December 2009 Archives

Game: Find the Music Source

Step 1: Listen for tinny music coming from somewhere on the train.
Step 2: Crane your head to the left.
Step 3: Look at the six people wearing iPod headphones.
Step 4: Try to guess which one is playing music so loud that you can hear it.

Game: Where Is that Smell Coming From?

Step 1: Where is that smell coming from?
Step 2: Try to move away from it.

Remember, it might be you!

Game: Spot the Pervert

Step 1: Look for a man abusing the train's crowded conditions to get away with standing uncomfortably close to a woman.
Step 2: You've spotted the pervert!

Remember, it might be you!

Game: The Music Producer

Step 1: Find a man or woman who is singing out loud, pretending as if they are not on a crowded train.
Step 2: Approach this person and tell them you are a famous music producer.
Step 3: Hand them the fake business cards you have printed up for this purpose.
Step 4: Tell them you couldn't help overhearing their singing and that you think they have real talent and that you'd like to bring them into the studio to do some recordings.
Step 5: When they ask, "Really?", respond, "No." and get off the train.

Note: Make sure to time this so that you can immediately exit the train. Otherwise you may be injured.

Game: Try to Read Your Book

Step 1: Attempt to get your book out of your bag.
Step 2: Hold it directly in front of your face with your elbows pulled into your body so they don't hit anyone.
Step 3: Try to read a few words.
Step 4: If you get to the end of a page, try to turn it.

Game: Look at the Top of Someone's Head

Step 1: Look at the top of someone's head.

Variation for shorter players: Look at the back of someone's head.
Variation for even shorter platers: Look at someone's back.

I also bought this at the Strand Central Park kiosk. For only $7.79! I've been seeing it on bookshelves for ages and it seems like an important hipster collection. I'm only partially through it and I'm not sure I'm going to finish it, so I figured I'd just post it now.

I like the writing, and, in many ways, I like her stories. I think I would have liked them more if I had read them individually rather than in one collection. Together, they are all a bit too obviously focused on "people who are so lonely that they reach out to any possible human connection they can find." That pretty much describes every story. One story, "The Sister", I think starts off quite brilliantly about a man who falls in love with this woman he has never met. It's a great, absurd concept. But then it ends with a message about him being a man who is so lonely that he reaches out to any possible human connection he can find.

Also, these stories are really obsessed with anal sex. Or, at least anal nuzzling. Nary a story goes by without at least a mention of such things.