Bagels

My friend is an Internet guru and information vacuum, she is awesome and also she send me great things to read. Today she sent me a link to a post on the great and multifarious kottke.org that catalogs a Twitter trend where people are upset that everything bagels don't live up to their name. To wit:

"You call this an everything bagel?! Where are the french fries & the pizza & the pot brownie & the Taco Bell fire sauce?!"
-- @ronniewk

"The "everything bagel" really only has like three things. Just what I want for breakfast. Lies."
-- @missrftc

And my favorite:

"This "everything bagel" is great. Has onions, poppy seeds, garlic, cheese, q-tips, Greenland, fear, sandals, wolves, teapots, crunking..."
-- @johnmoe

Clearly, everything bagels always taste better with crunking.
Outside of the fact that this is funny and brings a small argument for Twitter to exist, the reason I find it particularly hilarious is becaue J and I call each other Bagel, and when I feel particularly charitable, I tell people "he's my everything Bagel".
When J and I were first together, we were having an idyllic Sunday morning, reading the Sunday paper in bed. Filled with the perfection of the moment and the blindness of new love, he looked over at me and said "I love you, baby." But what I heard was, "I love you, bagel." This reminded me of Steve Carrel's character Brick from Anchorman:



For some reason, Bagel stuck. And somehow, it ended up being what we called one another.
Now, as a mini-hobby, we find it ridiculously satisfying to find bagel shops that affirm our choice of nickname:


But sometimes it works against us. In our first birth class this week, the instructor was talking about dilation. We all know that you are supposed to dilate to ten centimeters before you deliver a baby. But do you know how big ten centimeters is? I mean really? In the words of our instructor, "Four inches across, about the size of a bagel."






HAHAHAHAHungghhh WHAT WHAT HAHA ZOHMYGOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

As my grandma used to say, Egads! The reality of birth is starting to dawn on me, now that it is getting so much closer. I am 30 weeks along and this shit is real.
I know we are making the right decision to try to have a natural birth, but I have to be honest, it ups the fear factor. People have suggested that I not think about it, but to be honest, I would rather think about it and be prepared than not think about it and be overwhelmed with the shock of the pain and turn to meds. If i mentally prepare, I think I will be better off.

I know one thing, Bagel will be there for me every step. So this is in praise of the everything Bagel, who indeed, would not be complete without crunking.

Happy Holidays: PS 22 Chrorus sings "O Holy Night"

I might be an atheist, and I might hate how capitalism turns everything with meaning into a consumer event, but I love Christmas and this reminds me why.


I like that they changed the lyrics to be less alienating. It is a public school choir, after all.
Lots to be thankful for this year, that's for sure.

Andrea Gibson, "Photograph"

I signed up for Andrea Gibson's email newsletter because she is a fucking goddess, and writes sentences that make me want to chop off my hands for ever thinking of trying. I was looking at her website tonight, of course very prettily rendered, hoping to find news that she will be in NC soon and instead found some of her poems written out and accompanied by audio readings and reveled. Here is the first section of a poem called "Photograph" that kind of gut punches you and makes you love sick for someone or maybe a version of yourself you may never have actually been.

"I wish I was a photograph
tucked into the corners of your wallet
I wish I was a photograph
you carried like a future in your back pocket
I wish I was that face you show to strangers
when they ask you where you come from
I wish I was that someone that you come from
every time you get there
and when you get there
I wish I was that someone who got phone calls
and postcards saying
wish you were here
I wish you were here
autumn is the hardest season
the leaves are all falling
and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground
and the trees are naked and lonely
I keep trying to tell them
new leaves will come around in the spring
but you can't tell trees those things
they're like me they just stand there
and don't listen"

yes, please, more like this.

"Ir's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers"

The Bagel and I used to have a neighbor with a bumper sticker on his car that read:
"Ask Me About Gourds".

I so so so so want to go back and find him and make him read this excellent piece in McSweeney's. If you like things that are funny, or gourds, or the lucky convergence of the two then you must read this.

It reminds me of the classic first edition of "Sedaratives" in The Believer in which a reader asked how to cook the perfect egg and Amy Sedaris rightly told hum to "just poach the motherfuckers".

If that doesn't do it for you watch this altered Paula Dean video. All I have to say is "We're ... gonna be ... arrested."
(tigernoise)

10 Lesbian and Bisexual poets that you shoud read

Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm an A in the LGBTQIA community and that I dig on some poetry so when I saw this post on Jezebel republished from the awesome Lesbian siteAutostraddle who admonish us to read a fucking book already, they had me at Adrienne Rich.( As a sociologist in queer theory, Rich pioneered the concept of compulsory heterosexuality which makes her a total rock star.)
Some commenters complained on Jezebel that there should be some representation for the gays too. I think it is perfectly appropriate that a lesbian site focused solely on women, and hopefully this way, someone else can publish an article about 10 gay and bisexual poets you should be reading.

Also featured are the redoubtable Eileen Myles, spoken word poets Kirya Traber, Alix Olson and Andrea Gibson. Gibson's poem "Ashes" is one of the most personal and important pieces of poetry I have ever witnessed, so if you do nothing else, watch this video.

They also feature personal favorite Audre Lorde who is a damn fine sociologist. She "pioneered the concept that racism, sexism and homophobia were linked in that they stemmed from people’s inability to recognize or tolerate difference." (from the write up on Autostraddle)

From Lorde's “Who Said It Was Simple”:

But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

So do yourself a favor and check out the original article on Autostraddle, you just might end up reading a fucking book.

UPDATE:
A very nice commenter pointed me to a video of Tristan Silverman, a Chicago poet who makes a nice addition here. Check out her performance of the poem "Because I was Asked"

Not a Giraffe I like. Also, not a lion

This is a site that you could waste several minutes of your life at. This post in particular got me to laughing.