God, a shout out to MLIA. Never thought I would find a community where everyone enthusiastically hates on Twilight and Miley Cyrus, revels in all things Harry Potter, Pokemon, and enjoys forging random connections with strangers. I love how NONE of the stories submitted contain average anecdotes, unless they're ingeniously witty like like "Today I had sex with my girlfriend. She screamed the name Tommy. My name is Tommy." 

I've also noticed that there's an FML-MLIA divide. My friends enjoys FML much more and insists that MLIA is stupid, even though she's laughed her ass off at all the MLIA stories I've given her. Honestly, what does it say about you when you enjoy drowning yourself in depressing stories about jackass boyfriends and food poisoning, instead of pithy, hilarious ones? In short, I have no idea why everyone in the world isn't an MLIA convert yet. 

Here are some of my favorite MLIAs. I'm kind of using this as a memory storage in case I forget any of them in the future, though some of these are hard to forget.

Today , I went to the new Harry Potter movie with a friend . At the part where Dumbledore died , a man close to the front row yelled "NO!" and ran out the emergency exit door . It made my day . MLIA.

When I was little I would write my initials on my one dollar bills before I spent them. Today, I bought a cup of coffee and my change included a dollar bill with my initials in the corner. I've waited 10 years for this to happen. It's bound to be a good day. MLIA (not one of my favorites, exactly, but just a reminder for me to do the same in the future). 

Today, my friend explained to me that if you write 3.14 on a piece of paper and hold it in a mirror, it will say pie. Mind. Blown. MLIA

Today, I asked my dad to make me a milkshake. He told me to make one myself. I responded that I didn't know how to make a good milkshake. His response? "Well, that's why your single. No boys ever come to our yard." MLIA.

Today, in history class, we were studying the ancient city states of Ancient Greece. Our teacher (the classic old history teacher) had a rolling chalkboard with a map of greece, and we tried to label them of a reading in our textbook. Our teacher pointed at one unmarked city and asked, "What city is this?" No one answered. After the awkward silence, our teacher yelled "THIS IS SPARTA!" and kicked the chalkboard to the floor. MLIA

Today, I went through the McD's drive through and ordered a #3 with a cinnamelt. I realized I did not have enough money for the cinnamelt so I quickly drove out of line and pulled in a parking spot by the door. I walked in and, almost as if puzzled as to what I should get, I ordered simply a #3. I was happy to have enough money for the essentials. The man proceeded to hand me a bag and said, "here. there's a cinnamelt in there for you too. some ass hole just drove off after ordering." MLIA

Today, I decided to have some fun at the mall by walking up to random women, and saying in a stern voice, "I know about the affair." Four said they didn't know what I was talking about, five begged me not to tell their husbands, and three women paid me off. New hobby? I think so. MLIA

Today, a young male trick-or-treater came to my door in a fairy suit, with vampire teeth. A bit confused I asked if he was vampire or a fairy. 
He replied with I'm both. My name is Edward Cullen. Needless to say he got all of the candy I had. MLIA

At a friends house this weekend I heard his 6yr old daughter say she had a weiner. As her mom explained that only boys have a "weiner", her 4yr old brother yelled "Yeah, girls don't have weiners, they have brains!". Wise beyond your years, young one. MLIA.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to the world at large! Things I'm thankful for...

My beagle, Jane Campion movies, Margot Tenenbaum sad and eyelined, JD Salinger novels, David Sedaris' nervous tics (ticks?), the internet, cranberry sauce, sweet potato fries, best friends who start crying with mirth at the mention of fart jokes, 30 Rock, sequin minidresses, Ben Whishaw flamboyant and adorable, roommate's shenanigans, plush oversized cashmere sweaters, back rubs, my phenomenal history teachers, Al Pacino's expressively enormous eyes, Judy Garland's voice, MyLifeisAverage, Sofia Coppola's Cherie Dior commercial, above average intelligence, odd but divinely human experiences that we all share, New York City, ice cream. 

Wuthering Heights Movie

HOLIDAYS

Marquis de Sade: The whole world over, we eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die. 

Coulmer: But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, we (INVENTED CHRISTMAS) and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.

 - Quills (2000) (tweaked)

Is it too early to start thinking about pumpkin pies and wish lists and cherry pound cake oh my?NO! By my own standards, once November comes it's a free-for-all. I've already started dabbling around my Christmas playlists on Itunes, listening to Judy Garland's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". This melancholy classic never fails to pull at my heartstrings. Whenever I listen to it, I always think of this passage from "The Great Gatsby":

"One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into their own holiday gayeties to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?" and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

That's my middle-west--not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. "

That's why I love Fitzgerald -because he's just ingenious at recreating nostalgia in his books. It's all in the whimsical details. I personally always (for some reason) associated nostalgia with the clear, faraway sound of bells jingling on a snowy night. It's magical, happy-sad, and dimly fading, as the best memories are. Which really, also stems from my Fitzgerald-Ingalls-Garland fantasy. I've always wanted to be decked out in a ball dress,  underneath a velvet coat, riding in a horse-drawn sleigh across the Midwestern prairie on Christmas night, with nothing around but miles of dark snow and glinting lights.

For now, the closest I can get to it is probably rewatching The Polar Express, making hot apple cider, buying white-wool sweater dresses and counting down the days until the Holidays. And more than any other event, Christmas-time really shuffles the memory of your childhood, stirring up these vestiges of innocent caregiving that you thought to be long-lost. Unless of course, your childhood Christmases sucked. Then I apologize. 

Oh, holidays! It's one of the very few things from my childhood that has yet to be corrupted by greedy consumerism and gradual cynicism. It doesn't matter how much things suck around Christmas; it feels like there's always a stranger around the corner with their heart in good Christmas cheer, warming the streets and souls with smiles and foamy mugs of (insert favorite holiday beverage). It's one of the great Human experiences that will never go out of style. When I was little, my heart would actually burst from thinking about the mammals and little critters out in the cold snow that would never experience Christmas or Channukah or any kind of December-fest. I remember on one occasion depositing food in my backyard, whispering to the squirrels that might be listening: "Merry Christmas!"

*Polar Express theme playing in head*