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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


2004-06-30 ... 11:40 a.m.

CRANKY GRADUALLY CHANGING TO KIND OF MORONICALLY GIDDY

There are some things that upset me more than they should. Some of these things are online. Some of these things are Christian clowns. I don't claim to know a whole lot about Jesus, but I suspect that he would think Christian clowns were a stupid waste of time. Christian clowns would probably get Jesus good and pissed off. Here he is trying to save humanity and you are acting like an ass in makeup and big shoes. Actually, the image of Jesus beating the crap out of a Christian clown is kind of making me laugh, so maybe I am not so cranky anymore.

Another thing online that made me mad, that I will not link because people could get offended and Internet drama is so, so, so lame, was a journal entry that talked about how people in New York (every single last one of them!) are physically attractive and have this special glow about them, because (wait for it), they are really living. NEWS FLASH: PEOPLE IN NEW YORK ARE REALLY LIVING! And here I thought they were all a bunch of holograms. I guess the rest of us are the holograms!

This particular online diarist is not the only one to make a completely boneheaded remark like this, which is another reason I won't single her (whoops!) out for crankiness with a link. I like New York. I always have a great time when I am there, and it is a city in which I could happily live.* But New York does need to get over itself already. Most self-aware New Yorkers I know are indeed aware that they need to get over themselves already, but they kind of refuse to do so---they just shrug at you and grin ruefully as if to say, yes, I know it's dumb to think I am special because I live in New York...but I LIVE IN NEW YORK!!!

The New York Times ran a masturbatory fluff-piece semi-recently that went on for many wanktastic paragraphs about how there is a neighborhood! In Brooklyn! That has so many ethnicities in one place! Russians, Indians, Hasidic Jews, Pakistanis, all living and working within blocks of each other! Oh my god! Wow! Only in New York! Except for, you know, in CHICAGO or LONDON or TORONTO or probably a dozen other places.

*In Mega-Bucks FantasyLand, that is, or in an alternate universe where I was willing to trade a very spacious three-bedroom condo in for whatever shoebox my family could afford in New York.

I am also sick of other online blatherers who describe themselves as "aspiring writers." Not to get too Yoda-like, but either write or don't. There is no aspire. I think the only way you get to call yourself an "aspiring writer" is if you don't have any hands and your voice-recognition software or head-mounted laser-pointer virtual keyboard thingy has not yet arrived via FedEx.

Some of these people might be using "aspiring" as shorthand for saying that their goal is to get their writing published. Leaving aside for a moment the ridiculous notion that only published writers get to be called "writers," and that everyone else is merely "aspiring," that goal seems a little baffling to me. Because then what? "Then what" has been my problem for some time now. It indirectly led to my Fuck-It Philosophy, and to the fact that I can proudly say that I have no goals.*

(*It is not entirely true that I have no goals. I want to raise a kick-ass, self-assured, responsible, and happy child. I want LT and Nora and I to keep constructing our Metaphorical Treehouse of Family Life, with the slapdash and idiosyncratic construction methods that are part of its charm. I want to always have the freedom to enjoy myself [both financially and leisure-time-wise]. I want to keep working in my current field, even if it means that I have to sit in a meeting for TWO HOURS listening to people argue about the virgule, like I did yesterday. And I want to get tossed out of every hipster bar in the Chicago city limits and then write angry letters to the management about it, such as the one I am currently drafting to Nick's. The place pretty much sucks except for the fact that they are open until 4 am on Saturdays, which is why my comrade and I went there last month after Louisa's party. And I know we were wasted, but I have no idea why we were gently frogmarched out the door by a female security guard with incredibly large bosoms, since to the best of my recollection [which admittedly is a blurry and impressionistic montage of beer; Tom cell-phone drunk-dialing his friends; talking to some girl in the bathroom about the scratchy cheap-ass paper towels; beer; the big-bosomed escort to the street; the taxi home] we were not behaving badly. Drunkenly, but not badly. Anyway, I am writing Nick's a letter in my best high-handed "I am a mother and homeowner and pillar of the community" tone, which due to my years of writing complaint letters I am quite scarily good at, and we will see what happens.)

My workplace cafeteria has acquired a new microwave, and you know how microwaves now have those SPECIFIC FOOD buttons on them? So if you are an idiot you can just stare slackjawed at the bag in your hand, wait until the synapses register "popcorn," and then push the corresponding POPCORN button on the microwave? This new, communal, work microwave has a BACON setting. I do not use the work microwave much, but now I have even a greater disincentive to do so, and I live in fear that I will decide to go warm up my tea or nuke a veggie burrito right after someone has BACONED up the whole microwave and then I will have BACON-SMELLING TEA.

Sometimes you have one of those eerie weeks when the same theme keeps coming up over and over, and for me right now it's the toddler song "The Wheels On The Bus." You know, how they go round and round, round and round, round and round, all. Through. The town. It was sung on Six Feet Under this week, a show which I have a weird double-consciousness about, because I like it on its own maudlin and soap-opera-ish merits (perfect for the Sunday Sads!), but I also ADORE the TWoP recaps,* which manage to skewer everything that is overwrought and hyperbolic and so-stylized-it's-practically-self-parody about it. To the point where I sometimes get the preemptive giggles while watching a Six Feet Under episode, because in the middle of some dramatic scene with all the Symbolism and Gumbo-Thick Emotions and Award-Winning Acting I will start thinking about how the recap writer is going to have such a great time with this, and thus I end up simultaneously in the moment and also anticipating the ironical smirk of said moment, so hey yeah! It's that damn postmodern human condition all over again, hey yeah hey yo put your hands in the air and wave them like your metanarrative has been deconstructed!

*The other totally awesome thing about Television Without Pity, that I hope is still true by the time you read this, is that the site currently features a pop-up ad for something called "Feel 'N Learn Advanced Trainers" which are "the only training pant[s] with a Wet Sensation Liner." I guess this helps one realize that one has indeed pissed one's pants, which is a very interesting theory in terms of the sensations/consciousness conundrum (as applied to toilet training), and which also sounds very, very dirty. Feel And Learn. Wet Sensation. You bring the rubber sheets and I'll bring the strap-on.

Wait, I was talking about the wheels on the bus, or rather "The Wheels On The Bus." So, the song came up in that show, and then I was reading Brooklyn Mama's diary and she mentioned the song too. Only she mentioned it in the form of a book she reads to her daughter, and books have beginnings, middles, and ends (don't get all narrative-theory on me now, let's keep this simple). And I was all like wait, that song ends? It has defined things on the bus that go blank, blank, blank and then you're done? I have to learn this version. Because Nora loves that song, and every time I finish a verse she just says "more" in her funny little Peter Sellers accent, and then I have to scramble around for another thing on the bus that makes a noise. Sometimes I urban it up a little, with the drunk on the bus goes slur slur slur and the crazy on the bus goes heeble heeble hoo, sometimes I cheat and use farm animals, as in the cow on the bus goes moo moo moo, and sometimes I try to introduce a dramatic storyline, like the bee on the bus goes sting sting sting and the allergic person on the bus goes wheeze wheeze wheeze and then the paramedics on the bus go clear! Clear! Clear! But if I can learn the culturally-agreed-upon version that does not require all this impromptu creativity, that would be even better.

I hope you all have a great Fourth of July. America is a great country and Americans are a great people. Don't forget, we are the ones who invented the ONLY training pant with a Wet Sensation Liner. We should all be grateful to live in such a place, and we should celebrate our freedom with picnics and firecrackers and walking around with empty cases of beer on our heads.

---mimi smartypants led the pigeons, to the flag, of the United States of America.

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