Filed under: art, books, hookers, internet, personal | Tags: angostura sours, blurb, books, change.org, goodreads, npr, peeping tom, prostitution, the environment, the iPad, the kindle
The Telegraph on the fiftieth anniversary of Peeping Tom, one of my all-time favorite movies.
The Millions isn’t really into Goodreads, although for me it’s the one social network that actually tends to lead to interesting real-life conversations. (I guess you don’t have that problem when you’re already a famous book blogger, though…)
I just this week stumbled across high-class self-publishing site Blurb and so of course now I’m planning a book which will haunt me for months and then never happen.
Change.org continues to conflate prostitution with human trafficking. Also their math isn’t so good.
Articles about how iPads and Kindles are more environmentally friendly than printed books continue to make no sense to me. Also, shut up.
Finally, NPR recommended drinking angostura sours in honor of Mad Men. I have yet to see a single episode of that show, but bitters and egg whites sounds like a win-win cocktail for me.
[image: Still from Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)]
Filed under: personal | Tags: central new york, college, dead ladybugs, i hate college, me me me me me
Ten years ago I had a girlfriend. Her name was Monica and she was imaginary. Actually, she wasn’t imaginary, because I had a photo of her, affixed with blue Fun-tak to the wall of my freshman first-year dorm. My arm was around her. We were cute.
The day I moved into the dorm, some good-looking but frankly rather intimidating basketball players walked in and gave my wall the onceover. (I had immediately plastered my living space with photos and souvenirs from home and posters for albums that I didn’t actually own but meant to, because that is what people always did with dorm walls on TV.*) One of the jocks asked if the girl in the photo was my girlfriend and, without thinking, I said yes. “She’s hot,” he said. Which was true, although actually she was just one of my co-workers, one who was nice enough used to always make fun of me for not smoking weed or drinking and for being a vegetarian.
And yet suddenly she was my girlfriend. Once I had her, I talked about her constantly. “Monica got me this last Christmas,” I’d say, about whatever had my hometown boyfriend had given me for Christmas. “Monica listens to a lot of Cat Power.” “Monica’s family really likes me.” “Monica and I had sex in a church once.”
Lying was a lot of fun, although occasionally I would start contradicting myself, which grew troublesome. Also, because I didn’t know anything about girlfriends, some of my stories had holes in them. Like when I told my friend Sarah that Monica and I were both virgins when we met, which is why we didn’t think we had to use condoms. Horrified, Sarah asked if Monica was actually trying to get pregnant. Until that point I had never actually thought about condoms as a deterrent to pregnancy.
To avoid complications, Monica and I broke up over the Columbus Day break. This worked well, because no one was there to see it and also because it gave me a much-needed excuse to publicly sulk for a few weeks.
