with the sound of a crescendo

Hello, I'm the New York Times! China is so exciting and backward- and forward-looking, all at once! See these funny Chinese people imitating Western culture! See these funny Chinese people driving funny! See these funny Chinese people building too much, polluting everything--we would never do that! See these funny Chinese people using lead-based paints! Words in italics denote funny Chinee!

bloodstains on the carpet

I can't stop reading about Michael Jackson. HEE-hee!

shorty you a tin

My cab from JFK to home was pulled over by cops (!) yesterday morning at Metropolitan Avenue right off the BQE because, allegedly, the cab driver took an illegal left turn at a no-left-turn intersection. This interaction, between a modestly-sized South Asian immigrant man and two gigantic late-30 something white men, both shaved bald, included such memorable moments as (1) the cops pulling up to the car and saying, "What the fuck are you doing?" (2) the cops demanding license and registration and saying "This picture doesn't look anything like you" (to which the cab driver responded, "Because I have a beard now") and (3) the cops' parting shot ("I'll see you in court. You should shave."). And bless you, Mr. Chaudry, you said, "You don't need to tell me what to do."

I spent a week in California with Stephanie over Thanksgiving. It was sunny, warm, and filled with friends, family, and commerce - the details can be filled in by imaginations familiar with the well-known tropes of American Thanksgivings. While many exciting, illuminating, and possibly heart-rending things occurred between Wednesday and Tuesday, I documented none of it, yet Stephanie and I managed to take about 30 pictures posing with my parents' talking "Head Be-Holder" skeleton pirate doll, a post-Halloween drugstore purchase that gyrates to a K.C. and the Sunshine Band song and drops its skull into its skeletal hands whenever K.C. sings "Get down tonight!" I will post pictures just as soon as I am able.

Back in New York now, stir-crazy and almost 30!

icicles by cynthia, meter from me sybil

I just underwent some tortured waffling about not taking time or money available, kainotophobically, expressly available, reserved to art. No doubt, in dozens of nearby townships, crapulence abounds. Reasonably, each ailment begs of unguents, talmuds, yogis, omens, usufruction.

mama say

"Mama say mama sah mama sukah" is a stroke of genius. "Atcha-hoo!" is a fine new child of America. "There were bloodstains on the carpet." How I love pop and wish there were storytellers and inventors in it. Take a risk! Make some new words! Butterflies inside, inside, inside.

sorry i couldn't make it to your birthday dinks

Because my sweet little Boo started convulsing and gasping for breath and licking the carpet/floor/electrical sockets frantically and then threw up a half gallon of barley and balloon fragments! And while this was happening I didn't know what to do so I ran between my computer (googling "How to make a dog throw up" and "NYC emergency vets") and my camping equipment where I knew I had stashed an expired bottle of hydrogen peroxide in some old first aid kit! Then I rushed him to the 24-hour emergency vet clinic in Carroll Gardens! Where there was one nice lezzie receptionist and five MILLION MEAN ASSHOLES! Where me and Boo and Stephanie and David waited for 90 minutes even though we were the only people there and Boo was still convulsing!

Poor little dog. By the time the bitchy vet came down to inspect Boo ("Johnson Avenue? I used to live in Williamsburg but I've never heard of Johnson Avenue"), he was asleep, and I had finished the 300-page vanity book of handwritten love letters New Yorkers had written to their pets, and had written one to Boo, beginning, "Dearest, dearest Boo."

Anyway, that's why I couldn't make it to your birthday party. I'm really sorry!

buy me this please

god save the monarchy

Ooops! Only three minutes left in Evidence to grouse about why I hate contemporary fiction. I made the mistake of blowing $14 (which I want back to save up for a Wii) on "Best American Short Stories 2007" last weekend. I made it through 2.3 stories before tiring of reading about 60-85 year-old dying bourgies reflecting somberly on the failures of their lives. BARF!!!! If I read another well-measured, intricately-observed, technically expert, reflective and meaningful shit-stravaganza I'm going to vomit shit into David Remnick's mouth. After I read the opening story by Louis Achinschloss I wanted to scream "SOAPY BALLS! SOAPY BALLS! SOAPY BALLS! SOAPY BALLS!" - something, anything, please, God, something that is not so fucking BORING!