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I don’t know how you are about confrontation, but I absolutely hate it. I would much prefer the world get lessons on how to act and communicate clearly, rather than take their BS out on others, especially me. So when the office bully started to attack me, I had to, at the urging of a friend, stand up for myself. Nothing fancy. No yelling, just as calm and specific communication possible.

I literally feel like I faced Darth Vader, and while I didn’t kill him, I think I nicked his arm pretty darn good.

And now, I feel utterly drained.

When I started working in New York after college, my mom insisted that I take up a martial art to learn how to defend myself from all those, you know, serial killers and every imagined danger on earth. That was fine with me, because I ended up loving it. I found it utterly ridiculous that someone so desk-bound like myself was learning how to deliver round house and 360-degree kicks (which I never quite managed. I think I could do like 300 degrees at my peak). And I would laugh and laugh in sparring matches, while the 17-year-old boys in my class would wail on me and my tae kwon do gear.

Confession No. 1: After I learned a super-groovy self-defense move where you take your opponent’s hands off your shoulders and topple them over, I’d come home and practice on my parents. (And if you’ve met them, you know they’re tiny and I’m like an adopted giant from another species.) They were the best, because they go down immediately. It was like magic. And they looked so cute when they fell down on the bed! This move really works!

Confession No. 2: When I got fitted for my gear, we all tried on different size helmuts, and while my real size was an X-LARGE, I lied and ordered a LARGE….because I just felt it was more feminine. Jees. Does everyone need to know about the largesse of my Korean noggin?

That is all.

I was talking to my friend Alex J. about old classes we had to take in high school and junior high, like home ec and typing. My typing teacher, who was maybe in her fifties, wore a short blond-frosting hairdo and had all these perfectly preserved dresses from the 1960s, sweater sets with matching poodle skirts and pearls, which she wore without irony. And maybe you’re too young to have taken typing as a class, but I remember her drills where we had to type “F” and “G” over and over again, where she kind of waved her hands like a conducter faster and faster. And you could only hear the sound of her excited voice yelling “F, G, F, and F, G, F” and the growing storm of taps against typewriter keys. Alex’s typewriting teacher was named Mrs. Kitchen, and when she drilled her class for the letter “P” she would strike her palms together like cymbals, while she yelled out “P! P! P!”

For home ec teacher, I had the youthful, attractive Mrs. Shearer, who told me brightly that I spoke English really well. To which, I returned that she too spoke English really well (which Alex interpreted as a rrrerrrh [insert cat noise] moment, but it was more reflexive politeness than anything else, a deeply ingrained call and response.) Aside from the English comment, I enjoyed that class, where I made teddy bears that looked handicapped and other lopsided creations. In cooking, we made Apple Brown Betty.

But all these teachers, with their subjects completely obsolete, must be like on the dole now, right? And must have had strange lives in these towns where they taught such obscure arts. Maybe they were happy and fulfilled, but I prefer to think of them as….crazy.

You know, there are days when even the gossip rags bring you down. Britney is going bonkers, Heath Ledger passed away. I need to hear about wardrobe malfunctions, people, not this sad stuff. I have the regular news for that.

But all is not lost, as it were. US Magazine recently did a photo montage of the “Lost” stars captioned with their secrets on staying in shape. While most of the actors cited kickboxing or yoga, or running, weight-lifting as their primary, aid, the actor who plays Sayid, the ex Iraqui military commando on the show said his secret was buttered toast. If you don’t know the show, he speaks very slowly and carefully. So lines like “I will slowly flay your skin away until you scream to the hills” sounds methodical and clear, just the way he’d give like instructions on say…how to get your whites whiter. So hear that tough-guy voice for: “There is something about buttered toast that is so satisfying but not too filling. It gives me just enough energy.”

That made me giggle.

And another thing, if you’re a fan of the show and you want to see something totally weird, click here for a link that link features cast members with their body doubles. Creeeeeeepy.

I didn’t expect to, but totally dug this book. I’m jealous of it on multiple levels–the writing is exquisite, the jokes are funny, and the epiphany seems really — and dude, I’m in DIRE need of epiphanies. Someone in my office was like “oh yeah, she writes exactly the way I write, like the way I talk.” And I didn’t mean to be totally snotty, but this co-worker is a numbers employees and I don’t like when people dismiss hard-to-do feats, said “Yeah, she writes exactly the way I do to, if I could finish a book of complicated themes and sophisticated structure with a conversational tone.”

It’s going to make a great movie, which is what I’m sure lots of people were thinking, b/c it just got bought up to be a feature starring Julia Roberts. One of the aspects that’s interesting about the book is there’s an extensive description on the experience of meditation, which interesting, b/c I don’t really meditate but I think about meditating frequently, as in “I really should start thinking about meditating.” But it was interesting b/c even reading about meditating made me feel calmer. I heard about a friend’s marriage falling apart and took it in stride, when I would normally start obsessing overtime on what happened and if it was infectious. Meditation bubble. Nice.

But for me to actually commit to a meditation routine is another story. I don’t know when I’ll actually decided to commit to it. The author cites the distraction of getting twenty mosquito bites in a meditation cave in India, and how she just thought, for the first time, to ignore it and let it go. And soon enough, those bites became part of her lesson, to not give too much importance on a feeling that would pass. She started to notice that the bugs went away and her bites were annoying, but also were unnoticeable. That would never work with me. As anyone who has ever lived with me can attest, I’m like DISTURBINGLY allergic mosquito nibbles and swell up to the size of a tennis ball around landing areas and proceed to get very cranky.

I am writing to commemorate the fact that I watched the Super Bowl last night. And even if maybe I can’t say that I enjoyed it so much that this will become a regular part of my life, I can say it’s the first time I actually paid attention to a sporting event and understood what was going on.

I’ve heard it said that women, if interested in keeping their men, should learn about sports. To me, sports always reminded me of studying for the LSATs — I could be good at it if I studied really hard, but it really was never for me. So anyhoo, they say that the way into sports for most women is learning the life story of athletes. — i.e., whom they’re married to, their family history, any personal struggles — so that they relate to the helmuted people on the field and become more invested in the action.

I think that’s mildly, I dunno, sexist or something? I don’t think athletes are inherently that interesting as people, but what’s interesting is STRATEGY and PROCESS. Like who cool is it that the Giants studied the Patriots’ pattern of success, and then proceeded to intelligently apply new approaches in the game, and succeed? (i.e., not allowing Tom Brady any time alone with the ball.) Or how about those recent articles about how football causes severe, permanent brain damage to linebackers, who retired in their 40s with brain scans that reveal an 86-year-old addled with Alzheimers. Now THAT is freaking fascinating.

Anyway, I could not have reached this moment if Tony and Derek did not explain what “fourth down” and all that BS means, and I must also thank my husband, with whom I watched the second half of the game, who explained the rest (like that Eli and the other thick Manning guy who played for the Colts are brothers).

That’s all. I wish some of them cried at the end. That would’ve made it more satisfying for me.

And Hillary and Obama debate — yay for you Hillary. She took the positive high road and said how great Obama and how the Dems rock, which gave her an air of confidence and leadership that wasn’t there before. Plus, sorry, she just came across smarter than Obama. Whatevs. I’m at the point where I’m like ANYONE BUT BUSH PLEASE! And I don’t dislike Obama, but he’s just kind of a mirage in terms of his policies and governing experience, and I can’t help but think, dude, couldn’t you have waited? Seriously, what’s eight more years when you’re forty and you’ll that much more mad skillful? It’s kind of like when Karate Kid decided to go for the competition before his training is fully over. Other examples that come to mind — Michelle Kwan breaking out to the Olympics behind her coach’s back. I just dunno. I just don’t think it’s time.

And Hillary, congrats. But no more crying, and I really think you have to ditch Bill. He’s holding you back, dude. Check out http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?scp=1&sq=bill+clinton+and+kazakhstan&st=nyt. I mean, seriously, he keeps lying. That’s just not a good thing to be affiliated with. He doesn’t creep me out the way Giuliani does, but still.

Anyone who’s talked to me knows I’m obsessed with Lost — it has so many things I love: a premise that forces people who normally would have nothing to do with each other to work it out; it’s diverse; it has Koreans (albeit they come from a land with a lot of pagodas); it has a hobbit; it seemed a perfect inspiration after our age of reality TV shows like “Survivor” and after 9/11. But after tearing up through season one over and over again, I quickly got bored. (You know, b/c of a period of lack of character development, glacial speed, random plot twists, when are they going to quit trying to get off the island and just open a bar.)

So I tuned in last night not expecting that much, but at some point, first, my friend Joslyn screamed, then I screamed, and my husband knocked my wine into the air. So I’d say it was pretty engaging.

I just want to say to the people in my office who order things like burgers or tuna wraps with a large order of fries, SCREW YOU! That’s what I want to eat! Instead, I’m stuck with my sad salads. I’m chewing on lettuce leaves to fit in my pants, and while it does help, my love of all things fried is still with me, and dude, like an ex-boyfriend, you might forget about it for a while but then a certain song, or smell in this case, brings it all back. Aaargh. What am I supposed to do? Just keep posting pictures of what I’d rather be eating? So not fair.

Japan is weird. The Times keeps running random stories on their culture–like how when platform boots were in, the kids would wear one-foot high boots and their shoes became wedged in the accelerators, leading to major car accidents. Or how the thumb-dextrous teens can text on cell phones at lightning speed. And now this trend has actually led to a new movement called cellphone literature. In Japan, their top ten bestsellers of 2007 include an actual novel composed on the cell. These novels have like four word sentences with the lexicon of 🙂 etc. included, weak character development, no description, and fragmentary sentences. And they’re riotiously popular. They’re downloaded like crazy and when published in book form, fly off the shelf in a way only Oprah could otherwise produce.

“Indeed, many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers.”

What the hell. That made me laugh outloud. But now I’m moving to Japan. I see gold there people.

Here’s the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html?scp=1&sq=thumbs+race+in+japan