Packing up some junk

Now that I’m moving, I wonder how much moving-topical writing I ought to be doing. I could live-blog the packing process or something… but actually, I’m feeling surprisingly blasé about the whole thing. Sure, packing up everything you own and transporting it to a new apartment that may or may not turn out to have a cockroach problem is a total fest’o’stress. But, and this is undoubtedly from whence my Newfound Moving Calm has originated, I have realized one thing: no matter how many dishes get broken, or socks get lost, or cockroaches get freaky on the remaining, unbroken dishes or un-lost socks, no apartment experience will ever trump last year’s in total horrifying insanity.

In the totality of my life (25 years, 1 month, 11 days), I have called the police twice. There was nothing fun or funny about the first time, but the other time, about which I can write freely, was related to my last year’s apartment. More specifically, to its unfortunate proximity to other apartments. And most-most-most specifically, to those other apartments being inhabited by men whose idea of being neighborly was to flash their junk at strangers.

Yes, that’s right. This is a Penis Story! And not only that, it is a Penis Story In Five Chapters. Or maybe Six. I’ve only written Five, so far, but there may be the need for clarification requiring an additional Chapter.

Like, you know, if I see another penis or something.

Anyway. The point is, this is a good story. It has everything – humor, intrigue, nudity, the police… but it’s also a long story. Which leads me to several points:

1) The really good stories are few and far-between.

2) People do not like to read really really really long stories, even if they are really good, and about penises.

3) Because of the move, I will be exhausted and busy and not really in blogging mood for the next week or so.

And so, I would like to present… A Penis Story in Installments! This is just lazy, really. I've already written the story and am now guaranteeing fresh material for my next exhausted week, with little to no real effort on my part. But to YOU, it will be new. Maybe it’ll even keep some of you on tenterhooks, and intrigued, and coming back for more.

Now, without further ado:

ROOM WITH A VIEW OF A PENIS
by Kat

Chapter One: Introduction

The nightmare location in which all this madness took place – my very first NYC apartment – was in Harlem. This is not to say that all Harlem-dwellers are perverted weirdos (although, as you will see, some of them clearly are), but it’s necessary to mention because, in Harlem, all the buildings are very close together. The old, gray-bricked tenement buildings on the block where I lived were separated, side-to-side, by an alley that was maybe ten feet wide. It didn’t offer much privacy; I mean, if my neighbors and I had each leaned out of our living room windows, we could probably have held hands. It meant that, when I was in the kitchen washing dishes, the teenaged boys who lived adjacent to me could see me so well that they would immediately run to their window, open it, and make lewd, loud remarks about my ass. It also meant that, when this happened, I was able to reach into the refrigerator, find a half-rotted tomato, and chuck it across the alley into their apartment.

Though of course, all of that happened before The Penis.

To be continued…

Is there anything so marvelous as New York in the spring ti--- AAAAAAAAAGH!

It’s that time of year – the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the magnolias are in bloom, and I want to tear my hair out by the roots. Why? Because my lease is up.

There’s a reason why every New York blogger writes about moving and apartment-hunting at some point in their (lonely, blog-based, insipid little) lives. Namely, because it sucks.

I’m not sure if it’s the same in other cities. It’s not clear to me whether in, say, Cincinnati, looking for and then moving into a new apartment is an ordeal worthy of documentation. For the sake of Cincinnati-dwellers (Cincinatters? Cincies?), I hope it’s not. I hope that you open the newspaper, immediately locate advertisements for several apartments that are in the neighborhood and price range you want, make appointments to see them in an orderly manner, and ultimately, like the porridge-snarfing bear of yore, find the one that’s Just Right.

For the sake of readers who aren’t NYC-based, I must tell you: Here, there is no “Just Right”. There is only, “Affordable, Sort Of” and, if you’re lucky, “Affordable, Sort Of, And Also Not Visibly Infested With Cockroaches, Though They Are Probably Just Hiding.” To hunt for apartments here is to spend weeks on the verge of complete hysteria. Actually, it recently occurred to me that looking for an apartment in New York City is probably a lot like being part of an underground terrorist splinter cell—the sense of impending doom, the slew of unfamiliar numbers in your cell phone directory, the dashing out on a moment’s notice after a man who speaks heavily-accented English has insisted that you need to meet him over 90 blocks away right now and that you had better be carrying $1000 in cash.

And because I don’t actually want to phone it in like everybody else – by ranting about brokers’ fees, or complaining that West Bushwick doesn’t really exist, or expressing plans to quit the game entirely and just sleep on the couches of accomodating friends and/or strangers – I’m going to ask you guys for a favor: Sit tight. Sit tight, be patient, and once I have ceased freaking out I’ll come back with a really good story.

In the meantime, please enjoy this quickie installment of “Dear Googly”:

Oh, my.

Well. Dear Googly is not judging you, of course, my dear. I understand that life is difficult and full of challenges, and that sometimes the internet is the only place where one can turn for answers. But it seems to me that, confronted with something as concrete (and, I would imagine, clearly evident) as “STAINS ALL OVER MY FACE”, I would hasten to make a first stop elsewhere. Please, get your stain-covered self away from the computer, and seek real help in the acquaintance of 1) a bar of soap, or 2) a doctor.

Georgia O'Beef... or, y'know, something

Perhaps you’ve heard of Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Yes? They’re popular, widely-known, and with good reason: They make a frigging awesome steak.

Given their excellent reputation, they’ve come up with an appropriate tagline, which appears on all their advertisements. The tagline is:

“Life’s too short to eat anywhere else."

The problem is that it is currently appearing in an ad that features this particular photograph of a piece of, um, meat.

I’m sorry, that is just…

I mean…

That's wrong, in some way, isn't it? I was going to make some kind of “roast beef curtains” joke, here, but I can’t even see how it’s necessary.

Hell is other people's subway flooding

I was heading back to Brooklyn on Monday night, when the train abruptly shuddered to a halt inside the tunnel and sat, inert, for ten minutes. People were starting to fidget when the conductor finally came onto the overhead speaker to explain the situation.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed. “We’re being held by the train’s dispatcher, and should be moving shortly. We are experiencing delays due to existential water on the subway tracks.”

Oliver Sacks ain't got nothing on me

My dad, though it might not be, er, readily believable based on previous posts, is actually a doctor. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of turning my entire family into hypochondriacs. (Did you know that popping a zit on your nose or upper lip can cause death? Well, you do now. At least, this is what my father told me. Which is not to say that I don’t still pop the monster pustules that sometimes crop up on my nose, but rather that I do pop them and then lie awake all night waiting to die. Thanks, Dad.)

But, paranoia aside, my dad’s profession has been the source of great fun for my family over the years, because doctors bring home all sorts of interesting things. There were the freebie items from pharmaceutical companies; For instance, when I was in high school and all my friends were using standard-issue Bics for note-taking, I had fantastic, high-end ball-point pens whose pleasantly substantial bodies were inscribed with the names of cholesterol-reducing drugs. (Lipitor! Whoo!!!) Also, I was the only kid I knew who sometimes slept with a “stuffed stomach” at night.

(This is what it looked like.)

And, of course, I can't fail to mention the “LEVITRA” pen:

(Hee!)

Dad also brought home stories about his patients that were always a source of some terrific, amusing dinner conversations. Not that he named names or anything – that would be a violation of patient privilege. But it’s important to note that, although my father could not reveal the identities of…

• the man who claimed that tiny creatures named “Mewts” were living in his nose

• the woman who was using so much imitation coffee-creamer that she lost seventy pounds by cutting it out of her diet (yuck)

-or-

• the guy who swallowed some jimson-weed seeds and wrote a three-page hallucinatory essay about a duck named the “Tri-popotamus Jesus Butt”

…that did NOT prevent my entire family from laughing hysterically at their expense while we ate pork chops.

Anyway, the point of all this is that the medical profession is all about saving lives, yeah, but also, it’s funny. Which is why I’m excited to share the latest source of humor: Hospital Codes.

Hospital Codes

If there’s a problem in the hospital – a kidnapping, a bomb, a fire, etc – the staff cannot, for obvious reasons, jump on the intercom and scream, “BOMB! THERE’S A BOMB IN THE HOSPITAL! HOLY FUCKING SHIT, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!”

Because in a massive building where, at any given moment, hundreds of people are either unconscious or in wheelchairs or strapped down to gurneys, doing such a thing would cause some problems.

So instead, the staff has come up with the names of fake “Doctors” to page in the case of various emergencies. And here, courtesy of my mom, are the codes:

Dr. Wayward

(Paged to a location if a patient has gone missing.)

Dr. Strong

(Paged if security is needed to come restrain a “belligerent person”.)

Dr. Rush

(Paged in conjunction with the name of an actual doctor to indicate an urgent situation.)

Dr. Red

(Paged to indicate a disaster outside the hospital.)

Dr. Red X

(Paged to indicate a radiation disaster.) (No, I’m not kidding.)

Dr. Gale

(Paged to indicate strong winds.) (Who cares?)

Dr Wayward to the nursery

(Paged to alert staff of a child kidnapping.)

Obviously, if you are ever in the hospital, and you hear “Doctor Red X” being paged, it would be wise to get the hell out before you start to glow in the dark.

Addendum:

I don’t think these codes are anywhere near complete. What about all the many, many situations for which they haven’t imagined a code? I’d like to suggest…

Dr. Dre

(Paged to indicate a gang-related shooting.)

Dr. Who

(Paged to indicate an amnesiac.)

Dr. Phil

(Paged to indicate a patient who just needs a hug and a stern talking-to.)

Dr. Zaius

(For an accident involving monkeys.)

and, from my mom…

Dr. Clean to the "ICP"

(For an unfortunate accident involving a patient's catheter.)

Epilogue:

After my mom and I finished cackling over “the ICP”, I realized that I had a question.

“Hey, mom?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“What are the doctors supposed to do if they hear the code for a missing baby or a radiation disaster? Is there a protocol or something?”

“You know,” she said, “I asked your father about that.”

“And?”

“And he had absolutely no idea.”

The usefulness of full-length mirrors

A series of events for Wednesday, April 11.

7:45am: Drag self out of bed.

8:00-8:30am: Watch Good Day New York American Idol recap; discuss the Sanjaya Enigma, Sanjaya’s moustache, other contestants’ poor choice of hats with boyfriend; drink coffee.

8:45am: Get dressed in newly-laundered skirt, shirt, socks.

9:00-9:05am: Apply lipstick, put on boots; check self out in bathroom cabinet-mirror; leave apartment.

9:30am: Arrive at work.

9:30-10:45am: Create press release outline.

10:50am: Make bathroom trip.

10:51am: Pass bathroom mirror; give self casual once-over; continue toward stalls.

10:51:05am: Register terrible problem; return immediately to mirror.

10:52am: Stare at own reflection; attempt to convince self that shirt is not really see-through.

10:53am: Attempt to remember if shirt was transparent upon purchase.

10:54am: No, it was not.

10:54:30am: But it definitely is now.

10:55am: And you can see EVERYTHING.

10:56am: Maybe the fabric partially disintegrated in the wash.

10:56:05am: Violent swearing.

10:57am: Go into stall; pee; think.

10:58am: Vow to hide in cubicle for remainder of day.

11:00am: Email arrives from 50 year-old male boss requesting urgent, immediate meeting.

11:00:01am: Panic; one cannot meet with 50 year-old male boss when one’s unmentionables are showing.

11:01am: Sprint down hallway at 100 mph to borrow blazer from friend.

11:05am : Meet with boss; wear blazer.

11:10am-12:00pm: Continue to write press release; wear blazer.

12:00-12:30pm: Eat lunch; wear blazer.

12:30-5:30pm: Work contentedly; wear blazer.

5:35pm: Feel overheated; remove blazer.

5:36pm: Bring press release revisions to 50 year-old male boss for review.

5:36:05pm: Feel cold.

5:36:06pm: Realize that blazer is left behind at desk.

5:36:07pm: Realize that 50 year-old male boss is starting bemusedly at clearly-visible green lace bra showing through nearly-transparent shirt.

5:36:08pm: Cross arms over chest.

5:37pm: Leave 50 year-old male boss’ office; do not mention shirt transparency problem.

5:37:05pm: Ignore snickering sounds coming from 50 year-old male boss’ office.

5:38-5:45pm: Smack forehead against keyboard.

**Update: Since you guys asked, my shirt was teal-colored. And while I agree that there are times when a see-through shirt can look intentionally-- or even, stylishly-- transparent... well, this was not one of those times. To help you, I've created some MS Paint renderings of the situation (they're illustrative and not entirely accurate, which is to say, they're a lot cuter than me.)

This is how my outfit would have appeared if my shirt had been doing its job:

And this, though perhaps ever-so-slightly exaggerated, is what it actually looked like:

Note that you can see not only my bra, but the demarcation between skirt and stomach, and my navel piercing (which is, like ohmigod, soooo Britney Spears circa 1999, but which I can never remove because my stomach looks too weird without it.)

The boots were kickin', though.

The first rule of Palahniuk is, you do not talk about Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk almost killed me last night.

I wish I were kidding.

First, a little background: I had never, prior to yesterday, read anything of Chuck's. I'd always meant to, if only to win favor amongst the contemporary lit-ster crowd, who I imagine are probably standing around at this very minute drinking Pabst and talking about how much they'd like to bang Jonathan Safran Foer. To say that you enjoyed Fight Club: The Film but didn't bother to read Fight Club: The Book is to invite a certain amount of eyebrow-raising from the tapered-black-Levis-and-ironic-T-shirt set. And, I mean, I live in Brooklyn. A girl's gotta keep up appearances. Also, people-- people whom I trusted-- kept telling me that they were slaves to Chuck Palahniuk, that he was a visionary, and that I in particular would really appreciate his writing style. So considering all this, yesterday afternoon I passed by a table in Barnes & Noble that featured Chuck's recent novel-cum-short-story-collection, Haunted, prominently displayed under a sign that read "Favorite Paperbacks”, and I grabbed it. I figured it was as good a place as any to embark upon the Palahniuk journey. (Also, I like short stories. They’re like very small, very tasty literary packages – introduction, rising action, denouement, and conclusion all contained within a few pages. You can see a whole entire plot unfold during just one leg of your commute, never suffering the workday agony of having abandoned the world's most exciting narrative just because the train pulled in to 96th street when you still had 10 pages to go.)

So when I hopped on the subway yesterday to go home, I slithered into a seat between two other tired-looking professionals, opened Haunted to page 1, and started reading.

It was a slow start – halting narrative, choppy dialogue, unfamiliar writing style. But by the time I was making my transfer to the L train, standing on a platform jammed with tight-pantsed hipsters and feeling good about the street cred I was establishing via my public consumption of Palahniuk, I was totally hooked, having passed through the intro chapters and arrived at a new short story. It was called "Guts".

I'd actually heard about "Guts" before-- my friend Mardie had mentioned to me that it was intense, gruesome, and mind-blowingly graphic, to which my response was, "Awesome". Because-- and here's the rub of this whole episode-- I am NOT a weak-stomached pussy. As a kid, I loved horror fiction and weird-but-true stories of botched surgeries. And as an adult, I'm fascinated by disgusting and deformed things. Blood, gore, and intimate contact with dead animals do not bother me. What I’m saying is, I'd kind of established myself as somebody who would watch, read, touch, or eat ANYTHING, with gusto and without the slightest hesitation.

So, what happened next was unexpected and more than a little unnerving.

I was reading, waiting for the L train to arrive, tearing through the story at a furious pace. It was, true to Mardie's word, awesome and repulsive and utterly fucking disgusting. I’m not going to talk about the content of “Guts” -- first, because those of you who aren’t already familiar with it need only surf the internet for a few minutes to get all the information you need. And second, because I can’t bear to think about it.

Instead, I’ll just say that my vivid imagination, something which I'd always liked before, was working overtime to supply a never-ending stream of stomach-churning mental images based on what I was reading, passage after passage, and I was gritting my teeth in determination, forcing my way to the end of the story, wanting to get there before the approaching train arrived in the station… and then, I noticed something weird.

All over the page, words were disappearing. Entire blocks of text were being replaced, one by one, with bare, unprinted paper, winking out of existence as soon as I looked at them. Also, my head was burning. Also, I was starting to sweat profusely. A wave of nauseau hit me, I closed the book, I noted in a casual sort of way that I could no longer feel my fingers, I realized simultaneously that I could no longer see anything at all, and then...

Well, actually, I don't know what happened then. I do know that I woke up awhile later, with my cheek pressed against the cold, slate-colored floor of the 6th Avenue L train station, and with two nearby men debating which one of them would watch over me while the other went upstairs to call 911. I found out that the citizens of New York are really amazing, concerned, helpful people who will pick up your purse, help you onto a train, make sure that you find a seat, and offer to bring you to the emergency room when they find you unconscious in the subway. And I've heard that one guy (my hero!) caught and redirected me just before I fell into the path of the oncoming train like a post-modern Anna Karenina, for which I am eternally grateful, because now I can sit here and tell you that I almost died last night and it is ALL CHUCK PALAHNIUK'S FAULT.

Nobody believed me, of course. Sitting on the train, I tried to assure my hero that I was perfectly alright and not prone to fainting.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” he said.

“Yeah, no, I’m fine,” I said. He gave me a skeptical look.

“Are you sure? Have you ever fainted before?”

“Well, no. But I mean, I think I know why I fainted this time, and it’s fine,” I said, thinking, Please do not make me tell you that I passed out over a paperback.

“Are you sick?”

“No, I’m ok.”

“Well,” he said, cautiously, “Did you eat today?”

Suddenly, I was faced with a choice: allow my hero to think that I was anorexic, or suck it up and admit to being a victim of the Palahniuk Pass-Out. I folded.

“Oh, it’s not like that,” I said. “I ate tons of things. It was just, I mean, this book I was reading.”

“What do you mean?”

“Um,” I said. “Have you ever heard of… um…” I stalled, realized I had no idea how to pronounce the author’s name, decided to wing it. “Do you know Chuck Pa-la-nee-yuck?”

“Who?” he said.

“Er… Chuck Pa-la-hay-nyuck?”

“Pa-la… what?”

“You know, that guy who wrote “Fight Club?”

“Oh… no.”

“Oh. Um… well anyway, I was reading this book, and…”

“You got dizzy from reading the book?”

“Well, no, it was more like, it made me really upset, and, um…” I looked at my hero. He looked confused.

“You know what,” I said, “Maybe I didn’t have enough to eat today.”

***

Notes

1. A few minutes on the internet revealed that this story apparently caused at least 60-odd fainting episodes when it was read aloud during Palahniuk’s book tour. That’s incredible, isn’t it? The power of the written word, blah blah blah, but I have to ask—Could we get, like, a warning label? Something similar to the “explicit lyrics advisory” stickers on CDs, only this one would say, “Caution: Do not read this book while standing on a subway platform, a ladder, or the edge of the Grand Canyon.”

2. Good Samaritan shout-out: I was way too confused and discombobulated to adequately thank my rescuers last night. They were: a darker-skinned man with round cheeks, a white shirt, and black pants; a girl with a green sweater, red lipstick, and ginger-colored hair; and, a man with black pants, sneakers, poofy black hair, and a little pink bike. (That bit about the bike makes it sound like I was hallucinating, but I wasn’t, he really had one.) If you are one of these people, or if a friend of yours has mentioned that they rescued a dizzy girl from death on the train tracks last night, shoot me an email and I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll throw in my copy of Haunted for free.

Peep is risen

My family has always celebrated Easter. I realize now that this is odd for a secular household— without the Biblical elements of the holiday in evidence, my little brother and I grew up believing that Easter was founded on these key principles:

1. the creation of pastel-colored, hard-boiled eggs
2. the hunting of pastel-colored, hard-boiled eggs
3. the throwing of pastel-colored, hard-boiled eggs at each other
4. eating too much ham
5. noticing an unusual smell coming from the living room and alerting Mom, who would then discover a pastel-colored-hard-boiled egg in rotting repose behind the television
6. watching Mom exasperatedly lecture Dad on appropriate locations for egg concealment

So that's my family's Easter-- Bunnies, chocolate, slowly-molding eggs, and NO JESUS.

We liked it that way.

But at the same time as you may be expressing your exasperation at our sugared holiday, I have just as much trouble grasping the observant Christians’ innovative merging of Gruesome Biblical Easter and Commercial Pastel-Colored Easter. How do you combine the resurrection of Christ with bunny rabbits, Peeps™, and pastel-colored and/or Cadbury Crème eggs?

I gave it a lot of thought, but since the idea of a Chocolate Jesus was already taken, I had to try another approach:

Jeepers Peepers!

Later this week: A play-by-play narrative of Easter Brunch with my extended family. At which point you can decide which is more horrifying-- Peep Jesus, or a detailed account of how much hair my uncle has growing in his ear canals.

I'm still here...

...but damned if I don't have writer's block. Come back next week for anecdotes, jokes, naked pictures, etc. In the meantime, here's a picture of a bunch of Chinese people honoring Hong Kong's future as an Olympic city.



That poor guy in the back row -- the stricken-looking one -- has probably just realized that he and his countrymen were somehow duped into dressing up, en masse, as tampons.