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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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ANIMALS ARE ANIMALISTIC Here's an Automatic Penguin Generator, if you are into that sort of thing. Hit the plus sign in the corner to get even more penguins. For you non-urban people who have cool killer cats who go in and out of cat doors: Flo Control. I think it's neat. However, my own personal cat is a lot more like a throw pillow than a savage hunter, and she never goes outside. There's too much traffic out there and I wouldn't want her to get mauled by the Feral Chicken. I think my cat is an anthropologist and she is writing her thesis on human bathing habits because she will not leave me alone when I bathe or shower, and whines outside the door until I let her in. If I take a bath she sits on the edge of the tub and I hold each bathtime substance (soap, shaving cream, big fat stick o' reefer) out for her to smell. STUPID ALTERNATING WITH SMART Stupid: I once ran full-tilt face-first into a tree, cartoon-style, while tripping on mushrooms. Smart: I did not go to graduate school. Graduate school was something I had once considered, until I realized I was only considering it because I couldn't think of anything else to do. Stupid: I had an opportunity once to learn a new skill and take on a new responsibility at work, and I turned it down because it sounded boring. It turns out it IS boring, horrendously boring, but it is also very highly paid, so I probably should have put up with it for a little while at least. Smart: Buying my house instead of waffling about it and continuing to rent. Stupid: All the times I hopped on the El when we lived in Hyde Park, because it was right there and convenient, and not remembering that the Red Line drops one's puny tipsy white-girl ass off at 55th and the expressway, which is not the most welcoming neighborhood in which to be waiting for a bus at night. It's perfectly fine during the day but one should spring for a cab in the evenings. Smart: Dropping calculus at the last possible second and switching to a required math class that didn't make me cry on a daily basis. Stupid: Eating chocolate-covered coffee beans and drinking coffee at the same time, while I was working on a paper. Worst caffeine psychosis ever. At one point I actually believed I had grown wings, that my skin had become transparent, and that my mystical babblings about modernist literary criticism made any sense at all. Smart: Sneaking out the back door when the cops showed up. It's a long story. A GREAT IDEA! Put little mirrors instead of pimentos inside olives. That way you could fix your lipstick mid-martini. NOTES ON FINISHING THE RE-READ OF GRAVITY'S RAINBOW 1. I think I could do with fewer women being extremely ready and willing to fuck Tyrone Slothrop. It gets a little old. 2. And I really hate to say this but sometimes Pynchon sex reminds me of Ayn Rand (bleeeeaagh) sex, with icy blonde women and their chiseled cheekbones glinting in low light, and complicated underwear, and sadomasochistic undertones (always with the female being the submissive party), and a frequent switching of perspective. 3. Paranoia is personal is political. Paranoia IS politics, because it situates awareness of the self within larger processes. (I reserve judgment on whether any particular paranoia is reasonable or not...I'm just talking about paranoia in general here.) 4. In that continuing and really stupid Debate Of Drunkards about which is more "difficult," Gravity's Rainbow or Finnegan's Wake, I will still go with Wake. That is, unless I get cranky and denounce the whole debate as stupid and meaningless, which I have been known to do. 5. Reading this book again was a lot more fun than last time. When I was fifteen I was very preoccupied with sketching out plot details and what happened when. (When talking about Gravity's Rainbow, maybe the word "happened" should always be in quotation marks.) Since then I have become a lot more comfortable with the dream of being everywhere at once. IT'S NATIONAL OVER-REACTION DAY 1. I open up the electric bill and the electric company motherfuckers have not included an envelope in which I can send back my payment. What the fuck? Are they out of envelopes? Did the electric-bill-compiling-and-mailing machine break down when it got to the part where the envelopes go in? Now I have to find my own envelope and write the address on it myself. God damn you, electric company. I am going to start generating my own fucking electricity, by rubbing balloons on my head or using a bicycle generator or doing that cartoony thing with the electric eels. 2. If you ask me, there are not enough really good used bookstores in Chicago. Is this the case everywhere? Can I blame behemoths like Amazon and Barnes and Noble for the disappearance of small used bookstores? The burgeoning business in selling used books online? Or is it more of a general trend relating to suburban sprawl? I am just as guilty as everyone else of shopping there, just as addicted to instant gratification in the form of a huge in-stock selection. But I also like digging through big floor-stacks and that special smell of dusty books. JUST REST QUIETLY, YOU WILL BE FINE After nearly thirty years of being useless (I say "nearly" even though I am thirty, because I had some really good moments as a toddler), I think I have finally found a niche. This weekend I am hosting a good friend, who needs to regroup after a lot of anguish surrounding a death in her family. And a few years ago I remember playing hostess to another friend who was kind of freaking out for various reasons and couldn't be at home anymore. So maybe there is something about my current and past dwellings* that is inherently soothing to the afflicted. Come, ye weary, and get thy shit together on my futon. (*I think the magic factor is definitely the dwelling and not me. I am not entirely certain that I would be the best person to come to in a freakout situation, because of my generally bleak outlook. I'll give you wine, let you cry, make you oatmeal, cover you with a blanket, but don't expect me to cheer you up.) MIMI SMARTYPANTS' NFL "UPDATE," WHICH INCLUDES NO USEFUL INFORMATION LIKE SCORES OR STATISTICS 1. Did anyone else see the Eagles/Jaguars game where Donovan McNabb totally puked on the ball late in the fourth quarter? He threw up right under the center just before the snap, and the pass was all wobbly and went to no one, and you could tell the sideline guys didn't want to pick it up because it was all covered with quarterback vomit. He finished out the game, but he looked all sweaty and bug-eyed and awful the last few minutes. Eeeew. 2. Bears/Packers tonight and I am getting ready by making tofu-stuffed shells for dinner, because the shells are shaped like little footballs, and the marinara sauce is like Packer blood, and the tofu is like...okay I give up. SELF-CONGRATULATORY DIALOGUE AND EMO JELLYFISH SONG smartypantsmimi: I am trying to think of what sort of music freshwater jellyfish would be into. ---mimi smartypants is deductible for income tax purposes to the extent allowed by law. back/forward |
