echo chamber pot
EXERCISE FAIL
I have a dedicated playlist for running on the treadmill, full of songs that make me feel like a tough girl. Recently I learned the perils of not using that playlist and just letting the iPod shuffle. Have you ever tried to execute the hardest, fastest part of your run while listening to the Star Wars “Cantina Band Theme”?
SPARKLY SPARKLY MORMON VAMPIRES
I have not read any Twilight books and I never will, but for some reason I am addicted to Twilight takedowns. Here is one that charmingly describes the third book in the series as “yet another 700 pages without any fucking” and another (in three awesome parts!) that focuses on the not-so-subtle Mormonism in the series. Mormons! Vampires! Two creepy things that creep so well together.
I HOPE YOU ROT
Three-thirty in the goddamn morning, my cell phone rang. I ignored that for a time, but when it happened again I began to think that maybe there was an actual emergency. Compared to years past, fewer of my friends routinely drink until closing and then dial my number, so now I take middle-of-the-night cell phone calls more seriously.
When I answered, though, there was just a robo-operator asking me to press 1 if wanted to accept the charges, and then some guy yelling something like IT’S REESE I’M LOCKED UP IN JAIL MAN YOU GOTTA TAKE CARE OF THIS. Whatever, wrong number. Sucks to be Reese.
All that day, I received collect phone calls from Reese. Always with the same recorded message about accepting the charges, but sometimes the Reese-yelled portion would change, like SOMEONE FUCKED UP DUDE YOU GOTTA HELP or CALL ME BACK I’M IN JAIL WHERE ARE YOU? CALL ME BACK! I was at work, and even with the phone on vibrate it was extremely distracting to have FIFTEEN collect calls from Reese over the course of one day. (I have a “mom” chromosome that prevented me from shutting off the phone entirely.) At one point I considered accepting the charges just to yell at Reese in person, but I kept hoping he would just give up.
After a solid twelve hours of that annoyance/frustration, I was on the train home when my cell phone rang again, with a different area code. This time it was a young-sounding female, and here is our conversation.
Girl: Hello?
Me: Hello?
Girl: Hello?
Me: YES HELLO, WHAT DO YOU WANT.
Girl: Uh, Reese is in jail?
Me [losing my shit, slightly]: Yeah, I’ve heard. I’ve been hearing about it for hours. And listen carefully now: I DON’T CARE. I want him to QUIT CALLING ME. Can you do that? Can you make that happen? Tell him to quit calling me.
Girl: Uh…okay?
Me: Thanks a million.
After I had stabbed the END button with the Quivering Forefinger Of Righteous Anger, I realized that I hadn’t actually conveyed the information that this was a wrong number. Or that I do not know Reese. Um. Oops. I guess I felt like I did know him! After he called me fifteen times with different little details of his tragedy! So now I feel slightly bad that Reese is sitting in jail somewhere thinking that he has no friends, and that the person he so desperately tried to contact is content to let him stay in jail. Sorry buddy! Hope your offense wasn’t too serious! Maybe they will let you look up the number and try again.
—mimi smartypants, tough-love practitioner.