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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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SPIDERMAN AND HIS AMAZING AMPUTEE FRIENDS I saw the strangest thing yesterday while waiting for the bus, and for once it did not involve some hobo's penis. (Intersection of Bryn Mawr + Broadway = hobo penis capital of the world.) I saw a little kid wearing a safari-style hat that said OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM around the brim, interspersed with American, Iraqi, and Kuwaiti (why?) flags. That was weird enough---preschool clothing does not normally come in military-action themes---but when he tilted his head I noticed that the hat also had a picture of Spiderman embroidered on the crown. What unit was Spiderman deployed with again? I can't remember. Really, Spiderman would be almost useless in the desert anyway, since there is nowhere to attach his web. SUPERMORMONS There are Mormons loose in my neighborhood! They are going door-to-door selling their Mormon-ness in their spiffy clean white shirts that just seem to beg for a splotch of chocolate ice cream. Not that I would ever throw food at a Mormon! I was, however, rather abrupt with one recently, when I buzzed in a mystery person without using the intercom first and then opened the door on two clean-cut nametagged dudes who wanted to talk about Jesus with me. Then I had to borrow a page from Whitney's book and gently say, "Sorry, but hell to the no" as I closed the door in their faces. It is particularly hilarious that Mormons would choose to attempt to spread the Mormon word in my neighborhood, as I just can't imagine some Muslim or Sikh or Orthodox Jew saying, "Well, I never really thought about it before, but you guys are making a lot of sense! Bring on the funny underwear and secret planets!" BEYOND BUMBUM Nora recently grokked her first word-based comedy not based on nonsense syllables or the substitution of inanimate objects for farm animals in the "Old MacDonald" song. After her bath one night she complained that her nose was running so I said, "Oh no! Your nose is running? Catch it!" I swear the over-the-head lightbulb was plainly visible for a split second, and then she fell down laughing with the humor of it all. I do believe we are ready for prank calls! Do you have Prince Albert in a can? Can you get me Amanda Huggankiss? Other Nora-isms: "It's all messed up a little bit." (Alternatively, "It's a little bit all messed up.") Also, after experimentally running over an ant with the front wheel of her tricycle: "Oh! I think maybe he got a little bit deaded." LT IN THE HIZZOUSE There have been a whole lot of vexing domestic details nagging at me lately. Nothing big, just crap like putting the other carseat in the nanny's car, coordinating the whole thing about her picking up Nora from preschool, and trying to be organized about planning meals when I have not been to the grocery store in way too long (there is now a large supermarket across the street from my office, which is very detrimental to any sort of advance planning since it is all too easy to "pick something up" on the way home. Even if that "something" is a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine.) So the other night, after LT gave Nora her bath and before I started in on the hair-combing and story-choosing bedtime process, I asked LT to do some prep work on the next day's dinner. When I emerged from the kid's bedroom I found that he hadn't just done the prep work, he had gone ahead and assembled the entire dish, so that I could come home from work and just stick it in the oven. Then I started fretting out loud about the list of other things to take care of and it turned out he had already handled all of them. "How come you have such a huge penis?" I asked, which is something I say to him when he has been a particularly awesome husband. "I don't know but I have a sudden urge to rap about it," he replied. And he totally should, because there are not enough "what's my name?" raps about mad carseat-installation skills and making your bitch happy by chopping onions and grating Gruy�re. CLEANING OUT THE CLOSET 1. I have been informed that emailing me through the Diaryland interface does not always work. Because I am a whore for the email, I will say that I can also receive it Hotmail-style with the username mimismartypants. It will take me weeks if not months to reply, and by then your question or joke will be totally irrelevant. There now, please form an orderly queue, don't everybody jump on this golden opportunity at once. 2. Last year I think I confessed to an embarrassing crush on the Supernanny, and admitted to sometimes recording this show even though the amusement-to-cringing ratio was dangerously low. I have finally decided that Supernanny is 100% cringe, with a side of serious ambivalence about the concepts of discipline and punishment. (If only Michel Foucault were alive---he could have a rival nanny program! Oh, my kingdom for a reality show where a gay French theorist supervises a bunch of bratty children!) Since it makes for good television (at least by Fox standards), the Supernanny is always dealing with the crisis-level stuff, and it stands to reason that any kid who hits his parents or screams at the slightest setback needs a wake-up call about behavior standards; thus the "naughty chair" or whatever makes sense as a way of essentially saying cut that shit out now. However, what is our ultimate goal as parents: obedience or understanding? I am not saying that the little critters' crap should be tolerated, and of course there are actions that merit immediate consequences. But most of the kids on the Supernanny show seem so very angry and sad, and any kid with that much seething violence inside might need more than a time-out. For me the show is about evenly split between kid-situations that make me say "hey that's bullshit, good for you for calling them on it" and "oh man that is a ticking time bomb of a child and there is no way you solved that problem so quickly." And the latter feeling is so depressing that this show is now off the guilty-pleasure TiVo list for the time being. 3. I hate cavepeople. I hate the Flintstones, I hate New Yorker cartoons with cavepeople, I hate those dumb Jean Auel books, I hate Alley Oop and B.C. and Captain Caveman and that one Elmo episode where he watches "the music channel" and for some reason it features cavepeople. It is not just (or even mostly) the anthropological and paleontological inaccuracies that bother me, it's more that the depiction of cavepeople makes me feel squirmy and horrible inside, sort of the way I feel about Scooby-Doo's voice or ham. Gack, ham! I can't even think about it. Do you like ham, Scooby-Doo, and cavepeople? YOU ARE THE ANTI-ME. 4. Remember when I got all obsessive about Googling school lunch menus? Maybe you don't, maybe I managed to keep something to myself for once in my fucking life. Regardless, I have hit the motherlode. I can't stop looking at this site, even though I almost screamed out loud when I saw the Ham and Cheese Pita. You also must click on the link in the main page's right-hand corner called "What do I do with these pictures?" The answer is not "consider veganism while scrubbing out your brain with bleach," surprisingly. 5. More head-exploding internet items: A "friendly old codger" that peeks over your fence. A elderly pervert of your very own! Ever since I saw this I have had the words "lifelike painted resin head" running through my head in a rhythmic mantra. ---mimi smartypants will stay on the line for the next available operator. |
