winning the passive-aggressive battle with our neighbors

Who would think that an empty bottle of Guinness could start a small war? Until last week, I didn't think it was possible, but now I've seen the light -- and it comes on every time I step out of my front door.

When I walked out last Friday morning, I was met on the stairs by this very same empty beer bottle. It sat on one of the stairs, halfway between our floor & the one below us, with a dollar slipped beneath it. I left it there, thinking, "Well, surely our neighbors will pick it up this afternoon or evening and that'll be that." They'd had people over the night before, and, I guess, didn't have time to clean up yet. So I walked past it all day & didn't think twice about it. That evening, when the man came home, I mentioned it to him. He said, "Oh yeah, that dollar was crumpled on the landing, as if someone had reached in his pocket for his keys & dropped the dollar in the process, so I picked it up, straightened it out and put it under the bottle as an incentive for them to pick up the bottle." "Good thinkin', baby. Surely, they'll want that buck, at least for a snort-tunnel," I responded.

And the bottle sat there.

And sat there.

Finally, on Monday, sick of seeing it on the stairs, I decided to take the dollar as an "asshole tax" and leave the bottle squarely in front of their door. I was making a statement, damn it -- loud and clear.

That night, they came home & moved the bottle in front of our door. The man kept me from exploding and just moved it back in front of their door.

The next day, they moved it directly between our doors, as in the accompanying picture, taken Wednesday. I left it there, refusing to touch it again, and deciding that we'd leave it there until our landlord came for the rent and let him hash it out with them. I washed my hands of it.

Friday evening, I headed to Union Square to hand off the RightRides dispatch bag to this weekend's dispatcher, and met the man near his office to ride the subway home with him.

As we reached the top of the stairs, the motion light flicked on, and we were met with an empty hallway. To both our shock, they'd actually picked the damn thing up. A full week and several moves later, the battle of the bottle was over. And we had won.

live-blogging the oprah show

(to find out why the hell i would do such a thing, see the previous post.)

4:00: the opening music is angelic, almost a hymn
4:02: photographic slideshow summarizing the book ends, oprah tells gilbert "this is bigger than when bono visited"
4:04: oprah, "who has not met the tiles (on her bathroom floor)?!"
4:08: is it just me, or does the luggage under oprah's eyeballs actually say louis vuitton?
p.s. i love that the op keeps repeating everything liz gilbert says & then turns & yells it at the audience
4:09 oprah interrupts her mid-sentence to send us to break

{fantastic commercial break, by the way; apparently viewers are teen smokers who watch the news}

4:12: oprah proclaims, "eating!! yes!" then mentions the fact that she, "oh, has a tv show"
4:13: liz gilbert imitates charlton heston as god & i cried a little bit
4:14: oprah goes to quote the book & we see there are post-its flagging pages with highlighted paragraghs & notes in the margins -- blech
4:16: oprah coins the term "snot-sobbing" & gilbert calls it, "double-dipping" then says, "word salad," which i loved
4:18: oprah, "i love you 'cause you wanted to EAT!"
4:19: oprah can't fathom "the freedom to gain 24 pounds"
4:21: oprah declares she wants to go to naples & eat the pizza (or the pizza guy, if she's that hungry, i guess)

{commercial break: damn hasbro for their incessant media buys}

4:23: oprah's friends sound boring as hell -- they go to her house to all read a book out loud? my god, ladies, do something, rather than read about it
4:24: oprah doesn't seem to get the actual reason to go to an ashram, or, for that matter, the point of gilbert's journey
4:26: oprah's already making me sick

{commercial break: the chico's woman has really shitty taste, also, there's no "at chico's" -- i hate that copywriter's crutch}

4:31: one of the characters from the book, richard from texas, comes up on stage
4:33: oprah asks richard a string of stupid questions -- too many to count
4:34: oprah obviously don't get transcendental meditation
4:36: i hate oprah's laugh, but then again, she'd probably hate mine

promo interstitial for monday's show: "i talk to someone whose wealth approaches mine" -- jerry seinfeld's wife apparently holds the secret to life

{commercial break: dumb crap, like empire today}

4:39: oprah quotes "wizard of oz"
4:40: (when the medicine man didn't recognize gilbert) oprah, "why didn't you just go home?"
4:42: oprah, "and then you found love!" 'cause, really, that's what a spiritual journey's about....
4:42: oprah should NEVER read books out loud, especially when it's erotic or romantic, 'cause she puts on a really weird voice & sounds like a constipated ostrich
4:43: oprah puts up a picture of gilbert & her lover & then swoons when gilbert says, "that's my new husband on our wedding day"

{commercial break: tyler perry meets "today's soft music"}

4:47: oprah, "god bless the men in here who've read it"
4:47: oprah seems shocked that you just need to shift your view of life to do kinda what she did
4:48: the liz gilbert "do it yourself" steps to enlightenment
1) ask yourself in your morning journal, "what do i really, really, really want?"
2) write down your happiest moment of the day in a journal [oprah inserts her own gratitude journal here]
3) change your mantra -- quit beating yourself up or dragging yourself down
4:51: OMG ponies! oprah's gonna announce her next book club book after the break

{commercial break: do they really think oprah viewers are so fat they need the lap-band system? also, raymour & flanigan's furniture looks so much better on tv than it does in real life, but it's on sale right now!!}

4:53: it's announcement time (while she continues to lick gilbert's ass)
4:54: oprah, "if you love love, it's 'love in the time of cholera'" as she shits herself over the 50-year love story: 50 YEARS! now she's ruined gabriel garcia marquez for me

"brought to you by" interstitial for dove, which is a great partnership

{commercial break: ok, here's why her viewers' need the lap-band system, a commercial for friendship sour cream endorses eating it straight out of the container -- i can;t think of much grosser}

4:57: go to oprah.com, bitches & tell me all about your love story, 'cause it's time for "love in the time of cholera"

thank god it's over!


number of times oprah licked liz gilbert's asshole in one hour: 43

number of retarded questions lobbed gilbert's way: 38


Now, I ask you, people, why -- WHY?? -- is Oprah so goddamn popular??

america's favorite nihilistic crushing opinionator throws it in our faces again

It seems she's unavoidable, that evil, "this is your year," "Secret"-spewing, soul-eating, yo-yo-dieting, celebrity cuddling monolith. For years, I thought I'd done it -- kept my nose out of the Oprium, but today, I'll be forced to watch her damn show for the 2nd time in 2 weeks. And it's not because she sent me this email. That was just sad, forced marketing.

Last week, I was forced to watch when Michael Moore faced off against a PR lady from some health care lobby. Thank all the deities for Michael Moore's ability to read & retain statistics, joined with his giant cajones. If not for him, all our uninsured infants would be toting automatic weapons, funded by the Saudis.

Anyways, today, I'm forced to eyeball the Op again as she sits down with Elizabeth Gilbert, the "rock star" author of "Eat, Pray, Love".

I read it this year, despite Oprah's backing, in fact, defiantly against Oprah's backing. Nothing makes me run from a book more than the Opinion, but I'd already fallen in love with "Eat, Pray, Love" when a woman on the subway said, "Oh, did you read 'Middlesex' too?" Apparently, that was the book Oprah put on her summer pedestal. I shook with horror & possibly spat on the woman in those moments of shock & anger over her thought that I might be a brainless Optomaton. After that, though, I made sure to hide the cover when I was reading it in public, especially in the presence of WASP-y, middle aged, judgmental Connecticut-types.

But if you haven't read it, seriously, I'll loan it to you. It's that fuckin' good.

Now for a word from Noprah, the anti-Oprah.

If you haven't yet, pick up Amy Sedaris' new tome, "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence". It's full of crazy recipes, craft projects & funny stories about a gal & her bunny -- and no, that's not a euphemism. One of these nights, I'm gonna hostess a little Sedaris-fest, cook something from the book & make my bitches get all kindsa crafty.

Prepare yourselves.