Elyse feels compelled to take a photo of a stranger

My sister once tried this with a parakeet. It had devastating results.

I stop writing in third-person for a post

Look at me. I feel less annoying. La-la-la. ME!

Elyse recommends that you watch “Orange is the New Black”

Like other junkies with a binge-watching addiction, I stumbled upon Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” not by word of mouth, ad, or Facebook updates made by a high school acquaintance who actually writes for the show. I started watching it because I ran out of episodes of “Arrested Development” and Netflix countdown clocked it upon me.

 What the hell does that mean?

 Netflix, the AIDS-monkey originator of binge-watcheritus, shrinks the credits at the end of each episode you stream into a little lonely cube floating at the top right-hand corner of your screen. The next episode is in another cube at the bottom right. In the center is a clock that takes advantage of one’s post-show emotional rush or fresh end-of-series abyss-of-sad by giving you 10 seconds to decide whether you want to find out if Hank from “Breaking Bad” survived a bloody supermarket shoot-down, flush away your sense of emptiness with a new show, or engage in a responsible adult-like activity like going to bed at 2 a.m.. Netflix offered me a preview of its new series, “Orange is the New Black.” So I watched it and like cokehead accepting crack because her dealer’s fresh out of blow, I watched the show. And it felt so good.

To be fair, a crack simile is appropriate when trying to articulate Netflix’s manipulative marketing strategies, it’s not when using it as an analogy to describe the quality of “Orange is the New Black.” This show is not crack. Crack is whack TV like “Dancing with the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills 90210.” Yet, I’m not sure if OTNB is a fine wine of a show either – with only one season in the can, the show just popped it cork and needs some time to breathe. So I’m going to equate this show to a taco. It’s neatly compacted, filled with a variety of flavor, and tasty enough that you automatically want another immediately upon consumption, which is perfect for a Netflix series that premiered with 13 episodes ready to be devoured however one desires.

The show centers on Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a waspy Park Slope princess who makes artisan soap for a living. She’s the type who goes on Master Cleanses, forbids her Jewish wannabe writer fiancé to watch a new episode of “Mad Men” without her, and makes Fairway checkout clerks re-bag her plastic bagged groceries once she’s found the canvas bags that were hidden in the depths of her purse. She is the white, pampered, uppity, educated, self-righteous, phony environmentalist Brooklynite most Netflix viewers know, or as much as we would hate to admit it, are; making Piper the perfect audience surrogate when she is forced to go to prison for international heroin trafficking. That she partook in ten years prior with her lesbian lover.

And the show isn’t afraid to poke fun at Piper’s whiteness either, or let its main character use it as a source of manipulation. It is the layers of characterization like Piper’s that make this show interesting, but “Orange is the New Black” is not just about Piper. It’s about everyone she engages in a women’s prison. Or more importantly, about how someone like Piper – or someone like us – isn’t any better than the rest of the women she’s incarcerated with, from the transgendered beautician to Piper’s drug running ex-girlfriend.

Yet, for all the positives the show has – a great sense of humor, wonderful storytelling abilities, topnotch acting, portrayals of lesbians that extend beyond lesbians just being lesbians, a talented, diverse, and huge female ensemble that includes Laura Prepon, Natasha Lyonne, Natasha Lyonne’s hair, and the voice of Patty Mayonnaise on “Doug,” Constance Shulman (!!!) – it does have flaws greater than Prepon’s eyebrows. For instance, its male characters, specifically a prison guard called “Pornstache,” are one-dimensional and it can be gross (i.e. a scene where Piper is given a tampon sandwich after pissing off the kitchen’s well-connected head chef with ties to the Russian mob). And though the show identifies that clashes in race and class do exist, it hasn’t delved that deeply into the topic yet, which is only a downer because the show is so smart – just like the pairing of horseradish and pickles.

An item that Piper might have picked up at her local farmer’s market and rationed out in small servings in order to savor and extend the amount of time she could enjoy something so delicious, which is how you should watch this show. Don’t devour it whole. Take your time, ignore the damn countdown clock, and enjoy this series. Viva el taco!

Elyse posts a post at the end of June just so there’s a post in June

I know. I’ve been slacking. But it’s not like I haven’t been writing. I wrote a WHOLE short story in the time that I haven’t been blogging and I put together an entire bridal magazine. I’m like magic. Except without HIV. Okay, that was wrong. But, really, who’s reading this?

Anyway, presented without typing anything else that is horrible, here is Gary Busey:

And here are things with Gary Busey’s teeth:

Elyse is blind

I am blind. Legally blind. And being legally blind isn’t that much different from being legally blonde because I do ditzy-like things on a regular basis due to my seeing-balls inability to work properly. I basically Mr. Magoo my way through life. I have something called Stargardt's disease. A disease with a name I can never spell correctly and always reminds me of Bea Arthur in a silver sequins gown with *ginormous shoulder pads in space. Like a glamorous linebacker playing tag football on the moon with a cheesecake.

It’s a tricky disease, because unless I told you I was blind, you’d probably think I was an eccentric who types in size-26 font, hates seeing foreign movies, and never says hi when I look directly at you on the street. But, I can see how many fingers you’re holding up. And I can drive a car … just not legally.

A lot of people use modern technology as a crutch, even disabled people. I’ve heard that Autistic people better communicate with the help of iPads. But, for me with my particular problem, it seems like the more advanced software and gadgets become, the tinier the font becomes, making it increasingly more challenging for me to engage it. For instance, Instagram is something that I am completely ignorant of, not by choice, but because it’s only available on your phone and it’s impossible for me to use and read.

On the other hand, let me give a brief shout out to Kindles: Hey girl! All y’all out there who like to diss Kindles and Kindle users like we’re a bunch of unromantic assholes because tablets don’t smell like paper yellowed by time, are killing book culture, and are engaging intangible items that you can’t scribble crap into the margins or cut and duct-tape a hole into the middle of making it a great place to hide your crack pipe can lick my macula (go ahead, it doesn’t function correctly anyway) because ever since the Kindle was invented, I was able to read books again. Good books and not just self-help and Oprah’s book club books, which were the only books available in large print before the Kindle because those are the kinds of books old people who can’t see like to read. So, thank you Amazon, you horrible, horrible company that mistreats your employees. Because of you, I can read Hemmingway again. For free!

Anyway, back to technology I can’t use, or more technically, technology that is becoming increasingly more frustrating for me to use, like Facebook. Oy vey Facebook You annoy me. So much so, that I can’t even email within Facebook anymore. I have to literally cut and paste a person’s message into a Word Doc to read it, respond in a Word Doc, and then cut and paste my response into Facebook’s message box in order for me to have a normal interaction with someone else. Modern technology is saving me so much time.

The other day I was going through this whole cut, paste, read, write, cut, and paste process in response to a friend’s email about farting. Here’s a snipit of what she said to me:

“Re: farting. Are you farting a lot more than you used to too? I don't know if it's my diet or what. Last week I made a huge batch of beans and rice and ate it thinking ‘oh boy I am going to blow the house down with this’ but then just kept farting the same amount. Like, it gradually increased over the years or something? What the hell.”

And here is my response:
“I don’t know if I fart more, per say, but I do kind of just fart whenever I want without any kind of regard for anyone around me, because I’m older, think it’s healthy, and I’m not getting colon cancer after eating a lunch that consisted of nothing but bean salad because people are jealous of my boogie. I also enjoy my farts a whole lot more than I ever did before. Like, I’ll push out a real funky one and think ‘Good job, m’lady.’ And I think they smell bad enough to joke about in casual conversation. Sample tweet I made: ‘Great Gatsby in 3D sounds as bad as my last fart smelled. And this is coming from an expert on the subject of my farts.’ I am never going to get married. My last fart made me hungry.”

 This is a fine email to send to a good friend, which the person I was intending to email this message to is. But because of all this silly foolishness that happens when I attempt to zoom-in on Facebook, I accidentally emailed that message to an old co-worker, not a great friend. A co-worker who now knows my farts make my hungry. And now you should too.

Mmmm. I’m suddenly in the mood for roast beef and hard boiled eggs.

* I read today in a book (not somewhere on the Internet, but in a published book about the roots of words that actually had a fact-checker who fact checked facts before it said facts were published) that “ginormous” is as much a word as “humungous,” which sort of blew my mind gigantically, hugely, and enormously.

Elyse likes her polish color so much, she writes it a haiku

"Seasonal allergies sure are a bitch" 

 Lovely lavender 

The hue of Phil Donahue’s 

springtime hemorrhoid 

 Color is OPI’s Do you Lilac It?

Elyse writes a tweet that’s more than 140 characters, so she slaps it here

Forgot how to spell the word “igloo” today & when I looked it up I was so amazed by the spelling I wanted to lick it, get my tongue stuck to it, and just leave it there. Like my heart in San Francisco. Fuck you San Francisco. Give me back my heart.