Reason Number 18: Hiatuses from blogging

Approximately every five blocks, there is a Dunkin Donuts.

This might be disturbing for some, but for me it means ENORMOUS Iced Coffee (which cost only fifty cents on April 21st).

Today, I also ordered a croissant, which wasn't nearly as bad as one might imagine.

So, I suck at blogging. But my school year is essentially over, so maybe this summer will be reserved for more extensive digital recounting of my dull, hyperextended existence.

In other news:
-I'm learning photoshop! And flash! I really want to make a flash story/movie that evolves through time. I realize this makes very little sense.

-I'm starting a new blog with wee brother Dougles. It is a fashion-oriented blog with crazy awesome clothing on display (and for sale). I will let you know when it launches. It's partially online now but looks like garbage because I can't fix the header or the sans-seraph font (gross!).

-Salt and Vinegar almonds are delicious.

-I think I might like writing academic essays. It's almost more empowering than writing fiction, especially fiction no one likes.

-I don't really see a problem with wearing Denim on Denim anymore. Especially if it's done right. There are crimes way worse, like non-functional hats (newsboy, fedora, scally caps, those gross oversize headbands with fake peacock feathers that abound at Urban Outfitters).

-I want to challenge myself by writing a story with an intense plot with simple sentences. I just might die trying.

Reason Number 17: THIS BOOK

Payback really *is* a mutha. This book is guaranteed to convey some universal truths. I'm going on an adventure tomorrow to buy it (hopefully, at a discount).

Reason Number 16: This Picture

This really doesn't need an explanation.

Reason Number 14: Apple Cake can be better than you've ever imagined, and Brenda Russell peeks from the recesses of your mind and into your itunes

For one microsecond, I'm changing this blog name to reasons TO kill yourself, because I bombed my Spanish midterm, Al Qaeda-style.

It sucks, because I used to be kind of okay at Spanish. Granted, that was like ten years ago, and I haven't done the best job of practicing throughout those ten years (making/ordering flautas or saying things like "tengo tres familias de tortugas en mis pantalones grandes" notwithstanding).

I'm terrible--terrible--at pacing myself during tests, because I'm constantly double-checking literally everything, so by the time I got to the essay (which asked me to be a fake journalist trying to decide how to title an article about how the Chinese were really the first to discover America, which is insulting to begin with: journalism being an obviously inferior form of writing (I kid, and yes, I just said "I kid" as if I were the most pretentious beret-wearing person in the world))<--double parenthetical wtf what is this, Thomas Paine/Edith Nesbit/Sir Walter Scott/my dad?! At any rate, by the time I got to the essay, I had like five minutes left so wrote something completely nonsensical that went something like "Columbus was obviously Italian, and could never be Chinese." Um, fucking duh back to Kindergarten time. Kill.self.

BUT, in spite of colds (one of which I have) and bad grades, there is a light, fluffy, sugary explosion at the end of the st00pid, in addition to The Importance of Being Earnest, which I just started reading for Richard Howard (one of the greatest men on earth, with the best glasses ever, totally gay for Allen Ginsberg forty-odd years ago, but who wouldn't be?).

Smittenkitchen.com has some ridiculously great recipes, apple cake being one of them.

I just made it, and holy hell, it's so delicious I'll never go back to eating real food again, or bother trying to learn something as obviously pointless as the Spanish Language. And by that I mean I'm having it for BREAKFAST tomorrow, and then having an arugula/tuna/tomato salad for lunch.

And if you haven't seen this video, you should go ahead and jump in front of that bus:

Reason Number 13: Alexander Pope is, was, and will always be HAWT

Sephora
HOLIDAY SEASON BLOCKBUSTER AVAILABLE NEXT MONTH FOR ONLY $49.99! (on a sign outside, emblazoned with glittering holly sprigs and falling red-orange-yellow leaves, a model’s face, digitzed, demure, and smiling).

I had run out of my coral-red semi-matte1950s starlet lipstick (the name of which I’d unfortunately forgotten), so I dashed into Sephora, paramount luxury cosmetics supplier. Blinded by space-age lighting bouncing off innumerable reflective surfaces, I scrambled around overly-manicured sales associates in sleek pantsuits, their eyes spidery with mascara. I shielded myself against strategically-placed pyramids of shiny glosses, eyeshadow triads, and exotic, heretofore unmentionable brands like Makeup Forever (forever?), tooth whitening promotional kits, and celebrity-endorsed lip plumping serums designed to create an incessant, indefatigable pout—words like “buxom,” “venomous,” “fusion,” and “immortality” bombarding me at every turn.

Circumventing Dior, I was blocked by a woman—early thirties, at the latest—her shopping bags strewn across the aisle, trampled by bow-legged pre-teens in miniskirts as she frantically slathered her cheeks with a cutting-edge polypeptide moisturizer promising to regenerate the magical underlayer lurking beneath the lackluster, inadequate surface, eradicating wrinkles within three days, tops.

“Excuse me,” I said, shuddering as I turned to face the display of French brand NARS—

“—has the most concentrated pigmentation of any makeup brand in the known world, and you really must try SUPERCLIMAXXX blush, the new take on the beloved original CLIMAXX, imbedded with mirrored particles that really enhance your skin’s natural brightness in ways you wouldn’t even understand,” bellowed a tall saleswoman, lacquered pixie haircut sparkling.
I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the many mirrors lining the walls, and I was aghast at my flattened hair, my uneven complexion, my chapped lips. The perfect red lipstick would help, I thought, and I began snatching different sample shades—reptilian massacre, lucifer’s embrace, razorwire, suicide—“try me,” said suicide, on a sticker, and I opened my mouth, drew on color, puckered, blotted, when I felt a man’s hand on my shoulder.

“I prefer rape myself, as it has bluer undertones,” said the man as he wiped suicide off my lips with a gilded handkerchief, applying glossier, hyper-satured rape with abandon. “Such a velvet quality, in a far more flattering hue!”

I faced the mirror again, and smiled at the perfection achieved, the improved replication of my original coral-red semi-matte1950s starlet lipcolor. He stood next to me, and I marveled at our side-by-side reflections.

He was very small—many inches shorter than me, with a pinched face covered in whitening powder, dotted with pencil-moles shaped like stars. His powdered wig stood nearly two feet tall, and was interlaced with gemstones and Flanders lace and box tortoise combs, dripping with ringlets, and I noticed he was no ordinary man; he was Alexander Pope, arguably the greatest English poet of the 18th century!

“Mr. Pope!” I said, blushing, “it’s an honor, an absolute honor.”

“It is no matter,” he said, “applying cosmetics is a great pleasure of mine, crafting creations with the sweep of a brush, a squirt, a spurt, a dash of a single color manifesting epic loveliness. Your hair, for instance, is lovely but desperately needs enhancement.”

He produced a bottle of volumizing sea salt spray from an embroidered leather pouch attached at the hip to his fitted chartreuse brocaded trousers —“to feign the tousled effects of a stroll along a seaside promenade”—feverishly sprayed the strange faux-salt-air substance, running his tiny hands through my hair.

“But truly,” I said, “Rape of the Lock has always been one of my favorite poems, the mock epic being one of the most intriguing genres, and I’ve always wished I could—”

“Nonsense,” he said, “tilt your head back,” dipping his emerald-ringed index finger into a miniature urn of fig-pear eau de parfum, which he spread liberally all over my neck, unbuttoning my yellow dress to expose my clavicles, shoulders, dripping fig-juice between my breasts as a timpani-rich remix of an early-90’s classic blasted from iridescent speakers designed to blend in with the overall ambience.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked, clutching at his hands, stop, but we were already on the ground, legs splayed between Bliss™ and Urban Decay, and as he struggled to rip off my dress he kicked cosmetics out of their kiosks with his satin buckled pointed-toe shoes, blending brands, travel-size nail polish bottles raining over our heads, a flourish of body glitter pouring from an overturned vat, further powdering his already-saturated wig. I tugged at his curls, pulling him closer as he drew around my nipples, chest, stomach with electric blue liquid eyeliner—hearts, constellations, half-poems. I applied false eyelashes to the corners of his eyes with a minute tube of glue included in the package—“don’t blink,” I said, but before I knew it, he’d slipped off my polka-dotted underpants to get inside me, rubbing his made-up face against my breasts as he pumped.

“I want to ride,” I said, spitting out one of the star-shaped moles that had fallen off his face and into my mouth. I forced him onto his back, maneuvering myself up and down when I noticed a box of brand-new SUPERCLIMAXXX had fallen near my thigh, so I figured what better time to try it, opened the compact, equipped with a well-rendered miniature synthetic-fiber brush, which I rubbed into the pink, spreading it all over his cheeks, “to create the most natural, healthy flush,” I screamed as he pulled my hair. Sweating, he picked up a full-size pony-hair foundation brush, and shoved the long, rounded handle into my mouth. I bit down against the wood, groaning as he resumed his position on top and then proceeded to turn me over, “indeed, from behind,” he said, restraining my wrists. His heavy silk stockings created an almost unpleasant friction against my bare legs.

“I’ve always wanted to know,” I gasped, “how you managed five cantos, from lapdogs to spleens and back, letting tea-kettles walk all the while.”

He pulled out and came all over my back.

Reason Number 12: There is a possibility, however slim, that khakis might look good, when properly paired.

Also, Baltimora is awesome.  There's no better song than Tarzan Boy for:

 (a) organizing one's room

 (b) trying on khakis that have heretofore sat, limp and lifeless, at the bottom of a crowded closet, alien to the rest of one's wardrobe, a reminder of elementary school and USPS uniforms, not to mention investment bankers.

 (c) taking unflattering, bad pictures of oneself (see photo, left)

 (d) practicing Spanish with flashcards

 (e) writing (sometimes)

Perhaps that is a hyperbole; Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Rachmaninov, Pavement, and Lionel Richie also suffice in some of the above contexts.

I think I have anger management problems.  Or maybe I just hate nine out of ten people.  Is this hyperbole, too?  I honestly don't know.

I inhaled cayenne pepper today for reasons I don't want to get into, and my face is still suffering for it.

Thomas Love Peacock, author of Nightmare Abbey (1817 I think?) and contemporary of Percy B. Shelley (who totally suxxx) is unexpectedly fucking wonderful and has inspired me to read more little known early 19th century novels. 

I have a feeling khakis might come back, in a big way.  Aside from the fact that they exude an aura of stuffiness and social anxiety and are generally the least flattering pants on the planet.  I still want to wear mine with pride, though.  And a comfy plaid shirt.  

Reason Number 11: Even Marc Jacobs fucks up, big time

Marc by Marc Jacobs sucks hardcore balls this season.  Danny and I were enjoying the glorious and amazing early fall weather we've been lucky enough to have this past week or so by taking a monster walk around the city, presumably trying to locate nameless outdoor markets in Chelsea but often ending up in strange places, like THE MOST ABSURDLY TERRIBLE STARBUCKS IN EXISTENCE (where we waited twenty-five minutes for our drinks because some dickwad wearing earrings that looked like hubcap rims kept forgetting what we ordered, even though we ordered tall lattes, seemingly the simplest drink you can ask for at Starbucks these days, aside from plain old coffee--black) located near Times Square (our first mistake) beneath a dreary overpass, as well as the Marc by Marc Jacobs store on Bleecker Street.

First of all, the store itself was moved.  It used to be a spacious men's/women's store that was fairly pleasant to walk around in, but recently (don't know how recently, because it's not often that I find myself in the position to purchase Marc Jacobs clothing) the men's and women's sections were put in separate buildings. The men's store is now ridiculously tiny and difficult to maneuver through because of endless crowds of tourists eating Magnolia cupcakes (which are infinitely inferior to Sugar Sweet Sunshine cupcakes, or the cupcakes they make at Nettie's Cafe, the fantastic coffee shop/bakery that just opened in my neighborhood).  Most of the merchandise was placed so high you could hardly see it without being either ridiculously tall (like Danny) or in possession of a step stool.  Because the clothing sucks so hardcore this season, though, it was to my benefit that it was so difficult to see and touch.

I very strongly believe that fashion should be unexpected, fun, and not adhere to predetermined dictates.  Almost anything (except sarongs, espadrilles, and non-functional hats) can look good if some thought and experimental fervor is put into it: I'm open to jumpsuits, Dansko clogs, electric colors that make your face bleed, velour, pvc, corduroy overalls, even skorts, as long as the finished product is something you look at and think "wow, I never would have thought that would look good, but how brilliant." 

But, for some reason I can't quite understand, Marc Jacobs decided it was an excellent idea to emblazon at least a third of his men's collection with PEACE SIGNS.  Peace signs.  I understand the man recently got out of rehab, but peace signs?  Not only does it look hideous on bags, t shirts, and sweaters, but it's also the most derivative thing ever in the guise of being fun and cheeky.  It's like his inspiration came from Party City and Spencer's Gifts--he may as well start selling mood rings and yin yang pens with neon pink feathers bursting from the top.

Not to mention everything looked cheap, the fabric felt chintzy--the pants could have been sold at Old Navy.  He also included several shearling coats that looked like you could find them in one of those leather merchant stalls in midtown on a Sunday afternoon stroll following Applebeetinis and a hearty meal at Red Lobster.

The only thing worthwhile in the entire (very crammed) store was an awesome leather tote bag--buttery soft, perfect brown, with a laptop compartment on the front that managed to look sleek and not clunky businessman from suburban Atlanta.  This bag, I might add, was not part of the Marc by Marc collection but the more high-end Marc Jacobs fall line.