Do you ever look at something again for the very first time and you are like, ohhhhhhhh and then you have some kind of “spiritual awakening” and feel alive and your whole take on life changes and you feel “refreshed” or “rejuvenated” like you just woke up the F up and you think, damn, where the hell have I been?

Yeah, neither have I.

However, I am sitting here working and realized, you know what? My compartment apartment is shaped like the state of Utah. Very curious.

Interestingly, Utah’s state motto is “Industry.” Which might be (slightly) better than D.C.’s pathetic “Taxation without Representation.”

I live in Utah! It kind of sucks here.

Last week’s Time Out New York had a special feature on “small spaces” and featured a few New Yorkers who have mastered their “small spaces” through their mad dezign skillz. And when you have mad dezign skillz, you get mad propz. Zo that iz what they gotz–the propz. So I thought, hrm, I live in a “small space” let me check out this issue and read and gain knowledge and perhaps learn a few ways I can improve my “small space” from these masters of the design universe.

THEY. ARE. TOTAL. CHEATERS.

They have apartments that are 350 square feet! 350! That is the Taj Mahal when you compare it to my 187 square foot compartment. Shit, if you give me a 350 square foot apartment I would be living it up. I’d have enough room for a bed, dresser, couch, table, and a boccie court. Please, 350? That is like having a whole other wing of a house. Excuse me, where is the kitchen, I couldn’t find it because YOUR APARTMENT IS SO CAVERNOUS AND SPACIOUS, OH DEAR IS THAT MY ECHO I HEAR! Echo! (echo) Echo! (echo) Oh, don’t be silly, this apartment isn’t THAT big. Also, the kitchen is in the west wing. Go down the hall, turn left, go down another hall, and then make your second right. That is where the kitchen is, right next to the sculpture garden. You can’t miss it. If you see the Alexander Calder, you’ve gone too far.

So I decide to keep reading because I like to make myself angry by seeing how “the other half” lives it up in the warm, gentle, soft lap of luxury. It turns out they are even BIGGER cheaters because they do not read or have books (except for like one person). They also have this strange device called closets, which I am not familiar with, but apparently it is an area just for clothes and shoes. Very foreign. (Actually I do have a closet, it is a folding/accordion type door in front of a breadbox.) These apartments also get natural light, which I’ve only heard about, but have yet to see, much like a unicorn. And then I think one had a futon, but I don’t remember. I find futons offensive. I am a grown up. I should sleep like a grown up.

I have submitted my apartment to “Extreme Makeover: Your Shitty Apartment Edition” contests because it’s so small, but it’s in fact SO SMALL you can’t really do anything with it. Other than curl up in a corner so your books have more room to sit there and collect dust. The greatest number of people that have ever been in my apartment was 7. Me, a friend, and 5 firefighters, and one broken carbon monoxide alarm. But that is a different story, though with the power of deduction you can figure it out. One firefighter asked how much I paid for rent right there on the spot. Then he laughed at me and set me on fire.

Sometimes I am in the mood for a soda and I think hey, I will drink a soda. Why not? I should “live a little.” But then I discovered Diet Coke Plus and I got very sad. Do you know about this? It is totally ridiculous. It’s Diet Coke PLUS vitamins. Look, I drink Diet Coke specifically because it does not have vitamins. I do not want my Diet Coke to be healthy. I want it to rot my teeth until they’re little nubs and I have to throw all my food in a blender to eat it or get the fancy titanium bone graft implants that my dad has (who interestingly enough, rarely drinks soda). I want my body to be filled with all that glorious high fructose corn syrup and caffeine and whatever MSG type crap they put in their “secret recipe” that makes Coke so MF flavorful and delicious. I want all of this, yes. Listen, Diet Coke, you are not fooling anyone. I know your little games. Coke will never be healthy unless you replace it with water and call it Coke. Just saying. I guess the idea is that someone will want a Coke and think, hey, why not get Coke with vitamins? Anyway, the moral of this sad, sad story is that you should take vitamins if you want vitamins and drink Coke if you want Coke. And never the two shall meet. OR I guess we can go the other way and add Coke to salad. Like if you’re going to eat vitamins, might as well eat corn syrup and caffeine. It is an idea. Diet Coke with Salad.

I have a new blog post up at Emeco. This time it’s an open letter to Philippe Starck. Also if you are Australian and you are an architect and you are part of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, then check out this week’s newsletter. I have written an open letter to all of you. I will post up the PDF’s here when I get them. This whole newsletter thing is very random. And since the first piece of hate mail I ever received was from an Australian architect, it makes it all the more awesome and strange at the sametime.

I am at the office today and I go into the women’s bathroom and the first thing I notice is that there is a URINAL CAKE hanging from the ceiling. This is very confusing because 1. What is a urinal cake doing in the bathroom? 2. What is a urinal cake doing on the bathroom ceiling? 3. Urinal cakes smell bad, I rather smell urine…or do I? Hard to say. 4. There is a urinal cake! On the ceiling! What?

Anyway it is taped on to the ceiling with electrical tape. Not with duct tape. Not packing tape. Not Scotch tape, or as I like to call it, MacTape. But with electrical tape. You know just in case you want to TOUCH the urinal cake and you fear getting electrocuted. Safety first, that is what I always say. So if any of you want to visit me and touch the urinal cake, you will be very safe. You will be safe from the dreaded foe called electricity and also safe from the smell of urine. What you will not be safe from is the smell of a urinal cake trying to cover up the smell of urine. Also I should add that no one can pee on this urinal cake on the ceiling. I know this because I tried and was unsuccessful. So now I am sitting here, covered in my own pee. Most unhappy circumstances. Anyway the important lesson I want all of you to take away from this sad story, is that a urinal cake is not an air freshener.

Jelle, a lawyer from Belgium, just emailed me some news and now I am going to share it with you because I am a very nice person. Just ask my friends.

Happy Birthday or Whatever is ranked #39,622 in books on Amazon.com, which isn’t actually that good because I think there are only 39,623 books on Amazon, but WAIT HERE IS WHERE IT GETS GOOD:

I am ranked #85 in African American & Black memoirs!!!!

Sweet!!!!

Thanks to everyone who helped me crack the top 100 of African American & Black memoirs, we did it together! Go team!

I remember when the book first came out, Amazon put a little tag on it that said “Customers who bought this book also bought Joss Stone’s latest CD!” And I was like, dude, I am pretty sure 1.) no one bought my book and 2.) even if they did buy the book, they did not buy Joss Stone’s latest CD. So then when I looked at Joss Stone’s CD it did not say “People who bought Joss Stone also bought Happy Birthday or Whatever” and I got disappointed, but not really. So then I started browsing and noticed that many, many people bought Joss Stone along with some other books so I guess what I’m saying is that Joss Stone is a very popular person and her latest CD was purchased by many people, especially those who are interested in African American & Black memoirs.

Anyway sweet, dude! I’m #85!

Thanks to everyone who came out to Pecha Kucha tonight. I understand that many were actually turned away at the door which totally sucks and I’m sorry. There’s nothing worse than dragging your shit out to rock, only to get totally denied from the rocking. Clearly people do not want you to rock. Listen, I have no control over this. If it were up to me everyone would rock. Rocking, in fact, would be some kind of requirement for just being a mammal.

I think the presentations went pretty well. I liked the dude from Snohetta because he seemed like a pretty jolly guy and also I like the idea that their employees get 5 weeks off and work 9 to 6, though I have a hard time believing that any office actually functions that way. I have a feeling that they “can” leave at 6 but never do. Kind of like how I “can” rob a bank, but I know I shouldn’t. I also liked the thing Israel (from 2×4) did with the t-shirts (though dude, Israel, you went way over the 400 second rule, you should be publicly flogged, but actually, there’s no such thing as private flogging is there? Flogging by nature is public so why do people always say public flogging? Whatever, English, you are vexing me again). There were about 800+ people there and it was so hot inside that I actually tried panting. I mean if it works for dogs, it could work for us right? Guess what, it doesn’t work, but I tried it so you don’t have to. So it’s confirmed. Panting doesn’t keep you cool. But you know what keeps you cool? MOVING AIR. Note to air: KEEP MOVING.

I was up till 5 this morning doing these slides–and there were three other people who took on a few slides themselves, so I’d like to give a shout-out to Marc, Lizzie, and John. Don’t ask me why I didn’t start making my slides last week, clearly I like to make my life really stupid. Basically up until the last minute I was frantically trying to figure out how I could make my slides as cheesy as possible, and believe it or not, it’s actually harder to make something look bad, than make it look good. Although I guess people make things that look bad all the time, but then again they think it looks good, but then if you really think about it, they probably worked really hard to make it look good to them, which is actually bad, so I guess people really do work hard to make things look bad, whether or not they think it looks good. Oh man I am tired. I think that makes sense in my head. It’ll make sense in your head too if you read it a few times or stay up long enough. Anyway, I am particularly fond of the slide with the cow that flew across and the ramen slide. Those are my two favorite. Though I also liked the one Marc made with the soldier that comes out and shoots hearts and the Egyptian pyramid one. When I first saw that I laughed so hard. It was about midnight and things were still funny to me. But then things stopped getting funny around 4. Anyway I’m glad I did it and I appreciate all those that came out.

Please help me. My neighborhood smells very bad. It smells like feta cheese. It also smells like hot trash and pee and B.O. and also like room-temperature plain yogurt. Sometimes it smells like bacon. But mostly it smells like feta cheese and every time I walk out of my apartment I feel “totes nosh” and want to vomit in my own mouth. It turns out that the culprit is a tree. It is very large tree. It has bark and branches and green leaves just like a regular tree but it also has fruit that is filled with feta cheese. It is a feta tree. I know you thought that feta came from sheep, but actually it grows on trees, just like money. I keep thinking that at some point the fruit will all be gone, but the tree keeps making more feta. It wants to share it with the world, as if to say, “hello friend, please, have some fruit. It tastes salty and smells like socks.” It wants birds to take the feta fruit and carry it to faraway places where more feta trees can grow, but I can tell you right now the birds are looking at the feta fruit and they are like “You’re kidding right? We didn’t even eat this shit during the Depression.” I think it’s actually a ginko tree but my friend Brian is positive that it’s a sheep-eating feta tree. So if you have sheep, you will not want to walk it around my neighborhood. Just a little friendly warning. Leave the sheep at home.

Tomorrow night if you are in the fair City of New York, I will be giving a presentation at Pecha Kucha, which is kind of like Powerpoint karaoke. There will be 20 slides, 20 seconds each slide. The computer is set and I can’t control it. So basically if it’s boring, you will be spared. There will be extremely hip and potentially annoying and mostly pretentious designers and architects in attendance and you can look at the speaker list here. I’ll be talking about “Dear Architects.” I hope it’s funny. I haven’t written it yet.