like a tongue probing broken teeth
ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN, TEN BEING THE BEST
- Schubert's “Death and the Maiden” Quartet: 8.5
- The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore: Started out around 7, declining somewhat after the first four chapters (interesting ideas but repetitive prose)
- Not getting any response to my many e-mails (my lost, lonely words): 1
- The weather: 5 (I don't mind the chilliness, but the lack of sun is starting to get even this dark girl down)
- The weird and delightful phenomenon of no one getting on the bus after me this morning, and that we hit every single green light, so that the bus cruised along at this semi-slow constant speed like a ride at Epcot Center (The Wonders Of Devon Avenue!): 9
- Package design for Williams Mug Shaving Soap: 10
THINGS YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH/TOO MANY OF
- underwear
- office supplies
- champagne
- mail, whether real or e-, that is neither bills nor farm porn spam but rather communicative interestingness from people who care about you
- books about melancholy
- types of tea
In my office there is this alcove/hallway area, where various business machines live, such as a photocopier, a fax machine, and a paper shredder. I am quite pleased that I happen to work on the floor with the shredder, because it is fun to shred things. Apparently some other department thinks it is fun to shred things too, or maybe they think oh god it's absolutely fucking necessary to shred things, NOW, quickly quickly, before the Feds get here, because two different times I walked through and there was someone patiently but steadily shredding stuff, and in fact she had swapped out the shredder receptacle for one of those cardboard dumpster-on-wheels things, and by the looks of her stacks of paper there was much more shredding left to do. It is probably just spring cleaning but it is much more exciting to imagine some sort of scandal, and to imagine myself getting subpoenaed to tell what I saw, and then because I want to keep my job I would get to Reagan-esquely say “I don't recall” over and over again.
MAMBO-VOODOO PARTIES!
“Sinful Pleasure…was John's way of answering any problem. If Sheila—the married woman he had made love to—took him once in a mad passion and then cast him out, then he would find other women…other sinful and anxious wantons who would gratify his desires for a warm body next to his own. Even if it meant getting involved with the twisted abnormals who held the wild mambo-voodoo parties, where color of skin or nature of desire meant nothing…even to the point of possessing the lowest tramps, the most frightened innocent women- the most willing, the most unwilling. Any experience was fine, as long as it fulfilled the- Urge To Sin!
—from Girl Takers by Don Holliday, back cover
YOU POOR THING
THEY TRADED IN TORTURED FLESH! Our chain gang camp was across the road from the women's prison farm…enough said? The guards were the pimps, the matrons were the madams…and vice versa. And I, Jimmy Doyle, was in the middle—the helpless sex slave of a band of insatiable, man-devouring nymphomaniacs!”
—from I Was A Chain Gang Love Slave by John Denton, back cover
More purple prose from 1970s sex books can be found here.
PERFECTLY POISED
This morning I decided to try and do everything with style and grace, to dance my way through the day, to add a little extra flourish to everything I did. The results were mixed.
1. I cha-cha-cha'd my way through the tea-making ritual this morning, and then abruptly changed ethnicities and did a little Afghani-style ululating while swinging the teabag over my head like some miniature medieval weapon. Of course teabags are not meant to be used in this manner, so the teabag ripped away from its string and went skittering off to an unseen corner of the kitchen, and I gave up looking for it and used a fresh one, which turned out to be a good thing since it had landed in the catbox.
2. During the underwear-removing pre-shower process, I slid it down around one ankle and then did a fancy Rockette-style kick to try and aim the underwear toward the laundry basket. My underwear achieved impressive height but it was not terribly accurate. It was a like a surface-to-air missile, only machine-washable and decorated with flowers.
3. I clipped my work ID to the edge of my shirt, on the side, since I had no pockets today and I cannot stand the idea of wearing the thing around my neck, it makes me feel like I am the resident of a halfway house or a beloved pet. Continuing with today's theme of doing everything extra-fancy, I discovered I could face the door-opening card-reader gadget and sort of rub my hip up on it and the door would open. I gave this up after I misjudged the distance and had to try it three or four times, and realized that to a casual observer it looked like I was humping the door handle. WHICH I WASN'T OKAY NO MATTER WHAT YOU MAY HAVE HEARD.
So much for grace and style, I think I will stick to being a complete spazmosaurus since that is how it seems to work out anyway.
HELLO EVERYBODY HELLO HELLO
Here are the last few things I wanted to tell you about before I zoom off into the stratosphere (not literally):
- how and why I find Zen Buddhism to be just about the least satisfying set of religious/philosophical beliefs ever
- how I just learned how to make bulleted lists in HTML
- how I dreamed that the letter B had a tail just like the letter Q
- how good LT's minestrone is
- how I often find Laurie Anderson kind of overly “deep” and precious BUT
- how awesome the lyrics to the Walter Benjamin song are.
—mimi smartypants flies on the weirdest wings.