SELFABSORBED.ME

Guest Blogger:...Drum Roll Please...NYMagazine.

Ummm..because they are NY?...And a magazine? ...And they have pictures and not a lot of words ...and that makes me happy?

NYMAG.com


Meet Winter Raymond, Overachiever







ElleWomen's magazines often make women feel inadequate. That's, like, what they do. But seldom do they make us feel quite so inadequate as September's Elle, which features a woman called Winter Raymond:



When 27-year-old Winter Raymond isn't slogging through her third year of law school in Boston, she's in Seoul, Korea, juggling a law firm internship, a fledgling company (Seoulplay, a concierge service for business travelers she launched last year) and burgeoning TV stardom on the Korean answer to The Dating Game, in which she hits the town with famous comedians.



Really? How is that even possible? It's like she's one of those characters from Heroes.




Also she apparently does all this wearing $1,500 Jimmy Choo sandals and carrying a $2,595 Gucci bag. We, on the other hand, can't even put on earrings in the morning (the effort makes us nauseated).





We totally hated her immediately.

If you would like to guest-blog for me this week, please email me something funny ( I will be the judge of what is funny in Jesus' book) and it may or may not get posted. And I may or may not have the bubonic plague, but hey, anything is worth a shot.

Email me to guest blog at Kim@NYCPonderings.com

“So” She said on the phone to me after a particularly late night at work. “I went to Bloomingdale's to pick out a new outfit for work…and I had to make the forever daunting decision…of whether to look like a mom or a hooker.”


Just thinking about “work clothes” I could feel the bile building up in the back of my throat. I, myself have had one too many encounters with ‘work appropriate attire’ that I will deem sole responsibility on being a young woman in my 20’s. I can’t seem to win no matter which route I choose. I always see commercials for young people going to “work” in hip little corduroy blazers and ripped denim, carrying large architecture cases. Who are these people? Because, let me tell you something it more or less looks like Corduroy McGee's so called “work” is the unemployment line.

Even if you do happen to work in a ‘casual’ work environment, women still have the ever mysterious task of looking ‘nice’, but not ‘sexy’. But sometimes how can you be nice looking and not appear sexy? Or sexy, but nice? Or nice, but in a nonsexual kind of way? Or not nice and overtly sexual? Or how much wood would a Wood Chuck chuck if a Wood Chuck could chuck wood?



The lines become even more blurred when you are blessed by the Greek Gods with things I would like to refer to as, “boobs”. These so called “boobs" may seem fine in everyday life, but in the workplace they are utterly shunned upon. These alleged boobs must disappear completely come 9am, and must magically reappear after the hour of 5pm. However, if they are a decent size, even a basic v-neck sweater suddenly makes your work outfit look more like a Cheetah Club after-hours audition.


Oh and sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph may you be struck down dead if you have one of those dresses with spaghetti straps. You want to show a shoulder?! Who are you?! Naked Nancy?! Put that shoulder away, dammit, can you not see how you are arousing the men of the world and no one can concentrate on the work at hand with you showing that damn shoulder of yours! Men wont be able to “email” or “fax" or even have a basic phone conversation if they get one whiff of that Clavicle bone of yours!

The sexiest bone EVER

Have you not received the memo? Men will not respect you if they think you have a (whisper voices please) “body”. Yes, that is right, let no man think you have boobs, or shoulders or anything else for that matter. “Look at Mary, look at her and those BOOBS. Right there in her high necked-turtleneck! I can see the OUTLINE of those things! Distracting everyone! Get rid of her! She is a menace to the community! You better send that child home right now before she disgraces us in front of the men-folk! Now please, will someone go to the kitchen and churn some butter..."


Now if you don’t want to go the hooker route to work, you next best option, is the mom uniform. Oh yes, let me tell you, Peggy in accounting has this one down very well. Peggy is about 25 going on 83.

She strolls in everyday in her pleated front khakis, heart-patterned turtleneck and a blazer that’s big enough to fit the small population of Asia underneath it. But you know what, people like Peggy for her MIND, and because you can’t see any of those distracting things like “boobs”…or even that Peggy has an actual vagina. Thank God!

God forbid people found out she has an actual vagina, she may not get promoted at all.

I prefer to go to work with my entire body covered. Mostly in sheets, with a ski mask and possibly some goggles. I find I am much less distracting that way. And more people can concentrate on their work when they are not being demonized by my body or by my outrageous good looks.

And if Banana Republic could please stop advertising some kind of ultra good looking architect staff wearing high waist jeans and wife beaters, I might be able to actually be able to figure out what is work appropriate.

I woke up this morning and didn't feel so well... and not just physically, but mentally as well.

So I get into work and I open my laptop and you know what I do? That's right, I download Huey Lewis and The News' 'The Power of Love'. And not even because I like it all that much, because I don't like it much at all, but I heard the song after watching a College Humor skit and it has now been etched in my brain as the next song I needed to get in my Itunes. So I download the song and I play it and play it. Over and over. And everyone that walks by my desk all I can think of is how I am listening to Huey Lewis. So I listen to that damn song maybe 6 or 7, possibly 12 times in a matter of an hour. And I am quite sure by this time I can even tell you the chord progression and possibly the bridge.

But I still don't feel better.

So I get up from my desk and head downstairs. And as any bad-movie-goer knows what comes next, I get in the wrong elevator by accident. I meant to go down but everyone is going up and I walked in aimlessly and all the passengers gave me that sorry helpless look that I had been caught in their upward bound elevator ride. So I stand and mumble numerous F words under my breath and everyone in their pleated-front-khakis is staring at me. I finally get downstairs and head to the front of the cement steps. Now I am not what most people might call a 'smoker'. I am a smoker-wanna-be. I hang out with all the smoker-cool-kids at parties and outside lounges, because sometimes when I am wearing ripped jeans and a vest and some kind of cheesy hat from Urban Outfitters I am quite sure the one thing to complete my outfit would be a cigarette... I think Vests and cancer happen to go well together, yes. But in truth no matter how many times I have smoked it still burns the back of my throat pretty bad and upsets my stomach just enough to make me feel like I need to go take a shit.

But this morning I smoked two cigarettes. Two. It took me a bit to figure out how to light the first one in the middle of the wind storm. And I could tell the other "seasoned' smokers were staring. But I actually walked outside of work to do it so it was going to be done. And I stood there trying to light a cigarette with the rest of the smokers as though I belonged...but they kept eyeing me, clearly noting I was not part of the normal smoking community that congregates outside of my building's steps. And I had on no makeup, some old corduroy pants and a t-shirt and I wonder if people were thinking if I even looked old enough to smoke.

After I smoked my second cigarette...which essentially was just for effects and maybe to prove something to the other smokers. I breathed in the last end of ash so deep I almost threw up. But I stood there. Waiting for the nicotine to hit me a bit.

But I didn't feel any better.

So I walked back inside. Thankfully got on the right elevator this time and headed back to my desk. I sat down and started to try and eat my sandwich. Eating can be seemingly difficult though when not all is well.

I remember this girl Libby from my 8th grade class having just broke up with her boyfriend named Josh and after the final student came over to make the 'Just Joshin Ya! " joke to her (dont ask) she pretty much lost it at the cafeteria table and the site of Libby trying to eat some sandwich while she cried over Josh was almost too much for my 13 year old mind to bear. Every tear drop and deep-cry-inhale she tried to take a bite, and it was truly a painful site. It will be forever imprinted on me, like some horrible childhood memory.

So the more I tried to eat my sandwich, the more I started pulling the chicken out of it, and then the lettuce and tomato...until eventually all I had in my hand was bread and mayo. So I consumed that and sat there. Reached into my drawer and pulled out my kids chewable vitamins and ate 4 purple dinosaurs. I figured the dinosaurs would make up for the mayo and bread I had consumed as my only meal of the day.

And I sat and waited to feel better.

But I didn't feel any better.

And then I sat and wrote this blog. And wrote and rewrote and tried to make it funnier. Or wittier. Or catchy-ier. And I rewrote it again. And I tried to think of what my friends would think is funny, or what maybe even my dad thinks is funny . And I rewrote again.

But I didn't feel any better.


I am thinking I will now go download some more Huey Lewis and see how that goes...

Ever since Jewel made her first appearance on Rolling Stone in 1997, I became obsessed with female artists. I remember staring at that cover for hours. She was just so pretty. And smart. And she had boobs. Was the world going to implode?

And I was obsessed with everything Jewel until of course the first time Kurt Loader decided to shove one up that pretty little ass of hers and call her out during an interview. Kurt Loder questioned her use of “casualties” in her lyrics and Jewel essentially went on to explain her own definition of ‘causalities’ when Kurt Loder remarked that it was used incorrectly and casualties actually means someone 'wounded in battle'. I believe Jewel's definition had something to do with being casual in Alaska and wearing a bearskin rug or something.

After Loder called her out, Jewel then in turn, did what any folk singer might do and turned to Kurt and called him an ass.

Ah, the beautiful depths of journalism.

And while I did agree he was being an ass, as this was MTV , which means the WORLD was watching it…another part of me just thought Jewel was a fucking idiot and I soon tallied up her intelligence to that of a Ham Sandwich.


In later years I have come to realize I really do love her song lyrics and frankly, I don’t think I would care if I found out most of them were written in gibberish and consisted of lines such as “la de dum, pirates in my vodka rum"...frankly I wouldn't give two shits, because I love her.

And you know who else I love? And I am not even ashamed to say it either? Christina Aguilera.

Yeah, that’s right , I love her, I have loved her ever since her first album came out and she wore a beaded orange and blue tank top.

And then life got better when I bought…yes I will repeat..BOUGHT, her album and I heard “Love Will Find a Way” for the first time.

I would equate it to what most people feel when they see their newborn child for the first time.

I remember thinking what intricate and deeply sentimental lyrics these are. Who could possibly come up with such lyrics? She must be some sort of Harvard genius... with a really good JOB or something.

I don’t even know.


But to prove it I have decided to copy the lyrics below, so you can see what a true lyrical genius this Miss Aguilera is:

Christina- Love Will Find A Way

No one ever said that love was gonna be easy


How DOES she know?!

Gotta take the ups and downs the in-betweens


Yes! The Inbetweens, how did she think of that, it isn’t JUST the ups and downs, its ALSO the INBetweens too!

If you take this journey Gotta give yourself completely Never let nobody ever step on a dream

Fuck! She is so right. I wont let ANYONE step on my dream! I will put my dream on a shelf so high you wouldn’t be able to step on it! Unless you had some really big fucking ladder or something and could climb up there.

No the rain wont last forever Find a way to make it better Long as we can stand together Love will find a way

Wow, I get chills, the same kind of chills I get whenever I watch the Lion King and they lift the new cub above the old man’s head and play, 'Circle of Life’.

Gonna make a new tomorrow Say good-bye to tears and sorrow Better listen when I say Love will find a way

I want to say goodbye to tears and sorrow! How do I do that Christina? HOW?! God she is a genius!

Somebody tried to tell me love don't last forever

Shit! Someone tried to tell me that too! I think it was my Dad...

Said it only happens in your wildest dreams After all is said and done We're still here together Never listen to the lies and jealousy
You better stop

Ok I stopped.

Don't you let them turn you around
Ok, I will swivel a little bit back to my left...

You better stop

um, I just stopped...

Hang onto this love that we've found

Do you have some sort of hard rubbery glove or something I can use to hold it down with? I mean I just put cream on my hands so they might be a bit slippery.

Nothing that they say can ever stand in our way.


If that song doesn't give you chills then I don't know what would.
Maybe Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire would be next on my list, but frankly , that songs contains way too many words with more then two syllables.