The weather has been keeping me indoors lately, but before that when the Spring deemed it fit to sashay through our lives for a few days I was wandering the city observing.

I don't really get fashion. My goal is basically not to look homeless. Most of the things that the norms run around in are unsuited to my body type so I just mill around in jeans and shirts of various styles. I just blend. The concept of dressing to suit my personality is beyond me mostly because it's hard to dress like a measured smart ass without the use of a deerstalker and magnifying glass. And tweed. A lot of tweed. It's very English. Very we don't hug because cocktails are the only form of emotional expression we understand. And that's smart and sophisticated. God save the queen.

When it comes to fashion I'm an old lady yelling at kids to keep off my lawn.

Hey, you in the heeled oxfords! You're poking holes in my Kentucky Blue, get your aerating ass of my turf. *shakes cane* 

Don't get me wrong I love the whole menswear thing for women. I love it in the whole well structured Tilda Swinton as the Thin White Duke way. Which is to say scaled down and well tailored.

Well structured slimming blazers for all! 

I've always been sad that I was never tall and lithe enough to embrace the menswear trend. Well, I've always been sad that I was never tall and lithe period. That disappointment can be perfectly summed up in a single word: puberty.

Why, yes, I am the same height I was in fifth grade. Thanks for pointing that out. 

What I don't like is the assumption that just because I admire certain aspects of men's fashion is that I must be built like one. I am not a tiny pixie of a woman. Would that I were a rangy forest sprite. Unfortunately, I'm much more "Rubenesque" for lack of a more civil term.

Spoiler Alert: it's a condescending way of saying fat. Kind of like how "Bless your heart" is actually Southern for "Die bitch, die!". 

If I actually dressed for my body type I'd just run around in A line skirts and dressed. Which just isn't me. I don't like dresses. I never have. I can appreciate their aesthetic value and, on occasion, be compelled to wear one, but they aren't my first choice. Plus, my legs are super pale. They've developed an immunity to sunlight.

My legs are protected from the sun by a mystical force known as Irish ancestry.

In fact, I can only really participate in the menswear trend via scent. I happen to like wear a fair amount of men's cologne or unisex perfume which is how I discovered this:

For adult use only? Why does that need to be expressly stated on a bottle of Obsession for Men body wash? Please, don't tell me I really don't want to know. The explanation can only further debase humanity in my eyes. That's right I said "debase". BOOM! SAT words.

And while we're on the subject of scents, could everyone please stop bathing themselves in their smelly potion of choice? I would honor your name in song. You would live for a thousand generations.

Tra-la. Tra-lay. Hey nonny, nonny, appropriately fresh citizens. 

I don't care what you do or do not use. How you smell is a personal choice (most of the time) just please keep in mind we aren't wild game. All available mating partners need not be able to smell you from 3 blocks away. I should not have to figure up downwind vs. upwind while waiting to cram myself into a metal tube. Subtle is sexy people.

Wayfarers is on the hunt. He's 3 clicks away wearing Polo Black. READY YOURSELVES LADIES! THIS IS NOT A DRILL. 

Also, why do half of the perfumes for women on the market smell like vanilla, flowers, and bad decisions? A lot of women in this city, including the well dressed and immaculately groomed, smell like hookers rolled in Skittles.

Why?

Am I missing some key cultural touchstone? I was sitting next to a woman on a train back to New Jersey last week and I'm sure she thought she smelled like a tropical breeze gently wafting through the NJ Transit 3:30 to Trenton. In actuality she was a noxious vanilla cloud sugar cookie-ing up the train car. The guy in front of me actually had a coughing fit and moved. I was sadly cornered next to a sealed window.

And now, if you excuse me, I'm gonna go browse some poodle skirts and cardigans because my body type is incompatible with contemporary culture.

Currently Best Of: Love Potion #9 By Clovers see related

I’ve been doing the tri-state area shuffle again hopping trains between New Jersey and New York City. I’ve been taking care of various things that need to be done before I can give all my money to another institution of higher learning and thinking about logistics. Basically, coming to terms with the fact that I will probably have to move out the suburbs for 2 years until I get my Master’s Degree. I really would like to stay in Brooklyn, but it’d just be too much of a hassle.  So, time for more adventures in real estate. 

Before I set off on a train back to the diverse suburb that spawned me I came across an article about kids drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk and sighed. Now, I’m not that old. I was a teenager not too long ago and I did some pretty dumb things during those years, but I never looked at a bottle of Purelle and thought it’d be a good way to get trashed. It’s apparently so much of a problem in California that doctors are advising parents to use sanitizing foam rather than liquid sanitizer. Why foam? Because foam is apparently more difficult to distill into alcohol. Some intrepid youths skip the distillation process and just drink the stuff as is.

American Teens: falling behind the rest of the world in math and science, but leading the way in getting high off household products. 

The leaders of tomorrow ruining themselves today!

I get it, I really do, your teen years aren’t exactly filled with good ideas, but really kids? Can’t you just drink underage like everyone else? And I know that sounds irresponsible, but there’s no reason why American teenagers shouldn’t be able to drink and purchase alcohol at 18 like the rest of the world. No, reason at all. The reason the US has a legal drinking age of 21 is a pretty odd one.  In 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Prior to 1984 individual state legislatures decided the legal age of purchase for alcohol.  Technically, that’s still true today, but here’s where things get tricky. States did not have to follow the federal government's mandate on this. You know that whole pesky 10th amendment thing: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.  

Unsurprisingly, the founding fathers didn’t care about teenagers drinking and driving. But, Ronald Reagan did. So, spurred on by MADD, some compelling research, and the best of intentions Reagan made this an issue. (They thought that by giving kids more time away from booze they’d learn how to become responsible drinkers magically by the time 21 rolled around. And that would lead to less instances of drinking and driving and less youth fatalities caused by drunk driving. Yeah, forbidding a teen from doing something totally encourages them to take a rational measured view of it. That’s just logic.) Congress followed his lead for various reasons and used the power of the purse to get the states to comply. If a state did not ratify the Act their federal highway apportionment would be decreased by 10 percent. I.E. the money states used to maintain and build their roads system would be dramatically reduced. Naturally, everybody fell in line rather than losing out on a massive amount of federal aid. Only Puerto Rico, Guam, and The US Virgin Islands stuck it to the man and kept their legal drinking age at 18.  Well, Guam did until 2010. Basically, teens in the US can’t drink under the age of 21 because we have a massive highway system that needs to be maintained. 

Think about that the next time you hit a pothole youth of America. You can’t have a beer and the roads are still shitty. That pothole stole your right to party. 

So, that’s how we get here: kids drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk. Or the more industrious among them distilling it into a rough spirit that makes Everclear look like Malibu. 

 Everclear at least has a warning on the label that tells you not to do shots of it. I Not that it stops anyone. The label tells you to dilute it before drinking it. Hand sanitizer doesn’t do that.

Plus, the law hasn’t gotten the desired results. Recent studies of people between the ages of 18 to 21 tell us that young adults are still drinking heavily, but beyond that young adults are binge drinking more often and most binge drinkers are, in fact, underaged. 

We’ve gotten rid of the rats with snakes and now we’re Ireland pre Saint Patrick. Only with irresponsibly drunk snakes. That shotgun sterilizer. 

Anyway, psssh kids these days. 

Well Dressed Twentysomething on Cell Phone: You can't just do crack casually! No one just does a little crack!

Recent New York City Transplant: When did everyone in Brooklyn become bisexual? Was it that week I went away in July last year?

I keep my headphones on low so I can hear what's going on around me and because I'm paranoid about that guy with a hammer attacking women in the subway. Random strangers never fail to amuse me.