|
|
||
|
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
|
IT SUCKS LIKE A KNIFE Now that I have been driving more (on non-work days, at least), I am slowly being reintroduced to various features of our car. For instance, I was complaining about my space-time difficulties with regard to pulling into/out of our barely-two-car garage, without bonking into the neighbor's vehicle or the side of the building. That's when LT suggested using the passenger side mirror. The what? The who? Oh yeah, I always wondered why there was a mirror on "my" side! The more you know! Also there is the music situation. Even while just tooling around town on a day off, going to the gym or to Target, inevitably I tire of the few CDs that live in the car. Especially since the majority of them are either homemade mixes of dubious merit or collections of LT's crazy 1920s ukulele jazz. (WTF, my darling? Seriously.) If Nora is in the car she will reject all CD suggestions anyway in favor of just having me sing the chorus to Weezer's "The Sweater Song" over and over again. Which I don't mind at all, it is pretty rare anyone ever asks me to sing. So aha, the radio! But oh no, it's been years since I have listened to the radio. How will I find the handful of tolerable stations still out there? Never fear, because there are these BUTTONS, they are called RADIO PRESETS, and LT has loaded them up just like a real driver should. When I am driving by myself I can actually get kind of obsessive about making the rounds of the presets, because I enjoy the challenge of finding the least horrible songs on the airwaves. (There is always NPR, but there is also only so much depressing news that I can stand. Plus sometimes they start reading you a precious bucolic story or interviewing some one-legged didgeridoo player and OKAY, ENOUGH.) The other day I was driving along and punching the presets when I found Bryan Adams telling me that it cuts like a knife. Naturally I kept on pressing buttons, because the last thing I need is a geriatric Canadian vegan making the easy analogies, but there were either commercials or didgeridoo virtuosos on all the other stations and I kept coming back to Bryan Adams, who was still making claims about how its cutting action resembled that of a knife. Oh really? It cuts? Like a knife, you say? Jesus fuck that is a long song.* Toward the end there is a "na na na na" chorus interspersed with continuing statements about "it" (WHAT?) cutting like a knife. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT CUTS LIKE? IT CUTS LIKE A KNIFE! I don't know exactly why I am telling you this, except to say that I am very angry at Bryan Adams for ruining my drive. *Okay, I looked it up and supposedly "Cuts Like A Knife" comes in at only 5:23. But pretend that someone is cutting you with a knife for that long. See? THINGS MUST IMPROVE Because I am a sucker for data, I just now added up all the books I read in September (hooray for Goodreads!) and it came to a total of sixteen, of which nine either sucked intolerably (one star) or were only moderately shitty (two stars). This is a terrible ratio. I demand better reading material in October. SO FUCKING HARDCORE This past weekend we were at a party for Nora�s class. Someone's backyard, swing set, pizza, snacks, dozens of kids (classmates, siblings, etc) running around in a big anarchic mob. Nora was getting over a cold (now passed on to me, thank you), she had just scarfed down a huge slice of pepperoni pizza and several triangles of watermelon, and then she ran into the thick of things and proceeded to go nuts with Peter, her best school pal. They were superheroes on the trampoline, they chased each other in big circles, they rode a two-kid swing, they rubbed sand in each other's hair. I wore a nametag and made small talk and wished mightily for a keg. At one point I looked over and Nora was standing under the monkey bars, slightly hunched over and crying, which was weird because I would expect an injured Nora to be wrapped around my leg loudly demanding band-aids. I went to investigate and Nora said, "I threw up." And she sort of had, in a minor way, and frankly it was not a huge shock after all the pizza and cold medicine and screaming and exertion. I made appropriate mom-noises and started to walk her away from the action, when she suddenly leaned over and made another small deposit on the lawn, and THAT'S IT, TIME TO GO. Except in order to leave we had to walk past the food, and there was Nora noticing the desserts and saying, "Can I have a cupcake?" Minutes---nay, seconds---after hurling in the bushes. Can I have a cupcake? Never let it be said that Nora does not know how to party. ---mimi smartypants is a reaction against the Rococo style of anti-tectonic naturalistic ornament. |
