Emily Magazine

between being in a 10-person, 4-week yoga teacher training intensive and being on a competition reality show is that some of the people ARE there to make friends.

Do you think Citibank had to ask Depeche Mode’s permission?

Kenley Collins is like a perfect cross between Veronica (as in “Betty and”) and Monica Lewinsky (in a hot way) and I love her.

Some experiences defy blog-description, either because they are so ineffable and transcendent that they exceed the reach of words or because they are super fucking boring to hear about.  Or a combo platter.   Anyway, this thing.  It goes through the end of August.

A Radar commenter points out that Joni Mitchell wrote the original impressionistic, disillusioned party report.

I was listening to that song last night (um, what are the odds) and it got me started thinking about going to people’s parties, even though actually yes, there is a rule on the Internet that once Choire has weighed in about something there’s no point in anyone else doing so. And Choire really did nail it — except that the people I was talking to when Jessica was lurking around the periphery of our conversation, collecting dissilussioning impressions, are friends. No -imies suffix needed. And boy it is so true that we don’t control anything.

But even after Choire made sense of things I was still feeling angry at Jessica for sneaking into a party, not really bothering to talk to anyone except to confirm some biases she had going in, and then writing a sweeping pronouncement about it on the Internet and claiming that her insults and exaggerations and reductive, random slams were actually representative of her fearless writerly honesty. But then — uh oh! — I realized that I wasn’t feeling angry so much as I was feeling guilty. Hindsight, man. It’s like 20/10 around here lately.

There’s a difference between being honest and using “honesty” as a justification for being an asshole, and that difference can take years to figure out. I’m still trying to figure it out. I do know that it helps to actually talk to people and listen to what they have to say. It’s also good to actually describe things, to consider the source of everything you hear and everything you read, and to stop being flattered when someone who bears all the hallmarks of being a coward — anonymity, for instance! — tells you that you’re brave.

It’s hard to forgo the satisfaction of savaging someone when you know you’ve got the ammunition, and it’s hard to say no when you’re offered the spotlight. It’s hard to resist snap judgments. It’s hard to ask questions. But if you’re actually interested in being an “honest writer,” these are the things you’ll have to do. On the plus side, though, no blow jobs are involved.

(Also, I’m reinstating comments, but watch your step, crazies.)

(Also, unrelated to anything, via Alice:  the point of YouTube turns out to be Steve Nicks backstage awes randomness).

Yesterday morning I was walking to the LIRR when I crossed paths with a Mormon teenager who was handing out postcards about God on the corner and each one came with a free granola bar.  I took the granola bar and the postcard and at the next trash can I threw away the postcard.  Then, two bites into the granola bar, I accidentally dropped it on the ground.  Easy come, easy go.

Well, here’s the thing: you can’t work at home. Certainly you have a desk there, and some books, and internet access, and plenty of working electrical outlets. Probably you also have food and water and a bathroom. That’s not enough. You’ll find that you’ll be willing to sacrifice any number of these things in exchange for the presence of the warm bodies of strangers and the quiet sound of their clicking typing fingers.

So the problem is: where will you find these things? So far in my new neighborhood I’ve identified four sources, but each has a fatal flaw. The one that’s closest to me has the best food and drinks, but they’re brought to you by waitresses, so it seems rude to sit there for five hours nursing the same iced tea. And it’s also probably a little bit too close by. Somehow life seems less hothouse-stifling if your commute is longer than a block.

Then there’s another place but it’s so tiny that sometimes you and the counter-person are the only people there, and it’s like being the first one to arrive at the birthday party of someone you don’t know very well.

The big centrally-located place has no air conditioning, a perpetual and inexplicable long line, and no place to plug in your computer. It should be shut down by the board of Businesses Should Not Be Allowed To Suck This Much and Live. It has t-shirts for sale emblazoned with its own name and also with various Brooklyn Pride slogans. After it gets shut down I propose that it be made into a Starbucks.

The place near the park is nice. You can watch the joggers and babies stroll by in your seat by the doorway on a cool day. But apparently you shouldn’t leave your computer when you go to the bathroom because — haha, oops, I misheard the person who told me about this.  Apparently a one-armed man had one stolen from him!  Anyway, that place has bad vibes for some reason I can’t quite identify.

Rest assured that I’ll keep you updated  on this situation periodically for as long as I’m procrastinating, so: in perpetuity.

Fully three of these dreams are mine — none of the sex ones, however!  Also, for a while last summer I had a recurring dream that Choire had a really high fever and I had to nurse him back to health.  Hmmm.

* Oh look, the Observer has been rendered obsolete!

*Achewood genius Chris Onstad tells one of the New Yorker’s many, many blogs that some people aren’t impressed by his career: “It is a permanent problem, describing what you do when you do an obscure comic. I tell people I’m a cartoonist, and if they press me to say a cartoon out loud, I know I am wasting my time. It’s like suggesting that a young fireman dance around with his wonderful butt showing—it’s his job to offer, not yours to ask.”

* Why would the founding pastor of the Apostolic church on Washington want that sign to include his middle initial?  I guess to distinguish him from another Leon Dicks whose middle initial is not “C.”

* Does the Graham Home For Old Ladies still house old ladies, and if so, how old is “old” because I would like to move in there?  (Update: no, it is a co-op).

Fourth of July weekend was really just about food. This is a blurry cell phone picture so you can’t tell that what we’re dealing with here is a whole trout stuffed with garlic and herbs and lemon, scallops, the marinated kale salad from HBS!, pasta with tomatoes and mozarella and basil, and a fresh corn and avacado salad with grilled shrimp in it. Oh and also RC’s midwestern potato salad, which has little pickles. We ate it all and then we ate dessert.

A reader writes with concerns about the comments here that basically boil down to: ‘It’s okay if people comment on your blog insulting you, but it’s not okay if they comment insulting other people. You shouldn’t approve those comments.’ Huh! This reader also says, ‘Every blog gets the commenters it deserves.’ And, ‘The Internet doesn’t have rules, but it should.’

I’ve never formally articulated a comment policy here, but elsewhere I did write that I never delete comments. The logic behind that decision was, basically, that blogs should have comments, but that I don’t want to be in the position of policing my comments. Maybe this reader is right and I shouldn’t let people wage their anonymous battles on my turf. But I don’t want to spend time weighing comments’ merits because, in spite of the yoga books I’ve been reading, I’m still pretty sure we all only get one lifetime.

So I’m going to try a no-comments thing for a while and just see how that goes (I think everyone does this at some point, right? It’s sort of a rite of blog passage.) If your wish that I’d get hit by a bus is still so fervent that you absolutely must let me know about it somehow, you can send an email to emilymagazine at gmail. And hey, maybe sometime between logging into your anonymous email and typing the words and hitting ’send’, you’ll pause and wonder, for a moment, about what you think you’re accomplishing, doing that!

Or not.

Also, I won’t publish anything without permission.