a wraith in the night sky
TOO MANY LINKS SPOILS THE JOURNAL BUT WHO GIVES A RAT'S ASS?
Martin Luther hates women, snakes, monkeys, and Jews. Martin Luther can bite me.
The only reason I was merrily prancing about in Martin Luther cyberspace is that I am still on the gummi worm kick (if you sliced open my carotid artery bright-colored gelatin would ooze out), and I realized today that I have managed to have this little obsessive candy jag without once making a Diet of Worms joke. METATEXTUAL JOKES ARE BETTER ANYWAY. HA HA OR SHOULD I SAY: LAUGHTER.
This parody of “Like A Virgin” made me laugh and made my toast taste even better, which is pretty amazing because I really like toast.
Although I can't help him or her out with photos or first-person description, I do feel a special kinship with the person who was searching the internet for the Incredible Hulk's penis. I don't know why.
“A state of well-being that edges over into boredom” is a perfect description of the desire to consume. I didn't like James Twitchell's book but this article makes some good points: particularly the one that no matter how sick and disturbed the relentless pursuit of name-brand consumer goods makes you (and it makes me pretty sick and disturbed), consumers are not as stupid as some economists or cultural critics would have you believe. People don't really think Nike sneakers are better at performing the function of shoes than generic sneakers. They pay for the branding, the advertising, the extra bit of coolness, and they are well aware of that.
I would love for someone to dissect the reverse opulence that occurs in people like me and my friends: that of competing to see how little you can pay for something. If someone says they like my shoes, I feel compelled to mention that they were $5 at the thrift store. If someone asks LT what kind of car he has, he never just says, “a Saturn” but “a seven-year-old Saturn” and will probably add that we bought it used and mostly only drive on the weekends. Why does this happen? Is it a stupid college-educated bourgeois guilt thing? Can you imagine some suburban striver with children ever bragging about how cheap their clothing is? Really, it's just as stupid as letting everyone know that something you own was very expensive, and I want to break myself of this habit. (I am so strict with myself it's insane. I should develop an eating disorder or join a convent just so my oodles of self-discipline don't go to waste.)
MY SAD LITTLE GIGGLE FOR THE DAY
When I came back from lunch there was a huge backlog of salesmen at the lobby desk, around five guys with sharp suits and audiovisual equipment and sample cases, and because the sign-in process for visitors is quite tedious in my building, I got to watch all their little salesmen heads swivel around and gaze at me longingly as I breezed in just by flashing my employee badge. It nearly made me laugh out loud. Mimi Smartypants: Behind The Velvet Rope.
HUGGA HUGGA BOOM BOOM CLICK
Here's a way to make Sunday night less painful: get out of the house. Last night LT and I went to a documentary about the human beatbox. Now I'm driving everyone nuts with my sad attempts at beatboxing. So far though I can only make two sounds, the very-'80s Fat Boys hyperventilation thing, and the standard boomboom-spit-badoombadoom-spit. It is a good movie, worth seeing if you get a chance. I have no idea how those guys were doing some of the stuff they were doing: it bordered on that creepy Tuva throat-singing at times, only in a hip-hop way of course. Afterwards we walked up Clark and had some late-night sushi, and then some more late-night sushi. I think the waitress was a little annoyed that we ordered twice but hey, we were hungry people.
DAMN
There's a shrine to Dionysus (who was an academic interest of mine as an imaginative little Classics major—I'm so freaking predictable sometimes) near Delos that used to have this huge erect penis on it. Only the testicles are left, but you can get some idea of the scale from this photo. It is kind of weird that Dionysus/Bacchus is always about sexual excess and yet in mythology he is only mentioned once as having any particular sex for himself, with Ariadne. Isn't that interesting? (No, you say. Show us more giant penises.)
—mimi smartypants holds out her plate for a second helping of inertia.