Yesterday afternoon, I looked in the mirror and noticed a splotch on my upper lip. I made Adam come look at it. Sure enough, I was getting a cold sore—and it has turned gruesome. It's eating my face! I first started getting them about five years ago, when one January 1 my new year kicked off in a highly unpleasant manner. (The holiday was a Friday, so it was a long time before I could be seen by a doctor.) What bums me out isn't that it's caused by the herpes virus; it's that every time I interact with someone I know they're wondering if they're next. The experience makes me empathize deeply with people who have physical abnormalities, though I think it's probably a leap to say I'm a better person for it, because I'm crabby as shit. To perk myself up—the U.S.O. is otherwise engaged—I've written a fresh list of things I love.
1. Valtrex. Thank pug for pharmaceuticals! (As an atheist, I'm uncomfortable paying respect to this "God" fantasy.)
2. Peaches. The fruit. Though I like Peaches the musician, too.
3. The Awl's email newsletter. The Awl a is funny/smart blog Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, but it's their newsletter, written by Choire, that I particularly enjoy—it's like an email from a friend, if you friends wrote long emails instead of status updates and tweets. The newsletter doesn't come daily, as advertised, so I emailed Choire volunteering my services. I think I came off like I was offering to be a better parent to his baby. People don't like that.
4. Redundant words/phrases. Tunafish, hamburger sandwich, French-fried onion rings, beef steak, crack cocaine, cash money, taxicab, hound dog.... I shouldn't like them, because I'm an editor, but the quaintness kills me.
5. French-fried onion rings! Specifically the ones at Clamp's on Route 202 in New Milford, Conn.
6. ATMs that don't require deposit slips. Have you really wrapped your head around the fact that you will never again need to fill out a deposit slip? That it will no longer matter if the bank's pen-on-a-chain doesn't work?
7. Contrails.
8. Leanne Shapton's auction-catalog-as-novel, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. At first, the cleverness made me jealous, but I got over it, and now it inspires me. Of course, as Adam would point out if he were reading over your shoulder, I haven't actually read the book yet.
9. Urban Dictionary. The website never fails to make me laugh. Not just the words themselves—coinages like "Wait, Shit" ("Something someone would say after realizing what they just said was idiotic or bad")—but the sample sentences that contributors supply ("Dude, my dick is so big that if I laid it out on a keyboard it would go from A to Z. Wait, shit.").
10. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. While Urban Dictionary is great for contemporary slang, sometimes you need to know what "clutch-butt" or "flako" means (copulation and drunk or crazy, respectively), and you might even need citations. Alas, the project ended after two volumes (A-G and H-O), so if the slang begins with P–Z, you're S.O.L.
11. Big bars of L'Occitane soap. As part of our austerity plan, we now use Lever 2000, but back when I wasn't underemployed we bought those huge bars of L'Occitane soap. They smelled nice, sure, but it's the heft that I miss. That's serious soap.
12. This Elizabeth Peyton painting. I crossed this intersection about a million times when I lived next to the ugly white building. Let the cursor drift over it and you'll get the name of the painting—though either Peyton or the New Museum (where I got the name) doesn't know the difference between Greenwich Street and Greenwich Avenue.
13. Kiosk. Kiosk's owners go someplace and buy a lot of wonderfully designed everyday stuff, then sell it in three- or four-month exhibitions. Your souvenirs will pale in comparison.
14. Maxwell. Mr. Smooth.
15. Taking photos of clouds through airplane windows.
16. Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The first half is perfect. It goes downhill—somehow managing to lose speed as it does so—once Hedwig obsesses over what's-his-face. Still, the movie holds up. A classic. I want to see it in a theater, at midnight, in costume.
17. My checkbook. I don't have to write a check very often, but when I do I always feel a little more punk rock than I did before. Some guy outside Tucson makes all sorts of stuff with rattlesnake skins and sells it out of a motorhome in the desert, if I remember correctly.
18. Sandra Bullock. I know, right?
19. Street art. I don't like that I like it, because it's vandalism, but.
20. The Original Mommy-to-Be Doll. I only have the ad. For the love of pug, why did I not buy this doll? Why?
I have one I will sell you!
Posted by: Chelsea | 18 December 2009 at 11:51 AM