I’m going to insist you curb your anticipation right now. I don’t have a present for you. I did have a present, and it was great. Like, not just one of those “Gee, thanks, Liz, how thoughtful of you,” type presents. It was a “GOLLY… GOLLY,” type present. What happened to this exclamation-à-les-1950s-worthy gift, you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya:

So I told you I was going to Atlanta for a week, right? Lie! It was all a clever ruse to secure your birthday present. I can’t be terribly specific, but let’s just say I had to board lots of flights, bribe many a customs agent, and my passport is now heavier with ink than a bloated squid. Speaking of squid, I had to learn how to scuba dive. And mountain climb. And parachute from an airplane flying at 30,000 feet directly into the ocean in full scuba gear, thereby making it nearly impossible for the Navy to triangulate my position. Those parachutes can be pretty tricky to navigate in the water, incidentally. I also acquired skills in the arts of stowing away, hand-to-hand combat and carbon dating. But before this birthday note starts to read like a cover letter, I’ll get to the meat of the story.

I had to be pretty careful the whole time I was transporting your gift. Again I can’t be incredibly specific – there is, after all, the possibility that I’ll be able to find a second one and I don’t want to ruin the surprise if that’s the case! – but I can tell you that the gift was incredibly delicate. It was not only structurally unsound, but it also had the capacity to produce an impressive explosive reaction upon coming into contact with water, sugar, sodium or air. Luckily I was able to devise a storage container that allowed for safe transport. Due to the structural protections necessitated by the very delicate gift, the storage container bared an odd resemblance to Michael Jackson. I originally failed to notice this similarity. In fact, it escaped my notice entirely until I reached New York.

Well, as I removed the storage container from its overhead storage bin, the woman who had been sitting next to me during the flight (and who had spent the majority of in-air time knitting baby booties for babies she does not yet have with a husband she does not yet know but will probably meet via eHarmony.com) made note of the container’s eerie Jacksonesque appearance. A few aisles back, a professional eBay vendor of all things appearing to be, but not actually being Michael Jackson overheard her comment and started trying to purchase your present’s protective shell. Valiantly I refused, explaining that this Michael Jackson face contained my dear friend Shira’s birthday present, and as such was a vessel for her very happiness. Then he attacked me!

I fought pretty decently at first. I would throw the storage container into the air, deliver a swift jab to my adversary’s face, and then catch your gift in a Vin Diesel-would-be-jealous-type performance. I then attempted to use a Jedi mind trick on the guy, but he was more intelligent than his ponytail, Hawaiian shirt and neon green Crocs would have made you guess. It was at this point that the eBay adversary knocked me into my seat neighbor and I became tangled in her many many baby booties. Trapped and helpless, I could only watch as the villain grabbed the unintentional ode to MJ and sprinted off. I desperately fought against the oppressive string and baby footwear. Finally freeing myself using my handy pocketknife, I started to pursue the perpetrator in all haste. Unfortunately, airport security saw my handy pocketknife and tackled me to the ground. They were about to arrest me when a sudden blast rocked the terminal. Later I would learn that the evacuation that ensued was attributed in the media to some guy entering the main terminal with what appeared to be bomb parts. But the security team and I know what really happened. We know that the eBay fiend opened the storage container. We know your gift destroyed itself upon contact with the air, eviscerating its captor along with it, and maybe, just maybe, making eBay a better place.

Obviously airport security knew they wouldn’t be able to successfully hold me, what with all my amazing aforementioned skills, so after awhile of intense interrogation, they released me. So that’s why I was a little late to your party. And why I showed up without a gift. We cool?

Happy birthday!

Liz

p.s. Seriously though, can I treat you to a show/beers or something?

In an email I received from career networking site "Doostang":

All-star jobs. Some of our best and brightest in fact. Hurry before they're gone!

VC Associate, Los Angeles, CA

Consultant - Financial Analyst, New York, NY

Business Development Associate, Boston, MA

Senior Associate, Alternative Asset Management, Washington DC

I'm all for being employed, but seriously, if Venture Capital Associate is "in fact" the best and brightest they can come up with, I'll take my chances on poverty. Maybe it's just me, but the idea of competing for a position wherein my chief responsibility would be to manage assets alternatively makes me want to suck my eyes out.

Is it creativity or is it crack?

It's kids like this one that actually make poppin' one out seem like an OK idea.

Mind-Control Games

According to a USA Today report, we may soon be seeing the mass-marketing of brain-to-computer products in the form of "mind-control games". These games translate brain-wave activity into physical action and will further assist children in the quest to play while remaining as motionless as possible.

UCBT-LA gets Jon Hamm??

Ok, I get that this was cool. And yes, perhaps my comedic sensibilities and nostalgic impulses feel strained upon the the realization that I do not appreciate Robin Williams' surprise appearance at UCB a couple weeks ago nearly enough (presumably because I wasn't there to witness the miraculous, hilarious event myself). But damn it, I'm an adult now, and I want this:

I'm moving to Cali. Like, right now.

A penny for your thoughts? Nay!

At least a quarter! After much urging by ardent supporters and friends bored stiff at their day jobs, here is an update to my quarter life crisis project. For $0.25 in New York City (or its burroughs) you can purchase:


Balls! This particular item is available throughout the metropolitan area in a variety of sizes, colors and levels of elasticity (surprisingly, however, they all seem to come in the exact same shape!). Those pictured here I found especially nice due to the preponderance of orange hues; however, while sizes of available bouncy balls around town did vary, I did note a decided decrease in average size as compared to my childhood memories of the majority of bouncy balls encountered. Although, again, this might have been symptomatic of my formerly tiny hands.





You can say a lot of things about the Lower East Side. But why waste energy or time talking about a place where $0.25 can't even buy you a properly constructed extra large plastic die? (For those of you not in the know, a die's opposing sides are suppose to add up to 7... spot the error if you dare.)










What's there to do in Douglaston, Queens, you ask? Well lots probably, but finding a decent engagement ring for a quarter dollar certainly isn't a viable way to pass the time in this upper crust section of Kevin James' fiefdom. Is it so much to ask that the plastic jewel be auto-hot glued in the center of the faux-gold ring? Romance is dead. But I digress.









Monkey, see?! In Brooklyn (clearly the best of the suburroughs, despite its commute that makes me want to strangle myself and those bunched around me on the subway with my purse straps), you can buy a friggin' monkey for 25 cents! Now that, my friends, is an improvement from the days of yore. Monkeys were definitely not available for purchase in the small town in Georgia where my tenderest years were spent. Although I'm pretty sure I could legally rent a tractor.






I cheated a little on this one, I will admit. I broke a rule I had held to steadfastly (miso soup arguments aside) and spent TWO quarters on this little find. But I couldn't help myself. I was on the UWS... things are expensive there... and I was drinking. The best part about this purchase was that this little plumber dude is actually just one in a set of ten "white trash" figurines. I want to meet the person who is actually trying to amass the collection in its entirety. "Come on, please let it be Drunk Truck Driver, please oh please!" *Clink, clink, crank, sssss, thmp* "STD-infested diner lady again? That makes 7! Son of a-." I think we'd be friends. And I think s/he'd be an ibanker.

Labor's Sticky.

Purchase #1! Made today (day 'o labor) outside of the Met grocery store in Park Slope. As hoped (who knew the odds, it was a vending machine that distributed random toys!), a sticky green hand!
















We outsource sticky hand manufacturing nowadays.

















I then got to the playing. When I was little, as I might have mentioned, I would throw sticky hands against car windows. Now, I throw them on Picasso's "Guernica." Movin' on up!

















When I was young, I would also gleefully throw sticky hands onto the ceiling, thinking it immense fun to have my parents retrieve a ladder to fetch them back down. My ceiling sticky hand stickage would result in the confiscation of my sticky hands. But it was worth it.

Now that I have to climb to unstick sticky hands from the ceiling myself, I have realized, in retrospect, that I was kind of an asshole.

















Purchase #1 in the Amassed Purchases Box (APB).

Some other things that APB stands for:

• Accounting Principles Board (accountants)
• All Points Bulletin (law enforcers)
• Advanced Peripheral Bus (Advanced Microcontroller Bus architects)
• Atrial Premature Beat (abnormal hearts)
• Anti Pass Back (parking management and really lame club bouncers)

Quarter Life Crisis

As many of my peers are faced with indecision and uncertainty following their graduation from college and entrance into the "real world," quite a few of them find themselves experiencing a "quarter life crisis." This depresses me no end, in part because it means my friends are unhappy and in part because it implies they will all die somewhere around the age of 88-92.

Personally, I anticipate living until the ripe old age of 117 (at which point I plan to OD on heroine), so my quarter life crisis should come around the age of 29.25. As a result, I cannot at all identify with the life-in-transit crisis that my dudes are experiencing. I can, however, reflect on the absurd depreciation of the value of a quarter in our modern economy and the profound sense of loss I feel as a result.

Now, unlike my mother, I cannot recall a time when a quarter could buy you a Coke (and a smile!) and a couple pieces of candy at the corner store. However, I can recall a period in which a quarter could get you a massive handful of candy (although I suppose my hands were smaller), most of which would end up on the ground (damn you, tiny hands!). A quarter was also enough to get a really cool toy, like a bouncy ball infused with glitter, a rubber finger puppet, a temporary tattoo or maybe - just possibly - one of those jelly-like sticky elastic things that you could fling onto the car window on the way home from the grocery store, or maybe at your little brother's face.

Well, America, I may not be having a quarter life crisis myself, but I am worried about the state of a quarter dollar for us all. It is with this in mind that I embark on my newest (and most exciting!) project: $0.25 for 25 days! That's right, you guessed it... we're gonna test how far a quarter can go in the world of today (and in the City of New York, no less). After the purchasing period has ended, the amassed tchotchkes will be analyzed, and we will know better the value of a quarter in the world in which we live relative to, say, a purchase at Starbuck's and, perhaps more importantly, how much better off we were as kids than the runts being raised today.

R.I.P. Elizabeth Varner's Youth

January 20th, 1986 - May 15th, 2008

She was young. She was hip. She was so beautiful.



In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Elizabeth Varner's 401K.