And so, gentle reader, you may be thinking, "Rachel has abandoned us! Where has she gone? No new posts!"

   Fear not, my friends. I am only on vacation. Shooting big game in Africa, using my trusty blunderbuss. Presently I am covered in blood and gristle, typing away under a billabong tree, or whatever it is that grows down here. I have heard the roar of lions and not been afraid. I have stared in the face of a rhino and not flinched. I have riddden on the backs of a herd of elephants and delivered the trumpeting stampede call myself. My guide, Kwofe, is beyond impressed and calls me a natural in the wild. He calls me other things too, but they are muttered under his breath and I can't understand them. I know he is enamored of me.

   But know, gentle readers, I think of you always. As I adjust my khaki riding suit and dust off my authentic field hat from J. Crew, I understand that should this day be my last, I will have lived proudly and well. I am off now to puchase a gun-u-ine antelope tooth necklace from one of the natives and then after that, I'm taking Kwofe to a real movie theater to see Transformers 3! He's never been to see an action movie on the big screen (how quaint!) and just says silly things like "That movie will be crap. I prefer the work of Werner Herzog." Must be some native guy.

  Till next time, gentle readers!

   And so, gentle reader, you may be understandably impressed to know that this summer I have been interning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And not just in the regular old art section, doing silly things like polishing the paintings or filing the sculptures or whatever it is they do. Oh, no, I have been in the Watson Library, where you must be able to decipher art and read at the same time, which is exactly like rocket science. After a really hard test that required me to know both my phone number and my social security number, I was subjected to rigorous questioning about what bands I liked and whether I tweeted, just to see if I was cool enough to be there. Gone are the librarians with little chains around their glasses, these librarians have little chains that connect their wallets to their belts! Is that hip or what???

    Gentle reader, when I walked in to the library at the museum and saw how good looking and witty they all were, I knew I was in good company. They were so impressed when I said I had a blog-and a laptop computer! When I mentioned immediately after introductions that I thought The Fountainhead was so passe, we all had a good chuckle and some people guffawed. They offered at once to take me down to the "cage" in the basement, where the ancient and contraband books are kept. Yes, gentle reader, contraband! They let me skim through some boring book from 1343, and thought it hysterical when I put little mustaches on all the saint's faces! The hilarity continued when I spearheaded a project to put an eighteenth century book of Indian erotica through the copier and hang up the pictures throughout the portrait gallery!

   Gentle reader, I don't know how they get any work done there, I truly don't. With all the cracking of jokes, knuckles and skulls going on, it's just a riot. Just remember, friends, don't be fooled: beneath every librarian's cool exterior beats the heart of a maniac -a dirty, dirty maniac. 

  And so, gentle reader, as I sit listening to a record by the great Janis Joplin I am forced to wonder if my already immense talent would be greatly increased by the consumption of massive amounts of mind altering substances. Clearly, it's obvious this helps as a mind opener, since we all know everyone from Jim Morrison to Laura Ingalls Wilder used drugs to help them get "arty". Why, Laura Ingalls used to get so messed up on maple syrup and paint thinner in the thirties that she hit on Anais Nin until she got so uncomfortable she told her she was a Christian. And really, who was Anais Nin to talk, with she and Henry Miller doing steroids and running through the streets of Paris, lifting street cars with their bare hands? But they were all tetotallers compared to Fred Rogers from "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood". We know now he never left the neighborhood because he and Mr McFeeley had so much crack and Nyquil running through their addled brains it was all Fred could do to remember to put his sweater and shoes in the closet instead of eat them. 

   But, gentle reader, if I choose to go beyond the quart of Everclear and milk crate of mushrooms I already go through daily, it would be for my art, and the ability to drown out good advice. We wouldn't have such greatness as Precious Moments figurines or yogurt in a tube if it weren't for massive amounts of drugs, otherwise someone would have realized it was a bad idea much earlier. We would have missed out on macrame plant holders, garden gnomes, and every Sly and The Family Stone album ever made. Drugs make one mysterious, bloated, and flatulent, and if that doesn't make good art, I don't know what does. I might be able to make a life size Grover Cleveland meeting the Beatles on Mars but you wouldn't know that if you hadn't given me some playdough and a sheet of acid, would you?

   And so, gentle reader, besides the obvious appeal of never being that boring sober jerk that ruins every party by suggesting people "take it easy and stop chugging bleach", drugs just make stuff cooler. That's why before I wrote this I made a cocktail of children's aspirin, Mountain Dew and peyote. Soon, I will set the television on fire and cover it in purple paint and vintage lace. For art, and for all of you.

And so, gentle reader, I find myself housesitting and catsitting for friends this week and what a pleasure it is. There is no better way to get to know your friends than rifling through their underwear drawer and calling all the numbers in their old address books. I have especially enjoyed drinking the two hundred year old scotch they had locked in a steel case hidden in the depths of the basement that I can only assume they had left for me. In fact, I'm drinking it right now and am having trouble finding the right keys to type, but that may be less from the quality of the scotch than the fact that I am wearing their contact lenses and glasses at the same time. I have decided also that they have entirely too many nice things, and while some of them I have broken, many others I am taking the liberty of selling on Craiglist to pay my first graduate school payment, due today. Beneficial for both them and me, since now there is less furniture for them to run into when they are drinking all that scotch and I learn the ins and outs of the free market and just how much I can get for their copy of the Guttenberg Bible. And you wouldn't believe how much you can get for an autographed copy of Eric Estrada's autobiography!

  But, gentle reader, I do think the most difficult thing for me with housesitting is learning to forge my friends' signatures when using their credit cards. I do take pride in being a good friend and once I sold some of the extra furniture around here I used the cards to thoughtfully purchase some fun accessories for the house, like blow up dolls and a light up dart set. Indeed, part of being a good friend is knowing what your friends enjoy,and when they finish the last few swigs of the scotch I will leave for them, they're going to want a blow up doll.

And so, gentle reader, I found myself yesterday at a fancy French cafe in Prospect Heights called Le Gamin. Le Gamin means "the leg" in French and as the morning light shown upon mine I couldn't help but notice how nice they looked. I think the waitress was startled by my fluency in French for when I grasped her hand and introduced myself by saying "Je t'aime Rachel" several times she seemed confused and vaguely disturbed. It shocks me how few people speak French in Brooklyn, especially in cheese shops, where they all should. Ordering cheese that smells like an unwashed rear end requires heightened language, but most of these so-called hipsters have yet to master that, even with high priced degrees from the University of Nevada and such. When I begin graduate studies at CUNY Queens College in the fall, I plan to take a few classes in Latin, just for fun party chats. It can't always be about the latest issue of The Economist, after all. 

  But back at Le Gamin, the cafe au lait was delicious, although wastefully served in a soup bowl the size of an infant's bathtub. Usually you only see such waste in places such as Vermont or New Hampshire, ghastly bloated states known mostly for guns, god and ground beef, but I expected more from the French. At any rate, the almond croissant was to die for, but I do suggest not taking that literally. 

   Thank you, gentle reader, for reading my very first post! These restaurant reviews sure are tricky, but not all of my posts will be reviews. Oh, no! Tune in next time for thoughts about the merits of non air-conditioned subway cars and why cows are better than hamsters.