from happyrobot - updated 6/9/2026 11:16:02 PM https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp en-us https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3673 Although I wasn't close to anyone who died September 11, my dad was. His friend John Willett, a former grad school classmate, had started working for a Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary only a couple of months before September 11. I'd met John only once: on a car ride to the airport, but my dad had high praise for him, even when he teased about John for his crush on another classmate.

This is what my dad wrote about John two years ago:

Friends – I just found out that John Willett was one of the victims of the Sept. 11 tragedy. Some of you know John from the Fisher MBA pre-req days. He was a member of my pre-req study team.

John finished the pre-req program. But, with a masters degree in economics, John decided to take the plunge into “Finance Central” and try his chances in Manhattan rather than go on for his MBA at Fisher COB. The following is one of his recent messages to me:

“After goofing around at Chase for a year, I have got a real job! I started a couple of weeks ago, I am working for co2e.com, which is an environmental brokerage, and a wholly owned sub of Cantor Fitzgerald. We're on the 102nd floor of the World Trade Center, which is very cool.

“When people ask me what I do there, I tell them I do everything. It's a dotcom, so it has a very flat, cooperative environment. Technically my job is to set up the financial controls, something like a corporate treasurer, and help with deals that we are brokering. I also have duties with the
website that relate to marketing. Never a lack of work!

We have employees in NYC, Sydney, and one in Toronto. We will have a London and Paris office soon. The sun will never set on our company, which is great for deals because everything just gets handed off to the next shift on some other continent. It's a great study in teamwork.”

John was a good guy, a hard worker, had brilliant business sense. He was funny and reveled in his bizarre - and sometimes bad - tastes. Most importantly, he remained idealistic to the core. He lost a job and career in politics because he decided to blow the whistle on corruption in Missouri. He lost many weeks and weekends when he could have been studying or putting a new career together because he continuously had to return to Missouri and testify against the bad guys.

It’s a shame to lose him.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3672 I first wrote this in a group e-mail the week of Sept. 11, 2001 and was later posted on a friend's website. (I don't remember when, bad record-keeping on my part, I guess.) Although some parts make me cringe now, here it is in all its glory. The only thing I've changed is the capitalization. Here goes:

As you all know, I am a bit of an insomniac, to say the least. But instead of taking Paxil, Prozac, Valium, Nytol, I give myself steady doses of television until i fall asleep. So on Tuesday, September 11, it was the sound of Katie Couric's voice, not an alarm clock that awakened me.

I had been dreaming.

In my dream, Katie had been looking out the picture window that makes up the back part of the Today Show set. She was looking out of a window, through a periscope, at a far-off object I couldn't see.

"They've bombed the building," she said, in a incredulous voice.

I woke up a little bit before 10 a.m. Tuesday, September 11, to the sight of the World trade Towers smoking. And as I felt around for my glasses, I watched a chunk of one of the buildings fall, in erie slow motion, to the ground. Later, when I turned my head for a moment, the whole thing fell. Soon both towers were gone, lost in that cloud of debris, glittering with glass. First white with concrete and smoke, then black.

Ten days earlier, iId flown to New York in a small commuter plane. The businessman that sat next to me had been strangely talkative. As we descended toward La Guardia, he pointed out the landmarks.

There's the Manhattan Bridge. There's the Brooklyn Bridge. there's the Williamsburg Bridge. There's the Empire State Building. There's the World Trade towers, he said, his arm outstretched in front of me as we peered out the window.

I was impatient. I knew what the sights looked like, I didn't need him to tell me what I was looking at.

That was Saturday. On Tuesday, I met up with my childhood friend Joey (or Joe, as he prefers to be called). We stuffed ourselves with Indian food and talked about my possible move to the city. We walked over to the New York University area, eating pastries at a restaurant that Joey told me was one of the oldest in the city. The food was good, but filling, so we decided to take a walk. We walked for blocks, skirting the edge of Washington Square Park, then walking further and further toward the river. New Jersey, Joey told me, was on the other side. We thought about crossing the bridge, but wide lanes of traffic kept us back.

My mom is gonna be angry with you if she finds out that you took me out here at this time of night, I told him, smiling. She'll be sad if I die. It was dark, deserted and chilly. and while I was joking, I was more than a little nervous. Let's walk to the World Trade Center, Joey suggested.

So we walked and walked that night, bickering over how far away those twin towers really were. Two blocks, I argued. Twelve, he argued back. You have no idea how big it is. We walked by a big brick building, a modern structure that looked it had been designed with a child's wooden blocks in mind. It was, we agreed, rather ugly.

I saw that building later on the news, a high school, a background to frenzied news broadcasts. We kept on walking.

Six blocks. Neither of us were right, but I was closer, I told Joey. It was big, I agreed. We looked up the side of one of the buildings. It was dark, and the building was high. I couldn't see the top.

I needed to get back to my friends' home, and so we headed for the subway, going underneath those towering 110 stories to catch a train. It was the last time that I saw the towers. I didn't have a window seat on my flight back to Columbus, and I didn't look back as the plane flew westward that Saturday.

Tuesday, September 11. I started to cry as I watched the picture on the television.

I was at home, alone, and my calls to friends in the city went unanswered. All I heard was a recorded voice telling me that all circuits were busy, or worse, a few rings and then nothing at all.

Slowly, my calls began to go through. First to Matt, who was on the train, on his way home to Brooklyn, after an aborted attempt to get to work. Then Joey, returning to Manhattan from the Bronx, far away from the epicenter. Then Maya, her voice registering shock even as her cell phone garbled our conversation.

....8:30...I was going to work...I'm at a friend's in the Upper East Side now...outside is the same as on t.v....

I got e-mails from friends checking in.

I was on the street when it happened. It was pretty intense, wrote Molly.

(I stomped) up the stairs to walk 30 blocks to get to work only to see the World Trade Center fucking collapse, huge plumes of smoke covering the sky as bits of metal and glass shimmer through the air, raining down on the people sprinting uptown, away, away from the insanity, wrote Josh.

Everyone I know is okay. As far as I know, everyone they know is okay, too. And I know, in the grand scheme of things what I went through was nothing, nothing at all. But on Tuesday, September 11, I began to understand exactly why they call it terrorism.

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3497 The last two weeks have been crazy -- Kyle and I drove to New York not once, but twice in the last 14 days, the second time stopping off in Burlington, Vermont and State College Pennsylvania.

But I'll talk about that another time.

Instead, I have to take a moment to talk about what I just saw on the tee vee.

I was watching Insomniac With Dave Attell, not normally one of my favorite shows, but this episode was filmed in Columbus -- how could I resist? Adding to the appeal was that Dave was accompanied by a co-host from Columbus, who is a friend of a friend. So, anyway, I was getting annoyed with the show -- as I generally do when I watch it -- the PG-13 Girls Gone Wild antics can get a bit irritating. I couldn't believe it when halfway through the episode they had yet to visit a bar I'd ever set foot into.

But then they went to the St. James Tavern, a hipster bar in a questionable neighborhood with an unquestionably good jukebox and cheap drinks. There was a period where I could be found at the St. James at least once a week. And then I was reminded of why I stopped going for a bit.

A guy in his mid-20s was being interviewed by Dave. The guy flashed Dave his credit card, which read, "Gabe's House of Porn."

Jeebus. I know Gabe. About a year or so ago, I was at the St. James with a bunch of friends when Gabe sat down at our table, chatting and passing around his credit card. He was nice enough, if a bit garrulous for my tastes.

Anyway, a week later, my friend Colleen and I returned to the bar, with the goal of drinking a few $2 pints of beer and being left the hell alone. Gabe was there, again, and this time he was with a friend. They started chatting us up, and attempted to draw us back to the apartment they shared with promises of a cute puppy, premium cable, more beer, and, importantly, a couch.

It was as if they believed the phrase "we have a couch" was what girls spent their whole lives dreaming of.

They kept it up after last call and trailed us to my car, giving me and Colleen their address just in case we changed our minds and wanted to stop by. We didn't change our minds.

Since Girls' Night Part One: Drinking At The Bar had been effectively destroyed by the persistent lotharios, we embarked on Part Two: Smoking Pot That I Found Outside Of A Movie Theater In Dayton. I'd found the pot a couple months earlier after paying for a premium ticket to see Corky Romano at the insistence of friends. Finding the pot made me almost not hate myself for watching Corky Romano. Almost. My friends had gathered outside of the theater after the movie to discuss its finer points, such as the ongoing debate, "Was That Just A Really Fat Cat or Was That A Really Fat Cat In A Fat Cat Suit?" Having made up my mind (I sided with Just A Really Fat Cat), I started looking at the ground, and found a small baggie with something green inside. No one really seemed to notice my quiet announcement of "guys, I think I found some dope," so I pocketed the stuff. It was mostly stems and such, but there was enough for a small bowl. Not being a huge pot smoker, I held onto it, waiting for the perfect moment.

After getting hit on by Gabe & Co., the time seemed right. But there was a problem. Colleen and I, not regular pot smokers or smokers of any other substance did not have rolling papers, a pipe, a bong or any other smoking accessory. And although we had a supply of both apples and potatoes, neither of us knew how to craft a bong out of them. But I did have one skill: I could make a bong out of a soda can. Unfortunately for us, Colleen's roommate, Mollie, had just taken out the recycling, so there were no empty cans to be had. Unfortunately for Mollie, she'd left plenty of full cans of root beer in the fridge. Neither of us liked root beer, so it was dumped down the drain. Then I used Mollie's Sesame Street coloring book to separate the seeds and stems, feeling a little guilty, since Mollie herself has never touched pot. After we smoked the dope, we ate some of Mollie's leftover pizza, and then passed out, the stems and seeds still littering the coloring book, the charred can nearby.

Colleen and I didn't go back to the St. James Tavern for a couple of months after that. I was out of pot, and the thought of running into Gabe and his House of Porn again without the promise of drugs was enough to freeze my heart with fear. I dunno, I probably go back sometime -- guess it's time to start skulking around the movie theaters again.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3434 This weekend I celebrated the independence of the good ol' U.S. of A and my 17-year-old dog's birthday by drinking, watching a bad Reese Witherspoon movie and picking up dog crap.

First, the dog crap.
Whiskers (named by 8-year old me due in equal parts to my surprise concerning her long whiskers and my desire for a cat) celebrated Independence Day and her birthday early on in the day by peeing and pooping on the area rug in our living room. This "celebration" has actually been going on for a few weeks now, and is on the verge of making my mother and me batty. It's not so much the poop that's a problem -- it mirrors the consistency of her dry dog food -- as the pee, which has brought my mom to crawling on the rug on her hands and knees, sniffing for lingering odors. Dr. Bronner's Sal's Suds has done a pretty good job of removing any unwanted stains, but the daily rug cleaning is starting to wear.
And yet, I can't get upset by Whiskers' actions, even though she often pees inside when the outside is only a few short steps away. Converting her age to dog years makes her a centenarian, and I can't look into her cataract-clouded eyes and stay annoyed for long. She's a tough old broad, intimidating my bigger (and younger, at age four) dog Sollie with ease, even as she staggers on arthritis-stiffened legs. She decides when he eats, when he gets petted and even takes control on walks. I've been trying to get used to the idea that she probably won't last the year, but it's been a hard sell. I s'pose it's partially because she was my first pet. Apart from Goldilocks The Goldfish, the only animal to die in our household was Wilbur The Guinea Pig, a class pet brought home by my mom, who was a teacher at the time. Wilbur only lasted a week though -- he was felled by a heart attack after Whiskers found his cage and briefly held him in her mouth. That was a bad day.
So, anyway, I guess as much as I hate the now-daily task of picking up Whiskers' droppings, it would be worse if I didn't have to do it. I love that old bitch.

Post-poop patrol, I headed to a Fourth of July party with my friend, Mollie. It was a lil' stressful -- I only knew a handful of the people there -- and I was filled with seventh-grader-like self-conscious anxiety. I felt Awkward, and sipped on a drink of raspberry-infused vodka and coke in an attempt to feel Social.
The Fourth of July party is an annual event for Mollie and a group of childhood friends. They gather each year at a home near where the neighborhood fireworks display is to be set off. When they were little, they would camp out at the park all day to get a prime viewing spot. For most of them, the Fourth of July is a favorite holiday, not for jingoistic patriotic malarkey but because of their memories of childhood awe for the annual display.
So, when the fireworks went off an hour early because of an impending storm and everyone at the party (as well as the hundreds of families still trucking their way to the park) missed it, people got upset. Very upset. It was an ugly scene, with many of the festive (and slightly tipsy) partygoers welling up with tears.
Mollie and I decided to jet, since, in her words "Fourth of July may as well not have happened." In light of the depressing turn of events we decided to see a bit of summer fluff, and after some deliberating, chose Legally Blonde 2. Mollie, being a blonde herself, had a natural affinity for the movie, and, well, I like pink and I've liked Reese Witherspoon ever since the incomparable Freeway.
Legally Blonde 2 is no Freeway.
Even so, I would say I enjoyed it up 'till the last ten minutes or so. Although the ending was lame, in my book, there's little better than a gay dog subplot. Yeah.
Okay, time for beddy-by. Tomorrow's Deadline Day at work and I need my strength.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3423 So, it's 4 a.m. and I'm trying to finish writing a very long, very boring article that has taken the better part of six months from start to finish. I'm in the home stretch, and the only thing propelling me forward right now is caffeine-laden black-as-my-heart tea and a Late Night With Conan O'Brian rerun with Amy Sedaris. And then, just as she's starting to talk about her new book and I'm making plans to order it online, an announcement pops up -- this program has been interrupted by another broadcast. So I wonder, in the few seconds before the new program begins, what will it be? News of a hostage situation in town? A weather warning?


No. My beloved Conan was pre-empted for an encore presentation of Extra. Because another half-hour program full of hosts tumbling over themselves to fawn over "stars" is just what every T.V. viewer wants at 4 a.m. They might deliver the stars, but I'm going to deliver the rage.


Okay, back to work.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3412 Wednesday, Kyle pointed to a picture of his friend Joseph, whose likeness was silkscreened on a pile of t-shirts Kyle was attempting to sell.
Joseph, Kyle told me, had recently gone AWOL for a brief stint, smoking pot before returning to his Air Force base.

In high school, AWOL was a term I associated with the Beastie Boys and little more. Hell, that was my primary association with the term until I began dating Kyle a little over a year ago. You see, my boyfriend is an ex-military man, serving in the Air Force for four years after graduating from high school.
(Okay, "military man" might be an exaggeration -- he served as a dental hygienist.)

I never really thought I would be involved with anyone with a military background -- when military recruiters came calling my senior year, I could get them off the phone with a simple statement: "I'm a pacifist."What would have been just as easy, I've realized, would have been to tell recruiters about my parents, The Commies.

My parents were Communists when Communism was far from cool -- in the Reagan 80s. (Although, really, was Communism ever cool?) When I was little, when they regularly protested conditions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and for working people around the country, I used to worry they'd be arrested, and I would have to fend for myself. But as I got older -- although I still kept the information about my parents under my cap at school -- I became more at ease with their politics. By the fifth grade I was able laugh at the middle-aged woman who not-so-surreptiously whispered to her husband "do you think they'll be able to take over the world?" as she fingered old linens at a Communist yard sale hosted by my parents.

I never quite realized how deeply my parents were entrenched in their Communist ethos, but over the years, I began adding up the clues.
In the sixth grade, while rummaging through a bag of rags in the attic for craft supplies, I found a handgun. My parents, my mom explained, had done target practice in preparation for The Revolution.

And then there were the pictures of my dad, in Cuba, standing by a man who looked suspiciously like Fidel Castro. It was not, I learned, El Comandante, but his brother, Raul Castro.

The family record collection included a 7-inch record and accompanying book with a picture of Mao on the cover. The book had directions on how to do the daily exercises prescribed by the Chinese leader.

And recently I did an internet search and discovered the organization my parents had belonged to was a Maoist-Stalinist group. My friend Joey, my mom later explained, was named after Stalin.

In the years since, a lot has changed. Mom works at a non-profit, and says, "we were crazy back then." Dad does public relations for a union, but now has a younger, blonder wife and a fancy house bordering the 'burbs with a pool.

"They've sold out," Joey told me at a recent Thanksgiving gathering.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3411 When I was little, the list of foods I would not eat was a never-ending source of conflict between my parents and I. I liked bagels and cream cheese, chocolate and pizza and that was pretty much it. But my parents, heads of the "Clean Plate Club," insisted I eat the hated vegetables before I could leave the table. It was then that I developed what (I thought was) a clever technique. I'd douse the limp vegetables with ranch salad dressing, gingerly put them in my mouth and commence chewing. When my parents' attention appeared to be deflected, I would raise my napkin and quickly spit out the offending food. After dinner, I would stride to the nearest bathroom and -- flush -- the food was gone.

When I became a vegetarian at age 12, out went the meat, but I didn't find myself eating any more veggies.

Over the years, I slowly introduced more foods to my diet. Raw spinach, I discovered, was tasty compared to the limp frozen version Mom had served.
Tofu wasn't so bad -- if it was stir-fried with Chinese food, instead of plain, like Dad liked it.

But asparagus remained on my Do Not Eat list.

That is, until my 25th birthday.

I was staying with my boyfriend at a cabin in southeastern Ohio. Food was provided, and the owner even told me I could tell him what not to cook.No brussels sprouts, I said. No okra, no squash and no zucchini, I told him.But I forgot to say no asparagus, and there it was sitting on my plate. Out of politeness, I decided to take a bite, and discovered, to my shock, it was delicious.

So, last night I decided to try a recipe I found in the paper -- roast asparagus with breadcrumbs. It was a quick dish, only taking 12 minutes, which would leave me with more than enough time to make it to the city council meeting I had to cover for work.

I cooked, ate up, grabbed a water bottle and left.

I made a pit stop in the city hall bathroom before the meeting began. As I peed, I smelled something gassy, something fetid, something undeniably bad. I listened for the unmistakable sound of someone in an adjoining stall dropping a load, but I was the only one in there. And then I realized -- the smell was me.

According to webmd.com, the unmistakable eau d'asparagus pee is a result of the digestive tract breaking down a sulfur compound called mercaptan, found in asparagus and also found in rotten eggs, onions, garlic and in the secretions of skunks.

But not everyone smells the stench. No one quite knows if people who smell the unmistakable malodor of asparagus urine are unique in producing the smell, or detecting it. I'm not sure myself, but I'm making plans for myself. If this whole journalism thing doesn't work out, I'm considering becoming a one-woman stink-bomb factory. Any takers?]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/heartshapedstate.asp?id=3410 Last night I dreamt I lived in a rural town surrounded by woods. A friend told me that there was a new celebrity athletic facility in the middle of the forest, and I should check it out. After a little bit of searching, there it was: a bright white structure in the middle of dense trees. Thin, manicured celebrities lounged around the premises, their eyes hidden behind opaque sunglasses. I decided to sneak in.

Trailing behind the girl who plays Lucy on 7th Heaven, I strode past Vanilla Ice and attempted to walk by Dennis Franz, who guarded the door.

"You're not famous," he yelled, grabbing my arm as I tried to pass him.

He took me to another room, where he attempted to sell me a membership to the club. Even though it conferred none of the privileges afforded to the celebrities, I'd be able to tell my friends I was a member, he said.
I declined, and woke up. I think it's time to cut back on the Access Hollywood.




Tonight, I stayed at work until 4 a.m. My deadline's noon on Mondays, which means I, a procrastinator, end up doing a majority of my week's work on Sunday.

The only thing worse than being at work in the early morning hours is leaving work in the early morning hours. A few months ago, I listened as a local news channel announced a body had been found a block away from my office. The unidentified male had been shot and then burned, the newscaster announced.

The news left me a bit concerned.
So, I went to my dad for reassurance. After hearing the story of the mystery corpse, Dad found a way to assuage my worries.

"You know, they probabaly didn't kill him there, that's just where they dumped the body," he said.

Dad's reassurance techniques could use some work.]]>