Espresso, oysters, pistachios, hunger.  I think I’ve tried all of these snacks before writing and have found that pistachios are definitely my favorite to munch on.  Hunger and espresso are a close second for that Parisian-author-chic feel.  Oysters are too celebratory for me. 

Walt Whitman began the day with oysters and meat, while Gustave Flaubert started off with what passed for a light breakfast in his day: eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The novelist Vendela Vida told me she swears by pistachios, and Mark Kurlansky, the author of “Salt” and “Cod,” likes to write under the influence of espresso, “as black as possible.” For some writers, less is more. Lord Byron, a pioneer in fad diets as well as poetry, sipped vinegar to keep his weight down. Julia Scheeres, the author of the memoir “Jesus Land,” aims for more temporary deprivation. “When in the thick of writing I minimize food intake as much as possible,” she told me. “I find I work better when I’m a little starved.”

Source: NYTimes

Yes, I’ve always had a special bond with this school. In fact, this is my second time coming here. When I was 17 years old and touring colleges, way back in the fall of 1980, I came to Dartmouth. Dartmouth was a very different place back then. I made the trip up from Boston on a mule and, after asking the blacksmith in West Leb for directions, I came to this beautiful campus. No dormitories had been built yet, so I stayed with a family of fur traders in White River Junction. It snowed heavily during my visit and I was trapped here for four months. I was forced to eat the mule, who a week earlier had been forced to eat the fur traders. Still, I loved Dartmouth and I vowed to return.

Honorary Degree Recipient Conan O’Brien’s Commencement Address to Dartmouth College Graduates

Created by Liloh.

The grammar one is my * favorite, but they are all great.  Source: Sapling Press on Etsy via the blogosphere.

YES. PLEASE.

Happy Holiday Traveling, everyone!  To intrusive body-scanners and the season of giving!

Farmer’s Market street style.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-16-2010/mosque-erade

I mean really take 9 minutes out of your day and watch this.

You know, I’ve always wanted to be one of those cool girls at the bar who orders a glass of whiskey on the rocks, sips it slowly, without wincing, and makes everyone around her holding their paltry gin and tonics and vodka sodas look like a wimp.  But I’m not one of those girls.  Instead, I’m that person who orders laphroaig at a bar, asks for two glasses of water, and then gives my expensive glass of whiskey away because I can’t take the peat.  This needs to change.  And apparently, my coworker, Matt, couldn’t agree more.  He writes:

Switch to straight whiskey.

Drunkenness is a fleeting feeling dictated by a certain set of ongoing metabolic processes, right? So being pleasantly drunk is all about achieving the right balance and timing with respect to your alcohol intake in order to maximize the time that you spend in the “zone” of warm, fuzzy feelings and general good will for all mankind, without slipping back out the bottom into reality, or worse yet, going all the way into “hysterial weeping drunk chick vomiting into her purse” (see figure below). Straight whiskey (specifically, for the purposes of this advice, bourbon and rye) is the best means to achieve this end, for a variety of reasons.  Read the rest of this entry »

Mmhmm.  Source: NYMag

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog (mom, close friends), you probably already know of my crazy letter that I sent to Dieppa Restrepo yesterday in an act of desperation to get my hands on a pair of their nude patent leather oxfords.  Well guess what?  My timing was perfect and they just got a new shipment in a few days ago.  After hearing back from Maryam Nassir Zadeh the very next day (what a wonderful lady), I called them early this afternoon and put aside a pair for immediate pick-up/consumption.  In just a few hours, all of my hard efforts will be made whole.  They.will.be.mine. 

In order to get to this point, however, I had to send a really embarrassing letter.  Did I mention that I wrote a crazy letter to the company to get them? 

Read the rest of this entry »