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Kiss Me Deadly
(The Real World, Aug. 30)

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(The Real World, Aug. 23)

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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
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Your Treat

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

Um... what if I don't really want to meet Miguel? I'm kind of left with no choice here.

"Shot at our apartment in Mexico City, this was Miguel's first time modeling. We think he did a bang-up job."

This American Apparel ad graced the back cover of the August 11-18 Time Out Chicago. AA's ads -- especially the billboard ones in Manhattan -- have always been pretty obnoxious, but I'd say this one is the most extreme yet. Is it just me, or is this pose simply not that attractive? Miguel seems like a very nice young man, and he did get one hell of an upper-crotch wax job for the occasion, but I'm just not convinced that this pose is appealing to a large audience (gay men excluded). Am I wrong? Men seem to be very for or very against this ad, but I haven't asked any women yet. Let me know. I'm actually intrigued by this.

It was his first time modeling, so maybe he thought pushing his crotch into the camera was normal protocol. Or maybe the ''vertically integrated" American Apparel representatives drugged him up real good and told him it was a great idea.

"He's wearing our new Men's Brief and a Leisure Shirt, available online and at our retail stores." Buy them together. Be sure to go with the seafoam. Then wear only these two items. Everyone will line up to "meet" you.

I've recently been told that I'm the ''absolute worst blogger" on a friend's entire list of bookmarks. That really smarts. NOT.

I just want to write about the Six Feet Under series finale, but I can't because one of the five people who read this hasn't caught up yet. At this point, I don't see how he could have avoided all the hype. I also don't see how I'm going to cash in on the $50 bet I thought I had won because I picked the correct major character to die. Oof.

I'm not too sad about the show expiring, because all shows do and this one ended well. There are always DVDs, On Demand, or the nine shoeboxes full of taped episodes in my parents' bedroom closet. What I'm sad about is that I no longer get to have my character crush on Nate. I loved Nate, especially Season 1 Nate, Season 2 Nate, and Nate's scuffed-up dark brown leather jacket. Oh, my, it was perfect.

Keep in mind I say *character* crush, as I for some reason have never, ever had the hots for a celebrity. It's not that I dislike the famous, it's just that I don't really care about them unless they've proven to be really funny and/or smart on their own, sans camera and script. I don't find it interesting when hot young celebs are caught on camera eating (the horror!), driving, or walking, ''just like us!'' Chances are my next-door neighbor, who I've also never met, would be just as compelling in person.

The character crush makes more sense to me. I'm not sure I would dig Nate's actor, Peter Krause. I might, but it doesn't matter because I'll never meet him and don't particularly want to. I wanted to meet Nate, goddamnit! But I understood that it never would have worked out, given that we live on separate coasts, we have differing opinions about processed foods, and he is not a real person. All important factors.

And yet, I still had the urge to hang a Gap ad featuring Peter Krause in my room. This goes against everything I just wrote above, but it's okay because a friend gave me the ad as a joke, and because P.K. is really not that bad to look at. I do resent, though, the outfit selected for him here. It is entirely un-Nate. Nate was always wearing a dark t-shirt and shorts (for jogging), a dark suit (for work, but he didn't appreciate the dress code), or nothing (for sleeping and sex). Nate would never have chosen this dark blue striped oxford shirt, available for $22 at Gap stores nationwide. Nate also wouldn't have looked oddly petrified while clutching a large-buckled belt. He just wasn't like that. Okay?

Even when I was little, whenever I faced the question of which celebrity I'd most like to make out with, I never had an answer. The whole concept seemed so ludicrous that I wouldn't even let myself stoop to the level of making something up. I probably ruined everyone's fun by staring blankly at the questioner and demanding "Why?" in a low voice, more of a statement than a question, really. That condescending, "I'm cooler than you and one day, not today because you're really popular, but years and years down the line, you'll know it too" tone of voice. I'm sure that went over really well. Maybe I should have just said Brad Pitt. He's like, hot.

So, many thanks to SFU for finally giving me an answer, even if choosing a character instead of an actor totally goes against the rules. Rest in peace, Nate. Call me!

A muse-like friend has suggested I pen a collection of essays about my time here in New Buffalo, MI and title it "Cooler by the Lake." The cover would be a picture of me or someone hotter, maybe a stock model with more beach-appropriate feet, sprawled out on the sand next to a cooler teeming with beer and snacks. Love the title, love the cover, but the essays themselves might lack substance. Here's a rundown of a few potential segments:

Annie wakes up before 11 and congratulates herself profusely.

Annie makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and eats it on the deck.

Annie then congratulates herself profusely. (It was awesome!)

Annie willingly watches shows that she usually gets paid to grudgingly view, like "Clean Sweep," "While You Were Out," "In a Fix," or any other program on TLC. She doesn't get why, but is increasingly suspicious that they are all, in fact, the same show.

Annie watches "The Real World," makes an "I just saw naked Wes butt" face and then sits silently for three hours while writing about it. To reward herself, she eats three-quarters of a Kirschbaum's cherry pie.

Annie swipes her sister's giant ice water, which happened to be mixed with three heaping tablespoons of tasteless digestive aid MiraLax. 12 minutes later, Annie receives payback in the form of [you don't even want to know]. The photo at right does not relate to the incident, but Meghan's all-knowing smirk does make it sort of fit.

Annie pretends to take her car out "to go running" but ends up just driving around.

Dee force-feeds Annie a Vienna Beef hot dog, Chicago-style minus the long pickle, which Annie's just not that into. (On the side, though, it would have been great. How weird is that? This could be one of the discussion questions at the end of the chapter!)

After three hours of trying, Annie kills an innocent white moth that was actually sort of pretty.

Annie wears the same "Miller High Life" t-shirt for five days straight.

Annie finally showers. It's a little scary.

But then she puts the shirt back on. All is well.

I think this could be a bestseller, guys!

---

The same muse-like friend has complained (not in the comments section, like I prefer... less personal interaction there) that my entries are "all over the place" and "need to be separated by theme." Uh, okay.

---

Take a look at my new favorite meal of all time: the Sweet 'n' Savory French Toast at Southport Grocery in Chicago's Lake View neighborhood. It's french toast topped with gruyere cheese (whaaa?) and somewhat crispy ham with no fat on it, served with organic maple valley syrup on the side. The syrup came "from the grocery," which in this place seems to be a very big deal. I was almost afraid to ask for a second little cup of it becuase I thought they might make me buy the whole $14 bottle.

You have no idea how good this breakfast is. It might not sound good to you just written out in words. It didn't to me, on the menu. I would normally not order french toast in a restaurant, but my dining partner at SG a few weeks prior ordered it then. I sampled a bite so as not to be rude (and because I knew his generosity stemmed from his wanting a bite or more of my egg-laden bruschetta/crostini concoction, which was okay but not something to write in a shitty blog about. I don't know why we didn't just switch plates).

Whoa. I spent the rest of that morning jealously salivating over -- or shall I say savoring -- the memory of that bite. I couldn't even focus on conversation, much less my own meal, after getting a taste of this miracle. I think the jealousy overcame me to the point where I was downright nasty to the person who had had the good fortune of ordering it for himself. There's no way of being sure, because I don't really remember. I was out of my mind. That bite had been with me throughout the past three weeks, lifting me up during sour times, gently calling me back to the Midwest for another round. I made it, Sweet 'n' Savory French Toast! I came back to you. Are we in love? Is the feeling mutual? Call me!

---

I often get a very tense feeling when a meal I know I'm going to enjoy more than anything else that day is about to be served to me. It's almost like I don't want to receive it. I want to have ordered it, to have waited for it, to have it be on its way, but I don't actulally want it set down because at that point, it's practically gone. The food's there, but the suspense, thrill, and yearning have all vanished by that point. The plate in front of me is just a given. It, too, will go away, and all too quickly. There's something profoundly sad in that.

I felt this great depression while eating for the second time at Southport Grocery. I wanted to take each bite of the Sweet 'n' Savory French Toast, but I also didn't want to because then whatever little percentage of it that I managed to load onto the fork would be gone forever. I mean, I could come back, but not, like, for the next meal. They'd think I was weird. I'd have to wait at least a few days. Maybe one day. I don't know. It's too much to think about.

I always envision a huge, looming, color-coded pie chart when I'm eating one of my favorite things. Like I said above, the moment right before it's placed in front of me is the happiest moment. At that point, the pie chart is not a chart at all but just a benign, bunny-yellow circle: a big, smiling, hungry face with one of those wagging tongues that looks like it's about to slurp up something delicious. With each bite, not only do portions of the smiley face get taken over by a different, gloomier color (midnight blue... perhaps thundercloud gray), but the smile slowly but surely turns into a frown. At the meal's pausing point, usually somewhere right in the middle (also called the "breather," "timeout," or "period of solemn reflection"), I imagine the face having a completely horizontal line for a smile. It's not a grimace -- not yet -- but there is no joy left. It's the "look what you've done to me" face a sullen teenager might shoot at the parent who never gave him any attention. I almost consider not eating any more so as not to produce the inevitable downwards-drooping smile line. All of this makes it significantly difficult for me to find joy in the eating process.

Oh, but who am I kidding, I still do.

You know, if I hadn't taken Tylenol P.M. nearly three hours ago, I would be totally up for creating graphics of the meal-progression pie charts, thundercloud gray and all, but as it is I'm starting to drool and didn't even notice, and would be surprised if I even stay awake long enough to run upstairs, wait 10 mintues for dial-up to work, and get this posted. I sound like a raving lunatic, so maybe that's not a bad thing.

---

Ha! It worked. Suckers.

***Please post a short anecdote if you have any idea what I mean about the sadness involved in eating. Really. It's for research.***

I've really come to resent how when I call Time Warner Cable of New York City (it happens about once a week when for some reason I cannot view one of my thousands of regularly viewed programs) I'm greeted by the same pleasant woman's voice. She says "Welcome to Time Warner Cable: The Place to Be."

What?

That's the weirdest slogan ever. Time Warner Cable is not the place to be. Cable isn't even a place. If it was, I would enter that realm permanently and never return to earth. The concept of TWC as the place to be keeps making me more and more angry each time I call. I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it's gotten to the point where I hold the phone away from my ear for the first 15 seconds so I won't have to hear the slogan.

Here, try it if you don't believe how ridiculous it sounds. (718) 358-0900. You don't need an account or anything. Just call! If you don't come away angry I will give up writing this website. As if I haven't already. Actually, I'll be going "on sabbatical" in the great (lake) state of Michigan for the next few weeks so I'm not sure if I'll be able to update. If I don't, keep calling that phone number every morning around the same time you usually check this page, and think of me.

I almost just got the urge to write that DR is "the place to be" in the title of this post. But DR, like cable, is not a place. And it's certainly not the place to be. Why am I thinking of "Seinfeld" right now? I think Kramer called Frank Costanza's new billiards parlor "the place to be" in that episode. This makes sense. Note the difference.

There's a new "Real World" column up today but there seems to be some sort of curtain blocking me from seeing it. Which is actually better, because now I won't have to read comments along the lines of "Danny's a pu55y fa66ot'' and ''I did Mel up the @$$ it was awesome!!!!!" all day. Good for me.

Um, and what the hell is with the teenage/young adult fascination with the term "balloon knot"? It's like the cool thing to say now. I think it was even featured in "Family Guy" the other week, so it must be sweeping the nation. I'm not making this up! I'm aware that the term has been around for quite some time, but in the last few months it has been rampant in entertainment and on the Internet. Maybe I'm absorbing the wrong pop culture... Anyway, if you're looking to be hip, DR offers this advice: "Balloon Knot: The Thing to Say."

Also in teenage television: Even if you don't like "The O.C." you kind of have to love its ubiquitous commercial on Fox these days for the third season. I always get some serious shivers when Ryan flings the entire elaborately set dining table into the ocean. He's so carefree! Nothing matters! Except maybe his dead brother? Sometimes I even rewind. Now I'm pissed that I deleted tonight's episode of "House" from my DVR so I can't do a screen capture of this particular moment in the commercial.

You see, it's because my life is so fraught with serious dilemmas such as the above that I need to go on sabbatical. I should tape a notice to my apartment door, like professors do when they're gone. (As a tribute to my dear friend James, who's departing NYC for good tomorrow, here's the random and embarrassing photo we took at Berkeley of Judith Butler's door. I find it really funny that the text takes up about 2% of the entire page and yet she still chose to print it using the "Lateral" option. This must be one of many perks associated with being an academic supastahhh.)

Here's how lazy I am (this should become a regular segment; note the bold): I'm so scared of those little bugs that crawl around my 2-sq-ft kitchen counter when even the tracest amount of food is left near the sink that since I'm leaving for weeks and weeks and won't be able to monitor/kill the buggies day by day myself, I have instead placed all my dirty dishes (read: all of the dishes I own) into the fridge. I have time to wash them. I simply do not want to. It actually makes sense, since I had to throw everything out of the 100% airtight fridge anyway. I'd almost go so far as to call it a "smart move."

In conclusion, I'd like to discuss "Wheel of Fortune'''s default letter combination, R-S-T-L-N-E, since it came up this weekend in a drunken-slash-something-else fit of hysterics. Did anyone else find those letters a little unfair? They were never anywhere in the final-round word. They sucked! I would have chosen N-A-C-H-O-S myself, if given the opportunity. I bet I'd have a lot better chance of winning the car.

My Text Twist obsession has lasted only a few days, but it became dangerous to the point at which I had to quit. TT is a word puzzle on Yahoo! Games that eats up time at a rate I can't even believe. This can be both good and horrible. But it's over. I have to stop.

Usually, at work, I'd play with one or two people hovering over the screen, collaborating with me (the typist) to get the six-letter word that guarantees advancement to the next round. I always felt kind of impure doing this, as if I was cheating myself and Yahoo! by getting outside help. But as long as they were there at the beginning of the game and stuck around until the end, they were cool. If we got a high score, it would be all of our high scores and not something each of us could lord over others as reasons why we were individually awesome.

So it really pissed me off when yet other people would walk by and nonchalantly say the six-letter word as if it was really obvious. "Footed. Duh, you guys." I'd whirl around and literally yell at whoever did this, even if we weren't friends (and with even more venom if we were friends). I'd be all "How could you do that? This is our game." What?

In hindsight, this made me look mean, and somewhat deranged.

Late last night, I completed my final round of TT while alone in my apartment. It took about an hour and I was just totally in the zone. I felt unstoppable. My fingers seemed to move independently of my brain, but that's just because my brain was operating at super-warp word speeds not connectable to lowly things like hands. This game is a lot like Snood in addictive qualities. Unlike Snood, it's not completely mindless so you don't feel like a total negative when you play it for two hours straight, fighting off the urge to use the bathroom, eat or drink (quite a feat for me), or even look away from the screen.

My score was 111,250 -- a higher score than I even thought was possible for just one person. Even with a three-person tag team, we'd only be racking up 50 or 60,000. As I sat there alone, dominating, I actually wondered if I could turn this talent into a career. Upon emerging from ''the zone'' and remembering this, I decided to give up the game altogether. It's simply not worth its delusional effects. I'm through.

It's been 22 hours since I quit. And like a crack addict, I am sitting here with random letters floating through my numbskull, combining to make beautiful words like "tag," "rage," and "greater." But I am greater than this game. I will beat this addiction. You'll never see me play again. Because I will do it in the privacy of the Pink Palace.

Just realized I made up the word "connectable." I like that. I also like how up in the first paragraph, the word "eats" is hanging out right next to the large "FOOD" in the graphic/screen capture. How unintentionally excellent.

This morning I received a playful e-mail from Friendster with the subject "Friendster misses you!" Right. It can't stand life without the cackling girl with a tambourine in one hand and Stoli Raz in the other. I particularly got a kick out of this portion of the e-mail:

Oh, really? I can "blog it up" at Friendster? That's awesome!

Wow. Each time I read the above blurb, I get a little more pissed off, and I don't know why. I guess it's Friendster's flippant attitude towards the concept of the blog. As if I'd really want to "write an ode to sausage." God! Anyone knows the best bloggers only write their longest, most memorable missives about nachos and cupcake icing.

The Real World actually seemed kind of real last night, and it only took the death of a loved one. Yay.

Hey, you know what I hate? When people don't step aside on escalators! I mean, what's with those people? Seriously!

How can it be August already? I don't like August because there are too many birthdays for me to remember and because it means summer's half over. Not that I'd mind it being over. It's been so deathly hot lately in the city that I feel like I'm gonna, well, die. ("You just want to fly!") While on a plane recently, there was an internal discussion that I've had many times before in a novel I was reading. This made me happy, then a little jealous. Here's the internal discussion: Would you rather suffer from extreme heat, or extreme cold?

I remember asking myself this question during my preteen/teen years, specifically while walkng across the parking lot at Bernard's Cafe and Deli in Willowbrook, IL, during the winter. It'd be well below zero and as I'd wait for Bill to unlock the car, I'd think about taking a steamy bath. Keep in mind I never thought about taking baths unless I was in the parking lot at Bernard's. (That's kind of creepy. I feel like I'm about to uncover something huge. But baths are beside the point.)

My mind would inevitably lead from baths to the question of which sort of extreme temperature I would rather suffer. The initial hypothetical just involved a sweltering summer day and a below-freezing winter night. No biggie. But then I'd take it a little further, make it more morbid. I'd wonder whether I'd rather freeze to death or burn to death, as if this was a legitimate offer of the sort typically made to junior-high girls in Illinois. What? I remember reasoning that it would take a lot longer to freeze to death, so I always leaned towards the burning.

I would later learn via ER, Chicago Hope, Scrubs, Strong Medicine, CSI, The Apprentice, and Grey's Anatomy that burn victims no longer feel pain after their burns get to a certain degree. Okay, it actually wasn't on The Apprentice but can't you just picture Donald Trump announcing this fun fact in his choppy-sentence shouting voiceovers? It'd be like the scientific fun fact of each episode, brought to you by Domino's. So it looks like I made the right choice of wanting to burn to death instead of freeze without even knowing it. (Very recently, I also learned the various stages of how the body freezes to death underwater in under ten minutes while watching a Discovery Channel show about crabbing called The Deadliest Catch at work. This reaffirmed how smart I was to go with the burning.)

Sidenote: I'm sitting at my desk, facing away from the coffe table. I have placed a large bag of Lay's Kettle Cooked Mesquite Barbeque potato chips on the table behind me. I did this entirely on purpose, and I think I actually believed at the time that having to make the huge effort of turning around and rotating my arm to reach into the bag would make me not want to eat so many chips. Why did I think this would work? I have turned around at least 50 times by now, with some turns garnering more than one chip. What a horrible diet trick. Next time, I should try something really crazy -- like, um, not buying chips.

Anyway, the book I was reading discussed how people always think the opposite season would be a lot better. So, if you were sweating profusely on a busy street in the summer, you'd imagine winter, which is nasty, treacherous, and induces depression, as a lovely, breezy, better-smelling way to go through life. You'd wish for winter quite desperately. But what people don't realize is that it is truly impossible to accurately imagine the opposite season while suffering through the current one. The reason it's impossible is that both extremes suck. We just delude ourselves into thinking anything's better than what we have right at that time. (Look at me with the self-help-esque phrasing. WTF?)

Now I'm seriously concerned at why I seem to remember the Bernard's parking lot as my childhood example of "cold." Isn't that weird?

And now I'm recalling all the really unfashionable winter outerwear I used to don in high school. The Cool Girls and I used to go around in these really thick solid-colored fleeces from J.Crew or Eddie Bauer. I actually remember really liking my forest green one from Lands' End (a travesty!) and then feeling really inadequate after noticing how many kids had the "North Face" logo on their own fleeces. The Lands' End ones never had a logo. Looking back, I'm proud of myself for not wearing a logo becuase now I despise them. At the time, though, I kind of felt left out. But it's not like I couldn't have acquired a North Face jacket if I'd found it truly necessary. Maybe something deep inside me was pre-rebelling to the idea of a logo. At any rate, I'm glad I "kept it real" with the Lands' End fleece.

Wow, Lands' End. Who even shops there? I've never even seen the catalog since I moved away from Illinois. This blast from the past has me thinking of a funny exchange in the second season of DR's favorite show, The O.C. Lindsbree gushes over Marissa's Marc Jacobs shoes, bag, skirt, shirt, sweater, lip gloss, etc., and instead of just saying thank you and keeping her mouth shut, Marissa finds it necessary to say, "Oh, thanks. I like your... backpack. Where's it from?" Ha! Shut up, Marissa! Lindsbree cringes while stammering, "Um... L.L. Bean." Can I just tell you guys I was rolling on the floor laughing at this point? Can I? Can I? ROFL people!!!

The best part about this profoundly embarrassing moment is that I started wincing for Lindsbree even before she started to answer. I knew it was going to be something typically Midwestern, something you could order from a big catalog, you know, because we don't have any stores out there. Out there where the land just... ends. I was like "Oh, no, she's gonna say Lands' End." But L.L. Bean is even funnier, because it's basically the same thing as Lands' End but the three syllables actually make saying it out loud more humorous and more embarrassing. It's also just a dorky name. Bean. Hehe.

Apparently someone on the EW.com message board not only stalks me at this website but says I have been on television. I would love that to be true -- as many of you may know, one of my five life goals is to become a talking head on a VH1 program. It's not true. Yet.

Speaking of the message board, it's getting a little upsetting to keep reading about how "fat" and "ugly" and "boring" and "unloved" I must be because I have such venom in my writing for the attractive girls on The Real World: Austin. Let me clarify: I make fun of everyone, including the very attractive and somewhat unattractive men in the house. They all suck. You can't get around this. If I praised anyone on this show, people would probably think I was being satirical in some way more complicated than I can even come up with.

I know that whoever wrote such anti-Annie Barrett comments must be fat, ugly, unloved, and jealous themselves, but reading one of these comments for the first time gives me a very quick shock of horror. I look down at myself, or behind me at my mesquite barbeque chips, and wonder: Am I really... (gasp)... boring? Ha. Then, to torture myself a little, I read the comment over and over, and hit refresh every half hour to see if anyone else has jumped on the Annie Must Be Ugly (AMBU) bandwagon. Maybe they could register the domain name anniemustbeugly.com. I should suggest this! Speaking of which, sometimes I even consider writing a comment to post on the board myself, like "yeah annie blows" or "get a life annie and learn how to write, mothaf***ahhhhh" and sending it just for the sheer thrill/terror combination it would produce. Man, this is getting as scary as my last post. What's with me lately?

On a lighter, make that low-carb note, here's me acting horrified that I actually ordered a Michelob Ultra at a bar... and was serious. I repeat: a fucking Michelob Ultra. Yes. At first I was telling people "I got it as a joke" but I soon had to stop saying that because the real reason for the order was I simply didn't need another three-parts-vodka-one-part-cranberry drink and, as a fat and ugly writer, could likely benefit from the low amount of net carbs offered by Michelob Ultra. So why was I hiding? Come on you boring, unloved pile of lard, don't front!

And on a ridicuously high note, here's a photo collage I just made, featuring my friend Peter, a bartender at Rose's Turn, and Rob Corddry, a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Enjoy.

Who dat?

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