Listen

A gentleman asked me — as a pickup line — to tell him my life story. I demurred; it’s not really my style, and anyway, he only asked more or less so he could tell me his, which by his own admission is absolutely standard and, without being too cruel, banal. If the most exciting thing you’ve done in 25 years is to move to Williamsburg…well, don’t go around asking other people their life stories.

This is the opening of a letter I began writing to my aunt but never sent. It was, in it’s essence, a very long meditation on why I dread leaving New York, why I love it in a way I have not and cannot love another place (at least not in this country). I am revisiting it after reading this atrocity,  (written in San Francisco, and the example par excellence why that place is the bane of my existence) but we’ll get back to that.

The reason I love New York is very simple, though it takes a long, long time to explain correctly: My animating feature does not depress people here. In a city of 8 million people from all over the world a) no one gives a fuck and b) the people who do are interested. They get it. Shit sometimes happens. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of, lived through things we wish we hadn’t — but then we absorb them and move on.

Everywhere else I’ve ever lived or been, I find myself apologizing to people for the lesion through my spinal cord at the T5 vertebrate: I’m sorry I’m limping. I realize it’s very unattractive and not appropriately bourgeois, and that it’s distressing you with its social inappropriateness now that you’ve noticed. Please, insist it’s ‘all better now’. Quite naturally. Young people with good educations are like milk — nothing could be purer. (If only you knew!)

I certainly do not need people to be interested in me. The lesion is just a reality, like black hair and white skin and an unpleasantly large ribcage, or any  of the other absolutely uninteresting features that constitute my physical manifestation on the planet. I am not more proud of it than I am of my weight or my height or my cup-size, or any of the other G-d given things on loan to me for this mortal holiday.  (I am not ashamed either, though other people frequently take it upon themselves to be ashamed for me). I am not my disability — I find the idea insulting to my ability to irritate and alienate people by my personality alone.

Twins!!! Married to Twins!!! Who Sing!!!

Brooklyn Ink did this fantastic video–I absolutely love it and I hope you will too

Till Death Do Us Part from Brooklyn Ink on Vimeo.

Kermit’s X-ray

More from the Annals of Fake Terror

Another cab explodes on the Brooklyn Bridge last Thursday. Go figure

El-Al Tefillin Bomb Ad

Can’t Censor This

I haven’t even heard the song, but I like the setting. And so will you–Live from Brownsville, BK

The Real Sad Panda

Mysterious local celebrity  the Sad Panda revealed to be 62-year-old Chinese immigrant Jailing Chen. Eat your heart out Gothamist–real reporting wins out every time.

A word about time

Yes, I realize I’ve been gone a while. About a month, actually. I’ve been reading (a lot) and writing (just not here). Anyway, given I’ve been away for so long, I thought I’d bring it back with a few words about time. Specifically, Russian Time.

More specifically, Dmitri Medvedev’s plan to slash nearly 2/3 of Russia’s time zones. That’s right, the president who has so far distinguished himself as a very attractive and well mannered sock puppet of Vladimir Putin is putting his foot down. Frustrated with his lack of power, the president IS TAKING ON TIME ITSELF.

As surreal as it sounds, there’s actually a long history of time tampering in world politics.  China has just one time zone (until 1949 it had five), making it the largest country in the world to eat dinner at the same time. Since partition, India and Pakistan have been separated by half an hour (because I mean, heaven forbid it be the same time in Delhi and Islamabad). And wedged between the superpowers India and China, Nepal finds itself 15 minutes ahead of the former but an hour and 15 minutes behind the latter.

Across most of Asia and Africa, daylight savings time is an abstraction; yet, walk into a telemarketing office and it’s a hard and fast reality.

Iranian President Ahmedinejad was so pissed off at DST  he actually banned it in 2006, but was overruled a year later by an angry parliament who thought he was being capricious and a dickbag. DST was reinstated in Iran in 2008, but may not be there for long.  And Arizona STILL won’t get with the program. Motherfuckers

Everybody’s Debating the Obama Nobel

But all I can think about is this:

Reason No. 47 Muni Sucks (Catfight)