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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


2002-01-25 ... 9:28 a.m.

This morning I'm on the train and I'm feeling a little surreal and out of it, because of my continuing inability to stay asleep very well, and as I leave my seat to get off at Grand I stumble a bit and step on some guy's foot, and in the course of apologizing and steadying myself I accidentally put my hand on his ass. He gave me a very strange look and I hope he doesn't think I did it on purpose. The only way to increase the slapstick nature of my faux pas would have been to apologize for that by putting my hand on his crotch. Sigh. Already the day is not going well. Is it not yet time for my painkiller?

(One of my favorite Groucho Marx exchanges goes thus. Girl: "But I can't open the door in my underwear!" Groucho: "You have a door in your underwear? Let me in and I'll help you with it.")

Another continuing debate with myself (which is about 1000 times less serious than the "should I spawn?" debate) is whether I should cover up the gray streak in my hair. I change my mind on this every other day or so, to the point of actually making and then canceling salon appointments. Since the gray streak is only on one side, the Susan Sontag/Cruella DeVille comparisons (which I've made before, I know, but if you can't repeat yourself in your own webspace where can you repeat yourself) are quite appropriate, and I've been thinking of how I can somehow synthesize the two characters into my own person, and become one of America's premier dog-fur-swaddled intellectuals, with a long cigarette holder and a purple roadster and henchmen and ideas about experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself without interpretation. That sounds like a nice lifestyle.

Have you seen Leaving Las Vegas? I've written an alternate, Cliff-Notes-style script that I think should save everyone a lot of time.

NICHOLAS CAGE CHARACTER (HEREAFTER, "HIM"): I drink a lot because I am Sad.

THE FEMALE CHARACTER, HOLD ON A MINUTE WHILE I LOOK UP THE NAME OF THE ACTRESS....OK, ELISABETH SHUE (HEREAFTER, "HER"): Hello.

HIM: I am inexplicably drawn to you, even though you have nothing to say.

HER: Okay.

HIM: I am going to kill myself. The plan is to drink so much alcohol over a period of time that my organs will fail and I will snuff it. (Editor's note: I like liquor as much [ok, more than] the next girl, but there are much quicker and less painful ways to off oneself. In fact, John O'Brien himself chose one of those ways.)

HER: Oh, that's too bad. I wish you wouldn't, because I love you.

HIM: I love you too, although my face, voice, eyes, words, or actions will utterly fail to provide any evidence of this. Nonetheless, kill myself I must, for I am Sad.

HER: Oh.

[They have various sad-ass adventures.]

HIM: It looks like I really am going to croak now.

HER: I will fuck you as you expire, even though it really is a galactically creepy thing to do.

[They fuck. He dies.]

HER: Now I am Sad. And yet, I feel that babysitting a dying drunk has somehow improved my life.

Although this movie was shot on super-16, and I give it props for that because I am a fan of small-format film, I must object. To convey sadness in literature, film, whatever, you have to show us loss, and this was not done here. Also, can you imagine if the roles were reversed? He's a Heroic Drunk. She would be a Pathetic Drunk. The audience is never on the side of artistically romantically suffering female heroes. I'm not lauding Artistic Romantic Suffering, we all know how overrated that can be, but if society is going to buy into it I would like some gender equality there.

Requiem for a Dream is a much better addiction/alienation movie. I saw it on an airplane and the visual repetition was perfect for a hallucinatory transatlantic flight. And of course in high school I used to watch Sid and Nancy over and over again, because I had a Gary Oldman Thing, and I have a Thing for heroin movies/literature in general, so Gary Oldman as a heroin addict was mandatory.

It's amusing how I rant about not liking movies and yet here I apparently feel qualified to comment quite lengthily on them. Maybe I am Susan Sontag after all.

---mimi smartypants sez: you got to fake out the robot.

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