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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


2003-07-15 ... 11:53 a.m.

ANTONYMIC LINKS

Miracles of the next fifty years. Sigh.

Yay for the word "pre-columbianize."

MOPEY RAT

I feel Gothic, not in the candles/eyeliner/bad poetry sense but in the sense that I seem to have swallowed a cathedral, and it is poking me from the inside and making me miserable. I have nothing in particular to be sad about* and yet I am mopey and listless, and I want to lie down in the street until some big streetcleaning device roars by and scoops me up like a flattened greasy pizza box or a roadkill rat. Work was slow and my plans for beer yesterday were canceled. That was not such a big deal (in fact, due to the mopey listlessness I was questioning the wisdom of going for beer in the first place), but cancellations jar my routine and rattle my teeth---the plan to have one kind of evening and then the switch to a different kind. I poked around a bit for substitute beer-companions but no one wanted to go out on a Monday. So I drafted my sister to go out tonight instead, and we have plans to rock the dollar Schlitzes. Watch out, everyone.

*Except, of course, for my trembly existentialist conviction that meaning resides not in the external universe but rather in human relationships and language-systems, which are temporal and shifting and doomed to failure.

Speaking of rats, this weekend I had dinner at Kat's and saw a big juicy one in her neighborhood---it nearly ran right over my foot as it scurried into the bushes. Some people might think it rude to point out rat-sightings but to my mind it is no slam on the neighborhood. I like seeing rats. (Outside.) Kat is pregnant, and as we ate dinner we discussed the fact that she cannot bury her baby's placenta and plant a tree over the area, as many of her pagan colleagues would suggest, because here in Chicago rats would just dig up the placenta and scamper away with it and what is sacred about that? Also (I forget how this came up but there was wine involved), Kat refuses to name a boy child Cowboy Cockgagger. I think it sounds kind of tough, and even her husband, who played football in college, said he would be intimidated to line up opposite a jersey bearing that name. Fine, Kat. Suit yourself. He'd be the only Cowboy Cockgagger in kindergarten, instead of the fifteenth Jacob or Max, but you know best.

Speaking of mopey, how in the world did I get on this Romantic feminist literary criticism jag? I have been reading Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, and even running back to good old Madwoman in the Attic from time to time to verify half-remembered facts and theories. The book on Mary Shelley is pretty good: very plainly written, with almost too many examples (you find yourself saying OKAY I GET IT a lot), and very well-researched. The biggest revelation so far concerns those of you who grew weary of Frankenstein's ornate, flowery language: you have Percy Bysshe Shelley to blame for that, not Mary. As her husband and "superior," he felt duty-bound to edit her text, and she mostly allowed him to do so. (Apparently he did smooth out some transitions and helped with the plotting, but he also introduced all sorts of embellishments in tone.) Anne Mellor compared different versions of the text, and Mary's original is all about plain speaking while Percy's edits are all about inflated Latinate stylings. "Have" was repeatedly changed to "possess," "felt" to "endured," "do not wish to hate you" to "will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee," and countless other examples. Maybe someday an edition will be published that retains the original direct prose: I don't know enough to claim it would be better than what we have, but I would like to read it and find out. Score one for the damn patriarchy.

Less Romantically (and certainly less romantically), I also just finished Will Self's Dorian. Nonstop wordplay, fun while it lasted, but refuses to fully cohere or commit to making a lasting impression. However, neither does the original, really.

Okay, geeks, pay attention. I have come into a small windfall recently. Most of it will go straight into investments for the future (Mimi envisions a day when she can quit worrying about making a living and concentrate full-time on drinking, gallivanting, writing, starting her own publishing house, and supporting all the wack-ass projects of her wack-ass friends). However, I have made the decision to treat myself to an mp3 player and stop all this lugging-around-CDs jive. Price is sort of a factor, but I would rather spend more to have something I never had to fuck with than spend less and have problems.

The iPod is cute and all, but expensive, and I worry about Windows compatibility. I just don't trust those Apple folk sometimes. Hmmm.

Then there is this Nomad thing. Making playlists right on the player has a lot of appeal. There is a smaller, prettier, more expensive one too.

I don't want a lot of features like a radio (who listens to the radio?), but the Archos Jukebox's ability to record voice notes or ambient sounds is nice.

And what about the Lyra, which has the author of this review ejaculating everywhere with praise? Somebody get him a towel. Drawback: it is hideous. I am not too much of a design nerd, but ick.

Suggestions?

FOREVER OVERHEARD

1. Teenage boys on the El stuffing KFC into their mouths: sweaty, grungy, greasy, piercings, feral-looking, Hobbesian state-of-nature boys. "I love sleep more than anything in the world. Except skateboarding and porno." (ed. note: There simply must be a way to combine the three. Work on this.)

2. Streaky-haired fashion girl on cell phone: "Honey, you have to take control. Make him love you."

3. Guy in elevator to other guy: "Did that thing get fixed yesterday?" Other guy: "No, but so what."

THE BEST TYPO EVER

I am working on an article for a psychiatric journal, and the title mentions a treatment for "mooed disorders." Doctor, I am just so depressed. Hay sucks. Jumping over the moon sucks. Giving milk sucks. Moo.

---mimi smartypants only wants to be with you.

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