non-dairy beverage
My department had an early Halloween party. They always try to have a costume theme, and this year it was “Come As You’re Not.” Isn’t that called…wearing a costume? Very few among us actually are princesses or zombies or sexy pirates.
ESCALATION OF HOSTILITIES
Nora is playing a computer game, one of those weird time-management things where you have to run a farm or serve virtual pizza or something. She likes to be in charge of stuff.
Me: I’m going to go take a shower.
Nora: Do you want me to play you some music while you shower?
Me: Uh, okay.
Upstairs I am naked and washing while outside the shower curtain Nora is hammering out beats on her little DJ machine. I refrain from funk dancing because of the slip-and-fall factor, but from the thumps and shuffles I can hear that Nora is doing her spider-having-a-seizure breakdance thing. Then she starts seriously messing with the beats, so they get all stuttery and arrhythmic, and things get surreal:
Nora: Mommy! You are in the army!
Me: …
Nora: You are going to a WAR!
Me: Okay…
Nora: Wow, SO MUCH BLOOD!
Me: Oh.
Nora [changing her beats to something more old-skool hip-hop] Okay, war is over. You won! It’s a party! Go ahead and dance!
Me: Well, I like that better than a war.
Nora: There was no food at the party, and people are getting mad. [starts distorting her beats again.] OH NO! ANOTHER WAR!
All you political science majors best step off, because Nora has got this one covered. (Although if you loosely interpret “no food at the party,” it really does turn out to be the root cause of many wars.)
BY REQUEST
Email from a lovely stranger says this:
I tend to click on the little links* you provide in your posts, and today I found this:
“I once helped a friend spraypaint a pig carcass, which very nearly resulted in his arrest by the FBI”
Please tell me that you told this story somewhere. For the love of all that is holy.
*By this she means the times I link to other posts of mine, which always feels stupid and masturbatory when I do it, but on the other hand it seems equally arrogant to always assume you know what I’m talking about. The pig-carcass story was referenced here, but I don’t think I ever did explain. Well why not now! It’s No-Delete Thursday and I’m in a typing mood!
I attended a middle-of-the-prairie small liberal arts college that tolerated a lot of shenanigans. But as it turned out, they had their limits!
My friend Martin was an art major, often specializing in strange confrontational performances accompanied by terrifying distorted noises. He and I once performed a death-metal song at an open mic about the gross cafeteria cake, with him on guitar and me on Cookie-Monster vocals. (I could barely talk for days afterwards. How do those guys do it?) Some group had a pig roast out in the country, and Martin begged for the leftover carcass and was gifted with such, and managed to scam a ride from someone with a pickup truck to get the thing back to campus. I like picturing Martin riding in the back of a truck along with a huge slab of pig torso, enjoying the crisp Midwestern night. Anyway, he asked me for help with the project and of course I agreed, so way after midnight I found myself out in a remote campus field, helping him hang the pig carcass from a tree and spray-paint it all different colors, with symbols and random words too. We also set up some lanterns around it in the grass, and tacked pieces of paper to other trees with more rambling stream-of-consciousness manifestos about death and decay and blah blah.
The next day I heard that Martin had been called down to the Dean’s office, and had spent part of the day being questioned by the FBI. Someone had seen the tableau and freaked out, called the cops, who also freaked out and called someone on a “cult crimes” or “satanic rituals” task force (seriously) and whatever podunk FBI office existed in that part of the country sent someone down to talk to Martin. Very shortly they found out that he was an art major, and I heard that they kept wearily asking him, “Was this art? If it was art, kid, just say so.” And Martin (being Martin) was all performance-artist agitated and, reluctant to have his statement dismissed on the basis of “art,” kept yelling things like, “No! It was meant to UPSET YOU!” Also, he misguidedly did not bring my name into it, so I could not be the cute little white college girl who admits that yeah, it was art, and thus the whole thing took a lot longer than it needed to take. No one got in any permanent trouble though, and I guess some groundskeeper hauled away the pig carcass on a golf cart, which is something I would have liked to have seen.
VIDEO TIME
Kraftwurst.
Metal as fuck.
Life is short, man.
This turns it into a happy tune!
You wouldn’t want pure white. That would be disturbing.
Not your usual cute-kid song.
FREE, TONIGHT, AT YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE
I sure as hell don’t want to turn this into a dream blog or anything, but I am dedicated to recording the dreams I have that are related to business or entrepreneurial ventures, such as Presidential Shampoo, earthquake spray, or Gaia Walrus. In the latest installment I was a book publicist, and I was very busy putting together a book tour for the autobiography of Adam Podlesh. He is the current punter for the Chicago Bears, and in my waking life I don’t ever think about him. But asleep, I was working hard on promoting his book, which had the unfortunate title of PODLESH PODLESH. I can even remember the cover: both Podlesh-es were stacked on top of each other in a giant heavy font like so:
PODLESH
PODLESH
I remember thinking the title was unfortunate, and since the book was clearly ghostwritten* I wondered why the writer didn’t think of a better one, but in the dream I was a plucky little publicist and was going to hype the hell out of the book despite these obstacles.
*I typed this on No-Delete Thursday and then worried that without a disclaimer Adam Podlesh would read this and infer that I think he’s stupid. I am sure you are perfectly capable of writing your own autobiography, Adam Podlesh, although I’m not quite as sure that anyone wants to read it. (Oh shit! I did it again! Adam Podlesh is going to come kick me with his giant leg!)
—mimi smartypants signaled for a fair catch.