Cranky leftie that I may be, every time I read the Village Voice, I find myself throwing it across the room in irritation. When they cancelled Sylvia Plachy's photography on the letters page, I was annoyed. When they cancelled Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies, I was appalled. When they cancelled their sports pages, I had the sinking feeling that the back page would become a vacuum. But it was when they cancelled Cynthia Heimel's column, Tongue in Chic, that I knew that this paper had nothing for me anymore, nothing. Cynthia Heimel is a goddess, and I have adored her ever since the publication of her first book, Sex Tips for Girls, in 1983. (Last year she published Advanced Sex Tips for Girls: This Time It's Personal, which is full of great stuff, including "The Hobag Manifesto," an incendiary, hilarious piece that answers the question "what happens when punks hit menopause?" She is also the author of the best-titled book of the '90's, If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?, and of 1986's But Enough About You: Avoiding Fabulousness, which is out of print, thanks to the shortsightedness of her publisher, and which contains what I think is her best essay, "When in Doubt, Act Like Myrna Loy." I want to quote this entire essay, right here, right now, but I feel squeamish about doing so, so until I get her publisher's permission, I will have to content myself with a quote here, a quote there.
Our starter quote comes from Sex Tips for Girls, about the problem with the IUD:
IUDs are okay until they go wrong. Well actually they start right off being horrible...They say it's easier to put an IUD in after you've already had a child, but they're nuts, and the treatment of actual pain is a boring reason to become addicted to Percodan.
Plus they tell you to check the string each day to make sure the damned thing is firmly in place. Not one girl I know who has had an IUD has ever been able to feel the string after the first six weeks. Somehow, some way, they get hopelessly lost in there. The only good thing about the string business is that if someone catches you unaware when you happen to be in the throes of masturbation, you can laugh airily and say, "Just checking for the string, doncha know. Have a pecan." Of course, you don't actually need an IUD to pull off this ruse.
The kind and excellent BlogMonkey has advised me that 'round about hour 20, we might find ourselves posting things like "Must...write...about...something!..."
We're at hour 16.5.
Must...not...write...about...writing...
Although I have already posted here at PTMYB this excerpt from "Put a Lid on It," David Sedaris's superb essay about his sister Tiffany, I am posting it again, not only because it fits in with the general foodishness here, it also is thematically correct for Blogathon. See if you can guess why! It's fun!
Following her capture, Tiffany was put in juvenile detention and then sent away to a school my mother had heard about on one of the afternoon talk shows. Punishment consisted of lying bellydown on the floor while a counselor putted golf balls into your open mouth. "Tough love" this was called. Basically the place just restrained you until you were eighteen and allowed to run away legally.
After her release Tiffany became interested in baking. She attended a culinary institute in Boston and worked for many years in the sort of restaurant that thought it amusing to flavor brownies with tarragon and black pepper. It was cooking for people who read rather than ate, but it paid well and there were benefits. From midnight to dawn, Tiffany stood in the kitchen, sifting flour and listening to AM talk radio, which is either funny or spooky, depending on your ability to distance yourself from the callers. Tommy from Revere, Carol from Fall River: they are lonely and crazy. You are not. But the line blurs at four A.M. and disappears completely when you find yourself alone in a tall paper hat, adding fresh chives to buttercream icing.
From the beauty that is mercuryfern:
What is the first thing you learned how to cook by yourself? (Yes, I mean as a kid.)
Ahhh, that's easy. Brownies, specifically the Brownies Cockaigne recipe on page 653 of the 1975 edition of The Joy of Cooking. I always loved that our copy of the Joy fell open to this recipe, and I still think that these are the most moreish brownies I know how to make.
Peanut butter: crunchy or smooth?
Yes. I mean, crunchy for sandwiches or snacking, plain for sauces. And I love cashew butter the same way. Mmm, cashew butter.
Halvah: chocolate or plain?
Marble. 
And pistachio, too. Pistachio halvah rocks.
Tea: green or black? hot or iced? lemon or sweet? I want details.
Oh, dearest, I am a Type O positive with tea. Green and black. Hot and iced. Morroccan sweet tea and lemon unsweetened tea. Tisanes. Taro-flavored bubble tea. I love them all. Lately I've been hipped on the sage iced tea with honey sold at my local coffee/internet bar; it (the tea, not the coffee bar) is a beautiful light-green color that radiates a gentle, sea-colored light. When you get to New York, we are going to drink buckets of the stuff. (Unless you hate sage. Then I'll drink it for you.
