An earthquake, apparently.

From an e-mail I sent to my high school friends:

Apparently, my entire building shook (I was on the 33rd floor) but I was on a conference call and did not notice at all. When I got off (the call, not from earthquake-induced orgasm), I called Jake to see if he wanted to get lunch and he was like "Are you calling about the earthquake?" at which point I looked around and noticed that literally everyone from my floor was gone. I went downstairs and everyone on my floor had been evacauted and they were all like "Oh, I guess we should have told you that we were leaving."

The same thing happened to me when I was a freshman in college and there was a fire drill that I slept through. Why is everyone so okay leaving me to die? Is it because they know I'm a strong, independent woman who can fend for herself? I think so...

Thank God for these videos with messages!

Marlo Thomas is the original Gaga

According to Perez Hilton , the MTV VMAs will feature a new category: Best Video With A Message. Here are the nominees:

P!nk – F****** Perfect - P!nk lets out a rally cry of reassurance for anyone who’s ever felt less than perfect.

Lady Gaga – Born This Way - Mother Monster gives birth to a world free from prejudice, judgment and self-doubt.

Katy Perry – Firework - The California Gurl celebrates the spark and originality in all of us.

Eminem feat. Rihanna – Love The Way You Lie - Em and Rih Rih illuminate the pain and peril of domestic violence.

Rise Against – Make it Stop (September’s Children) - Rise Against reminds LGBT teens pushed to the edge that “It Gets Better.”

Taylor Swift – Mean - Taylor Swift cautions negative naysayers that being mean gets you nowhere.

Okay, is it just me or are they stretching here? Let's go back in time and look at some of the videos that could have made it into this category had they only introduced this category a little earlier:

1989: Madonna- Like a Prayer-- Promoting prayer in schools! Also interracial dating... It doesn't matter if she's white and he's a wooden black Jesus if they love each other!

1992: Nirvana- Smells Like Teen Spirit-- Encouraging effective deodorant use in teens

1995: TLC- Waterfalls-- AIDS, drug-dealing in front of your mom, believing in yourself, erm... This song was a little all-over-the-place, but the takeaway is something like don't go after your dreams?

1998: Madonna- Ray of Light: Encouraging the use of solar power

2001: Britney Spears-- I'm a Slave for You-- Abolishing slavery

2004: Outkast- Hey Ya!-- Racial equality between Beyonces and Lucy Lius (and baby dolls)

2005: Green Day- Boulevard of Broken Dreams-- Cleaning up our nation's highways

2007: Rihanna- Umbrella-- Sharing is caring. Also acid rain.

2008: Katy Perry- I Kissed a Girl- Encouraging sexual exploration and polyamory among young girls

Who says the era of the protest song is over?

Adventures in Sleeping and Not Sleeping

I came home to find Jake asleep. His laptop was still open on the dining room table. The TV was still on, tuned to Anderson Cooper, on mute. And every 10 minutes, his cell phone alarm would go off and he would roll over, murmur and then shut it off. At a certain point in one of those moments between alarm and snooze, he became aware I'd come home and assured me that he was only taking a nap. It was already 11pm. Perhaps we had a night of midnight frolicking ahead of us, but more likely, the nap would become the sleep. I convinced him that there was no point in getting up and back he went to sleep.

I have always had a hard time with sleep. I like to think of it as a state of inertia. When I am awake, I have a hard time shifting to sleep. And when I am asleep, I can sleep like the dead until far into the afternoon. I have lain awake, frantically trying to calm my body, until 5am, rising every so often for warm milk, peanut butter, yoga and Google searches of what cures insomnia. And I have slept through exams, appointments, work, rehearsals, my freshman-year Japanese midterm... slipping back into consciousness, rolling over and checking the clock and being shocked to find it is hours after I was supposed to wake up. How startling to hit snooze once... twice... and then find that it is suddenly and alarmingly (pun intended) three in the afternoon.

Besides these frantic moments, I have visceral memories of trying desperately to stay awake, of being mad at myself for falling asleep or staying asleep. Last nights of vacation, last nights before the end of college, last nights with best friends or boyfriends or family members where you knew you had to say goodbye in the morning... I would angrily try to convince my body that these moments of happiness were worth it but my body disagreed. My body let me sleep and in the morning, when the time I had thought we had was gone, I would feel betrayed by my own inner clock. What does it matter now, whether I slept at midnight or 2 or 4? In the long run, why do I still remember those moments as defeat at my own hand? Time would pass regardless. Staying awake wouldn't have stopped the morning from coming... although I guess I wouldn't know, since I always fell asleep before I could find out.