August 2009
30 posts
An obituary
Maisie Edelstein was born sometime in September, 1993, in Ravena, a hamlet in upstate New York. Little is known of the first eighteen months of her life except that at some point an accident, thought likely to have involved a car, resulted in the amputation of half of her tail. It was also known that she was called ‘Spike’, due to the inability of her owners to identify the fact that...
4 tags
Sebastian and I are in a cafe, discussing...
Except that I can’t concentrate.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just that these people are right in my eyeline. And they’re doing some extremely intense making out.’
Seb turns to look. The couple is about our age - maybe a bit older, even - preppy and professional looking. They are sitting at a table just outside the cafe’s vast plate glass...
“Why have I invited this sadness into my life?”
– Footbelstein
WatchIn honour of my excitement of my impending return to San Francisco (well, Berkeley) this week, I give you this video of me giggling anxiously while looping the Golden Gate Bridge in a helicopter.
“PLEASE…..get that hair out of your face…!!!! It is not the 80’s anymore and it...”
– Viewer who saw me on CNNLive yesterday and is apparently angry that I need a bang trim. (via ameliamagritte)
[I like how this commenter emphasises his gender, just in case Amelia wasn’t taking the criticism seriously enough, because gosh knows if a man doesn’t like her bangs, in that...
Dear Google user who is interested in fascinators,
Email me if you’d like to get in touch with the talented designer of mine.
F: [redacted relationship question]
JHE: [redacted relationship advice]
F: Jean, emails like that are the reason that your GP marked you down as 'aggressive' on your medical notes.
“Women: do you have a man? If you do, better beware. Chances are that some lone...”
– It’s true: all the taken men are best
Well. WELL. Here’s an interesting, revealing new study: remember all of those times you met some guy and thought, ‘meh,’ and then found out that he had a girlfriend and suddenly thought, ‘well, actually, maybe he is rather lovely’. You were not alone! Much as I...
Going as Far as I Can: The Ultimate Travel Book by... →
Apology for the Woman Writing by Jenny Diski |... →
“…you can’t just pick a football team by asking people on the Internet who...”
– Footbelstein
“You should be pleased he wanted your friendship and stop wasting your energy...”
– Mariella Frostrup, Observer Magazine, 16th August 2009 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/16/dear-mariella-frostrup-relationships)
Oh, Mariella. Generally, I like Mariella: she is also from the ‘don’t be a jerk, to others or yourself’ school of relationship advice that we endorse here...
Pejoratively...
iloveadverbs:
Following the death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics, Slate this week discussed the use of mentally retarded. This term has apparently been deemed unacceptable, and is being replaced by intellectual disability.
The process by which a term designating a sensitive concept becomes considered increasingly taboo, and is eventually superseded by a more...
Apparently most people don't have these kinds of...
Driver: So what do you do?
Jean: I'm a writer.
Driver: What do you write?
Jean: Well, I wrote a book.
Driver: About what?
Jean: Relationships.
Driver: Are you married?
Jean: No.
Driver: Isn't that like being a dogwalker who doesn't own a dog?
“Jean, I’m proud of you. But not just proud in a brotherly way, or...”
– Sebastian reacts to me sharing some good news with a neologism.
Due to well-grounded protests...
…from people who read my blog particularly because it’s NOT about football, I’ve started a new one (temporarily) for the duration of my football project. It’s called Footbelstein. Obviously. Click over for the big reveal of which team I selected to be obsessed with.
JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems: Post-dated...
himglishandfemalese:
And then when he doesn’t magically figure it out, because you haven’t told him, you then become even more annoyed not just because he is suggesting something unacceptable, but because he is apparently insensitive, and then the next thing you know you’re getting all shouty with each other and you have to lie down in a darkened room with a bag of frozen peas on your head just to...
On my new football-related project
Hurrah! This Saturday marks the start of the Premiership football season, an event which I have regarded with the utmost indifference forever. But not this year! Following a conversation with a friend who challenged my assertion that being a football fan is boring and pointless, pointing out that this it’s not really fair to be so disdainful of something that I’ve never tried, this season I have...
'Ugh! You are so irritating and I wish you'd go...
himglishandfemalese:
A central problem with our ongoing collective struggle with marriage, I think, but which is not often discussed, is the fact that it is a relationship that we have more agency over than any other close relationship in our lives. We choose to be with our partner, we don’t choose our parents, but then despite this agency, we tend to wish for the relationship to fit in to a...
On wearing t-shirts with words on them
I don’t. I really haven’t done since I read a volume of Judith Martin’s Miss Manners and she remarked on the stupidity of wearing a slogan plastered across your body. I made an exception for my Obama t-shirt, and I sometimes wear wordy shirts to the gym, but that’s because I consider myself essentially invisible at the gym anyway.
But. Jodie got me a really undeniably cute...
On finding an album of photos from my first year...
So there we all are, my friends and I, sitting on the dirty utility carpet in the corridor of the breeze-block building that served as our home; wearing hockey jerseys and running on ice; watching television in the common room; clutching cocktails in plastic cups, sophisticates. Here, I am wearing my very best skirt of 2000: it is black angora - yes, rabbit hair - covered in black sequins (it...
“I hereby declare today to be DEFRIEND YOUR EX DAY (2009): stop putting yourself...”
– Himglish and Femalese - JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems: Limited Friends?
On magazines that should be top shelf
When I was in grad school my friend G gave an outstanding presentation on lad’s mags. ‘I have performed a content analysis,’ he explained, ‘and have divided them into three categories: trash, awful trash, and really awful trash.’
Some months later, as we whiled away our days in the library, writing our dissertations and worrying about the future, G noticed an advertisement (in the Guardian, I...
“In fact, just this week I read some sample chapters from a newbie writer, and I...”
– Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent (via iainbroome)
Some people are good at telling stories. Some people are good at writing. Some people are good at telling stories and writing, but they are the most unusual type of people of all.
On riding a bicycle whilst sporting a wrap skirt
Not recommended. Really.
“It is a miraculous little machine: two bricks of cheese sit across from each...”
– Joyce Carol Oats, The London Review of Breakfasts
On the naked man I saw in Barcelona last week
I was in a cab, being driven to my next meeting; he was strolling down Las Ramblas amidst the sweaty throngs, wearing a messenger bag, as if he’d gone out to run some errands and brought the bag along because, well, he had no pockets.
July 2009
47 posts
On my doctor's new beard
Never has the key imbalance of power in the doctor-patient relationship been so evident to me than the other day when I went for a one-month follow-up visit, only to discover that my GP had grown a luxuriant beard in the interim. I sat there and answered his very personal questions about my well-being, and wondered what it is about the unfairness of the social norms of the practice of medicine...