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
ACTUAL QUOTES FROM LAST NIGHT'S SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO FOOTBALL GAME, BLITHERED STRAIGHT FROM THE MOUTH OF JOHN MADDEN (SOMEBODY, PLEASE, DIG A HOLE AND THROW HIM INTO IT) 1. He's got a Chinese arm! [ed. note: I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.] 2. Without a quarterback, they've got no offense! 3. He kept talking about "activating" this guy or that guy, which I know is a football-roster term but it made me think of all these linebackers in cryogenic freezing chambers, floating in stasis until Monday night. 4. That's what you have to do...you have to create a problem for yourself...a problem for the team...I mean the other team. You have to create a problem for the other team and not let them...not let them solve it. Don't let them solve the problem. That's the key to this offense. THE AXIS TURNS ON THE MUNDANE There is a whole subset of things that I resent having to purchase, because they are necessary but dull things that carry no sexy consumer shimmer or thrill of acquisition whatsoever, and it makes you feel like yay, you spent some cash but have nothing to show for it. Things like lightbulbs and toilet paper, inconspicuous things where there is no discernible difference among brands or types, should just be given away at some large government distribution center. (Some of you may be howling in protest right about now because you have a specific brand of toilet paper you prefer, and you are addicted to softness or something, and at the risk of offending you [which is probably not such a huge risk because what are you going to do about it tough guy? Hmm?], I will be bold and say that I find that odd and disturbing, and you need to get over it. I tend toward the dogmatically utilitarian when it comes to ass-wiping.) Also, there should be government-subsidized gummi worms. Particularly if you can prove that you Have A Problem. Did I tell you I went for a solid week without feasting on worms? Without the help of the patch or anything, yo. I had a few bad moments but then it started to get easier, and I thought, Wow, I'm clean, I am going to beat this thing. But then I went to the drugstore for a few things and there was a package of worms right there at the checkout line and it's like I went into a functional blackout and when I came to I was walking down the street with a green-and-yellow gelatin nematode hanging out of my mouth. Yeah. I'm back on the invertebrates. Somebody do an intervention on me. Or at least make a Behind The Music-style documentary on my nightmare descent into gummi addiction. BEHIND A VERY TINY BIT OF THE MUSIC 1. Time out for an opposing viewpoint: personally, I like this Stephen Malkmus solo thing better than many Pavement albums. I am not really a rabid Pavement fan like some of my friends, so I found this article an interesting explanation of what an uneven band they have always seemed to me. 2. Today I got rid of a CD. I have this Kill Rock Stars compilation and today I put it in the CD player and had a sudden epiphany that it contains not one single song I like. So I gave it away to one of the Sad Rock Boys at my job. It was strangely liberating. I love getting rid of stuff. A VIRUS FROM OUTER SPACE, YES IT IS Article on irregular verbs by Steven Pinker. And one about the singular use of "their." I guess I AM NOT HIP AND COOL because I still can't bring myself to accept that one. Did you read his book Words and Rules? I didn't love it, in part because it takes a very computational view of the mind, and it seems completely silly to me to say that our brains do nothing but implement computer programs all day long, but OH JEEZ MIMI DON'T GET INTO THIS NOW. Okay, back to the book. There's a part about how sank, shrank, sprang, and stank are disappearing as past tense forms. Most people just go ahead and use the past participles (sunk, shrunk, sprung, and stunk) for the simple past. Many verbs already have lost their ank/ang forms...four hundred years ago there really were words like strang and flang (simple past of strung and flung). Fine. That's the way people "really" talk. But people really say things like new-clue-ar and liberry and Warshington too. Also, it makes me sad to lose any word forms whatsoever. We need more words! Not fewer! Fuck the lowest common denominator! "Sex you up" = around 4000 Google hits "Sex you down" = around 300 Google hits "Sex you sideways" = did not match any documents This is the exact reverse order of what I would prefer. "Sex you sideways" sounds perfectly, bewilderingly naughty and "sex you down" sounds nice and relaxing. "Sex you up" is a distant third for me. You know the phrase "at the end of my rope"? I always pictured that it meant that you were standing on a chair with the well-made noose around your neck. You are at the end of your rope and soon to be swinging from same. This came up yesterday and my friend looked at me like I was insane, and said that no, "the end of my rope" refers to sort of a mountain-climbing thing; rope is being played out to you and then the end is reached. (She was fairly vague about the mountain-climbing scenario, never having done it before.) We then took a very informal poll. Some people readily had some sort of rope-picture to go with the clich�, some claimed they had never really thought about it before, and some told us to go away. Hmmm. ---mimi smartypants is listening in to the venus line.
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