October 31, 2005
Bottle up and explode
Part of the city exploded about an hour ago, and if that sounds dramatic, well, it was. I'm used to hearing loud street noises from high up here in my nine-storey tower of an office, so I didn't look up at the first boom, but then as people around me started making shock-talk I glanced up to notice that a square of city in the distance was on fire. My boss postulated that the fire was in the general area of a large gas station, so that might explain the subsequent explosions and shooting flames. There was a column of smoke leaning on its elbow over half the city, looking like a bored djinn. Or like a column of smoke, since really this was dramatic enough without adding metaphors.
I took a few pictures with the crappy office camera of the smoke, but am as yet unable to load them onto the computer. (Curse you, admin privileges!) Hopefully I'll have some soon, but by then this thing will have hit the press. Now that the smoke has gone the reporters have arrived; I can see a news helicopter circling the area, no doubt painting a useless verbal picture for the folks at home of what was there just a minute ago -- a picture not unlike this blog entry.
Update: The AP is just a leetle quicker than me, but not by much. I keep my finger on the pulse around here.
Posted by didofoot at 04:12 PM | Comments (6)
October 20, 2005
The first missed connection I've ever posted
Don't get mad, get Craigslist.
Posted by didofoot at 09:24 AM | Comments (5)
October 19, 2005
"Say banana!" "Bananar."
Our new FedEx guy at work sounds like the fifth Beatle. "My goodness," I said to him when we met, "your vowels certainly are long!"
"Loo-ah-ung?" he said.
Because he's also a comely fellow of many tattoos, I have taken to sexually harrassing him in a way which is only possible with someone with an accent. "When I coomb he-ah, I want you wee-ay-uh-tin' at the doo-ah-r for me with a cuppa tea anna scone," he told me.
"Say scone again!" I shrieked like a harpy, transported with excitement. "And take off your shirt!"
Today we talked about how the U.S. is getting worse and worse, with the guns and the mee-ay-nee-acs. "I'd like t'find a smoo-ahll island t'roon off to," he told me. I suggested England, but apparently that was not what he had in mind.
In other news, you'll all be interested to hear that the Lad and I have been seriously talking about having a baby. I've really been wanting one for the past couple of hours, so we shot a few emails back and forth on the subject. This might have something to do with niece Allegra's recent charming and drooly visit (she's a gummer of other peoples' knuckles, a ridiculously adorable habit which I hope she abandons before she enters the workforce). Or it might be because I've been playing Yoshi's Island nonstop on SNES lately, and taking care of infant Mario is casting a little shadow onto my biological sundial. So far the Lad is holding firm against my lifelong desire for a child of my womb and he says we can't get a turtle either so I don't really know why I even stay in this relationship.
I asked the FedEx guy if he wanted to have a baby with me, and I'm pretty sure his answer, hiding behind a forest of vowels, was in the affirmative. So at least I've always got that to fall back on.
Posted by didofoot at 04:13 PM | Comments (19)
October 13, 2005
Princess Toadstool and the world of letters
Litquake is happening this week. For those of you who did not, like me, stumble across this in the paper yesterday while waiting for the nice girl to toast your bagel, Litquake is an annual week-long celebration of (I think) local writers. Lots of readings and so forth. I checked out the website today and was shocked. How is it possible that in a list of a hundred names I only recognized five of them? And the five I recognized are dead! (How they wound up on the list is anyone's guess. Maybe it's a metaphor of some kind.) Jack Kerouac: dead. Jack London: dead. Alan Ginsberg: dead. Gertrude Stein: dead. Amy Tan: dead to me.
I would like to be the sort of person who is up to date on the local literary scene but the truth is most of my knowledge is centered on 19th century England. If it has rigidly-defined morals, rigidly-constructed undergarments and was written before the invention of sex, you will find it on my shelf. If it contains a drug stronger than willowbark tea, a woman stronger than Princess Toadstool* or language stronger than "dashed shame," I have never read it.
This is partly because reading Jane Austen can make even my life seem interesting by comparison. But no longer. Though I am not shallow enough to believe that my new bangs will change your life, my reader, I am just shallow enough that they have completely changed mine. Can you imagine me storming my way through Litquake now? "Who is the beautiful girl with the ridiculously hip haircut," people will be asking each other, "and how can she see with one eye entirely covered in bangs?" As I wind through the crowds like a sinuous sheepdog, blowing a kiss to Dave Eggers and snubbing Amy Tan, authors will fall before my flat glance like wheat stalks before the reaper. Before you know it, I will surely find myself with a publishing contract from some stray editor too maddened by my cyclopsian grandeur to think clearly. I will be queen of the literary world before the evening is over.
Or anyway, that's how it would go, except tonight I have to attend my Literature class where everyone will be watching a movie. I, as usual, will mostly just be watching my bangs.
*That is, the Princess Toadstool of Super Mario I who was constantly needing to be rescued. The Princess Toadstool of Super Mario II was a kickass female and the best character to play, except in that one level where you need Luigi to jump really high so you can warp.
Posted by didofoot at 10:50 AM | Comments (10)
