This is absolutely the best satirical article to come out of the election yet.

Bachmann bans falafel in school lunches

Anyone else completely convinced that this could be a reality sooner rather than later? It's not bad enough all the Republicans wanna get up in my ladybits, now they're trying to take falafel from me!

Love, in writing

On a good day, when the R train's extra speedy and my favorite barista at the 'bucks puts a touch of extra sweetener in my green tea latte and I get a new play idea while in the shower, I look back on the men of my past and feel incredibly pompous about how much smarter I am now. Look at me! Look how many positive life choices I make! Look what a fantastic boyfriend I have! Recently, on a day when I was feeling especially cocky and 'changed,' I decided to idly check out an ex's facebook page.

At which point I discovered that said ex wrote an article about how getting a dog saved his relationship with his fiancee. The same fiancee he swore he was going leave for me two years ago.

There's a huge difference between pining for an ex-boyfriend and still feeling affected by an ex-boyfriend. I fall firmly into the second category. TB was my mentor, and a very good friend for many years before a long-awaited reunion turned into something...other. TB is in no way the reason I am a writer, but we met at a time when all the circumstances in my life seemed to be pointing me away from theater. And TB single-handedly dragged me back from the edge and pumped me full of inspiration and courage. So, 5 years later, when TB came to town for just one night for a reading or one of his plays, of course I went. When he suggested that we go for drinks after, I said yes to that too. And yes to the next two bars and the next three drinks. Even though I knew that he had been in a relationship with a faceless woman back in Texas for the entire time I'd known him and this was undoubtedly breaking some rules. I said yes, because it was him. Us. And when TB talked me into taking a cab with him to Fort Greene and then leaned over in the backseat and kissed me...well. Honestly. I never said yes to that part. But I didn't know how to say no either.

The next few months were a disaster. TB and I conducted a long-distance affair so lopsided and manipulative that it pushed me back into therapy and nearly derailed my second year of grad school. I alternately felt loved and desolate, and what started as a seemingly inevitable joining of two hearts quickly presented itself to be the worst romantic (and professional) decision I had ever made. Only weeks after dragging myself out of the epistolary abyss that the demise of my 'relationship' with TB, I met the man who is now my boyfriend. I will call him Pennsylvania here. Penn was quiet and unassuming, wore a knitted cap in late spring, when we met he had completed a British parody play about aliens. He played no games, was my intellectual equal, kept me feeling safe and distracted during Hurricane Irene. I think I loved him from the beginning.

In our less exciting moments, Penn and I sometimes idle away in front of my computer, watching anything and everything Penn can think of that might make me laugh. I'm determine to someday own a corgi and so our attention is frequently drawn to videos of the little dogs hopping here, there, and everywhere on their fuzzy, smaller-than-average legs. More than a year into our relationship, Penn has now fervently promised to someday buy me a corgi of my very own. He may even let me name it D'Artagnan if it's a boy dog.

Anyway. I digress.

 Reading TB'S article in the Times gave me the briefest moment of envy -- envy for his professional success, for his talent. More importantly though, that article was a stark reminder of all the reasons I should never have been with him. In the article, he gives a frank and damning version of his relationship with his forever-fiancee, presenting himself as victim and her as the cold she-beast he just can't seem to slay. And it's bullshit, of course. Because in reality they are two sad people who have chosen a lifetime of making each other even sadder. Staying in any kind of entanglement with TB would have kept me as his passive muse, the subject of his tortured (if eloquent) prose. At the end of the day, I'm more than happy to leave that to his fiancee. And when it comes to dogs? Penn and I may eventually get one because we're ready to take the next step in our life together. Not as a band-aid over the bullet holes we've launched into each other.

Happy 40th, Roe v. Wade!

Choice keeps us safe and alive and free.

Happy birthday, RVW. My body -- and all of its distinctive parts! --thanks you.

apologies, apologies

As a long-time fan of The Bachelor, I can't decide if the reappearance of Brad Womack represents a step in the direction...or a major backslide. Hunky ol' Mr. Womack made a big impression his first time around because he *gasp* decided not to propose to either of the two women left standing at the end of the series. And after watching the first episode of his second-try season last week, it seems like no one -- and I mean NO ONE -- is going to let him forget about this.

But really, ladies...are we actually going to criticize a man for failing to decide on a lifelong partner after a couple weeks of hanging out with them en masse in front of tv cameras? Cool it with the apologies, Brad. I'm only upset about the fact that you decided to try this bulshizz a second time.

love is never blind, but often shortsighted

I admit it: I watch reality tv. Actually, correction, I watch a LOT of reality tv. As a writer (and a relatively intelligent human being), this feels especially embarrassing. I should know better...shouldn't I? Have higher standards? I blame this on an interest in seeking cognitive dissonance. Life as a grad student often leads to days spent debating 19th century French theater and evenings reading long-winded articles about the psychology of conjoined twins. So, sometimes I just feel like I deserve a mental break.

Today the show in question is Dating in the Dark, a self-proclaimed 'social experiment' (barf) in which three single guys and three single gals date IN THE DARK (get it? like the title?) to determine whether or not meaningful connections can be formed without the benefit of a face-to-face meeting. The premise is problematic for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is the assumption that a visually-based chemistry is always somehow more shallow and less legitimate than a connection based on what we get from our other senses. If a guy turns me down because of the low timbre of my voice, my inability to give a good capsule summary of myself, or the interior of my car (they do that sometimes on the show) is that really any less superficial?

Increasingly frustrating is the fact that the show's producers seem determined to find people who purposely conceal information like, for example, their line of work(so as not to give up the secret that they are actually models/strippers/traditionally smokin' hot folks) or have some distinguishing non-visual characteristic that serves as a complete red herring for what they actually look like.

If it's shallow or superficial or somehow immature to believe that love has to be felt with all five senses, then I am perfectly willing to be all of those things. We love and lust with our eyes not because that's all that matters, but because there are intangible, fascinating things about a person's physical appearance that subconsciously give us clues about the rest of this person's appeal. I love the way you smile in spite of -- not because of -- your nice white teeth, because when you grin it goes all the way to your eyes and I know that you are genuinely happy. I feel my eyes gravitate towards your hands, not because they are especially large or small or calloused or smooth, but because I am mesmerized by the wholly unique way you use them as you talk to me. I had no interest in knowing you in the dark until my body and my brain and my heart knew you in the light. Take that, Mr. Social Experiment.

a house of cards: thoughts on power

The most extraordinary thing about a house of cards is that it’s anti-hierarchy. Democracy at its best. It’s not like poker or blackjack or gin where there’s a high card and a low card and a card you want and a card you discard. Everything is of equal value when you’re stacking them in a house of cards. Kings and Queens can be on the bottom or the top, supporting the weight of the low-numbered cards or balancing over them. A five can rest at a jaunty angle atop a ten, the fickle deuce can press intimately against its Queen with the same candor and innocence as it uses with the eight. And those Queens…oh those Queens. Those four little beauties. Funny how, even in a different card game, all of the queens are equal not only to each other, but often to the Kings and the Jacks. No clout. No magic. It’s nothing like chess. No backwards and forwards diagonal kicking the crap out of the other face cards’ perpendicular lines. The Queen is only as strong as the game she plays, as strong as the hand that moves her across a board or angles her in a stack or flips her onto a felt table. You love the Queen best not because she is all-powerful, but because she is nothing without you. Nothing without the power and precision of your ability to choose a path for her. To guide her. To cup her in your palm and make her your champion.

a house of cards...the ultimate display of gender and socioeconomic equality.

paradox [par-uh-doks] noun - a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

Once upon a time, in a small apartment in the land of hipsters and spanikopita, I was kind of a sullen fat chick. Not PHAT, mind you, with the trendy 'ph.' Fat. Overweight and overwrought and in complete denial about both. The Mexican takeout place down the street was my secret salvation, plastic bags from Lane Bryant were hidden under my bed, and I spent the bulk of my (limited) expendable income on shoes and accessories, all of which were meant to detract from the dimensions of my physical person. I was an office drone, I was something of a dismal failure on the online dating circuit...and I was stuck.

Snap to the present. One major quarter life crisis, two years, and almost 60 pounds later, my life has been flipped upside down, with most of the shitty parts of it falling out of my pockets along the way. And yet, for all that, sometimes I feel like people took me more seriously when I was bigger and sadder and more in need of their help. As a damsel in distress, I got to be the smart, quirky one. As I am now...sometimes it's a fight to be heard beyond my measurements.

So...I'd like to introduce you to the Pretty Girl Paradox. Because sometimes you want to be the loudest, most articulate voice in the room while wearing a little dress with bows and buttons on it. THAT, ladies and gents, is what it means to have it all.