Archive | July, 2009

Dear Record-Breaking Seattle Heat Wave

30 Jul

Dear Record-Breaking Seattle Heat Wave,

Oh, you make me hot. So so hot.

Hot too hot-hot, as my friend Mike would say.

Hot like a dragon is breathing on me and slowly steaming me into a nice soft casserole-pudding, hot like even my always-icy feet are lukewarm to the touch! Hot like I’m in a giant cast-iron pot being stewed, hot like I am a fried egg. In the first few seconds after it comes out of the pan, not when it’s cold and congealed. Oh what I would give to be cold. (Not congealed.)

Actually, I don’t like being cold either. I like being room temperature (though not this room; this room is 90 degrees and not likely to cool off even after the sun goes down).

I like being San Diego 70-80 degrees near the ocean temperature. So much that I want to put it in a brownie sandwich and eat it.

Someone else in my mind (not a voice, an imaginary person): Well if you loooove San Diego so much, why don’t you marry it?

More mature someone else in my mind: Or move there?

Me: Fine. I think I will. (This is a true statement. In less than a month I fly. Then drive.)

Also, I think I’m hungry. Is it just me, or were there a lot of food references in the above? To be fair, a lot of food is hot. Like the weather. But there must be other comparisons one could make. Even me. I could make other comparisons.

Like…the heat was like sitting under a giant blow dryer covering the entire earth whilst holding the last print of a dying newspaper, fresh off the press, in one’s hands and sitting on a long-burning lightbulb, and soaking one’s feet in a chamomile tea bath and wearing one of those amazing Russian fur hats with the ear-flaps and sucking in water just evaporated off a natural hot spring. Also wearing sixty-eleven wool sweaters knitted by one’s grandma.

Hmm. Maybe some food would help. With the thinking. And the writing.

Looooooooooooove (it’s love, but it’s melting in the heat),

MM

Dear Cowboy Boots

24 Jul

Dear Cowboy Boots,

Why must you be so expensive? And so awesome?

And why must all the expensive ones be so awesome, and all the awesome ones be so expensive, and why aren’t the ones I want on sale at the Nordstrom SALE?

It’s called a SALE, people, let’s put the things I want on it. In it? Whatever.

With a midsummer consumer sigh,

MM

PS– Remember when Daniel Radcliffe was in Equus? And they still let him go back to being Harry Potter? Because it’s Europe and they’re not insane and they don’t think nudity should be punished with banishment?

Dear Twitter

20 Jul

Dear Twitter,

Why would I want to know what you are thinking every fifty-nine seconds? (No offense.)

Dear god, I wish I didn’t have to know what I am thinking every fifty-nine seconds. (Actually much more often than that. Unless it’s after eleven o’clock at night, at which point I slow waaaay down. Or every now and then speed way up, but that’s usually considered a worry-spiral and it goes downhill fast towards just sounds, rather than fully developed thoughts, soooo.)

That’s all.

Love hugs and kisses,

MM

PS– The word limit thing is no longer a thing if you post every secondandahalf. The point is to practice being concise, to exercise your poetic intent of fitting an incredible amount of information in a small amount of space…

PPS– Sorry. I really like short-word exercises and over-use of Twitter is ruining everything.

PPPS– Please don’t hold it against me when I inevitably join the craze.

PPPPS– Post your six-word memoirs below! And you cannot do more than one. Ha.

Dear Half-Shaved (Female) Heads

16 Jul

Dear Half-Shaved (Female) Heads,

So at least 2 of my friends went through stages wherein they wanted to shave their (female) heads, and I was…not supportive. I mean, their heads and hair grows back and all that, but overall there’s no way to pretend that I was encouraging. Or even neutral.

However. When you’re a celebrity and exempt from normal people issues (like feeling weird at the grocery store without hair or having a bad no-hair day or finding out you have a bumpy head or really awkward features when they are not framed by hair which is probably most of us, it’s nothing to feel ashamed about…or really mostly just me having to hear about those things) and you kind of have mythical creature status because you’re a rockstar/model and the only times I ever see you, you look pretty hot because you’ve been styled out the kazoo and you’re prepped for photogs…then you get to do things like shave your head.

Kind of hot, no? (image from missbehavemag.com)

Kind of hot, no? (image from missbehavemag.com)

And surprise me when I find it oddly hot in a very retro punk kind of way. Which we all know is the best kind of way to be hot right now. For those of us who can pull it off, which is not me. (I’m getting my haircut today and I’m trying to maintain a firm grip on reality. Which is to say not only am I not shaving half my head, I am also trying to remember that I do not have straight, fine hair and should not ask to look like people who do). The point is, “Cassie” as a “singer” can pull it off and so can Alice Dellal as a model over here.

Alice Dellal doesn’t get quotes because she has a real name, with a first one and a space in between and then a last one. Cassie, on the other hand, missed the essential part of becoming a one-name sensation, which is to choose something kind of unusual so when I talk about her, people don’t think I’m referring to my old writing teacher or the neighbor’s dog or that girl in my class who once got chewing gum in her hair. Which, come to think of it, might be why “Cassie” now has a half-shaved head.

And then! I saw some girl walking around the outdoor mall the other day with SHORT hair and a half-shaved head and it was CUTE. And she was wearing a sheath dress and sandals, like she had just been working at J.Crew or good old Banaaaana Republic. So real life, not so punk rockstar, more working preppy shopgirl with a half-shaved head. So a High Five for her.

Really, no, I’m not tempted, just surprised and admiring, and actually, I like the short-hair twist on things better. Especially of us real people. Probably this will pass in a month or so.

My approval, if not the trend. Trends so rarely end when I think they should.

With just a little bit! of punk envy,

MM

Dear Paper Toilet Seat Covers

15 Jul

Dear Paper Toilet Seat Covers,

I’ve got a bone to pick with you. If, as my mother and sister claim (both almost public health experts) (don’t ask) you can’t get diseases from toilet seats– EVEN THE WET ONES– why do you exist?

Above and beyond that, what’s with your design? Right, so I pull this little toilet shaped thing (you) out of a cardboard holder on the wall, and I try to arrange you over the toilet seat without letting you drift in. If you drift in, it’s all over. Except you’re made of tissue paper (refer to point A: how, even if there were diseases, would you do any good at all? especially with wet ones, that just soak right through you?) and therefore, being made of tissue paper, you drift toward water like a cow toward cud.

And, say I get you positioned. Turns out the hole in you is occupied by more tissue paper, still attached at certain points around the oval and a long strip at the mouth of the toilet. (Yes, that’s a technical term.) So I rip through the little points, reposition you…

Keep in mind I’m engaged in this activity at all because I HAVE TO PEE.

…and the hole-shaped tissue paper in the middle drifts downward (obviously), gets wet, and since it’s still attached to the rest of you through the strip at mouth, begins to drag you all down.

If my pants are still fastened, I’ve got a real problem at this point. It’s a speed game, and it’s anybody’s call whether you’re going to be soaked through with toilet water and lost forever or I’m going to A) get my pants down one-handed while holding onto you– hoping the side I’m not holding doesn’t make any sudden moves– or B) let you go and go for the button and zipper with two hands, twirling and sitting with my eyes closed, no knowledge of whether I’m going to hit toilet seat cover or bare-butt toilet. With potential diseases.

Wouldn’t the horse-shoe shaped toilet seat cover, sans the filled-in middle, have a better chance of staying still? If I’m not going to get any diseases, why am I bothering? If there are diseases, don’t I, in the process of all this, end up touching the disease-ridden toilet seat a LOT? Why is the seat so wet, anyway? A bad-aim pee-er? A squatter, perhaps, so afraid of diseases she has to hover above the toilet and increase everybody else’s risk by peeing directly onto the toilet seat? How far above the toilet is she if she’s missing that badly anyway? Or is it just a powerful flush? Why aren’t more toilets eco-friendly anyway? Isn’t it just an extra button and a difference in water flow? Maybe that would take care of the splash…

Maybe I should squat above the toilet and pee too. Ooh, Kathy loves Johnnie? Oh MAN this stall is out of toilet paper???

And men wonder why it takes women so long to go to the bathroom.

And you, paper toilet seat covers, really have to go. I mean, come on, has anyone ever walked into a stall and refused to go because there were no paper toilet seat covers available? No. Never. Because you’re unnecessary and poorly designed and harder to get positioned than a diaper on a wiggling baby. And the whole point of being an adult is that we don’t need paper on our butts to go to the bathroom.

Toodles,

MM

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