Back to Diaryland 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	2005-11-28 ... 2:44 p.m. YAWN WITH A SIDE OF BLAH 1. I keep getting the Sesame Street version of "Shiny Happy People" stuck in my head, where Michael Stipe and some of the other guys (minus the aneurysm drummer) bounce around and sing about "furry happy monsters feeling glad," which then suddenly changes to "furry sobbing monsters feeling sad," all with accompanying drama on the parts of a whole bunch of monster Muppets, and I am still not entirely clear on the pedagogical point of all these bipolar monsters but DAMN that is a tenaciously catchy song. To get some variety on my earworm, I have been slowly rewriting the lyrics so that they are about the scrotum, a hobby of mine that has a long and not-so-proud tradition. If nothing else, it is fun to imagine Michael Stipe singing "wrinkly hairy scrotum hanging down!" instead of the monsters/happy people line. For the "something has gone wrong" part, I am doing a cold-snap theme ("shriveling/shrinking"). 2. More scrotal conversation: smartypantsmimi: Read that second paragraph. idlewords: ow ow ow idlewords: That's awesome. smartypantsmimi: So efficiently Darwinian. idlewords: That reminds me of the Gillette policy of constantly adding additional blades. I guess the llama with two rows of razor teeth wasn't quite getting the job done. smartypantsmimi: Partial scrotum ripping is the worst. idlewords: If you're going to do it, do it clean. idlewords: I love mentions in passing like that. smartypantsmimi: Exactly! the article is all about some llama attack and I'm like WAIT WHAT ABOUT THE SCROTUM RIPPING???? idlewords: I do think it's cool if someone fucks with you to send their head to a lab. idlewords: I love that they blame the llama's upbringing, too, in a Freudian touch. smartypantsmimi: Today I vow that if anyone crosses me, I will threaten to send his/her head to the lab. idlewords: Or threaten to go llama on their ass smartypantsmimi: THE DEADLY LLAMA. idlewords: Getting hungry for ENEMY SCROTUM. smartypantsmimi: There should be a first-person-biter video game with llamas. Scrotal Doom. Half A Testicle Life. idlewords: Hey I got my first piece of hate mail, three years into the blogging life. AT LAST, I thought. I pissed off a Milan Kundera fan smartypantsmimi: Yay! I thought the Kundera takedown was so right on. idlewords: Thanks! idlewords: I seemed to tap in to a deep well of latent hatred, especially among some women readers who had gone out with Kundera fans. idlewords: Always thought that guy was kind of a woman-hater myself. idlewords: My teeth hunger for his scrotum smartypantsmimi: Send his head to the lab! 3. Nora talks all the time and oh boy isn't that adorable but seriously, she talks all the time. And she likes dialogue. Even when she is supposedly "playing by herself," there is this stream of commentary that requires input from me, with the result being that my reading gets slower and less-comprehending until I usually just give up and play with her properly. Which was probably her entire intention in the first place, that sneaky little minx. I am getting really tired of hearing "Look, Mommy! Look! Look!" whenever she stacks a thing on top of another thing or whatever is passing for achievement in the toddler world these days, so I have taught her to say "Behold!" instead. Part of me also wants to teach her to say "Never trust whitey" but that would be inappropriate for a whole lot of reasons, so I won't. It is just very tempting, when the child is so eager to imitate and learn, to have some fun with her. 4. We recently had the first discussion where Nora realized that not everyone is from China. Right now she seems entirely neutral about her ethnicity (although she does like to say that she has "Chinese knees" and will happily repeat the phrase until she falls over giggling), but it was interesting that she finally noticed some differences on her own, without me directly introducing the topic like I usually do. I hope Nora always feels proud about where she's from, but I am also trying to stay ready for anything---from indifference to curiosity to total hysterical identity-politics ethnic freakout---part of me cannot wait until she comes home from college all strident and freshman-feminist and announcing MOTHER! FATHER! I AM CHINESE! just so LT and I can say OH MY GOD ARE YOU FOR SERIOUS? Because that will be funny. 5. I was lightly macked upon during my commute on Friday. A boy had been checking me out---I am usually painfully oblivious to such things but even I noticed it this time, it was that blatant. He switched seats to be closer and said: Boy: I like your scarf. Me: Thanks, I made it myself. Boy: Really? Cool. Me: No, I can't even knit. I really gotta quit lying all the time. [silence] What possesses me sometimes? Seriously, what? Please email me if you have any insight. 6. Besides scrotums (llama and human) and blurting out whatever comes into my brain, I have also been haunted by the idea of having a pineapple for a head. It started with this and now it just continues. It would be especially great if the head pineapple rapped all the time instead of speaking normally. I floated this idea to LT, in the context of "would you still love me if I had a pineapple for a head instead of a regular head and I rapped all the time, in a sort of early-Beastie-Boys style" and so far his answer to that question is a firm "maybe." 7. This Thanksgiving tradition pisses me off royally. Criminals are "pardoned." Those turkeys did nothing wrong. Oh, be grateful we did not eat you! Such benevolent Americans are we! Fuck you, turkey "pardoners." You will be the first up against the wall when the turkey revolution comes. ---mimi smartypants rained on your parade. back/forward