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

opium priestess

ALL THE THINGS I AM READING AT ONCE, WHICH IS WAY TOO MANY THINGS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATED FEELINGS

  1. The Gilded Razor, Sam Lansky. Rich prep school kid does drugs, fucks older men, eventually gets sober although I’m not at that bit yet. Feelings: How do people have this much money. How do teenagers have this much freedom and where are the adults? (The parental adults, I mean. Not the ones fucking the teenagers, we know where they are and WE DO NOT APPROVE.) How do some memoirists manage this wry tone of “wow, I was really messed up” while somehow still sounding like they are bragging?
  2. My Struggle, Book 1, Karl Ove Knausgard. Feeling: Admiration. I admire people who are willing to risk being boring. (Shout-out to myself! Boring personal blogging for 17 years!)
  3. You Will Know Me, Megan Abbott. Feeling: This author is really creeped out by female athletes.
  4. The Beautiful Bureaucrat, Helen Phillips. Feeling: That old familiar Kafka dread. This book rekindled my perennial worry that I will be arrested and imprisoned for a crime I did not commit.

Speaking of books, I had to mute some dumbshit on my Facebook because of eight million memes about BOOKS and how WONDERFUL it is for INTROVERTS to be SURROUNDED BY BOOKS and TOO MANY BOOKS? I THINK YOU MEAN NOT ENOUGH BOOKSHELVES oh ho ho wow you’re so literary. And fetishistic. And annoying. I love reading, I don’t love books.  When you gather them around yourself like a dragon with gold, I have to wonder what the goal is.

The “I’m great because I read so much” thing is also an irritant. I have definitely used reading as a way to escape emotions, responsibilities, exercise, and other pursuits. People will give a pass to the person sequestered with a book and shame the person who is on the sixth hour of a Netflix binge. Of course content matters, but just because my drug of choice is usually New York Times-reviewed literary fiction doesn’t make me less of an abuser.

NOT SURE ABOUT THAT

I passed a 7-11 yesterday with a sign in the window advertising a $1.99 chicken sandwich. Here is the sign.

chicken guaranteed

“Awesomeness guaranteed.” You can go back after consuming the sandwich and say, “Excuse me. That was not awesome.” And the clerk will…make it awesome? Hmmm. It’s complicated. They didn’t say, “Satisfaction guaranteed.” Just awesomeness. Maybe the problem is your perception, man. Maybe you’ve become cynical and nothing is awesome anymore. Maybe your standards are too high.

Time out for a rewatch of Eddie Izzard and the devaluing of “awesome.”

SOCIAL FUNCTION

My kid has been having lots of friends over, and we’ve got the basement all fixed up with television, video games, dartboard, etc. I stay out of the way because the decibel level is not to be believed, but sometimes I have to be down there for laundry or getting beer out of the fridge. (Porque no los dos?)

There was a mixed group of teens down there and I happened to overhear a kid say to Nora something like, “your mom is not like most moms, though” and I had to yell into the games room, “Oh I am EXACTLY like most moms, buddy.” (To much hilarity, of course. Although with that group everything provokes much hilarity. Easy crowd.)

I have no real idea what that kid meant, but I thought I should shut it down just in case. Speaking of not like other moms, every time there are kids in our basement I am reminded of being a freshman in high school and this guy Dean. As a freshman I had a small part in the main school play (I was the younger sister in Our Town, who delivers the creepy and semi-autistic speech about “the Earth, the solar system, the universe…the MIND OF GOD”) and so started hanging out with some older kids, and we sometimes ended up at Dean’s house. His mom was either on some good drugs or just generally sort of wack. We wouldn’t see any trace of her whatsoever (no dad around either, and Dean was an only child so it was like visiting some odd bachelor pad) and then suddenly she’d show up downstairs with a tray of honest-to-god 1960s-throwback hors d’oeuvres. For a bunch of high school kids. “I brought you some angels on horseback!” Uh, okay. Thank you for the bacon-wrapped oysters, Mrs. W! One time she brought down a whole punch bowl complete with fruit-filled ice ring, crystal cups, and a ladle.

So I might not be like other moms, but I’m not like Mrs. W. either. We have microwave popcorn and ginger ale and I’m usually down for ordering pizza if it’s an actual meal time. Go nuts.

—mimi smartypants is a pig in a blanket.