Subway coincidences

1) While in the Park Street subway stop today, I noticed a girl wearing a black tank top, boot-cut jeans rolled up once to show her ankles, and red ballet flats. That girl looks great, I thought. If I were a Glamour photographer I'd take a shot right now and use it as a Do picture. Then I walked around a little knot of people and saw a second woman dressed the same way, except with those thin red Asian-print type shoes. Perhaps it's already been a Do picture.

2) While in the library I looked for Female Chauvanist Pigs by Ariel Levy, which apparently doesn't add much to third-wave feminist discourse but looked like fun to me (I haven't read much 3rd wave that I know of, anyway). They didn't have it because all copies were checked out. Then on the train coming home, after I left the library empty-handed because an alarm went off saying there was an emergency in the building, I saw a girl on the train reading a library copy of it. I'm blogging this one, I thought. I followed her up out of the T stop in a very creepy way, trying to get close enough to see if the book was from the BPL or if it was just from a school library, but failed, leaving me with only a nagging suspicion.

3) Earlier today I succeeded in hopping up into a (bent-legged) handstand with both feet at once, keeping feet and legs together, and tapping my toes on the wall. It was repeatable, too -- I did it 3 or 4 times, and it wasn't all that much physical effort, it was much more of a technique thing. Needless to say, I now consider this a completely unimpressive accomplishment, but you know what'd be REALLY cool is if I could... no! dammit! What I did is just as impressive as I would have thought it was yesterday and so there, brain, and it was fun, too. :)

4) In the spirit of full disclosure: #3 had nothing to do with either subways or coincidences, but rather was an essentially predictable result of focus and practice that occurred at a bit above ground level near the top of a small hill.

Let the ant-shaving begin!

Another list. This one is from Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans, which is a humor collection put out by McSweeney's. I've tried to avoid the whole Eggers/McSweeney's thing because the literary pretentiousness sort of makes me retch, but now that I've subscribed to Wholphin and I have this book I'm not sure how pure I can claim to be. Trouble is, Wholphin is really cool, and the lists in this book are pure genius. This one, my favorite, is by Marshall Salla.

SEVERAL PHRASES THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN UTTERED IN HUMAN HISTORY

"Look out, God -- behind You!"

"Nothing's the same since Julie started those wars."

"The New World has that New World smell."

"We, the jury, find the defendant as cute as a button."

"Shoot him again, Mr. President. He doesn't mind."

"Yummy plague!"

"I claim this land in the name of Phyllis T. Brunell."

"Let the ant-shaving begin!"

"No man is so tall as when he stoops to help a child kill."

"That was no lady, that was Iraq."

Along the same lines, and also in this collection, is the list INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS by Justin Dobbs, featuring "But how do you get it to float next to the VCR?" and "Can I top off your warm salt water?" But it's not as good and I've probably shared enough.