erotically charged enigma, with soy sauce
Tax refund for me! Everybody say yeah! (Yeah!) After last year's debacle, when we owed two thousand dollars and I was convinced I would end up in debtor's prison, I totally changed my withholding scheme at work and that, combined with NASDAQ's shitty performance, means hooray hooray refund. What do you think? Pay off the Visa bill or spend it all on cocaine and lapdances? I knew you would say that.
In the accountant's office LT and I were speculating on what new love-the-rich Republican tax laws would be in effect this year. Can people who make more than a hundred thousand clams claim some sort of environmentalist tax benefit for cleaning up a puddle of motor oil in their driveway? How about claiming a “species survival control” benefit for every endangered animal shot? (You just staple the ears of that panda you bagged on safari directly to the return.) Or if you install a cowcatcher-type-thing on your Humvee, and use it to merrily toss homeless people aside as you scoot a whole three blocks to Pilates class, well, doesn't that merit a Community Improvement Credit?
I joke. But not really.
ME AND MY BUDDY H ENJOY SOME HOT FRESH PUNCTUATION
H: I e-mailed you something.
smartypantsmimi: And I received it!
smartypantsmimi: So magical!
H: I will never get over the fact that things work.
smartypantsmimi: I know. Things really do work! Like the microwave!
H: Sooo cool!
smartypantsmimi: What the hell!
smartypantsmimi: Buttons! Pressed! Hot Food!
H: Holy shit!
H: What a country!
And later, with no context whatsoever and signing off immediately after this (which is what I love about his IM style):
H: Ha! I say. HA!
smartypantsmimi: Ha! Ha! Ha!
smartypantsmimi: It is! To! Laugh!
H: The whole nasty business is quite absurd!
smartypantsmimi: You speak the truth, my good man!
We don't use AIM or MSN Messenger. More like some sort of Eugene Ionesco Instant Messaging Service.
HE LIVES IN DRURY LANE (I THINK)
Last night LT went to Chinese class, and after I had my bachelorette dinner (which was quite sensible, rather than the Refrigerator Roulette I sometimes indulge in), I had this crazy idea. The idea hit me with that giddy powerful feeling you get from varnishing floors in an unventilated room, and had similar properties in that the idea seemed extremely glittery and attractive and I felt as if I gazed down upon the idea from a great lofty height, and saw that it was good. Here is the idea: I SHALL MAKE SOME MUFFINS. Where did this come from? Well, I did flip through that issue of Martha Stewart Living while waiting for the accountant appointment. And I have always wanted to be the sort of person who can Do Things, you know, like those people who are always running around changing their own tires and making their own stationery and whipping up a batch of muffins for no reason at all, while I stand there flopping my spastic stick arms and saying “uh…if you need any books read, I can help with that. Or how about drinking this here can of beer? No problem. Glad to be of service.”
So I found a muffin recipe and realized I had all the ingredients, including a bag of leftover cranberries in the freezer. Leftover from what? I don't know. I buy groceries in a state of blackout sometimes. However, I did not read the recipe very well. It called for one and one-quarter cups of sugar in the ingredient list, and then said “combine sugar and cranberries over high heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.” Are you sure? I thought as I stirred and stirred and stirred a red, grainy, sugary, cranberry-studded mass. Lo and behold (thank you laws of chemistry), the sugar did indeed, eventually, dissolve. Then I go to read about the dry ingredients and find listed, among the flour, baking powder, etc, “and the remaining quarter-cup sugar.” Remaining? Fuck. Improvising, I left it out of the dry stuff and trusted that my over-sugared cranberries would carry the day. Also improvising, I decided there was not any need to let my butter soften completely, I mean, it's soft enough, right? and went ahead with the hand mixing of the butter-egg-milk, using the hand mixer which, when running, smells of a serious impending electrical fire but which also was a Gift From My Dead Grandmother, so of course I can't get rid of it. It was the first thing she bought me when I moved into my own apartment—what more practical item can you think of for a single girl in the big city? A hand mixer! For whipping up all those cakes and muffins and such! So because the butter had not been adequately softened, the hand mixer whirled butter clots everywhere and large lipomas of butter ended up trapped in the beaters. Improvising even further, I retardedly tried to push the butter globs out of the beaters while the beaters were still moving, with a knife, which made an amazing noise-band-style screeching clattering sound and scared The Cat. The batter, when finally combined with the cranberries, looked horrible and vaguely intraoperative, but by that point the muffin adventure was sort of like America's involvement in the Vietnam War—hideous, prolonged, and starting to feel futile, but with the oven preheated and the protesters marching outside the White House I had no choice but to press on.
Twenty minutes later we had achieved muffinosity and they really aren't bad. Kind of architecturally low to the ground, nothing like your Mega McMuffin Mansions sold by Starbucks or anything, but tasty enough. I brought some to work and left them by the fax machine with a sign that said: FREE NONPOISONOUS MUFFINS! BAKED BY MIMI! DON'T BE SCARED!
WHY YOU SHOULD ALWAYS OPEN YOUR MAIL
Opening and dealing with mail is a weird source of dread for me. You would not think it would be that much of a trauma but some days I feel more capable of taking a baboon in a knife fight than opening the mail. See, I don't particularly care for being baffled. I prefer to have mastery of my daily domain, as do all humans, and in fact even all animals (you should see my cat when she has just mastered the couch. Mastered it all over the place, holding it down with her bulk, making it all fuzzy with her stupid detachable hair). There have been some medical moments in our lives recently—nothing serious, just a run-of-the-mill ass transplant for LT (his terrible affliction of White Man's Booty was reaching a critical point) and the yearly polishing of the jewel-encrusted titanium geegaws that replaced my inner organs long ago. Anyway, when you have a series of medical moments all your mail is suddenly from BlueCross BlueShield (god I hate the way they spell that) and has all these numbers and mumbo-jumbo and also a huge column that says NOT COVERED, and a big statement at the top that says THIS IS NOT A BILL! THIS IS NOT A BILL! IT IS MERELY A STATEMENT OF WHAT COULD BE, AS IN THE MANY-WORLDS THEORY! So there has been a huge temptation to throw these things away unopened, because if they are not bills I am unclear as to the purpose of keeping them. Until today, when I opened one and found a check for $163.20, and here is the greatest part: This amount appears nowhere on the statement, and one cannot arrive at it through simple mathematical manipulation of the amounts that are on the statement, and there is indeed not even a mention of the enclosed check on the statement. Cashed that sucker immediately, I did, just in case it was an error. Check? What check?
MUFFIN INSURANCE (OK, REALLY JUST LINKS)
Well hang me from a net inside a cave and inject me with mold, there really is a gorgonzola.org. I used to want to have a son and name him Treehorn Gorgonzola, a combination of syllables that is just absolutely delightful to my ear. “Treehorn” comes from The Shrinking of Treehorn, and if you haven't read this book yet you REALLY NEED TO.
More bad art. What is with that guy's hand?
This was written in 2000, and would never work post-anthrax, but I was surprised and delighted at how much silly mail actually got delivered.
—mimi smartypants is lost in translation.