Spent a few days in the countryside (always a good way to make one appreciate returning to the city), the highlight of which has to have been a visit to a llama farm. Have you ever seen a llama? They are big and furry and their eyes are sort of strangely on the sides of their heads and they have really cartoonishly long eyelashes, and they generally resemble some sort of lesser-known muppet species. Apparently they make very good pets, though I'm thinking I would have a hard time selling that idea to my landlady.

I realize I've been dreadful about posting lately... please bear with me, all you (handful of) people who read this... I will be back and prolific next week, after a visit to the wilds of western Massachusetts to clear my head. Happy whatever holiday you celebrate, even if only in sort of kitschy spirit... I myself will be dyeing Easter eggs, and last night participated in a seder in which we had a short play about the exodus of the Jews. I played Moses. And if you think Charlton Heston was good...

I have nothing to say, so I'm just going to direct your attention to this, which never fails to entertain me...

I wandered into a very surreal temp assignment yesterday- it was for a "three hour focus group," said the perky blonde thing who sets me up with all of my gigs, and I was glad, because it meant I had the rest of the afternoon to myself. Showed up at the offices of the publisher of Ladies Home Journal, among other bland American mags, along with another temp, an affable young guy on about his third assigment, like me, and was told that the project at hand was an interviewing workshop, and that we were to be the guinea pigs. For the next two hours, we traded off pretending that we were interviewing for editorial jobs at magazines, being grilled about our backgrounds by the managing editors of various publications while other editors looked on, all to practice a new style of interviewing (a rather grating one, I will say, which involves barking out questions that force you to recount specific situations in great detail, apparently so they can spot "star" editors, which I guess means being able to come up with really detailed bullshit on the spot as opposed to the usual vague cheerfulness that is most interviews I've ever been a part of), the joke being that of course both of us really would very much like to have actual jobs, and thus this being compelled to go through the paces of interviewing while not actually being offered a job was kind of grim. I suppose one might, if more optimistic than I, look at it as "practice." But then I've always been a glass-half-empty kind of girl.

Hey... new look for the blog! This one just seemed like a natural. Bear with me while I figure out how to adjust templatey stuff.

Right after Sept. 11, I signed up to be on the mailing list of this organization called Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan, these amazingly brave women who filmed all sorts of horrible behavior from behind their veils and put it all on the internet.... now that they've become (somewhat) liberated and much more well-funded, I find that they are sending me approximately three emails a day. Every time their name gets mentioned in the press, I hear about it. And I don't mean to sound disparaging of their very admirable mission to get the word out about what great things they're doing... but it's funny, now that they're becoming more visible and more... westernized, I guess, they've also become just another annoying email presence. That's democracy, I guess.

I got nothing again today. Nothing. My social security number is being pirated as we speak, and I'm all sad about a boy. How do I like them apples, you ask? Not all that well, really. I would prefer other apples.

I have nothing good to say: it's raining and I'm sniffly. But rather than bore you with that sort of thing, I'm going to pass the buck and just direct you to the one thing that's made me laugh today. Fair enough?

So I have been taking a writing class over the past month... an exercise in weekly freelance article crafting... it's been sort of grueling but I'm learning to love it, and here's why: because it is maybe the only time since I came to New York that I've gotten to sit around with people and discuss article ideas and read my stuff out loud and have it be actually FUN... people here actually get excited about their ideas (and, better yet, they get excited about mine). Sure, the constructive criticism can be a bit thin at times- this is a group more inclined to write "great!" in the margins than, say, "this is a really boring sentence; take out the joke about Bush, it totally doesn't work"- but there is something so heartening, so refreshing, about being around people who aren't so jaded by the whole freelance thing that all they can come up with is, "Did you see that thing by Christopher Hitchens in the Atlantic Monthly? Yeah, it was OK... I mean, whatever, that magazine kind of sucks now..." I don't think I have ever heard any of my friends who actually do publish things in magazines on a regular basis say anything to the effect of being excited about their work or anyone else's. More often than not it seems like a competition over who can be the least impressed. Does this mean I should aspire to have enough bylines that I, too, am incapable of feeling a thrill when I see my name in print or when I make someone laugh out loud while reading my stuff? Does it mean that freelancing will suck all of the joy out of being a writer eventually? I'm kind of hoping not.

Here's what not to do on a gray, rainy day: wear a wool sweater over a tank top. The resultant hotness and itchiness under your overcoat as you slog your way to work will inevitably set your day on a downward trajectory. Of course, it does give you an excuse to tear off said sweater as soon as you get to work, and parade around in a tank top all day, pretending that it is summer instead of f'ing-with-your-mind, cold-one-day-warm-the-next borderline spring.

Today was a real day of extremes: unexpectedly got a poem published in the Times. Later, found myself rummaging through all my bags and coats, picking out random lint-covered quarters so that I might have enough money to buy food until Friday.

Unrelated: spent some of my nonexistent money on a container of Whopper brand malted milk ball mini Easter eggs, which come in a little container with a happy looking Easter bunny on it. The mini eggs, unfortunately, look exactly like rabbit shit. They didn't even bother to make them fun pastel colors. They're brown. Is there any way that didn't occur to the Whopper people before they shipped these out? Or do they just get bored sometimes?

I spend my whole day looking up random stories in newspapers and magazines. Once in a while you run across something you would never have thought anyone would write an article about. Like this story about a shrink in Afghanistan.

Went to the doctor a couple of days ago; the questions she asked made me feel like my life is really together. “Are you under any threat of domestic violence in your life?” Well, no. “Do you smoke cigarettes?” Nope. “Wear your seatbelt when you’re in a car?” Am rarely in a car- I guess when I take cabs I make a reasonable effort to wear my seatbelt. I’m ahead of the game! Good thing she didn’t ask things like, Do you end up staying out late at bars too many nights a week? Do you tend to date boys who are completely inappropriate? Are you under any threat of your career totally imploding?

So today I am temping again, this time at a drug company that makes all sorts of neat little "life-enhancing" substances like antidepressants, and as much as I would like to be all disgruntled and critical, I would have to say that the people here are just so gosh-darned nice that I really can't complain. It does, however, make me wonder if they are actually pumping some of the goodies straight into the water supply, because the ambiance here is just the same as at any other big corporation (gray cubicle walls, fluorescent badness, pale thin men in button-down shirts who look like they haven't seen the sun in years). What they do have to offer is food. God, the food is everywhere: bagels in the kitchen, crumb cake on the file cabinet in the hallway, giant places of spicy pasta in the cafeteria... it reminds me of a saying my darling transvestite cult leader roommate used to descibe this sort of environment: We Are the Veal. I can kinda see it, from this vantage point...

Here is a certain type of person who will never be a close friend of mine: the co-worker who is forever sending out invitations for people to get together and play Paintball. The more you read on these invites, the worse they sound. What is fun about waking up early, going to some remote location in New Jersey, and having to run around ducking for cover while other people shoot paint cartridges at you that are apparently big and painful enough to leave lacrosse-ball sized bruises on your skin?

Was reading Sarah's blog entry from Sunday, and I found much to commiserate with. I, too, am scared to call my landlady, because not too long ago I told her it was maybe not a good idea to leave the mail on the burning hot radiator instead of, say, the not-hot-ever radiator RIGHT NEXT TO IT, and ever since then she has hated me, going so far as to avert her eyes when we pass in the hallway so as not to look at me, as if I am dead to her. I am trying to devise a plan to win back her love, or at least her disinclination to raise my rent, and the plan right now revolves around cookies. Maybe St. Patrick's day cookies. I will bake some homemade cookies and decorate them with green sprinkles, and gaily bring them by her apartment (which she never, ever leaves, and sits around all day with her sweet but depressing old mother, and the whole place just reeks of fat lady and hopelessness) as if I am constantly baking cookies, and just happened to be dropping some by, and she will have to be completely charmed and forget all about her little radiator vendetta. In the meantime, since I am afraid of incurring more wrath, I dare not ask her to turn up the almost-nonexistent heat, and instead have taken the step of shrink-wrapping my windows in insulating plastic. Nothing looks more ghetto than that, I might add.

Things you learn being a travel editor: there is a valley of rock formations in Urgup, Turkey, which includes a section of especially, uh, mushroom-shaped structures known to locals as "Penisville."

Since nobody else seems to be doing it, I'd like to propose some new guidelines for the modern wedding. First of all, there should be completely separate requirements for guests who are similar-minded couples well on their way to getting married themselves, and single people such as myself to whom the whole concept is still a bit of a mystery. The aforementioned couples, since they probably spend a fair amount of time thinking about this stuff themselves and are expecting to have all the same festivities afforded to them in short order, should be the ones who throw the pre-wedding showers/parties, make the finger sandwiches, and buy the gifts. Single people should be excused from all prior parties, especially bridal showers; they often do not own a full set of dishes themselves, sometimes even using Mason jars as drinking glasses, and therefore should in no way be required to buy someone else an ornate serving platter or cream pitcher. Single people should really only be expected to show up to the actual wedding wearing something without obvious stains on it. Couples will be responsible for giving teary-eyed toasts, dancing to the inevitably cheesy music, and talking to the old folks about how wonderful weddings are. Single people will be expected to drink, have funny conversations with other single people (with whom they will be seated, instead of in between two adorably happy couples who met at the same fraternity/sorority mixer back in '92) and occasionally hook up with one another in bathrooms. Couples will stay in their own nice little hotel suites; singles will take the red-eye back to New York, thanks very much.