Rites Of Passage

I'm just going to throw it out there and say how much I despise birthdays. I've mentioned before how much I hate change, and nothing throws it in your face more than a celebration marking the passage of time. Birthdays were originally meant to be celebrated because it was a miracle in itself if you lived another year. Without the modern miracles of medicine or online shopping, our forefathers were pretty screwed if they became ill or lost the will to live.

In every persons life there are these supposed milestones one is supposed to celebrate. The first one would obviously be birth. The second would be age five when you receive the pony you had been patiently waiting for all year...and still continue to wait for to this very day. Thanks Dad. The third (in the Jewish tradition) would be your Bar/Bat Mitzvah, where an entire crowd is blessed with your mumbled and fast paced chanting of the Torah. You are pronounced an "adult" and the audience hurls candy at you. After wards there is an open bar where Mrs. Leibowitz drinks too much, tells her son he was a mistake, and vomits in the bushes outside the Temple. Then there is the sweet sixteen for the non-Jews or the conveniently wealthy. The next step would be your eighteenth, or high school graduation/baby shower for the girls lacking in the scholarly minds department. After all that there is the twenty-first birthday, where you're supposed to celebrate "finally" being legal, and do body shots until someone accidentally swallows your belly button ring. I had my fake twenty-first in Philly, and I will say that I had a good time. However, I felt like I had some sort of social obligation to go out for my real twenty-first, in a city I had moved to two days prior and know no one. To make it short I ended up sitting in a bar alone and drinking a Guinness. Watching the pouring rain outside while the sad old man next to me sang along to "Stairway to Heaven" was one of the most maudlin/amusing moments in recent memory. At least it was a Monday.

Oh and happy Passover. I remembered this little fact right after I finished my BLT at lunch. So wrong yet so worth it.

Twenty-one.

As I sit here, enjoying my final drinks before the clock strikes midnight and I turn 21, many thoughts lay heavy upon my mind. Is this the end of an era? The final step on this long and self-destructive journey? Oh the misguided antics of youth and passing out in public places.

It’s times like these that beg certain questions, formerly restricted to the midst of troubled sleep. Who am I? Why are my feet bleeding? Why are plastic handles of vodka $20 in Manhattan? For the love of Christ has Tresemme discontinued its heat protective spray, or can I just not find it?

I feel like everything is happening too fast, especially with the move to NYC and sudden disconnect from Drexel. However, I’d like to throw myself at the mercy of optimism, and say that everything is really working out for the best. Living in Hell’s Kitchen for six months should be interesting, especially now that I don’t have to lie about my identity.

I will miss my former former identity Kimberley, even though she was less attractive than I and 5’3”. Not to mention she made me twenty-seven when I was eighteen. She was a shitty ID, but good enough for the dregs of society in West Philadelphia. And by dregs of society I mean UPenn bars.

My former identity was very good to me, and this time we shared the same first name and picture. I decided upon the name because I figured no matter where we were, my friends would call me by my first name, and if I were with certain people they would make anti-semitic references. Therefore I chose a comically Jewish sounding last name.

When I was in high school, I thought life slowly spiraled downward after the twenty-first birthday. What was there to look forward to, other than being able to rent a car? I’m admittedly a horrible driver, and do it as little as humanly possible. However, high school Sarah also thought she was cool for pre-gaming the homecoming dance, skipping track practice, and mis-matching velour sweatsuits. I could never aspire to be that baller again.

In the end, I realize the vodka tonic I’m drinking now tasted just as shitty now as it did when I was sixteen, or will taste when I’m chugging them in some hellhole of a retirement home. The only thing that will change is I will hopefully one day be able to afford glass bottles, as opposed to the plastic ones of shame I’m so used to. To that I will raise a glass, and say happy fucking birthday to me.

See you in hell Nesbitt

I can't wrap my head around the fact that I am officially done with Junior year, with only three terms left until I graduate. At first I was elated, and may or may not have screamed something along the lines of "see you in hell Nesbitt" to which some of my peers did not respond well towards. However, they are but lowly design students, and I accepted their silent disapproval with a grain of salt. I didn't see shitty photoshopped pictures of Nixon on their portfolio sites, but who's the asshole that got an internship in Midtown? This one right here. And that is worth every grammatically incorrect jibe about my work, or the fact that I still reek of grain alcohol. And it's three in the afternoon.

Since I had a very short break at home before the official move, I had very little time to relax and felt like the majority of my time was spent shuffling from state to state. I am omitting the two whole days where I watched nothing but Spartacus and binge ate. As far as I'm concerned, it never happened.

As the end of March approached, I became increasingly more aware that I had important decisions to make. Mostly along the lines of what shoes I had to buy. Because lets face it, I'm starting someplace new and will be more or less incompetent for the first couple of days. I have to at least look halfway decent before they realize what a horrible and terrible mistake they've made, hiring an unpaid intern. The crisis was averted when my mom bequeathed to me a pair of loafers for my impending twenty-first birthday. Such gifts are time honored New England traditions, along with sailing and tennis camp. (It's a good thing I kept up with both sports, and don't completely suck at them. Because that would be a horrible waste of time and money.) She also saw it fit to give me my annual fresh pair of J. Crew flippy floppies, as I mercilessly wear the poor things into the ground with my duck feet. Yet another endearing quality of mine my family has to endure.

I am going to try and blog as much as time allows about my time in Manhattan, as I honestly lucked out on every aspect so far and am pretty optimistic about the next six months. Unless I have to get a part time job working retail. However, such a travesty is unspeakable and too bleak to fathom.

There's always stripping.

Dipping into my pot of Jew gold.

Normally I wouldn't dare blog about my shopping adventures (which are only comparable to Frodo's quest to destroy the ring of power, except with more dire repercussions) but I did exceptionally well today, even by my own cheap and bitchy standards. While walking around Center City and Rittenhouse during my three hour break in between seven hours of class, I knew I had a purpose other than enjoying the tepid weather and putting modest mouse on repeat. I had to put up posters for my viral advertising final, while avoiding the police and other good samaritans. They would most likely fine me even though I am nothing but a lowly design student in road salt stained UGG's. After putting up a dozen or so and becoming bored, I decided it was time to save my sanity and popped into a thrift boutique on Walnut. After sifting through racks of trampy junior high track suits and camisoles that had probably seen the rise and fall of Kurt Cobain, I came across a wool tube dress with a drop waist and pleated hem. It didn't feel like any form of polyester or synthetic fibers of hellfire, so I checked the label and was pleased to see that it was J Crew. Better yet, it was my size, and had been marked down to eight bucks. I win.
After purchasing my reward for blowing off vandalizing one of the only nice parts of West Philadelphia, I decided to pop over to Chestnut to do some more damage. I also needed to find more home goods I could design/destroy for my restaurant identity final. Unfortunately there was nothing found among the racks of long stale cookies and distasteful oven mitts, so I decided to recuperate in Buffalo Exchange. I headed straight to the skirt section as I have been looking for the quintessential pencil skirt for months, if not for most of my life as a scholar and degenerate. I was told they had restocked, and I grabbed a BCBG and a Kenneth Cole number. Because I am not blessed with the long misunderstood trial of anorexia, the BCBG was a trifle too small. However, the Kenneth Cole fit well enough to go out with a slutty tank, but was still conservative enough to wear to work with a cardigan and slutty tank. The Best part was that it was marked $16, but I had ten bucks credit there for selling high school paraphernalia. All in all I would call it a successful trip, and by some form of slut or Jew magic I managed to vanquish the metaphorical demons of the retail industry. Then again they were probably made by five year olds for about a nickel, but we try not to think about that.

Lil' Bastards

I will preface this by saying that I do not want children in the near future. Give me at least another decade of being a complete and utter asshole, because once that demon seed comes barreling out of your uterus, life as you know it is over. However, that doesn't mean I can't find their tiny midget like features adorable, or creepily wave at them on public transportation. One of the things I can picture myself looking forward to is buying the little bastard fun accessories. For example, while browsing for flasks on a home goods website, I stumbled across these sweet pacifiers. I am ashamed my parents did not purchase vampire fangs or grillz for myself or my brother. I also look forward to dressing the thing in Crewcuts, regardless it be a he, she, or he-she. Considering J Crew sends me an email every damn day (but it would be blasphemy to take myself off the mailing list) I have seen my fair share of Crewcuts and simply put it is fucking adorable. The brunette girl on the right looks like she's about to smack the blonde one and take her flower, and rightly so. Life is a cruel and never ending struggle, even in the bright and shiny world of J Crew.

Damn you Craigslist.

Since looking for reasonable NYC sublets when you're due to move in a month is so much fun, I thought I'd update instead of curling into the fetal position and slowly crying myself to sleep. After eating vast amounts of cottage cheese. Because no one likes the fat chick.

I added the beginning of a paper that actually had no relevance to the assignment. It was one of those bat-shit crazy four-in-the morning deals when I thought I was making sense, only to wake up and realize it had all the coherency of a Bush speech on methamphetamines. Not to mention the sheer awkwardness of peer tutoring the final piece. A classroom full of pretentious writing students and weird shut ins who have not met the light of day, nor acne wash? I'll pass. I don't think they could understand my small and insignificant victories against the writing program when I get away with this bullshit.

The Hamster Genocide

The Syrian hamster is considered a pest in its native land. With their cheek pouches extending from their mouths to their shoulders, they are capable of storing nearly the equivalent of their own body own mass in their mouth. Unremitting hoarders, they have been known to gather up to sixty pounds of grain in preparation for the cruel winters and long months of potential starvation. Third world farmers have responded violently, and the cuddly creatures are rounded up and slaughtered by the dozens. This leaves the hamsters with no choice but to live on the run, skittering around as fast as their little hind legs can carry them. The hamster genocide has gone unnoticed for far too long, and once again international diplomacy has failed in its very indifference. Damning an entire group, nay an entire species, is at the very least unethical and another example of our sadistic bastardization of a legal system. Their wee metaphorical shackles and exercise wheels of humiliation have existed for nearly a century, with no end to the cruelty in sight. Without the monetary or intellectual resources (not to mention necessary dexterous capabilities) a hamster revolution is certainly out of the question, and their persecution will continue until met with human resistance.

The real question is why the international community has kept such a massacre under wraps, denying these creatures the very basic rights to life. The answer lies in the dark underbelly of medical testing, paired with incestuous corporate relationships with shareholders.

Hamsters were first introduced to the modern world in 1839 by zoologist George Waterhouse, who aptly dubbed them Cricetus auratus, which translates into “The Golden Hamster.” A family of hamsters was bred in captivity in 1930, and it is believed that all North American hamsters sold as pets are descendants of the original litter. Bearing in mind the females go into heat every four days, and can birth up to twenty furballs in one litter, population problems were originally out of the question. These rodents are the fourth most tested upon animals, securing their spot right after lab mice. However, they are solitary creatures are genetically engineered for wide spances of the Syrian desert, and close quarters cause the little ones to attack each another with razor sharp incisors. The only guarantee that two hamsters will not attack one another is when the female is in heat. However, the fairer sex has been known to immediately attack the male hamster after copulation, while he is still recovering from the physical exertion. Granted, the intercourse must have been truly horrible if she felt he deserved such a fate.

....And then I passed out.

Neutraface

">

The first time Meghan showed me this video, we were both cracked out from a late night in the labs and our substantially stress free lives. Those lucky enough to be working in Nesbitt's great and terrible halls at that hour were subject to us doubling over and crying. Not a lot of things make me audibly laugh (lies) and anyone who can successfully make a Pokerface parody about Neutraface deserves a damn Grammy. Or at the very least acceptance that they may be insane, but are still harmless. And isn't that all we really strive for?

Although they dis helvetica in the video, I have to disagree and point out how fucking awesome helvetica neue is. Especially the light versions.