Viva Manhattan.

The embodiment of all that is Manhattan has been rearing its ugly head, and I've finally seen it... twice!

These are two separate occasions; however, I will tell them as one. I live by a subway station that is not only underground, but very much so. If that makes sense. So generally when I take the subway I position myself strategically so that the train spits me out exactly in front of the elevator that services the surface. Now, when I say "exactly" I mean exactly that. At times, I do not give the human populace enough credit, too many people have figured out this strategy as well. On this particular day it was not the mad rush to the lift I expected. However, once the subway door opened and I was almost upon the door with some other people, some random "girl" pushes by the person closest to the call button and makes sure she is the first person to press "to street", I had to stifle my guffaw and I seemed to be the only person to truly notice how absurd her action was; which doesn't make any sense. The rest of the elevator ride I spent staring a surgically precise hole in the back of this "girl"'s head.

The other incident, involving the same elevator, occurred some weeks later. Standing in the same position in the back of the elevator, I was minding my own business, which translates to me studying the carbon-based contents of the elevator car, in order to see what freaks came out for air that day*. When the car arrived at its destination (the surface), I noticed some commotion toward the front by the door. Apparently people were vocalizing their intentions to let other people out before them. An old lady that had to be in her seventies, was telling a younger woman, maybe in her late thirties, to go on ahead before her. The middle-aged woman kept refusing, and so the elder put her hand on the former's shoulder and said, "Go right ahead". The thirty-something-year-old proceeds to slap the old woman's hand off of her, flips out, and spits out, "I am not, comfortable, with people, touching me". This time around I could not hold in my scoff, and blurted out, "Are you kidding?" The people around me chuckled and one said a sarcastic "good morning". It was at this point that all of the New Yorker stereotypes came crashing down to this culminating moment. But it is OK, I can take solace in knowing that woman is going to die some day.

*Sometimes I am one of those freaks.

Office Socialism.

I can really feel the atmosphere in there, I mean REALLY feel it. I would say that the atmos in question is a shade short of literally palpable. Labeling it as the "daily grind" has everything to do with it; but this revolves around the point that it's inescapable for most people who are inclined to make money. I mean, you've heard the lady, "Wouldn't you like to make more money? Sure we all do" (TV ad).

The office setting draining wills.

I work for a major television network. For the most part it's sweet/a breeze. I honestly don't mind schlepping across the city to go to work for several helpings of small-talk, but this largely depends on my mood, which can be said for some-to-most-to-all mammals. It is understood why people gossip and largely converse about the same three or four things, but I have little tolerance for conversations that do not need to take place. Therein lies electronic mail. We are so spoiled in the 21st century. “Hey, did you get my email?” And then regardless of the answer, the initiator 100% every time continues to state exactly what is in said e-mail, usually by saying something stupid such as, “Oh OK, because….” Which obviously defeats the entire purpose of electronically mailing the person in the first place. And now the subject cannot be dropped since just broaching it causes enough damage.. It makes absolutely zero sense. The worst part about this whole thing is that more than likely a response to the initial email has probably already been written, and in light of this conversation, nullified. This kills me. And people get offended if I say that I replied to them so there is no purpose in our currently discussing it. The mood becomes increasingly awkward as if there is no other topic on the entire planet worth talking about other than this now infamous email. Easily the most irritating part about this is that from time to time I have also been a perpetrator.

Sometimes emails are sent with “high importance”; in the event that I see the email and deem it too lowly on the scale of my attention span. I cannot foresee a time where we as a society are so incredibly busy that we have to impose a system of hierarchy in our company Microsoft Outlook. How is not every email, at the very least, a little important? Even if I see the little red exclamation point that accompanies a super important email, I don’t read it before others. I refuse. Perhaps if the red punctuation was instead a Batman symbol, then I’d read it lickity-split. Yes I’d be fooled every time into thinking it was an email from none other than the Dark Knight himself, but the sense of urgency accompanying the email would be unmistakable.

This is why I frequently send emails with a "low importance" blue exclamation point. I don't think my recipients have noticed (does that mean it works?). After all, if an email were of true dire importance, it would be a phone call, no?

Cancerous Cerebellum.

I think I have brain cancer. That, or an acute sense of smell. I remember reading somewhere that phantom smells have something to do with having cancer of the most important human organ (arguably).

Upon delving into this recent epiphany, I have also realized that perhaps it is not as bad as people say. Granted, I have never heard/read a testimonial from a brain-cancered person, but I'd imagine that it would go something like this: I don't really feel anything for the most part, but there was this one time I thought a cat came away with the silver medal at last year's world's fair (2007).

Olfactory hallucination, has to be somewhat prevalent. And as far as the severity of this situation is concerned, I am about to lose all credibility. This phenomenon I have experienced has mostly occurred on the subway. I'll give you a second to close this page down.


I was riding the 4 train downtown (for those of you familiar with New York City) rather recently and I happened to stop reading my book and take a gander at my fellow Americans (arguably). Besides noticing the older gentleman across the way, who was far too busy wiping his nose and then going back to his pizza, I became aware of my sense of smell. There is absolutely no way my nose was accurate in what it was smelling at that time. I swear on my life that I was smelling my hometown house. You may now think that my home is gross, but this is not my meaning (its scent is quite comforting actually). However improbable, it was right there, slightly above my mustache. The more loony I thought I was becoming, the more lucid my thoughts appeared. I ended up shutting my eyes and attempted to discern each and every smell in the air. The first one to identify itself was the slice of pizza in front of me, for obvious reasons. I also thought I could sense the old man, but this could have been vicariously through the pizza. My nose then went on to distinguish someone's perfume along with hair product. And soon after it became increasingly difficult to detect anything else in the air; not to mention the subway's perpetual metallic smell along with the general collection of people smell, tunnel smell, and overall rank-ness. Since the fist time I stumbled across this subway wonder, I have taken whiffs of things that could not possibly be manifest around me such as: my defunct car, my old Cobra Commander action figure, and my Xbox 360. You might think these last few things are ridiculous, and they are, but anything is possible with the odor of the subway. On occasion I have come across subway cars that have very few people in it, and after further investigation, I realize it is because there is a lone homeless man huddled in the far corner. Isn't it awful that opening into the actual subway platform is a beautiful respite in the form of air in comparison to aforementioned homeless guy?

Maybe it isn't my brain cancer flaring up but I am indeed somehow smelling these things. But how does it make me feel that on any given moment an amalgam of scents on the subway can produce the smell of the house I lived in straight through adolescence? Oops, I almost forgot, there was definitely B.O. lying around somewhere that first fateful day, and that person shall remain nameless, but only because I do not know who it was, otherwise, I'd rat them out in a heartbeat.