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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


2001-04-12 ... 10:26 a.m.

I hate feeling like a cliche. I was reading some Sylvia Plath poems yesterday. It's become commonplace for women to identify with Sylvia Plath poems. It's like a bad joke.

But so what. Today, I'm with you, Ms Plath. I understand feeling empty and angry, hands turned to claws, brain like a hot dry stone, shrieking for something else, something more. I understand turning your head like an infant from the spoonful of dull dishwater that the world wants to feed you. I understand feeling fierce but powerless. And, as always in this journal, I shall now back away from this truth.

Besides, all this angst looks ridiculous on a penguin background.

I want everyone to forget I ever said that about not enjoying the recounting of dreams in online diaries. Wipe that from your memory and write down all the dreams you want. Here's one from me. You know that TV show The Sopranos? (Confession and digression: I LOVE this show, and consider it one of the best arguments for cable ever. The acting is completely spot-on, and it's so richly characterized and well-paced that it feels more like installments of a novel than a television program.) Back to the dream thing. (There's the wind-up, here�s the pitch.) I had a dream last night that I was grocery shopping with Tony Soprano. I guess we weren't getting very many groceries, because we only had a basket, not a cart. I remember lingering in front of the frozen case and him telling me that I could get any flavor Popsicles I wanted.

As we all know, the Mafia are very generous with ice cream novelties.

Besides the dip into Plath (New! Chocolate-Covered Plath!), I'm reading Experience, Martin Amis' memoir. I love it so far (only about 100 pages in), and it's way better than most memoirs. For one, it's not linear. (Duh, this is Amis, right?) I lose interest with linear memoirs and biographies (ok, confession #2, I lose interest with MOST things linear...to quote the party line, I Am A Postmodern Casulty of the MTV Era), especially because writing about childhood is so difficult to do well. Most people's childhoods are not very interesting, and even if one is, there's all this memory and nostalgia and truth and lies and narrative folly to wade through. It's a paradox: children can't express how enormously complicated their thoughts and feelings are, but neither can adults. OK, now I'm feeling sad again, enough of this.

But never enough of this. Please follow the link, it's a great cautionary tale and one of the best damn photographs of a starchy tuber you are likely to see today.

---mimi smartypants

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