Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed to Go on the Internet

I'm not a believer in the Zodiac or astrology or any of the dark arts...and yet somehow I found myself researching the Chinese zodiac. I was born in the year of the Dragon...Fire Dragon to be specific. I was reading the description of those born in the year of the Dragon to see if I saw any of myself or my Dragon friends in the words on screen.

Here are excerpts of what Wikipedia has to say about those born during the year of the Dragon:

"The Dragon is the symbol of power and wealth. Because they are larger than life themselves, dragon people like to do everything on a grand scale. If a dragon's friend faces a problem or dilemma, he or she will be there to offer help, and when others leave the field of battle the dragon takes a step forward to solve the problem with authority and dignity.

Ideal jobs for dragons include kings, military officer, politician, musician, buffers, poet, artist, biological and environmental engineer, stockbroker, athlete, trade union leader, company director, explorer, and attorney."

Here I must pause. I was more than a little surprised to see "king" as an ideal job for....well...anyone. I went to a good school, attended career fairs, did a lot of internships, took several executive education courses. Most of the companies I've worked for (though in fairness, not in any of the roles listed above) put considerable emphasis on employee development.

At no point did anyone suggest I get on the "king" track.

The question is, why didn't they? Dragon or not, there's no question I would make a GREAT king. Especially if I were primarily a figurehead and all the work and responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of a prime minister. I submit to you as evidence:

• I love wearing robes -- and crowns!
• I excel at telling people what to do.
• I welcome fawning adoration.
• Pointless shows of pomp and circumstance might be my favorite thing in the whole world.
• I can work a scepter like nobody's business.

And yet, no one suggested I become king of Norway, Qatar or even King of Prussia mall? I would get into a whole thing about how the American post-secondary education system has failed to prepare our children for viable careers and we need more opportunities for women and blah blah blah...

but the truth is I'm going to spend the rest of the day looking for headhunters who specialize in "king" placements.

The Incredible Shrinking Personal Space

So I'm in the security line at the airport this afternoon and it's unbelievably long. I take the same flight on the same day every week and today was the first time in a long time that the line was this long. In all, it took half an hour to get through security; so long that my flight was already boarding by the time I made it through.

Of course, it was my good fortune that the woman standing behind me in the security line made it a point to bump into me each and every time the line moved. A line long enough to take 30 minutes to get through moves often, if not quickly. Any time the line moved a centimeter, the woman behind me stepped up six inches -- which means she bumped into me each and every time...for half an hour.

I tried to distance myself from her by keeping my luggage at arm's length behind me, thus making it impossible for her to bump into me. Not to be thwarted, she then started bumping into my bag instead of my body. Then I tried to avoid moving any time the line moved some infinitesimally small distance and restricted my movements to meaningful advances in the line. My bumpy neighbor decided to move every time the people in front of me moved whether I moved or not.

Unable to hold my tongue any longer (and afraid to bludgeon her to death for fear of missing my flight) I turned to her to say, "Please stop doing that." Before the word "please" was out of my mouth, she said "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," which said to me that she knew exactly what she had been doing for the preceding half hour.

What I don't understand is how she thought bumping into me constantly would get her through the security line any faster. Bumping into me didn't make the dozens of people in line in front of me disappear. It didn't cause them to separate their laptops and liquids from the rest of their belongings any faster. It didn't even cause that ten-second delay that each person who goes through the scanner must wait to go by any more quickly. So what did she get out of it?

Patience is a virtue. This woman definitely needs Angry Birds.

The End of the Affair

It would seem that all great love affairs come to an end. Seal and Heidi Klum. Washington and Jamie Dimon. Paula Deen and double-decker cheeseburgers on Krispy Kreme buns.

And now, me and my Kindle?

I love my Kindle. I never read in hard copy what I can get on Kindle. Some things I don't read because I can't get them on Kindle. Over the years I've purchased four Kindles for myself: the first, because it was a Kindle! The second, because a new generation came out two months after I got the original Kindle (which I sold to subsidize the purchase of the new one). The third, because my second Kindle was stolen -- by a thief with good taste and a great love of reading? The fourth, because it was the Kindle Fire, on which a digital version of New York magazine is available.

Because I am so enamored of the Kindle, I have even purchased several as gifts. I've evangelized about it on the train, at work, even here. But we may have now come to the end of the road.

Last night I noticed that the back cover of my Kindle was gapping. I snapped it back into place with no clue of the dread that would soon ensue. When I turned it on, I was able to resume reading the book I'd been reading earlier in the day -- from the CFA Institute;  great, light beach reading -- which was a good sign.

However, when I pressed the button for the Home screen, which should show me all the books and newspapers and magazines I currently have saved on the Kindle, I was instead directed to the Kindle Store. Like any insane person, I tried the same thing again and again, hoping for a different result.

None came.

Then it occured to me to reboot the Kindle and try again. After all, isn't that all tech support at your job does? You call in, you have a computer problem, they say, "Have you tried rebooting?" And you're thinking, what good would that do? And even more annoying, rebooting your PC actually fixes the problem.

So I tried rebooting the Kindle. And unlike as is so often the case with the PC, that didn't fix my problem. I wasn't home, so I decided to wait until I could contact Amazon and deal with the problem calmly and rationally.

I won't take you through the blow-by-blow, but suffice it to say that I had to explain 36 times to two different people that rather than take me to my Home screen, the Home key takes me to the Kindle Store before the second person said, "So when you press the Home key it takes you to the Kindle Store instead of your Home screen?" I should have known this progress would not bode well for the rest of the interaction.

In the end, they couldn't fix the problem (though they had me reboot a googol of times, even though I told them I had already tried rebooting) but did offer to sell me a replacement Kindle (same model) for $85. That price is less than half of what a new one retails for today and only one of the Kindle models currently on offer costs less. That particular Kindle has less functionality than mine, so in all I guess the price is an okay deal.

I asked if I could get expedited shipping and was told that I could -- for a price. That really disappointed me given that I'd be surprised if anyone has purchased and been responsible for as many Kindle purchases by others as I have. Exhausted by the process, I let it go. Thankfully, afterward the representative did investigate providing free expedited shipping and found she was able to make that happen.

I would have just relied on my Kindle Fire as my primary reading device and gone without the e-ink Kindle, but it is simply impossible to read the Kindle Fire at the beach. Which is where a considerable amount of my weekend reading gets done this time of year. Also staining my relationship with my Kindle is that the price for a Wall Street Journal subscription on Kindle has mushroomed in the last year or so. Every few months I receive an email with a notice of a $4 increase in the monthly subscription price and this has happened easily three times. Which is curious to me given how rife with typographical errors the Kindle version is. I guess somebody's got to pay for all of Rupert Murdoch's lawsuits.

So all of this has come together to dampen my fire (sorry, pun intended) for my erstwhile e-reading device. Let us hope that its triumphant return Kindles my ardor once again.

The Limits of Environmental Responsibility

So I'm on the train headed home the other evening. During rush hour, so the train is pretty crowded. However, this particular car is more crowded than others because of one family. It's like Jon and Kate plus Eight except (1) this family isn't famous; (2) this family is still together; and (3) wonder of wonders, I think they actually had eight separate births...didn't see any that looked like multiples. The kids ranged in age from infancy to probably junior high/high school.

On the one hand, I applaud these parents' instilling in their children a commitment to the environment and lowering their carbon footprint. You've seen me write about being greener before. I've stopped receiving (even free) issues of magazines I don't make time to read, gotten removed from catalog mailing lists since you can see everything online, switched the subscriptions I could to my Kindle (you know I couldn't help bringing it up) and even thought about getting a bike.

On the other hand, if you have eight young children, it is your duty -- nay, your mandate -- to get a car. Yeah, I said it. I don't want to be on the train next to your eight loud kids. I know you didn't pay for all of them to get on the train and that savings (plus the millions you must be saving by not buying birth control) should help you save up for a family car. Remember the public transit saying "small enough to ride for free is small enough to ride on your knee"? Between these two parents they didn't have enough knees to seat their kids so they need a car. If they had eight well-mannered children (well, seven since the infant was actually making the least amount of noise) I wouldn't be so upset. But the children were so loud, so rambunctious and running all over the train car...they needed to be buckled into the backseat of a mini-van watching DVDs in seat headrests. Would that be as green? No. But sometimes environmental responsibility goes beyond Mother Earth and all the way to common courtesy by making the train environment a little nicer.

That bike ride is looking better and better.

Rattus Norvegicus

The longer you've been in New York, the more you think you've seen it all. No really, ALL. Someone tells you they saw a grandmother hawk a loogey in a restaurant and you wince, but you're not surprised. You see the episode of The Sopranos where Meadow and her college friends see a homeless woman with a newspaper wedged into her bottom and you nod knowingly. You hear about some guy in Harlem keeping zoo animals in his apartment and you think, "Well, it IS New York."

All that changed for me this morning on the train. I was reading the paper on my Kindle (sorry, obligatory shameless plug) and I noticed someone had drawn her legs up onto her seat. I thought to myself how rude she was for putting her disgusting shoes on the seat where someone will have to sit later today. Then I noticed that she and the others on her seat were all looking in the same direction, though no one was saying anything. I follow their line of sight and see a rat. Inside the subway car. Rather, I see the rat's moving tail, because he is in motion crawling under the seats.

I now know what the phrase "greased lightning" means with respect to speed. I was sitting in an inside seat and the person on the outside wasn't moving quickly enough so I bolted past her, knocking her out of my way. Even though I was wearing a narrow skirt, somehow I hopped onto a seat with ease to keep my feet out of the path of this germ-packed vermin. By this point, more people have noticed the rat and screaming chaos ensues. Unfortunately, the doors between cars on my train line are locked, so there was no way to try to shoo the rat out until we got into another station. Someone tried to get control of the situation by saying, "Everyone calm down! The rat is more afraid of you than you are of him!" No offense, but WHO CARES how afraid the rat is or isn't? How about he has more diseases than I do, or more ways to kill me than I have to kill him???

Don't get me wrong. Not a day goes by that I don't see a rat inside the subway station. On the train tracks. Even on rare occasions on the platform itself. I HAVE NEVER SEEN A RAT INSIDE A SUBWAY CAR IN MY LIFE. I've seen fights on the train. I've seen a homeless man's penis on the train. I've seen silent vomiting on the train. I've seen teenagers beat up a homeless woman on a full train while none of the able-bodied men did anything about it. I've seen people covered in (what I had to assume was) anthrax on the train. After all that, seeing this rat in such frighteningly close proximity was the very first time I thought to myself that perhaps my time in New York had come to an end.

I have a feeling that for the rest of the day I'll be a little jumpy about anything I see in my periphery. Today wouldn't be a good day to sneak up on me.

Digital Sign of the End Times

It's time to get really familiar with the book of Revelations. You've heard of Conquest, War, Famine and Death; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I've got another, sure fire predictor that the world is coming to an end.

My mom is on Facebook.

I know what you're thinking. What does she mean? Why can't her mom be on Facebook?

My mom being on Facebook is a disturbing indicator of change in her acceptance of technology. My mom didn't have a mobile phone until 2003. She didn't have a BlackBerry, even for work, until 2007. She didn't have a home computer until 2008, and that was an old laptop of mine that I gave her. At this pace, I fear what's next! Bluetooth headset? Twitter? iPhone 3G S????

Just when you think you know them. They grow up so fast! Happy 60th birthday, Mom :)

Post-Racial Era My Patootie

So here we are, in a brand new year with a brand new President who (relative to his 43 predecessors) has a brand new heritage. With Obama's candidacy/election/inauguration comes this belief that we as a nation have somehow adopted a brand new mindset regarding race.

I beg to differ.

On January 1, 2009, just 19 days before our post-racial President was sworn into office, a young unarmed man named Oscar Grant was murdered by a police officer in Oakland, California. This particular young man just happened to be in handcuffs, lying on his stomach on the platform at the time. This young man was shot in the back in front of a BART train (their version of the subway) full of people, many of whom were recording the execution with their mobile phones.

I know what you're thinking: "Why haven't I heard anything about this?" or perhaps "Don't you mean New York City? That kind of thing always happens there." Even New York's new senator, the one replacing Hillary Clinton, has opined that the Grant murder looks like a crime. Yet the officer has resigned from the police force and was granted bail as opposed to being held without it. One of my friends suggested, "Maybe this happens so often it's not really news." Clearly I'm troubled by this prospect, but he may be right.

When will we start holding our cops to a higher standard? The punishment for a citizen who commits a crime against a cop is much more stringent than if that same crime were committed against another citizen. Yet, cops aren't held to an elevated standard in the way they treat the rest of us. Or at least, some of the rest of us. So often (this case included) the officers claim that the shooting was "accidental." Why is it that the victims of all these accidents always have skin color in common? Doesn't sound very post-racial to me.

The New York Times had an article last year that described the "accidental" shootings and brutality episodes for the NYPD going back several decades (so I can't even blame it all on Giuliani) and with perhaps one exception, they were all of African descent.

So we'll see what happens in the Grant case, and whether his killer -- a man whose salary Grant's tax dollars paid -- is brought to justice. Stay tuned.

DC, Take a Lesson

Knowing that I'm a resident of a "blue state", it may not surprise you at all that I wanted to go to the 56th presidential inauguration and watch Barack Obama wrest control of our country from...the other guy. Me and two million of my closest friends, right? My dear mother, who works for a member of congress, got tickets for my aunt and me to join her at the inauguration. Wonderful!

Not so wonderful. Apparently no one in the District of Columbia has ANY idea how to handle access to an event of this scale. Perhaps they should have contacted the NYPD, who has made it through the New Year's Eve ball drop since 1907.

I should have known we were in for a disaster when I awoke at 3 AM for my 6:30 flight to DC (all the trains were booked) and had received an email from Delta that my flight had been cancelled. Hardly the best news I could awaken to. They had rebooked us on the 7:30, but of course that gave us an hour less time to get to the inauguration, and the crowds were amassing with each passing second.

We landed a little before 9 AM and made our way to the Metro station (their version of the subway), conveniently located at the airport. The station attendant told us to take the Blue Line to our destination. The Blue Line trains were packed to the gills at the doors as DCers have no idea that if you move toward the middle of the car, it makes more room for other people to get inside. After three Blue Line trains had come and gone, with my mom and aunt and me (and lots of other people) still on the platform, a police officer finally held one of the trains and forced people to move down to allow us and others to enter the car. Only later did we find out that we could have taken the Yellow Line, which comes more frequently, gets to where we were going faster and was almost empty.

Once we made it to our destination (Federal Center for those of us with Blue Gate tickets), there were comforting signs directing us where to go out of the Metro station. There was no one affiliated with the inauguration, or even the District of Columbia, in sight. We followed the signs until we saw a huge crowd and a sign for the Blue Gate and there was no way to tell where the line began, where it ended, where you should join it, who had a ticket, who was a looky-loo, nada. It was a complete free for all and there was no one to direct foot traffic or give information on where to go or sort ticket-holders from passersby. A real mess.

Suffice it to say, if you haven't read the press

• http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/alex_spillius/blog/2009/01/21/barack_obama_inauguration_the_nightmare_at_blue_gate
• http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/washington/2009/01/blue-gate-at-inauguration.html
• http://voices.washingtonpost.com/inauguration-watch/2009/01/many_express_outrage_over_tick.html?wprss=rss_blog

lots and lots and LOTS of people (20,000 by one estimate), my mom and aunt and me included, didn't get in, even though we had tickets. That's right. We got tickets from our (okay, "a") member of congress, plane tickets to DC, took a day off of work, shlepped around their city/District in the freezing cold and in the end will have to watch the inaugural events on YouTube. Pretty sad, extremely disappointing.

Now say what you will about the NYPD, but this kind of thing NEVER happens in New York City. Our cops get you in and where you need to go, quickly and without confusion. When was the last time you heard of an event where there was limited or no police presence in New York? Never! Because it never happens. People don't even get denied access to Times Square for New Year's, or FDR Drive for the Fourth of July or Fifth Avenue for the Puerto Rican Day Parade or Eastern Parkway for the West Indian Day Parade...need I go on?

Others have written extensively about what may have gone wrong, so I won't bother here. Plus, I'll obviously never know. I'll just chalk up that ineptitude as the last gasp of an outgoing administration and look forward to it getting done right -- even if they have to hire some consultants from NYC -- when BHO is inaugurated again in 2013.

Super Gadget Freak

Rick James knew what he was talking about. Sometimes you just gotta shout about SuperFreakiness.

A friend of mine called to my attention that old age, or 2008 or global warming (we'll never know which) has sparked a gadget-freakiness in me that didn't previously exist. In general, I am a dinosaur: I was late to CDs, late to digital cable, late to TiVo/DVR, WAAY late to iPods, barely understand online networking and still have a tape deck in my car. Perhaps some of you are too young even to know what "tape deck" means.

Of late, though, I have embraced technology with gusto. This year I:

• started reading blogs (before, if it wasn't on paper, I wasn't going to read it)
• oh yeah, started a blog!
• got a touch-screen all-in-one computer which I love
• found the coolest letter opener I've ever seen. Doesn't make opening bills fun, though
• finally got a text plan. Yeah, I was that person who kept track of who texted me and demanded the 50 cents they owed me for uanauthorized texts
• scoured the Internet trying to find the date the BlackBerry Bold was coming out b/c it had GPS (good replacement for my unit that was stolen earlier this year) and synced with iTunes (yes, I finally did get that iPod)
• got rid of hard copy subscriptions to magazines and instead got an e-book reader. I think Amazon's Kindle is the best one, but now I notice many people on the train use these to avoid the origami fold you have to do with the New York Times
• and possibly best score of all, this neat little stapler that doesn't use staples. Container Store is a little slice of heaven.

This love affair with technology has also shown me easier ways to be green. For example, not getting catalogs from 72 companies I'd never order from anyway. Not throwing away two newspapers every day. For the longest time, being green was too hard, and meant for people who had children who might be affected if the planet died, but not me. Technology has made being green accessible.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm no locavore and everything about paper plates feels "right" to me. But baby steps, right? Even for the super freaky.

Ode to Chip Shop

Last night I went for drinks with some friends, and we reached that inevitable point in the evening where you either MUST get something to eat, or you'll be one of those embarrassing drunk people who can't handle their liquor. Right next door (and don't fret, there are two locations in Brooklyn), there was a place that I had heard of, but never ventured into: Chip Shop.

Let me explain why I was only aware of Chip Shop, but not a customer. Chip Shop sounds like some British spot and I think we can all agree the Brits aren't known for their stellar cuisine. I remember early in my career being in London for meetings and being so busy I hadn't eaten, and being on the verge of passing out from hunger but being unable to eat the gross stuffs that pass for food in London. Boiled what???

Don't let the name fool you. While Chip Shop does have a decidedly British vibe (pubby atmosphere, UK flags everywhere, Beatles paraphernalia covering every surface) the cuisine can best be described as "fried".

That's it.

And when was the last time you had something fried that wasn't wonderful, a gift? Lest you think I am making much ado about nothing, let me give you an idea of what "fried" entails as a cuisine and why I am so enamored of it.

Deep Fried Pizza
Fried Macaroni (can be had with or without meat, but why would you have it without?)
all manner of Fried Fish
Fried Chicken, in finger form
Deep Fried Burger

And if you want dessert, and you should, you have your choice of fried delights like banana chocolate sauce and candy bars like Twix, Mars or Snickers. Yes, they're all fried. And until Mayor Bloomberg, he of the city-imposed health mandates, banned trans fats, they offered a TWICE fried cherry pie.

My current plan is to sell my apartment and use the proceeds to purchase fried food from Chip Shop until it kills me. Oh yeah, we're in a contraction/recession/depression and I can't sell my apartment. All the more reason I need some fried relief.