The state of things

A telling (albeit slightly disgusting) anecdote:

The other night, I had this dream--not that I remember anything now, only that it was epic and sprawling and I think my friend Sue was in it--and in the middle, I woke up juuuust enough to register that my mouth tasted bad. Really bad. Consistently bad. Like rubber.

And then I realized there was something in my mouth.

And then I realized I was--wait for it--chewing on an EARPLUG. I had taken my right earplug out of my ear, put it in my mouth, and chewed it into pieces. (The left one: still in.)

It's still in bits on my night stand.

Stress eater, meet teeth grinder? In any case, I can't stop giggling about it. When I win my Emmy with a character who wakes up with earplugs in her mouth, you'll know.

...

In other news, today is my last day of work. Last! Day! Of work! What?!

Holy crap.

Strange Fruit, indeed

Instant tears of hilarity, every time.



You can hear the whole essay, along with pieces by Anne Lamott and Sarah Vowell, here.

Everyone's a critic

I went to the library after work the other day. I'm in the middle of something thick and fairly engrossing these days (Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl), so I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I don't even think I was looking for anything in general, really. I just like going to the library, especially the tiny branch by the lake, and especially when it's a sunny day and I can park a few blocks away and walk.

Anyway, I was in the fiction section, trying to balance my own instinct to loiter with the librarian's instinct to close the library and go home, feeling pressured to choose something fast, even though I knew I didn't really need anything to read. I sort of panicked and shifted into search-for-interesting-cover-colors mode, pulling the prettiest books off the shelf as I waited for "last call." And then I opened up a certain book--I don't even remember what, exactly--and a little piece of paper fluttered out of it and onto the floor. I picked it up. It was a note written in blue ink on a little square of plain note paper. "This book is terrible," it said. "Don't bother."

I love this. I mean, I'm not sure how I feel about the unsolicited non-recommendation--it makes me feel like the person who wrote it had just a tiny bit too much time on his or her hands, or is kind of judgmental, or maybe it just really was that bad--but it's like some kind of literary vigilante justice! Zorro for the Oakland Public Library! I wonder, if I were to pick up and shake out all of the other books in the OPL system, how many more notes of this kind (and others, I suppose) I'd find. And are there recommendation notes? If I were to open a copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany, one of those books that pretty much everybody agrees is wonderful and brilliant, would I find a little sheaf of notes telling me I'd made the right choice? Who is that Post-Itted man (or woman)?

Anyway, I put the book back, but now I kind of wish I'd brought it home with me.

To get to the other side

Is my life a Pee-Wee Herman movie?

I was driving up my street this morning, muttering to myself about Monday and morning and sleep and work, when I had to stop. And wait. For a chicken--a rooster, actually--to cross the road.

But...WHY?

You knooooow what I like

Sometimes, I love my Tivo. Currently collected in my "Tivo Suggestions" folder:

- Top Ten Hawaiian Beaches

- Lionheart (starring Jean-Claude Van Damme; "A French Foreign Legion deserter enters a U.S. arena of bare-knuckle brawls run by a woman")

- Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which it records every day and which I delete every day, because my attention span only has eyes for Jon Stewart

- Steak Paradise!

It's like it RECORDS my SOUL.

It really is a place where dreams come true!

To be filed under "Things I Wish I'd Thought of First" and "People I Want to be Friends With":

The Dairi Burger

GENIUS.