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Alert level: Cuddly

Blogs are so, like, stupid.

iCan't believe iHave one.

Misery loves danish

Subway: drink fresh

Can you believe I only know three people who have blogs? Lame.

Ask Why Not
Insomnia Haiku
Your Treat

  Annie Barrett is a writer living in New York City. Annie Barrett. Annie Barrett is probably insane. Annie Barrett doesn't care.

Hmmm... what's for breakfast? I'll take a medium hazelnut coffee and the Living Arts section, thanks. File this under Most Random (or Most Effective -- you choose) Placement of an Egg & Cheese Sandwich... Ever.

I mean, wow. It's even on a croissant, which is hands-down the best way to enjoy E&C. And it has nothing to do with the newspaper. It's quite possibly the most perfect image I have ever discovered on the Internet.

How could the two items possibly relate? Are NYT readers the best readers in the city, so therefore would likely choose the best breakfast sandwich in the city? In that way, the E&C could be like a compliment to the Times' clientele. Or maybe it's like a lollipop at the eye doctor's office -- sit through this stodgy newspaper (or get blinding drops placed into your eyes) and you will have earned a delicious, fat-drenched breakfast treat! Or maybe the image suggests that the NYT is as sexy, desirable, and downright tasty as an E&C croissant. Or, I guess, the ad could be suggesting that for the price of a breakfast sandwich, one could instead have a subscription. But that goes against the apparent continuity of the sandwich/paper combo and besides, people in New York don't usually eat E&C because they have to keep skinny for each other. It's the unspoken bond: You don't eat, I won't either, and we'll all get depressed and strung out together. Party!

Those are four okay theories. But look closely. I've been missing the point. Check the headline right below the E&C. This has to be intentional. Much like the U.S. as concerns invading Iraq, readers of the NYT will have the opportunity to "attack" egg & cheese sandwiches from three unique angles. Or more, since the average Times reader is undoubtedly much more creative than the average U.S. citizen.

I'm really not quite sure where this website has yet to go now. After this, everything else will just seem mediocre. Like the other New York City newspapers! I get it!

Speaking of mediocre, new glasses:

How creepy is this? I feel like they should use this photo on public service announcements about stalkers.
They'd say SHE'S WATCHING YOU, or something better. Oooh.

Oh, and I've eaten Chipotle twice since the calculator incident. I can't help it; I just found five free-burrito passes from the glory days of being friends with freshly minted NYU housing employees.

I'm actually sick of Chipotle, mostly because I feel even more uncool than usual when I step into the land of primary colors and blonde wood from the harsh, gritty streets of Manhattan. Okay, from the nice, Village-y part of Sixth Avenue. I'm such a liar. But really, tell me where to go for good guac (which I think should be a flavor of milkshake). Preferably downtown. I can't be bothered, you know.

Who am I kidding updating barely once a week? I'm like The Onion, except not funny and instead garlicky, as I've just discovered hummus. Maybe I should rename the site The Sun-Dried Tomato. I just checked, and that's actually available. Hmmm.

Check this out -- it's a pop-up window that I didn't notice for about three days. I love that it says "DR," features a graphic of a man getting suffocated by a face mask (or drowned, as they seem to be underwater), and has a list of the "Top 5 Drugs."

Hey, it's nice out! Some other people realized the same thing on Sunday and came by to lounge on my roof. I thought the dying flowers and unnecessary blue boa were both nice touches. I like to put guests at ease with a refreshing mix of divaliciousness and general decay.

Also, at the top of the page, check out DR's three new mascots: the tambourine trio at Rose's Turn! They don't know that they're mascots, and I doubt they'll find out. If they do, does that mean I stop getting free shots?

Rebecca was supposed to come to NYC this weekend but never showed. Guess what, Rebs? I didn't really miss you, but the Tea Cookie Travel Pack courtesy of Deeborne Express sure did! These were set aside from my much larger box especially for you.

She is so pissed right now.

In Depressing News, here's the Chipotle Nutrition Calculator. My burrito was 1447 calories, and I didn't even get to see it. Try it yourself and post your score. Do it. And don't change the number. And answer this: doesn't that amazing-looking pico in that site's top graphic just make you want it even more? They must have stolen that idea from DR's nacho bar of summer '04. There's even a "Change Theme" pull-down menu with different options like "cheese" and "lettuce." Ewwwh, lettuce.

Let's make this brief, as I have a Very Important Haircut in the morning and need to mentally prepare. It's going to be short. We're talking boy short. Bermuda short, even. Think I'm kidding?

Yeah, I'm kidding. Keep your shorts on. While walking home from the illustrious RewardTV office, I stopped on W. 10th in between 5th and 6th to bend over an enchanting display of hydrangeas in a concrete box garden outside a luxury apartment building. Aww. A strange sense of delight swept over me upon seeing the garden, and I think it was confused because it had to fight the powerful presences of resentment and hate that usually accompany my ogling of luxury buildings.

But, you know, springtime. And shit. So I'm bent over, my face completely smashed into a fragrant white cluster. It's two in the morning so I relax a little, knowing no one is out walking around and can see me. To anyone else, this would be a good reason to sprint the hell home before getting mugged or attacked, but to me it seems a perfect opportunity to laze with my face in someone else's courtesy flowers. Nice.

I close my eyes, rockin' out to the anniPod. I look like a second grader who has finished her work in class and is resting face-down on her desk. But she doesn't HAVE to rest her head. She just does it to brag to the other kids that she's faster, therefore smarter, therefore better, than them. Precocious little twerp.

Huh? Anyway, when my lame-ass song (I can't even bear to name it) finishes, I open my eyes and seriously consider uprooting the flowers and taking some home. This actually goes through my head. Luckily at that moment, I notice the doorman, who has been sitting five feet away from me for well over a minute. He's basically gaping and I wouldn't be surprised if he could read minds and suspected my criminal intentions. I even look pretty sketchy, for me anyway, as I'm wearing a legitimate do-rag because I didn't feel like showering. A do-rag. In New York. I'm not kidding. And sorry, but it's going to happen again.

The point is, I could be one of those homeless yet oddly privileged-looking white kids who sit on the streets with cardboard signs reading something like "Please Help a Peaceful Soul" (read: "Hey Jackass, For All You Know I Live in the NYU Dorm and Don't Look Now, But You're In My Senior Independent Study Film Project"). In any case, I look weird. Doorman narrows his eyes, and I run away.

Why? It was a public street. I was enjoying myself, and he didn't seem to mind. As if the doorman actually cares if someone takes the flowers. They're not his flowers. They're God's flowers! God's and the tenants'. I pooh-poohed myself for the sudden flash of self-conscious embarrassment and resumed thinking about more important things. Such as...

The Rold Gold Honey Mustard Tiny Twists taste alarmingly like honey mustard for the first entire second of eating; then for the rest of the chews they just taste like regular pretzels. I pronounced this out loud at work and had to extend the challenge to a few naysayers who thought I was full of it. Of course, they ended up marvelling at my precision. "You should be a professional taste-tester," said someone I don't really know. "Oh, I am," I replied, solemnly. "What?" "Yeah, it's my day job," I said. He stared. I stared, with the trademark Annie Barrett "What. Stop looking at me" face. Then he slowly backed away. That's right. No more pretzels for you.

Dude, Gawker's hiring unpaid interns. Major step down? Brilliant career move? Basically doing what I do for no money anyway? Sign me up.

DR has decided to resurrect the "File This Under WTF?" feature. It might become even more popular than the "If I Worked at the Magnolia Bakery" feature. Imagine!

I'm obsessed with The Weather Channel's weather.com. It's my top bookmark (have fun guessing what the rest of those acronyms stand for, above) and it's set to display the 10-day forecast for my zip code. Try it. You'll love it. And if you love breadcrumbs as much as I do, you'll especially love it, because the 10-day option seems to respond some sort of applet (Ha! I have no clue what "applet" even means and am 100% sure I am using it incorrectly) called "breadcrumb." WTF?

Ideally, "breadcrumb" would change to a user's most current craving by reading its mind. Someone needs to invent that. Hello! Technology! Let's go. In 2020, my navigation bar better say this...

...which could easily apply to any moment in my life.

Pretty sure I was out of the loop as usual on what was probably a really basic computer term, I got the whole staff together for some intense research. A quick Google inquiry for "weather.com breadcrumb" returned a few sites that talk about "Breadcrumb Navigation." Sounds official, and nerdy. That's as far as DR likes to go in our research (the interns and I aren't really into going the extra click), so we're not offering any more than that. Sorry. We're sure it's not very interesting. But seeing if anyone finds this site by Googling the same thing should be. We can add it to our impressive list of the searches we dominate, like the gems "see buttcrack" and "bermuda shorts lyrics."

This site is so cool. I know.

In other news, I was somehow inspired to wake up in the single-digit AMs on a Sunday, which is unheard of save the four times it happened at BC for the Nerd Program's annual canoe race on the Charles River. (Yes, that's me at the top, and in the last photo, looking like the Michelin Man while getting beheaded by an errant branch. Or was it the canoe that was errant?) My intramural softball team was called "The Faerie Queenes," after the poem by Edmund Spenser. And because WE'RE ALL GAY. It was single elimination, so season's over (clap clap, clap-clap-clap). I'm pretty sure that if we'd spelled the name with a v instead of a u, like in the poem's original version, we might have had better luck. Shame on you, Captain Mike. Hitting multiple home runs doesn't make up for inappropriate spelling, you know.

R.I.P., FQs. Which sort of reminds me of "F--- yous." Which is what we should have said to the team that beat us. Their name was "JumpOff." Um, nice name. I don't recall any famous poem called that. Losers.

I still can't believe there's a Swedish pop star who stole my nickname for her album title. She even kind of looks like me. Blasphemy! I'm so jealous. But I bet she doesn't have an anti-blog!!!

Wow! I was just sitting in my cave of doom lamenting how crappy today's post was when I got a colorfully urgent message from my sister:

i painted your jesus tulips.
thought you'd like to see part of your room on my canvas.
i made the cool glass vase-thing non-transparent cuz that would have
been too hard.
and now you don't have a second window, or an annoying heater.
haha

(Click to make it bigger!)

Haha, indeed. Okay, the best part about this is that she broke up the lines like a poem. Second-best is that she deleted my constantly rattling heater, something I'd love to do myself but can't since I don't have her artistic superpowers and do have, instead, ears.

Awww. Isn't she great? She's like Little Miss Matisse Jr. But lest you start posting all sorts of pro-Meggers comments, let's remember that she also just used the term "cuz" in an e-mail. And was, like, serious.

Wait. I just reread that and realized that the new best part of her note was the joke about my Jesus Tulips, which were the lone signifiers of the Easter holiday around my apartment. (I'd promised her an egg hunt Sunday morning, but looked around and realized there was no extra space to put the eggs.) It'd be kind of funny if I had accidentally bought purple and we randomly came up with "Jesus Tulips," but no, I did do it on purpose. As a joke. And they didn't bloom. He ain't risen.

How do you like my new spring-colors horizontal rule? Who do I think I am with those, anyway? They kind of creep me out, so I don't know why I keep making them. Nothing better to do, I guess. Sorry.

New photo, too. I never seem to run out of inexplicable ones, so here's a nice shot of me cluelessly holding up an Entenmann's Multi-Grain bar that I found in my bag on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). I guess I was just surprised that if there was an Entenmann's product in my bag at all, it would turn out to be something pseudo-healthy. Jeez. Next time I'll just show a closeup of raspberry danish, for old time's sake.

So, it's been awhile. I've been busy, but finally took a few hours this morning to catch up on all of my recorded television programs for the week. Then I went to the bakery, and then I spoke with my parents on the phone. I have such an admirable priorities list.

Damn Ellen and Jon Stewart were both off all week, so my DVR/life partner ended up recording American Idol because I have it on some sort of third tier of choices. Maybe you have to be a non-Idol fan to feel this way, but I just don't understand how this is real. This is the #1 show in America, and yet it doesn't bear even the slightest resemblance to entertainment. What the F is it? It's not dramatic, it's not interesting, it's certainly not funny. I'm sitting here gaping in disbelief at this horrific alternate universe with swirly lights and extreme close-up confessionals made by idiots. It's awful! Someone, please, tell me what the draw is. I'm serious - I want to know. I won't judge you.

Speaking of me being able to judge things, last night's O.C. was great. Remember, that's the one I have to watch, so it's not lazy and pathetic that I do so. I feel like Seth Cohen, or the Seth Cohen type, should slowly sweep the nation, planting seeds for little mediocre but probably still funny Cohenclones to sprout up everywhere. This is an American Idol I could actually handle. Seth's unapologetic snarky geek genius is what teenagers should strive to be instead of ridiculous pop tarts who embarrass themselves on stage in hopes of a few hundred thousand text-message votes. I think we need to introduce Seth as one of the Idol options next week. No performance, just a little Seacrest quip at the end, "And to vote for Seth Cohen..." [show clip of Seth being shoved into his school locker] "... text 5710."

Both shows are on Fox, so I'm sure Idol wouldn't mind the cross-promotion. Can someone get on this and make some calls? Oh wait, I'll have the DR interns do it. Okay, they're on it. Awesome. I'm pretty sure that if Gawker can have possibly fake interns, so can I. How do you know they don't exist?

Do tulips always bloom? The last two bunches I've procured have not. Even when I talk to them patiently. Is it me?