The road less travelled is WTF?????

Guys, seriously. What, in the name of God, is the matter with you?

I have just under one hundred of these hits, all credited to Google searches of various permutations of "iguana erection photo". (One enterprising internetter, who really wanted to cover his bases, was searching with "iguana erection picture image photo". Good for you, dear. I'm sure you have a bright future in fact-checking.)

Seriously, for once, Dear Googly is speechless. I was initially excited at the increase in traffic, but then I realized that it is all coming from people who are looking for photographs of an iguana erection, for crying out loud.

This is like finding out that your favorite pair of jeans -- the ones with the fabulous detailing and neat pocket pattern that everyone compliments you on 'cause they're just SO COOL -- were made by starving one-legged children in an east Asian sweatshop.

Because they're instigators, that's why.

Kat: I saw something weird this morning.
Coworker Natalie: What?
Kat: I was near the subway entrance, and there was this construction worker across the street, yelling and flailing his arms around.
Natalie: Oh, that’s always fun. What was he yelling about?
Kat: You know, man-intimidation stuff. “Come here you son of a bitch, you don’t want to start with me, I’ll show you something,” et cetera.
Natalie: Sounds scary. Was he yelling at somebody?
Kat: That was the thing. He was yelling at a spot on the wall behind one of those Village Voice containers. And there was nobody there.
Natalie: Weird.
Kat: Yeah. But then when I came around the corner, I saw there was actually a cat there, so I was like, oh, that makes sense.

(pause)

Natalie: Why does that make sense?
Kat: Because, it… yeah.

(silence)

Natalie: I’m going back to work now.

Iguana sex you up

This article is terrific, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but I have to say first that I’m having trouble getting past that subheadline. “Nights and days of the iguana erection” has a certain capital-letters-required ring to it, much like The Last Days of Disco or Seven Years in Tibet, that makes it sound less like what it is (an iguana boner), and more like some sort of hippie-monikered retreat for artists and pot-lovers. One loosely based in principles of eastern religion and founded by really, really west-coast people who used to go to Burning Man, but got angry over its increasing inclusivity of people who spend their non-Burning-Man-moments wearing suits and, god forbid, managing hedge funds.

“Screw Burning Man and its yuppie influx,” they would say. “Nights and Days of the Iguana Erection is so next-thing.”

Anyway, the article itself is pretty limited in scope, which makes sense in a how-much-can-you-really-say-about-iguana-peen sort of way:

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Mozart, an iguana stuck with a permanent erection six days after a mating session at a Belgian zoo, may have to have his penis amputated if the condition does not improve.

"He will see the vet on Thursday," said Enid Balemans, spokeswoman for the Aquatopia Zoo in Antwerp, stressing that veterinarians were still considering alternative treatments.

Good, straightforward reporting. Iguana has boner; amputation is imminent. Reuters, way to go: I applaud this as an exemplary study in the principles of cause and effect.

Readers are later reassured that male iguanas are actually born twice-blessed in the penis department, so those concerned about Mozart’s ultimate well-being (as far as his continued ability to get it on with the lady iguanas) can rest easy, because he’s still packing a spare. I know that I'm relieved.

A mischievous-looking suited man shared my elevator today. He hopped on at the ground floor, waggled his eyebrows at me, and then – when I pushed the button for my floor—said, “SooOOOoo, what do YOU do on the eleventh floor?”

This post isn’t about Elevator Conversations (although I really want to talk about those one day, because honestly, is there any dialogue more constrained than one that MUST reach a logical and comfortable conclusion between the lobby and the eleventh floor?), but rather, about how this particular one made me realize that I don’t like it when people ask me what I do.

It’s not because I’m embarrassed or anything— publicists, like dentists, are necessary to a fully-functioning global economy. Only better, because we don’t make your gums bleed. But the inevitable followup to “I’m a publicist,” is, “a publicist for what?”, at which point I’m forced to say, “for the arts,” at which point the asker realizes that I am not Leslie Sloane Zelnick, and they ask me what the job entails. And here’s the thing: I know that I, and all the other chirpy women who work in this field, must be doing something important. I mean, we’re employed. And even though our jobs consist largely of hassling people over the phone and/or writing press releases to announce things that we ourselves do not remotely care about, even though we are considered by most to be a worthless waste of the earth’s ever-dwindling natural resources, there are A LOT of us and WE ARE ALL GETTING PAID. (Suck on that, Gawker.)

Still, the fact that my job does consist largely of hassling-and-not-caring makes it a lot harder to, y’know, qualify. So I come off boring (“I assist my clients in media outreach and messaging with the goal of securing coverage for their large scale initiatives”), or idiotic (“I, like, talk on the phone a lot?”).

Or, sometimes, I lie.

Cocktail Party Guest: What do you do?
Me: I stab people.

Which leaves me wishing, just every so often, that I had one of those jobs with a self-explanatory title. Like, “beekeeper”. Nobody asks the beekeeper what his job entails. No pressure. No judgement. Just bees… and the quiet keeping thereof.

Related: A google image search result for “I love bees”.


Unrelated, for those concerned about the breakup: I’m fine. Really. Thanks for caring about me!

A personal update, with cactus

I wasn’t really sure whether to bring this up, since I’m pretty sure that most people come here looking for insight about geostationary bananas made of paper mache and/or Leigh Lezark, and not for updates on my personal life. But since it means abandoning a standby blogging topic, it gets a brief mention. So here it is.

If you read regularly (hey, you three!), and if, in your regular reading, you noticed that Dave isn’t making his usual appearances, and if, noticing that, you thought to yourself, HEY, did they…?

Yes, we did.

If you want to know why, then just imagine the most horrible, scandalous, soul-ripping relationship atrocity ever committed. Now, multiply that by 100, and add some, like, barnyard animals, and a lot of screaming and hair-pulling and maybe a knife fight. Ok? Now you may as well just stick with whatever it is you’ve conjured up, because it is vastly more interesting than what actually happened.

Which is, we broke up. And then we ordered a pizza. And then, a couple hours later, I went home carrying my deodorant and toothbrush in a tote bag.

Ok, that's it. To make up for the total anticlimactic-ness of this post, here is a picture of some cactuses (or cacti) wearing hats.

Harry Potter and the Age-Inappropriate Obsession

My friend Brad did me the amazing favor (or, possibly, the incredible disservice) of lending me Harry Potter books 1 through 6. I’d never read a single one of them.

That was a week ago.

I have now read five.

I am obsessed. Harry Potter flows like heroin through my veins, and I am powerless to stop it. It’s like being in the throes of the world’s most crippling high-school crush, except that I’m 24, and not in high school, and my crush does not even really exist, and even if he did that’s no excuse… but that doesn’t stop me from investing myself, page after page, in bespectacled (and be-scarred, poor thing) object of my eternal and everlasting affection.

Last night, I was curled up in bed, tearing through “The Order of the Phoenix” and biting my fingernails down to the quick, when Emily came home.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked.
“Reading,” I muttered.
“Harry Potter?”
“Yah.”
“And the Chamber of Secrets?”
“No, it’s Order of the Phoenix.”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Mr. Potter,” she said. And then, “A lot of time in bed.”
“I like him,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose you think he’s different than all the other boys.”
“Yes.”
“Did you think that might be related to the fact that he’s twelve years o—“
“HE IS FIFTEEN IN THIS ONE!!!!” I yelled, pounding my fist on the bed.

Emily and I looked at each other.

“Oh,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I guess that’s fine, then.”
“Right.”

I returned to reading, she sat down on the couch to watch TV. All was quiet, peaceful, and lovely.

With the possible exception that my roommate and I had just mutually acknowledged a total okayness with dating fifteen year-old boys.

The road less travelled is paved with splatted tomatoes

Dear Googly is so pleased, so VERY pleased, to see that it is - for once! - an intelligent question about tomatoes (and not the usual filth about boners and shagging and pee) which brought somebody stumbling across the site.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what measures are being taken by the country’s Tomato-Makers to make their product more appealing to… er, costumers.

But, on the chance that my tomato-curious search friend just made a typographical error, I do know that tomatoes have been bred rot-resistant since the mid-nineties in order to make them more appealing (and longer-lasting) for consumers. Some of whom are bound to be costumers, based on professional demographics and wealth surveys and blah blah blah the banana thing was so much more interesting than this.

A banana floats over the Rio Grande

Did you ever see that Saturday Night Live skit, where a very prestigious financial investment firm found that all the good domain names were taken and had to launch their website at http://www.clownpenis.fart/?

(It's not real. Don't click on it.)

This is sort of like that, only instead of a prestigious financial investment firm, it’s an unapologetic (and clearly amused) artiste from Montreal.

And instead of http://www.clownpenis.fart/, it’s http://www.geostationarybananaovertexas.com/.

GEOSTATIONARY.
BANANA.
OVER.
TEXAS.
DOT COM.

Hee!

The other difference, though, is that this is actually a legitimate art project. According to the article that directed me to this site (which features the totally self-explanatory page title, “Geostationary Banana Over Texas”):

… a Montreal artist is planning to float a gigantic yellow banana in geostationary orbit above Texas next year, his Web site says, to stir residents' imagination and provoke comment.

…He plans to build the balloon out of bamboo and synthetic paper, and launch it from Baja or Sonora in northwestern Mexico in August 2008, he said on his Web site, geostationarybananaovertexas.com.

Although I’m afraid that the imagination-stirring and commentary is going to be pretty much limited to statements like, “Hey, Ralph! If you squint and tilt your head to the left, it looks kinda like a dog’s dick!”, and I should probably waste some time rambling about what sort of humanitarian good might be done in the world with the money ($1 million Canadian) that was used to fund this project, really, I only want to say one thing… I think this is AWESOME. It’s as though Andy Warhol and Roger Waters got drunk together and decided, after a great deal of thought, to unleash their collaborative awesomeness on the world.

+



=



God bless whimsical art, and kudos to Cesar Saez for the explanation he gave when questioned about his motivation for the project:

"Because it's possible. Why not a banana over Texas?" the 38-year-old told the Globe and Mail newspaper when pressed to explain why he would fly fruit over the United States. "We address advertisement, we address entertainment, we address political issues," he said. "The issue of migration in the (United) States is another. The banana is built in Mexico and released in Mexico and enters in a furtive way."

On his website, Saez says a flight path over President George W. Bush's home state was chosen "because it has oil, and a lot of Wal-Marts, Exxons and Halliburtons," as well as the president's ranch. "I wanted to bring some humor to the Texas sky."

If anyone reading this would care to invite me for a stay down south during the reign of the Geostationary Banana, please send email my way. I salute you, furtive fruit on the southern horizon.

The belated NYE post

I had a great time on New Year’s Eve (as evidenced by my waking up the next morning with a terrible champagne hangover, the sickly-sweet after-scent of which oozed out of my pores for approximately three hours until I finally eradicated it by eating a scrambled egg). But I never got around to posting a minute-by-minute rundown of the evening's activities, so instead, I have just one incident I’d like to publicly discuss.

Just after midnight, a flurry of beeping signaled the arrival of the usual “New Year’s Eve” text messages. Most of them fell into one of three categories— the Basic (“Happy new year!”), the Contextual (“Happy New Year, I’m drunk/high/getting a BJ from your sister!”), or the Why You Should Turn Off T9 When You’re Drinking (“Gaspsy new webbs!”)

And then there was this, which seemed to be a strange amalgamation of the three, and which came from someone identified in my phone as “Frank”. It said:

Crappy POO BEAR. and you. im Drunkl. FRANK!

I liked this message. It had pizazz. It had inexplicable typos. It talked about poo. And, of course, I had no fucking idea who it was from.

If you’re like me (i.e. a 24 year-old New York City girl who spent nearly two years living the oft-caricatured life of an urban bachelorette), then you understand this. A byproduct of the single life, in a city of 9 million, is that your cell phone can become a scrolldown repository of guys you once dated. The ratio of men to women in my phone’s memory is approximately 5:1.

It wasn’t always like this. I used to delete the names of former hookups, preferring to eradicate them from my phone in the same way that I’d eradicated them from my life. (Though it is, admittedly, difficult to frighten away a phone number by telling it that you think its dad is “kind of hot”.) So I happily deleted all evidence of my former flames... until an unfortunate incident in which I answered a late-night call from a number I didn’t recognize, only to find myself talking to a former hookup, a squash player from Colombia whom I had kicked out of my bed two months earlier when he got a little bit over-zealous and tried to bite off a part of my body--which I won’t name here, but which I was highly disinterested in parting with-- and with whom I decidedly did not want to talk.

“Hello?” I said.
“Hey baby,” a voice said. “Wanna hang out?”
“Who is this?” I said.
“It’s J-----, what, you don’t remember?”
“J----? Wait... J---???? The guy who tried to maul my ladybits back in June?”
“Yeah, baby! C'mon girl, where do you live? I can't remember and I wanna come over!”
“AAAAAAGH!” I said, and hung up.

And then, I added his number back into my phone so that when he called again (and again, and again), I could simply shudder, cross my legs, and push the button marked “Reject call”.

Which is to say that, if I went out with you, even once, chances are that your name and number are still idly haunting my contacts list. All because one expatriate athlete once mistook my clitoris for a fruit snack.

This is so far beyond double entendre.

Anyway, I may never figure out who “Frank”, the anonymous text-messager, is (after a great deal of thought, I think he’s somebody I met on a Saturday excursion to Culture Club, which in and of itself opens up an entirely new set of questions), but I’m glad to know that he was having a good time on New Year’s Eve. I’m glad that the retaining of old phone numbers isn’t a quirk that’s unique to me. And I’m glad, too, for all of us who sometimes feel lost in this city in spite of calling it home – that no matter what happens to us, or where we end up, people will always carry in their pockets the names of those who would be otherwise forgotten.



Happy new year!

Public service announcement

I have no idea if a fall onto the NYC subway tracks is included in any of those “Worst-case scenario survival guide” handbooks that people are so often giving each other as retirement gifts (and really, I’d think they’d be much more appropriate for new grads, considering that the chances of being in a skydiving accident or surfing-related shark attack decrease significantly after age 65), but in any case, this is really something worth knowing about. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve looked down at that little canal between the tracks – which is usually littered with rats or copies of AMNY or, inexplicably, used batteries – and wondered whether one could avoid being hit by an oncoming train by hiding there.

Thank you, Mr. Awesome Hero Man In A Blue Hat, for offering yourself as the guinea pig in an experiment which proves, once and for all, that hiding in the canal = escape from death.
Oh yeah, and for saving The Seizure Man’s life.

I’m just waiting for this story to be immortalized in the annals of “Email forwards from your mom about safety”. My favorite so far contained detailed tips on how NOT to get raped (did you know that putting your hair in a ponytail increases your chances of being sexually assaulted?), but this would definitely trump it.