a photo of a photo of the floor
ISN’T THAT SPECIAL
Please enjoy this description of a lesion’s texture from a medical article: “a pendulous hyperpigmented lesion with a ridged bag-of-worms texture on palpation.”
DOING ALL THE THINGS
It is October, and everyone seems excited about it. Since I last posted anything, I have seen four movies in the theater, been to three rock shows, played a lot of Scrabble, met two owls at a “meet some owls” event, and taken a free trial jiu jitsu class. That last thing was under a fair amount of peer pressure. My friend was like “do this with me” and I was like “ohhhhh I don’t know I could break all my elderly bones and also that sounds like an awful lot of touching people.” It’s a grappling sport! Oh my god! I can sort of get behind kicking sports, punching sports, and stabbing sports (are there stabbing sports? fencing, kind of) but I am less sure about having a stranger breathe and sweat all over me.
HOWEVER! When I propose “do this with me” to my friends, I want them to say yes more often than they say no, so I said yes. Jiu jitsu was a little weird and awkward and everything smelled like the inside of a hockey bag, but it was not the worst “let’s try it” experience I have ever said yes to.* My friend and I were the only two women in the class so we mostly wrestled and pinned each other. The instructor was a serious guy who, when I asked if his explanation of a foot/elbow placement was similar to a Turkish get-up said (with extreme solemnity), “It is very cool that you know that.” Uh, okay.
*That honor goes to aerial silks, which was just hideous. Trapeze at least involves the neurological fun of swinging but aerial silks is just crawling around like a sexy monkey on a dirty piece of fabric. I hated EVERY SECOND.
I do not think I’ll be going back to jiu jitsu, though.
My rock shows were all very good, particularly Automatic and Cusp at the standard sardine-can little rock venues, and for a completely different experience I also went to see The Dream Syndicate at a seated venue. I might have been one of the youngest people there. It is weird because I don’t think of The Dream Syndicate as being THAT much before my time but then they mentioned playing a show in 1984 and I was like oh yeah, I was not going to shows in 1984.
In trying mentally to pinpoint what grade I was in 1984 I was rewarded with this memory. I had an annoying teacher that year, and I got caught passing a note. He took the note and told me to see him after class, and when I did he had my note and the dictionary. In the note I had referred to him as a “petty bureaucrat” and that stupid teacher made me look up “petty” and “bureaucrat” and read both definitions out loud to him. Then he asked, “Does that sound like me?” and I said “yes,” because otherwise I wouldn’t have written it? Then no one really knew what to say so he let me go to lunch.
—mimi smarytpants: dope on the floor and magic on the mic.