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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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You would think I was a ninety-pound cheerleader at the top of a human pyramid somewhere in corn-fed Nebraska. You would think I had been screaming banshee-style into a microphone as I performed with my imaginary punk band, Dick Cheney And The Secure Locations. You would at least think I had been out in some smoky bar going blah blah blah theoretical blah blah. (Hey, that's not a bad name for an imaginary punk band either: The Theoretical Blah Blah.) But all of these situations are false, and still I have the most horrible sore throat. It is a miserable mess, and all lopsided as well; much more painful on the left side than the right, so that I have this weird two-part swallow that is all awkward and overcautious. Having a sore throat or the sniffles is a great way to become aware of normally autonomic processes, if indeed you ever had an urge to become aware of autonomic processes, which I don't recommend because it will drive you FUCKING NUTS. How many times a day do you swallow? (Oh. Uh. Um. If you are a professional prostitute or have a severe zinc deficiency, don't answer that. That question is for the rest of you.) Anyway, the answer is "a lot." And that is why it was so seriously messed-up that my orthodontist, who tortured me for almost three years in my early adolescence with the wire-tightening and the rubberbands and retainers and other appliances meant to tame my wildly cresting, Modernist, every-which-way childhood teeth back into a human shape (which mostly worked), decided at one point that the reason for my overbite was that I swallowed incorrectly. And he had exercises I was supposed to do that would teach me to swallow differently. Yeah. After swallowing thousands of times a day, every day, for twelve years, I am going to be able to swallow differently. It was recommended that I practice for an hour a day, swallowing alone in my room with a hand mirror, and even my mother, who takes an almost religious attitude toward following doctor instructions to the letter, knew that was insane, and that staring into a hand mirror for an hour every day, watching the workings of one's tongue and jaw, was not a recipe for the mental health of an already-somewhat-depressive twelve-year-old girl. Want to hear another creepy story about my orthodontist? When I moved to Chicago and found a dentist, I did not bother to have any records transferred, so my dentist knew nothing about me: not any x-rays, not any previous addresses, nothing. I get a cleaning, they take x-rays, the dentist wanders in to look at the x-rays and says: "You had braces, didn't you?" Well, yes, I did. Then he says, "Dr Blair?" I nearly fell over, because yes, that was indeed the name of my childhood orthodontist, but how would you know that? "Oh, I went to school with him," the dentist says. "I know his work." Which raises a whole other set of questions that I never did get answered: Did he fuck up? Is there some sort of obvious misalignment that Dr Blair never could get right, and which shows up in my x-rays? Did Dr Blair do something uber-creepy like etch his name into one of my molars? This is a very corporeal post, no? Maybe 2003 is the year we stop feeling all like a brain in a jar and get back into our skin. What can be learned through touch alone? I know my bones have something to say, if I could tune the frequency high enough. You always return to your first love, and our first love is always and forever our bodies: have you ever seen an infant stare at its own hand with the purest adoration? Or when you figure out you can run? Or those times when everything I do to you turns you on, but that for me is secondary for how what I am doing turns me on, and taking and giving get all mixed up in a neverending skin/fingertips/skin/fingertips cycle? A long time ago I was in a typewriter store and there of course is paper in all the typewriters (part of me likes the Bukowski shorthand "typer" to mean typewriter and part of me would never allow such a thing in this web page), and customers had typed different things. I was maybe ten years old at the time. One of the things typed was this phrase: "how dark is this machine." And I have carried around that line with me forever, and written several pieces of crap juvenilia containing it, because for me that line starts to crawl toward something about our unknowable bodies. The whole ashes to ashes thing. The thin layer of skin being all that holds it in. Our taste for pills and wine. This is a very corporeal post, yes. I love these Communist slogans. So adamant and exclamatory! I think I am going to start talking like this all the time. Patrons of the Goldstar! Lift your Old Style bottles in praise of grain, which gives us beer! Long live Susan, the most efficient bartendress to ever sacrifice her hearing to the clack of billiard balls and the roar of Buzzcocks on the jukebox! Smokedot is like Slashdot, only with an exclusive marijuana focus. Oh give me a break. What, if there is pornography available in the room, after like six menus asking you if you really want pornography, Satan might just make you watch it? This is pay-per-view, you know. It's not like the pornography is sentiently lurking behind your TV screen, just waiting to pop out once you get done watching whatever it is you freaky family-values people watch. And don't try to tell me it is because you are worried about your kids, because why are you leaving your little kids alone in a hotel room, and older kids who are too stupid to realize the porn will show up on Dad's hotel bill deserve whatever punishment they get. Ha ha ha ha better symbolic logic system: "In an additional bow to diversity, the negation constant is gay, and the conditional is pregnant." Yay. ---mimi smartypants sees a red door but would rather have it painted black. back/forward |
