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

all of the above are below

1. I am the one who takes down all the cutesy passive-aggressive bathroom notes at work and throws them away. I’m sorry, but when I am washing my hands I do not need to read “Please Pick Up Your Dishes, This Is NOT A Hotel! [smiley face]” or “Ladies:  If You Sprinkle When You Tinkle, Please Be Neat And Wipe The Seat [more smiley faces].” I don’t care that you spent work time selecting a lovely font and centering each line and printing it out and taping it to the mirror. Into the trash it goes!

2. I always push the “double speed” button during all the little in-between musical bits of podcasts, and I almost always think the music sounds better that way. I make fun of LT and his love for hyperactive cocaine ukulele jazz from the 1930s but maybe he is on to something.

3. Can you just have “qualms” or do you have to have qualms about something? Can qualms be intransitive? Can’t I have just plain old qualms? One side of qualms, please.

4. I did not realize until I started comparing notes with my parent-friends just how many schools say the Pledge of Allegiance in an organized way, all in a group. Nora’s school does not and I am thankful for that, because something about professing allegiance in a group gives me hives. It is not just the “under God” part (although that gives me DOUBLE HIVES); it is more that group pledging is very, very close to group prayer.

5. And the thing is, I *do* pledge allegiance, if not literally to the flag (I get that the author was speaking metonymically, but it still seems like a weird phrase), but to the idea and reality of America, which for all its shitton of fuckedupedness is still, in a deep and real and complex way, mine.

6. For example: my crazy cat Rocko, who seems like a really terrible, nasty, and inconvenient animal, but he’s mine. Which sounds like I’m saying, “Oh once you get to know him you’ll see his good points,” which is true but also sort of a side issue since his bad points are pretty damn bad. But he is still my cat. Rocko IS America!

7. Do you love me like crazy? Are you going to say some things, and then I’ll say some things, and then we’re done? Okay then, let me tell you the story of how I finally left behind my Diet Coke addiction.

8. I was down to only drinking one Diet Coke a day, but that one-a-day was the most shameful one of all—the morning Diet Coke. I don’t know why that bugged me so much, except maybe that I felt like I had no control over it. Any other time of the day I had no trouble with “just water, please” but mornings— my mouth all sleep-gross and my eyes barely open—always found me padding down to the basement (oooh, metaphor!) fridge to get that cursed can. Even if the night before I had sternly told myself that I would make tea or drink juice or grab a beer (kidding), or do anything but pop the top on the container of caramel color + neurotoxins, the morning would come and I could not help myself.

9. None of the accepted stop-drinking-soda wisdom (fizzy water! green tea! diluted juice! blah blah!) ever worked for me until it clicked that what I wanted from Diet Coke was acidity. Carbonation and caffeine are entirely secondary to the blast of acid that cleaned out my mouth like the 5-0’s jump-out boys clean up a drug corner.

10. (I want to take that comparison a LOT further, and craft a highly-acclaimed cable television drama about the war between oral bacteria and the forces of fluoride in a troubled city called Mouth, and how acid substances like coffee and Diet Coke seem to vanquish bacteria temporarily but are in actuality bad for the teeth [read: ordinary citizens, moral fiber], but the bureaucracy goes for the quick fix over long-lasting dental health. Do you think there might be intellectual-property lawsuits there?)

11. Anyway, once I figured that out I started drinking a huge glass of water with a LOT of lemon juice squeezed into it right after getting up and, three days later, no more cola-flavored monkey on my back. Plus I get to feel all smug and faux-healthy, like I am doing some ridiculous Gwyneth Paltrow-esque “cleansing” ritual when I get my easy peasy lemon squeezy on. For a while I was even drinking this crazy Whole Foods apple cider vinegar/honey beverage made by Bragg’s (with their irritating Christian fish symbol right on the bottle and everything), but then I started feeling stupid because it has three cheap-ass ingredients and surely I can make it myself. I have not yet gotten the proportions right but I will keep trying.

12. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. And as long as I am being opinionated about the Pledge of Allegiance and bathroom etiquette notes and acidity as THE ONE TRUE WAY TO GET OFF DRUGS, I will also be opinionated about music and say you should listen to The Grates, Ni Hao, early Cars, Couch, Mogwai, Eat Skull, the David Bowie album “Reality,” Wild Flag, The Phenomenal Handclap Band, Cypress Hill, and avant-garde cellist Okkyung Lee.

—mimi smartypants wants to know: are those Bugle Boy jeans you’re wearing?