Knives are sharp

Last night I was admiring my new birthday knives. They are exquisitely beautiful and shiny, especially the santoku knife, which has oval indents in it for "thinner slicing." I was standing in my kitchen admiring its icy, almost malicious gleam in the tinny fluorescent light, and found myself instinctively moving my finger toward the blade to touch its shiny edge. (I like to touch shiny things. I am a girl.)

Slow motion-- my finger's hypnotic trajectory is punctuated by my mother's voice-- "KNIVES... WILL... CUT... YOU..." I managed to stop my finger micrometers away from the knife, suddenly realizing that yes, running my finger along the edge would probably result in a terrible, annoying band-aid on my digit for the next two weeks. This probably saved me hours of irritation as well as 8-10 bloody paper towels.

Thanks, Mom.

Addendum

I was thinking about my previous post's pleas to Shonda Rimes & Friends. Yes, I would still like some sort of massacre to occur at Seattle Grace. Yes, I would like it to happen as soon as possible. Yes, I would like every major and supporting character to perish without any dramatic dialogue or mourning involved. But in addition to this, NO ONE CAN COME BACK AS GHOSTS. Especially ghosts that have sex and warn people about cancer. Especially ghosts with spin-offs, or ghosts that appear on Private Practice. Also, I would like the president of ABC to formally apologize to America and all countries where Grey's Anatomy is syndicated for this poor excuse for entertainment.

Thanks!
Love, Elyse

TV Guide

As you may recall, I canceled all television service to my apartment a month ago. It's been a quiet month in my apartment. I kind of like it, but sometimes I need to do something... mindless... so today I watched some of this season's premieres (on my laptop).

1. Grey's Anatomy: First of all, why do I waste my life watching this drivel? The dialogue is painful and all the characters are ridiculous. But I think I've beaten the bad dialogue horse too much in my life; today, I'm going to beat the bad plot horse. Thanks for killing off boring George, Shonda Rimes & Friends, but there's still lame Izzy, boring Meredith, boring Christina, boring Derek, lame Alex, lame Meredith's sister, and the rest of the lame, boring cast to kill off. I suggest that a bomb explodes in Seattle Grace, flattening the entire hospital, because this show is like a roach infestation. If you don't obliterate them all, they'll come back even stronger than before in some incorrigible spin-off. We can't have that again, people-- I will not abide by another show as terrible as Private Practice. Also, I'm growing impatient about the speed at which character deaths occur. You can't afford waste an entire episode deifying a character who had no redeeming qualities. Be honest, you're glad he's dead. It's okay to move on with sociopath-like speed. You have other bad characters to kill, SR&F, and I want them all dead before sweeps (except Patrick Dempsey). Please start with Izzy. Now let's get crackin'!

2. Eastwick: I'm still not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, they took an awesomely dark, overtly sexual and sadistic book about three gorgeously powerful women and turned it into a frilly, flouncy, cutesy-magicked version of Desperate Housewives. I hate Desperate Housewives as much as Grey's Anatomy. On the other hand, the guy who plays Darryl the Demon is way hotter than I imagined him in the book. But on the first hand, Rebecca Romijn can't act well enough to sell her character. But on the second hand, who cares, because she looks sooooo good kissing Darryl. But on the first hand, no no no, don't ruin literature with cliche dialogue, plots, characters, soundtrack... even the font in the credits is predictable. No, ABC, no. Just.... don't. I beg you.

3. House: I used to love this show until one day I realized they ran out of ideas in the second season and still needed to give Hugh Laurie something to do to justify his huge salary. I would prefer that they have him tap dance and solve riddles for an hour instead of murdering all the respect I had for the show's writers. Who writes for TV these days? I'm starting to think it might be a group therapy project in an adult care facility: cut and paste things from newspapers and novels until you run out of space on the page, then doodle set designs on them. The sixth season premiere is a modernized and watered-down plagiarism of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I'm not even going to explain to you how the writers have stolen the plot of the movie point-by-point, because I have more respect for you than that. It's even worse than plagiarism because it takes a work of Ken Kesey genius and infuses it with the same tired cadence we've all come to know and detest in House dialogue. I like a good homage as much as the next cranky bitch, so when they come up with a good homage I'll certainly give them credit for it. Where's the creativity? At the end of the episode, 13 sleeps with a stripper and kills herself, Wilson throws a sink out the window, House gets a lobotomy and the giant Indian-- I mean, FOX -- puts the sad, empty remains of this program out of its misery... oh, sorry, no... that's what would happen if I wrote this episode.

It's almost my birthday and that means I've been thinking a lot about... alcohol!

I thought of a good name for a sure-to-be disgusting shot: PBR&J. It would consist of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Jello, or maybe PBR and grenadine and a cherry. At any rate, that's gross, but it would be fun to order. I would probably try it once or ten times.

You know what would make a really good shot? Tequila. I'm going to have some now.

P.S. My parents got me knives for my birthday. Super sharp professional chef-quality knives. I'm excited because my current cutlery requires Neanderthal-esque techniques in order to slice foods tougher than a mushroom. Sometimes I think it would help if I grunted and scratched my fleas while I use them, no joke. Now that the new knives have arrived, my mom keeps calling me and reminding me to be careful, because "knives can cut" me. Thanks for the heads up, Mom.

Phobias

I've been experiencing a lot of anxiety lately, and I think I want to commemorate that by describing a couple more of my phobias. I don't think these phobias have cool names like masklophobia (which, by the way, is still generating hits for this blog. I'm not alone). If you can think of a good one, please share it with me.

1. Peanut butter. First of all, people, peanut butter is evil. It's fatty and sticky and once you stop eating it, it's in your mouth for a long time afterwards, tempting you to eat more and more and more. Fuck Skippy: this addictive paste is obviously ground out by Satan as he plucks the peanuts that dangle from his ceilings in hell. But enough about reasons to love peanut butter. I'm terrified of peanut butter because it's a goitrogen as well as an allergen that can kill small children in minutes. I'm terrified because I don't understand the immune system well enough to put the word goitrogen into perspective. I hear "thyroid-slowing food" and immediately think "neck tumor." I like my thyroid and neck the way they are, so no peanut butter for me, thanks. (P.S. Kissing after eating peanut butter is also not okay.)

2. Bathtubs and showers. In a perfect world, you get clean in a bathtub. Thinking about how imperfect this world's bathtubs are makes my toes curl. I cringe when I see cheesecake photos of women lounging in their bubble baths. Just imagining the invisible cast-off grime entrapped in soapy scum along the walls and edges of a bathtub, not to mention the hair, oh the hair, is enough for me to get in and out of my shower as quickly as possible. I bleach it down every morning and I still refuse to touch the walls and sides. My hot water bill is really low. I wear sandals in every bathroom except my own, and sometimes my anxiety takes hold and I can't help wearing them at home, too. Somehow dirt is just dirtier when it's in a place you get clean.

3. Eyes. I don't really have the stomach to justify this fear with vivid imagery. Well, I'll try. Eyes teeter at the verge of your sockets, held in by spidery ropes of nerves. They are outpoochings of your brain. They are covered in bulging red capillaries and pumped so full of vitreous humor (as opposed to vitriolic humor, like this blog) that the tightest little bump might burst them like a balloon. Oozing itching blinking twitching eyes.

Is it weird that thinking about eating peanut butter, strangers' showers, and eyes keeps me awake at night, but I can appreciate the beautiful nuances of a brain while I remove it from a rat's still-twitching, disembodied skull?

iMemoriam

Last week, I lost a good friend of mine: Veatrix, my iPod. She presented Wednesday morning with a sad iPod face and never woke up.

Veatrix was a first generation 20 GB color iPod that I adopted from my dad, who won her in some promotional event at work and doesn't have my emotional musical needs. I was a freshman in college then and only used an iPod to amuse me during the 20 minute walk to and from my dorm. I filled her with the entire Beatles catalog and a few Rolling Stones songs. At first I scoffed at the students who were attached to their portable music player as if it was a pacifier, but I soon accepted the easy, codependent lifestyle Veatrix offered me.

While I dragged myself around campus, depressed and cold and considering transferring to another school, Veatrix soothed my weathered nerves and warmed me inside while my ears blackened with frostbite. Veatrix outsang the my peers' obnoxious pseudointellectual debates while I studied in campus coffee shops, and she and I developed a clever eavesdropping scheme to catch up on the most interesting gossip. By the end of college, I relied heavily on Veatrix to completely drown out reality.

Veatrix was my best friend. She chattered to me during long car rides and nerve-wracking graduate school interview trips. She was a salve to the irritation I developed on my bus commutes to and from the UNC campus. When I put her on shuffle, she always played the songs I wanted to hear, even defying randomness to inject extra Wilco into the mix when I needed it most. Veatrix knew me better than Pandora ever could. In the spirit of hyperbole, I'll admit to you that the man who invented iPods is the only man I'll ever love. (That might not be true, but hell, this is a eulogy, not the encyclopedia!)

This past week without Veatrix has been one of the most boring and irritating weeks of my life. For each shoe-squeak step that I take to the bus stop, I miss the upbeat melodies Veatrix might have played me. For every paper I pull off PubMed, it hurts to wonder what musical accompaniment Veatrix might choose. Each un-soundtracked workout brings a stinging tear to my eye. Each obnoxious bus conversation I overhear makes me miss her, miss her.

Oh Veatrix. I'll never replace you in my heart, but of course you must understand that I immediately replaced you in my life. Mama's gotta keep her sanity, baby. I got my new iPod nano, jet black, today... and it is obscenely cool. I named it Veatriix. See how the "i" doubles as a roman numeral? Can you even stand how clever I am? I know, sometimes it's just unbelievable.

I miss you Veatrix, but now that your music lives in on a newer model, I guess my heart will go on.