mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

I'll tell you once again [who's bad?]

“I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.”

—English Professor, Ohio University

I don't know whether this comment was really made or if it's some sort of college urban legend, but as an editor I appreciate it.

I was at the drugstore the other day. You know, a lot of my sentences start like that. When am I ever not at the freaking drugstore? Apparently I spend my life buying toiletries. Anyway, I was very very extremely tempted to buy Cosmopolitan magazine, which I honestly hate but with which I have a sort of sick fascination. The reason I was so tempted was that this issue had a corner cut advertising it as “The Bad Girl” issue. Be still my heart! What a great evening that would be for a deeply sarcastic postmodern feminist freak like myself…sit back, crack open an Old Style, and peruse the “Bad Girl” issue. Ah bliss.

Exit (a bar/nightclub, if you are not in the Chicago know) used to have (and maybe still does) a pinball machine that had the theme of “Bad Girls.” It said BAD GIRLS! in huge red sort of slasher-movie-font letters, and had an illustration of two women in lingerie and high heels lounging on the hood of a sports car. I used to wonder, now what makes these girls “bad”? They are underdressed, perhaps, maybe even skanky, but “bad” seems like an awfully pejorative judgment to make. Instead of labeling them “bad,” maybe we could get to know them. Lend them a sweater and some pants, share part of our lunch. Let them into our chinese jump rope circle at recess. Show them that there is more to life than posing on the hood of a car in lingerie.

Not that I'm sure that there IS more to life than posing on the hood of a car in lingerie. Hell, what do I know.

—mimi “not bad, just misunderstood” smartypants