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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


2003-03-06 ... 8:56 p.m.

I have lost yet another pair of gloves. Where? El, bus, cab, on the street, in a dimly-lit bar: who knows anymore. For those of you playing the home version of our game, that makes the third pair this year. And you can buy swimsuits in March, but you can't buy gloves. Nope. Not anywhere. There is snow on the ground and it is bitterly cold, but gloves are no longer for sale. LT said I could borrow his for today, and I did, but what kind of solution is that? Alternating who gets the gloves like some kind of sad Steinbeck family?

LT's gloves are huge on me and flop about like baseball mitts on a kitten, and if I gesture too much they literally slide off, but they are better than nothing and they can double as pouches in which to store my transit card and keys and such. However, this two-gloves-four-hands disparity cannot continue. So either spring needs to come, some hipster knitting chick needs to quick fast knit me some little mittens, I need to go root around in the box of winter stuff at the homeless shelter, or I need to get to the toy store NOW and buy these. Oh my god I need these anyway. Everyone needs these. Absolutely everyone. Fuck duct tape, Al-Qaeda would crap their fundamentalist trousers if every single American was capable of HULK SMASH! HULK SMASH TERRORISM!

Remember my file system for doubt? On some sleepy cellular level my brain must be obsessed with taxonomy because I dreamed that I was given the assignment of coming up with a different way to organize a large grocery store. I have been thinking about this dream on and off all day. The grocery store taxonomy is really quite complicated. Mostly things are arranged according to their storage requirements (frozen stuff, refrigerated dairy, etc), but there are also your more arbitrary pairings: packaged cookies and crackers are usually together, for instance, and what is that based on? Some sort of trans fat kinship? Things In More Or Less Square Boxes With A Type Of Inner Plastic Sleeve? Most grocery stores also have the Salty Crunchy Aisle, the Aisle Of Toastable Things (bagels, bread, english muffins, crumpets), Fizzy Beverage World, and The Aisle Where We Lump Together All The Things We Consider "Ethnic" Into A Sort Of Non-Western-World Ghetto. Seriously, that bugs me. There is no reason that La Preferida pinto beans, just because they have some Spanish words on the label, should be shelved in some weirdo "ethnic" section instead of with the other cans of pinto beans. And besides, doesn't salsa outsell ketchup these days? Is there anyone left out there who is still freaked out by something as "exotic" as soy sauce? I think it is time for the big grocery chains to come up with another system. All of my own personal ideas (alphabetizing the store, assigning call numbers to each item like in a library, or classifying each food according to its "humor value" [so that something like a kumquat would be way at the front, and something yawn-inducing like rice would be in the back]) are fanciful, unwieldy, and often just plain stupid, so I will leave this to other grocery taxonomists to work on.

So status report: cold hands/giant gloves, obsessed with taxonomy, and sleepy as hell. I kept almost dozing off during my morning El ride, it was not good. I was even having little minor sleepy auditory and visual hallucinations. First I thought the guy next to me had said, "You murdered entertainment, sweetheart," into his cell phone. (Maybe he did. What kind of thing is that to say to someone?) Then I spaced out again and when I came back to reality he was reading a magazine and yes, I know it's a lousy habit but I have trouble not reading or at least looking at what people have open on their laps (hmm, that last part sounded dirtier than I meant it to), and I thought a caption under a headshot of some columnist called him "Entrepreneur, Activist, and Bacon to Lost Souls." Cue the music: If you're lost, you can look! And you will find me! Rind after rind! (Because I'm bacon! To lost souls!) (Of course the caption really said "beacon.") Then I yawned so big my head felt like it was going to fall off. Then it was my stop and I was grateful for the big slap-in-the-face Chicago winter wind to help me wake up a little. Man oh man.

The rest of my day was pretty pointless, although I did manage to stay awake. Things need to happen to me. There is a lot of so-so going on in my life right now and I won't stand for it. I pledge to Make Things Happen tomorrow. Chicago had better not wear its best clothes, this could get messy.

KISS MY LINKS

A theory on open modality (for geeks only).

Thank you for saying that Norman Rockwell sucks. It's about time somebody said it.

Words to live by: "Stay calm and don't worry. Do anything that will make you more at ease. Sing a song, whistle or tell stories or jokes to yourself. Take comfort in knowing that people are looking for you. Don't worry about wild animals."

What kind of ludicrous world do we live in when bands like Sleater-Kinney and the Buzzcocks open for Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam, people. Aren't we over this wailing big-guitar stadium stuff now? I sure am.

I have already babbled about this at length to just about everyone, but here it is again: I Love My Newish Shoes. I have a lot of trouble buying shoes, as mentioned before, and these fit perfectly and are so comfortable and they make me all aglow with shoehappiness. AGLOW. A-FUCKING-GLOW. Fine, I knew you wouldn't get it. Me and my wonderful shoes will just hang out over here by ourselves.

---mimi smartypants wants to wish Alan Greenspan a happy birthday.

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