bought a ticket for a runaway train.

this actually happened to me yesterday, but in my worrying over the possibility of domestic violence in the homes of Z100 morning zoo listeners, i was entirely too preoccupied and forgot the incident happened. so we'll pretend it happened this morning.

so i'm on the train to work this morning and i'm leaning against the door to the little conductor chamber in the corner of the car. unless there's open seating, i prefer that little corner over standing somewhere in the middle of the car as i'd rather slump against the wall unobtrusively than jockey with other passengers over where my hand should go on the overhead pole. just let me read in the corner, people, and i'll be a happy camper.

oftentimes when i'm in the little corner, i wonder if there is in fact a conductor behind the door i'm leaning on. i wonder about what he's doing in there (in my brain, train conductors are only men. specifically ones that look like ringo starr circa shining time station), perhaps smoking a pipe, adjusting his cap, or shining the brass train pin that is affixed to his lapel. and sometimes i think about how funny it would be if he was to open the door whilst i was leaning against the door and i were to fall into his booth.

of course today i did.

so i'm wrapped up in the latest issue of NY magazine and suddenly i hear a metallic clank and i find myself tipping backwards. thankfully the booth is only a foot wide, so between the slightly ajar door and the rather large WOMAN CONDUCTOR (dreams. shattered.) wedged in the doorway, i didnt have too far to fall. she of course said "whooaaaa" and sort of shoved me forward and out of her way. i scooted away from her, apologizing profusely, and she emerged from the booth and made her way into the next car, grumbling. i personally thought the grumbling was a little unnecessary. yes, i was blocking the exit from her booth and toppled back onto her. but better me than some smelly homeless man, right?

so in my last bit of MTA news - i do realize i talk a lot about the train. one would think its because the commute is the most exciting part of my day, and probably feel pity for me. please don't. my obsession with the train is a little less sad - dad collects Lionels. a love of of all things choo-choo is clearly in our blood. - the man exiting the train in front of me today was carrying a saw. a hand saw, i believe - it wasn't a power tool. now, although i've spent a fair amount of time in the ol' Home Depot, i'm no expert on tools and/or tool transportation. but i would at least assume that the blade should have some sort of protective cover over it shouldn't it? right. well, not this one. the guy was just swinging it at his side, blade gleaming in the flourescent light of the station. amazing that the NYPD hangs around stations checking for "suspicious packages", while this guy can just openly tote around an instrument of death.

why turn to NPR for thought-provoking radio.

we apologize for not updating yet this week. well, half of us does...the other half doesn't really have a good excuse although she's creative and charming enough that when she does decide to offer one up it will be so good and you will be so enchanted that it won't matter that she currently has you cast aside like a slightly moldy peach. anyways, my excuse is that its been a very busy/exciting week involving a new job and some irish nachos. i honestly can't tell you which I was more thrilled about.

so last week, sister dearest switched the radio station on my alarm clock from a station that was passable - classic rock, only one majorly annoying morning show host. the best adjective radio stations, at least the mainstream ones here in nyc, can get from me these days is 'passable' - to one that is pretty awful. squawky cohosts, cheesy music, ridiculous bits, bathroom humor. i actually feel my brain cells start to wilt when the radio clicks on in the morning.

so its a testament to my laziness that its a week later and i still have not moved the dial back to my old station. a major feature of the morning show are the prank call segments - they have a clever little name for them, which escapes me at the moment. now, i've never been a fan of the crank call thing. crank yankers was cool simply because of the puppet factor, but other than that i could care less about the jerky boys and the nonsense they let loose on the world.

but i have been absolutely fascinated by these morning calls the past week. the unsuspecting phone targets, who seem to always be men who are being set up by their wives, all have severe anger management issues. from the minute they start getting phone-f*cked with they scream and curse and threaten lives and you can hear the blood vessels violently popping in their foreheads. the man this morning was yelling so ferociously you actually couldn't decipher between his words - it just sounded like a bellowing roar of pissiness. ok, so it makes for compelling radio. and even if these guys are acting, i'm amazed at the rage they can pull off. but say these guys are for real - what i sit there and ponder is, why do these little jokester wives play pranks on husbands who have nasty tempers? if my husband was the sort to completely flip out when things go awry, the last thing i'd want to do was set him off with something as dumb as a radio prank. i guess they think it'll make for a memorable bit and all, but what of the repercussions? do other listeners spend their commute wondering if mrs. prankster gets a black eye after mr. angry hangs up the phone? i do.

all this for a bunch of snacks.

if you were to come to our neighborhood, and you were the sort that was into drugstores - pharmacies - you would be in hog heaven. on your walk from the trains you would pass two rite-aids, two eckerds, and a duane reade. since i hate playing favorites, i have some rules that dictate which store i'll stop into. if i'm purchasing items i wouldn't want any normal person to see me with, i opt for rite-aid. that place is a mess and filled with crackheads who don't care about any mildly embarassing purchases. if i'm in a rush and want to ensure that i will find what i'm looking for in stock and in its proper aisle, i hit up duane reade. for basically any other needs, i go to eckerd. i have a special place for eckerd in my heart. not only because its the most aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to pronouce drugstore name, but because a few summers ago a bunch of my friends took a weekend trip down to the shore and for some reason we took a liking to the massive - massive. like jurassic park sized - eckerd near our motel and literally spent about 1/3 of the weekend inside of it, purchasing snacks, drink mixers, developing the photos we took only hours earlier, and practically getting our hungover asses tossed out. so for nostalgia's sake, eckerd it typically is.

unfortunately the eckerd by me is a hellhole. the blemish on the good wholesome eckerd name. and crazy things are always happening inside. yet i still insist on giving it my business.

so i stopped into eckerd this afternoon. missy and bear were home anxiously waiting for me, in desperate need of snacks, so i made a beeline for the food area. as i was debating over which brand of sour gummy worms to purchase, i kept on having to do a little we're-in-each-other's-way shuffle with this older man who was inspecting the candy bar selection. so i decide to move over to the fridges and to do so i have to go in a circle around a shelving unit of cookies to get there. as i make my way round, the man is coming around the other way and i'm again in his way. so i sort of take a few steps backwards, snickering to myself. i suppose this made it look like i was trying to follow him, as then he about-faced and sort of came around in a circle behind me. i circled to move away, he followed again, and thus there we were doing this bizarre little dance around the maypole that was a cookie display.

after 2 rotations i realized i had to get away, and ran off to the fridges further down the aisle. he blessfully got the hint. so i got missy's diet pepsi's, and got on the entirely too long line. the woman in front of me was bickering with her daughter in another language, so i sort of spaced out and stared off at the Whitman's chocolate display. angry mother moved away from her daughter, and leaned into the display. within 30 seconds, the brightly-colored-yet-obviously-shabbily-constructed cardboard shelf she was leaning on collapsed, causing the woman to fall into the display and multiple boxes of chocolates to tumble off the shelf.

no longer angry, embarassed daughter helped mother put the boxes of whitman's back, while my eyes teared with laughter. little did i know more fun was in store during my wait to pay. now, part of the reason i think this eckerd is so insane is because its registers are poorly situated. so we were all lined up, awkwardly, along this one bank of registers. there was another shorter line at the other bank of registers, but as you had to walk around a few aisles to get there, we all just stayed put. mildly frustrating situation for the less patient. so a woman comes up behind me and inquires if this was the line, and a man a few people in front of me turns around and suggests she go around and over to the shorter line. suddenly, mother shouts "why are you saying that!" to the man. the man loudly retorts, and mother starts pointing and yelling in broken english about how he is wrong. and stupid. man yells back, mother continues shouting, frazzled manager emerges from behind register and asks everyone to please calm down or they'd have to leave. mind you, this is the SECOND yelling match i've been privy to while waiting on line at eckerd. if there are fisticuffs next time i'm in there, i'm giving up on all the other drugstores altogether.

the thursday morning mountain lion report.

I’m starting to think we should have named this blog “animal news”…what can I say, it interests me more than warfare. so the latest. did we all hear about the mountain lion who invaded a home in Colorado? crazy. He just burst through the screen door and into some guy’s house. Now, as strange as that sounds, the oddest part of the whole story is that he stayed inside the house for an hour, whilst the owner and authorities waited outside. Not that I would necessarily want to barge into a house and tussle with a predatory cat, but what was the point of calling the authorities if they were just going to stand around outside, doing nothing. “gee, deputy dave, I wonder what that lion is up to inside?”

Which brings me to the most exciting part of the story – what was the mountain lion doing inside for a whole hour? we’ll never know, but i bet he was lounging in a recliner, paws up, watching Animal Planet.

hip hip...

there are many reasons why i like canada. the european flair. toonies and loonies. a greater appreciation of hockey. eugene levy. fun province names like quebec and saskatchewan. moose. canadian bacon.

today i found a new one, one so wonderful it would possibly make me contemplate moving up north, except for the fact that i've experienced montreal in the winter and totally can't handle it. i've been on a banking research kick lately as i think i finally have to end my relationship with Chase. its been a pretty solid one now for many years, but lately i'm starting to feel taken advantage of. and i realized i'm still with Chase just for the convenience factor, and that's really a poor reason to stay with someone, isn't it? but i digress. while bank perusing for greener (heh) pastures, i somehow went a bit off-course - typical - and wound up coming across President's Choice Financial, a canadian banking company. so what makes them so wonderful, you ask? this:

a hippo bank! i love hippos and even have a hippo bank myself (not courtesy of Chase), so i was quite thrilled to see such love for our potato-shaped, water-dwelling friend. he even looks like he was plucked off a hungry hungry hippos gameboard, which obviously was one of my most favorite games EVER. so this little hippo bank was all over their website, and i couldn't find any logical explanation as to why they want the hippo representing them - a moose or a beaver i could have understood, but not this sub-saharan beast. do canadians just really love hippos? well, then i love the country even more! it's so unfortunate that the nearest President's Choice is a few hundred miles from my apartment, or else my banking switch would be infinitely easier.

the adventures of loveandcyanide and the angry ravioli: an eventful thursday night.

for some reason we haven't been causing as many hijinks as usual lately. thankfully last night changed all that and we're back to our old ridiculous ways. it all started, i assume, when i graffiti-ed in the supermarket. now just calm down. i didn't cover the Keebler display with spray paint. i merely saw a sign on a freezer case:

Angy Ravioli
.99

of course i thought it said "angry ravioli" and i was so excited by the idea of these pissy little cheese circles i almost knocked missy down as she was checking out some new brand of pita chips. when we realized the ravioli were not actually angry, i took out my trusty pen and added the R in. now they are! not the worst thing i've ever done, but we believe it set off the chain of calamitous events that followed.

we squeezed all the fun possible out of ShopRite for the evening, and were off to Dunkin Donuts. it has a drive-thru, and we never turn down the option of drive-thru, so there we were hanging out the car window figuring out what we wanted. as i begin to order, i realize my mouth felt wet. why? of course my lip has split and blood is gushing out of it. while ordering my father his sundae i frantically turn to missy and do the international sign for please-give-me-a-napkin-because-my-face-is-bleeding and she sort of stares at me in disgust and passes one over. so we order and start to bring the car around towards the window and we realize i'm still gushing blood and can't possibly face a dunkin donuts worker looking like this. it was nighttime and i assume he would have assumed i was a vampire with a hankering for a strawberry frosted donut and i'm certain working the night shift like he does he's seen a lot worse, but still. so i put the car in park, and we run out and switch places.

further embarassment averted, we drive back to my parents house, where they stare in shame and something akin to fright that their eldest can be such a bloody mess. thankfully my hemorrhaging soon ceased and we busied ourselves soaking fruit in jugs of wine, prepping for the sangria we will be serving at a party tomorrow. afterwards we settle ourselves in with the excess wine and breakfast on pluto -- an excellent movie, but unfortunately it has squelched my love for cillian murphy. i can't possibly still have a crush on a guy who looks better in a dress than i do. movie ends, we go to bed. right. easy. no. instead, as missy carries the supposedly empty glasses into the kitchen, she somehow lets go of one and sangria is flung into three different rooms. she used to play softball so we know she has a good arm, but the distance this sangria flew was actually amazing. it made it around corners, in crevices. it was dripping off of surfaces we didn't know existed. laughing hysterically at the mess we'd made, we deliriously cleaned up the wine - poorly, as we were informed this morning - and took our hapless selves to bed. an eventful evening, indeed.

thoughts on today's top stories.

i haven't been completely following this planet debate that has been going on recently, but upon reading some articles this morning i can't help but wonder, is there really a need for more planets? nine seemed like a perfect number of them - twelve is entirely too many. how are children going to fit twelve foil balls into a shoebox for their solar system dioramas? plus there are already too many sets of twelve out there - eggs, numbers on the clock, days of christmas - let the planets have their own special number that they don't have to share with the less stellar.

taking off my scientific hat for a moment, never before have i seen my exact feelings on a muppet in print before. its rather refreshing. hopefully some anti-elmo revolution rises up because of this article. i tried to start one back in h.s. - to no avail - when bizarrely, 15-year-old girls started carrying their tickle-me-elmos to school. why were teens buying t.m.e's anyway? not for nostalgia reasons - elmo was barely featured on the show when we were kids. oh wait, it gets better. tickle me elmo was the mascot of our cheerleading team. i wish i was kidding, but there he was, red fur blowing in the breeze from the rattling of the pompoms.

finally, some sad news today - RIP Bruno Kirby. you made When Harry Met Sally a classic, and if we had the familial luck of having an uncle named lenny, we know he would have looked exactly like you.

and we thought we had wild drunken tales...

abduction has been on the minds of loveandcyanide lately (more to come on that one), so my eyes immediately fell onto this headline this morning. yes, its 2-day old news...you know we're a tad slow around here.

Welshman punished for drunken goat abduction

drunken goat abduction. that sounds like the funnest idea ever and i'm totally sober. this dude carl is a total genius when it comes to alcohol induced pranks. damn city living - hindering my ability to get wasted and steal livestock for joyrides...anyways, had carl only been 1 gallon of cider deep, i'm sure this story wouldn't have made the papers and would have just remained a funny yarn told for generations amongst the youth of Wales. and we all would have missed out. but as the gluttonous lad drank a gallon and a half of cider that fateful evening, although he somehow managed to wrangle Snowy the goat into his vehicle, poor carl wound up crashing the car into a tractor (+1 for city living) and was soon apprehended by authorities.

unfortunately, this otherwise amazing tale ends on a tragic note, as poor Snowy passed away two days after the incident. apparently goats do not have as high a tolerance for drunken debauchery as the rest of us do. R.I.P Snowy - we hardly knew ye, kid.

are you lookin' at me?

you ever get the feeling that everyone is staring at you while you're walking down the street? i hate that. the whole experience sets me off into a fit of paranarcissism** since i know that a. no one is really looking at me, i'm just being paranoid and everyone has better things to do than look at me, but b. subsequent thinking leads me to hey, you know, i do look mighty fine today so maybe they are, or oh my god, i must have something so wrong going on right now that everyone feels the need to gawk at me. further thought on the matter usually leads to a temporary self-obsession, fussing with my skirt/hair/sunglasses/bag, seeking out the presumably embarassing explanation for all the stares. there usually isn't one.

but after today i will no longer fall prey to the flustered fussing around over nothing. while going to the doctor this morning to get meds for the monstrous disfigurement minor skin affliction that i'm currently blessed with on my poor little face, i learned a very important lesson - you KNOW when people are ogling you because you resemble a train wreck.


** although paranarcissism sounds like a term that should already be in use for something a little more scientific, scholarly, or at the very least, important, i've checked the dictionary and googled it to no avail. hey, if the internet doesn't know about it, then it can't exist, right? right. so its mine. when you read about it in some v. influential journal someday, remember you heard it here first, kids.

celebrate your skivvies

i love celebrating obscure holidays. why should we have to wait for the christmases and arbor days of the year, when there are spectacular reasons to celebrate every single day? like today, for example -- its National Underwear Day.

yay! i mean, who doesn't love underwear? (besides you, Bear.) we hope everyone is celebrating accordingly and are sporting their finest undergarments today.

some interesting facts to aid in your underwear-inspired merriment:

-- in the 1920s, modelling underwear was thought of as morally wrong and early advertising shots showed models in black face-masks to hide their identities.

-- married men change their underwear twice as often as single men.

-- loveandcyanide knows what underwear Sean Astin prefers.

don't ask. happy national underwear day!

hiss.

it's always nice to go in your bag and look at your cell phone and see that you have a message. you get that nice warm feeling of hey-i'm-loved-and-someone-wants-to-talk-to-me, blended with a bit of the excitement of ooh-who-can-it-be?

so imagine my surprise when i dialed my voicemail, heard the monotone voicemail robot woman telling me i had 1 new message, and then suddenly samuel l. jackson was bellowing in my ear that i had to get to a theater and see 'snakes on a plane' this weekend.

it was by far the most unexpected voicemail i've ever received. there's some celebrities i suppose i can envision calling me. sammy j. isn't one of them. nevertheless, the ridiculous message was the best minute-and-a-half of my day. the highlights - and i quote -

"go get your homeboy and go see snakes on a plane"

and

"it's the big nasty blockbuster that will take a bite outta your butt".

yes, it was complete aural insanity. i felt like brett in pulp fiction (though unfortunately sans big kahuna burger). you know, i had no intention of seeing SOAP after it was hyped to all hell over the internet earlier this year (plus i hate - HATE - snakes and can barely watch them onscreen without my skin crawling), but if there is anything that will get my ass in a seat at the nearest loews, it's definitely sammy j. leaving me threatening voicemails.

slow down, you crazy child.

with 85,000 other things going on in the world today, i think its silly that Christie Brinkley's big smiley head was plastered on the cover of the NY Daily News this morning. so her soon-to-be-ex-husband cheated on her with a teenage girl. big deal.

why so callous? I've had a long standing feud with Brinkley since I was a toddler. of course this feud is totally one-sided and has never manifested itself outside my head, but we've been bitter rivals ever since I can remember and so it will remain. so how exactly does a 5-year-old have beef with a supermodel? i was in love with Billy Joel, of course.

obsessed is more like it. i had to have been his biggest fan under 5 ft. not to delve too much into psychobabble, but I am convinced my electra complex was projected onto him and not my own father. suffice to say, I was DEVASTATED when they got married. I actually cried when I saw the headline splashed across the front page of the newspaper that fateful day in '85. tears streamed down my little face as I experienced my first heartbreak. our family, with their vast mental filing cabinet for embarrassing moments, vividly remembers this, and of course still ridicules me to this day.

pathetic as it was to have my pint-sized heart broken by someone i had never met nor could have been with if i had met them, in retrospect I don't think I was being too outrageous. have we seen the age of Billy's latest bride? he could've totally waited 20 years for me. but moving on. so I recovered from the tragic blow to my little ego and have moved on to more sensible crushes since then, but can't seem to shake the grudge i've held against Brinkley for stealing my man. so she's getting no pity from me during this scandal with her fourth (fourth! hussy!) husband.

and yes, i still skip over the song 'uptown girl' on the an innocent man cd.