I think...

... you can learn a great deal about a person by their reaction to reaching the subway train just as the doors have closed.

How creeped out can I get after 4 years in NYC: An Experiment

Fear not, $0.25 for 25 days shall continue on, but another investigation to add to the mix!

Inspired by my friend Flo - who is essentially me (a Euro History major at Barnard, currently a paralegal in Midtown living in Park Slope) but Asian and better at video games - I have created an account on okcupid.com, a terrifying website that attempts to predict everlasting love based on extremely scientific personality tests (ex. the "Superhero Archetype" quiz and the "Which Color M&M Are You?" quiz). Of course, this sort of relevant information in combination with the details available in my carefully constructed profile (favorite books strategically listed to appear intelligent but not too pretentious, activities in which I no longer participate, interests about which I am for the most part dispassionate, etc...) provides a completely accurate picture of myself as a person, how well my suitor and I will get along and how fantastic our sex life will be!

Now, Flo is not the only friend that inspires this blog post/experiment. My roommate, Shira, frequently posts some of the ridiculous/adorable/ hilarious emails her company receives from curious kiddies in her blog. And if we can find humor in the total inability of children to engage in logical follow-through, then it must be possible to find the hilarity in the creepy messages I am bound to receive! Since my profile's completion at 1:00am today (approx. 33 minutes ago), I have already received 3 messages and 1 "five star rating," whatever that means. As of now, the messages have been pretty mundane; but if all goes well, some really terrifying dudes will think I'm pretty and the laughs will roll. As a proud Barnard grad, I am stepping up and Taking Back the Site; I will not fear the terror - the terror will fear me! Or, like, I'll get bored and delete the account.

Confession: I am already a little in love with some dude's profile. The "I thought meeting people in real life was the way to go" romantic in me finds this sad, but I think it will ultimately make for a funny story to tell our grandkids.

Further confession: Incorporating my inspirational friends into my blog post was inspired by my friend, Hibben. Who can now die happy.

My project needed kelp

So today I was going to use a portion of my lunch break to find a 25 cent treat in the area around my office on 59th and Lex. I was very excited about this, primarily because I tend to crave the impossible. And finding a reasonably priced item in Midtown East is about as feasible as resolving the "who's the better superhero, Batman or Superman?" debate. I digress.

Alas, as sometimes happens in the fast-paced, action packed world of the litigation paralegal, my lunch was canceled due to a rather sudden deadline, which, if missed, could only result in chaos, fire and brimstone. Fortunately for the world (and unfortunately for those with their money on 9/4/08 in the Armageddon pool at the office), I skipped my lunch break and persisted. The focus, intense; the hilarity, minimal. I trudged on, past my normal frozen yogurt break, through my typical blog perusal and facebook checking hiatus, even beyond my daily quitting time.

Still in my cubicle at 8:30pm, my stomach reminded me that I'm a human and I ordered dinner. There are some slight perks to being a super-paralegal/saving the world from ultimate destruction. One such plus is $10 towards dinner from the firm if one stays two hours past departure time.

Sushi! One seamlessweb.com visit and 30 minutes later, my food had arrived: a spicy tuna roll and a seaweedy tub of miso soup. Total (w/ tip): $10.25. Total (w/ tip) - firm overtime $10 dinner deal: $0.25. That's right, ladies and gents. Bitch got miso soup for a quarter. As evidenced above, the soup was about 20% broth and 80% wakame. So it's possible to get some broth for $0.05 and some seaweed for $0.20. Mom would be so proud. (Note: I am aware that based on the above logic it is equally possible that bitch got a sushi roll for a quarter or gave the delivery dude a 25 cent tip; however, I find the implications of paying $0.25 for raw fish equally disturbing as being a cheap asshole. So I paid 25 cents for miso soup.)

Incidentally, the answer is definitely Batman.

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.