Monday, April 03, 2006

Based on my most recent research.

Well, it's part of our nature to put off uncomfortable tasks. While it's trite to blog about procrastinating, I'm quite interested in the history of procrastination. It was my pleasure to do a little bit of research in my spare time, the results of which I will share with you.

You may not have known this, but our society has been shaped by little known heroes who stalled, idled, and delayed us into making some of the greatest advancements in human history. Take the great explorer, Eric the Idler, (not to be confused with Eric Idle of comic fame). He had a legendary beard the color of corn husk, which he was fond of braiding in Viking fashion. Many a village was saved from pillage due to his ability to seclude himself for days in the ship's belly, meditating and grooming his beard. He'd later become known in history, after emerging from weeks of isolation, as "Weirdbeard." However, the women and children of many Northern countries were saved thanks to his idiosyncracy. Indeed, entire lines of ancestry survived due the preoccupation of Weirdbeard.

Another quiet hero I'd like to acknowledge is Ambrosia the Slow. Named after the nectar of the gods, Ambrosia was slow as molasses in January. She lived in Greece and worked as a ceramicist. Her village depended upon her for certain pots, designed to keep foods moist and fresh. Because Ambrosia could not produce to keep up with the townfolks' eager demand, techniques of food drying had to be developed, resulting in such popular treats as raisins and sundried tomatoes.

The most significant time-waster of all was the Earl of Procrastin. Procrastin was a small, beautiful village near the French riviera, and in the 1700s, the Earl of Procrastin was the most little known but most well-landed gentry of the region. Famed for his long, leisurely walks and total lack of industry, Procrastin would make long lists of tasks to do and spend hours gazing at the horizon and reviewing the lists in his mind. Sometimes, he'd find that his duties rhymed pleasantly, and he developed a notable fondness for word games, none of which he found the time to document, so none found their ways into the fashionable parlors of the day. Procrastin kept meaning to develop the games into playable amusements, but somehow could not find the time. He dreamed of one day ruling the Procrastin Nation.

I'd better get back to work, but I'm glad I took the time out of my busy day to share these historical tidbits. I've got several blogs now to update, and I think there's some fresh coffee brewing somewhere on the floor, so I'd better go, especially if I want to have a chance to read the latest Hollywood gossip, print out a few crossword puzzles, and check out the ofoto book my friend just sent. I am just too busy to waste any more time.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Yay! Tyra mail!

Oh my god, I totally can't believe I am here, competing to be America's Next Top Model. Like, my whole entire life everyone all said Sheara, you are so going to be America's Next Top Model. So when my mom was like, "Sheara! You got Tyra mail!" I jumped up and said goody! I am so going to L.A!

Tyra is like, sooooooooooooooooooo beautiful. She told us that we could all accomplish our dreams and anything we set out to do, cause we are all a beautiful person inside. I'm all like Ohmygod Tyra, you are sooooooooooo beautiful.

First was the questions. They asked us, like, in this room with tons of cameras and lots of people that you never see on TV and they said, So Sheara, why you want be a model? and I'm all like, cause look at Tyra and look at Janice. Even thou Janice is really old and her eyebrows maybe are kinda sharp? But she's fierce and I loovvvvve her. After words, Janice hugged me and said that I was sooooo cute but she looked mad? But I think that is just how her face goes.

The other girls were all really cool and from cool places, like Houston and big cities like that. Me being a Small Town Girl I think helps, cause the French photographer said I just fell off the turnip truck. I nodded and even thou I never saw a turnip truck I still smiled and said thank you, and then I said mercy! which is French for thank you.

We got to pick rooms. I picked the Brigitte Nielsen room because she is a fierce competitor, like me. My roommate is named Brooshetta and she has a Pradu bag. The label says PRADU and she told me it is Italian and is supposed to cost a lot of money but she got it special deal because the sales person knew she is going to be a top model.

Then a girl got shadey and said it is not a real Pradu but I know the truth.

The girl that got shadey is named Bitsey and she has done modelling before. She is the oldest and has kind of big boobs. If we have a lingerie shoot she will for sure win. I brought some pads with me but it is not the same.

So far we did one shoot, like I said, with the famous photographer and me and Brittney-Dee and we had to pretend we were dolls having tea with a tea set. We had on doll wigs and shiny mary janes and red circles on our cheeks.

Me and Brooshetta are getting ready to go to dinner right now, so I have to say chow! We got Tyra mail while I was writing this and it is time to go. Chow chow!

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Sunday scramble.

The line this morning at Tal Bagels is long but ridiculously efficient. The ten bagel guys behind the counter flow like a trapeze act. They have a damn good system, and this place has damn good bagels.

There's a British-accented conversation going on behind me about the grotesquely oversized muffins in the case. "They look mutant," "do you think they're tasty?"

An English muffin, as every dutiful American supermarket shopper knows, is quite small.

A baby shouts behind me, no words yet. "Please be patient and attentive. This is the very best I can do for now. Perhaps sometime next year I'll have mastered a fifty-word lexicon and will be able to inquire with polite elegance as to the whereabouts of my bottle and whether I might impose upon you to kindly hand it to me, but until then, all I've got is AAAAHHWWWWHHHAAAA!"

There's an open table and I take it with my ruffly-plated FLAGEL. This is a flat bagel. Into a bit of flagellation here, har har.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, which I thought was back in November. Who knew? Been a bit out of touch, maybe. Was the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction only one year ago? It seems like longer. Maybe last year's halftime show flew by eventlessly. I personally would rather not see any breasts. I am not big on seeing strange naked bodies, male or female, without a good and direct reason. I think men are more easily titillated. OH-wa!

This is a nice FLAGEL. Flat bialy=flialy. Flat croissant=floissant. This game is too easy. I wonder what is the most popular bagel variety here, but not enough to find the manager and ask. People seem to be asking for "everything bagels." They want it alllll, baby. With lite scallion cream cheese.

Overheard yesterday in a Jersey diner: a lady discussing her intended meal with her husband. "How bout a noyce piece-a meat and a noyce patayta?"
How bout it? I guess in Texas, she'd have been "Fixin teh hayav some barbeekyoo!" to the equally vehement approbation of her marital partner.
Lovvvvve to eavesdrop. Love. It.

If I had a scientific mind, and a lot intellectual stamina, I'd probably be one of those insane mathematicians obsessed with the movements of everything in the universe and their patterns. Conveniently big on patterns. And generalizations. There's a fantastic article in the New Yorker this week about generalizations and how they're often misused. It's by the guy who wrote "The Tipping Point" and "Blink," two books that I've picked up but couldn't run with. The article focuses mostly on dog attacks and the singling-out of pit bulls. It was so clever, so well written and so good. And when I saw the byline at the end I thought well, so that's what the big fuss over him is all about.

It's interesting to find the commonalities in things and people. Like, you and she both have square jaws and both enjoy potatoes and hate corn. So will you both respond the same way to this? I don't believe that anything is random, but I'm not yet sure whether to discredit the notion of 'luck.' I do think that some things are inevitable (aside of death and taxes--oh Dorothy P, we love you although you did not love yourself) and that everything moves in trends, on different frequencies.

One of my best friends' husband is an electrical engineer who develops high-frequency oscilloscopes. I asked his colleague this weekend at their dinner party if the government ever asks for anything. The answer I got was casual: 'oh, the military asks for the strangest things.' He continued to distribute garlic on the pizza he was making and didn't elaborate.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Man and his symbols.

Last night I ate dinner alone in a diner, with a glass of red wine and a newspaper. The newspaper was brought to me by one of the busboys, a young spanish dude with an intelligent expression who said to me in concern, "you are thinking too much." Then he gave me the Post.

I left the diner and walked around the vicinity of 86th street and 2nd avenue, talking on my phone to a friend who'd moved away to become a SMBC (single mother by choice) in a place more affordable to raise children.

NYC has become strangely conducive to replicating. There are strollers and especially now, double strollers dodging commuters and joggers and shoppers on the sidewalk. I couldn't sit down at a bar during brunch last week while waiting for a table until a harried parent moved his twins' stroller out of the way. I clogged the aisle, with the stroller, we two entities locked in conflict.

City kids are different. I wasn't one. I am a city thirty-something.

Last night before dinner I spent a half hour in Blockbuster looking for some entertainment. The movie "Joe's Apartment" looked promising but then I remembered I used to stay at that exact apartment three years ago--the real apartment where it had been filmed--and thought, nah. I don't know which would be grosser: the roaches in the film or the memories of that relationship, which ended on Valentine's day after he gave me a purse. The gift had nothing to do with the breakup. We had a communication problem: we stopped calling each other.

A pocketbook. And it was damn funny, because I had dreamed in the first month we knew each other that an Uzi kept going off in my pocketbook. Israeli guy. Go figure. He presented me with a box and as I opened it he said, "baby, I wanted to get you a purse."

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Oh the childish pranks.

As I am a friendly person who likes to engage others in amusing and merry jest, but couldn't go so far as to make anyone uncomfortable, I would like to invite you to execute all the pranks I've been tempted lately to pull yet have not.

Go to the gym and take a nice hot shower. Wait until someone flushes a toilet and yell "MOTHER FUCKER!"

Use your myspace account to befriend people with naked pictures. Just naked people. Put them in your top eight and leave them there.

Walk through the crowds on 42nd street and shout in agitation, "What is this, TIMES SQUARE????"

Approach strangers and ask them in your highest voice how to get to Sesame Street.
Post recipes on Epicurious for "Hot Buttered Ass."

Walk into a small bar (like Milano's) with a double stroller and leave it there.

Put five dollars worth of repeats of "Don't Stop Believing" on the jukebox and then run away. If they do not have "Don't Stop Believing" then "Brown Eyed Girl" is okay. If they don't have "Brown Eyed Girl," then "Heart of Glass" will do nicely. If they don't have that, anything by Rush will do.

Set up a lemonade stand on your street corner that sells "Sea Breezes." This should not get you arrested in New Orleans, but anywhere else it might.

I have done none of these things. Well, the Times Square one I did, but I don't think it really registered with anyone. Still, I marvel at my polite resistance to actually do anything else listed above.

Well, stay tuned for pranks, part two, as the missed opportunities continue to pass.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

I doubt the dispatcher was listening, so here it is.

Hello! Hello dear! Yes! OK! Ledmegedyour bag dear! Here, get in dear. York Avenue goes two ways, yes dear?

So I look this morning at your name when I come to pick you up and I see it, Duvdevani! Is this an Indian name dear? Is your family from India? That is a veddyIndianzoundingname dear! Dev or Deva, that is like a big hearted god dear, a Deva is the god with big heart! Yes it is veddyGOODnamedear!

Oh they were Not Indian you say, because I look this morning and I see, oh such a good name! No? It was not Duvdevani before? You are married dear? Ah! Your grandfather changed it from a Polish name! He picked a veddygoodname!

I did not hear you! Can you please say to me the name again? Vischnya? OH! OH! Idizlike Vishnu! That also is veddy good, veddy veddy goodname!!! Vishnu! Also like a god!
You are going to Houston dear? Yes I have a cousin in Houston! He is an engineer! GOOD place, nice and hot! Yes I am from Bombay, it is hot! New York in the winter, I am used to it now. I have lived here with my wife and two sons for fifteen years now dear.

They are twelve and seven. GOOD STUDENTS. I also want to go to school. I wanted to go into engineering! Yes, someday. I was quite good at math when I was young!

What do you do dear? Are you a student? Oh, you work in an office. Do you like it? Yes, I do like the freedom of my job. I have been driving for fourteen years dear.

Continental? Ledmegedyoursudecasedear. OK! Thirty-three dollars with tolls. Oh, thank you dear!

Yes! Good luck to you too! Thank you, yes! Let us have a beeudyvul new year!!

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Away?

Dear JeriAnn,
Thanks so much for the delicious handmade truffles! They were above and beyond last year's batch, and the batch you made the year before that. That little hit of liqeur really enhances things. I've eaten two already! Happy holidays,
Yael
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Happy Holidays!

Thank you for your message. I'm out of the office until January 3, 2006 and will reply to you when I return.

-JeriAnn
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Dear Jer's away message,
I don't care what you say! I am saying my thanks. These truffles are sooooooo good! Did I mention the nice liqour hit? Am really, really, really enjoying these confections at desk. Mmm. Cheers to you and I hope you read your emails soon, xoxoxoYael
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Happy Holidays!
Thank you for your message. I'm out of the office until January 3, 2006 and will reply to you when I return.
-JeriAnn

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Hey!
Want to jusht shay the truffs, oh the truffs are gooo-oood! Woo! You are quite the candy maker and let me also say to you that you have quite nice eyes! I like the truffs. Delish lady! You are very special, I miss you, come back to the office soon ok
huggies and kissies YA.
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Happy Holidays!
Thank you for your message. I'm out of the office until January 3, 2006 and will reply to you when I return.
-JeriAnn
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Look here!
I have told you that I like your truffles!
They are very, very, very good!
Me and your truffles, we are happy here!
You are a nice lady.
LOVE, YAEL
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Happy Holidays!
Thank you for your message. I'm out of the office until January 3, 2006 and will reply to you when I return.
-JeriAnn
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Hi, it's me! I'm done, the truffles are allgone. I am crying, I miss them. Thirsty though. Desk in triplicate. Filling formsh out in triplicate. The triplicates de belleville, singy dancey rendezvous, woo! Truffs so good, I sing a song of truffles pocket full of rye. Does that mean he had a rye bread in his pocket? Don't get carraway now, getit? Is that a rye bread in your pocket or are you happy to see me? HA HA HA! Caraway, gosh I forgot where that came from now. Hi Im back! Just gotup and stole George's truffs but I will make it up to him


I am putting my head down now but I wanted to say you are the best and I wish you were here, are you here? I am getting up and coming over to your deshk now, oh! Boss is standing by coffeepot. Oooo! I will go say hello!

See you soon

xoxoxoxo, your dear friend Yael
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Happy Holidays!
Thank you for your message. I'm out of the office until January 3, 2006 and will reply to you when I return.
-JeriAnn