I saw you standing by the slurpee machine
THINGS I USED TO BELIEVE THAT TURNED OUT NOT TO BE TRUE
1. That sexual intercourse was always performed standing up.
2. That you should never peel the outer covering off a golf ball because inside is a poison gas that can seep out and kill your whole family.
3. That all human minds were linked in a sort of meme pool/Jungian collective unconsciousness way and that there were no unbridgeable chasms between distinct phenomenological minds.
4. That wolverines roamed in every wooded area, hungry for little-kid flesh. And that wolverines can climb trees.
5. That it was incredibly expensive to have a key copied, and that it took days.
6. That the Other loves you for who you “really” are, not just for who you are in the context of your relationship with him or her. (Note: the loss of this belief did not produce as much despair as one might think: see 6a.)
6a. That the search for a core self, made up of unchanging and unshifting deeply true attributes, values, and beliefs, is a meaningful way to spend one's time.
7. That if I rode my tricycle fast enough, the wheels would leave the ground like airplane landing gear and I would take off into the sky.
8. That anyone of any importance would ever care what my SAT scores were.
9. That I wouldn't be all that sad when my childhood dog died, since he was very old and I hadn't lived at home for years. (In reality I cried almost nonstop for two days.)
10. That, given a steady supply of beer and cigarettes, it is not really necessary to consume food.
WE NEED TO TALK
John Dodge John Dodge John Dodge. I am shy about e-mailing you but maybe you will Google yourself and find my page. I cannot tell you, John Dodge, how disillusioned your article made me. I am reevaluating my relationship with the Weather Word. I think the Weather Word and I can still be friends, but we've lost what we once had. It's not really your fault. But, as you would notice if you read this web page (which you don't because your byline states that you are a big-shot “Executive News Editor”), you would know that I had a small fixation on the Sun-Times Weather Word. You have let me down in two ways: (1) using STICKY twice, one day apart (seriously, what was that about? A VERY POOR SHOWING, JOHN DODGE) and (2) revealing yourself as the Weather Word writer. It is probably a matter of professional pride, but it's just so much more interesting if the Weather Word appears mysteriously on a daily basis like an oracle. To know that the Weather Word is merely a jovial little side project for you ruins some of the fun.
BUT MY OFFER STILL STANDS JOHN DODGE. I know LOTS of words. I am a master of the evocative adjective. I can certainly do better than some past clunkers like NO PARKAS or BRRRRR! Ask anyone who knows me: I drop wonderful, beautiful words all over the place, like fruit falling from Carmen Miranda’s hat. So, John Dodge, if your second job as Weather Word writer ever becomes tiresome, drop me a line and you will not be sorry. In fact (not to belittle your efforts thus far or anything), I think MY Weather Words would usher in a new era of semantic meterological beauty, and cancer would be cured and world peace achieved and all the animals of the forest would join paws and dance like in the cartoons. Think it over, John Dodge.
NIGHTMARE
He's cute, he's personable, he has a sexy voice, he speaks intelligently about postmodern literature, he can hold his liquor, and then you take him home and these are under his pants, and he is bewildered when you start to laugh. There is no suitcase large enough for the amount of irony that is required for Confederate Flag boxers to even begin to work, so word to all you ironic hipsters out there: don't even try it.
SO UNKOSHER IT MAKES MY HEAD HURT
In the Western Hemisphere, North America, Illinois, Chicago, River North, Ohio and St. Clair streets (approximately), there is a small hot dog stand that has painted the names of the things they sell all around the circumference of their building. Simple block letters, no punctuation, and thus it appears that they sell BBQ PORK MALTS. What a treat!
—mimi smartypants is doing donuts on her neighbor's lawn.