August 2010
1 post
The New Inquiry Newsletter
thenewinquiry:
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July 2010
3 posts
"All the best"
“All the best” is a polite and convenient written sign-off that many of us employ without even thinking. I learned to use it when I was an intern at a literary agency; it usually indicated the presence of an enclosed unsigned contract, and it sounded just fine. That is all it is ever meant to do: sound just fine.
I was walking along Henry Street on Monday morning when I heard a...
“Holistic dentistry”, as advertised on the Park Slope food coop’s staircase, sounds like a terrible idea.
One way to make your sink look like a warzone is to scrape burnt toast into it.
June 2010
2 posts
"Extreme Solitude"
Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Extreme Solitude” in the New Yorker is exactly the type of story I aspired to write in my college creative writing classes. Everything from the Barthes references to the dynamic between the two characters to the way he paces his sentences — even their first names (Leonard, Madeline) were ones I would have liked to have picked out. But the difference is...
A French Revolutionary →
This is something I wrote while I was in Paris!
May 2010
8 posts
The new Brooklyn Bridge Park is so untained and smooth that even from the ground, it looks like an aerial shot of its own prototype.
In Japan, I noticed that the outskirts of Kyoto and Tokyo had a similar quality, except, of course, their prototypes are not displayed inside a glass box in an architect’s office the way new Brooklyn developments are. Out the window of the Shinkansen bullet...
Highbrow/lowbrow
Swiss airlines has an audio-book of To The Lighthouse on its in-flight entertainment system. I listened to it on my flight to New York yesterday, between watching “It’s Complicated” and “Leap Year.”
Three stories with many similarities
Children are Bored on Sunday
Temporary
Childcare
Seoul, South Korea
Observations:
It is a noisy city. Everything talks to you: buses, doors, phones, remote controls (or is it the objects they control that talk?) Also: recordings of Brahms concertos playing in public toilets = the pinnacle of civilization?
Perhaps it’s the Starbucks, but you never feel like a stranger. Nobody looks at you funny or treats you like a tourist/retard. Most people don’t...
“Intelligent women only bake when they’re depressed”
– R.S.R
“In certain ways, placebos are ideal drugs: they typically have no side effects...”
– The Magic Cure
I’ve been trying to figure out a way to obtain sleeping pill placebos without ever finding out that they are placebos. I also keep thinking how this reminds me of the Liar’s Paradox, even though it doesn’t really line up, and this, too, keeps me up at night. The...
Has any pop song ever rhymed “faster” with “disaster” before? I love that part in Telephone (1:45)
Proximity
You know how when you move to an apartment that’s near a gym, or a farmer’s market, or a park or swimming pool, and you tell yourself, “I might as well start going, since it’s right next door”? Well, churches aren’t really like that, are they?
April 2010
11 posts
Some thoughts while packing up an apartment
Fitting books into a suitcase is a lot like Tetris.
I have accumulated five almost-full boxes of band-aids in ten months, but I still have blisters on my toes.
Using bubble wrap makes me feel very grown-up. I’d feel even more grown-up if I’d actually bought the bubble wrap, rather than receiving it in a package three months ago, getting flustered about how to recycle it, and...
How not to write about France: a Manifesto
I love Adam Gopnik’s writing almost all of the time. Paris to the Moon contains some of my favorite commentary about living in France, and he always manages to make the personal aspects of his essays completely relevant to the topic itself. This is rare, as many Americans writing about France fancy themselves as Hemingway, and most personal essays end up sounding self-centered or...
One drawer closes, another opens...
My desk at work only lets me open one drawer at a time.
There are three drawers.
Is there a functional reason for this mechanism that I’m unaware of, or is the furniture manufacturer sending subliminal philosophical messages to disgruntled office workers?
First lettuce, now lipstick? →
(via Jezebel)
This is what I do on a Sunday →
Washing lettuce
I cannot stand washing lettuce. The clumsy salad spinner, the sore wrists, the laborious soaking and rinsing process, the bits of salad that clog up the sink, the worms that float to the surface — it just doesn’t seem worth it for something that is, at best, an ignorable vessel for better, tastier things (arugula is an exception: the wash-benefit analysis tilts in its favor, due to...
I feel really guilty every time I use paper towels in the kitchen, but I never feel bad about using toilet paper.
Last week, I ran out of paper towels and used toilet paper to mop up some tea I spilled.
I didn’t feel too bad about it.
Appetite for German
Reality Hunger, if only in name, sounds like it should have been an Enlightenment-era German tract: Realitäthunger.
(It’s really fun to translate random stuff into German. Especially song lyrics. Especially rap.)
leoncrawl:
Is there a phrase in journalism more plainly indicative of laziness and a lack of familiarity with basic facts than “in recent memory”? I’ve used it, certainly, and have felt like a huge loser every time. “I want to put this thing in historical context, and have a vague sense, based on I don’t know what, that it is a very unusual thing. Sorry but I’m not going to be looking up any...
March 2010
2 posts
“A group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis declared lox nonkosher last month because...”
– Everything in this paragraph makes me miss New York like crazy: crazy rabbis, bagels and lox, and the brilliant, brilliant minds behind the Post.
February 2010
6 posts
Who loves the sun?
This winter, it has not rained or snowed or sleeted or shined in Paris. For three months, it has drizzled.
We’ve had snowfall, but never more than a couple of centimeters. It rains practically every day, but never heavily enough to put an end to your vacillation over whether or not to take an umbrella. Showers dampen your mood, snow dampens your shoes, and the slightest glimmer of sun - a...
“The Khomeini fatwah was pronounced on Valentine’s Day… So that would be...”
– Salman Rushdie on the worst Valentine’s day ever.
"I miss you like a fat kid misses cake"
Theoretically, wouldn’t a skinny abstemious person miss cake more than someone who was fat and ate cake all the time?
“Since that is not her style, Ms. Deray said, she has still not had a long-term...”
– On College Campuses, a Shortage of Men
Oh dear.
metro moments
The Paris metro is not like the New York subway. There are no rats; the layout of the seats is too close for comfort, discouraging eye contact and eavesdropping; it cannot touch you in the same way the Q train can touch you, creaking over the Brooklyn bridge at sunset, reminding you that you are as happy as you ever will be. In Paris, you won’t stand next to a hulk of an iron worker who will...
Bundles and Bureaucrats
I spend a considerable part of my workday reading speeches by B- and C-list politicians: Foreign Ministers of former Soviet states, Agriculture Ministers of large industrialized countries, European Union Finance Ministers, and so on. These speeches are, for the most part, dull and predictable, and my job is to glean strategic and personal information from them to enable ass-kissing in upcoming...
January 2010
7 posts
A thought on newspapers
I am trying to convince my bosses to get subscriptions to all the big newspapers and magazines so a) I can actually do research properly and access stories more than 24 hours old and b) to support print media (of course.) The problem? It’s impossible to find the subscription forms and prices without getting lost in their websites. I’m really annoyed with this. Print is in decline: the...
Maybe this could be fun
This reminds me of college, when groups advocating environmentalism/gender equity/ genocide awareness would plaster their event posters with FREE PIZZA
missprotestalot:
Every morning I turn on NPR and know that thousands of people will die from starvation in Haiti while we New Yorkers enjoy our rice and beans which we can just get right around the corner.
Yesterday while the internet was on...
Glow/Gloat
The New York Times Style section is hardly a beacon of journalistic originality, but in this article about the New Age Cavemen, the author uses a particularly annoying cliché. When discussing his subjects - New Yorkers who follow the “paleo” lifestyle - he describes their appearance in a very specific way which buys into everything these “lifestyle artists” try to uphold:
...
Of rice and men...
IF John Mackey (brown rice capitalist) ==> China (white rice communists)
“You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago...”
– John F. Kennedy, Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association New York City, April 27, 1961
Underpaid writers of the world, unite!
My mind is swimming in time-zone arithmetic: country codes, new front-door passwords, airport acronyms, foreign change. In 2008, I had different phone numbers for every language I speak and moved 10 times between two Aprils. I can now recite back exchange rates and immigration laws for multiple countries, and overcome over jetlag with just three small pills. I don’t even get sick on planes...
The tote bag, overlooked in many end-of-decade lists, speaks volumes about the values of our generation.
The tote bag esthetic was unisex, utilitarian, and unfussy - an antidote to the gaudy handbags adorned with chains and logos which, earlier on in the decade, could house a cell-phone, a hair-straightener, two small dogs, and thirteen varieties of lip-gloss at any given moment. The tote...
December 2009
3 posts
“The most ‘popular,’ the most ‘successful’ writers among...”
– Poe, “The Literati of New York City”, 1846 (via RSR)
“Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that her government preferred an...”
– France to Unveil Tax on Bonuses
I love that Angie had the sass to call a bonus tax “charming.” What a badass.
Gym clothes
I tend to pay attention to what I wear, especially now that I live in the 7th arrondissement of Paris and the way people treat me seems to have a strong positive correlation with the length of my skirt, the size of my heels, and whether or not I’ve bothered with makeup. But sometimes it’s really convenient to look like garbage. For example, at the gym.
My gym in Paris is ridiculous...
November 2009
2 posts
I wrote more stuff!
The Semantics of Rape for Candor (a great new lit mag!)
FIACso art reviews from Paris for Paper Monument
Fatties Beware! →
This makes Fight Club look civilized
October 2009
9 posts
One Hundred Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)
Via NYTIMES
THE PARISIAN VERSION:
1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.
Do not acknowledge anyone’s presence until they address you. This applies for everyone except Sarko, his entourage, and members of the PSG football team.
2. Do not make a singleton feel bad. Do not say, “Are you waiting for...
“Obama Visits Returning War Dead”
– NY Times
Ugh, for a moment I thought they meant he was dead.
Colonel Sanders infiltrates U.N General Assembly →
A man posing as KFC’s “Colonel Sanders” managed to get into the U.N General Assembly and pose for photos with diplomats. He addressed the “grilled nation” in a publicity stunt to advertise a chicken sandwich.
In No Logo, Naomi Wolf detailed the ways in which corporations commodify the strategies of anti-corporate activists for their own ad campaigns. But this makes...
On the way to the
metro I saw an elderly nun with a broken umbrella. After I absorbed the scene in all its photogenic tragedy, all I could think about was how amazing a Marilyn Manson cover of that Rihanna song would be.
Surprisingly delicious:
I bought a bar of dark chocolate with toasted sesame seeds a couple of days ago. I think of myself as having tried most types of chocolate (I am, after all, nominally Swiss) and I always assumed I’d fantasized about all the different possible chocolate concoctions at some point in my life. Violets? Check. Salt? Done. Walnuts, bacon, tea, coffee? I’ve tried it all. But sesame seeds? In...