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

another plastic bag

TWO OF MY FAVES

On Twitter, I follow both Snoop Dogg, who posts a photo approximately every five seconds (the man likes his Instagram), and the National Maritime Museum. Both avatars are somewhat dark and swirly. When they end up right next to each other and I am reading the feed quickly, it is easy to imagine Snoop wishing a happy birthday to Matthew Flinders, 19th-century British cartographer, or the National Maritime Museum participating in #puffpasstuesday.

CAMPING

1. Nora attended a week-long Chicago Blackhawks-sponsored hockey camp, one of three girls there and about fifty boys, and each day entailed more exercise than you and I probably do in a week. Morning skate skate skate, tons of drills, get undressed and go to dryland training (burpees, running, pushups, agility things), eat lunch, get dressed again for more skating, get your sweaty little butt home and in the shower, do it again the next day.

2. She got to hold Kendall Coyne’s silver Olympic medal. On the last day’s scrimmage, a giant bird was their referee. He dropped the puck out of his beak.

3. I took a week “off” (meaning I still answered email and worked on projects) to drive her back and forth to this thing, and ended up very glad I do not have to commute by car, because driving every day SUCKS.

4. As I trekked around the stupid north shore suburbs, I noticed that Niles has two different numbers on their population signs, depending on your direction. Get your shit together, Niles.

5. The only reason I went to Niles in the first place was to restock Nora’s miso and udon at Super H Mart (she has odd breakfast requirements). It is dangerous to shop at Super H Mart in the middle of the day, as the place is full of tiny mean Korean ladies who will body-check you in front of the seafood counter lest you get all the good squid before they do. (I was just looking! I didn’t even want any squid! I did want those small puffed-rice snacks that are shaped like chicken drumsticks and claim to be “fried-chicken flavor,” and maybe some of that totally inoffensive Korean beer, but the store was out of both items. DAMN IT.)

6. The last day of camp was the most strenuous of all, as the night before Nora had been up until after midnight at the Katy Perry show. Yes. I survived. It was her big birthday present and I had been worried about my ears and my psyche and the possibility of blindness from getting glitter in my eyeball, but I am okay. Two full hours of Katy Perry is rather more than you need (that woman works hard), and two opening bands was complete overkill, especially the first guy who was nigh-intolerable. All you need to know about him is that he played the keyboards and wore fishnet on his arms. PLEASE NO I WILL DO ANYTHING JUST MAKE IT STOP.

7. Katy Perry as a person alternately makes me think “I would so hit that—I might not want to hang out later, but I would definitely hit that” and “Damn, I need to get to the gym right now.” Musically? Whatever. It is what it is, catchy and annoying and annoyingly catchy.

SAVED BY THE WET TOWEL

As I moaned about on Twitter, I recently had a sad time at the gym. I was at my normal weightlifting class and toward the end I started feeling kind of woozy. After sitting out a few reps it was not getting better, so I started stumbling to the door, with my vision all blackspotted, and crumpled up outside the studio. An overly excited person shouted, “Someone’s down!” This was mortifying but, given that my gym doubles as a cardiac rehab facility, understandable. A beefy trainer crouched down to talk to me, and tried to get me to sit on a chair, but the floor was serving me just fine as I did not yet have the blood pressure necessary for any type of verticality. Eventually it passed, and he put a cold towel on my neck which was lovely, and I apologized about eight million times, and he told me all his own embarrassing over-workout stories, one of which involved vomiting into his own gym towel, and I felt better. Not better enough to go back to weightlifting class, but enough to walk around the track and head home under my own power.

Movies and soap operas and Victorian novels would have you believe that fainting is a passive, calm thing, like just fading away into unconsciousness, but as a fainter I can tell you it’s actually awful. That buzzy head, that black-spot-vision, that thing with the heartbeat, it all feels like a goddamn panicky DEATH EMERGENCY and is nothing like falling asleep. No thank you.

PUT IT ON PINTEREST

So I guess about four months ago a mentally ill rapper cut off his penis and then jumped off a building. I come here not to make fun of him, because it sounds like what led up to that was no fun at all, but the story really is a goldmine of lovely quotes. For instance: “I’m still alive, penis or no penis.” (No penis, in this case.) And Fox News, bless their hearts, decided to unnecessarily elaborate on the story and get sound bites from an assistant professor of urology, who had this to say:

The best way to transport the amputated penis is to put it in a plastic bag and put that plastic bag in another plastic bag with ice and slush, which cools it, and then get into the operating room as quickly as possible.

I don’t know, something about the putting it in a plastic bag and putting that plastic bag in another plastic bag really gladdens my heart. Put that plastic bag in another plastic bag and that plastic bag in another plastic bag and it’s plastic bags all the way down, with a tiny shriveled-up amputated penis at the center. A METAPHOR FOR AMERICA.

—mimi smartypants: U don’t have 2 be rich 2 be her girl.