What Possessed Me

You're here for the bunnies. Admit it.

Darling Emma over at Old Soul Ink sent me five questions to answer as part of a meme that's making the rounds. Is there a meme I don't like? I don't think there is. The rules are below if you'd like to participate.

1. When and where did your love for baby animals develop?

During particularly disastrous periods at work – when things were really, really bad – I used to crawl under my desk, suck my thumb, and cry. No, that’s a lie - I never sucked my thumb. Instead, I pressed a hedgehog plush toy lovingly to my breast and whimpered. When that didn’t work, I googled things like “baby panda cuteness explosion” and “tiny coyote pup boops nose.” Baby animals are my Xanax. I swear to God, I only got back together with Fauxhawk because he promised me a baby lion. (That shit didn’t happen, by the way. Men and their tricky, tricky ways.)

Anyway, somehow baby animals made their way into this blog. I liked the incongruity. Before long, it turned into all-out warfare: pandas against hedgehogs, bunnies against albino koalas. The readers of WPM are a very discerning bunch - if the baby animal wasn't cute enough, they talked smack. It was a like a full-time job keeping up with their needs - the pressure was immense. I had to take a break from it and now I'm "resting" at a "special facility."


2. On one gorgeous, dreamy night, you are asked out on a date by both Ricky Gervais and Steve Carrell. Trouble is, owing to the scheduling constraints of the rich and hilarious, you can only choose one. Which do you choose? (And for the purposes of this questionnaire, please assume that I would not hunt you down if you chose Mr. Carrell; however, were this actually to happen I think we both understand that he is mine. Ahem.)

Jesus Christ on the cross, you torment me with this question. I have been thinking about it for a solid week and am totally stumped. I have several follow-up questions: Will there be a torrid make-out session involved? Can I ask them to the prom? Which one likes baby lions? I just don’t have enough information to answer this question.

3. If you were forbidden from speaking English for the rest of your days, what language would you choose to adopt? Why?

That would have to be Frenabic. Or Arabench. I figure that between Arabic and French, I could conquer the world – or at least communicate with people in countries that interest me (all of West Africa, North Africa, France, the Middle East). Sadly, my French is rudimentary and my Arabic is only slightly better. Arabic is hard, dawg. Maybe I’ll get on that in 2009.

4. What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

My sole focus during childhood was to avoid being beaten up or psychologically warped by two older brothers. I am only exaggerating slightly when I say that we were total jailbait – constantly scrapping, scheming, and torturing each other. There were also a few animal casualties. Look - that’s what happens when you put three kids aged five, ten and fifteen in a New York City apartment and make them share a bedroom, okay? Some bad shit goes down. Things will get hectic with the neon tetras. As a result of these early “bonding rituals” my brothers and I are pretty close, mostly because I can now beat them up.

5. What's the best/worst thing you've ever said to someone in a business setting?

“Does changing the diaper of your boss’ five-year old son in the back of a car count as loyalty to the firm?” Wait - does this have to be something I said out loud? Because I said it LOUD and PROUD in my mind.



THE INTERVIEW RULES

• Leave me a comment saying: "interview me"
• All comments will be published (even the filthy ones)
• I will e-mail you five questions of my choice
• You can then answer the questions on your blog with a link back to my blog
• You should also post these rules, along with an offer to interview anyone else who e-mails you wanting to be interviewed
• Anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog. (OK, let's limit this to two interviews. If more than two people request interviews, I will pick two winners out of a hat - or employ some other scientific method.)
• It would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger

Is it me or do these rules seem really bossy?

Tagtastic

Lex in the City tagged me for a photo meme, which is good because otherwise I'd be posting YouTube videos of dramatic chipmunks. This is what my life has come to.

The rules of this meme are that you are supposed to go to your fourth picture folder, pick out the fourth picture, and then describe it. Well, I did that and it turned out that the picture was inappropriate. Not inappropriate as in "P. wearing nothing but a vest of sausages" but inappropriate as in "someone's precious baby and who knows what unspeakable things people with baby pictures on the web I've heard some really creepy stories." So I cheated - in the name of decency - and picked the fifth folder and the fifth picture. I hope the internets will forgive me.



Anyway, this is a picture of The Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, during my road trip to Mexico. You can read about our antics by typing "road trip" into the search area above). While Fauxhawk was suffering from an extreme bout of "don't go in there," his friend Loverboy and I visited a series of cemeteries to honor los muertos.

What we thought would be a very grave (forgive the pun) and mournful experience turned out to be something like the best dinner party we've ever been invited to. Everywhere we went, free shots of mezcal (poison), music, flowers, and families eating and chatting happily around the tombs. Here is a not-very-good-bonus-shot to give you an idea:



We both thought that this was a very sensible way to handle death - so unlike my own (Greek) culture, which is all about wailing and wearing black until the end of time.


I hereby tag the following four prestigious online publications to carry out the memeage:

Debi van Zyl
Freckle Farm
popbaroque
Woodley Park-Zoo

P.S. I am adding another blog because that's how I roll: Good Mouse, Bad Mouse. Love this girl.

Seven adorable, irresistible, awe-inspiring facts about me.

Seriously, when you read these seven things, you are going to wonder why you bother to live such a dreary, uninspired life. You are going to call all of your friends and ask them if there is any reason to carry on with your petty, shallow existence. Then you will curse the gods for making you less adorable than me. That's why I hesitate to unleash these seven facts on you: because I care about you deeply - deeply. But since the beautiful Jora from Domestic Reflections tagged me for the Seven Random Things meme, I am forced by the Laws of the Internet Machine to comply. I'm sorry if these seven things make you feel inadequate in any way; it was never my intention to be so awesome.

1. I was morbidly shy as a kid. I refused to answer the telephone. I avoided neighbors by taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I stayed home sick on days when I had presentations at school. I got over it by sheer force of will. I figure that shyness is OK if you’re twelve, but after that, it’s time to man up. Secretly, there are still situations that make me want to implode – I’m just better at hiding it.

2. Speaking of which, I have horrible, horrible stage fright. I find this interesting because my dad is a professor and my mom is an actress – both professions that involve standing in front of people and talking. Though I am getting slightly better, there was a time when I would regularly puke before giving presentations. Now I just break into a cold sweat and pray to the sweet baby Jesus that I won’t pass out.

3. Cake with jelly in it: back Satan! Cookies with jam in the middle: not fit for human consumption. Chewing gum with a soft center: you betray my trust with your gooey explosions.

4. Steve Carrell is my fantasy boyfriend. I had a fleeting dalliance with Clive Owen, but then decided that Ewan McGregor was less vain and brooding and more the sort of person who might make nice scrambled eggs. Also, he could whisper sweet nothings like, “Away an bile yer heid ya numpty, ye dinnae ken whit yer talkin aboot!" with his cute Scottish accent, causing me to collapse into a heap of giddy delight. Incidentally, Fauxhawk is not allowed to speak of his fantasy girlfriends. When he mentions his exes ScarJo and Kate Winslett, I get huffy and imperious.

5. If there is one thing I hate – and I mean really, really despise – it’s soft-core lad mags like FHM and Maxim. They make my blood boil. I had a roommate whose boyfriend brought them into our house, and I used to glue all the pages together to spite him. Cosmo, on the other hand, is a paragon of high-mindedness and progressive thinking.

6. I once told a pervy eighteen year-old boy that I was a contributing editor at Butt Man magazine. The next thing I knew, I was pointing out articles from Butt Man and expounding on their journalistic merits in front of the nice Yemeni men at my tiny neighborhood newspaper store. I can’t really explain how it happened, but I am constantly getting myself into situations like this. A year later, I am still obsessed with reversing the damage, lest the Yemenis think I am a dirty whore. Suggestions?

7. My latest enthusiasm is juicing. I force feed Fauxhawk kale in the morning when he is too groggy to protest. For reasons that mystify me, he seems to tolerate this cruel and unusual punishment.

I hereby tag Marie-Laure at Aurea , Sarah at Saipua, Christina from Soul Aperture, Kate at For Me, For You, Genevieve at tell you (today), and sweet Melissa from Melissa Loves.

Photograph by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Harpers Bazaar, via We Heart It.