Is this what being old feels like?

I just did a bunch of stretches designed to help alleviate/prevent carpal tunnel and now I can barely move my fingers.

Seriously, I'm 22, what the hell.

Work work work

Today at work I accidentally added my boss to the "spammer" database. Also, my neighbor's CPU caught on fire. No, true story.

Man, I love my job and I love the people I work with even more, but I swear to god it's going to kill me one day. I wonder if the company's health insurance covers a prescription for Xanax.

April is National Poetry Month

And because I suck, I have not posted a single poem this month.

Thus, I present:

<> !*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<> ~#4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED


(Please to read aloud as:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.)

Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese

Happy National Poetry Month.

Edited 4/25: I neglected to credit the creators of this poem, who are noooooooot me because I am not nearly this clever. The internet tells me it was first published in Infocus magazine in 1990. I'm pretty sure it was forwarded to me by a friend at some point, but I have since forgotten who it was - I saved it to my computer because I loved it so much. Whoever you are, thank you.

Crazy eyes, indeed

The trouble with writing fiction is that it builds on itself.

Not in a good way, most of the time, if you're me. I've reached right now what I call the "fractal" stage of writing, in which each train of thought spirals off into three more thoughts, all of which need fleshing out, and then once you go down that road you have to deal with all the spirals that come off the first spirals, and then there are exponentially yet more spirals until oh my god you're telling a completely different story than you were a couple thousand words ago, and in the meantime it's four AM and you're really supposed to be writing a paper about Irish emigration in the 1980's, except nothing is more interesting than the shit going on in your head, and also now there are all these thoughts that came from the spirals, so you might as well just keep writing since you'll be thinking about them anyway, and then Jesus Christ the birds are chirping, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU GO TO BED, APPARENTLY SLEEP IS IMPORTANT.

The fractal stage of writing is actually fun, really, if you're neurotic and into masochism, and don't have, like, other things to do, or friends, or a job, or a social life - all of which (I like to think) I have. Of course, the fractal stage of writing is immediately followed by the crazy eyes stage of writing, which then leads directly into the I HATE EVERYTHING stage of writing, at which point you're pretty much fucked and you should go have a glass of wine and write something else.

The point is this: right now, there are so, so many things I should be doing instead of what I am doing (see aforementioned paper, PS it has to be twenty pages and is due on Wednesday, I dare you to guess how many I have). I'm not doing them.

Crazy eyes, indeed.

I like open letters, what can I say

Dear World,

Putting Holy Week and Passover in the same week has made my job really, really hard. Nobody is taking any of the stuff I send out for the weekend, and all our translators want the week off. Even the Canadians. Particularly the Canadians. I have a 10k job into French for Canada and NOBODY will take it. They're all making quiche, or something. Silly Canadians.

Of course, this would be the perfect week for a big Arabic job, but no, I haven't had one of those since Mubarak resigned and none of my favorite Egyptians (all our best people are Egyptian, I have no idea why) had internet access.

Stop messing with me and current events! Argh.

Oh god please no

AHHHHHHHHH.

So I am in the process of putting together a powerpoint for this research conference I am required to attend on Friday in which I present my thesis. Because I have basically given up caring about anything related to the thesis at all, "putting together a powerpoint" now equates with "screenshotting parts of my .pdf to copy-paste into a powerpoint in lieu of doing actual work, because I honestly could not care less, and yes, I am this lazy."

EXCEPT FOR THE FACT MY SCREENSHOTS HAVE TYPOS. EFF MY LIFE TIMES INFINITY.

Exhibit 1. Note the last sentence.



I normally would just fix it, except I have already submitted this to the department. This version. With the typos. Also, I seriously care so little and am so blasé about the whole thing that I am just keeping this incorrect version in my powerpoint. What the hell ever, man. The day I willingly ignore typos has arrived.

Good god.

I'm too young for this

Today I bought a French baguette at the Union Square Greenmarket. I wish now I had paid more attention to the stand where I bought it, because - and this is a small miracle - this baguette actually tastes like the French baguettes I remember. I want to go back for more, forever, now that the taste is stuck in my mouth and my brain. There's something very particular about the texture of the crust of a baguette, the slightly dry dusting of flour on the bottom half of the bread, the way it crumbles when you tear off pieces (and, if you're me, the way the breadcrumbs then rain down all over the floor, your shirt, and everything else nearby). It's glorious.

When I was fourteen and then again when I was sixteen, my summers in Paris tasted exactly like this baguette - smeared with nutella, jam or butter for the morning tartine, accompanied by a nice chèvre or fromage bleu at lunch, alongside some bad Beaujolais or cheap rosé in the long light of the evening, or even just plain whenever I got hungry, standing in that sunny Paris kitchen that was even smaller than my Manhattan kitchen is now. I ate bread that tasted like this bread every day during those summers - it's absurd that such a small, daily and unremarkable thing has triggered such a bizarre reaction in me now, years later and an ocean away.

I wish I knew where I could get more bread that tastes like this.

Tu veux du pain? Moi j'en veux.