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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
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SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE Today = not so good. If you bother to read the following at all, remember that I am coming at this from an emotional, skeezy, hyperbolic angle. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no fooling around. And it sure as hell ain't no intellectually rigorous philosophy of consciousness. To summarize: I am suspicious of people who know, or think they know, how to live. I doubt the IDEA of a solution, not the solutions themselves. Neo-pagan earth worshipping: cool. Jesus: great. Yoga: way to go. Raw foods, live like every day is your last, don't let the bastards get you down, setting boundaries in relationships, balancing work and play, you can't kill the Rooster, etc. Those are all good or possibly good strategies, but they are not solutions. I am not explaining this very well. I am suspicious of the very idea that there is a solution to the problem of being alive. Because that's what it is. A problem. Sure, sometimes it's a joy and it's always interesting at the very least. But always a problem. How to reconcile the different parts of yourself, how to either integrate/create a self or decide that there is no such thing as the self. How to relate to other people using paltry, dusty things like words and grammar systems, remembering always that they have their own agendas and their own labyrinth ways to communicate back. How to filter the entire universe through five puny senses and one idiosyncratic brain. How to reconcile the centuries-old, culturally pervasive idea of the Platonic Love Object, the "other half," with the simple reality that no one person can fill every single one of your emotional needs. How to balance the idea that you are the architect of your life with the mundane shit like staying alive, and the requirements of things like a full-time job, that paradoxically give you the financial freedom to be creative and pursue leisure and stimulation while also robbing you of the time to be creative and pursue leisure and stimulation. How to raise your hands in the air. How to wave them like you just don't care. It just seems very difficult to be on this planet. And now you are all like Yeah blah blah more of this crap, check out Mimi all faux-dramatic and nihilistic, no clean well-lighted place for her: but it is not really like that this time. I am not saying this in a despairing way---however, to me the entire search for meaning is a crock, and you take the broken pieces* and carry them home, and make some sort of collage out of them, because there is no solution to this problem. And that comforts me in an obscure way, and I hold on to it. *Of CROCKERY! Get it? Oh, I got skillz. I would make a terrible philosopher, because I only reject. But, for now, TO BE sure beats the shit out of NOT TO BE, so there is a safe limit to my rejection. HEY, WHAT'S THAT SMELL? MORE COMPLAINING! WITH SOME SILVER-LINING NICE BITS! 1. Blah. This story was bad enough before finding out that the victim had a brand-new baby. [NICE BIT] I had my cranky despair at the evils of this world tempered, if not exactly lessened, by this wonderfully obfuscated quote from a police official, describing what happened before the shooting: "He had prepaid for some coffee for a friend and when the friend came in, she was charged for the coffee which incensed him. And from that point forward, after he had confronted our deceased victim with that he felt that the deceased was not properly serving him each and every time he came in there," said Cmdr. Lee Epplen, Grand Crossing District. What? 2. One of the toilets in my office bathroom has a leaky flush handle. This is kind of gross, although to be strictly rational it's not that gross, since it is clean water that is leaking and you are going to (hopefully) wash your hands right after flushing anyway. Which is why the person in my office who insists on fashioning a little toilet-paper cozy for the leaking handle, so that she won't get a drop of toilet-tank water on her delicate little hands, needs a beating. Hey, if you have some serious germ-phobia that is your own business, I have been known to get like that myself. But please throw your toilet origami handle-cover creation AWAY, instead of leaving it there on the handle to soak through and disintegrate. Because then the next person has to deal with it, and it is so much grosser to touch a wet porous thing, like toilet paper, than to touch a wet non-porous thing, like the stainless steel of the flush handle. Actually, I usually try to flush public toilets with my foot, since I am fairly limber and it gives you a nice chance to do a little Karate-Kid leg-balancing thing right after peeing. Why are toilets not designed that way, with little pedals for flushing? [NICE BIT] Googling "toilet design" made me kind of happy. [T]he Japan Toilet Association was established in 1985. The Association's mandate is to promote innovative restroom design in coordination with local governments, various organizations and private individuals. The Association calls for the "development of toilet design consciousness." It also forges ties with similar associations in other countries, and offers assistance for those promoting its goals. Each year the Association gives awards to the "10 Best Toilets." 3. I wish my body would solve the mystery of why I feel so very tired and yet I sleep so crummily at night. I am running on green tea and loud headphone music right now. Even with my white-noise-maker, I wake up constantly: when the cat sneezes, when I have a dream about bouncing around in one of those moonwalk things at carnivals while smoking a really long cigarette out of a rhinestone holder (that has got to be against the rules), when there is thunder and lots of rain (yay, though, the flowers need it), or when LT tries to sex me in his sleep. (See, baby, you have to stop this nightly reverse-incubus thing. I definitely want you to bring the noise, as it were, but please do it when you are awake.) [NICE BIT] The aforementioned loud headphone music. I have made myself a "stay-awake" CD for work, The Green Tea Mix, and, if I may be immodest for a moment, it is the magic bullet of the moment. I tried to arrange it with a sort of body/mind ebb and flow: alternating lots of staccato-rock super-verbal songs (like They Might Be Giants and Pixies) with lots of beat-heavy move-your-body-in-a-slinkified-way songs (like Amon Tobin, some hard-bop classics, and that guilty-pleasure "I Could Never Be Your Woman" song from like 1997 or whatever). 4. I received a phone call from one of the main speakers at this work thing I am traveling to in Pittsburgh, a guy who months ago e-mailed me the title and synopsis of his talk, and he said, "I just wanted to confirm that I am going to Pittsburgh?" Um. Yes. Then he said, "I realized last night that I have no idea what I am supposed to speak about." I tried not to start screaming in terror, and told him that I would be happy to send him the information about his talk, which he had sent to me in the first place. So I was not real happy to find out that one of the major panelists is very possibly a senile freakazoid, and after I hung up I just stared at my phone blankly for a while and chewed the hell out of my lower lip. Yeah, this is going to go well. Oh god. [NICE BIT] I get to miss four days of work, which will not be subtracted from my vacation time, obviously, to go to this Pittsburgh thing. I will very possibly get to have dive-bar beers with a Pittsburgh native, and I will be taken out to dinner a lot. Once my "remarks" are over I am officially no longer the committee chair, so I will feel free to misbehave. This will be me, in a few days, on my flight to Pittsburgh: "The flight attendant asks me if I want some Cheese and Crackers, but I cannot have any, because I have swallowed my tongue. It tasted fucking good." Go ahead and have a read. It's juvenile but funny and y'all know how I love a good literary catfight, so I would like to have the distinction of being the first female third-rate online-diary-keeper, who has not written a novel and who is not an ex-junkie, to join Neal Pollack in saying: YES JAMES FREY BRING IT ON, YOU'VE SEEN WHAT I CAN DO TO DRYWALL. Oh, I crack myself up. At some point I shall actually have to read the book to see if it is as silly as its author makes himself sound in interviews. THINGS THAT ARE JUST PLAIN NICE, WITH NO COMPLAINY BITS 1. Newly discovered ancient settlements. 2. Hearing a French woman say the word "goofy" this morning, in reference to a manuscript. 3. My god. Swoon. Okay, just one more. (Oh Corin. You make even a buffalo-check shirt look good.) The most bipolar entry ever! From introspective and alienated to giggling at the French and crushing on Corin Tucker in one somewhat-fell swoop! I believe it is time for lunch! ---mimi smartypants deeply regrets the inconvenience. back/forward |
