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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


2002-08-23 ... 2:05 p.m.

I am: hilarious in French! So much funnier than in English!

I am: ever so suave. There is this Thai place where I like to have lunch sometimes, not least because it is right by the hospital and is very heavily patronized by doctors, and I like to eat lunch with a lot of doctors around because you never know when I'm going to choke on a square of tofu or have an aneurysm. Actually, when I am around a lot of doctors in a social setting I almost want to fall and break my leg or otherwise experience some sort of medical emergency, just to take advantage of the convenience factor. Like getting a flat tire at the mechanic's or setting yourself ablaze right in front of the fire station. Anyway, I am in the writerly present tense, ooh, how trendy. I am reading a book about skepticism. I am feeling deeply skeptical of my Pad Thai and just at that moment I drop a rather large forkful of it down my shirt. In fact, a few noodles end up IN my shirt. See? Ever so suave. Ever so suave to have to go back to your office and remove a Pad Thai noodle from your brassiere. Lick me baby, I'm exotically spiced.

I am: having a strange argument/discussion via e-mail. It's a thought experiment thingy that goes like this. Imagine there's a person who (since birth) is blind, deaf, has no tastebuds, has no sense of smell, and somehow is anesthetized so that he can't feel any touch sensations (no hot or cold, no shapes or textures of things). Is this person human? Does this person have a self? Can this person think or dream? I think you can guess which side I'm on.

I am: nostalgic for Bahrain, which is bizarre since it is a boring flat little island that doesn't have a whole lot of culture of its own. (Sorry, Bahrain, but you know it's true. I still like you though.) I am particularly nostalgic for getting to see chickens on a daily basis. When we lived there LT used to take me to work every day, and there was a shortcut out of our neighborhood that took you through this cluster of village houses. One of them kept their chickens in the front yard and just seeing all those chickens milling around, all chickeny, all bawking and squawking and roosting and brooding and pecking and scratching, made me happy and lessened the pain of going to my rather pointless advertising job. One time we turned that corner and saw a duck, just one duck, standing there amongst all the chickens. He looked confused. Maybe he was some sort of exchange student, in a language-immersion program to learn Chicken.

I am: invisible today, apparently. I am nothing but a digital shadow puppet. I have been bumped into or nearly run over about fifty times. Maybe I need an airhorn or other noise-making device to signal my presence.

I am: kind of surly today too. Maybe it's because of all the people bumping into me. Maybe it's because this foggy suffocating drippy sky is no kind of sky, it's no kind of sky whatsoever, we signed up for sky and we got nothing, it's the old bait and switch and there oughta be a law. Maybe it's because I went to Borders to pick up a gift certificate for a friend's birthday and of course you can't NOT get something for yourself when at a bookstore, not even if you try and sternly tell yourself that there are plenty of readables and listenables in your life already. I ended up buying two things that I was already familiar with but thought I should own: Terry Riley's "In C" and a paperback copy of Mrs. Dalloway. I know I could find Mrs. Dalloway elsewhere but I really liked the cover on this particular edition. The clerk held up the CD and said, "Oh, this is great. This is really great. Good pick." I didn't feel the need to have my choices validated at a large chain bookstore by some teenage retail drone, and I didn't feel like chatting because of the aforementioned surliness, so I just fake-smiled at him and left it at that.

In high school I worked in a video store, and it was pretty odd how badly customers wanted to have their video choices validated by me, like I am some sort of Final Judgment on action movies or insipid romantic comedies. "Have you seen this? Is it good?" customers would ask anxiously as they forked over their three dollars. I hate nearly all movies, so I never knew what to say. "I wouldn't watch that sexist, poorly-written, unoriginal pile of baboon crap purporting to be entertainment if my own grandmother had directed it. But hey, you might enjoy it."

I did have a lot of fun renting porn to people when I worked there, though. We were supposed to say the names of the movies when telling people their (the movies') due dates, but no one but me took this rule literally when it came to porn. The other employees would say things like "Driving Miss Daisy is due back tomorrow and this one [holding up the porn] is due back Friday." Whereas I would always cheerfully say, "Assflesh Fuckfest is due back tomorrow by 10 pm! Have a nice night!"

I am: happy to have found some more information on one of my very favorite words.

"Kiosk" first appeared in English in 1625. Its original meaning was, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, "An open pavilion or summerhouse of light construction, often supported by pillars and surrounded with a balustrade; common in Turkey and Persia, and imitated in gardens and parks in Western Europe." The root of "kiosk" is the Turkish word "kiushk," meaning "pavilion." The graceful kiosks of Turkey and Persia were social gathering places on estates and in public parks, much admired by European visitors, who carried the idea (and the word) home with them.

I am: gyrating. On the way back from Borders I stopped at a toy store because they had hula hoops in the window, and there was a neon green one with silver stars on it that looked like five bucks' worth of happiness to me. So I have been taking periodic hula-hoop breaks here in the office.

RESULTS FROM GOOGLING THE WORD "GYRATING"

Did you know Marilyn Manson is "a disorderly person"? How surprising.

In which the word "cyclotron" is bandied about.

Plus, there are a whole lot of gyrating vibrators for sale. But you knew that.

---mimi smartypants warped the fabric of space-time and she is very, very sorry.

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