I don't have my Didion here (The Year of Magical Thinking), but I know there's a brilliant, simple, clean line about the truest relationship between two (involved) people being like a lifelong conversation.

I learned of one ending some time ago and never had the opportunity to clarify why until earlier today. Maybe the conversation never really started. It was clear there was love and that it was real and that once its lifeline had been cut both parties were left empty and in the depths of something dark, but for now it could never be clear that that alone could really be enough. I know that one of the people dearest to me must have hurt, in that raw, flesh throbbing, gutteral moan kind of way, but this knowledge is in hindsight and reacting to history and not the present. Might it not have hurt at all?

But I know it did, and it does; I can see it in the distracted look in the face, the glassy, hollow stare and the short breathless pang. The other does really deserve to wake up beside someone who will find them exciting, and the person themself deserves to feel a rush - at the expense of such a clean but unnatural cut?

"The males of some bird species exhibit the equivalent of graying hair. As they age, the ultraviolet reflectance of parts of their plumage begins to vary. Birds have ultraviolet-sensitive vision, so females begin to see the males differently, which can affect their choice of mate."

I mean...shit. It took a science times article to report this? This is true of humans too...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/arts/14clay.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=5a940ed1d3e5d6a4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Now why on earth would this man have to struggle to house his mother's phenomenal collection of black history memorabilia chronicling the African American experience? BECAUSE YOU BASTARD GET RICH QUICK RAP STARS HAVE NO TRUE APPRECIATION FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN POPULARLY EXPLOIT.

Sure, P Diddy/Puff Daddy/Sean Combs and friends would have you believe that their struggles represent the true modern black experience - it sells records to spin tales of police brutality in eights (and no, I do not doubt for a minute that it indeed is a widespread problem,) however the fact of the matter remains that Bad Boy entertainment and its dashing president and founder represents nothing but the self absorbed myopic view of new money revelling in its own importance.

Allan Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Sean Combs, Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons
- all of these "moguls" (I refuse to remove the quotation marks) have the potential to catch the Oprah bug and give back to the community they so cleverly exploited to make their gains. I don't know of an awful lot of white people willing to beg, steal, or borrow to spend $90 on BabyPhat.

Instead, they blow money on White Parties and leave these first edition Langston Hughes languishing in a garage.

Christmas in the city is a fucking pain in the ass. Tourists flood the damn streets with their necks permanently craned upward looking at all the lights (yes, Saks has lights. No, they are not different from last year - you'd know if you'd lived here), blocking pedestrian traffic. It makes trying to buy anything on Fifth a fucking nightmare. Fat people should not wear puffy down jackets; they make them take up more space and they simply make them look more like a beached whale. I hate tourists.