"'Cause Calvin Klein, no friend of mine
Don't want nobody's name on my behind."
--Run D.M.C., "Rock Box"

I dedicate this to the consumer victims of logo bags, jewelry, sunglasses, and t-shirts. Christ, people, if you're going to pay that much money, at least make the assholes DESIGN something. Don't pay for the privilege of being an ad.

And no, I don't give a crap that Run-DMC wrote "My Adidas." Their being hypocritical on this point doesn't make it a bad point.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Anxiously anticipating the revolution,

Adair

My older brother and I, whenever we are on the phone, inevitably find ourselves engaging in a purely rhetorical debate; his role is to spout Panglossian proverbs and adages, and mine is to let forth an acid-filled counterargument. Then we laugh and resume normal conversation.

In playing the voice of harsh outrage in these jesting discussions, though, I often find that I'm not faking my scathing rejection of his clichés. It may not be the most traditional sibling bonding, but it's helped save my critical thinking muscles from atrophy. Some examples:

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
My retort: "What doesn't kill you can leave you a hollow shell of your former self, completely unequipped for the challenges ahead!"
I really think I had a point. This is probably my least favorite cliché; it's nothing more than a cop-out, an attempt to pretend that affliction is a blessing. It isn't. That's why we call it affliction.

Life isn't fair.
My retort: "Of course not. The overall nature of the universe, however, does not excuse your conduct."

Pessimism never won any battle.
My retort: "No, but it probably prevented some really stupid ones that didn't need to be fought."

Further to this rejection of existing trite phrases, I've started creating my own variations: "ponies and rainbows" (a complimentary closing indicating politely suppressed ire), and the self-explanatory "encrapulation" and "thought-resistant".

We may never escape greeting cards. But we don't have to talk like them.

I did a rather spur-of-the-moment walk over the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, and then just kinda kept going until I was most of the way home.

Pluses:
--There were flood lights on at South Street and at the base on the Brooklyn side, so the whole thing looked different than usual
--It was freezing (literally) so there weren't many people out
--I walked 4.5 miles!

Minuses:
--That 4.5 miles was in improper footwear.
--I left my digital camera in my friend's car on NYE, and I keep forgetting to get it back, so I only had my cell phone's camera to snap away with. All that dramatic lighting went to waste!

Results, such as they are:

Strange shadows on the first tower:

Lights between the two towers:

Being a strange shadow on the second tower. I love my hat:

Yesterday I had a long, dumb, enraging post office ordeal. I'll spare you the details. But when I was waiting (and waiting . . and waiting) at the counter and I saw the markings of those who had walked the path before me, I felt no longer alone:

If you can't make them all out, the various scrawls are:

"This post office SUCKS!"
"Burn this place down and start over"
and
"I'M IN HELL"

There was also a sign from 1985 that I'm posting here as a public service. Remember, kids: if you're going to get busted for drugs, at least make enough money to have some half-decent artwork on the walls.

Last year around this time, my problems were:

After a hideously painful holiday season that I later described to a friend as "a parade of grotesquery I hope never to see rivaled", my grandmother on one side and grandfather on the other side died within days of each other. They both lived long lives and neither death was shocking, but both in themselves and in the larger context they were still upsetting. Coming right on top of each other like that, the deaths completely sent me back to square one in my grief for my father. So, last year about now, I was bracing for whatever the hell else was going to go wrong next, and having a really hard time caring about anything in the meantime.

This year, my big problem is:

My friends are too nice. And I am bewildered as to how to contend with it.

I really, really prefer this year's problems.