1a. I promptly forgot about the city when I got back to Portland and saw the pink sky over Casco Bay.

1b. Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about being in Maine and being in New York and being in places in general. It’s habit by now. At least I don’t bite my nails.

2. One of the (many) things I miss about zine publishing is the schedule: one or two issues a year, 32 booklet pages. For me that is a perfect level of casual-writing output. Frequent enough to be serial, spaced far enough apart to allow for rethinking, revising and general ruminating. The truth is, if I didn’t get paid to type things on a website every day I probably would not type things on a website every day.

2a. This is one of the (many) reasons I don’t type things here every day, or even every week.

2b. Or here, even.

3. In case anyone’s still reading, here is a picture of some sled dogs I met last month.

3a. Things sled dogs eat include: raw venison, raw smelt, hard-boiled eggs with the shell still on, raw carrots.

So when I say “I went to the cell phone store to look at new phones,” what I mean is “after acquiring massive amounts of information about various phones available on my carrier, I went to the cell phone store to look at the three I liked best and also to pepper the salesman with questions about specifics and plan costs.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m never a jerk about this. There’s no excuse for being a jerk to customer service people. I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day, or if the service is subpar, even. No excuse. I know this as a former customer service worker and also as a human being — look, it’s not rocket science. Don’t be a jerk. Do ask your questions.

At the store, with the devices in front of me, I ruled out one of the three contenders while I waited for the salesman to finish helping another customer. That left two options, let’s call them the “Blueberry Concavity” and the “Mamsung Palin,” to avoid any accusations of shilling. I quite liked the Blueberry Concavity but the Mamsung Palin had a number of attractive features, so I thought I’d see what the salesman had to say about the merits of one vs. the other. After pretending to listen to my preferences and concerns, he strongly recommended the Blueberry Concavity. “It comes in purple!” he said.

It comes in purple! It comes in purple! Oh boy! I am such a special princess!

But even special princesses need to access their data, so I asked a couple of questions about data plans and syncing with multiple email accounts, and the salesman was happy to provide technical details about the Blueberry Concavity…

…to my boyfriend. Who was standing a foot behind me, staring alternately at the wall and at his own phone (which, to be honest, isn’t as slick as either the Blueberry Concavity or the Mamsung Palin). Have you ever performed “improv theater”? Shut up, yes you did, in high school. I felt like I was stuck in a terrible scene with a selfish performer who simply would not “throw me the ball,” no matter how many times I “threw the ball” to him:

Me (to Salesman): This new version of the Blueberry Concavity has built-in wi-fi, right? Is that something that’s going to activate automatically whenever I’m near a signal, or do I just enable it when I want it?

Salesman (to Disinterested Boyfriend): It’s got the wi-fi, and you turn it on if you need it. There’s a setting where you can manage your connections.

Disinterested Boyfriend: …

Me (to Salesman, loudly): Great! Thanks! I think I will buy this phone, with my money!

Salesman (to Disinterested Boyfriend): Fantastic. If you’ll step over to the register, I’ll get the paperwork going.

I know what you’re wondering. Yep, I bought the purple Blueberry Concavity (according to the package, it’s “smoky violet”). I liked it better than the black one, and I always toss my phone in my bag or my pocket, and it’s easier to find if it’s a light color. I’d have gone with silver if that were an option, but it wasn’t. Also: I happen to like purple and its variant colors. Including smoky violet. In fact, today, I’m wearing a button-down shirt that’s distinctly mulberryish.

Yet for a good thirty seconds there at the store I debated my preference for the smoky violet Concavity, thinking I should choose the black one to make a point, to keep this guy from thinking he knew what kind of customer I am. You’re not closing a sale with that “It comes in purple” line, bub, not after talking over my head for the past ten minutes. Then I came to my senses. Just as there is never a good reason for being rude to customer service people, there is never a good reason to question things like your favorite colors. What the hell is the point of that? Why should anyone ever do that? You can’t make me do that, salesguy. I’m going to get what I want, and the thing I want happens to come in a color I enjoy. Done and done.

I should add that the salesman was wearing a pink shirt. It looked very nice on him, though I personally do not care for pink.

I have, however, seen every single episode of Three’s Company. And Benson. And at least 95% of the entire Law & Order series.

This weekend I found myself in a maternity store on the Upper East Side, where I saw strange and terrible things I never knew existed: bras with snaps, maxi-pads for boobs (?!), Sevens with an eight-inch strip of black elastic sprouting from the waistband. At the register they sold boxes of hard candies called Preggie-Pops. I looked at the ingredients list. It was nothing but brown rice syrup and flavoring, but the price was $6 for 30 lozenges because the box featured a picture of a circular woman smiling in a field. She had one sweater tied around her neck and another sweater flung casually over her shoulder. Perhaps this is normal, for the Preggie-Pops demographic.

Things make sense according to what you know. You live in your rickety wooden frame of reference built from scraps of interest, memory and circumstance, and every now and then you realize there are strangers outside the window and they’re speaking in tongues. Do you need a translator, or do they?

I don’t know. I’m tired, I guess. I know how to say milk in Polish (mleczny) and I know the way to Waldoboro (up Route 1, hang a right). Everything else will have to wait.

Anyway, I’m fine, in varying shades of purple. The lesson here is always wear a helmet when bicycling. I was wearing my helmet and if I hadn’t been I might not be typing this right now, and just think how sad you’d be. Also, eff you U.S. health care system ($1,200 for a CAT scan “just to be sure” on the noggin front? Deductible votes no!) and thank heavens I’m a filthy hippie who knows how to take care of myself (ginger for inflammation; arnica for bruising; loads of B vitamins; hatha yoga to prevent stiffness; small quantities of organic beef for iron; an acupuncture session to hit the reset button). Free advice, there you go, no copay necessary.

* * *

I’ve spent a lot of time lying on the couch, giving myself a crash course in American rom-coms. There is no helmet for that, as far as I know, but there should be. It should’ve been called He’s Just Not That Into You Because You Are a Terrible Movie And He Resents Having His Intelligence Insulted For Two Hours, and 27 Dresses Plus a Free Shotgun For Shooting Your Eyes Out Afterwards.

On the other hand, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People was very good, Kirsten Dunst notwithstanding.

It is nice to have an excuse to lie around and watch movies, even if some of the movies make me angry and my DVD player is held together with Scotch tape.

* * *

Comrade Trying to Schedule Plans: So what’s your deal?
MPS: I’m going to raise commodity prices by establishing a system of “domestic allotments” that will create artificial scarcity conditions
MPS: OH WAIT NO that was FDR’s deal

Gchat: How to lose friends and alienate people.

* * *

Current obsession: traffic islands.

* * *

Fetal joke: Something about the Senate voting down ACORN funding on account of the prostitution video thing and the Senate’s continued funding, via payroll, of David Vitter. (Joke never carried to term. It will not be missed.)

* * *

So what do you think? Brain damage, yes/no?

In the midst of thinking about these matters I flew to New York to help a friend move to the West Coast — so much transition in so short a time — and on a rainy Saturday morning, muscles aching, I woke at six o’clock to put on my black dress and nice shoes, because that is what you do. Smith Street was still except for pigeons and the lingering smell of Friday’s beer, but Atlantic Avenue was bustling already, mostly with men muttering to themselves in doorways. After five years of city living I learned to ignore men who hurl insults or come-ons, but that day, suddenly, I was indignant — couldn’t these cretins see my black dress? Didn’t they know this wasn’t standard garb for Saturday morning? Wasn’t it obvious where I was going?

No and no and no. A man with animal eyes stumbled after me. “Hey pretty. Pretty lady. Come here. You know you want to. I’ll pay you to come over here. Hey!” I kept walking, feet and face forward, brisk, holding back fists and tears. He screamed. “I’ll pay you money! You look like you should buy a thesaurus!”

New York, like death, is at once obvious and incomprehensible.

The train to Long Island was almost empty. My fellow passengers and I stared out the streaky windows at the grey buildings and sipped our paper cups of coffee. I had a copy of The New Yorker on my lap but I couldn’t read it, there were too many words. I skipped around my iPod — the only thing I’ve wanted to hear lately is music involving British and/or Kiwi men, pre-1990, this has been going on for weeks — and none of it sounded good, so I listened to the train’s rattle and those blasted piercing beeps it emits at each stop. I was relieved yet not relieved when the next stop was mine, because it meant finality.

Catholics, of course, do casket viewings and then full Masses. I was less prepared than I thought I would be for both of these things. It had been some time since I’d set foot in a church, especially with the entire family around, and in the middle of the proceedings an urgent whisper spread from one pew to the next: someone had meant to to mention that the granddaughters would be presenting the gifts before Communion, so, a little freelance altar serving, and as it turns out the sense memory of carrying a small glass cruet of wine remains intact after twenty years. I’d forgotten how well I remembered that.

This sounds so weighty and sad and it is weighty and sad. But it is also, in my family, un-weighty and un-sad. The use of the phrase “family-friendly” to indicate an absence of cursing or sarcasm has always amused me, given the things my people say, and at a funeral no less. What pride I felt, when my youngest cousin — #14 of 14 — took an opportunity to crack wise about the names of the dead buried in marble vaults around our grandmother’s casket! How soothing to hear my uncle do the one about the meth addict trying to study! What Zen to reminisce about Ozarka bottled water, a beverage we have been discussing at length for no particular reason since 2006, when we encountered it at my cousin Joseph’s wedding! And by the time Matt was explaining his travails with an freakishly deep ladle it was almost as if rain and death weren’t possible, as if nothing could hurt and there were no mean words in the world, as if our clothes weren’t black and time could stand still long enough to be grasped.

In case you couldn’t stomach it yourself, the Palin tribute shows a clip from her Jan. 19, 2009 appearance on Beck’s inaugural Fox News show:

BECK: I think the problem with most politicians is they haven’t been at a Wendy’s drive-through in quite some time. You know what I mean? They’ve never actually said, “Yeah, just give me a Frosty, please, with the Oreos crunched up inside.” I think that’s a problem. I’m gonna ask politicians, “When was the last time, Governor, that you were at a Wendy’s and had a Frosty? And you ordered it yourself.”

Now flash back to the December 10, 2008 episode of Beck’s radio show, in which he described his speaking tour in Idaho:

BECK: The only problem with it was, I’m sorry, Idaho, but you have far too many signs that say “Next exit, 47 miles.” And when you are at least 47 miles away and you can’t trust that that exit has some sort of dispenser that could give you a Frosty, I just don’t know. You know what I’m saying?

Some guy named STU: It’s very, very understandable, Glenn, when you are away from Wendy and her services. I know you get very disappointed.

Mind you, this was just one month after Beck suffered a horrific assault at a Wendy’s where he was “going to get Frosties” because “everyone wants a Frosty.” You’d think the trauma of being verbally attacked by a racist Nazi truck driver might sour a man on this particular brand of frozen corn syrup, whey, and cellulose gum, but apparently not.

I can’t find any mention of an official deal between Wendy’s and Beck, but it seems to me a savvy fast-food exec might start thinking up ways to monetize this shillfest — also too, I hear Glenn could use a side of sponsorships with his Frosty these days. (They are delicious if you dip them.)

The thing is, I knew I was getting sick several days ago, even before the headache set in, because I started experiencing two familiar (if bizarre) symptoms:

Symptom #1: A brain malfunction that replaces a word or phrase with another word or phrase, completely unrelated, also completely nonsensical. The headline “Debate Continues at Town Hall Meetings” became “Debate Continues at Pork Rind Meetings.” An email from an editor asking for a bio became a request for a door. It always takes me a few moments to recognize that I am having this malfunction, and during those moments I am shocked to think that CNN perpetrated such a ridiculous error, or that my editor thinks I can build doors.

Symptom #2: Mentally writing jokes that are not jokes. They feel like jokes, in that they have an intro or a setup, maybe a reference to current events and then some sort of “punch line,” but really they are just meaningless assemblages of words, often with overtones of violence. Recent actual examples: Did you hear the one about the watch fob that shot your mom, because she is so ugly? And: So this dog walks into a bar and says, “Give me a whiskey, make it a double.” Bartender stares at the dog and then shoots himself, because of Socialism. Not funny. Right. But whenever one of these things floats across my consciousness it makes me laugh, because I assume it’s a joke, and then an hour or so later I realize it’s not.

Diagnosis: Yeah. I’m sure I don’t want to know.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make myself a cup of hot vertebrate and fucking Eric Cantor and you can all fucking laundromat and go to bed.

A few years ago I tried to popularize the term ‘braffed,’ a word to indicate a situation that has been overwhelmed by irritating mediocrity. Example: “Argh! My boss rewrote my presentation and put three typos in it!” “Man, you got braffed.” It never caught on, but once I tested the Ruined Music email list software by sending myself a message that read “Test test, you got braffed,” and in a stroke of misfortune, sent the message to the entire list. I braffed myself!

Zooey Deschanel
I want to think I’m wrong on this. Maybe if I hung out with Zooey Deschanel we’d discover that we have sooooo much in common, and we’d run around the Lower East Side shopping for adorable vintage bracelets, and she’d convince me to cut my hair in thick chunky bangs, and then we’d drink kombucha and giggle and swing our purses as we skipped down the street and then a unicorn would fly overhead and vomit glittery stars and we’d hold hands and promise to be BFs for F. It’s possible.

Then again maybe not.

Conor Oberst
Hey Conor. Yeah, look, a lot of people didn’t like George W. Bush. Most of us were able to deal with this without resorting to tripe like “Does God suggest an oil hike when the president talks to God?,” but then again most of us are not bugeyed professional daydreamers in Prada suits. Aw, I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Quick, someone get Conor an absorbent sweater, I think he’s going to cry.

Sandra Lee
I have seen this lady on television maybe three times in my life, on account of not having cable (move to Canada you goddamn commie), but three times was enough to convince me. Plus surely you’ve seen the mashup clips that are circulating on the internet, this one being the best/worst (pet peeve: ‘expresso’), via Salad & Candy:

***BONUS: A Person I Have Already Punched in a Bar***

Sufjan Stevens. Except it wasn’t in a bar, it was on the sidewalk outside a bar, and it wasn’t an angry punch, more like a friendly one. Also he was very drunk so I don’t think he felt it.