oh, racism

"There are still parts of the Muslim world where historical enlightenment still needs to be implemented," [Germany's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble] told Brussels-based journalists on Thursday.

what i understand from his comment: "white is right."

*sigh*

"Beckham Agrees to Galaxy Move" why, why, why did david beckham have to wait until a year after i left los angeles to move there? i would have bought a season pass, even though i would never have been able to recognize him from any of the seats i could afford.

2007 is off to a strange start; macguyver would not approve

yesterday i managed to lock myself in the bathroom. i accidentally slammed the door a little too hard and the lock fell onto the floor. when i tried to re-attach it to the bolt in the door, i only managed to push the bolt through the door.

i tried picking the lock with two hairpins, but i needed something in the shape of the missing bolt. thus, i tried to fashion a rectangular bolt out of some newspaper in my coat pocket. it didn't hold its shape well enough, so i put the hairpins inside the paper, which would have worked (or so i'd like to think) if my makeshift bolt had been a bit longer. thank goodness my cell phone was in my pocket. my roommate was still out of town, so i called my landlady, who was in a play. i spent the next two hours sending text messages, trying to find someone, anyone, who wanted to entertain pitiful universal muse trapped in her own wash closet.

my landlady finally arrived and pushed the bolt back through the door so i could put the lock back together and liberate myself. then she laughed at me.

not really a happy new year's eve

my new year's eve was wrapped in a haze of (literally) foreign substances. of the actual stroke of midnight, i remember very little, aside from the fact that there was a lot of champagne. i spent the night in paris surrounded by unrealistically beautiful people, but despite the lovely scenery, my fete was dominated by a run-in with an ex-not-exactly-boyfriend.

i know i'm not the only girl who has convinced herself that carly simon wrote the song "you're so vain" for her ex, but i think my case is especially juste as the french would say.

take the first line, for example: "you walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht." not only did he walk into the party as though it were a yacht, the party might as well have been a yacht. he was superb, dressed all in black, fine fabrics from head to toe. the party was, in a word, swank. it was overflowing with foie gras, courvoisier and, as i learned afterward, cocaine. i was completely out of place, a gauche and un-elegant american girl among cultured, worldly young europeans.

as far as the second line of the song goes, believe me, his fedora was "strategically tipped below one eye," though his scarf was black that night. he actually does own an apricot ascot, however. i teased him about it the one night he wore it in front of me.

just like the night we met, we ignored each other for several hours. both on the night we met two years ago and at this new year's party, i ignored him because i'm incredibly shy around attractive men and he's not only attractive, but intimidating. he ignored me the first time in order to make me chase him (you can imagine how well we worked as a couple), but this time he ignored me because he didn't want to talk to me. he told me as much at the end of the party when i confronted him. i asked him very directly why we weren't talking and he replied that he didn't realize that i expected so much (a conversation) from him.

this last meeting between us seemed totally unreal, and not only because he dared tell me that five minutes of his time was too much to ask. i'm pretty sure i had a contact high from at least one of the substances being smoked at the party--i really hope it was pot. since i've never smoked anything in my life, my head was spinning throughout the party and i remember falling at one point. in addition to the atmospheric influences operating on my senses, a bit of nostalgia lent a surreal feeling to our last conversation. you see, we had never properly broken up, so this was perhaps the closure i needed.

all these elements combined to give me the impression that i never saw him, though i'm sure i did. he exited my life almost as smoothly as he entered it, though i must admit I cried after the party.

among all his harsh words (i gave you the short version), he did manage to slip in a compliment: he likes my writing. he wants to keep receiving emails from me, not because he wants to know anything about me, but because he thinks i've got style.

Happy New Year!

speaking (blogging, rather) of food-related names that double as feminine first names, i went to see the movie paprika tonight. what a weird film. it's an animated japanese feature about scientific dream manipulation. think eternal sunshine of the spotless mind without any of the physical constraints that live action places on characters' movements, but also without lovable characters. one element of the film that worked especially well was its suspense. when i was supposed to be scared, i was. i can't say that i recommend the film. it was interesting, but i won't go out of my way to see it again.

oh, my darling clementine

one day about a week ago, i noticed that my nails were a funny yellow/orange color. not being easily alarmed about my own health, i ignored it and hoped it would go away. two or three days later, i started to worry. optimistically, i tried to attribute my yellowness to my carrot intake because i once knew a girl who ate so many carrots her hands turned orange. but i knew that i hadn’t eaten any yellow or orange vegetables in the past couple weeks, and then, not enough to cause discoloration; besides, my palms were perfectly normal. then, i thought, what if i have jaundice? panicked, i ran to the bathroom to check the whites of my eyes. to my profound relief, they were still white. since the only place where i noticed the strange discoloration was on my nails, (and only between the tip and the cuticle) i knew that the villainous stain culprit must be something i spent a lot of time touching. but what?

i thought long and hard: i knew it couldn't be the yellow chalk from school or my yellow/orange pen because i don't use them very often. none of my clothes are obnoxiously bright yellow and i don't do manual labor with anything yellow. all at once, i realized: it must be the four or more clementines i'd been eating per day. my clementines of choice are not those itty bitty american ones, but the big, juicy, technicolor-orange, spanish variety. by peeling them manually, i must have been staining my nails orange/yellow. cue the huge sigh of relief. thank goodness nothing was actually wrong with me.

i'm not going to stop eating clementines because of this little scare. my friend p thinks that i should at least slow down, but in my opinion, living with stained nails is a small price to pay for the incredible amount of vitamin c and flavor, not to mention joy, that each clementine brings me. plus, i might be a little addicted.