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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


2003-03-24 ... 2:14 p.m.

The old Medinah Temple here in Chicago, previously home to a lot of retro-cool Art Deco tile, is now a Bloomingdale's housewares store. Obviously this is not ideal, but at least the building itself was not destroyed and I can still look out my window at its faux Turkish copper domes. I got a little happiness boost when I walked by it today and saw that the G in the word Bloomingdale's has been stolen, from every instance of the brushed-metal branding (which, irritatingly, appears on all four corners of the building, screwed into the brick at eye level). Ain't nothing but a G-Thief! Running around the city with a bunch of lower-case Gs! Not that Mimi Smartypants advocates vandalism or anything, oh no, perish the thought. However, if you are going to steal, please make it a letter of the alphabet! I once stole a large plastic letter R from a gas-station sign and then did a little photo project where I asked just about everyone I knew to pose with the R, and it turned out really well. I can only hope the G stealer is having that much fun.

This was an excellent, excellent weekend. Friday night LT and I had friends over for more impromptu homemade pizza. It is now a full-blown food-and-wine clich� at our house, and eventually we are going to run out of friends who want to come and watch LT knead and shape and punch and twirl. Then we will have to spice it up a little, like maybe have eXtreme Pizza Night (with fire and midgets and ear-blistering hardcore music) or Naked Pizza Night (self-explanatory) or One Of These Pizza Slices Has A Dead Wasp In It Pizza Night. Or maybe not.

After the guests had left I was all wide-awake (in fact, I really did not sleep well at all this weekend: could we be entering a Spring Manic Phase? Oh, you hope not), and wanted to finish my wine and answer some e-mail. Somehow through a combination of my own tipsy impulsivity and Hotmail's tiny-font overly-clickable home page I ended up entering the "chat" section, something I had never done before. What the hell, I thought. Let's see what this is all about.

Well, MYSTERY SOLVED. Now I know precisely what chat rooms are all about. They are all about annoying the shit out of me. The minute my virtual self virtually showed up in the virtual room I started getting about eight messages a minute, mostly of the ever-obnoxious "A/S/L?" variety. Also a fair number from robots, inviting me to go watch them masturbate on their webcams (if they were true robots instead of just spammified chat bots from porn sites I might be intrigued because that whole human-mechanical sex thing would be kind of futuristic and cool. But alas.) I quickly realized this chat room scene was not at all for me, but not before having the following pure-comedy-gold exchange (screenames have been slightly changed to protect the hot and the male).

HottMale34: Hello
mimismartypants: Hello hot male
mimismartypants Why did you name yourself hot male?
mimismartypants: That is kind of odd.
mimismartypants: It's like you are insisting you are hot and you are male, both of which should be self-evident.
HottMale34: Thats all i was able to come up with
mimismartypants: How sad. Are "hot" and "male" really your only attributes?
mimismartypants: An impoverished existence, to be sure.
HottMale34: u talk to much
mimismartypants: A subjective verdict, and an odd complaint to voice in a "chat" room, but I'll give it to you. "Verbose" is one of my attributes.
HottMale34: stick a dick in that big mouth
mimismartypants: From whence, this dick?
HottMale34: if i stick my big dick in your mouth would u stop talking?
mimismartypants: It's kind of a moot point, isn't it? We are each free to leave this conversation at any time, and there is no big dick in evidence.
HottMale34: you're so dumb
mimismartypants: As a sack of hammers!
HottMale34: bye
mimismartypants: goodbye, sir!

Then I went to bed for a twisty fitful red-wine sleep. At one point I woke myself up with my sleep-talking, saying, "I have now completed casseroles A through K." I wish I remembered the alphabetical casserole dream.

Saturday I ran errands with LT, including a trip to the pet store to get more Science Diet Light for our portly pet, The Cat. I like looking at the fish, so that errand takes longer than you might think. Then I went to a bar-slash-package-store* and my drinking comrade and I speculated on the outcome of imagined battles between the graphic icons of different liquor bottles. The Beefeater vs. Captain Morgan. The stag on the bottle of Jagermeister vs. the bison on the bottle of Zubrowka vodka. The stylized peach-half on the peach schnapps vs. the realistic mint leaves on the peppermint. The idyllic Irish landscape on the Bailey's bottle in pitched combat with the sprawling plantation on the Southern Comfort label. This is an idea whose time has come. There could even be wagering.

*Do you have these where you live? They are wonderful. While you drink cheap draft you can gaze upon a wall of booze, all of it for sale in either single-serving or portable sealed form. So inspiring!

PLANETS ARE MISALIGNED SOMEHOW

The past week has seen more utterances of the word "pretty" reaching my ears than I remember since the times when me and my sister could be found lovingly braiding the manes of weirdly chunky and stunted pastel ponies. As I walked up the alley the other night my neighbor said I looked "tired but pretty" (?). The lady at the dry cleaners, who normally interacts only with LT, asked if I was Mrs. LT (which I am not, since I never changed my name, but sometimes it's just easier to agree), and then said "oh I knew you would be pretty, your clothes are so pretty." And two different people at work have commented on how "pretty" my hair looked in a ponytail, a hairstyle that for me means one of three things: (a) hungover; (b) can't be bothered; or (c) despite my best blow-drying efforts, hair is doing its own individualistic wavy Medusa thing. What's with all this "pretty"? Ugh, I am getting embarrassed just talking about it, since what for me is a legitimate source of puzzlement and linguistic intrigue will no doubt, when I go to read this over, sound like one giant troll for compliments, but on second thought I kind of successfully circumvented that accusation but not putting pictures of myself online. ARE YOU STILL WITH ME? YOU DON'T NEED TO BE. I CAN JUST IMPLODE WITH SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ALL BY MYSELF THANKS.

No, wait, don't go. Here are some links.

"It's like sitting through a Spandau Ballet sound check, circa 1980."

Introspective shoe/surface photography.

Gorgeous photos of microwaved CDs.

Prayer of the proposed patron saint of internet users.

Georges Bataille's antimyth of the Solar Anus is, like most Bataille, fairly strange. Here is an excerpt. Basically, he uses the image of a radiant anus to symbolize the triumphant return of primitive anal-related impulses that have been repressed by bourgeois culture. Um. Okay.

"South Park, as a narration of late capitalist concerns..."

---mimi smartypants, her cause is just.

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