An Open Letter to Will Shortz, Editor of the New York Times Crossword Puzzle

Dear Mr. Shortz,

As I am sure both our time is valuable, I'm not going to mince words. What is your problem? Why, pray tell, was this week's Sunday Crossword so simple, its caliber was at a Monday level. Yes, yes, you threw in a reference to Emile Durkheim, but that is Wednesday material, at best.

If this is your idea of a sick joke or some plot to give me a false sense of confidence, I do not appreciate your sense of humor. I suspect your plan is to lure me into doing the Crossword in pen, only to devastate me with clues regarding opera and archaic English vocabulary that has fallen out of use. Thank you Mr. Shortz, but no thank you. This pencil and trusty eraser will stay firmly in hand!

Good day sir. I said Good day!
Sarah

p.s. By the by, if you so happen to have the phone numbers of fellow Wordplay commentators, Jon Stewart or Mike Mussina (Go Yankees!), feel free to hook a girl up.

Julia Roberts is Wrong

You know in the movie Steel Magnolia's where Julia Roberts tells her mom that she would rather have a few minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special? Well, Shelby was completely wrong. Sometimes nothing special is fine and dandy.

Take today for instance, perhaps this is what they term the calm before the storm, but today has been perfectly ordinary (aside from me walking to work with a wooden baseball bat slung over my shoulder -don't ask). The day is so strangely ordinary in fact I can't really think of a suitable adjective to describe it. So I guess I will describe it with things that it has no business at all being compared to:

If today were a food it would be a casserole made with Campbell's soup.

If today were a TV show it would be Family Ties or maybe M.A.S.H.

If today were a kitchen utensil it would be a turkey baster. Perfectly utilitarian in nature and supremely content sitting in your drawer until needed. It has none of the excitement of say a pizza cutter nor does it bring about the same enthusiasm of an ice cream scoop. But that's okay.

If today were a musician it would be Billy Joel. Don't get me wrong, everyone likes Billy Joel, but I've never seen anyone passionate about Billy Joel.

If today were a body part it would be a kind and considerate pair of eyes, but the kind that don't make a big deal of themselves.

Yes, that perfectly describes what today is. Perhaps when nothing bad happens the day is a good one by default?

I'm guessing this is what Sean Lennon meant when he sang "nothing feels better than okay".



PS: I was at the above concert in Boston in 2007.

Under Pressure....

It's 9:20 at night and I am still at the office trying to finish the neverending jury instructions from hell. Under Pressure is playing on the radio...so apt. It's like some higher force gave me a shout out. Just waiting for Delilah to come on and say...and that one went out to Sarah (I imagine she would over emphasize the h so that I knew she meant me).

No one has ever dedicated a song to me, so I will take what I can get...

Looks like and another statue kind of week. Sigh. Hoping to be the pigeon soon.

One Love, Lama Surya Das, One Love

I subscribe to the Dzogchen Center's Weekly Words of Wisdom, which are sent out weekly (duh) via email. I'm not terribly religious, so the quotes that are mainly just some interesting things to ponder or some secular words of advice are a bright spot to my week. Some past favorites are as follows:

Compassion is an attitude,
Love is an action.
~ H.H. the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa

The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
~ Robert Ingersoll

Ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen

If you want to win the war with your mind, you'll be at war forever.
~ Adyashanti

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.
~ Carlos Castaneda

If you haven't got any charity in your heart,
you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
~ Bob Hope

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

This is the one I received today, which totally made my smile because of the eclecticism of the selection:

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
~ Bob Marley


I have also been thinking about this quote a lot lately:

Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and other days you’re the statue.
-Roger C. Anderson

I've had a statue kind of week. Hope things will start looking up soon :)

Dear Diary, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The last 2 books I completed were The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Deary Diary by Lesley Arfin. Here is a little about each:

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is possibly the best thing ever written, or at least the best thing I have ever read. Keep in mind, I am a complete sucker for a story about a group of lonely misfits so perhaps my opinion is slightly swayed. In any case, Carson McCullers is a phenomenon. I can hardly believe she wrote this at the age of 23 and the book was originally published in 1940, it is timeless. McCullers writes with such compassion for her characters and without even a bit or pretension. She's the kind of person I could not imagine uttering a word like "exquisite", let alone forcing her characters to. This is basically my favorite kind of author. If reading is not your thing, check out the film. The story is too wonderfully sad and sweet to miss.

The other book I just completed was Dear Diary by Lesly Arfin. This was published in conjunction with Vice, so I kind of thought from the get go that it would be lame. Turned out to be okay, slightly better than meh. Meh plus. It's basically Arfin's memoir, chronicling her adolescence and early twenties complete with heroin addiction and rehab. What I primarily enjoyed about it were the pop culture references. Reminded me a lot of high school, and how I liked punk and my favorite band was ALL. Or that time I cut my shoulder length "girl, you'll be a woman soon" hair off by grabbing a pair of scissors and half-hazardly snipping off chunks of it. Turned out kind of cute. Or how many of you had a JanSport backpack that you wrote all over with a Sharpie? I remember having an SST records sticker on mine.

Wow, I wish I was even half as cool as all that now sounds. Really, I was just a silly geek who was lucky enough to find some really good friends. Some things change and some things stay exactly the same.

Obama's Muffin Top is all That

1) Totally crushing on Obama even more (if that is possible) after this article from the New York Times. My favorite part:

Mr. Obama has also brought a more relaxed sensibility to his public appearances. David Gergen, an adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents, said Mr. Obama seemed to exude an “Aloha Zen,” a kind of comfortable calm that, Mr. Gergen said, reflects a man who “seems easygoing, not so full of himself.”

2) I ate a banana muffin for breakfast this morning and all I could think was "my muffin top is all that, whole-grain, low fat. I know you want a piece of that, but I just want to dance". Which caused me to giggle uncontrollably at my muffin and computer screen. Luckily it was early and I was the first one at the office. And who cares what people think anyway? I'm independent lady... so do not try and play me.

Sorry if I am weirding you out.

Random Notes On Shopping

Here are some random shopping related observations:

Re Ala Moana:

-Note to kiosk owners, if you are selling a straightener and your kiosk smells like burning hair, I do not "want to try". This will likely not change so please stop asking.

-Is it just me, or is Abercrombie & Fitch a vapid wasteland of excess? Seriously, what is it with the inappropriately loud music, excessive perfume and shirtless sales people at the door. It's almost cartoonish. It would almost be cool or like an SNL skit if they had a hot dog vendor up front so all the senses could be covered.

Re Sam's Club:

-So I was at Sam's Club the other day and was near the prepared food section. They sell sushi there in assorted varieties. All of the little containers of sushi are clearly marked in bold black lettering. There was California Roll, Furikake and one that read Tuna of the Sea. I saw this and thought to myself, yeah, what other kind of tuna is there? Then I thought, oh well there is *that* kind. And finally I thought, Sam's Club, you are sooooo seventh grade.

-Also, Sam's Club, I received your letter re the product I recently purchased from you. Thank you for the notice of possible salmonella poisoning, and for validating my paranoia about basically everything.

And one last note, Starbuck's Apple Chai is the most fantastic thing to drink when your office feels like you are working in a meat locker and you begin to lose feeling in your hands. It's like winter in liquid form.