crisp, teetering remains
COMMERCE
We had a garage sale. It was all Nora’s idea and she worked seriously hard at cleaning out her room and toy bins, plus she helped me drag all the shit out to the yard and sat out there all day, making change and hawking her old comic books and Bakugan. So I split the proceeds with her despite having a brief 1950s-dad moment of EXCUSE ME YOUNG LADY JUST ABOUT ALL OF THAT WAS BOUGHT WITH MY PAYCHECK. She is thrilled, and will no doubt hoard her new cash for approximately forever. She’s pretty good with money right now. Long may it last.
Now this week Nora is at a day camp and I am spending a lot of that easily-earned cash on random takeout foods. I feel like the cliché working mom all of a sudden, because camp goes until 5 pm and it’s near work, so I’m stuck hanging around work until 5 pm even though I could theoretically leave earlier, and then I get Nora and we start the transit trek home, and oh crud now it’s after 6 and we all need to eat and bathe. And the cats want food, and laundry wants washing, and some of us need to eat our popsicles and watch our allotted half-hour of How It’s Made and go to bed. Others of us need to play Steam-downloaded video games, and still others of us need to pour some wine and try to read 3 measly chapters of a book before falling asleep. Ahem.
However, camp is only a week and then I will be back to charmed-life status, where my work and my Nora duties do not intersect quite so much and Nora parties with Grandma until I get home to start dinner in an organized, leisurely fashion. Okay I am a fucking lame-ass old person when meal planning takes up this much head space, help me help me help. Time for some gangsta rap, the cure for what ails me!
STILL CONFUSED BY CURTIS JAMES JACKSON
I finally got over my “In Da Club” obsession, and then I had to go and hear the following. Honestly I think 50 Cent is kind of a shitty rapper, but all his stuff sticks in your head and goes around and around until you write a stupid blog post about it. We will start with the baffling chorus:
I got places to go, I got people to see,
The penitentiary, ain’t the place for me,
I’m warning you do, not tempt me,
I’ll run up and squeeze
And put a hole in you, hole in you
This is a very odd series of statements.
(a) I’m a busy man.
(b) I do not want to be incarcerated, as that would limit my freedom.
(c) Do not aggravate me, or I will shoot you.
Statement (b) follows (a), certainly, but I don’t see what (c) has to do with anything. Except maybe that not shooting people would be a GREAT starting point for Operation Stay Out Of Prison!
The best part of the whole song:
Picture a perfect picture, picture me in the pimp hat
Okay.
Picture me starting shit, picture me busting my gat,
Uh-uh, Fifty! Remember your chorus!
Picture police mad they ain’t got a picture of that,
Photographic evidence would indeed be a slam-dunk in court, but people have been known to prosecute shootings without it.
Picture me being broke, picture me smoking a sack,
Picture me coming up, picture me rich from rap,
Picture me blowing up, now picture me going back,
To my momma basement to live, shit, picture that,
This is actually kind of poignant, even if it seems to skip a few steps. Poor, enjoying marijuana, a rising star, a millionaire! Famous! Oh whoops, homeless and staying with family. I’d like to know more!
Where I’m from it’s a fact, you gotta watch your back,
You wear a vest without a gat, use a target jack,
Hustle hard, money stack, sell that dope, sell that crack,
Sell that pack, sell that gat, sell that pussy, holla back
Entrepreneurship.
50 Cent, too much henny, man I’m bent, I’m outta here
Best way ever to end a lyric—say your name, say what you’ve been drinking, say it’s time to go.
—mimi smartypants, Trader Joe’s big box red, peace out.