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

when in Rome, talk about Rome a lot

JULY IS THE MONTH WHERE I TALK ABOUT SEX TOO MUCH

I think I may be a selfish lover. My eroticism is squarely on the autistic side, so when I nibble and bite and lick your shoulder, or neck, or some other bit of you for over twenty minutes, I am really just taking care of myself. You are probably bored. You are probably thinking, “Move on already.” Well, too bad. I am having fun doing weird, overly-sensual, opium-den-style things to you. See? Selfish. Unless of course, you are enjoying it, and then you can go ahead and mistakenly think I am super-considerate and solely concerned about your pleasure. Who cares about self-delusion as long as everyone gets off?

Speaking of biting, when I went out at lunch today, to get a salad I did not want (weirdly un-hungry lately), I saw a beautiful Korean girl with an unmistakable human bite mark on her calf. She was kind of staring into space, sipping some Starbucks thing, and her face was very vapid and sad. Who bit you, Starbucks Girl? Hopefully it was a nice happy sex thing but my mind was coming up with all sorts of nasty scenarios, just based on how miserable she looked. Or maybe she works at a preschool, one for nasty biting kids.

I suspect that someone in the automotive industry may read this thing. Remember my post about the car model anal game? Well, Pontiac has brought you the Vibe.

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON

There is a type of person I cannot stand (okay there is more than one). I call this particular type the Fucking Helpless Baby. These people have issues with someone who stands too close to them, but they don't say anything at the time, they just suffer and then tell everyone who will listen the long boring story of someone! On public transit! Who had the AUDACITY! To STAND! VERY CLOSE TO ME! Yes, people do that. People are jerks. Were you raised in a glass aquarium? Or perhaps in the suburbs? Because it really is not worth remarking on anymore. There is plenty of more egregious subway behavior, you will have to do better than that.

Or, to give another example, I was reading the Chicago Reader restaurant reviews online, and there is a section for “patron comments.” And I had to grit my teeth at this one woman's story: why, the restaurant staff was unkind enough to sit her near the DOOR! And it was cold! And she was on a date, and she was shivering the whole time! Oh my god! And then the waiter took her knife away after the appetizer, so, in her own words, “I really couldn't eat much of my chicken without a knife.” OH YOU POOR BABY. I can just picture this woman, moping and pouting and sighing all through her date, instead of just asking someone for a damn knife like any normal adult human.

Why am I saying this? Because I was thinking about how I tend to report my little urban encounters, with weird street crazies or rude potato-place patrons and such, and also thinking about how much I hate the sort of person who flies off the handle at the least little bit of ho-hum everyday subway crowding or lack of “respect” from waitstaff. Am I this sort of person? I wondered. Or do I appear to be one of them, because I have a silly web page where I quite often talk about what happens when two or more random pieces of this Chicago puzzle collide?

I would like to think not, and that the difference is all in the attitude. I am vastly amused by human behavior. I don't believe that I am the protagonist and all those other millions of people swarming around out there exist solely in relation to me. I don't believe in getting bent out of shape by how total strangers treat me. In fact, if I wanted a steady stream of “respect” and “courtesy,” I would probably move somewhere else, because Midwestern Nice notwithstanding, that is not a common commodity here in Chicago.

However, the woman who actually put her hand on my shoulder and moved me as she was exiting and I was entering the Grand Avenue station, just like I was a turnstile or her square dance partner, needs to be held down and kicked and then have some really spicy pepperoni rubbed in her eye. There are limits.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO MY SELF-JUSTIFICATION. NOW WE CAN CONTINUE WITH THE SELF-INDULGENCE.

Chicago experienced an epic downpour and high winds yesterday. I was on the train and I half-expected to see cars and cats and bicycles caught in the treeline. There is still some storm-drain backup on my street, which fills me with wistful nostalgia for being a little kid after a big rain, when I would go outside and stir filth and muck up from the bottom of the deep puddles with a stick, and build little dams. I got fairly wet on the way home from my post-work library visit, and when the rain was at its worst I thought oh great, this is going to be a fun bus ride, all of us sweaty tired transit users packed into a small space. But yay! An empty bus! And a quiet ride! I got pretty wet on the way home, which normally is so not my thing (I have a cat's attitude toward water, most of the time), but after a certain point, when the rain thoroughly has you in its rainy grip, it just doesn't matter anymore. At least I have shorter hair now, which is much easier to dry.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD?

I work with some doctors, who are contributing editors on the journals. Not a single one of them is any fun whatsoever. I was early to a meeting and so was Dr. X, and he found a pill on the floor. He picked it up and said, “Hmm, I wonder what this is.” “Let's take it and find out,” I suggested. To which he replied, “Now that would not be a very good idea.”

You just lost your invite to any of my future parties, pal.

—mimi smartypants would like to propose a toast.