|
|
||
|
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
|
I do NOT know where to start with this, but: (a) I sincerely thought those were lobsters clinging to the necks of the gay guys at first. You know me! Always getting lobsters and demons confused! (b) Don't you love the tract's constant capitalization of "Gay"? (c) Those children are drawn with some seriously pedophilic fuck-doll mouths. CULTURE HIGH MEDIUM AND LOW 1. LT and I attended our last symphony concert of the subscription series on Friday, and I'm kind of glad. Five symphony concerts in six months is kind of a lot for me. Plus they were all on Friday nights, which meant crazy compressed schedules with regard to getting home from work, feeding Nora, leaving overly-detailed instructions for whatever relative has graciously offered to babysit, driving like maniacs down to Orchestra Hall because at this point we are cutting it too close for public transit, then sliding into our seats and struggling to pay attention and stay awake. Even when the program included music I enjoy, something about Friday night after a hard week at work says "Miller High Life and World's Wildest Police Videos" not "Bartok violin concerto" to me. Actually, in a perfect world, World's Wildest Police Videos would have a Bartok score, the symphony would feature a beer guy selling his wares in the aisles, and no one would have to choose. 2. I am not normally the type to notice things like continuity errors in film and television---fuck-ups have to be pretty egregious to get my attention. The Sopranos finale had a really bad one. When Carmela and Tony were talking to AJ about his "event planning," the kid's sleeves were zuzshed, rolled down, up, down, all over the place, each time the camera cut back to him. So much for your commercial-free high production standards, HBO. For shame! 3. A very perceptive person wrote me with a theory that people might think Nora and I look alike because right now she is in her duckling phase, getting all imprinted with my (and LT's) gestures and inflections and facial expressions. She is a dedicated little mimic right now, but it is hard to tell who takes after who sometimes. Nora makes me laugh constantly, which could either mean that she is a natural-born jokester or that I have the comedy sensibilities of a sixteen-month-old child. The other day she was sitting in her highchair after dinner and saying "BAP," just this little burst of a nonsense syllable, but the way she set her little puppet mouth in place to say it, and the way she laughed and laughed and laughed and then got her mouth ready to do it again, but was sometimes not even able to get her lips in place because of laughing too hard, was a priceless moment that I would not trade for anything in the world. I mean, eventually there will be riddles and puns and sarcasm and satire and slapstick, but right now there is BAP and Nora and I are completely hysterical with glee. We are headlining at the comedy club this weekend, there's a two-drink minimum. BAP! In the past week I have had two different people mention that they "now know what it's like to have kids." Neither one came to this realization through actual parenting---one person has a new puppy, the other just finished her doctoral thesis. Okay. With the puppy thing, although I don't agree, I can at least see the logic---inappropriate poop and urine have made an appearance in your life, and you have a needy little being around who requires a lot of love and attention and guidance. However, you CAN leave a puppy alone for stretches of time, it is much less likely to fatally injure itself through misadventure, and while one could argue that there is emotional responsibility involved---you don't want your puppy growing up neurotic, after all---give me a break. A dog with serious emotional problems will chew up your furniture or bark all day, while a kid with serious emotional problems will scream I HATE YOU and slam the door as he goes out to burn the neighborhood retarded kid with cigarettes. Plus, kids need to learn to read and think for themselves and negotiate complex relationships with all kinds of people, whereas a full and happy life for a dog consists of eating, pooping, and being told GOOD DOG! I will stop now, as no doubt you people can finish the essay question "Compare And Contrast Children And Dogs" all on your own. And the doctoral thesis? She did years of research and wrote a really long paper, so now she knows what it's like to have kids? If sleep-deprivation, monomania, social isolation, poor personal hygiene, and twitchiness and bitchiness were the only traits required for parenthood, we would be encouraging many more crack addicts to reproduce.A SAPPY STORY ABOUT BALONEY On Thursday, June 10, LT and I will have been married for nine years. It seems hard to believe. Popular culture is very fond of describing marriage with the metaphor of "work"---it's something you work at every day, you have to put in the effort to make it work, so on and so forth. Maybe I am just terminally slack or secretly anti-capitalist, but I hate that idea. It sounds like no fun at all. It sounds like marriage is one long tally sheet, where you put in the work and you expect to get paid. I am much more drawn to slightly fanciful, magical metaphors to describe marriage. Nine years ago, LT and I (metaphorically) drew a circle in the sand, stood inside it, and agreed that it existed and would always exist, agreed to move it out of the reach of the tide if necessary, and agreed to throw really kick-ass bonfires inside of it. Now our circle is overlapped, Venn-diagram-style, by another one, and Nora is in there wearing a cute sun hat and pointing out the blah (dead crabs, seaweed, medical waste) on the beach, and the party continues. But what about the baloney? You should know that I have a horror of gross things touching my feet (I am wearing shoes on that imaginary beach up there), particularly lunchmeat. In fact, when I was little and spending the night at my cousins' place they would torture me by saying when I fell asleep they would put ham on my feet, ketchup in my hair, and chickens under the bed. This made me cry. Seriously. Years ago LT was teasing me about this, saying, "What if I was making a baloney sandwich, and you happened to be walking by with no shoes on, and I dropped a piece of baloney on your foot?" "I would be very upset with you," I said. "But what if it were an accident?" This was troubling. "I guess accidents happen, but I would think back on THIS VERY CONVERSATION and be suspicious. I mean, I want to think you wouldn't do something that awful to me on purpose, but that's a pretty strange coincidence, and OH MAN THE DOUBT. The crippling doubt!" "This is way too much stress on our relationship," LT mused. "Maybe we just shouldn't ever have baloney in the house. I don't like baloney anyway." I offered to go stand on the porch while he made these hypothetical baloney sandwiches, to minimize the risk, but he said no no, let's not chance it, let's just leave the baloney at the store where it belongs. And that's what marriage means to me. That, and the sex on demand. ---mimi smartypants slept through her alarm. back/forward |
