Week Six

my aircon isn't working hard enough, take me back to the beach

IN:

• red nails

• men who wear Sabah shoes (or more specifically, that one man who worked at the Sabah store in NoHo last summer)

• having the motion sickness dots automatically appear on your phone when you’re in a car (or any kind of moving vehicle)

• wearing sunglasses inside the club

• Snack Factory Pop’ums (sea salt flavor only)

• showing your friends around your hometown (& convincing all of them that the Jersey Shore reigns supreme)

Butter yellow was nice, but I missed my girl red — red nails forever!!

Blame it on light sensitivity or whatever you want, but you’ll look mysterious and cool af and more importantly, your eyes will thank you!

If you see these at your local grocery store, you'd better pick them up ASAP. You will not be disappointed, they are the greatest snack I’ve ever tried.

OUT:

• thinking every headache is a brain tumor

• people who whisper loudly/hoarsely

• the NJ transit being delayed and packed on your way home to the city after two weeks of bliss in the suburbs

• three-pronged forks at a restaurant (ew ew ew ew)

• pen-palling with men on dating apps (I am simply too fun and personable, you’ll all fall in love with me too fast!!)

• the internet never working on the subway and my texts sending in psychotic order because of it

So like clearly I am working through this one!!! But haven’t sent a message about it since June soooo…progress over perfection people!

Imagine having to leave this for a hot, packed subway car?? Thank you for thinking of me during this hard time.

Vibe when your train back to the city is delayed and it’s 90+ degrees out and you have to carry two heavy bags home all by yourself (aka another thing that should be a man’s job).

BFFR:

Out: the internet never working on the subway and my texts sending in psychotic order because of it

Alright, let’s get serious because this is ridiculous. I know I’ve said it before but it’s 2025…why in the everloving fuck is my phone constantly on SOS when I’m on the subway?

To make it clear, personally, I love the subway. I love public transportation. I think it’s wonderful and we should all use it more and appreciate it more for the public good that it brings us (and the environment). It could certainly be cleaner, and nicer, and there could be fewer delays and re-routing because, see above, it’s 2025 — but alas, at least we have a pretty high-functioning train system that can get you all over the city (cough cough LA cough).

What we don’t have, is functioning cell service on the goddamn subway — and honestly it’s reached an absurd point. There are parts of the L train that are fine, and I tend to have service for the first half of my commute (or second half depending on which way I’m going), so I’m gonna leave my girl out of this (she has plenty of other issues), but the 4,5,6? 1,2,3? A,C,E? Forget about it. Might as well throw your phone out the window because it will be as useful as a brick.

In the middle of texting your friends in a group chat about something fun? Welp, sorry!! Your phone is going to freak tf out and then tell you that none of your texts were delivered (even though they sometimes actually probably were) and some might send as green texts while others will send three times, and by the time they do send, your friends have now sent 15 other messages and your messages about something they were talking about 5 minutes ago are so out of place and out of order that you look stupid, and IT HAS TO STOP. My time on the train is the majority of the time that I have to respond to people’s messages. It’s free time while I am literally trapped underground with nowhere else to go and have to respond to people — why, MTA, are you making it so hard for me to cross things off my to-do list?? And why are you also semi-inducing a panic in me every time I realize my phone is non-functioning??

Imagine your subway car is stuck underground for some reason (anxious just thinking about it) and you can’t tell anyone??? Because your phone just says SOS, and you’ll have to figure out how the emergency calling works while it’s on SOS, and lord knows that will take forever. I would rather get out of the subway car and walk the tracks than be stuck down there mad at my brick for a phone — I’ll take my chances with the third rail and rats.

Listen, I am not in tech, so I don’t exactly have the solution for this, but I know someone does. There’s some billionaire out there who could fund this (but god forbid billionaires provide public goods anymore, remember when they used to build libraries?). I don’t want to hear about how expensive it is or blah blah blah too much work — make it happen. Use your money, get your tax cut or whatever it is the government will give you for doing something you should be doing anyways, and give me extremely fast and reliable internet underground (and no, I don’t mean wifi that is shady and hackable, I mean my Verizon wireless carrier providing me my service at its full capacity). The tube has internet underground in London, and those trains are far more underground than ours are! How did they figure it out! Call King Charles up and ask him right now!

It’s embarrassing, and we need to fix it. If the new Mayor wants me to lead a task force on this, I will happily volunteer as tribute. It’s becoming dire. The tourists are probably all laughing at us, and we cannot have that (we’re embarrassing enough as is in so many other ways right now). So consider this my public plea, public cry, for help, for change. I never want to see a red exclamation point “not delivered” message on my phone again!!

Like, can’t I just send my family a photo of my outfit while I’m en route to the office?? COME ONNNNNN.

Open to other suggestions if you think the billionaires won’t come through (because we know they won’t). Yes, I’m talking to you, Google software engineers lurking on here — help us!

Xx,

B

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Deep Cut: Last Kiss by Taylor Swift

In honor of it being July 9th earlier this week (IYKYK), it would be a disservice to the Listers if Last Kiss wasn’t my Deep Cut for this week. One of Taylor’s best songs (which don’t worry, there will inevitably be a post where I discuss Taylor in depth), so do yourself a favor and take a listen to her poetry set to music.

See below, three parts of the song that have haunted me since high school. I promise you I have FB statuses out there with all of the lyrics below cryptically hinting at lord knows what — poor high school BB. But as with any Taylor song, it continues to evolve and grow with you for the rest of your life, pure poetry.

And the shaky breath version is back now that she owns her originals!!

All that I know is I don't know
How to be something you miss

So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep
And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe
And I'll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are
Hope it's nice where you are

And I hope the sun shines and it's a beautiful day
And something reminds you you wish you had stayed
You can plan for a change in the weather and time
But I never planned on you changing your mind

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Miss you <3

And because I miss it, leaving you with this zen photo of the Jersey Shore as a palate cleanser after all the ranting above.