quote 38.

the blind man opened them wide, as if to facilitate the examination, but the doctor took him by the arm and installed him behind a scanner which anyone with imagination might see as a new version of the confessional, eyes replacing words, and the confessor looking directly into the sinner's soul.

-josé saramago, blindness

definition 1.

this post is dedicated to anyone who ever drank underage at american spirits.

no, make that anyone who ever drank at american spirits.

murray hill north - n., a corridor extending from 72nd to 96th st on manhattan's 2nd ave, characterized by a systematically chotchy dweller and distinguished by a similarly diced constellation of eyesores including brother jimmy's, dorian's, sushi generation, american spirits, and shaaray tefila. (the uptown analog of murray hill)

happy holidays.

hoping to get back in the saddle next week.

notes from a test run of my new commute.

an homage to modestmerlin.

the train is 3 blocks away, as opposed to 3 leagues. (it's the clinton-washington c stop.)

i felt as meta-satisfied with the c train finally being 'my' train as i thought i would.

the morning c train clientele is fairly talented. not as talented as the l train denizens, but on the other hand not as contrived and/or annoying.

the whole of the clientele seems to comprise prep-hipsters, yuppies and black schoolchildren. ie, if the obama coalition had a train, this might well be it.

ten year old black girls are hopelessly adorable when six of them on a train bench lean into each others' puffy jackets at parallel sixty degree angles, like books slanted on a shelf. like ny madelines.

they are even cuter when they notice me futilely trying to capture this image with my hardly panoramic cell phone camera.

we didnt drink rye to emulate frank sinatra.

we drank rye because it got us drunk the quickest. and in this way, we emulated frank sinatra.

we didnt eff each other and stab each other in the back because we wanted to be like fleetwood mac. we did these things because we were insular and incestuous, and in that way, we were like fleetwood mac. (and a bit pretentious.)

the first blogger was jack kerouac.

the friendship accounting classification system.

for ari, a definite cash flow friend.

a few days ago, an old buddy of mine wrote me one a those long time/no speak/just saying hi emails. i was glad to hear from him. i last spoke to him around a year ago; he had just gotten hitched.

after giving him a brief synposis of the current state of my union, i wrote back my classic how-r-ya catch-all for these kinds of people: how's married life?

he wrote back: Funny you should ask. I'm separated and living alone in the village pending a divorce. Seems married life wasn't exactly the right choice for me. More like [redacted] wasn't the right girl and it took me about 12 months too long to figure that out. Other than that all is good. I live right by [redacted] so we should meet up sometime soon and catch up.

so i wrote back: TMI!

jk. i wrote back that i was sorry to hear that, etc. and we should def grab a drink soon. and i hope we do.

nonetheless, this precipitous divorce update led me to come up with the friendship accounting classification system, which shall serve as a handy way for people to describe their level of closeness with friends. it is derived from financial statements.

i dont know much about finance (ok, i prolly know more than the average person, but i just like saying 'i dont know much about' something before i prove that i do, b.c i like sam cooke. and im obnoxious.), but i know that in financial accounting, there are four main statements which capture an entity's financial activities and condition: the balance sheet, the income statement, the statement of retained earnings and the cash flow statement.

im sure we could use the two in between, but for now im only gonna say that most friends are either cash flow friends or balance sheet friends.

see, the thing with the balance sheet is that while it provides a fairly comprehensive portrait of a company's financial condition (assets, liabilities, equity, cash on hand, etc.), the portrait would more accurately be called a snapshot. it's that firm's position at that particular point in time. it says nothing, or relatively little, of how said company makes its money, spends its money, etc. it's kind of like doing a wallet audit on someone, as opposed to following them around work for a couple of weeks (including the day they get paid).

the friend i mention above is a balance sheet friend. we care about each other's overall positions in life, but we dont need to keep up with each other on a week-to-week or even month-to-month basis.

the cash flow statement is different in that it shows not only how much revenue a company is taking in, but more importantly in this case, how said company is making its dough. for instance, it will show receipts from customers, then how much of that total is paid to employees and to the rent, then how what's left over is apportioned, etc. from this you can extrapolate a firm's revenue cycle and whatnot. in other words, the cash flow statement gives much more of a week-to-week type of assessment of the entity's condition than the balance sheet.

needless to say, your closer friends are, thusly, cash flow friends. if my relationship with my newly-single friend had been of the cash flow variety, i would have observed that he wasnt getting along with the wif, then perhaps he would have confided in me that he was worried about his marriage, then this would have gone on for twelve months too long, and then he would have told me he was getting divorced.

so next time you bring up an old friend with a new friend, and the newbie asks you to describe your relationship, you might do well to start by saying, 'well, shes a cash flow friend.' or 'well, this person's kind of a balance sheet friend.'

after you first designate them as being .diced, .chotch, or .classy, of course.

also needless to say, family members, colleagues and lovers have places up in this mix, but thats for another time.

isnt that the way they say it goes.

happy birthday purple!

from the deal:

elaine. (reading card) think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was i had such a friend.

kramer. (to jerry) yates.

lans, you made the best election day joke, you cooked me boy food, you arranged for my blood to be siphoned and made sure to say hi while it was happening, you came with me to moma while we were both flippin out, you watched several woody allen films with me, you came to the park with me that other flip out day - remember that? (i saved the text you sent me for over a year), you brought me cupcakes, you came the closest anyone's ever gonna come to making me like the crossword, you were there when the spirits diced my ice cream cone, you humor my neuroses while others just stand back and laugh, youre sparing with your words so i hang on every one of them, you got your phd at seven years old, you fire up my political juices (to put it diplomatically), youre gods gift to the hoodie, you can throw a spiral and catch one too, you give good text, you like eating things in bowls - almost to a fault, you introduced me to cereal mixing, you said 'what's that?!', you like the band, you quit smoking, you used to meet me at haru when we both lived uptown, you took me to candle cafe, you were one of the first people to ever comment on my blog (and it was a good one, at that), youre fun to watch baseball with, youre just a classy human being, i love you - END OF STORY.