waffle stuck to the ceiling
My whole El car was preached at yesterday morning. LOUDLY. And she was a lousy preacher, too: no rhythm or timing and very garbled content. (Not that I would appreciate ANY preaching, especially in a confined public space like public transportation. Keep your Jesus to yourself, thanks.) The only good part was this vegetable kick she got on for a while: “You like the CORN! You like the CARROTS! You like the EGGPLANT! You like the LETTUCE! You like the BROC-CO-LI! Well, the good lord made ALL these vegetables for you!”
Crazy Preacher Lady (who had not one but two largish twigs stuck in her hair and a pink quilted ski jacket with JESUS #1! magic-markered on the back) was relentless, and relentlessly loud, and was on the train with me all the way from Loyola to Grand. I did not have headphones or earplugs and I was trying to read while she was shrieking her messages from the Holy Ghost. I suddenly had a vision of leaping up from my seat and beating her to death with a large heavy object, more to just MAKE THE NOISE STOP than out of any real anger or annoyance. It kind of scared me, since I could really vividly see that scene in my head and since, like I said, there were no accompanying wrathful emotions to go with my violent impulse. Maybe I have vast untapped reservoirs of hidden rage. Maybe I'm a ticking time bomb and don't even know it. If fury were peanuts, I'd be George Washington Carver.
(Okay, George Washington Carver was undeniably a great man. But none of the web pages about him answer specifically what I want to know, which is: WHAT IS WITH THE PEANUTS. Was he all obsessed with the peanut and making things out of peanuts, or were peanuts simply the raw materials most available to him? When he showed his friends a new peanut-based invention, were they outwardly polite and supportive and then said, “Oh christ another peanut thing” the minute he left? I am curious.)
The speech accent archive is really cool. I slacked off here a whole bunch today.
STATUS REPORT
LISTENING TO: Night Prayers
CURRENTLY READING: The Savage Girl (so so good: I am a little disturbed that it has its own website though)
FEELING: Unjustly apprehensive
Apprehension is a synonym for dread. But also, my faithful dictionary tells me: understanding, perception. To dread is to understand and vice versa. What I often understand, or dread, the Beaujolais graping my mouth, is that I'll miss the moment when evening shades into “too late,” when one bottle becomes two, when I start imagining that the radiator noise is not a pipe expanding but a dark gong clanging meditation.
I am working on another new-wave song (I am so going to cash in on this brief revival that the kids are all into these days), and I am very disappointed that only “vague” and “The Hague” rhyme with “plague.” There are a few others, according to the rhyming dictionaries, but they are too obscure to be of much use in a new-wave song. I have to think about this some more. (My new-wave song is about how you should never poke a gopher corpse because that's a good way to get bubonic plague. I know, I talked about this already. I am obsessed. Hey, at least it's not peanuts, right?)
—mimi smartypants likes all the vegetables, in a nontheistic way.