Alizah Salario

I wrote a draft of this post nearly three years ago while living in Istanbul, when I felt unexpectedly nostalgic for an American holiday that had always meant little to me beyond the stuffing and pie. I like to tell myself it’s because I’m constantly reminding myself what I have to be grateful for, rather than confining it to a particular day, but I’m not sure that’s totally true. Anyway, missing Thanksgiving made me eager to latch onto ritual of any sort, even if it wasn’t my own.

I don’t know how to slaughter a turkey. I have no clue how to kill a sheep. I’ve never heard the choked bleats of a dying lamb, and I can’t even imagine the process of turning a furry or feathered animal into the various shanks, chops, thighs and breasts of the butcher’s sinewy world. I figure it begins with a quick slit of the throat, but I really don’t like to figure such things at all.

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Do you consider yourself an Ikea Swedish meatballs or Ikea cinnamon buns kind of person? This is the question I pondered during a much-anticipated pilgrimage to the home furnishings behemoth in Red Hook for the second installment of a weekend game I sometimes like to play called Decorating My Apartment Makes Me Feel Like A Real Adult.  After 3 months of living in our new place and an initial splurge on key household items like knives and chairs, my roommate and I decided it was time to get non-essentials like cookie sheets and mason jars to keep legumes, spices and other organic substances fresh. (I’m neither into Swedish meatballs or cinnamon buns, but I am the kind of person who wants to partake in the gingerbread house building contest in the kid’s play area).

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Please don’t hate me.

I know we’ve all got our pleather thongs bunched up over the Kardashian kerfuffle. Real or fake, for money or for love,  it’s Kim K..’s life – and she’s now alone. For reals. So why is America taking it so personally?

Aren’t we, like, totally over marriage? Considering that many successful, independent women have resigned to, shall we say, less than stellar husband choices (exhibit A: Kris Humphries) should we even be surprised?  I’m not really sure about the rest of the country, but I can tell you why I care. If you have an overbearing mother, a sister with whom you fight constantly but still consider your best friend, or are a petite white girl who doesn’t look like she belongs on The Hills and has butt and not a pancake for an ass, you might, on some level, be able to relate to the Kardashians (Surprise! I have all three).

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Obviously.

When I lost my iPhone in the back of a taxi a few weeks ago, I decided I wouldn’t replace it. My incessant checking of Gmail, Facebook and Twitter had bred a certain gadget co-dependency that I felt rather ashamed of. I had become that girl walking down the street while texting without looking where she was going. I’m also the girl who has to check her phone in the middle of meals, meetings, and otherwise important events. Rude? Maybe. But you’re probably that girl or guy, too. Still. Perhaps the iPhone mishap was a blessing in disguise. I replaced it with a $20 go-phone, which is the modern-day tin-can-on-a-string equivalent: it makes calls and texts. That’s it. No photos, no email, no Internet – and worst of all, no Tweets. I’d survive. Maybe.

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Adrian is (was?) a member.

I recognize that most of my existential questions will go unresolved, but I had to find an answer to my latest (ridiculous and first world) crisis: Should I join the The Park Slope Food Coop?

The concept of the co-op is simple: it’s run and owned by members, so there’s no big boss man disconnected from the workers, and no disgruntled peons on the bottom of the totem pole. Everyone is equal, in theory, which makes for an heirloom tomatoes and flaxseed oil sort of utopia. Again, in theory. Members work one short shift a month (lifting boxes, cutting cheese, weighing dried mango slices, whatever ) and in return have privileged access to luscious organic produce and  natural products at discounted prices.

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Want to come over and watch MSNBC?

I don’t get bunny ears. Are they sexy because they seem docile and coquettish, just like the furry creatures that procreate a lot? Or have they simply become associated with sex after years of Playboy-inspired scantily clad bunny Halloween costumes?

It turns out a lot of people are skeptical about bunny ears. NBC’s sitcom The Playboy Club premiered last week to a swift backlash against the show’s regressive portrayal of women. At The Washington Post, network television’s fall lineup of shows depicting grown women as kewpie-dolls in kitschy uniforms had critic Hank Stuever asking a simple yet provocative enough to warrant all caps question: WHAT THE [EXPLETIVE] HAPPENED TO WOMEN?

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I hesitate to write about something as intimate and inconsequential as my hair, but if the New York Times can devote an entire fashion & style column to curls and waves then my unkempt tresses warrant one wee little blog post.

Curly-haired Greek

After a lifelong love/hate relationship with my frizzy waves, I got a keratin straightening treatment for the first time about six months ago (thank you Groupon). I walked into the salon with my hair resembling a tangled rat’s nest and came out feeling like a sleek mermaid goddess. The stylists all told me my hair looked ah-ma-zing, which further reinforced how awful I must have looked before. The only problem? I didn’t feel like myself. I felt like I was masquerading in someone else’s hair.

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It feels wrong to be more affected by one loss than another, especially a single death over a large-scale tragedy with lasting political and social ramifications.Truth be told, I was deeply moved by Amy Winehouse’s death in a way that minimized the impact of the  terrorist attacks in Norway. I’m not sure why, exactly.

Is it that one story started with a chilling climax, while the other had built toward a slow, cataclysmic end? Is it that we mourn those those we identify with more than others? Those who, in a parallel universe, we could see ourselves becoming?

Many people responded to Amy’s death  with a curt “it comes as no surprise” response. No, I certainly wasn’t shocked, but I was nonetheless saddened, and this dismissive attitude bothered me. It was like we were internally shrugging our shoulders as if to say,” See, I told you so. Look what happens when you succumb to temptation and fail to clean up your act. She got what was coming.”

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I’m remiss, again, in updating this here blog because I happen to be traversing the country on a train. Yes. That’s right. An Amtrak train. I know train travel doesn’t exactly scream glamorous jet setter, but it does have quite a few perks: you can bring more than three ounces of liquid, you don’t have to check your bags, and there’s minimal security (I’m not sure whether this should fall in the “pros” or “cons” column).

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