"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Way back in the dark ages, there was a time when I didn't know what true love was. As hard as it is to understand, there was a brief moment when I didn't have Erik in my life. Before that blink of an angel's left eye, I made several of what we'll call "disasterous dating mistakes". These were similar in scale to 9/11, or the tsunami. This was our Pearl Harbor, our Vietnam, our Date-Gate.

Remember when I devoted my blog to revealing the horrible traits of my douchey ex-boyfriend for a month (scroll down to about, oh, Valentine's Day) such as how he blew me off on Valentines Day and then text messaged me at 11:00 to "come cuddle"?

Guess who I just got an email from? One clue: his 19 year old "new girlfriend" just broke up with his ass, and it ain't even Valentines Day yet.

This morning, I received the following email from said charmer.

In a commercial tonight for a new medication. "One in ten grown adults suffers from Restless Leg Syndrome"
http://www.restlesslegs.com

That was the whole email. Timestamped 3:56 AM.

The last time we spoke ended with something like "Never contact me again, ever, ever, ever, you lying douchebag." I may or may not have added a "p.s. Unless you find a link about restless leg syndrome".

In the interest of blogging everywhere, I will respond:

Dear Evan,

To contact me like this, with no explanation, as if we'd been emailing all this time and hadn't had an enormous (and, I thought, FINAL) fight - is beyond pathetic. Dare I call it truly deranged?

I know your answer to this email will be - 'Why did you have to respond to me like this? I just saw a link that made me think of you. Anyway, I thought maybe we could be friends but now you had to go and be a bitch and ruin it all'.

Try treating your next 19 year old with respect, instead of being a cheap, selfish alcoholic, and then she won't leave you and then you won't have to email me at 4:00 in the morning and look like a complete and total loser.

I HAVE A BOYFRIEND. We are not breaking up. You and I will never get back together. We will not ever be friends or even friendly - not just because of how you treated me while we were dating, but because 6 months later, you told weird lies about my boyfriend as if we were in Junior High School and seemingly got us uninvited from a damn party.

Stop contacting me. For my sake, but mostly for yours.

yours truly,

Kyria Abrahams

Erik: What were you writing?

Me: Some long rambling thing about standup. It's babbly.

Erik: If you can't babble on your blog, where can you babble? Blogs aren't exactly where people go for concise dissertations.

Me (thought): I'm putting that on my blog...

I was surprised at my ability to enjoy the show. Taking time off from 'being a standup' has to give you the perspective of being the audience. I highly recommend it, the way some freakish hippies tell you to fast for a weekend to "let your colon breathe".

It's like going straight to college from high school. You view it as a chore, and the sole reason to get up in the morning. You can't truly appreciate history until you work nights to pay for it.

I actually enjoyed the show. I would never have been able to say that as a standup, because a standup is not allowed to enjoy comedy.

You just graduated from a standup class two weeks ago and this is your first open mike? You suck. You've been doing standup for 17 years and have travelled all over the country making a living? You're a pathetic hack. You're 'alternative' and you just read a page from your 4th grade diary? Go ask your parents for money. You're doing well and just got a writing job? I want you to dissolve into the earth's molten core.

Standups are masters of schadenfreude. When I was 8 years old in Rhode Island, the Pawtucket public library sponsored an ice-cream eating contest. A few days prior, I'd won a pair of real roller skates* by drawing a winning picture of two girls skating their cares away in 2-D perspective.

*(that is, they goddamn drilled a metal chassis and plastic wheels the size of french cruellers onto the bottom of a pair of red, white, and blue no-name sneakers: REAL fucking rollerskates)

Then my fat friend won the ice-cream eating contest and I had a complete mental breakdown on the library lawn.

I won rollerskates by posessing artistic talent. My fat friend won a gift certificate for ice cream by fat-eating ice cream and I just couldn't take the competition.

Standups are like that.

I wondered how I would be, not exactly a standup comic anymore - sitting in an audience for a show I'd been asked to submit an audition tape to, and hadn't. I wondered if I would feel like a failure, feared I would start crying. How would I not want to be on stage in their place?

Eh. I sat still like a normal human being and enjoyed a show. I didn't think everyone was funny, oh dear christ no, but I didn't HATE them for it. I, like everyone else in the audience, had nothing to gain by hating the show.

I enjoy watching people enjoy themselves. Smiles, laughter, that kinda crap. This is oddly controversial in standup circles. Apparently the audience is only supposed to be entertained by that which certain comedians deem acceptable. Everyone else is 'destroying the art form'. So the comic gets on stage and talks over the audience's head for 7 minutes and yells at the front row because he thinks they're heckling (they're not) and leaves feeling smug because they just don't "get him" and the audience goes home pissy and wondering what the hell that was.

Fuck the fact that this audience works all day and goes home to a bitchy wife and doesn't get to hang out at the bar 3 nights a week cracking jokes with a group of standup comics. Fuck the fact that this audience actually CAN'T write jokes and actually APPRECIATES being entertained because they don't know how to make that part of their brain work. Fuck them. They have no taste.

Before the start of the taping, a zoftig black woman literally line-danced into the aisle in front of us, turning to me and my boyfriend to say, "I HOPE Y'ALL LIKE TO HAVE FUN CUZ WE GONNA HAVE SOME FUN TO-NIGHT!"

She was enjoying herself more than I ever have in my entire life. She high-fived her friend before sitting down. I've never high-fived my friend because I sat in a seat. And you'd have to be an unrelentingly pretentous douchebag to begrudge her that.

I'm not saying there isn't unique, smart, edgy comedy vs. comedy that just sucks. But the people that yell about "good standup" all seem to be part of the same subculture. They all played a lot of D&D as a kid.

Some people grew up all boring and like to feather their hair and eat sausage on things that sausage doesn't belong on. Some people listen to popular radio, some people have a separate livingroom with a couch that never gets used and gold velvet lampshades. Yes, the lampshades are ugly, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to laugh. Everybody deserves to laugh. Just because you can't reach them doesn't mean you have to be a cunt about it.

The comedians I found to be the funniest that night, 'Gonna Have Some Fun Woman' didn't seem to agree with. Judging from the way she was turned 1/4 of the way around in her seat and conspicuously not standing up and waving her index finger in the air - she wasn't enjoying it like I was. So what are you gonna do, strap her to her fucking seat and FORCE her to think that joke about evolution with a reference to an obscure Smith's song was brilliant?

To quote the book Bedtime for Francis,

“Everybody has a job,” said Father.
“I have to go to my office every morning at nine o’clock.
That is my job. You have to go to sleep
so you can be wide awake for school tomorrow.
That is your job...And if you do not go to sleep now,
do you know what will happen to you?”
“I will be out of a job?” said Frances.
“No,” said Father.
“I will get a spanking?” said Frances.
“Right!” said Father.
“Good night!” said Frances, and she went back to her room.

I think I started hating standup comics because they forgot their job is to make people laugh. They think their job is to look important and make a whole room listen to them.

And now I will mull over the fact that a book I read as a kid touted beating your child because they had trouble sleeping. Good work, book. Good work.

For your ooh-ing and awe-ing pleasure, please turn your attention to the fabulous handcrafted silver and turquoise necklace which the love of my life did purchase for me not but two weekends ago.

Note that the bottom looks like a curved medalion. It can also be wrapped around your wrist and worn as a bracelet...

Dare I say, it is almost as beautiful as my boyfriend.

Today's overblown and innacurate newsbite is brought to you by This Is Our Tsunami.

From now on, all tragedies must be compared to 9/11 or the Asian tsunami. For example, I currently am home sick with the flu and I have quite a nasty headache. This is similar to the pain of the families of everyone who died in 9/11 and the tsunami combined.

- The London bombings were like 9/11

- 9/11 was like Pearl Harbor

- Pearl Harbor was like the time we ran out of clotted cream and had to subsist upon dry scones and assorted honeyed victuals

- Vietnam was like Apocalypse Now (Redux)

- The Irish Potato Famine was like a really bad seat at the St. Patrick's Day parade (without a giant green foam finger)

- Reagan getting shot was like the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs

- The great depression was like the time I accidentally gave a cab driver a $20.00 tip

- The South-East Asian tsunami was like the South-East Asian tsunami (of 1629)

The only poor black folks who would have been safer IN the army.

I'm serious about the famous-blog thing.

Stars don't need an outlet.

Think about it. Think about the power of blogs.

It's deep, you know.

Specifically, Val Kappa, who will certainly be too hysterikal for skool.

I'm excited to see my friends of course, but strangely disconnected from the whole idea of "getting on television".

That is, I haven't entirely gotten comfortable with the fact that I don't "do standup" anymore.

Sure, I'll talk a good game over Korean vodka on 34th street

and tell you how unbelievably selfish and psychotic the whole idea of standing on a stage and forcing an emotion from people seems to me. And I do feel that*. I also feel like a complete failure.

*Only when the performer is myself, or someone who is so self-consciously "funny" that you want to stab your vagina off.

Sadly, I have no one to blame but myself for quitting.

And my parents who told me that Jehovah hates college and I should spend my time preparing for Armageddon instead of learning things about the world.

If you can't blame your psycho-cult member parents for your debilitating insecurity now and again, who can you blame? Who??

I will probably write more about why I am a complete failure soon.

Why do famous people have blogs?

Philly was as I remembered it: barren.

We walked back from the subway at a mere 10:30 at night, and the streets were utterly silent. Empty. Scary empty. We were followed back to the hotel from the train. The New Yorkers ended up being the most naive tourists in Philly.

We hopped on a trolley (which looked suspiciously like "a bus") and walked around University City where we stopped at an Ethiopian restaurant - a neighborhood establishment populated entirely by large groups of men, drinking, eating, and heading back and forth between each other's table. A young boy was leaning against his father's knee, listening to older men have discussions he didn't fully understand.

As we fingerpainted with lentils (Erik fares better with a fork than with bread. So do I.) I noticed, in the back, all these mysterious young college kids darting in and out from somewhere...

There was a damn separate restaurant upstairs, with a separate entrance.

All the white college kids were going in the back door and heading up to their private hipster hell.

As if to rub in the divide, they were playing "ironic" country music.

As Erik eloquently said: "What a bunch of pussies."

The second day - Saturday - we walked for 10 hours. Just walked.

We broke fast in the Rittenhouse Square district (more like Ritzie-house Square if you ask me, LOL!!) and had a "gourmet" breakfast that cost too much, so that the people who live in Philadelphia don't realize they're not in New York. From there, we walked across Philadelphia.

We always - always - ended up back at Locust Street.

The carriage houses along thin cobblestone sidestreets, just blew us away.

We went to the Mutter Museum, looked at body parts in jars.

I introduced Erik, who is "not a drinker" to the appletini, which he loved, and we drank on the sidewalk. He's going to break up with me because he is now a gay man. I had a chocolate martini, because I, too, am a gay man.

Flying high on pretty drinks, we wandered around the Penn's Landing waterfront. Then we read every damn plaque about the Irish potato famine and tried to rationalize how you go from "No Irish Allowed" to foam leprechaun hats at the St. Patricks parade in South Boston.

On Sunday, we visited a little something called the "hotel omelet bar", but no matter how many omelets I ordered I couldn't get a buzz on. We then spent 9,000 hours in the Constitution center, Erik thought he lost me when I couldn't find the bathroom for 20 minutes, and we passed "Trenton Makes - the World Takes" on the way home.

Did you know those stupid double-decker bus tours cost $25.00? There's another reason to hate the tourist in the clear Duane Reed slicker taking photos of you as you walk home from work.

Lew Blum tows every car in Philadelphia.

All in all, I found Philadelphia to be a lovely weekend trip, mostly due to my brilliant travelling companion, but we were both relieved to get back to New York and feel safe in a city where the Midwest tourists stay out past 9:00.

Today: Queens.

Philadephia. Hotel. 6 month anniversary. True love and all that, you know, sir.

True love is rather boring really. It's just one long cliche.

Icouldn'tlivewithoutyou You'remyeverything You'rethesunandorthemoon. Ineedyouforeverandeveramen.

The thing I hate about love is it makes you realize how completely unpoetic you are.

It's a good thing it makes life worth living, because otherwise it would totally ruin you.

If you place the phrase, "We Are Jewish Owned..." on a slowly scrolling LCD screen in the window of your business, it will, for just an instant, first be seen as "We Are Jewish..."

At least by me.

Got that, Parkside Funeral Home on Queens Boulevard?

Not that the people who own said Jewish-owned business wouldn't also be Jewish, it's just more effective to say: "Next day delivery"

By Burenbayar Chanrav and Kyria Abrahams

I keep coming up with these incredibly funny lines during sex, but I forget them before I can reach my blog.

Don't tell anyone I said that.

I received a replacement for my dumb-stupid broken old cell phone and now all of my phone numbers are gone.

Apparently "smart chip" means that it remains a chip when moving it from one phone to the next.

It does not, however, mean that it retains any of your, say, personal information.

"This chip is smart. Real smart. It didn't turn into a badger or an ice cream cone. And lookit - he knows his ABC's!"

If you love me, please email me your phone number.

If you hate me, hit me with an axe.

email: my full name at gmail.com

They say that children are much more adept at learning languages than adults are. I don't believe this. Children are pretty dumb. They're children. I'm teaching myself Russian right now. If someone asked me what "B" was, I wouldn't put my hands over my face and squeal: DOGGY!!

I had a bunch of primer books as a kid, where you were supposed to trace over segmented letters. Each letter was written in 9,000 point type, and there were about 3 letters to each line. I spent months meticulously tracing over the letter "S", and 4 years later, I was still writing it backwards.

Today, I taught myself several Russian letters. I looked at them and then wrote them on a piece a paper. There was no tracing involved. Later on, I'll still remember what most of them look like. It won't take me 2 years to do this and I also won't spill juice on any of my books, ruin them and then FUCKING CRY!

Put me in a class with any 6 year old and now let's see who learns languages faster. Your "zheh" is looking a little shaky, Susie. What's wrong, don't you have full muscle control in your wrists yet? There's a gold star in penmanship with my name on it. It's go time.

What if every person who bought an iPod donated ten dollars to charity?

I'm now going to sound like I'm laying a guilt trip on you. I'm not. I mean, I sound like it, but I'm not. This is an idea that I'm honestly excited about, and I want to spread it to others.

Ask yourself: have I bought anything incidental in the past month, such as a cd or movie tickets?

If so, please consider donating the same amount as you spent on your incidental to a charity.

It may seem like a lot for you to drop $25.00 or $50.00 a month here, but if you don't, I promise you that it will get spent on:

Burnt-tasting accidentally-decaf coffee
A Mister Softee ripoff truck
A night drinking for no reason
Candles that smell like cheap fabric softener
Cat crap
Shitty body glitter
Christ, why the hell did I go out drinking last night?

Maybe this idea is something you'd be inclined to mull over. I hope so.

love <3,

Some condescending, self-important bitch

There is a place called the Bronx Zoo and we went there. Here within the gallery you will find several photos of this most fantastical journey, often on a train.

(This photo is breaking my page, yes.)

Sign manufacturers. People who create signs for a living must be the most vindictive people in the world.

Hey there, sign maker. You, me, and the guy running the lathe all know that there's no such word as "Laundreymat," and it's not the nice Chinese lady's fault that English isn't her strong suit. She's a lovely woman and she presses a good shirt. Why you wanna do her like that?

Are you gleeful as you adjust the font kerning for "1-Stop Cofe Shop"? Do you motion to your staff to gather round the masterfully lacquered: "Delicious Samwhiches"? Does this give you fulfillment, joy? Does it arouse you sexually?

Be a man. Pick up that phone and push 10 buttons. Ask: "Did you mean, Swan's Laundromat? Oh, and by the way, I took the liberty of adding a possessive apostrophe to your name,"

Then, wiping your nose against your shoulder, add, "Because that's the sort of conscientious human I am, ma'am. I'm a sign manufacturer. It's what we do."

School teachers everywhere are praising JK Rowling's Harry Potter series for its ability to get children interested in reading about Harry Potter. No other fantasy series, such as C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, has ever generated as much fervor for buying The Half-Blood Prince as JK Rowlings' books have.

"Ever since The Chamber of Secrets came out, I have been reading Harry Potter books," says Rachel, age 11. "I have now read all the Harry Potter books and have seen all of the movies and bought all of the toys. Each new Harry Potter book makes me want to read another Harry Potter book and buy Harry Potter cereal with a quidditch ball free inside."

In a low voice, she adds, "And... to worship Satan."

Harry Potter fever - it's the fever you won't have to keep your kids home from camp for! Perhaps you've seen his loveable face everywhere and in every single place you've been lately. In fact, it seems that he is inescapable. Do you feel trapped, overwhelmed... by a newfound love of reading, that is?

Teacher Caroline Heggers talks about the educational establishment's delight with this new generation of bibliophiles: "It's Harry Potter or nothing," Mrs. Heggers says, scratching deep red welts into her forearm. “Harry… or… nothing."

International research groups, such as UNHPI (United Nations Harry Potter Initiative) have said that only one-third of the children who read Harry Potter books would have phrases such as "Harry Potter lunchbox" in their vocabulary without Harry Potter, and less than half would have read the books without them.

Before receiving The Goblet of Fire for her birthday, Jenny Dentin, age 12, had only read Pat the Bunny, a pre-school book made of soft, touchable fabrics. "I'm learning to love reading," said the voracious Jenny, "so buy me the Harry Potter Pumpkin Drink maker now! I SAID NOW!!"

Opponents of Harry Potter, such as Gloria Henderblatt president of CARE (Christians Against Everything, Really, Everything) say the book encourages children to run through train station walls, after which they will meet a "sorting hat" who determines which magical house they will be placed into.

"Hats do not speak," Henderblatt says, "They simply do not."

Try as they might, these anti-Rowling nay-sayers have been unable to stop the marketing blitz that is "Potter-fever-mania-power". Where is your god now, Gloria? When will he show his face?

Whether teacher, parent, or Christian nutbag, it seems most people can agree on one thing: if kids are engrossed in a fantastical story about a boy whose parents were killed by an evil wizard, instead of a real story about a boy named Tutsi whose parents were killed by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda - they're gaining a lifelong love of words!