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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
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MIMI'S GUIDE TO THE MEDICAL LITERATURE Three cases occurred in young to middle-aged men--hanging, electrocution and inhalation of a zucchini. INHALATION OF A ZUCCHINI. I think that is my favorite part, although a close second would have to be the charming use of "whilst." Believe it or not, I actually found this by searching PubMed for "zucchini" and not for "masturbation." I admit that this one, however, was a flat-out search for wacky masturbation. Deer tongue? Now that's wacky! smartypantsmimi: Did you know there is a medical journal called Alcohol and Alcoholism? Its PubMed abbreviation is ALCOHOL ALCOHOL. I love seeing that in a reference list. I also just finished reading an ophthalmology article about a guy who lost an eye when he was attacked by an owl. Now I may be reaching here, but I don't think anyone wants to lose an eye. But if you have to lose an eye, if it is somehow foreordained (remember this word) that you will lose an eye, it is so cool and Greek-tragedy-style to lose an eye to owl-attack! The owl! The blinding! (Not your standard Oedipus-link! Click and learn, people! Click and learn!) The foreordained-ness, if indeed things are foreordained, and I'm not saying they are! So never mind! CAN'T SLEEP, NUNS WILL EAT ME Your very own disembodied head of Mother Teresa, all nice and wrinkly. When I was a little kid, I was very frightened of old people. This was before I learned that you could oh-so-easily push them down the stairs and be done with it. Needless to say, if this thing had been anywhere near me between the ages of four and eight I would probably have started crying. HEAD ON THE DOOR A Nigerian restaurant in Rogers Park has this handmade sign on their door: We have ISI EWU (GOAT HEAD!!!) LT and I think it is cute that the sign is so excited. We often debate about how the goat head is served. Is it in head form? Or is it just head meat? If the goat head remains in goat head format, do you get a whole head to yourself or is it more customary to split a head between two or three diners? The idea that isi ewu (GOAT HEAD!!!) could merely be shreds of goat head meat is very upsetting to LT. "What's the point of eating goat head if it's not all heady?" he cries. I agree 100%, but I love LT and I don't want to see him hurt or disappointed, so sometimes I try to gently prepare him for the possibility that, when we visit the restaurant to see for ourselves, the goat head will be a stew-like thing, instead of head-shaped and on a plate. But if it's a stew, how do you know that the head parts are really head? They could put anything in there and call it head. Millions (okay, dozens) of diners could be duped into eating non-head flesh by an unscrupulous goat-head restaurant! Stop the presses! This restaurant is closed until we can verify the authenticity of the headstuff! Here is some more goat head information. The part about the "small wooden bowls" makes me nervous and I have a feeling LT is not going to get to eat a head-shaped head. THREE WORDS: THREE WORDS. EXCEPT THAT'S TWO WORDS. DAMN. This morning I went to work very early. How early? you ask. You are always asking stuff. I was at the office by seven. There was hardly anyone else on the train when I got on at Loyola, just a couple of sleeping people who had probably been riding all night. I have a little problem with impulse control today (and last night, as well, considering I happily accepted and drank BOTH of the shots of top-shelf tequila that the bartender at Delilah's* bought me, and at a later point had to be physically restrained from throwing lit matches at the frat boy doing PUSH-UPS on the floor.** Why won't my friends ever let me set people on fire?) *Foster, you are an enabler of the highest order. We salute you, and we tip you. **I am not sure I can explain this one adequately without dissolving into incoherent rage. Why were these guys at Delilah's? Why was one of their ilk doing push-ups on the filthy floor, a floor that has seen more than its fair share of bodily fluids and spilt intoxicants? Why did one of them ask me, slurringly, "What time do things get started around here?" What things? What things, oh Brad? Why were they all dressed like senior citizens in sockless loafers, khaki shorts with ironed creases, and tucked-in golf shirts at twenty-four years old? Why did they pronounce the jukebox selections "crap" and then proceed to have a Guns and Roses sing-along? Why was I not allowed to throw lit matches at them? These are all mysteries cloaked in enigmas and swirled in a thick fog of Okay. So I have a little problem with impulse control today, and there was no one on my train this morning, and I noticed these weird advertising posters for McDonald's. They feature a slightly nauseating (maybe only to me, post-tequila) close-up of a salad, and they say THREE WORDS: NORTH AVENUE BEACH. (There is also a version that says THREE WORDS: SOUTH SHORE BEACH. In the spirit of bipartisan unity, I guess.) When I first saw these ads it took me a minute to get their point---I was staring and staring and thinking That's not a beach it's a salad and other dumb, tequila-poisoned thoughts---until I finally saw the oblique advertising strategy, which I think goes something like this: you're fat; we decree that beachwear requires you not to be fat; eat salad so as not to be so fat; because we said so. Luckily I had my Sharpie and my poor impulse control, so since there was no one watching I stood on the seats to modify one of these posters. So if you are riding the Red Line and see the McDonald's ads that say THREE WORDS: FASCIST BEAUTY STANDARDS, yeah that was me. You're welcome. Get your own Sharpie, think of your own three words, and join in the fun! At the Belmont stop this pimply twitchy teenage kid sat down next to me. At first I thought he was garden-variety twitchy or agitated or jacked up on cola and hormones, but I soon realized that he actually had OCD or some kind of tic disorder, because he kept jerking his whole body repeatedly as well as doing a spazzy ritualistic hand jive thing. I felt sorry for him. It is hard enough being a regular-kind-of-spazzy pimply teenage boy, with all the crippling self-consciousness that entails, without having an extra, legitimately weird, thing to be self-conscious about. So I was thinking my teenage-boy-empathetic thoughts, and just then my very favorite Stereolab song, "Wow and Flutter," which I like to dance to, came on the iPod's shuffle, and I thought "why not" and started to subtly groove out in my seat in my usual spaz style. So then we were both zooming toward downtown jerking and jiving and moving our bodies. I cannot take away your spazzy pain, but I can keep you spazzy company! And that is my motto for today. ---mimi smartypants is a boat on a strip-mine ocean. back/forward |
