for the unrefined palate

doesn't this fancy pasta entree look delicious?

it's taco bell.

or at least it used to be.

this blog is abso ridiculous, but it still made me incredibly hungry.

what was it you said about fish?

for all of you who told me i am crazy.

and laughed at me.

and asked if i was just making this stuff up.

and suggested i not bring up the topic again:

you

can

suck it.

but first, click here. and here. and here. and here. and here.

and don't even get me started on the pollution and toxicity issues.

it's nice

knowing

Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you.
I’d been broken beyond repair.

you don't even wanna know the source.

nerdily funny

i'm not a history buff, but the blog Historical Tweets is quite entertaining... so long as you have some clue about historical events (its charm would be lost on today's teenagers).

the anne frank one went too far.

fitzgerald says...

re-post from 5/18.
because i finally feel it.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

not now, not ever

thanks for the reminder, T.

my morning smile

forgive me if you're offended by some light bathroom humor.

click to enlarge. it's worth the burden, lazy.

not to mention...

outta my, outta my head

and the streets were wet
and the gate was locked
so i jumped it and i let you in.
and you stood at your door with your hands on my waist
and you kissed me like you meant it.

and i knew that you meant it

a classic.

not without my books

in a recent discussion with an old friend (and by old, i mean OLD -- happy birthday, jacob!), it dawned on me that the Kindle might actually take off. until my buddy told me he wanted one for his birthday, i didn't think anyone was really buying into this crazy idea. sure, i saw a girl on the train using one of them, but she was fat. i thought the trend would die with her.


maybe just because i'm always reluctant to try new technology. it took me years to get an iPod, and i had trouble switching to Gmail. but when it comes to this silly little, horribly-overpriced contraption, my hesitation is about more than just my stubbornness.

as i told jacob, i love books. even here on my blog i've gone on and on about how i love re-reading my favorites. i think books are wonderful -- not just their contents, but also their physical form. their smells, their feel in my hands as i sit in the sun. i like to dog-ear pages, maybe even highlight, so that i can return to the book later and remember instantly why i loved it. i can't get that in electronic form.

even more important to me, i love sharing books: lending a good book to a good friend, taking one off of his or her bookshelf as well. if we all switch over to the Kindle, we can no longer share, can we? how horrible! and don't get me started on the ridiculously high price of this latest must-have electronic.

i hadn't even thought about the sociological importance we lend to the books we see in a person's hand. lucky for us all, this fantastic Vanity Fair article examines the cultural snobbery associated with our book, music, and other collections -- all of which are becoming hidden as we digitalize our albums, films, and now our favorite novels.

As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects—digitize and dematerialize—we approach a Star Trek future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles. Reading will forfeit the tactile dimension where memories insinuate themselves, reminding us of where and when D. H. Lawrence entered our lives that meaningful summer. “Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The Barnes & Noble bookstore, with its coffee bar and authors’ readings, could go the way of Blockbuster as an iconic institution, depriving readers of the opportunity to mingle with their own kind and paw through magazines for free. Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

grumpy Andrew Sullivan calls out superficial snobs like me, who might be holding onto objects like these books for the sake of vanity. maybe he's right, and our use of books as decoration and status symbols and bases on which to judge complete strangers will be better off left in the dust of the 20th century.

i can't really fathom buying the Kindle right now, or ever getting rid of my terribly worn copy of El Principito. but maybe in time i'll want to simplify life. and maybe that effing "iPod for books" will become affordable in the near future. until then, i'm still buying real books.

3 new ones this week, and so excited to get into them. stay tuned.

lewis says...

You don't have a soul.
You are a soul.
You have a body.

truth

i decided

one of the best jobs in the world has got to be delivering flowers.

regardless of the occasion -- birthday, anniversary, mother's day, please-forgive-me-soon -- everyone is happy to receive flowers. even under the worst circumstances, such as a funeral, the flowers provide a little comfort, some amount of beauty and distraction, if for only a few seconds.

and the man that carries these cheery arrangements, these comforting, wooing, even begging displays of affection to your door is nothing less than a HERO.

i could be that hero, baby.

also, i have the sneaking suspicion that when an anonymous delivery arrives (don't you LOVE anonymous flowers? just magical.), the recipient, simply due to the absence of certainty regarding the sender, for a brief second might just associate the anonymous delivery with the man standing in front of her. 'ya know?

so maybe i'll stop being a lawyer and just deliver flowers. walk around the city all day brightening people's lives. what could be better?

real love

You may not be his first, his last, or his only. He loved before, he may love again. But if he loves you now, what else matters?

He's not perfect -- you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together, but if he can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can.

He may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you can break: his heart. So don't hurt him, don't change him, don't analyze and don't expect more than he can give.

Smile when he makes you happy, let him know when he makes you mad, and miss him when he's not there.

editor's note: i wonder if bob marley would mind if he knew i was playing gender reassignment with his beautifully simple and quotable words? of course marley said "she," but i prefer my alternative version.


and so begins my series on real love, in all its glory and its gloom.