Food for Sloth

Me: Somebody is blasting Sean-a Paul-a outside my window.

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:07:06 +0530

Me: Somebody is blasting Sean-a Paul-a outside my window.
Emily: Wow, that must be like "Say Anything" for you.

That Time I Moved to Brooklyn

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:50:00 +0530

It’s 4:46 in the morning and I just read an article about how three nuns broke into a nuclear power plant that processes uranium (the same one in which the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were created) and sprayed the walls with baby bottles full of blood, among other things that caused $8,500 in damages. Most striking is how they are unashamed. Sister Megan says she has waited 70 years to do this. I like them.

My friend Zsolt came over with a bottle of rosé last night and we surprised ourselves (/I surprised myself) and drank the whole bottle. He’s from Hungary and has the appropriate Eastern European enzymes to break down alcohol; I don’t. We went up to my rooftop, which ALMOST had a perfect view of the Manhattan skyline, if not for a taller, new development building that comically blocks the view right where the Empire Building is supposed to be. I do have an excellent view of what various people in that building are watching on TV, though. And I found out there’s a 16 Handles on my street.

While we were up there, we smelled the most delicious food cooking, like meat being grilled on a fire. We went down to Bedford Ave and literally sniffed around to see where that smell was coming from. But not before drunkenly—almost miraculously—setting up the WiFi in my apartment. We decided to get food (a very, very difficult task for two Libras - one solar and one lunar) at the proximal Mexican food truck, close to the corner of North 7th and Bedford, and ordered giant burritos. Holy freaking crap these burritos were delicious. I might never eat Chipotle again. I got it with chorizo, no lettuce, extra hot sauce. The rice they put in is seasoned with something that makes it an orangey-red color. We took them to a nearby coffee shop and ate them on the shop’s outdoor benches and talked about boys, but only after we acknowledged it was OK to stop dedicating 100% of our attention to our food. Zsolt went into a nearby deli to get us mini-cartons of orange juice (“orange-pineapple or orange-calcium?”), and we walked up to Greenpoint, passing the automotive (?) high school, with its frontal gardens charged with that scent of fertilizer. On my way back, I saw two European men approach the girls who were sitting near us while we were eating earlier. “We are in a-New York for the first time.”

By the time I got home, I only had the energy to find 3 instead of 5 headlines for The Morning News, because my arms for some reason were so dang sore. I blame the weight of the burrito. My headlines are due at 5 AM, so I set the alarm for 3 AM (you never know when news will be worthy of reportage or not, so it could take you anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours to find and coin a succinct, synopsized headline), snoozed until 4 AM, and am now staying up reading about how Minocycline - an antibiotic used to fight acne (which I take regularly, actually) also helps men be less trusting of attractive women. I haven’t found myself to be less blindly trusting, regardless of sex or attractiveness, but then again, I’m not a man. And the nuns.

My bed is half filled with boxes that used to contain all my WiFi gear, my gym bag, raincoat, camera, book, and is an overall territorial mess that barely leaves any room for my body. And that’s how I know I’ve finally settled into a new home.

Good morning, Brooklyn.

A worker finishes up a Pope Francis costume mask at a factory...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:02:00 +0530

A worker finishes up a Pope Francis costume mask at a factory assembly line in São Gonçalo, Brazil.

(NatGeo)

"Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through..."

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:14:18 +0530

“Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.”

- Herman Melville, from Moby Dick

Hannah took this photo of me in Milan and it pretty much...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:19:40 +0530

Hannah took this photo of me in Milan and it pretty much describes 95% of my life.

Photo

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:22:35 +0530

Did You Know...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:21:00 +0530

Salman Rushdie was supposed to have a small role in Talledega Nights? He, Lou Reed, and Julian Schnabel were supposed to be a part of a cameo that featured three highly unlikely NASCAR drivers.

“We were all supposed to be wearing the uniforms and the helmet, walking in slow motion with the heat haze.”

From his interview in The Talks.

hoaran: this is my favorite video of all time I’m...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:52:15 +0530

hoaran:

this is my favorite video of all time

I’m weeping with laughter; this is hilarious.

"At the beginning of the universe when it was still an unhedged acre, light filled its horizon like..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:40:00 +0530

“At the beginning of the universe
when it was still an unhedged acre,
light filled its horizon like clotted cream
so you could scoop it up with a spoon.”

- “Terrier in Rape,” Nick MacKinnon. Winner of the 2012 Keats-Shelley prize. Full text here.

The Ultimate Grammar/Philosophy Pickle

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:56:00 +0530

As a performance art piece that’s been in making for seven years, Tilda Swinton slept in a glass box unannounced (even the museum guards were unaware) this afternoon. She will do so another half-dozen times this year, on random days in different locations of the MoMa, where the exhibition is currently taking place. (Gothamist)

(Laughing Squid)

As an intern for The Morning News, I choose relevant and/or interesting items from the news and devise pithy headlines for them. It took me almost an hour to write the headline for this article. Here’s why.

I originally had: “Tilda Swinton sleeps in a glass box unannounced as a performance art piece in the MoMa.”

But should it be “in the MoMa” or “at the MoMa”? I think that “in” corresponds more to items/objects while “at” corresponds more to people. For example, “I am ‘at’ the zoo” vs. “I am ‘in’ the zoo.” Or rather, “in” corresponds more with the tangible while “at” corresponds more with the intangible, like “Let’s meet in the box” vs. “Let’s meet at 2 PM,” since time is, though we often forget, an abstraction. So what is Tilda? A tangible object/piece of art IN a museum or an abstract concept AT an abstract place/concrete place filled with abstract things?

The philosophical questions raised by prepositions (and this fascinating piece in/at the MoMa)!

P.S. I just dropped “in/at the MoMa” in my final headline.

P.P.S. If anyone happens to be there while Tilda is, tweet at @nikkitwitta and I’ll be there in a jiff, which is shorter and faster than a jiffy.

euphemize: Saul Steinberg

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 03:49:58 +0530

euphemize:

Saul Steinberg

This is for you, Alice

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:10:26 +0530

This is for you, Alice

My shirt sort of matches with her butt. Selfie / Separation of...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 01:02:52 +0530

My shirt sort of matches with her butt. Selfie / Separation of art and life?

The fact that I walked for 40 minutes in the freezing cold just...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:01:13 +0530

The fact that I walked for 40 minutes in the freezing cold just to see this bridge in the snow (over the Pompidou modern art museum) must mean that I am secretly a huge romantic

The Thinker

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:28:12 +0530

The Thinker

I was choosy and indecisive about where I’d eat dinner tonight....

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 04:56:00 +0530

I was choosy and indecisive about where I’d eat dinner tonight. My time here is so precious I feel like I have to mete it out precisely, not a mouthful of blandness or an eyeful of drab. As I hunted, more and more restaurants’ OUVERT lights began turning off. I finally found this Lebanese place near a construction site. Hardly picturesque, but I liked the menu. It struck me that I could get take-out and eat it by the Seine. It was 11:10 pm. “Manger?!” the waiter asked, incredulous. He shrugged: “Ok.” I tried to ask him if he could make it take-out, but the language barrier was high. “Pret-a-porter?” I tried. He asked the four women dining nearby if they spoke English, and they translated for me. He was hesitant at first, and had to go ask the chef. I found out later that it wasn’t because take-away wasn’t possible, but because he was worried the merguez would get cold as I walked. “You live nearby?” The translators asked. “I want to take to the river,” I said, skipping words the way my mother does when she talks to the nail technician. They put my couscous in an old sorbet container from Picard, the budget frozen food chain. The waiter told me to be careful when he put the harissa paste in a separate piece of foil: “picante!” He threw in some raisins, as an after-snack. When I asked for a plastic fork or spoon, he asked the other waiters, looked befuddled, and just threw in a regular steel spoon. I left a tip; he looked puzzled at first, then gave me his business card. I’ve never had strangers fuss over my food like that. As I crossed the bridge to the bank closer to my house, I noticed Our Lady in the distance and veered my course towards her. Though I didn’t really care if my food tasted lukewarm, I practically ran there. And now I’m here, eating the closest thing to a home-cooked meal in a month.

PS: I am surrounded by teenagers smoking weed. “Where do you from?” said one guy to a group of girls. “Poland,” their Regina George replied. “How you like Amsterdam?” He said it the way the French say “hamster”: Ahm-stehH-dam.” “Poland!!!” Was all she said in response.

“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends...

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 21:24:58 +0530

“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.” -Oscar Wilde

For lack of a toaster This olive bread actually belonged to...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:56:00 +0530

For lack of a toaster

This olive bread actually belonged to Hannah. It’s from this boulangerie on Rue Saint Domanique, near the Eiffel Tower, that I remembered going to two years before, on my friend Chihiro’s recommendation. Chihiro is a Paris champ; when she took me here, it was her 6th visit to Paris. I bought this olive bread to eat on the train back to London. I also bought Eiffel Tower-shaped pasta, to remember this whole experience by, however ephemerally. When we walked into the boulangerie, the cat from a neighboring souvenir shop snuck in and climbed to the top of a shelf. It looked ready to pounce on just about anything. Hannah and I got bread, and then ate Chinese food at the place next door, because we felt like it. We wanted to see the sun set behind the Eiffel Tower. When we did, there were two people in a car in front of us, arguing furiously. We’d walk and walk, the large tower invisible behind much shorter Haussmans, and BAM - there it was again, in all its flamboyancy, reminding us of its presence behind our inside jokes and funny noises and all the philosophizing a good friendship carries in tow. And this bread, in my fridge for a week, was an artifact of that sunset, and now it’s as gone as that Eiffel tower semolina pasta from two years ago, and I just wish there was a way we could keep these memories in our wallet and pull them out like we would to give a man playing the accordion on the metro a coin or two, because even though those coins are gone, they come back into your wallet virtually the same, unlike these memories which may flatten or blend in with that time you were 22 and went to Paris and ate your friend’s leftover olive bread a week later which you heated up in a saucepan because they just don’t understand the concept of toast here.

Versailles

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:55:46 +0530

Versailles

Photo

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:20:30 +0530