Girl Guide To Breaking Up:

1) We Need To Talk
2) Texting, Email, Voicemail
3) Disappearing
4) I Need Time Out
5) Back Together With Ex
6) Get A Friend To Do It For You.

Okay, #6 is unbelievably retarded. You might as well just wear a sticker saying I Am A Fuckwit.

Number 1, 2, 4 and 5 are decent - myself, I particularly like Five. Five is good, it is a pre-existing situation, nothing personal, the man is left with some vestige of self-esteem. Good if you actually like the guy but don't want to kiss him again. Ever ever ever. Of course, Five is seldom exactly true, bit of a side issue, but it still works. Unless, of course, horrors, they know the Ex, in which case ...

Number 1 pretty much says all - you just have to do is say the words We Need To Talk, and doom wafts slowly up from the ground. Two works also, especially if it is only a couple months, and #4 is incredibly useful if you want the door left open, it both warns them and gives you some breathing space.

Which brings me to #3. The disappearance. This is fine after a couple dates, especially if you know there is no way you are going to run into the guy again. Saves you confrontation, there is no emotional connection anyway, no problem.

This break-up method only passes when no connections have been forged, like I said, a date or two. But to pull this stunt further along the love timeline is insanely disrespectful of the other person, not to mention a waste of time and energy. Here’s why: The person who is left this way will take some time to catch on, and during that time, will not know what to think. They will worry about you. Sometimes they wonder if something bad happened to the other person. Oh, so uncool.

Especially when you have perfectly respectable #2.

And such bad karma.

Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them.

So last night I saw Mr & Mrs. Smith. Which I realize everyone else on Earth has already seen, so I'll just say a couple things - one would be poor Jennifer. You never had a chance. You should have just dropped the papers off first day of filming. I'm sorry, darling, you are awfully cute but Angelina Jolie is a genetic marvel. Plus she flies her own airplane and adopts Ethiopeans at will. She probably speaks 17 languages and has a black belt, the point is she's better looking than Brad, and he knows it. You only looked like him ...

The other thing - wow, is it violent. Is this a guy thing? I can't imagine any woman getting turned on by watching Brad and Angie beat the crap out of each other. I can't figure out why this scene was even filmed. I couldn't even watch. It must be a guy thing, the man I was with thought it was great. Which, um, might pretty legitimately qualify as a red flag.

Anyway, sorry, Jen.

I have been going over and over what happened four years ago. You can't explain it to anyone else. People want a piece of it, which I guess is normal. But it is not theirs.

What it is like living with this - it can be anguish. You shut it off for long periods of time, it shows up at 3am. Four years later, I wake up on the other side of the world covered in sweat. I see again the people jumping, holding hands, from the towers. I feel the grey cloud coming through the street. Worse than any horror movie anyone has ever seen, real life. My friends that never came home. Their cars left on the street. They disappeared.

The cloud got me. I was holding on to my girlfriend, we had just dropped our children at school, we were having coffee in Tribeca, then we saw the first plane. I lost her hand when the cloud came. If Hell has a noise, that would have been it. There was nothing, she was gone.

Everything was gone. My children spent two days thinking I was dead. When I came to, I thought they were dead. I couldn't even scream, there was no scream left.

And it happened to all of us. We would go to the grocery store and just stare at the cereal. Someone would come up and say, what are you looking for, here I'll put it in your cart. Then the next isle there they would be, just staring at rice.

The worst part is the boys. They are mine and I owe them a childhood, I owe them. I think I am making it up by being here and it does, but I can never take that away. They saw it happen. In their normal little school day, they were at the playground and they watched their parents die.

For all you guys who saw it on TV? It is like seeing a war on TV. Not to negate, but you can't imagine. You don't want to imagine. Leave us alone, please. Any of us would give it up in a minute to be like you. We didn't want this, we don't feel cool because it did. We would love to be like you. We can't be. The people who had this happen to them changed. We don't give a shit anymore.

I have nothing to say about Katrina. I have nothing left. I guess those guys will have nothing left too.

Memo to Guido At The Printing Store: You Do Not Speak English.

I imagine you think you are speaking English - see above - but you are not. You are from some weird Eastern European country and you are sweaty. Also papering your walls with business cards does not indicate success. Your computer still had green writing on it. Also, you couldn't pull anything up on it. Which is kind of understandable, there were two coffee cups on the keyboard.

English may be a dream of yours, but it is just not working out. Also what doesn't work out is you breathing in my face. And telling me what a great deal we are getting while holding the door shut - not the best sales technique. I don't like having my hair touched. Sorry about the chair.

All the hest,

O.

I am from New York City. I live in Australia. More on this later. I have to stay completely anonymous, my visa doesn't allow me to work here and I do have an Australian income. The government here tends to frown on this. Actually, they more than frown, they escort you to the airport. I am a little vague on this point, but I think guns may be involved. As I have two boys and a large dog, I am kind of trying to stay away from this. On the other hand, as I mentioned I am from New York and we pretty much don't really like being fucked with. So there you go.

My New York City children run around free here, Thomas the dog gets ice cream from the neighbors. I dance, I paint. Even work is fun. Although, okay, illegal.

And no, I am not the secret kingpin in a drug cartel. After seeing Scarface about 10 times, I don't think that would be fun. I mean, introducing people to your little friend might be fun, but as I actually don't have a little friend, problems could arise. Because I could just about bet they would have lots and lots of friends.

Spalding Grey said things so much better than I ever could.

"For 34 years I lived with you and came to love you. I came to you because I loved theater and found theater everywhere I looked. I fled New England and came to Manhattan, that island off the coast of America, where human nature was king and everyone exuded character and had big attitude. You gave me a sense of humor because you are so absurd.

When we were kids, my mom hung a poster over our bed. It had a picture of a bumblebee, and under the picture the caption read:

"According to all aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly because its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wingspan. But ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway."

That is still New York City for me."

And for me, that is Australia too.