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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


2003-01-17 ... 2:31 p.m.

LIST OF INTRIGUING TRASH IN MY ALLEY THIS MORNING, FOR REAL, WHY WOULD I LIE

Two toilets, one white, one pink
A giant sock (really, really big husky-sized sock)
Some sort of hockey-based board game (?)
Incredibly ugly lamp, no shade
Broken menorah (looks like it was run over by a car)
Empty box for some sort of snackcake called "Raisin Cream Pies" (doesn't that sound vile?)
Birdcage, no bird inside
Baby carrier, no baby inside
Computer monitor
Hideous brown-and-yellow afghan, was that yarn on sale or something?
Styrofoam head for holding wigs, which I almost took but it would have been awkward on the train

The sight of the styrofoam head briefly made my heart beat faster because from a distance all I could see was that it was head-shaped, and maybe you didn't know this, but I would really love to find a human head. Sometimes it seems like everyone has found a human head but me. Yeah, it would be grisly but I look at medical photographs all day long, I could handle it. Think how long you could drink on this story! Everyone would be all like "Tell us again about how you found the head!" "Well," I'd say, wiggling around on the barstool to get more comfortable, "I was just walking down the alley minding my own business when I noticed this blood-stained pillowcase..."

Of course, eventually people would get sick of hearing the head story. They would tactfully excuse themselves to use the bathroom when you started the head story again, or they would try and change the subject, and eventually your best friend would be blind drunk one night and would just burst out with "God! Can you shut up about that head already!" and you'd be all like "ha ha, sorry" but on the inside your feelings would be really hurt. I mean, he didn't have to yell at you like that.

That's when you start looking for a torso.

As long as we are talking of disturbing things, on this morning's El ride I was not even able to practice my usual Commuting Routine of reading or constructing elaborate baroque orgiastic fantasies in my head. (Casts of dozens! Interesting geometric furniture! Clouds of opium smoke! Everyone's bisexual!) The reason why I could not concentrate on these things was because of the loud and intrusive conversation going on to the left of me, and I use the word "conversation" loosely because it really was more of a diatribe delivered by a loud woman with a serious South Side accent and all the accompanying vocal tics (such as the constant "you know what I'm saying?" after every sentence) delivered to a much quieter man.

She leads off with the weather. Damn, it's cold. And so forth. This eventually switches to a rant about the bastards who towed her car because she parked in a towaway zone for ten minutes! Can you believe it! (Yes. I can.) Then there was how much money it cost her to get her car back. Then there was a discussion about how she considered going to law school, and took a couple of law classes at City College, but then realized that she�d have to sell her soul in order to drive a Mercedes-Benz. (Because of course, there is no middle ground in the law, like actually helping people or anything like that. Lawyer = soulless rich bastard, period.) (I don't often find myself defending lawyers, but I hate illogic.) Then, a rant about the legal system in general, and how public defenders always tell you to plead guilty. For instance, twenty years ago when she shot her boyfriend. (I start listening a little harder right about now.)

[transcribed from my notebook]

Loud Woman: I shouldn't have been messing with him anyway, because he was a married man, but hell! That ain't my problem! I wasn't married to him! You know what I'm saying? I was dealing at the time. My boyfriend, he was trouble, but I loved him so much. He spent the night, and we had relations, you know what I'm saying? Then I wake up and he is gone, and so is my money. Thirty-five dollars. It wasn't the money, but the principle of the thing, you don't take shit from me. You just don't. If I got something you want, just ask, but don't take from me. So I got my .38, and I went over to his house, and his wife is all up in my face, saying "He wasn't with you last night, get out of here," and I say, "Oh yes he was, bitch, why don't you smell his dick? He was with me, go ahead, smell his dick." [ed. note: ????!???] I didn't mean to shoot him. I just wanted my money, but he looked so damn smug, and then he started to come out the door, and in my mind he was getting ready to hit me, so I shot him in the kneecap. Then I stood there until the cops showed up.

Then the rant about the justice system resumed, about how the asshole public defender told her to plead guilty, why would he do a thing like that? (Um. Because you were?) The boyfriend declined to press charges (aww, true love!) so she never did any time. Later she got mad at him again for some other reason so she went over to his house and "fucked up his truck real good with a brick and a two-by-four." The best part of this entire urban storytelling episode was that the guy she was telling it to seemed sincerely interested, and when I got off the train they were exchanging phone numbers.

Today is the feast day of Saint Anthony the Abbot. According to the Patron Saints Index, his relationship with pigs and patronage of swineherds is a little complicated. That's okay, I don't need to know any more.

It is the vest.

File under S for So What: Firehydrant.org, the #1 Hydrant Information Resource.

Porn music radio. Enjoy.

CULTURE APPRECIATION CORNER

Oooooh. I am kind of excited, does that make me a nerd? (Yes.)

How did I not know the first (and best) album from Suicide had been re-released? Time to replace that old cassette tape. Especially since I no longer own a tape deck.

Hooray for Kim Deal hoarsely yelling the lyrics to this song. She has so much fatigue in her voice and you can almost smell the cigarette smoke on her clothes, and no amount of Febreeze is going to relieve the stink of this binge.

Charles Simic and Matthea Harvey.

Hooray for Friday. There was a possibility of driving to Milwaukee to gaze upon a batch of art tonight, and eat cheese and schmooze with some of my painter friends at an opening, but now the prospect of time in the car after working all day seems less than desirable, and I am back on the fence about that. (This trip has been on-again/off-again all week.) What is really starting to sound nice is the prospect of going home, taking a bubble bath, eating pasta, drinking a whole bottle of wine, and demanding sex. It's art vs. sensual animal pleasure! Superego vs. Id! Apollo vs. Dionysius! Somebody get that ho Camille Paglia on the line!

---mimi smartypants recommends you stop reading approximately now.

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