In lieu of phone calls, please send sea monkeys

This day was long, long, long. I spent the day downtown seeing a mediocre play that neither bored nor interested me. Sometimes that's how it is. On the upside, nobody sat next to me. Even better, nobody with wicked B.O. & nasty, pointy elbows sat next to me, which is awesome. A man in a green coat admired my green coat & thought we should converse in the street (he promised it would be fun) seeing as we both had green coats & all, but I declined. Perhaps on some other day I might have discussed the bitchin' nature of green coats & how much cash I had to spare & whether or not I needed to be saved by Xenu High Dictator of the Galactic Confederacy but not today. I wanted to go to Borders & make fun of the bestsellers, but alas, I only had time to mock a few of those wacky tomes (ostensibly) penned by conservative pundits that seem to be popping up in Evil Chain Bookstores Everywhere. Sometimes to demonstrate my literary disfavor I turn these books face down & walk away. (I cannot flip the covers the bird in front of my mom. She wouldn't like it.) My reasons have less to do with a general distaste for conservative ideology than you might think; mostly, I am angry at the conservatives for ruining the concept of a tea party for ever & ever. Tea parties should have scones & pretty flowered teacups & earl grey with lemon, not misspelled signs & ill-fitting novelty shirts & promises of an armed revolution. Instead, there should be tiny cubes of superfine sugar served with a delicate pair of silver tongs.

They had a sign up for national poetry month on the end-cap, but all they had to offer was Emily Dickinson & Charles Simic & Billy Collins, which is okay I guess. Still, it would have been way cooler if they had brand-spanking-new books by contemporary poets, but of course I know better, because it's Borders for cripes sake. People buy Twilight T-shirts there.

I ate lunch in a restaurant that tried to sell me a wedge of iceberg lettuce for seven dollars but seeing as we have not yet had an apocalyptic food shortage, I thought this rather optimistic on their part. I was not persuaded by their hoary promises of maytag bleu cheese. Seven bucks is too much for a wedge of crappy lettuce. Period. Also: I cannot spend an entire day talking to people for hours on end. It's exhausting. I have decided I hate talking & will happily write back & forth with everybody but real-time reciprocal conversation is just too taxing. Instead of calling on the phone & arranging a real-time visit with me, people should just send unexpected presents in the mail. Anything would do. Send me an oven mitt or a magic 8-ball or a packet of sea monkeys so I know you are thinking of me. That would suit me just fine. I will send you something awesome in return, like sparkly ribbons & tiny bottles of super-fancy sea salt. I think this would be a great way for people to communicate. Remember how Maggie Gyllenhaal leaves an earthworm on James Spader's desk in Secretary? Yeah. You know what I'm talking about.