who made this mess
CAUSE AND EFFECT
Wine: I will talk, a lot, in looping recursive swirls. Is it Too Much Wine? Is it a good, “serious” red wine? Are you a girl with whom I have chemistry? Then we will probably make out at some point.
Beer: I will talk, a lot, straightforwardly and maybe even a tad aggressively. I might want to talk about football. My musical tastes will devolve toward the fist-pumping hard-rock end of the spectrum.
Tequila: It’s been years, but let’s just say that the Achewood quote WOAH I AM SO NOT AFRAID OF THE POLICE RIGHT NOW fits the situation well.
Gin (summertime only): I will wear a hat and have sensible grown-up conversation with you, right up until I go indoors to “rest my eyes” and wake up sometime the next day.
LSD: Again, it’s been years. But I will have big round anime eyes and scuttle about like a woodland creature. I will carry talismanic objects and look up at the sky a lot. I will probably want to wear something with a hood, to protect my skull.
Marijuana: I will think about Substances in general and mentally make this very list. I will consider whether it is “worth it” to write it down, knowing if I don’t I will completely forget it. But maybe it’s best forgotten, where do I get off thinking that my every thought is worthy of black-and-white type. I will think about how all human effort is faintly ridiculous. I will tell myself not to go down THAT path, as it ultimately leads to despair, manifested as staying in bed all day and reading Philip Larkin poems.
I will make really bizarre faces at myself while brushing my teeth.
I will have weird matryoshka-doll language ideas like the following:
A good line for a poem, she thought
Would be a good line for a poem
She thought
As image image blah blah something something poetic goes here
I will have nothing further than that because it’s really more of a clever cryptic crossword than an idea with any real substance or point.
OTHER STUFF
1. As I was walking up Kimball I passed two fauxhawked Asian teens and one was saying to the other, “Totally. I mean, Donald Rumsfeld, man.” I wish I had heard the beginning of that conversation.
2. Nora and her new short hair had a first instance of other people’s gender normativity the other day, when some seventh-grade girls told her she must be in the wrong bathroom. I felt weirdly outraged on her behalf but kept my cool, because I don’t like telling her how to feel about stuff.
Me: What did you say?
Nora: I just told them, “No, I’m a girl.” Then they started whispering.
Me [getting slightly steamed]: Did that bug you?
Nora: No. They were probably whispering because they were embarrassed to have made a mistake.
I somewhat doubt that interpretation, but Nora seems wholly unflappable at the prospect of anyone’s confusion, wholly certain of her girlhood, and wholly in love with her short hair. Long may she continue to rock.
3. Shag carpeting, skin-and-bone hipsters with terrible haircuts, and basement paneling are nowhere on my list of turn-ons, and yet there’s this guy dancing. Um. Meow.
4. My new humidifier occasionally makes a gurgling noise that sounds exactly like a cat barfing. This has been the cause of many a startled awakening.
5. I have started using straight jojoba oil as a facial moisturizer. This hippie move was brought about by a combination of practicality (serious dry skin) and woo (medium-level freakout about toxic chemicals). It works really well and my skin has never been happier, but it is still hard to get over the weirdness of smearing oil directly on my face, after years of brainwashing by the cosmetics industry and beauty magazines about how oil on one’s face is the worst thing ever.
6. Oil on one’s face is not the worst thing ever. The worst thing ever is currently sitting in my basement refrigerator. Nora’s science-fair project required the purchase of LARD. I have no idea what to do with the rest of the lard, as I am hardly going to cook with it. I don’t even know how to dispose of it! Does the food pantry want lard? Would it wreck the garbage disposal to put it down there?
So if you do anti-vegan or Karen-Finley-style performance art, want to run around screaming “The Power of Lard” while holding actual lard aloft, or want to make a lot of really rich pie crust, I can hook you up.
—mimi smartypants wants nothing to do with it.