The Beautiful Maiden and the Cottage in the Woods

Once upon a time there was a beautiful maiden. All the eligible princes of the land yearned for her hand, but she was quite difficult to please. They brought her gifts of flowers and jewels, livestock and elixirs, silks and all the foreign delicacies one could imagine. But each and every gift she refused.

Frustrated with these lackluster lads, she hastily escaped from the watchful eyes of her guardians, out her bedroom window and off into the nearby forest. No moonlight shone down in that late hour, and as she wandered on she became afraid. A wolf howled from behind her and she felt eyes peering at her from every ghastly crevice of the thick wood. Starting to run, she quickly stumbled as her dress caught on a branch. Terrified, she looked up, only to see a small cottage enlightened by a low fire within. She entered cautiously and found inside an old woman.

"What brings you here, my dear?" the woman inquired. And the maiden replied, "The richest of the royals have asked for my hand, but they favor me only for my looks. I had to get away!" And with an eery smile the old woman exclaimed, "I have just the thing!"

So just as dawn broke above the mountains in the east, the maiden left the old woman's cottage quite differently than how she had entered it. Her face was now disfigured and ugly, warts strewn across her visage like a constellation in the sky.

"Finally!" she thought, "now I can find my one true love, who'll desire me for my intellect above all else, and who only then can be rewarded with my beauty!"

Unfortunately, the maiden overestimated her intellect. She had very little personality to speak of, and had significant troubles holding a conversation with anyone above the age of 6 or 7. Though she sought diligently for her one true love, she found not a one. And though she tried to return home, her family didn't recognize her, and thus rejected her. Finally, she resigned herself to make what little money she could by prostituting herself throughout the closest villages. She died just a few short years later of herpes-related complications. And as it turned out, her ugly face was quite permanent, even in death.

And the moral of this story, of course, is: Never turn down a perfectly good present.

The Pot Roast Recipe from the Gods

Start with the good stuff: prime boneless beef chuck. It helps to tie it with string.

Those Other Ingredients:

• Onion (chopped, as much as you can fit in the pot)
• Ketchup- just a bit
• Worcester Sauce- just a bit
• Garlic (fresh chopped and powder)- lots
• Paprika- some
• Salt and Pepper- plenty
• A dash of Rosemary
• A dash of Thyme
• Pomegranate Juice- a whole bottle of it
• Beef bullion- enough
• *Baby carrots, celery, and red potato at your own discretion

This is why I love crockpots: take all the above ingredients and stick them in the pot. Place on low heat. Let cook for about 8 hours. Eat.

Ok, it's only slightly less complicated than this. For the potatoes one should wait until about 3 hours before serving, then put the potatoes into the pot. Otherwise they get overcooked.

Bonus Points! If you want to make a quick glaze for the roast, smother that hunk of meat in wine and a few tablespoons of flour about an hour before serving. You can't go wrong.

And yes, the pomegranate juice is the secret ingredient. Feel honored; I know I did.

In the end, you might just get something that looks like this:

When I'm an Elementary School Teacher, I'll Keep My Shotgun in my Desk

When I was in middle school I saw the documentary Bowling for Columbine for the first time. As a 12 year old, I was both outraged and confused. While every teenager I've ever met detests high school at some points, I couldn't imagine someone hating it so much that they'd prepare and enact a plan to kill their fellow students. In high school we would have practice lockdowns several times a year, where we'd crouch in the corner of a darkened classroom behind locked doors, and the local police department would go door to door ensuring that we'd retreated correctly. I didn't understand the point, since nothing like that would ever happen in my town.

Now I'm a junior in college and I've witnessed the worst school shooting in recent history, at an elementary school. This is something I cannot accept. News sources are saying 27 are dead at this small-town suburban K-4 school, 18 children. But how is the media going to explain this one to us? What kind of justification will they give us for an adult setting out to terrorize and slaughter children? When I learned about the Columbine massacre, even as a "tweenager" the first thought that came to me was that guns should be outlawed. This thought formed more fully as I grew older: the only citizens that should be able to legally acquire guns are police officers and military.

I understand the debilitating features of my plan. Pro-second amendment morons often complain that if guns are taken away from the law-abiding citizens, the criminals will of course still have them and use them against the "good" Americans. But research has shown that in cases when an armed intruder entered a home of gun-owners, the gun-owners were more likely to shoot themselves than the criminal. I also understand that enforcing such a law would be vastly expensive and nearly impossible. But can you really put a price on protecting our children? Gun advocates iterate again and again: "People kill people, not guns." But you know what? The guns make it a hell of a lot easier. The CT murderer today would not have massacred nearly as many innocent children as he did if he'd been stripped of his weapons. Guns distance the killer from the victim in a way that is unacceptable; if someone wants another human being dead so badly that they'd commit the murder themselves, they better damn well do it personally, because we're talking about people, not livestock. Mass murder would not be possible without guns. It's as simple as that.

How can we ensure our kids will be safe? It's simple. Either no one can have a gun, or everyone must be required to carry one. Which of these extremes seems more likely?

Lately I've been narrowing down potential career options, and I've come to the conclusion that I'd be happiest teaching elementary school. Children of that age are the most fun. They're creative and curious, eager to learn and socialize. In my opinion there is no such thing as an evil child. But there are evil men; there are evil adults. So if and when I find myself teaching 1st grade in a suburb of New York City, I plan to keep a firearm in my desk. Because I'll be fucking damned if I'm going to let anyone hurt a bunch of innocent children just because they feel like it.

Celebrate Good TImes...C'mon!

I am in New York City at least once a month. I have family there, I have friends there, I have a lot of memories there. But I'm not quite sure I could ever live there.

There are a lot of reasons in favor of my someday moving to NYC. My brother and his wife live there and will probably always live close by. They just had a daughter, my niece Lena Rose, who I am determined to be close to both physically and emotionally for her entire childhood life. Two out of the four (only four!) schools that have the graduate program I am looking for are located in NYC. New York is close to my former home town in NJ. There's always something to do. There's always someone around. And many if not most of my friends will move here eventually.

And yet, I've never felt comfortable there. Any time my skirt is cut a bit short or my top a bit low I feel self-conscious. I feel like every man I pass is leering at me. And I've never felt like that in Boston. Sure, Boston has it's sketchy areas, many of which I've frequented over the course of my college education, but I've always felt the undeniable sense that Bostonians look out for one another. People will hold the door for you or come to your aid if you trip or let you take the first cab or stand up on the T so you can take their seat. Men, specifically, are not nearly as scary in Boston. Once in a while I'll get a whistle but a man would never grab at me just because he felt like it. And in fact, if that did happen in Boston, I'd bet hard cash that any nearby male witnesses would spring into action to defend the aforementioned damsel in distress.

I'm the kind of person that people are almost always nice to. It's a running joke in my family that I'm destined to marry a cab driver because about half the times I've taken a cab, the driver has professed his deepest darkest secrets to me and then bestowed upon me his "card" so that I can call him "day or night, whenever I need a ride." When I took a cab out of Brooklyn last night, my cab driver and I belted "Celebrate Good Times, C'Mon!" on the freeway at midnight. It was a hilariously typical moment for me. But despite my natural ability to dazzle strangers, people are not that nice to me in New York. When I smile at them, they don't always smile back. When I hold the door for them, they don't always make eye contact, let alone say thank you. I have the unsettling sense that New York City would crush my spirit. And I don't want that to happen. It's nice being nice.

Someday there may be no logical choice but to move to the city. At least I'll have a few more years in my hometown of choice to mentally prepare.

To Work Or Not To Work

I don't quite understand what people mean when they say that their career "chose them." And yet, it seems that all the happiest individuals invariable utilize this cliche. And this being the case, it's quite worrisome that I haven't felt an intense draw towards one profession or another yet in my life.

I know I want to work with kids. At least, I'm 85% sure that for most of my life I will want to work with kids. But these days there are a trillion different ways to help children. Do I want to work one-on-one or take the command of a group? Do I want to work with normal kids or kids with developmental disorders and disabilities? Which kinds of disorders? Which kinds of disabilities? What age kids? Lord send me a sign because I'm sadly stumped.

I think I might want to be an elementary school teacher. I also think I might want to be a therapist. I also think I need to stop thinking so much. I suppose I can always change careers. Again, and again, and again. I don't know where I'll be two years from now or two years from then. Hopefully Vietnam or Chile. Maybe in New York City with my brother and beautiful niece, maybe not. Maybe I'll be a marine biologist. Only time will tell.

Orthodox Jews on Animal Rights

Tonight the concept was posed to me that while the Torah (and Bible) contains strict law forbidding the harm or torture of any animal, human beings are still considered above them. According to this Rabbi, although animals could display many if not most of the same emotions as humans, their inferior intellect means that humans shall always reign supreme. Human beings are special.

I do not agree.

This view point makes several assumptions that are flat out wrong. First, this supposes that some almighty power has made the executive decision that humans be special. But existential biology would emphasize that humans are the result of natural selection. We are the way we are entirely by chance and it might have been any other phylum of animal that made this ascent towards intellect. Furthermore, all animals in existence are a result of natural selection. Not just humans. This means that each species is perfect in and of itself. And even if one assumes that some higher power exists, then she must have been perfectly content with each creature she created. Each one uniquely different from the next. Each one perfect. Each one special.

Now this view point also assumes that humans are special because they were made in God's image, while other species were not. More specifically, this view assumes that being made in God's image is a positive thing. It may not be. God is a lone wolf. She has no meaningful relationships to speak of, frequent mood swings, and temper tantrums. And yet, she is a cocky bastard. She believes herself to be the greatest power in the universe, and asks us to worship her. And she has the audacity to create billions of beings "just like her"- arrogant, self-centered, and ignorant of their own insignificance. A wise man once told me that I should not believe everything I read. Well I read in the Bible that God is all-powerful, and that myself- along with the rest of the human populace- was made in her image. In all likeliness, this is not a good thing.

And a person who claims humans are greater than all other species due to our intellect is also assuming that our intellect is greater than that of any other animal. I don't really buy into this either. There are things animals understand and communicate with one another that humans couldn't possibly comprehend. Have you ever been to a greyhound convention? These dogs are abused, starved, and forced to race to survive for years of their lives. And when you attend a convention for dogs rescued from these horrid conditions: silence. Greyhounds do not bark at one another. Not at all. They do not need any sort of verbalization to communicate, and are thusly much more advanced than many of the humans I know, who for some reason cannot express themselves even with the entire English dictionary at their disposal. Elephants have better memory spans than humans. Octopi can navigate mazes and trick their handlers to steal fish. Squirrels are able to hide food in numerous locations, then retrieve it months later. Dolphins have their own language and use tools in their natural environment. Chimpanzees can learn sign language, and exhibit levels of empathy I've seen lack in many humans. Animals are a hell of a lot smarter than we think.

So perhaps before asserting that human beings are the center of the universe, we should reassess whether humans could even be considered the most important living beings on this planet. We shouldn't believe everything we read.

How to Lose the Cushiest Job on the Planet

A little background info: I work in a swanky apartment building at 81 Beacon Street. I'm the front desk/concierge person there. This means that I literally sit at a desk for 6 to 8 hours at a time, and my only job is to get up and open the door for the residents. There are only 20 residents. And they're all so inconceivably rich that they are rarely all in the building at once. They fly south for winter. And spend their weekends in this or that five star hotel in this or that country. Typically, I might come in contact with two residents per hour. Often less. The rest of the time I'm specifically instructed to do whatever I want (mainly homework and watching TV). And yet, I'm in fear of losing my job.

This is a cautionary tale.

1. Refrain from setting fires.

My first day of work I managed to set a sandwich on fire in a toaster oven, causing the entire first floor to fill up with smoke. Had the fire gone on just a few minutes longer, the alarms would have went off and the entire building would have been evacuated. And the sprinklers would have gone off. Needless to say, they took away the toaster oven.

2. Refrain from visiting pornographic sites while on the job.

At work, I frequently watch TV shows I've missed, from "illegal" sites. These types of sites often have ads and popups for bizarre fetish websites. On more than one occasion now, my boss has come behind my desk to see an enormous ad for "barely legal" girl on girl action strewn across my screen.

On second thought, this might be the only reason I've kept my job this long.

3. Do your job.

With a job description as simple as "open door when residents arrive," it might seem downright impossible to screw up. And yet. I sit about a yard from the front door, and can hear and see when people enter the building, so that door is rarely a problem. However the back door to the residence is a short sprint away. And even when I see a resident entering the building from a monitor, the distance between them and the backdoor is half that between myself and the same place.

At this point, the residents here probably think I jog in place on the job, because every time I greet them at the back, I'm out of breath. There have been times when I've tripped and fallen trying to get to the door in time. There have been times when I've been this close to making it, and nearly ran into them because I was just a second too late.

4. Do not write blog posts about your job while on the job.

My boss just walked in.
I attempted to change the screen quickly so he wouldn't know I was writing about him.
The screen I changed it to had several ads for Naughty School Girls.
My life.