We're Jammin'

I am sitting in the Park Slope Starbucks trying to finish up my Social Justice paper. Babies are yelling and pooping, reggae is blaring, and I just witnessed someone buy four venti frappucinos with extra whip cream...for himself. I know this because he's sitting right next to me and has all four heart attacks lined up in front of him while he peruses the pages of Maxim. If I see even a hint of masturbation going on here, I'm going to lose it.

So, what horror was so bad that I was forced to enter a fresh one and purchase an exorbitantly priced mocha?

Crazy T., our next door neighbor, and his neverending carbon monoxide detector alarm that's been going off since yesterday afternoon. Crazy T is the guy who's been known to leave his apartment door wide open at night and walk around the neighborhood in Frankenstein boots looking through a magnifying glass. Since we had the same defective detector a few months ago and wound up with the local Fire Department in our apartment not once but three times, I have no fear that Crazy T. is fine and hasn't succumbed to a gas leak. However, I was thinking about gassing myself this morning when the noise still hadn't relented and the crazy upstairs neighbors' - the ones who vacuum every night at 11pm - yip dog decided to howl along; a cacophany like you've never heard.

So here I am. Listening to Bob Marley on a loop and a kid demand a latte from his overindulgent mom who looks like she just might get him one. Just what we need here: a caffeinated child. Help.

my hills are alive

Don't trust anyone who starts a conversation with "Did anyone ever tell you you look like..." At least in my case, this one always ends in tears.

I was stopped in the kitchen at my internship by a gentleman who told me I reminded him of Victor/Victoria herself: Julie Andrews.

Jackie's feel-good remark was "At least he didn't say Carol Burnett." Yeah, at least.

I've been compared to a lot of middle-aged ladies - Judy Gold (6'5" lesbian comic with a voice so grating she makes Harvey Fierstein sound like a phone-sex operator), Emma Thompson - but this one takes the cake.

The Christ in the Off Hours

The maintenance guy at the homeless organization where I'm interning is named Jesus, as in Jesus Christ. I failed to make this connection for the first month I worked there so every time a toilet overflowed or someone needed their garbage wrangled and the alert would go out over email that "Jesus is working on it" or "Ask Jesus, he'll take care of your garbage" I just assumed the place was a little more religious than I first realized.

Today we were alerted that "Jesus is taking care of business" which - I came to learn - meant polishing the floors while wearing a sizeable mask and singing. Later, another email went out stating "Coffee packets have been restocked in the kitchen. Thank you Jesus!" Thanks indeed.

i'm really not 21 any more

I am currently sitting on the second floor of the library at Barnard College (my alma mater), staring out at the square of greenery only a city school could call a lawn, listening to the extraordinarily loud construction being performed on the now defunct MacIntosh Dining Hall (or whatever that 70s throwback was called). I'm here both because writing a midterm paper made me a little nostalgic for a time when I could actually pull off consecutive all-nighters, and because Fordham's library looks more like a nuclear bunker than any place books or people should be enclosed.

Other than the fact that I'm the oldest person in here by at least a decade, and that my computer no longer possesses an amber screen and is actually portable, and that I'm drinking a cup of coffee that cost me $4, absolutely nothing else has changed.