the electricity generated by a handy lightning bolt
This has not been my favorite week. There is work sturm und drang that is so stupid I can't even begin to describe it adequately, and that necessitates a lot of closed-door meetings and a lot of me pretending that I am a manager type and a grown-up who has a ghost of a clue about these sorts of things. There is the suggestion, from my very own lawyer, that since his fee will be about $2500 and since he somehow has to talk to approximately a million judges and get the plates from Thieving Ho's ill-gotten Ford Explorer revoked, that perhaps I should just pay the $1300 worth of parking tickets and get my license reinstated that way. (Which is infuriating, because not only then will I be out $1300 that I could have put to much, much better use, but I WILL BE PAYING THE THIEVING HO'S PARKING TICKETS ON A CAR THAT I NEVER OWNED, and that deeply upsets my sense of cosmic justice.)
However, here are some good things.
LIKE THIS
I spent a lot of my morning at the police station, trying to obtain a document that relates to the complicated gumbo that is my life. (My life is full of fish heads and shrimp and okra, didn't you know?) Police make me nervous. Even seeing a police car makes me think “THEY'RE AFTER ME! NO! YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!” So walking into Chicago Police Headquarters at 35th and Michigan I was all jumpy, and convinced that the minute they typed my name into a computer the cops would be all like, “Oh, Mimi Smartypants? You should have been arrested long ago,” and then the cuffs would come out and I'd be plunged into a nightmare world of Kafkaesque bureaucracy and a mock trial. Then I'd be sent to women's prison and forced to wear some skimpy cotton dress, and slutty-looking girls with sexy cropped haircuts and wide kissable mouths and tattoos would fight over the new piece of ass (me), possibly ripping off my clothes in the process, but I'd fight back and win their respect and eventually get the cutest sexiest tattooed girl to bunk with me and be my slave. Yeah. So that's what I'm, uh, afraid will happen if I go to a police station.
The police station itself was not really that anxiety-producing, and the process was surprisingly quick. I was a bit disappointed that the police station was not at all like NYPD Blue or any one of a thousand detective movies, you know, all dark and shadowy with some wisecracking prostitute being manhandled down a hallway by a tough but sensitive cop who doesn't play by the rules. It was more like any old boring government office, but I loved the cashier's desk, which featured a little tiny potted plant. In the dirt of the little tiny potted plant she had inserted a straightened-out coathanger with a handlettered sign affixed to the top that said PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THIS PLANT. I wondered if the plant was aware that it sported such a strangely self-referential sign. And I thought about putting labels all over my own body, like PLEASE DO NOT FONDLE THIS ASS and PLEASE DO NOT STEP ON THIS FOOT. Could be useful for crowded situations.
Here are more scenes from my trip to the south side and back: (1) The totally awesome wig store on State St, just south of Lake, which features hundreds of mannequin heads in the window. Some of them are on rotating platforms so the head in its crazy wig goes around and around with a disco ball sparkling all over it. Rotating Disembodied Wig Head Of Disco! I was transfixed. (2) Getting to see LT in the middle of the day, and having wonderful greasy Thai food for lunch. (3) The amputee panhandler on the State St bridge, who was singing this homemade blues song:
“I-ay-ay-ay ain't got no legs. No no. Oh Lord. I ain't got noooooooo legs. I ain't got no legs. Help me Jesus. No legs. I ain't got no legs at all.”
Call me up and I'll try and sing it for you.
Did you ever live in a gross suburban neighborhood subdivision where all the streets had “theme” names? In my childhood suburb there were several of these—names of Native American tribes, names of trees, and one that was all girls' names. Yawn. I want to design a subdivision where the streets are all sea creatures (Manatee Dr, Jellyfish St, Anemone Ave) or one where they are all biological sex characteristics (Breast Blvd, Penis Pkwy, Testicle Terrace).
Rabbit rabbit reminder system.
One of the cutest pictures ever.
There are a lot of these guys in my neighborhood. One has detailed his car with these gigantic slasher-movie letters so it says “FEAR THIS.” And I'm thinking, Dude, somehow I just don't fear your Nissan.
CRYPTIC NOTE TO MYSELF FOUND ON MY DESK THIS MORNING
R – T – F – M. Naked, failure. (What the hell did I mean by this? Anyone?)
SOME FISTS AND SOME GLOVES
Iron Fist, Velvet Glove
Wooden Fist, Burlap Glove
Titanium Fist, Cashmere Glove
Styrofoam Fist, Tinfoil Glove
Tofu Fist, Polarfleece Glove
I'll stop now.
FUCK YOUR FASCIST DRESS CODE
At work we had some sort of weird thing where you pay a dollar for the privilege of wearing jeans and the money goes to some children's charity. (1) [for fuck's sake here she goes with the numbered lists again] I never read these all-employee e-mail things, because mostly they are not relevant, so I didn't know about this jeans event. (2) I don't even own jeans. I haven't owned jeans since around seventh grade. I am not the denim type. (3) Being pressured to dress down is just as bad as being pressured to dress up. My inner teenager resents those sorts of things very much. (4) I find it very bizarre to equate wearing jeans with underprivileged kids. Can't I just write you a check?
The upshot is, however, is that I show up at work dressed in one of my usual all-black shapeless ensembles (I call this one “Hipster Nun”), instead of jeans, and thus I look like I hate children. People have been commenting all day, “Did you forget we could wear jeans today?” as if it's some amazing, blessed, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I am bitterly and humorlessly refusing to take advantage of. Big whoop, I say. Big. Whoop.
—mimi smartypants sleepwalks towards her doom.