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

fish your permission

This whole post is going to be a disaster. I am sorry, impressionable young people who may read my blog (where are your parents?) I am sorry, easily-offended Mormons (as opposed to the other kind, and I know there is another kind). I am sorry, relatives of mine who may prefer to remember me in pigtails and overalls instead of talking like a Soprano. On the other hand, I don’t really want to hear about it because I am in a mood and a half.

I am going on hour 20 of not eating anything besides “clear liquids,” and I have had it up to here with Sierra Goddamn Mist and green tea and water. Supposedly I am also allowed “broth.” Who the hell wants broth? Oh yay, broth! Bro, you brought broth! Hey everybody, there’s broth in the break room! These are phrases you do not hear. Fuck broth. Fuck it to death.

Tomorrow at a stupid hour of the morning I go to the lab to swallow the magical robot pill camera, and get hooked up to electronics that will transmit its photos of my insides to an enthralled audience. At least that’s how I imagine it, a moodily lit Pentagon bunker, giant screens everywhere, and my gastroenterologist frowning earnestly at a monitor. Probably with a cup of broth in his hand, the fucker. In reality I’m sure it is all very boring and hands-off, and he will download a .zip file labeled “MIMI’S KICK-ASS INTESTINES” in about a week, blah blah blah.

I was not told about the not-eating part. Oh, I knew I couldn’t eat on pill-camera day, because poor little pill-cam probably can’t navigate around a giant roasted-vegetable-and-goat-cheese-sandwich on focaccia bread dear GOD I would happily touch a camel’s penis if you would give me that right now. But not eating the entire day prior? That was news.

But wait, it gets better! When I called to get the no-eating instructions, the nurse was like yadda yadda the bowel prep…say what? Oh yes. In addition to not eating, I get to drink all that disgusting medicine and poop all evening, just so I’m nice and suicidal by the time I actually arrive at the lab. All the fun of a colonoscopy without any of the good drugs! It is RIDICULOUSLY UNFAIR. I stuttered something on the phone about, “oh, that’s not what the internet said” and the nurse said, “Yeah, Dr. [redacted]’s protocol is stricter than most. He’s an overachiever. Ha ha!” Yes he is. An overachieving, broth-drinking, son of a whore.

So yeah, this day seriously sucks. I am in a state of murderous rage and too weak to do anything about it. The only bright spot was when I went to Target and some people were struggling in the parking lot, like just get your shit together and park already, and I said out loud, “You all are some low-skills motherfuckers” and that kind of made me smile. A little bit.

Nora and I had the flu, and we are just now getting healthy again, except you know what healthy people do? They EAT NUTRITIOUS FOOD. So there goes that. She is finally back to school after missing three days—perfect attendance since kindergarten blammo, undone by a virus. Poor kid was really ill though. Pale napping Nora? Not normal. I stayed home two days but was at my worst on Sunday with a high fever and aching all over. I watched part of the Superbowl before going to bed. The fever combined football with that Brad Pitt movie trailer about the very fast zombies,* and for hours I lingered in a half-conscious netherworld where little tiny CGI Ray Lewis-es swarmed all over the place like locusts. I don’t know why the Ray Lewis-es were tiny. It would have been better if the tiny Ray Lewis-es had tiny little knives and tiny little bloodstained white suits that have never been recovered, but that was not part of the fever dream.

*Hey look! It’s the sexy detective from The Killing! They should make another season of that. It was the rainiest show in the history of television.

In conclusion: people who fast for any length of time on purpose—and I’m talking straight-up liquids, not your faker “juice fasts” where you get juice and salads and stuff—are crazy. Cray to the fucking zee. Maybe you say your god wants you to, maybe you have some political agenda, maybe you literally have a mental illness that makes you unable to eat, but it all boils down to a form of crazy, no? Yes, I realize I am calling Mahatma Gandhi crazy. What’s he going to do, fight me?

—mimi smartypants hates everything.