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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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I predict that the next big trend in poor grammar, in shitty self-expression, in lousy language skillz, is going to be the misuse of "literally." I started predicting this when I read the sentence "He literally exploded with rage" in a literary-mag short story, and after overhearing dozens of teenagers say things like "I literally died." I hate this almost, but not quite, as much as the homonym/wrong word thing---breathe/breath, there/their, "She handed him the reigns." Gah. The other thing I predict is that it soon will be considered hip and cool to wear clothes with obvious price tags on them. Someone was telling me last night that among hipster girls, particularly the subset who want to dress like high-fashion sluts but do not have the money to do so, it is common practice to charge the $250 asymmetric-sleeved shirt on their sad little credit cards, carefully tuck the tags in, wear it out, Febreeze it, and return it the next day. The sort of hipster who does this would be smart to just leave the tags dangling for all to see. In the self-referential Vortex Of Cool, it is okay to expose your foibles but not cool to front like you are something you're not, and it is okay to want nice things and be a fashion slut but it is not cool to be well-off enough to actually afford them. It is like wearing a dorky hat, which is okay if you are just wearing a dorky hat but decidedly not okay if you picked the hat based on its dorkiness, thinking "huh, I'll wear this dorky hat because dorky hats are cool, and this shows me to be a regular guy who is not afraid to wear a dorky hat." Hence: expensive clothes with visible price tags. It will be the next new thing. And then all the hipster's heads will melt from the intense heat generated from worrying about this sort of crap, and I will be off to the side holding my Miller High Life and laughing, and trying not to step in the headpuddles. (I got molten head on my shoe!) THINGS THAT IRRITATE OR MYSTIFY ME MORE THAN THEY SHOULD 1. When Hotmail's server claims to be "too busy" to get my mail. I always want to scream, "YOU ARE MICROSOFT." If anyone can handle the traffic it should be you fuckers. No excuses. 2. Speaking of Hotmail, the other day their home page asked me, "Has Ben Affleck lost his luster?" and I did not know what to say. 3. I got the latest Readymade crafty magazine in the mail, and here, I will just cut and paste the irritation: smartypantsmimi: Caterina has an article in Readymade, that crafty magazine, using the SAME DAMN author photo from her website.
4. I want to know more about this "training" curriculum, and where you receive said training. That "trained instructor" thing is intriguing. "Rock On with a Strap-On: Strap-on Sex 101," a workshop at Early To Bed, will teach you everything you need to know to have hot strap-on sex, from choosing the right equipment to the ins and outs of technique. Taught by a trained instructor. 8pm at Early to Bed, 5232 N Sheridan Rd. Reservations are recommended; cost is $10 per person. 18 and over only. 5. An acquaintance of mine, who was going to remain nameless but that�s no fun so let's call him FF (short for Faker Foucault), has entirely too many graduate-school-postmodern-wanker aspirations, which lead him to make entirely too many strange statements. As in today, when he tried to tell me that a necktie is a "text." I was willing to concede that a necktie contains nuggets of cultural information, is a signifier in the sense that an occasion become that much more formalized once the strip of cloth is knotted around a man's collar, but if a necktie is a text I am Britney Spears. FF is always making wankerriffic statements like this, but it really got to me today for some reason, and I spent the next hour thinking hey! FF! A punch in the face is a text, too! A punch in the face is even like hypertext, all reader-response-criticism-like, since it demands a response from you! Let's test this theory! LINKA LINKA CHOCK CHOCK The Powerpuff Girls as People Of The Book. Who does this sentence make you want to kill more: its author or its subject? He's a coffeehouse philosopher who drops names like Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and French avant-thinker Guy Debord the way some guys his age drop the names of indie rock bands. Want more hate? Keep reading. (EXTRA BONUS SNARK FROM ME: Oh wow Joseph Campbell? You don't say. How esoteric.) Another link about feral kids. TRAGEDY BRAIN Diagnosis: Tragedy Brain. I get this before any big event---I had it right before my wedding, and I have it now before going to meet Nora. Our plane goes down, a family member dies before they get to see her, LT breaks something before the trip. (Hey, it's happened before). The craziness of Tragedy Brain means that even typing this feels like I am inviting bad luck, and for someone who likes to think of herself as a materialist I sure have a weird heap of superstitions about keeping bad luck at bay. I am insane. I also am having many little freakouts about things kid-related. Today's freakouts were about food (OH MY GOD I HAVE NO REAL IDEA HOW TO MIX A BOTTLE) and clothing (OH MY GOD DO 8-MONTH-OLD BABIES NEED SHOES I DON'T EVEN KNOW). But then I got a grip and ate some nachos. (Serenity now, with guacamole.) I was nearly late for work the other day because I was trying to research Chicago Public Schools. There are good ones out there despite all the inner-city horror stories, and I believe in being a good member of the community and that kids need to be exposed to other kids from all types of families and backgrounds, and don't even get me started on home-schooling. (No seriously, don't. We can agree to disagree and I will like you anyway.) But it turns out that information on Chicago Public Schools is seriously hard to find, even for simple straight answers like the basics on deadlines for applying to magnet schools, stats on different neighborhood schools all in one handy place for comparison, and so forth. Eventually I got a grip, got off the Internet, and reminded myself that Nora is in China still, and that she is a baby, who will probably be much more interested in ripping up paper and scooping cat shit out of the litterbox than in multiplication tables, at least at first. I do not have to plan out her school career just yet, particularly not at five in the morning. THE GIRLS AT CLUB FOOT DO NOT PEE Really, I don't think they do. Last night I was making the trip to Club Foot's bathroom every one and a half beers, and I never once ran into any other chicks in there. It was eerie. I used to go to Club Foot a lot, and only yesterday did I get the joke. Get it? Club foot. Christ. Pity me. Pity Nora, and her dumb mom. ---mimi smartypants is still Mimi from the block. back/forward |
