July 29, 2005
A Didofoot was pricking on the plaine...
I bought my books for my fall classes today, so now I'm a little nervous. For half of my swan song at State I'll be taking "The Structure of Language," a course the English department chairman actually warned me away from. "It's a syntax course," he said doubtfully. What, do I have a big neon sign on me saying SYNTAX IS MY KRYPTONITE, IF YOU SEE ME WITH SYNTAX PLEASE ALERT THE MOMS? It's true that the last time I took it it caused me to drop out of college and is basically the reason I still have not graduated at 25, but THERE WERE MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES, PEOPLE. I was nineteen. That is a mitigating circumstance if ever I saw one.
I faced the dragon Errours once and only barely escaped with my life. Now I must face the dragon Sin(tax) and probably I will have to die and be reborn to get through it. So if you don't see me much in the fall, it will be because I am dead.
As if facing my deadliest rival weren't enough, I'm also taking the pompously-titled "Literature and Psychology." There's a whole lotta Freud on this menu. I've never read Freud and never wanted to, contenting myself with making fun of his ideas as best I misunderstand them, so I'm not looking forward to getting a big old ladlefull shoved down my throat. Also, I see I will be forced to read Orlando again, which I think will finish me off even if I survive everything else.
What I am saying is: poop.
Posted by didofoot at 10:34 AM | Comments (11)
July 28, 2005
Tales from the darkest Mission
One of the companies that shares our office is run by a man named Temp. "Were your parents expecting a more permanent child to come along later or something?" I asked, but weirdly he did not think this was very funny.
There is a conference of math teachers meeting here this week and the hipster-looking one told me I always look despondent, except he didn't use that word because he teaches math, not English. I'm dismayed to hear it because I try to give the impression of being a cheerful, slightly vacant girl, which encourages people not to give me too many things to do at one time. Apparently I'm coming off as sullen instead. I had my revenge, though. We got to talking about books and I confessed I am in the middle of yet another volume of Anais. "Anais Nin," he exploded. "That woman couldn't write her way out of a house of cards. She used adjectives like other people use nouns."
"She was my grandmother," I said. For the first time ever, a hipster turned beet.
Posted by didofoot at 04:41 PM | Comments (4)
July 20, 2005
That'll do, pig
I walk around the Mission surrounded by girls shaped like good asparagus. Vegans, the lot of them. Don't they have to be? How else do you achieve that level of fleshlessness? These girls answer the question of who could possibly wear that sack you saw hanging at the back of Goodwill or Anthropologie and make it look good. Instead of a full skeletal structure, they just have one long bone that branches a little into limbs like a tree. A sapling tree. They are skinny, I'm saying.
I have never felt like such a solid girl, filled as I am with meat and cheese. I comfort myself with visions of how thin I will be after a few more months of walking to and from work (not much exercise but still 100% more than I was getting before). I comfort myself with a BBQ bacon cheese burger with extra burger. I comfort myself with the knowledge that I am not actually a rhino except in comparison with these little veggie-munchers.
My hand resting on my stomach doesn't rest on my spine. Maybe it's better to have a little human padding. Maybe it's better to eat a little pig.
Posted by didofoot at 06:11 PM | Comments (6)
July 15, 2005
I just need one anecdote, just to get me through the day
I lost my sense of humor sometime last night. I'm not sure exactly when, but I woke up this morning and it was definitely gone. It's weird because I didn't do much yesterday -- usually this stuff disappears with your cellphone or car keys when you're drunk as a skunk in the Mission. Could it be in my building's laundry room? I looked all over my office but it's certainly not lying around. I even tried calling it but I didn't hear anything (though I might have set it to "vibrate" before I left last night).
The Lad and I are hopping a plane to Seattle tonight to gape at Emily's new sprog so I guess I'll have to live without it this weekend, unless I can get to a Walgreens and pick up a new one. I just hate to buy another when I know mine is sitting around in some perfectly obvious place waiting to be found.
Actually it might be for the best. I was kind of worried they might not let me bring it on the plane. Southwest will usually let you get away with it, but you know, humor terrorists. It would be so easy for someone to paralyze a pilot with spasms of laughter and then take over the plane and crash it into an amusing orifice of Mount Rushmore.* I hear they won't even let Sean or Jason within five miles of an airport these days, the poor bastards.
I guess I've become too dependent on it anyway. I'm finding I can barely get through a day at work without it. Maybe it's time to kick the habit once and for all.
*Which is nowhere near Seattle. Maybe my sense of humor ran off to join my long-missing spatial acuity.
Posted by didofoot at 01:41 PM | Comments (2)
July 14, 2005
Pain in the face
Last night I dreamed I was shot in the tongue. Then the doctor who fixed me up tried to molest me. In both cases, a question of speaking out or not.
There was no pain in the dream when I was tongue-shot, but then I don't remember much pain in real life when I pierced my tongue. Just a sensation akin to the soft give-and-pop of a pencil through taut paper. If we don't remember physical pain once it's over with, then why are we so afraid of it? If it doesn't live in memory, does it count as an experience at all? As with any abstract question, I turn to Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a concrete answer. When Angel had to reverse time to make Buffy forget they'd ever been together, was it easier for her, afterwards? Did it nullify her suffering? (Or use Superman and Lois if you are a classicist, it's the same thing.) Pain creates a vacuum in our experience, a hole we learn to shy away from. But it cannot be said to hurt once it's done hurting--the memory or, let us say, the shadow or the echo is gone--so as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist. All of which is to say, shouldn't I stop being such a baby and just pierce my belly button already?
Posted by didofoot at 11:31 AM | Comments (5)
