Lost and Lonely Leftovers

My friend Erika sent me this and said, “I saw this sad,...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:16:57 -0400

My friend Erika sent me this and said, “I saw this sad, cast away lollipop with leaves stuck to it and thought of your blog!”

I think she meant, “I thought of how you could use this on your blog,” but of course I took it as, “I thought of how sad, cast away, and leaf-ridden your blog is.”

My friend Kim sent this to me and called it...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:40:23 -0400

My friend Kim sent this to me and called it “pick-a-mix”. I was like, “Pardon me?” And she was like, “Duh. That’s what you call candy you buy by the pound.” And I was like, “Ooooooh, you mean bulk candy.”

And she was like, “No, no, I do not.”

In honor of my trip to California at the end of the week,...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:36:21 -0400

In honor of my trip to California at the end of the week, here’s a lost and lonely leftover from last year’s stop in Santa Monica.

I wonder if these birds have any idea that this wasn’t technically lost at all or if their little peabrains can’t distinguish between food they had to fight for and food that’s thrown at them for human amusement. Or not even amusement but, like, human pathetic-attempt-at-companionship.

But I like feeding the birds as much as the next gal.

My longtime blogfriend caropal lives in Chicago and experiences...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:35:23 -0400

My longtime blogfriend caropal lives in Chicago and experiences a lot of the same train and bus trauma I do every day living in NYC. So it’s not surprising that her world was shattered–shattered, I tell you–when she came upon this doughnut dumped in a corner of the el. (Or do you guys say “L”? I don’t know how Chicago trains work.)

I like the idea that some suit was riding into work with his breakfast, couldn’t prolong his gratification anymore, and had to free his O of dough from its bag right at the door to the train. At that precise moment, the conductor obviously hit the brakes for a track-crossing goat (because while I don’t know much about Chicago transit, I know a lot about their wandering native goat herds), the doughnut was dropped, and the suit threw his bag down in frustration.

Pity.

I’ve been writing lately about this particular seat on the...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:34:21 -0400

I’ve been writing lately about this particular seat on the bus and the wonderful little table that’s formed next to it by the housing for the bus’s wheel. Well, I sat down in that seat the other day and found this little treasure waiting for me.

Hair and all.

Found on the floor of my office, bounced from a tray of...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:33:33 -0400

Found on the floor of my office, bounced from a tray of more-beautiful strawberries.

Note the hair wound around the nubs of the blackberry. That’s likely the only thing that kept me from employing the 5-second rule on these babies.

During my first trip to Disneyland last fall, my friends and I...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:33:03 -0400

During my first trip to Disneyland last fall, my friends and I stopped to rest on a bench like the elderly people we are and almost sat in this.

Isn’t it such a lovely reminder of summer? Although there’s something to be said for frozen Kit Kats.

My co-worker, friend, roommate, and landlord, Jack, spotted this...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:32:06 -0400

My co-worker, friend, roommate, and landlord, Jack, spotted this photo on a friend’s Facebook gallery and stole it for me.

You almost feel like some animal welfarist purposely set the slice down in front of the pigeon to help him deal with the cold winter day, right? These are the things that warm my heart.

My Australian friend Aaron is finding so many Lost and Lonely...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:31:16 -0400

My Australian friend Aaron is finding so many Lost and Lonely Leftovers he’s threatening to start his own blog, Loster and Lonelier Leftovers. I don’t think it would ever gain the acclaim mine has, though, since loster sounds too much like lobster, and no one wants lobster leftovers.

This latest picture was taken at the ferry terminal in Manly (Manly!), Sydney, and of course none of the hehe-look-how-stereotypically-they’re-dressed passers-by noticed it. Well, except maybe one person, because there looks to be a single … skid mark? … beside the cone, running through the drippy melted remains.

Evidently Austrialian unicycle riders brake for dropped cones.

My friend Alison just left NYC to move back to her much-beloved...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:29:58 -0400

My friend Alison just left NYC to move back to her much-beloved college town, but before she moved, she took this photo for me, which she called Farmer’s Market on the N Train.

I’m kind of partial to Beans and a Boot, but hers is a little more poetic.

My long-time blogfriend Kat of Kat of All Trades sent me my...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:28:47 -0400

My long-time blogfriend Kat of Kat of All Trades sent me my second spilled spaghetti photo yesterday.

When I opened the photo full-size, the seemingly-hardened pasta filled my screen, and it just struck me as so beautiful.

It reminds me of the way the sidewalk would be littered with worms after every rainstorm when I was growing up in Ohio. And even though I thought worms were gross and would relish cutting into one in high school biology class, I was still sad when I saw one that had been squished.

I guess NYC is too thick with concrete, because you never see worms in the rain here.

Sometimes, when you’re a person who enjoys oddities like...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:27:33 -0400

Sometimes, when you’re a person who enjoys oddities like photographing abandoned food, you think you’re a freak, alone in the world. But then someone writes you an e-mail and says, “Dude, I’ve been doing that for years.”

One such person is Patrick B., whose girlfriend sent him a link to this blog and entitled it “The Competition”. I’d like to think that we’re just twins from a strange, strange mother who gave us up to avoid concentrating too much weirdness in one family. Or something.

Patrick has a whole Facebook album full of his photos, but here’s my favourite. I really feel like most of that jelly is still entirely edible, which makes it all the sadder.

My best friend, Tracey, of Unapologetically Female and...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:26:27 -0400

My best friend, Tracey, of Unapologetically Female and UNBREADED and Twitter fame sent me a video earlier this week of Minty, the Candy Cane That Fell on the Ground, complete with cigarette butts, a penny, and ants crawling up his backside.

I believe there’s mention of poo in that song, right?

My friend Kim is insanely witty and almost scarily snarky but...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:19:55 -0400

My friend Kim is insanely witty and almost scarily snarky but isn’t interested in the critical acclaim being featured here is almost certain to bring, so while she won’t give you, a likely future serial killer, access to any of her social media outpourings, she was still kind enough to send me this photo.

The caption read, “People at Harvard don’t like to finish their cookies.” And to that I say, “They don’t really look worth finishing.” But I think we both know there’s really no such thing as a bad cookie.

Cold Stone Creamery’s new flavor: Tobacco Chocolate.

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:18:26 -0400

Cold Stone Creamery’s new flavor: Tobacco Chocolate.

The victim of a spirited game of 4th of July croquet, this...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:17:56 -0400

The victim of a spirited game of 4th of July croquet, this burger was left on the playing field and left to the flies.

There’s a guy I work with who’s known as Big Salad....

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:16:58 -0400

There’s a guy I work with who’s known as Big Salad. Apparently he used to be a fatty but is now as svelte as can be thanks to his daily regimen of dumping half a bagged salad into a ginormous bowl and topping it with all of the meats and vegetables our office fridge can handle.

After he left the kitchen the other day, I found this left behind on the flatware. I silently cursed him for germing up the spoons, but I also secretly thanked him, too.

My friend Meredith is traveling to far-off lands (I wrote...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:15:53 -0400

My friend Meredith is traveling to far-off lands (I wrote fart-off the first time) in pursuit of dissertation research but still found the time to send me this lovely WHOLE zebra-striped doughnut that her little dog no-doubt gobbled up moments later.

I’d like to say it’s from somewhere exotic in Europe, but she actually spotted it on the street in our neighborhood in Brooklyn. I love imagining the poor hipster who came home with only enough baked goods for 11 of his unwashed friends.

My extreeeeeeeeeeeemely prolifically-blogging friend Eric of the...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:13:54 -0400

My extreeeeeeeeeeeemely prolifically-blogging friend Eric of the veeeeeeeeeeeery often-updated Park Slope Scope sent me this awesome photo the other day of one of the new blue-seated subway cars that have been slowly integrated into the NYC transportation system over the past five years, replacing the ones with the supposed-to-be-cheerful-but-instead-just-look-grimy-and-also-who-decided-on-that-taupe-colored-wallpaper-for-the-walls? orange and red seats.

Clearly, this is a take-out box of chicken fingers and fries with a Slurpee from one of the handful of 7-Elevens that exist in Manhattan. Which, by the way, never made sense to me. You don’t have a Dairy Queen or a Panera, but you have multiple 7-Elevens?

Yet when I showed this to two separate friends, both somehow believed that the blue part of the photo was the sky and asked me things like, “Why is that Slurpee floating in the clouds?” and “Why is there a line down the sky?”

I don’t understand what I did to deserve this.

I found this immaculate cookie outside of the G. Esposito &...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:12:15 -0400

I found this immaculate cookie outside of the G. Esposito & Sons butcher shop in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The question remains: is it better to have tasted and lost than to have never tasted at all?

I believe I found this on the same block as the Unheralded Ham from the previous post, which I’m assuming means some slob had a delicious pork-and-pastry lunch.