Saving you the shame

So it's Roommate's birthday, and her boyfriend oh-so-sweetly buys her a carrot cake from Whole Foods, and everyone's sitting around and you are offered a slice, and you think, "Hey - it's got carrots, it's organic, one tiny piece of cake can't hurt..." So you take the slice, and it's pretty f-ing good as far as carrot cake goes and you think nothing of it.

And then Other Roommate calls you the next day from work and fills you in that the said measly piece of last night's cake contained...wait for it...wait for it...830 CALORIES, 67 GRAMS OF FAT, AND 92 GRAMS OF CARBOHYDRATES.

And then you realized that the thunder you heard this morning despite sunny skies was not an impending bout of inclement weather, but simply you walking down the stairs.

Photo from WholeFoods.com, Disgusting and disheartening calorie count from TheDailyPlate.com.

How about just spit in my eye and call it a day?

I frequently get J. Crew e-mails that are titled, "Spring Dresses!" "Fun, Uber-Preppy Summer Clothes That Are Right Up Your Alley!" but should really be entitled, "Too Bad You Are Poor And Cannot Afford Anything In This E-mail!" "Maybe When You Graduate You Won't Have to Shop At Target and Dollar Tree!"

And I usually browse them and send links to my mom in the hopes that she will really be missing me that day and may pop over to the mall on a whim and see the adorable dress/skirt/blouse I just so happened to send her in said e-mail and say to herself, "Bah, it's only money. Let's refinance the house so Kate can have the wardrobe she wants."

It's true, I love everything J. Crew and/or sickeningly preppy, and it's partially her fault - I come from a family that takes portraits in matching khakis and white polo shirts, whose men all have the same "Republican Swoop" hairdo, and whose women wear Lilly Pulitzer on a daily basis to the country club in the summer. Without irony.

Note the swoop. Oddly enough, John Edwards is a Democrat. How did that happen?

It's pretty sick.

And all this was well and good, until I moved out into what most people call "real life," and realized that things cost money. I subsequently concluded that J.Crew is actually pretty fucking ridiculous in terms of what they charge for say, a t-shirt, but I always held a soft spot for it and even occasionally blew a paycheck or two or three on shopping sprees there.

Until today.

They unveiled their yoga collection, and sent me an e-mail announcing it. And I was all, oh sweet, I'm gonna save up and get me some yoga gear. And then I looked at the price, and get this, friends - a CAMISOLE is $40. Now, unless this camisole is not only going to help me do a Downward Dog for 20 minutes without my arms and legs even feeling it, but make me look like I have washboard abs, and curb my appetite between meals, J. Crew can go suck it.

I'm taking my $40 elsewhere...like Dollar Tree...where I can by 40 pieces of crap I don't need, but where I at least know they won't overcharge me for a polka dot scrunchie.

The BNF: where sanity goes to die.

Loosely translated, this says, "Intellectual pain and suffering, THIS WAY."

There's not too much to tell about last week's trip to Paris, only because the majority of my time was spent in a building that sucked out parts of my soul that I'm just now starting to get back, a week later. I'm speaking, of course, about the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, or the BNF. It is only now that I can recall my time spent there without wanting to crawl under a blanket and die, or stab myself in the eye with a fork.

"How can it be that bad?" you ask. It's just a library, right? Wrong. It is so much more than a library. It is an institution designed specifically to inflict an immediate inferiority complex on anyone who dares step through its hallowed doors, while aesthetically offering up feelings of impending doom and crushing despair.

Alright, enough with the drama. It's not the worst place in the world (I imagine Guantanamo is marginally less enjoyable), it's just that I don't think it has ever in its existence given someone the warm fuzzies like so many other places in Paris are wont to do. I mean, look at this thing:

It's a beast. I imagine the architect who designed it was simultaneously tripping on acid and reading Orwell's 1984 when he came up with the concept. The library consists of a wooden rectangular platform with four glass skyscrapers, one on each corner. The middle is hollowed out and filled with a bizarre forest of evergreen trees, that, so help me God, are CHAINED INTO THE GROUND. In an effort to spruce it up, they also put various shrubbery around the platform, and then enclosed it in mesh wire cages to you know, give it a home-y feel.

The reading rooms are located ten stories underground, naturally, and the interior is primarily decorated in what I would term "industrial chic": lots of concrete and metal, a bit what I imagine a stalag looks like. To even get to the reading rooms, however, you have to endure a demoralizing interview with a librarian so that she can determine whether you are worthy enough to put your grimy American paws on a single volume of French sagesse. You must present various documents to prove your worth as a human being, such as a letter from your university, a doctor's note confirming your blood type, and four years' worth of tax returns.

God forbid you forget your passport and only have your driver's license and your student ID as well as four different credit cards on you as a form of identification. But I don't speak from experience.

Once the librarian decides you aren't a British robot come to steal secrets, she will take your grainy picture at an inopportune moment (when you are wiping away tears of frustrated exhaustion, most likely) and paste it on your card. You then thank her profusely, because she has done you a huge favor by allowing you to descend into the reading rooms, or what I like to call the Pit of Despair.

You then must go check your coat and put all of your belongings into a bizarre plastic see-through messenger bag, that will slap against your hip loudly if you move, and swing around to hit fellow pilgrims in the temple of knowledge when you walk by. This wins you many friends.

Once you ride fourteen escalators down to the P. of D., you must register for a place in a reading room, which are designated by letters of the alphabet and separated by subject matter. Again, God forbid, you want to research overlapping material, like I don't know, history and biographies. YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE, CRETIN. And choose carefully, because you can't access books from another room if you are not assigned a seat there.

To actually access books you must make online catalog requests, and wait an average of 3 hours before a notice will alert you that your books have been brought down out of the glass towers. You then go pick them up at the desk that serves the location of your assigned seat. (This system exists so the proles will not walk in and wreak havoc by picking up books and looking at them freely. This is a library, after all.)

Additionally, you must scan your card when you log onto a computer, walk through a set of doors, or use the toilets, so that Big Brother knows where you are at all times. I'm not even kidding. Every hour on the hour he comes on a huge screen and you have to cheer loudly.

Meanwhile, you struggle and stammer as you try to communicate your research needs to the librarians in French. They will make no effort to speak to you in English, so don't even try. This is no conversation with the waiter or the taxi driver. This is serious stuff, so bring a French dictionary so you can go back to your numbered seat and furtively look up the obscure words that you will no doubt need. (Do this hunched over under the table if you want to maintain your street cred, obviously.) Again, clearly, I don't speak from experience...

And then embrace that feeling of utter incredulity, when, on your very last day after countless hours of pathetic babbling in French, you hear the announcement over the loudspeaker of the quintessential French institution of academics, the storehouse of all French knowledge that would never dare to be anything but the Frenchiest, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen. The library is about to close. If you wish to reserve books for tomorrow, please let your librarian know."

In English.

Are you KIDDING ME?

And that was my time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The end.

Really, Martha? Really.

Am watching Martha Stewart try to convince me on her show that an $18,000 Hermes bag is a wise investment.

She actually just encouraged the audience not to eat for a month, because owning an expensive handbag is REALLY important.

And now she's going through her Birkin and showing us its contents.

Glad to see that prison time really gave her some perspective.

Let's Discuss: The GBF

The Girl Best Friend. The GBF. Why do they exist? To torture other women, naturally. Everyone knows the GBF secretly wants to be the GF. Why else would she text your boyfriend every hour on the hour? Leave him messages with cute secret acronyms that actually mean, "I'm in love with you. Let's make some babies?" Have him fly home to England this weekend for her birthday party?

And clearly, his gchat message that's a countdown until he sees her is just because she's a great friend.

I'm not speaking in specifics, though. Obviously.

They've been friends for like, ever. And of course there's no attraction there. Even though she's blonde and has huge boobs. Like, post-op Marisa Miller huge. (This is apparent from the copious photos of them together on Facebook. Lo and behold, her profile picture is of the two of them. The boy and her, not her boobs. Shocker. Not that I've looked or anything.)

Note: I am a brunette and a card-carrying member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. Consequently, I hate Marisa Miller with the fire of a thousand suns.

I know what you'll say, though. Obviously, if this is something I'm worried about, I've got some Deep-Seated Issues and am clearly insecure in my relationship. I'm actually quite secure, thank you, and he actually has never given any indication that he feels anything more than brotherly to her.

But I know women. Fuck, I am one. And I've got a sneaking suspicion that she feels a bit more than sisterly toward him.

Any woman is lying through her teeth if she tries to tell you this situation wouldn't bother her the tiniest bit.

The worst part of it is, what do you say? Any questions you may have or anything that expresses discomfort with the situation makes you seem like Insecure Psycho Woman, while she's just good old [insert stupid poncy British chick name here] who will laugh about it when he incredulously tells her that you think she's got feelings for him.

While secretly she's thinking, well duh, and delighting in the fact that the score is now her 1, you nil.

So instead, the best thing to do is rant in a passive-agressive way on your blog that no one you know reads. Naturally, and pray that GBFs everywhere read this and take this advice:

If you are a GBF, a true and good GBF, you will gracefully step aside and BACK THE FUCK OFF if your MBF, man best friend, starts dating someone. Those are Girl Rules. I play by them, and you darn well should, too.

Photo Credit: Christian Lantry/Getty Images

A heinous story to get you in the mood

"Why don't you just call it what it really is?"

"What?"

"S.P.A.D."

"What in the hell is S.P.A.D.?"

"Single Persons Awareness Day."

I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. While most of the nuns had died off by the time I arrived, there was still a vestige of Manhate that permeated the air of the 200-year-old Academy. It wasn't so much a hatred toward the opposite sex that school administrators emitted, more like fear coupled with an intense desire to believe that every single girl in the school did not do a 180 appearance-wise on Friday nights, tarting up to go drink cheap wine coolers in the parking lot of the boys' school before football games. Mostly, the Academy pretended that boys just didn't exist; it was easier that way, because without boys, there could be no sex, and without sex, eternal damnation of its students was a lot less likely.

Valentine's Day, however, was another story. All of a sudden, young (CHASTE!) love was a thing of beauty, to be celebrated and glorified by allowing us poor innocent young females to receive flower bouquets from our significant others. Yes, every Valentine's Day, without fail, the last hour of the day was spent with the Bouge (our ex-nun principal) or the Nipp (our 200-pound-plus dean of students) calling girls' names OVER THE ANNOUNCEMENTS to come to the office and pick up their massive bouquets of flowers and any other trinket (stuffed teddy bears, chocolates, spark plugs) a boy saw fit to send them.

This was one of the most miserable hours of the year for people like me, who for the first two years of high school studiously avoided any contact with the opposite sex out of pure, unadulterated fear, and for the last two avoided contact with them because I realized that the great majority were complete idiots. Girls like Alyssa or Kendall or Brittany, though, lived for this hour; it was the culmination of months of slutty outfits and SlimFast lunches. They rose triumphantly from their seats when the Nipp called their name, only to totter back in the room 10 minutes later, completely obscured by an epic spray of pink or cream roses (red would have been too serious; carnations just meant your man was a cheapskate - he may as well have sent you pork rinds and a can of Mountain Dew.) They would sit there, preening and purring (yes, purring), as other eager and secretly hopeful girls inquired as to who sent them - Ian (last week's flavor) or Jeff (this week's?)

Some girls couldn't take the shame of not receiving a public display of affection in plant form, and if they didn't happen to have a boyfriend come February, would insit their parents send them an-over-the-top arrangement at school to make up for it.

Is there a moral or even a point to this story? I don't know, kids, I just don't know. I actually did receive a bouquet senior year from my boyfriend, but by that time I was just so disgusted by the entire ritual that the flowers just seemed like a waste of money. Maybe the moral is that 200 lb. deans of students should not be allowed to perform sadistic Valentine's Day rituals designed to shame the unattached. Or maybe I just wanted to remind you that if tomorrow sucks for you, remember things could be worse.

(And if you're bored tomorrow, and want to like, I don't know eat an entire cheesecake or go key couples' cars while they're eating their candlelit meals, I'm available. I actually have someone I'm supposed to spend V-Day with, and he's on business. In Dallas. Where I went to high school, ironically. So...yeah, let's hang out.)

Not sticking her in the freezer, after all. Or, a retraction of my rage.

This is my dog.

Okay, so after I took some muscle relaxers and underwent an intense round of anger management therapy (call me Drew now), I had second thoughts about yesterday's vitriolic rant about the bodily functions of my roommate's dog . Live and let live, I say. As long as you stop peeing on my rug, we can coexist in peace.

So I took the rant down. But I left the picture of my dog up, because, well, I think she's pretty damn cute.

Happy Flippin' New Year

I could eat this and see what happens. That could be fun.

Ah, New Year's Eve. Has anyone ever had a truly great New Year's Eve? I feel like everyone puts so much emphasis on this one night - it's like adult prom, except it happens EVERY YEAR.

Seriously, if I have to hear another "It's going to be the BEST F*CKIN' NEW YEAR'S EVER, MAN. Like, really good," I think I'm going have a nervous breakdown, Anne Heche style. If you see a naked woman wandering into your backyard mumbling about her alien spirit guide, it could be me. Be nice. Maybe give me a blanket.

In all honesty, I have never had a truly great New Year's Eve. In fact, mine usually suck. Big time. The best one ended in a boyfriend's ranch catching on fire, and the worst ended with me crying drunkenly in Lesley Schornack's bathroom over that same boyfriend, followed up with me eating an entire plate of Tostino's pizza rolls and passing out at 11:37 p.m. Good times.

This one looks like it'll be okay, albeit low key. And by low key, I mean spent on my parents' couch, watching Sad People television, drinking sparkling shiraz (probably the highlight), and counting the hours until I return to D.C., my friends, and civilization in general.

I can tell you one thing, though - Tostino's pizza rolls will not be involved.

Oh! And if you have a heinous New Year's Eve story, please do share with the class.

I am single. Balls.

Why is December always the month when someone decides to crap all over my heart?

Like, seriously disturbed.

Soooo my roommate comes screaming up the basement stairs waving around a Cosmo (magazine, not drink), and lo and behold it is Ex Boyfriend Numero Uno on the Steamiest Confessions page giving a "MAN'S TAKE" on some girl ripping her panties off accidentally in front of her Crush or some such nonsense. I have no idea how he got in there, but it creeps me out enormously. That and the fact that he seems to have changed his name - it's really bizarre - on Facebook, too, so you know it's official, he's going by his name + an ending that isn't his, kind of like if I made everyone start to call me Katelyn, even though it is not and will not ever be my real name.

Don't know why I'm fixating on this - maybe it's the weird name change, maybe it's the fact that no matter how sleazy he acted, I always thought he was more normal and wouldn't end up being a genuine sleaze bag talking about TURN-ONS in a trashy magazine, maybe it's the fact that he snuck up on me in 2-D form when I haven't thought about him in a good long time. Don't know what it is, but somehow I'm writing about this instead of writing my term paper.

I told my mother this, my mother who sat through mind-numbing phone calls with the patience of a saint during the incredibly pathetic saga that was my sniveling, drawn-out, Breakup then Make Up then Breakup (for-like-real-this-time), and she said, "Maybe he's bipolar. This is the age it starts to come out."

I laughed until milk came out my nose, and then paused sadly while I wondered if it was true.

Whatever you do, don't order the bitch beer: Brasserie Beck

Boyfriend and I went to Brasserie Beck downtown last night and I fell in love - with the restaurant, of course. I love everything about it - the high ceilings, the modern, Mondrian-esque design, the tragically hip clientele, the FOOD, the book of Belgian beers they give you, with tasting notes for each beer - just a great dining experience.

I had moules frites (mussels and fries), which I always seem to order when they appear on the menu. They were pretty fantastic - plump and juicy, well-seasoned, and the fries, oh lord, the fries. They were thin and crispy and came with a trio of mayonnaise (Belgian-style), which I typically loathe, but I was practically licking the plate if that tells you anything. Boyfriend got the same, except he got his mussels with fennel and chorizo, while I stuck to the more traditional white wine, parsley, and garlic. We also split a cheese course, which was delicious, if slightly lacking in variation.

Brasserie Beck serves up typical Belgian brasserie food, but to be honest, the focus is not the food - it's the beer. Pages and pages (15, if I counted right) of all different types of Belgian beer, each served in a brand-specific glass for ultimate tasting pleasure, our server informed us. The fun was in choosing which beer to try next. I had a total of four: an Affligem Blond (crisp and flavorful, though I'm no beer aficionado), Delirium Tremens (my favorite), St. Louis Framboise (a raspberry-flavored lambic vaguely reminiscent of a wine cooler - bitch beer, pretty much), and a Kwak (caramel-y amber ale - yum.)

Cuteness: I was actually going to order a different beer than the Kwak, but the waiter interrupted me and told me he would bring me what I really wanted, and would overlook my lapse in judgment when I ordered straight up raspberry juice with the Framboise. He came over with the Kwak (which I lurved) in a bizzare beaker-like glass that had it's own wooden stand. How did this man know I love anything involving caramel (even a beer with a caramel finish) and that anything that's so pretentious it has to have its own wooden stand automatically captures my heart with its ridiculousness? Methinks I've found a soulmate.

One last note, to the chick next to us who insisted on having a 20-minute discussion with the sommelier about which wine she was "feeling:"

1. We know you like wine. We know you like showing off to people that you "know" wine. But when you practically scream to the restaurant that you're "LOOKING FOR SOMETHING WITH A HINT OF A PEPPERY FINISH, THAT OPENS UP TO THE PALATE EVER-SO-GRADUALLY," you make everyone in the vicinity want to engage in homicide. Please refrain, and get over yourself.

2. You are at a brasserie with a fifteen-page list full of brews you can't get anywhere else in the city. Man up and order the beer.

Photo credit: heatherfreeman.com.

And then I gouged out her eyes with a rusty spoon.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I met someone really rude last night and it totally caught me off guard. Someone, who, when she walked in the room and I stood up to shake her hand and introduce myself, merely stared at me like I had an extra appendage growing out of my head. Someone who made no effort at pleasant conversation, but every effort to belittle me with questions that I knew she already knew the answers to. And it's not like the questions were that insulting - it was just insulting that she would try and play a snarky little game with me, when I'm someone she should be nice to, for reasons upon which I won't elaborate. (You never know who reads these things, right?)

Is it naïve of me to expect a certain level of friendliness from people I encounter? She could have at least been an adult about it and waited until I had left to put on her bitchy hat...

I comfort myself with the conviction that her bad manners are a poor reflection on her, not on me.

With that and copious amounts of red wine. And a cookie or two.



Photo Credit: Sydney Morning Herald (smh.com)