The beginning of the end.

As much as I like to use this blog as a way to write about things I see in New York, I should mention that after three years in this great city, I'm trading up. As of January 5th, I will be the newest immigrant to Sydney, Australia. My company is transferring me, and for the foreseeable future, I will be acclimating to a lifestyle of 300 days of sunshine. But don't worry New York: If I ever move back to America, you are the place I'm coming back to.

So, the beginning of the end has begun. In other words, I've started packing. I'm going to document this experience as much as possible (depending more or less on my laziness at any given moment). I'm officially moving out of my Williamsburg, Brooklyn apartment on December 14th, but most of my stuff will be sold/shipped/thrown out before then. I've decided to post some photos of the de-evolution of my bedroom from a place I love to just another address I used to live at. This is where the hard part, emotionally speaking, of moving starts to kick in. Three weeks from today, I will no longer live in New York. That's proving to be more difficult to rationalize than I originally thought.

I know exciting things are waiting for me in Sydney, but New York is addictive and only people that have lived here for a significant portion of time know this. Right when you think you're ready to leave, this place sucks you back in with something amazing. In the end, you catch yourself digging your claws in trying to hold on as tight as possible to a place you love because it's home.

Cosmic Truth.

It is a cosmic truth that if you buy four bottles of salad dressing that you don't like (but bought because Ranch and Italian seem to be favorites for everyone else) for the company Thanksgiving potluck lunch, no one will open any of them. Then you will be left with four unopened bottles of shitty salad dressing. For all of time.

I waited almost one month on purpose...

It's been almost one month since I last posted. I did it on purpose...if you can call being tired, lazy, unmotivated and generally lacksidasical "on purpose."

There is something that caught my attention this morning, so the motivation is back...

Why do foreign men (i.e. not from the United States since that's where I live) use an inordinate amount of exclamation points when writing messages either via e-mail, message boards or text messages? I thought at first that this was a singular phenomenon wholly owned by my close friend's exboyfriend, Eamonn. The man could write a paragraph containing only three sentences but manage to use no fewer than 15 exclamation points. Below is an example of what I'm talking about (this was not actually written by him, but let's pretend that he was writing to me):

Him: "Hello Mary Ann!!!!!!!!!!! How are you?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: "What in the Hell..."
Him: "LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and so on and so on.....)."

Imagine if he actually spoke like that? Are there such people that can't control the excited tone in their voice regardless of what they are talking about? If there are folks like that, I would like to meet them. I think I could appreciate how utterly ridiculous they must look every second of every day.

But back to my point of thinking this was singular mishap, that poor Eamonn was doomed to come across as the excited asshole at every social gathering or via every electronically-based correspondence he will or has ever sent. I recently came across a Facebook "Wall" comment posted on a good friend's page. He had actually posted the comment himself (perhaps he's not bright enough to learn the function of properly posting on a friend's page and not one's own, or perhaps I should stop calling him a retard because he is, in fact, a retard****). The context of the comment was not bothersome - just a typical fragmented sentence written by someone who I know for a fact is alot smarter than poorly formed sentences. It was the punctuation. As if wanting to take the exact opposite approach of say, a William Faulkner book, he used no fewer than three exclamation points at the end of every sentence. To help show how absurd this is, I have taken a passage from William Faulkner's classic novel The Sound and the Fury and changed all the punctuation (periods, question marks, etc.) to exclamation points. It helps give the situation some perspective:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch!!! It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's!!!!!!!!!!! I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it!!!!!!!! Because no battle is ever won he said!!!!!!! They are not even fought!!!!!!!!!!!! The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!"

Fair enough, Faulkner's work did not include the "LOL" at the end, but I thought it was appropriate, given the situation.

So what's the deal? What's with the excited tone when I know for a fact that they don't actually speak that way. I know both these men aren't a jittery bunch of school girls laughing at everything and overstating every word that comes out of their mouths...well...at least Eamonn isn't...

*** I explicity told the person I am referencing here to NOT read my blog. Something feels weird about it. So if he is reading this, it servesr you right. Pig.