we regret to inform you of an angry duck
SHAMEFUL CONFESSIONS
- I never really liked Husker Du. (This is a fun one to bust out in front of aging, musically “pure,” male former punks. They all look at me like BURN! THE! WITCH!
- I also don’t want to put the umlauts on Husker Du. Deal with it.
- I fell asleep a tiny bit when seeing Black Panther in the theater. What can I say, there were those Dolby recliner seats with the sound-effect rumble deep within. Also some of those fight scenes were very soothing. I was like a baby in a swing.
- Before going to Black Panther, the kid and I were hungry and had some time to kill. We ended up at a Red Robin (this chain is new to me), and I had many dark snobby thoughts about how it was probably the fattest place I’ve ever been. I’m not referring to the people. I’m talking about cliche OMG THOSE GROSS AMERICANS things like overhearing a preschooler order a THIRD refill of a root beer float. Or what happened when we tried to get an order of fries to share, and the waitress said that if we ordered a burger we could get “endless” fries. Excuse me but. If you don’t want a burger, you can’t eat a burger just as an “oh whatever, yeah, give me a burger too”? A hamburger is not an afterthought? No one orders a burger they weren’t planning on just to receive extra fries? But maybe some people do? I don’t know, I get very annoyed by Supersize-Me-style BlahhhhhhEveryoneEatsLargeAmountsOfCrap trend stories, but maybe in some instances people do eat large amounts of crap. (Please keep in mind that for “breakfast” today I had a large iced Americano with mumble extra shots of espresso + 20 peanut M&Ms. The Empress has no clothes!)
- My kid has to read Things Fall Apart for English class and I really do not like that book. I find it kind of impenetrable and dull, which is clearly because of my hegemonic white-lady ways. Or maybe because it’s not that good? Maybe there are better writers from Nigeria, but we read Achebe because that’s what made it into the canon first? And now it’s codified and cemented into a List Of Great Literature just like some other things that are not that great (ahem AHEM COUGH Beowulf ahem ALFRED LORD TENNYSON ahem). One thing I do like, though, is how villagers visit other villagers and bring a kola nut to share. I do not know why that makes me laugh, but it does, and I want to start doing it, with different nuts of course. Hello neighbor Jeanne! I have brought a single cashew, shall we ceremonially partake?
- Horrifying to think about, but this coming summer will probably be the last one before the kid starts spending summer trying to schedule campus visits, look for a job, or do something Significant that will look good to college admissions officers. So besides lovely idle hours of playing guitar and video games, we’ve scheduled some fun hobby stuff too, like woodworking open studio and a metalsmithing class and another week of pottery class, and after I arranged all this I realized that we are basically putting together a Medieval Skills summer camp. We should make some beer and bread while we’re at it. Thresh some grain.
- I started typing this quite a while ago but forgot about it until just now, when I am on a work trip in San Francisco. The meeting is winding down, I should be paying better attention but I paid attention all morning long! I made a presentation and did not die! I have no attention left. When this is done for real am I going to go out and reexplore this wonderful city? No, I think I am going to
- Have a treadmill run
- Go out and buy some beer and some takeout pad thai
- Back to hotel room, pants and bra say bye, Netflix and Twitter say hello
- How are you? I have not provided this kind of insane and pointless content in a while. Mostly because of standard middle-aged Crankiness and overly-dramatic Despair, which are competing for my leisure time along with the usual range of textual and digital delights. I would promise to type and publish more often but you all know that I will do whatever I damn well please.
—mimi smartypants is fake news.