#30 Being Yourself

BE yourself.  Just, you know, be yourself.  Your TRUE self. The self you know yourself to be, because, listen, that's enough.  You're great, if only you realized that just being who you are is totally and completely enough and wonderful.  People just need to be themselves instead of trying to be, you know, "better" than themselves.  That's just gonna make us sad and we don't like sadness! Sadness is depressing and unattractive. And if everyone was just themselves then no one would ever be sad. They'd be themselves.  We'd all be ourselves, basking in our own selfiness, and A-OK! And you are absolutely not allowed to not like yourself.  Insecurity is so '90s, and it's not OK anymore.  In fact, if you don't like yourself, you know what, keep it to yourself because we ourselves just don't need to hear about you and your fucked-up perspective on yourself.  That may sounds selfish, self-serving, but whatever, it's the gestalt.

You know what?  I say, be better than yourself, yourself is a start, but I mean come on, you know and I know that you need a lot of work.  How's that ever gonna happen if you just go around being yourself and being OK with yourself?

Also, what the hell is a self?  That guy from the Verve was a million different people and he was kinda shallow (just look at that picture!).  You?  Me?  We're at best an arena of semi-consistent traits, some good, some bad, that have some statistical probability of manifesting themselves in certain situations, but certainly don't amount to some unitary platonic self.  We're quantum, a range of stuff, and none of us knows what the hell is going on, not really.

Just remember, the next time someone tells you to "just be yourself" they're not making any sense at all.

#29 Peanuts!

...

...

...yeah, Peanuts is pretty unassailable; you're not allowed to not like Peanuts.  If you do...

...you're just kinda wrong. Sorry, I hate myself for saying it as much as you do, but it's clearly correct.

#28 A List of Ones I'm Probably not Going to Go into Greater Detail About

Using Chopsticks

Carl Kasell

Fashion Week

Madison, WI.

Neuroscience

The Kyoto Protocols

Fleet Week

The Word "Vestigial" 

Euripedes

Power Tools 

Steam Baths 

Chocolate

Merries-Go-Round

The Magna Carta

Birdsong

Malcolm Gladwell

Peanut Butter Cookies

Anyone's Culture

Hard Massages

The Spanish Language

Dactylic Trimeter

Restaurant Week
The Museum of Natural History

Quinoa 

#27 Di Fara's

Ok, so here's the thing.  I grant you that the last slice of the pie you get at Di Fara's is a pretty darn fine slice of pizza.  Those Salerno tomatoes, the fresh mozzerotzugatzuzatz, the newly scissored basil (and that scrumptiously faint trace of mouse hair) all finally eaten at a temperature at which the mouth is able to actually  discern flavors...YUM!

But the fact, the simple fact of it is, Di Fara's isn't worth it.

Now as a threshold matter, I've always thought that people take pizza way too seriously in New York.  Yes the better slice you get at that place you think is great is better than the average slice I get ANYWHERE ELSE in the city, but not that much better.  Not better to the extent that we've all have to have that same conversation over and over again. I get it, you like pizza, you have "taste", a sophisticated palate. It's the minerals from the rust in the pipes of this particular place.  I get it.  You can proudly show off your membership badge of the I-live-in-New-York Society of the Insufferable Sycophants Who Make Too Much Over Minute Differences.   It's freaking Pizza.  It's bread, tomato, mozzarella and if you're lucky, some good EVOO, basil and anchovies.  It's not trout freakin' almondine, or slow-smoked pork shoulder.  It's pizza. Just calm down.

Now again, even against that background, I'll cede that that last slice of Di Fara's is the best pizza you or anyone has ever had ever in the history of this pretty ordinary foodstuff. I was gonna write this one about your New York Pizza Place, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Di Fara's is really what I'm talking about. Even if it's that good (debatable, but ceded), it's still not worth it.

A) It's a shlep to get to whatever neighborhood in Brooklyn Di Fara's is actually in (no one can give me a straight answer on this, but I think Di Fara's exists in some kind of quasi-toric inter-dimensional n/r/f/d/q train rift and appears at the corner of Alpha Centauri Prime and Avenue Zebulon at random once every .17 nano-ergs per micronewtons squared.  I'm pretty sure I'm right about this).  Regardless, it takes forever to get there, if only b/c of your anticipatory foreknowlege of

B) It takes forever to get your pizza.  Now, whatever, there's good reasons for it, Dom's an artisan and true art takes time and IT'S FREAKING PIZZA!  Anyway, that's not the point. The wait is simply the background.  It exacerbates C,D, and E.

C) While you wait, you're waiting in an infernal hellhole.  It looks and feels like the downstairs "rec" room in your Uncle Randy's house. Randy, who is 54, could never hold down a job and was the first person from whom you ever heard the phrase "motherfuckin' assholes".   It's usually hot in almost the exact same way that balls are hot.  If' you're lucky, you can grab an uncomfortable chair! And THEN you get to spend the next 45 minutes reading about how great Di Fara's is from the geniuses at the New York Daily Soil or the Brooklyn Weekly Fashion Trough.  How privileged you are, what a "real New Yorker" you are to be sweating there, making yourself progressively hungrier chugging down overpriced Fantas, and shifting uncomfortably in a chair; waiting in that way that is always so long that about 45 minutes into the waiting, you say to yourself, "wow, I really feel like this is taking a long time"...and then it takes another hour and 35 minutes.

D) And speaking of overpriced, a "Regular" pie costs TWENTYFIVE DOLLARS.  The truly discerning and sophisticated New Yorker must, of course, order the "Square" (by declension, "irregular", and kind of odd, that it's like 25% more expensive than the round pie, which also kind of implies a normative geometric philosophy that just feels kind of arbitrary and wrong) pie or a "Di Fara's Special" (by declension, so crazily "irregular" that it comes with sausage, peppers, mushrooms, AND onions) at a premium of  THIRTY dollars.   That's just insane.  Nothing is worth thirty dollars.  Nothing.  Particularly when,

E) So you've been sitting there basting in your own smells and dehydrated Fanta-sweat for 3 hours and 25 minutes reading about how great the stuff you're about eat is, and remember you went to Di Fara's in the first place expecting a wunder-pie, with a healthy appetite that by now has burgeoned into such a preposterous voraciousness that, I posit here, you lose your ability to actually judge how good the thing you're actually shoving in your parched and infernal mouth is and your name is finally called (well after, by the way, the names of several people who arrived a full 2 hours after you ordered).  And so here it comes and it is, just slightly colder than...Satan's Own Hell.  There is no way the human mouth can distinguish flavors at that temperature.  There's no way the human mouth can do anything but sustain injury at that temperature.  But you're so freaking starving that you start scarfing it down, if only b/c you've suddenly found yourself in some absurd prisoner's dilemma with your friends and if you don't dig in you're gonna be out a slice at the end and so you end up shooting each other in the face (In classical economics that's EXACTLY what happens.  Either that or the prisoners end up deciding to share everything . . . . Wait, no, that's just stupid.).  And but so you are all so invested in this not being a complete waste of time and money, in being real New Yorkers who get it, that with blistered tongues you extol the virtues of the best slice you've ever...not really tasted at all.

So yes, then, finally, at the end (it's evening now), you get to that last slice and it's finally cooled down, and it, is, fantastic.  Again, I'm on your side here.

But it's just not worth it.  The difference in awesomeness b/w Di Fara's and your average pie place is less than the difference in not-being-a-total-pain-in-the-ass-given-the-price-y-ness b/w Di Fara's and your average pie place.

Plus, it has mice.  Let's just all agree to boycott Di Fara's for a couple of years.  Let it get back to being just another pizza place, exert some market pressure, force them to drop their prices, move closer to my neighborhood, and then go back.  I promise not to tell you how amazing the pizza is at this place down the block from my house if you do the same.

#26 Myopia

You ever hear two people who wear eyeglasses compete for who's more "seriously blind"? It's like because nature burdens you with some kind of a genetic deficiency you have to reclaim it and own it or whatever; wear your blindness like a badge and declaim for all the world how comparatively blind you are.

And god forbid, you're blind-dueling with some kind of next-level Poindextrose 20/1000 freak and all of sudden you feel completely humiliated, b/c this stupid deficiency you hang your identity on is all of sudden not such a big deal anymore and now, who are you? Who the heck are you? You're no one, just some vaguely near-sighted naif with no job and an irrational attachment to your own weaknesses.

Here's a thought. Instead of reclaiming our weaknesses, let's all play to our strengths. The fact is, yeah, it sucks, you have to wear glasses, but that doesn't mean you have be the blindest boy on the block. Focus on what you're truly good at, like throwing knives or using a lathe or putting away groceries or banging pots and pans together or crossing in the middle of the street no matter the flow of traffic or playing free cell or Ponzi-scheming or strawberry-rhubarb pie. And the next time someone asks you what your prescription is tell them the truth.

It's Klonopin.

#25 Scarface

What is it with Scarface? Pacino is so completely (ludicrously, idiotically, unforgivably) over-the-top, and the movie caters to the absolute basest quasi-human instincts (I'm not talking about reveling in the Id, I'm talking about catering to lowest most asshole-y people and what they look for in their entertainment).

You know how you can tell someone is a complete asshole? They love Scarface. Seriously, check it, it correlates 100%. Loves Scarface? Asshole.

Asshole, loves Scarface? A Venn poser! Now while not all assholes necessarily love Scarface, I suspect that's only because any such asshole simply hasn't yet seen Scarface. If, in fact, an asshole saw Scarface, I have absolutely no doubt that said asshole would get all up in your business about how fuckin' awesome Scarface is.

Thus, there is a complete overlap between the categories "Asshole" and "Someone would does (or would) love Scarface." Q.E.D.

Now, I know, given the purview of this blog, that technically means the world is filled with assholes such that you can't really get away with not liking Scarface. But I don't think that's it. Really it's the tyranny of the minority. The worst kind of extroverted, macho, shithead who brays and struts and prances like a gorilla, well, he's kind of intimidating right? So that has two consequences:

a) Those of us who have seen Scarface and aren't assholes and are like "what the fuck is everyone talking about?," well, we keep our mouths shut b/c it's not worth going to toe-to-toe with Scarface-Nazis. Because really, the impulse to like Scarface and the impulse to be a Nazi are different in degree, not kind.

b) Those of us fortunate enough to have NOT seen Scarface but, precisely because we recognize that reprobate-douche-nozzle-Scarface-screech-monkeys' behavior is a pretty good predictive indicator that we probably won't like it simply avoid the movie altogether and, when confronted by such unfortunate quasi-humans, can say "sorry, haven't seen it."

Now the danger with b) is that you might get stuck being regaled by the Scarface-monkey, but hey, even that's better than watching Scarface.

#24 Carla

So I'm watching Top Chef Masters and I hear this come from one of the remaining 5 contestants (3 of whom were female), "it would be really amazing to win Top Chef Masters as a woman."

Now apart from the fact that, at the point she said it, it was statistically probable that a woman would win Top Chef Masters, it highlights something I've suspected about Carla for a while now. She's completely disingenuous. The squeals of delight, the charming awkwardness, I don't buy for a second. If you step back for a second and think to yourself "wait a second, this person is completely fake and overbearing" all of sudden that quality that she carries actually comes off as an act, and a pretty smarmy and ingratiating one. Here's another one. There's one part where she's "confiding" in someone else about how important is to be "true to your own food" or something retarded like that, and she's talking to Antonia about how she told this to her before, remember (with fresh tears in her eyess)?! Well that means that she's saying it again to make sure it gets on camera that she said it because it showed what a soulful and sensitive uninhibited free-spirit she is. And Antonia is sitting there nodding like "uh, yeah, I remember that conversation we had before that you're now reiterating for no reason."

I call bullshit on Carla.

I just don't buy Carla, and I never have. She's the worst, the absolute worst, and I wish her ill.

#23 Trees

So I print out another copy of the crossword because I lost the newspaper and I was only half-done and I really wanted to finish it. And so I'm standing by the printer and I'm explaining this to someone and they murmur half-joking, "oh, you like killing trees, huh?"

Yes. I do. I like killing trees. No, that's not right, I LOVE killing trees. I have xylem-lust. I love the smell of sawdust in the morning. I want the trees DEAD! I want their roots, DEAD! I want their saplings, DEAD!

Everyone just calm down. Print stuff out. Press print and with a clear conscience because hear me now, we do NOT owe trees anything.

First of all, there's way more of them than us. You ever been to a forest? They're all over the freaking place. You can't walk down the street without some tree leering at you, making you feel all short and human. They're huge. They live longer than we do. Try beating up a tree with your bare hands, see who wins.

Oh, but they give us oxygen, the apologists winnie. Precious, life-giving, oxygen. BALLS! We give them just as much CO2! We're square. It's anyone's game, and I'm putting my money on the species that can do things like make buzzsaws and pulp and paper and houses. And rocking chairs?! Are you kidding me? WE do that! With our brains, and our will, and our opposing thumbs, and our ability to move. We make friggin' rocking chairs. Chairs. That ROCK!

I'm sorry but we win, and enough guilt about it. Do yourself a favor. Get a really long knife, go up to a tree and stab it as hard as you can, right up to the hilt. You'll thank me.

#22 Yoga

Ah the reason this whole things started. Yes, SYANATNL has been blogata non grata of late. Why? Because I'mNotBobby's been relatively happy, unfettered, accepting, and filled with all the joys properly attendant to the onset of Spring. But something has been eating away at I'mNotBobby, something he's been neglecting and it occurred to him on this fine morning as he was walking to the library preparing to ensconce himself in the minutiae of international trade and customs law. There they were, Columbia students. Out on the lawn. At 630 AM. On a weekday. A whole group of them. "Surely, that's a mistake," I'mNotBobby thought to himself. "Surely a proper group of ne'er-do-well undergrads are not awake at this hour for anything but a properly resented obligation." And then he saw the butts. A whole range of mountainous glutes stuffed indelicately into stretchpants and aimed skyward and noses pressed to the ground; an unholy inversion -- Yoga.

Yoga is kind of the reason I got into this business. There's something so unpleasant about it, unless you're doing it. Yoga may not be brainwashing; Yoga may not be a cult. But, as I'mNotBobby's grandfather, I'mNotSelig used to say, "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and condescendingly tells you how awesome being a duck is and how they think you particularly would just be so much healthier and happier as a duck, then it's probably a freakin' duck...now go bring me a tall glass of Vodka, that's a good lad."

Isn't it weird how Yoga folks feel no compunction whatsoever in proselytizing? I mean, sure I complain about my back sometimes, maybe my abs aren't what they should be. But does that mean I deserve to have some glassy-eyed narcotized adept telling me how Yoga would be especially good for ME and MY problems? How it's changed their life, really, and how they couldn't imagine not getting up and greeting the sun with outstretched arms and upraised heinie? How, when they don't do it, they feel such a deep and oppressive guilt, and when they return, how good it is to be in back in their Lord's loving grace?

Listen, you want to do yoga, that's your business. Knock yourself out. I'm sure you're happy. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone doing what makes them happy so long as it doesn't impel them to convince other people that they should find the same happiness. Keep it to yourself. It is no different than Jehovah's Witnesses or Jews for Jesus. I'm sure, I have no doubt, that Jehovah makes those people feel good, healthy, whole. That they're absolutely sure that Jehovah is just the thing for what ails me. But it rightly pisses me off when they tell me that. It's simultaneously superior, condescending and just plain creepy and Yogaphiles do the exact same thing. There is no qualitative difference at all. AT. ALL.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but would it surprise you, I mean really, in the end would it surprise you if some megalomaniacal mastermind somewhere in India or something, had a special signal that, when the time is right, they're prepared to transmit and that all these superhealthy, superflexy, superhumans' eyes are going to go all swirly and they're going to blithely and happily march over the earth slaughtering all the helpless non-organic, non-vegan, unbendy and upward-facing people in their wake? I'm not saying it's going to happen, but the brainwashy way these people act has me just a teensy bit worried...

#21 Subway Performers

[by way of explanation, I know that lots of people don't like subway performers but the amount of dirty looks I get from people when I express my exacerbation or ask them to stop makes me feel justified in including this as a proper SYANATNL topic]

So you're sitting there on the subway minding your own business and all of sudden a group of kids sets up camp in the middle of the train and turns on some godawful beats and starts breakdancing wildly kicking everyone in the shins. Or a team of trebly mexicans starts mariachi-ing in your ears. Or a group of a capelliacs inflict their insipid harmonies all over you. And you find yourself re-reading the same paragraph in your book 3 or 4 times because you can't concentrate with all this infernal racket. Or suddenly you can't remember whether Eero Saarinen was an architect or the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra completely breaking your crossword flow.

And why? Because these people think they have the right to inflict their "culture" or "art" on you. Because at least that group of kids is not hanging out on the street getting into all sorts of god knows what. But since when are those the only two options (up to no good or imposing your breakdancing nonsense on unwitting subway riders)??? And the thing is, the really insidious thing is, that your average subway rider encourages these people. Easily half of you sit there and smile and enable them. How delightful! How artistic and wonderful! Oh what an enterprising group of talented young kids!

NO! These people are fascists. Do they give you any choice? Do they ask, before they begin whether what they're about to do is going to bother anyone, anyone who has absolutely no choice in what is about to be inflicted upon them? No, they don't. They don't care about your choice. They're fascists.

Listen, when I'm on the subway, I'm stuck there. I'm not at a club, I'm on the freaking subway. I'd prefer not to be there and the last thing in the world I need is to be forced, involuntarily forced, to consume your stupid art. I don't inflict my writing on you. (EXCUSE ME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO NOT LIKE? KALE!) This is why I wear noise-canceling headphones: NO SPILLAGE. I make every effort to minimize in all ways possible the extent to which other people on the train are forced to deal with me and I (as we all should) expect the same. Subway performers are anathema to the whole program and need to be stopped, not encouraged. They are a blight, a pox, a vile extroverted disease. So please, what ever you do, do not encourage these people. Do not give them money or a kind look. Put on your noise-canceling headphones with an air of extreme annoyance at being forced to drown out their insipid fascism. Heck, if you're really adventurous, do as I do, and ask them if they could kindly keep it down. No one should ever be forced to consume another person's art. It offends even the most basic principles of respect and civility and you should not only be allowed to not like it, you should just plain not like it.

#20 The Dislike Button

Now I know this seems like it's right up my alley, but I don't trust the dislike button one bit. It reeks of cynicism and snark, and it may just be a significant step toward the apocalypse.

Now, as you know, I have no problem with not liking things. I like not liking things or at least support people's right to not like things without fear of being ostracized or otherwise dismissed. But the dislike button isn't about not liking things, it's about hopping on a hate-wagon.

And that makes all the difference in the world. This blog, my friends, isn't about hate. It's about not liking stuff and being able to admit that and have it be ok. And there is a yawning abyssal of space between the two.

 In fact, joining in a communal, giggling, sniggering hate-fest is what the dislike button is all about. It's not even really a dislike button. It's a hate button. People don't want to admit that (and it doesn't present the same ring of counterpoint with the "like" button that "dislike" does), but really that's what it is. It's about gleeful hissing meanness. Disliking stuff should be an expression of independence of thought and aesthetics, not "cold dissing" your friends. "Oooo, this is such a great idea. Just think of all the possibilities. We can just click dislike and then that'll totally pone (pwn?) him, awww yeah, the dislike button is the HYPE!"

No. It is not the hype. It's shallow and cowardly.

If you really dislike something, own it, explain it, spell it out honestly and without fear. Don't press a button. That's weak, petty, childish and small. You're better than that, I know you are.

#19 Chicken Tikka Masala

So you know when you're with a bunch of people ordering Indian food and everyone's ordering their own favorite things with the intention of having the majority of the thing they like but also sharing it with everyone else and you're salivating over the possibilities and someone always insists on ordering chicken tikka masala? And so then you feel screwed, right, b/c the sharing ratio then gets all messed up because while you don't hate chicken tikka masala, you certainly aren't excited about it and the last thing you're going to do is ladle some of that radioactive pink-orange sauce onto your plate because that vinegar-sweet taste and fluorescent color infect everything else like just so much patchouli or house music. So you don't take your proportionate share of chicken tikka masala but people are helping themselves to healthy doses of the awesome spinach-whatsawhatsa you ordered and you end up totally freaking screwed.

"What do you mean you don't like chicken tikka masala? Chicken tikka masala is sooooo good.

Just try this chicken tikka masala, the chicken tikka masala from this place is some of the better chicken tikka masala. Hey, everyone, I'mNotBobby says he doesn't want any chicken tikka masala. Oh, that's so I'mNotBobby, well screw him, that just means more chicken tikka masala for US! Pass the spinach-whatsawhatsa."

End the Indian food tyranny and the next time you're with a group of people ordering , tell anyone who wants chicken tikka masala that they can go ahead and get chicken tikka masala, but they can't share with anyone else...they just have to sit there and order for themselves and eat chicken tikka masala and only chicken tikka masala. We'll see just how much they love that yogurty iridescence.

Chicken tikka masala.

#18 Football

I don't get football. I mean I guess it's because I never played it, but there's plenty of people out there who live and die for the game who never played. Now, as a baseball fan, I know I have no leg to stand on here, complaining in subjective terms about why football's no good but judging it using my own criteria. I get that. Except that it seems pretty much OK to lambaste baseball (oh, it's so boring!), but coming out against football is tantamount to declaring openly for Al Qaeda or France or something. Flatout unamerican.

But there's nothing elegant or beautiful about it. At all. Mountains vying for position. I don't see it, I never have. How is baseball boring and football not boring? I mean honestly, can you sit there and watch every play in a football game? every referee conference? every play action incompletion? Honestly? Football's stupider. It's always the dregs of the gene pool who play it in school and don't even get me started about the pieces of bauxite who go to tailgate

parties and paint their faces and wolf down beer by the gallon and get into fights and act like complete douchebags.

Also, Super Bowl Sunday is the day with the highest rate of violence against women all year?  You really think that's a coincidence?

I'm indulging in hyperbole here because there's a double-standard at play and there's something defiant and extroverted about football fans. And god forbid you're in a sports bar and you ask them to change the channel to a nice golf tournament or tennis match, or maybe the MLB network's showing some Padres/Pirates matchup from '77.

But no, you're not allowed to not like football. Or farm shares. Or bike lanes. Or rainbows. Or the miracle of childbirth.

Yeah, there's roids in baseball, but it's freaking institutional in football. It's an angry game filled with thugs and wife-beaters. Guys literally trying to kill each other. It's perverse and evil. Football should be banned. No More Football. End the madness and play baseball 365.
Football is boring, stupid, and just plain evil.

#17 New Year's

[I'm not bobby apologizes for there being so little SYANALTNL lately. He's on vacation and has been happily rant-free for a while, but...]

then New Years happened. Hear me out.

Shouldn't new years be at the beginning of spring or, per my people, at the onset of fall, when the summer's over? That sense of newness makes so much more sense associated with the new school year that marked the passage of time in a much more meaningful way when we grew up than this weird anti-climax post-halloween-thanksgiving-and-christmas-and-after-this-everything-is-going-to-be-cold-and-miserable-or-at-least-back-to-normal-back-to-business-so-let's-freak-out-and-go-apeshit-idiot-fest. There's something so kind of sad and desperate about the way people party on New Year's. It's one last grotesque and desperate hurrah.  And I mean how much money does NY waste on that freaking party with the ball, anyway? Meanwhile, I can't get an express train on the weekend???

Speaking of which, what brings someone to go to Times Square for New Year's Eve? What kind of odd confluence of genetics and life experiences leads someone to go do something that ludicrous? How do you get to a place in your life where you're saying, Oh, I mean no I can't make it because I'm going with a whole bunch of people to west 45th and 6th and we're gonna spend all night standing in the half-rain-half-snow with thousands of drunk and desperate people frenching each other? And then trying to get home and everyone kind of knows the season is over so they're just a little bit belligerent and a little more drunk and a little louder and a little bit more completely-impossible-to-take.

Anyone who's into the idea of changing new years to September 1st let's organize, get a petition together, write your congressman, meet up a nice hotel bar for a drink, something...or just bitch about it and agree not to participate. Who's in?

#16 The First Snow of Winter

So it's the first snow of the year and I'm already pissed off. Everyone's completely delighted at the wonderful winter wonderland and all I'm thinking is that this crap is going to be disgusting grey slush in no time. It's the first real indication that you're basically going to be spending the next 3 months indoors, with outdoor time essentially being spent getting from indoor point A to indoor point B. And in that journey, you're going to half-slip on the ice-slush at least once, your nose and ears are going to burn-hurt, your lips are going to chap and god forbid it's actually snowing, in which case everything you and everyone else is wearing is going to be covered in the stuff and it's going to get all over everything and you can't even walk and do the crossword anymore b/c it's either snowing or too darn cold to hold the pen without gloves on and who can do the crossword with gloves on? I don't know about you, but I like being outside. I like walking on unslushy stable traction-granting ground. I like not having to try to leap over the little pools of standing arctic pond that settle at every pedestrian crossing and falling in at least once a week completely soaking my feet in the icy hand of death. I like my trains running on frigging time.

Speaking of which, so I'm on the subway this morning and the conductor announces "due to the cold weather express trains will be running local between 96th street and Chambers."(emphasis added)

What the hell is that??? That's like saying due to a water shortage, we will be screening "Yentl" in IMax 3-D every day, non-stop, for the next 6 years. But no one even questions it, they just nod their heads, seeming to say Oh, well that makes sense. No it makes no freaking sense. But everyone just expects the entire freaking system to break down just because it's cold or snowing. It basically gives the city carte blanche to half-ass it for 3 months.

I mean, yeah, there's definitely something pretty about snow when it first falls and you're at home all warm and safe, sure, I get that. But the gigantic hassle is completely not worth it. And any time I bring all this up, people will nod and agree with me and say, yes you are totally right,

but then when I say and that's why I hate the first snow of winter, it totally freaking sucks people always say oh no snow's great, it's wonderful, it's so pretty and wonderful and great and wintertime is a time to spend at home, with family and really take stock and enjoy the company of your loved ones. Um, I mean aren't loved ones for the most part best enjoyed when you're not forced to? Isn't being thrown in with your family for long hours out of a sense of holiday obligation or meteorological exigency a sure recipe for disaster? I mean doesn't it basically ensure a total familial meltdown?