Category: categories

Don’t

To the woman in the locker room who is standing in front of the mirror, completely nude, slowly rubbing gym-supplied hand cream on her breasts:

Weird. Would you stop that? It couldn’t be more disturbing if you were taking fistfuls of the hand cream and shoving them in your mouth. The rest of us are unsure of your objective. Is this sexual? Ritualistic? An excessive devotion to silky-soft skin?

Even the women who are into other women are freaked out. We think it’s the way your eyes look a little dead, though we can’t be sure, because none of us can bring ourselves to look directly at you. All of us are looking near you, above you, next to you, trying to ascertain if you are, in fact, doing what we think you’re doing.

Yes. It seems that you are.

Hm… Well… Are you still doing it?

Yep.

Kay. That’s weird… What about now…?

Yes. Even now, you are still doing it.

We are all pretty sure that this if it’s something you enjoy is something that you should enjoy in the comfort of your own home. Please go there so the rest of us can blow dry our hair. Thank you.

The Wonders of the Human Brain

In the shower, I realized that I remember the entire theme song from Fight Back with David Horowitz.

FIGHT BACK! Don’t let anyone push you around

FIGHT BACK! Stand up and hold your ground.

And so on.

This got me thinking about other useless things that take up space in my brain, and I started humming theme song to Small Wonder, the witless 80s sitcom about a girl-robot, Vicki, whose family tries to keep her robot identity top secret.

Then I wondered if there was any useful stuff up there, which led me to what I remember from an entire year of high school geometry classes:

If a=b, and b=c, then a=c.

If a+b=c, then c-a=b.

Then I thought, Aveda soap smells just like Fruit Loops.

Smell and Envy

By Douglas Goetsch

You nature poets think you’ve got it, hostaged

somewhere in Vermont or Oregon,

so it blooms and withers only for you,

so all you have to do is name it: primrose

and now you’re writing poetry, and now

you ship it off to us, to smell and envy.

But we are made of newspaper and smoke

and we dunk your roses in vats of blue.

Birds don’t call, our pigeons play it close

to the vest. When the moon is full

we hear it in the sirens. The Pleiades

you could probably buy downtown. Gravity

is the receiver on the hook. Mortality

we smell on certain people as they pass.

(via Writer’s Almanac)

Whim

Excerpt from an old Writer’s Almanac:

Short story writer Katherine Mansfield became one of the wildest bohemians in New Zealand. She had affairs with men and women, lived with Aborigines, and published scandalous stories. She moved back to London and lived in the bohemian scene there. At one point, she married a man she barely knew, and left him before the wedding night was over because she couldn’t stand the pink bedspread.

She said, Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare fiddle?

Overheard: Now you Behave

My friend Courtney sent me a conversation. She says:

I was on my way back to the apartment this morning after moving the car and saw a woman dropping her 6-ish-year-old girl off at the bus. I thought you would appreciate their exchange:

“Now, you behave today. You got a problem, you talk to the teacher. No gettin’ in any fights.”

“OK.”

“And no talkin’ back!”

“OK”

“And no hittin’ anybody…”

“OK”

“less they hit you first.”

While You’re Ahead

In search of a portable blender, Josh calls information for REI contact info:

-What city?

-San Francisco.

-Listing?

-REI

-What’s that?

-R-E-I.

-Can you spell that?

-ARR-EEEE-EYE

-Oh! What does that stand for?

-Really egalatarian cicles. (hangs up)