Extremely Perishable

Just like the Titanic, my virginity and acid-wash jeans.

Fuckacino

January 30, 2005
I was at the Starbucks at Astor with Whiney the Pooh and Mr. Brazil, when Brazil pointed out to me how sexual a Frappacino is. He wanted a huge, milky, caramel-drizzled Frappacino, with whipped cream on top, which he described as sex in a plastic cup. Witness...the "Fuckacino."

After that, I started to notice other things and it is undeniably true; Starbucks sells sex. Everything in there is sexual. Everyone is sipping and licking and sucking on something - poking their straws or their tongues through openings, gulping down mouthfuls of hot liquid. Behind the coffee bar the employees are squeezing bottles of thick, sweet coffee toppings and the chocolate oozes and then spurts out of the end. Or sometimes you'll see them trying to clean the coffee makers. They grasp the steel nozzels in their hands and rub them up and down, up and down, over and over.

It's all sex. Everywhere you turn. You just have to decide.

Do you want your's tall or grande?

My Skin is Tight

January 28, 2005
So I stuffed myself at French Roast tonight. This will inevitably ruin the good thing I had goin on with my body. For some reason, I've lost weight and kept it off - this is despite the fact that I'm not training 2 hours a day, 6 days a week anymore! I was heavier when I was working out. There seems to be something wrong with that. Girls tend not to gain muscle weight, but maybe I am the anomaly. Fuckin weird.

Anyway...that went to hell. Chocolate Pecan Pie.

Those of you who live with roommates have probably, at some point, felt like you missed being able to sleep naked. I do. I really wanted to, last week. But it was inappropriate. It's just a luxury that you take for granted, when you have your own room. I have a feeling that my suitemates wouldn't give a shit if they got an eyeful. But Whiney...well...the word "puritan" comes to mind.

Introspection 101

(Please remember that I read Freud before I wrote this.) I ask myself more and more frequently - why can't you figure out the boundaries between yourself and everyone else? I'm fully aware - sometimes I don't know where my edges are. A lot of the time, I feel like the boundary is too close to me and then, other times, I feel like the boundary is too far out. It is never the same.

The fact is...even though I have moved back to New York...I'm still at the stage in my life where my anxieties are all about the future - or, more specifically, the aimless way in which I'm stumbling into the future. I feel better about where I am in the present but I'm still messed up about what direction I'm taking. I used to do things that would distract me from that - I could ignore shit by working myself to death and falling into a numb routine. But being here, in a new situation, after having dropped my career in collegiate sports, the Ivy rep and switching majors at the last possible junction - it all seems to come together. And it spells out one thing.

Get your shit together, Ralph. It's time to step out.

All That OMFUG

January 26, 2005
Who did I see at CBGB's tonight?

Drea fucking De Matteo.

Yes...Drea from "the Sopranos." Drea from NBC's "Joey." Drea from "Deuces Wild." Drea fucking De Matteo. She is one of only 3 women I would consider going gay for. (Angelina is in there of course.) It was a pretty chill night - I had a ton of work but my roommate convinced me (very easily) to dump it and go down there. Shooter Jennings was headlining and we got in free because we came for the first set. As we were walking in, I kind of noticed this woman, but didn't make anything of it - until I got inside and turned back and saw that it was Drea walking in behind me. This would be my third celebrity sighting in New York. The second was Mos Def, outside the Whitney, 3 weeks ago. The first was Nas and Kelis in Barnes & Noble at 66, on the second floor, art section.

I guess Drea is dating Shooter - cause she was kissing him at the bar, after his band was done playing. I was thinking how fucked up it must be to be famous. I could've been a paparazzo, taken pictures of her and sold them to Us Weekly where they'd show up with a stupid column about how she was spotted canoodling. Regardless - people eventually started to realize that there was a celebrity in the house and in between sets they all swarmed around her. I've never seen such rabid ass-kissing go down. It caused me actual physical pain. I just sat back and appreciated Ms De Matteo from 10 feet away. It's all good. I was at CBGB's, we had good music and I was hanging out with rock stars and a leading lady....gormandizing.

The Days

January 25, 2005
It's days like these when I really regret not having enough money to buy a tricked out digital camera. Everyone has cool pictures of New York City snowed over, glistening, rolling in the whiteness of the snow drifts - except for me. The urban landscape is amazing right now. But I can't record it.

It's surreal. I feel like I live in Russia...or the Ukraine. (I live on the edge of a Ukrainian neighborhood by the way...go figure.)

Anyway - NY* is treating me all right. I'm still slightly stunned by the number of small-town, small-minded, weird people I seem to run into though...even though this school is distinctively diverse and "city." There were these two fuckers sitting behind me today in my film lecture who started debating the merits of "The Green Mile," refering to Michael Clarke Duncan's character as "the magical negro." And two days ago...some weed-head, bean-pole white boy from the boondocks said to me "maybe it was the milkman," when my geneology came up AGAIN in yet another UNNECESSARY conversation. WTF.

I'm kind of sick of the dumb shit. It's all been said and done before. I'm disappointed by the fact that people are still unable to grasp simple biological concepts and don't know when to keep quiet or keep their ignorance to themselves. People are just straight up rude. They talk stupid, without thinking. I'm not surprised by it anymore...but O am I disappointed.

Current reading list:
Plato - the Republic
Four Plays by Aristophanes
Civilization and its Discontents by Freud
Kierkegaard - one big-ass book
3 big-ass books about Disney (the "evil entertainment conglomerate" + Walt)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
Saint Augustine's Confessions.

And there's a lot more where that came from.

A Whine Tour of New York

January 17, 2005
Classes start tomorrow, down here in lower Manhattan. I don't know that it has registered in my mind yet - the fact that I'm not going back to Ithaca. It might be because I'm so used to my life shifting and morphing every 2 years.

My new dorm is apartment style. My roommate has never spent significant time in the city, never taken the subway, never been to a bar and never paid 9 dollars for dinner at a restaurant. (She thinks that's expensive.) She's simultaneously in awe of and freaked out by New York. In addition...she is freaked out by how "intellectual" NYU/Columbia/city kids are. We met a kid who reads poetry in his free time and she can't stop talking about it. She's whining about it on the phone to one of her friends - right now.

I - as a person who loves and embraces all of New York, including all of its great culturally and intellectually attuned city kids - hate her fucking whining. The girl whines constantly. It's only one semester though...I'll get ear plugs. Either that or there's gonna be a smack-down, some time around march.