For my fans

I’d like to say that I’ve been feeling guilty not updating my blog or that I meant to post many times but never got round to it, etc. Truth is, I almost forgot about this damned thing until I started receiving flattering comments on my blog from unknown fans, such as: “enlarge your penis”, “cheapest place to buy viagra click here”, “hot Russian brides register now”. So I said to myself: Hell, there’s people out there who need you. You can’t let them down.

In the last three months life has been easier without the New Yorker. Our subscription ended in September. End of September, actually. The 28^th of September, to be precise. Was I counting? Yes. Every Monday my husband and I would ask each other: “Do you think this is our last issue?”. Until one Monday there was no New Yorker in our mailbox. Only the old, sweet, comforting junk mail. A new taste of freedom. Well, I shouldn’t exaggerate. I remember my granpa’s stories about his walking back home from the Russian front at the end of World War II. That’s freedom, and what do I know about it? But hey, after all, a New Yorker-free life is my coming home from the Russian front.

The Big Lebowsky Festival and the SS Burger Project were our requiem to the New Yorker. In short, the Big Lebowsky Fest was our entertainment highlight of the year. I liked it so much that if they write a story about it on the New Yorker I’ll buy it.

The SS Burger Project is about my husband and I sampling highly recommended burgers in the city. I named it SS because we’re radical in our choices, we control the means of production, and we reject criticism of our opinions. Just like Social Security.

Since we made a point of not eating meat more than once a week, we’ve tried out only 7 places in 2 months. Normally I would end my post here. But once I read that you have to give something back to your readers, like advice on how to do things, recommendations for places to visit, how to teach your squirrel some new tricks, etc. So here we go: Hey, Viagra people and Russian pimps, if you happen to be in the city, try the burger at Beacon, 56^th street, between 5^th and 6^th.

Learning skills that may come in handy in NYC

Westside Rifle & Pistol Range

Descending into chaos

From Barnes and Noble,

to the Strand,

to sidewalk rummaging.

Williamsburg, 09/07/2009

Wake up and smell the incense

I am the opposite of a hypochondriac, whatever that is. Same goes for my husband. We may be suffering from delusions of immortality, the thing is we ignore pains and symptoms until we literally can't function, we don’t bother visiting physicians at all, we can safely watch House and Grey’s Anatomy without shouting "I have that!", and happily embraced a “I must be ok 'cause my heart's still beating” philosophy.

Maybe this explains why I was dumbfounded when last Sunday in church my fellow parishioners refused to share the sign of peace. The woman in front of me, hands firmly anchored to the back of a bench, turned and spit out “Peace be with you” in such a way that if I were deaf I would have thought she told me to go to hell. When my husband stretched out his hand to the man behind him, the guy withdrew in disgust.

Later that day I learned that, over swine flu fears, various Archdioceses around the country invited parishioners to refrain from taking Holy Communion from the chalice and sharing the sign of peace to avoid close contact with others.

Three reasons why I think things are being blown out of proportion:

1) There have been 12 fatalities of swine flu in the US. Considering that there are over 300 million Americans, my fellow parishioner’s chance of catching the flu by shaking my hand is 0.04 in a million.

2) Dear fellow parishioner, are you a germ freak? If you live in the city, then sorry, you signed up for this filth. A germ-free New York is like, say, a noodle-free Shanghai. This city is a goulash of bacteria. You may avoid my hand at church, open the church door with elbows, punch the elevator buttons with knuckles, carry wet wipes to disinfect the bench, and in the end you take the subway, used by 7 million people daily. Seven million people eating, spitting, scratching, touching their feet, rubbing their noses, picking up bacteria and then leaving it on that handrail, on the change, in the gym… Yes, that reminds me, if you work out at Crunch Fitness in Midtown, then be aware that a spot check of health clubs revealed that your gym has fecal bacteria hanging around the water fountain.

Now my favorite: no one knows how many rats live in the city, but the estimates are anywhere from one to 10 rats per person, which in the best case scenario adds up to a quarter of a million ratti norvegici, i.e. the species living in the city that, incidentally, has been known to gnaw on concrete. In addition, they seem unlikely to pack up and move to Jersey any time soon. In a study recently conducted by the University of Tel Aviv, researchers developed mini models of city layouts to see what type of city a rat could easily navigate its way through. The finding: rats prefer New York City over New Orleans and Jerusalem.

The problem had gotten so bad over the last decades that in 2000 the city hosted the first Rat Summit, cosponsored by the Daily News and Columbia University. Mayor Giuliani was represented by Joseph J. Lhota, his top deputy mayor, who presided over a rat control task force of health and sanitation officials and whose office door at the City Hall had a sign reading ''The Rat Czar: Allied Command Headquarters.''

In an effort to keep up the good work, last year the health department created a rat map available on their website which is billed as “a one-stop resource website for New Yorkers' rat prevention needs." (Fascinating. Where would Abraham Marlow and his school of psychology place “New Yorkers' rat prevention needs” in the hierarchy of human needs?).

3) Last but not least, the sign of peace is a gesture intended to communicate that the peace of Christ extends to the unity of the church and of all humanity. It recalls the passage from Matthew 5:23-24 about being reconciled with your brother before presenting your offering at the altar. After all, aren’t you, my fellow parishioner, and I both going to church because we believe in a blue-eyed Jew who, on a hill near Rosh Pina, said love thy neighbor, and that bastard of your enemy too? And correct me if I’m wrong, but when the leper went to Jesus and said “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean”, Jesus DID NOT ask “Wait a minute, did you wash your hands?”

Dreams of a three-day tourist visa

Bunburying: term introduced by Oscar Wilde in the play The Importance of Being Earnest. The art of inventing a sickly friend in need of assistance, as a clever means of dodging unwanted social engagements.

Our 10 days guests finally left. We’ve been gracious hosts, they had a good time, and everybody’s happy. As for me, I’m enjoying every single second of this Hegelian progression from bondage to freedom. Not that I don’t like company. But perhaps I've worked for the Israelis for too long; I’m not a big fan of territorial concessions.

The aggravating factor of our last guests’ stay is called: The Garrulous Wife. Her trivial ramblings accompanied us throughout our hosting experience, which under these devastating circumstances normally follows a pretty standard path, like this:

• day one is when your guests say thank you and please all the time, and ask permission to go to the bathroom;

• by day three every time I come home I have to introduce myself: “Hi my name is Silvia and I live here”;

• when on day four dinner starts with the ins and outs of her colitis, you realize you would have been better off in the hands of a bunch of Iranian or Chechen kidnappers. Next you stay up all night trying to sell your guests on Craiglist;

• day five is when you make an attempt to scare them by interrupting the conversation several times “Shhh… my mother’s dead uncle is telling me something” ;

• day six is when you actually agree with everything your mother’s dead uncle tells you;

• days seven to ten are just fine. You feel like you just had a lobotomy.

Garrulous Wife was put on a plane back home on Sunday at 6.30 p.m., after she told me about ten times I ‘aaaaaabsolutely’ have to go to her place for dinner this summer, and made me swear I will. I said yes. Anything to see her leave. As for this summer, I will have no choice but to commit the Bunbury.

Storage deluxe

The rule is: if you have to walk 10 blocks or more in high heels to get to that party, bring extra, more comfortable shoes with you so you can change shoes if necessary.

Problem: clutch is too small for your flats.

Solution: stick them into your husband's coat pockets.

The yawning kingdom and its subjects

How do I know that today in history Louis XIV of France moved his court to Versailles (1682)? That today is Sigmund Freud’s birthday (1856)? That a cat named Hawkeye scuba dived in a custom-made $20,000 wetsuit? Because lately, I’ve been finding myself sitting around work bored pretty often. A typical boring day at work is when an email from FreshDirect announcing they’ve added over 50 new cereals to their online inventory is a big thrill.

I know that the best thing to do under these circumstances is to tell your boss. I did. I asked for more work. I got something to do and chew on for a couple of weeks. And now I am again bored out of my mind.

With a simple Google search I discovered the vastness of the office boredom universe. A recent survey found that 14% of employees in the US are bored. There’s even a Boring Institute, founded in 1984 as a clearinghouse for information about boredom. What bothers me the most is that due to the stigma attached to acknowledging your infinite uselessness (or your exceptional time management skills, like in my case), I have to bore myself to death alone. Otherwise I could hang out with that 14% of bored people working in my building, we could establish bored employee clubhouses, perhaps have a dedicated trade union?

On the contrary, you must pretend that you’re very busy at work. However, a proficuous Internet time-suck session will show you a gazillion sites offering help to squash your boredom. Among the many pearls of wisdom I found, here are my favorite ideas to liven up your day:

• Reload your favorite news page every 5 seconds to make sure you are the first to read the newest article,
• Shout random numbers while someone is counting,
• Put your garbage can on your desk. Label it "IN."
• Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
• Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: "Do you hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now."
• Walk sideways to the photocopier.

Overachievers get bored too. They should check out those sites that teach you how to take dull moments as a signal to start on some productive action and “advance towards your goals”. For example: tidy your desk, practice your PowerPoint techniques, learn your keyboard shortcuts, etc. Actually, I’d rather bang my head against the wall (calorie expenditure: 150 an hour, I learned in the course of my fourth Internet time-suck session of the day). “Socialize with colleagues” was the best piece of advice I found on these nerd websites. To make it more interesting, I would further elaborate on the socializing task: “start a surreal conversation with the dumbest colleague you have.” Like the one I had the other day with my Asian colleague who happens to start every sentence with “oh”:

-oh, did you have a good week-end?

-absolutely, my sister is in town

- oh, she’s moving to New York?

- no, she’s on a field trip with her law school

-oh, she got a resident visa?

-for what? She’s on a field trip with her school and she’s gonna go back to Italy in 2 weeks

-oh, she can’t get a resident visa?

-she doesn’t need one, she doesn’t want one, she is viii-siii-tiiing.

-oh, so she can’t live here, what a pity.

-yes, what a pity. Sorry, I gotta go… I’ve got a lot of work today.