brighter than nothing, smarter than nobody
ELEPHANT VERISIMILITUDE
I was walking to work behind a woman wearing a blouse that had tiny little elephants, linked up by their trunks, printed all over it. The blouse was cream with tiny black elephants and I was idly admiring and coveting it. After years and years of never wearing any sort of printed fabric I am now becoming elderly, and thus starting to like some whimsical shit. (As long as the whimsical shit is subtle. Don’t worry, giant screen-printed cat-face sweatshirts are not in my future.) But when I looked closer the print was in groups of three trunk-linked elephants; two regular-sized elephants with a baby elephant at the back. And that’s when I knew that I would never wear this whimsical blouse, no matter how original and adorable its print, because the baby doesn’t go at the back! For fuck’s sake! Elephant moms and aunties are responsible and caring and would be keeping that baby safe, right in the middle. So this printed fabric somehow made all the way through the design process without anyone correcting the ELEPHANT ERROR, just like Elaine’s sexual fantasy made it all the way through her brain and out onto her word processor and into the mail without anyone correcting the GORILLA PENIS ERROR. Shameful. I sentence everyone involved to a reeducation camp with Nat Geo and Wikipedia and 24/7 lectures by leading zoologists.
DEPRESSING RAP CONCERTS
Tonight at Dad’s House: DJ Custody raps his hit “Can’t Divorce The Beat.” A Grown Apart Joint, presented by Frozen Pizza Productions.
MC Assisted Suicide headlines the PASS THE MORPHINE party! DJ Hippocratic spins, the 2 Ethical Crew will perform. Cash bar. Tonight at Final Exit, 224 Advance Directive St, Portland, Oregon.
Macular D-Generation, Glaukkkoma, and Diabetik RetinOPathy, one night only on the Can’t See Shit World Tour. Service animals are welcome.
GIRLS’ NIGHT IN
LT has been on a business trip to Mexico* for a few days, which means that Nora and I eat dinner in the kitchen with books in front of our faces like feral (but literate) animals, and also that I allow her to sleep in my bed. Between all the extra stuffed animals and her unconscious cuddling, it’s more crowded in there now than it is with my husband. It has not been terribly restful, although it is intriguing to me to witness how quickly she falls asleep each night. From chatting to snoring in five minutes flat. I could not fall asleep that fast if you hit me on the head.
*(Doesn’t this sound suspicious? “In Mexico for business.” In Mexico for tequila and crystal meth, you mean? I thought he should have shown up in full racist serape and sombrero—I even offered to buy him one of those awesome bullet belts—but he declined.)
THINGS I LIKE RIGHT NOW
- The Wikipedia entry for “Crosseyed and Painless.” “The lyrics discuss a paranoid and alienated man who feels he is stressed by his urban surroundings.” OH REALLY? PERHAPS WE ARE DISCUSSING A TALKING HEADS SONG? However, I could have done without knowing that “Crosseyed and Painless is played very often at Phish concerts.” Well make them stop! Because that is wrongity wrong wrong wrong wrong.
- Hint Water, in the pomegranate flavor.
- A book called The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson. If you like Hitchcock/Highsmith-type murder stuff, it is a pretty decent read. Plus it is like 2 bucks right now for Kindle (or at least it was when I bought it).
- Using a lot of It’s Always Sunny… quotes at work. Here are the most useful ones so far for business purposes:
- Well, maybe it boils down to this, smart guy: Computers are for losers.
- I’m cracking eggs of wisdom!
- Ha, so listen, first let me apologize for never calling you back, ever.
OTHER THINGS, NOT SO MUCH
- Nora made me watch “America’s Got Talent” on one of these girls’ nights and holy hell, what an utter mountain of suck. She mostly likes to make fun of it but it’s too bad even for that. The only redeeming moment was Neil Patrick Harris saying, “I didn’t like that act, I don’t like weird things” while making a cup of tea, and dipping the teabag directly in his mouth immediately after, and then me falling off the couch with the giggles while Nora asked me why that was funny. I did not explain.
- Also Nora: she has hockey camp all week, which means that every night there is a laundry pile of sweat-wicking base layers and compression shorts and disgusting socks. It looks like a locker room destroyed by a tornado in my entryway. It’s not really worth picking up each night since it all starts again the next morning. Oh hockey.
- We refinished the guest room (ripped out the disgusting carpet, sanded the wood floors, put up curtains), and I want a rug in there but cannot find one I like. Oh fancypants white-girl problems! Why don’t I employ some miserable poverty-stricken child to hand-knot one for me, that would make the whiny privilege-fest complete.
—mimi smartypants sets one bitch on fire and everyone freaks out.