Onions

Onions
Originally uploaded by pelmeshka.

I'm just testing a new feature of Flickr. Ignore if you don't like this. Comment if you do.

- Natalie

On Advertising, or The Comedic Potential of Pop-Ups

So I'm reading the New York Times online today, and I'm just starting the article on how the two Russian jets crashed in Russia, when I get the following pop-up: http://oagflights.com/.
Now, I don't know about you, but an article about a plane crash isn't exactly the best possible endorsement for booking a flight...

Well, I found it a bit silly.

And after that little distraction, I'll go back to reading that article.

Natalie

New Design (or, How I Need to Work on Saying "No")

As you can probably tell, I've changed the look of my blog. Nifty, isn't it? (I love the word "nifty". I think it's just a really fun word).

Anyway, I figured I'd ramble a little more, now that my blogs are actually showing up on the page (you might want to scroll down a bit, too, to see if you've read all the posts below-- I know there was a post I made in May that only showed up today after I changed the layout of the page).

So, my latest problem:

I've been plagued by people trying to sell stuff to me.

Okay, so it's only been two. But it seems like a lot more, because the suffering they've brought me... Well, okay, I guess it's not so bad. I'm just incapable of saying no to them!

Take yesterday, for instance. I got a call from MasterCard (guess what kind of accent the guy had? C'mon, guess! Yes - Indian!), with the guy telling me that he's going to send me an unactivated credit card, and how the terms are really good for students, etc., etc. Simple, everyday kind of call, right? Everyone gets them.

Right. Except it took me fifteen minutes to get off the phone -- because my dad's been telling me lately that I should get a credit card, and so I thought I'd take the opportunity to receive a credit card application in the mail and find out its terms and things like that - but then the guy started asking me which college I'm in, and things like that, and my suspicious nature kicked in, as it does whenever anyone asks me for any sort of information that isn't easily accessible (like, I guess I won't be suspicious if they ask me how old I am -- but, after years of drilling via my parents, I absolutely refuse to say what school I go to or what neighborhood I live in...). So I kind of started backtracking and telling him that never mind, I don't want to receive anything from him -- but you know how those telemarketers are. Once you get them started... Fifteen minutes! And I only got him off the phone by asking him to call back at another time after I talk to my parents (it always works to use the "I'm a helpless kid and need my parents' permission to give out any information" card, if all else is lost). Hopefully, he's exasperated enough with me never to call back.

And then today: I'm sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, getting ready to have a very nice lunch hour with my book and my carrots and green peppers, when this guy comes up to me and starts telling me about this promotion his spa is having. So I feel obligated to listen to him for a couple of minutes, and then I actually get interested, because it's a pretty good offer, and it looks fairly legitimate-- and it's occurring to me that it would be a great present for my mom-- so I listen to him go on and on about it, until I realize that it's not just a flyer he's handing to me, but that I have to fill it out and pay him right away-- which I'm obviosly not going to do with some stranger on the street, no matter how legitimate the flyers look.

So I start telling him that no, thank you, I'm not going to pay you right now, and I think I probably looked fairly stubborn about it, because he got a semi-defeated, understanding look on his face. So I'm thinking, yes! I got through to him! He's going to leave me alone! But no-- he's reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell phone, telling me that I can call the number on the flyer and verify what they are.

I say no; then he dials 411 and tells me to call them. "I definitely don't have any friends there," he says.

I say no again. He manages to look very hurt and informs me that lots of people have payed using their credit cards, and it's extremely safe.

I say no for the fifteenth time. He insists on asking why. I explain that I never buy anything from anyone on the street. He looks very hurt, and tells me that he doesn't want me to think he's a con artist. I tell him very politely that I'm sure he's not a con artist, but I'm not going to take any chances. The guy pulls out his cell phone again.

"Here," he says. "You can call my mom and ask her what my job is! She'll tell you..."

At this point, I'm wondering how I manage to get myself into these situations. Do I look like someone who will buy anything if they're nice to me? I mean, I guess I have an inherent inability to be rude to strangers (most of the time, anyway), and I can't just stand up and leave, or yell at them-- but I'm pretty stubborn, too, and I never actually buy anything.

So why does it take me so long to say no? Or, rather, why does it take them so long to accept my no?

I remember watching a show a long time ago, and this scene stayed with me:

A girl is sitting along in a bar, angry after a fight with her friend. A guy slides in the seat next to her and smiles, obviously intending to talk to her.

She just looks at him with a subtle expression of disgust on her face, shakes her head, and says, "Uh... no."

The guy leaves immediately.

I want to be able to adopt that tone of voice, and to be able to use it with people. I mean, I think being rude is horrible, but sometimes I just sit there, after a fifteen-minute conversation with a spa-salesperson, and wish I was able to just look at him with that don't-contradict-me expression, and say "no" in a way that would give him no room for argument.

But no. I'm doomed to a life with hours of time wasted by listening to salespeople talk to me about things I'm never going to buy.

Oh, well. At least if I am ever forced to become a salesperson, I will never have to feel guilty for being angry at people that are rude when I stop them on the street.

The Curious Incident of the Two Crazy Elevator Passengers...

A strange conversation between two strangers in an elevator today:

So I'm standing in the elevator of a building on Greene St., having just delivered a letter to the seventh floor. There are two people in the elevator with me: a man and a woman. The elevator stops on the second floor, and a man enters, holding two umbrellas.

"Down?" He asks. "Down! Down!" He sounds a bit crazy, and, since the building is the home of the School of Ed, I wonder for a moment if he's a patient.

He gets in the elevator and looks at us. "I always bring umbrellas for my students," he informs us.

The woman who was already in the elevator with me asks, "Why don't I get one?"

He looks at her. "Well," he says, as if it's obvious, "you didn't ask."

"If I ask, can I get one?"

"Yes, of course. There's a beach umbrella left."

The elevator stops on the first floor and we walk out. The man keeps talking to the woman.

"You know, I've been here for fifty-three years!"

"Really?" asks the woman, a bit apprehensively.

"Yes. I've been teaching here for fifty-three years!..."

Maybe it doesn't look as funny on paper. But these two people obviously didn't know each other, and the umbrella conversation struck me as completely insane.

But maybe you had to be there...

[Omitting heading to avoid redundancy...]

Right. I think I have possibly had enough of the "Feeling", "Listening to", and "Tasting" information. Maybe I'll revive it later, but all I've gotten for it is teasing (Larry) for my New-York-Times-style headings, so it is gone for now.

Now, on to more fun things:

I saw a duck in the subway today!! It was really, really cute. This girl was holding it, wrapped in a blanket, and it's so much cuter and fluffier than one would imagine ducks to be. It looked something like this, and it occurred to me that maybe we could have a duck for a pet instead of a dog, which is what my sister wants (the dog, that is), and which we're not allowed to have in the building. But then I went online and found out that most people keep ducks in their backyards, and that while there are people that keep ducks in apartments, it tends to be complicated: you need to have a constantly clean pool of water for them, and it tends to be difficult... so, no duck for me :-(

But, yes-- only in New York would you see a duck on the subway. And an even stranger part was that aside from my mom and me-- we were shamelessly staring at the duck and the girl holding it-- there was only one other girl that expressed any sort of interest in it. Everyone else just sat there, not even looking, as if they see ducks commuting to work every day.

Well, that's it for today, except for the following (unrelated) quote, a part of which I found when I was taking a typing test here (it's a cool site -- check it out!), and the rest of which I found here:

If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there is an exception to every rule.
If we accept "For every rule there is an exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception.

So that's it for now... Email me!

Natalie