Back to Diaryland

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


2004-03-06 ... 9:51 p.m.

QUESTION FOR GIRLS ON BIRTH CONTROL PILLS

Do you save the placebos? About ten years ago (gosh I'm old) I switched brands and my new brand of pills, which I still use, is a twenty-eight-day, variable-dose thing that includes a row of placebos. I am somewhat offended by the placebos. It seems to imply that "you are such a robot, a zombie, a brain-dead creature of habit, a big dumb instinctual animal, that you cannot remember to NOT take a pill for one week, even with the helpful mnemonic device of the vaginal bleeding, thus here are some sugar pills, there is no need to vary your routine one iota, you sweet stupid girl."

Instead of taking them, I started saving them. In a jar. Seven placebos a month, for ten years, is a nice big pill bottle of placebos, and now I don't really know what to do with them. They are too delicate and dissolvable for most craft projects. They are too small to do much damage if I wanted to get all teenage and whip them at people from an El platform. They are pink and small and not dangerous-looking, but they might suffice for a big dramatic fake suicide attempt if people did not look too closely, so maybe I could burst into tears at the next painfully boring work-related meeting, pull out a huge pill bottle and a thermos of gin and tonics, and start gobbling placebos. That might get me a week off work. Or maybe my unemployed friends could make some cash, a la Go, by approaching gullible teenagers at raves. Can you be prosecuted for selling fake drugs? I remember my high school once expelling a kid who was selling oregano joints, and I never understood that one: are the public schools in charge of quality control now? Is it their job to protect the dumb kids from wasting money on bogus product?

Devon Avenue is getting spruced up lately. I miss the tacky plastic seat covers, sparkly Hindu-themed art, and garam-masala-colored carpet of Udupi Palace, all remodeled and now much less Bombay-mafioso/Miami Vice-looking. I definitely miss the snack shop that used to have a wonderful sign advertising a CHESSBURGER AND FRIES for $2.99---such a low price for such a wonderful burger! A burger of perfect information! A burger that comes with a time clock! A burger that, in order to eat it properly, you have strategize three bites ahead! However, the bodega that took its place has a good sign of its own, which is BREAD SLICED LOAF. All the way to my sister's place last night I muttered this: breadslicedloaf, breadslicedloaf. Then I ended up rearranging the units of the phrase like a Chomskyfied linguistic game, and discovered that with a little punctuation, you can post a bunch of bread-related words on your website and amuse no one but yourself:

bread sliced loaf

bread loaf, sliced

loaf bread (sliced)

loaf sliced = bread!

sliced bread loaf

sliced loaf bread

"Loaf" is such a horrible word. A "loaf" should not be food. And what rhymes with loaf? "Loath" comes close but I can't think of anything exact. (Edit: duh. Oaf.)

My other favorite signs, "WE SALE CIGARETES" and MIDDLE EASTER FOOD, are still around too. Hooray.

FUNNY STRANGE

1. Near the Fullerton El stop is a stuck cluster of white balloons, about twenty or thirty balloons, and somehow my brain will not register "balloons" but instead insists on thinking "frog eggs" as I pass them on my way to work. There will never be tadpoles because in reality they are just balloons.

2. Work has been crazy lately. After one hectic work-through-lunch-hour, I was mentally already onto the next thousand things I had to do. Plaque waits for no one, however, so I flung open my desk drawer for my toothbrush and toothpaste, thinking I would hit the bathroom before my afternoon meeting and get the salad remnants off my teeth. I was halfway there before I realized that I had not grabbed toothbrush and toothpaste but instead SCISSORS and toothpaste, and I nearly shrieked because it put me in mind of our recent conversation about the scissors-related horror movie scene. I sprinted back to my office to make the exchange. Creepy.

3. Wednesday night I went to see Northern State. It was a good show, but seemed short---did they run out of material, or is the 30-minute show a hip-hop aesthetic?* Afterwards we (me, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend, who really needs a pseudonym of his own already) were standing around outside Empty Bottle, looking for a cab, and he (the boyfriend) pulls out his pack of Marlboro Reds and starts to light one. I am all talkative on my three (or was it four?) beers and, still yapping away, I reach for it to steal a drag (there I go getting grabby with the off-limits boyfriends again---I'm down with OPP, yeah you know me?). At the top of my nice big inhale I realized that what I was sucking on was in fact a joint, and it must have been quite comical to see my eyes widen like a puppet's as I looked down at my hand in surprise and then had to quickly switch up my inhale-routine to accommodate the unexpected marijuana. I do not believe I have ever smoked pot accidentally before.

*I have decided that the hip-hop/indie rock schism is not based on music or ways of social interaction or race but on wearing clothes that are too big for you (those long shorts, giant t-shirts, jeans sliding down the hips and puddling around the Timberland boots) vs. wearing clothes that are too small for you (girly tees, babydoll skirts, high-water thrift-store pants, bony wrists sticking out of shrunken jean jackets).

4. I ran into an acquaintance of mine at the show, who has a tendency to make up words when drunk. (As do I: I believe I was drunk when "scroogly" was born.) Apparently after I left she told a mutual friend that I was an "intellijaded" person, and now I simply adore this malapropism and am trying to use it at every opportunity. Intellijaded. That's so mal-, it's almost eu-.

Wait, was Nora---my daughter, my constant obsession, my one-note diary theme, my entire ball of wax---not mentioned today? Here is the poor baby passed out in the high chair, which is what happens when you insist that you don't need a nap.

---mimi smartypants was brought to you today by the letter F and the number 12.

back/forward

join my Notify List and get email when I update my site:
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com