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.

Rotten things to do to Post-Its

• Stick Post-It to felt. Remove Post-It. Attempt to stick Post-It to anything else. Mock Post-It’s inability to perform.

• Affix the adhesive strip of one Post-It to the adhesive strip of another Post-It, forming a long rectangle. Call the sum a piece of paper.
  

• Find old school Post-It pad that is stacked accordion-style (as opposed to the currently popular pad-stacking-style). Find calm cat. Attach first Post-It on pad to cat’s collar. Find laser pointer. Release cat, taunting with laser pointer dot as you do so. Please note: small dogs can be substituted for calm cats; pad-stacked-style Post-Its cannot be substituted for accordion-style Post-Its.
  

• Write something really important on a Post-It. Start to frame Post-It. Stop suddenly and yell, “Oh my God! What am I doing?! This is important! I can’t use a Post-It!” Sneer. Cast Post-It aside.
  

• Tell Post-Its you’re switching to miniature legal pads. Do so on a Post-It.
  

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.

'Ello, Govna

Lieutenant Gov. David Paterson is set to become the Governor of New York State Monday following the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Paterson will make history as the state's first African American governor. But, perhaps even more significantly, Paterson will also be the first legally blind governor in U.S. history.

Finally, this neglected segment of society will be represented in the highest office of the State, giving a voice to those without vision.

Dr. E. Varnberg's "A Brief History of Time"

• Sun.
• Sand.
• Gears.
• Electrical power supplies.
• Ralph Nader attempting to destroy all things good because he should be allowed to.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a rat's antebellum

I went to an international school. Subsequently, me and US History, not the best of amigos. Usually this only gets me into serious trouble when I laugh at what is recognizably an American historical reference, albeit one with which I am unfamiliar, at a comedy show or on TV, and the person next to me asks me to explain the joke. Unable to admit that I had only pretended to understand the quip, I begin the futile endeavor of trying to explain why the reference was hysterical in only the vaguest of terms. It's kind of like watching presidential hopefuls campaign in sparsely populated grocery stores.

This lack of a practical working knowledge of US History brings me to my most recent scholarly embarrassment… my lack of recognition of the term “antebellum.” Now, let’s not exaggerate my stupidity here (despite the inherent entertainment value this would bring to the blog). I knew we were talking about something that happened after the American Revolution and before the "war of northern aggression". – I would like to take this moment to celebrate the fact that in some of Atlanta’s more elite private schools it was not unusual for 16-year-old boys to begin a night of heavy drinking with a toast “fucking Sherman”. – In any event, it was time to start some serious soul-searching in order to determine what “antebellum” really meant.

“Ante” – from Latin, meaning “before.” Cool.

“Bellum” – from the French “belle”, meaning “hot people.”

Therefore: “Antebellum” – adj. Before people were hot.