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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


2003-07-09 ... 1:55 p.m.

Movies about animals eating people, yay. Go animals! Chew the hell out of us! We deserve it!

(Actually, being eaten by an animal is a huge fear of mine, because the whole time it happened I would be screaming and bleeding and dying and also on some level thinking THIS IS SO STUPID. ONLY ME WOULD DIE IN SUCH A STUPID WAY. I SUCK. And who needs that? Also, you cannot reason with a bear or squirrel or wolverine or whoever wants to eat you. You just have to yell and hit it on the snout. Forget all your debate-team techniques because they will not work.)

Slim Goodbody, played by John Burstein, has been a favorite character of freaked out children since 1975.

How busy are we? Most people are a lot less busy than they think they are. I have crazy days, where I don't have two minutes to rub together and it feels like my head will explode. But then I see the big picture, and I think dude, look at me finding time to type up all my brain-fluff and read two books a week and sit in various bars. It's all relative.

A clear Mellotron! What's a Mellotron? This.

A tiny bit of nothing.

LT and I were watching one of those forensic shows about a guy convicted for drugging and raping a friend of his, and I went to bed thinking how happy I am that this (meaning deliberately poisoning someone) is almost always a felony now. Not only so that these guys go to jail and stop running around the streets drugging and raping, but also because they are obviously very creepy people who do not need to be living in society. Just when you thought rape itself couldn't get any creepier, along comes a guy who wants to rape someone who is unconscious. Shudder.

Does anyone know why I bookmarked this? Was I intrigued by the phrase "veal in the blanket"?* Was I planning to make a west-side pilgrimage for pierogi? I have no idea.

My playlist just spat up some very old Depeche Mode (oh baby, you still have some on your chin...let me wipe off that Dave Gahan for you), and suddenly I am curious: how can a rainbow set you free? It cannot. Reflected droplets of atmospheric water never liberated anyone. (Mimi The Cynic! Someone needs a hug! Someone needs a unicorn sticker! Turn that frown upside down! So that you have, not a smile exactly, but at least an upside-down frown!)

*Extra Bonus 1980s Reference to go along with the Depeche Mode thing: anyone want to sing "veal in the blanket" to the tune of the old English Beat song "Mirror In The Bathroom"? No? Okay, just me then. Suit yourselves.

ANXIETY IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING

1. The other day I needed to get something at Osco. It was crazy hot and I was wearing just a t-shirt and shorts. Sandals. No bra. "Can I go to Osco in shorts?" I asked LT. "And not wearing a bra?" He looked at me like I was nuts and said, "Have you been to our ghetto Osco lately? You will look like a freaking fashion plate next to all those flowered housedresses and terrycloth tube tops." On the way there I still worried---is this some sort of slippery slope? If going to the Osco braless and in shorts is okay today, will going to the zoo in a pinwheel beanie, velvet knickers, and bowling shoes be okay tomorrow? But then I did take a look around the ghetto Osco, and darn if the guy didn't have a point. Hooray for class prejudice, at least in the area of fashion! Hooray for not thinking a t-shirt that says, "I Suffer From PMS: Putting Up With Men's Shit," is appropriate attire! On the other hand, I am starting to reverse my position on the velvet knickers zoo outfit, that sounds kind of groovy. Time to go shopping.

2. There is this book chapter I am writing (a book on science editing), and the reviewing editor has just told me she wants to see a revision. Again. For the fourth time. With very minor changes each time. I am starting to feel like Milhouse playing Fallout Boy. This is done! No more!

3. Later I am sitting at the computer. At home. After sitting at the computer all day, at work. This is a recipe for cranky meltdown. All the Things Left Undone are rattling around in my head, and then I get a piece of snarky e-mail from some random psychotic hosebag, and I start to cry a little bit. Whereas ordinarily I would (mentally) tell her to bite me, delete the snark, and move on with my life. When you are crying over Internet happenings, folks, it is time to take a step back. In fact it is time to switch off the computer, run a bubble bath, open the wine, and devote yourself to de-stressing.

Okay, some book reviews. I hesitate to use that term, because a book review done right can be great literature in and of itself, and we will not even begin to reach that level here. How about this:

SOME BOOKS I RECENTLY FINISHED AND WHAT I THOUGHT

The Little Friend is the book that took Donna Tartt ten years to write. Everyone liked The Secret History and everyone wanted another one, so here it is. Personally, I would not have titled my second book in a row The Adjective Noun, but maybe stuff like that does not matter to her the way it does to me. I liked this book a lot more in pieces than I did overall. Some of the description is fabulous, the Harriet character (who I suspect is more than a touch autobiographical) is great, and to book manages to get pretty deep inside family dynamics. However, the plot completely unraveled for me just when the action was supposed to be climaxing and I kind of lost interest. It also bugged me that (a) the central question posed by the beginning of the book (no spoilers here) is never resolved; and (b) even after finishing it, I had no idea how the title was supposed to relate. Oh, how I hate that. (Which is pretty funny coming from me. I am terrible at titling things, and often picked titles completely at random for stuff I wrote back in the day. Which is how, in college, I ended up with a goofy spoken-word/electronic music piece called Eight Hundred Tons Of Marijuana: Or, The Case Against Business School.)

I am almost done with A Life in Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski. It is kind of a biography/mystery story about the Swiss guy who wrote a fake Holocaust memoir. Some people still believe him, even after it was proved that the facts do not square up. Which makes not only for an intriguing journalistic whodunit, but a good place to muse about memory and history and the intersection thereof.

I believe this is the first time I have ever ended an entry with "thereof." Except that now I have not. Crap.

---mimi smartypants, the girl's got rhythm.

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