vegetable soup: kind of gay?**^

**this was the title of a short story a friend of mine/ours had to grade.
^also code for: we have finally caved and done that 7 and 7 shit

same friend said this of the goodreads cult: goodreads aka al qaeda emailed my entire address book so i have forty students who've been like, hey bill, long time, etc. barf.

this afternoon, i got a series of emails that included language like this: Hannah, You have 568 new updates from your friends.

i'm not blameless. i spent the entire 3 hrs i was administering an exam, idly adding books. or copying them from your lists, excuse me, your shelves, because i'm Lazy. i was going to talk about how this was a waste of time, rather like this blog, but as aaron pointed out, Do we just do things to waste time so we don't think about dying all the time? i said to him, Why, yes, i think we do. but i also eyed him suspiciously for taking shit lying down and secretly thought: Whatever, i'm beating this whole death thing, watch me.

and on that note: let me preface the following by letting you know that i've been shouting, Stupid, stupid, stupid! at myself for 24 hrs now. you're perfectly welcome to join in.

yesterday, at a red light, someone slammed into the back of my car. i was first at the light, and the force of the impact did 2 things: pushed my car into the intersection, and threw me--in spite of the seat belt i was wearing because i just got a HUNDRED DOLLAR TICKET FOR NOT WEARING IT AS I PULLED INTO A PARKING SPACE--onto the horn of my car, so i just laid there dazed, honking forlornly. beep. beep. beeeeep.

in the end, it seems that the jetta is not a car, but a damn rock. it's uncrushable. her car on the other hand was clearly made of apology. the entire front end had sort of smooshed in abashedly. and the driver was crying and old and in pj's and there were 3 babies in the car. sobbing, she tottered forwards and peering into my car, said, You got babies in there?

WARNING: STUPID CONTENT COMING RIGHT UP. i looked at my car, saw that it was fine, worried that i wouldn't make it to the exam room where 150 of my students were waiting, told her no problem, hopped in, and drove off. I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. i develop a conscience and sense of responsibility at impossibly inconvenient times. but this woman in her bedroom slippers. the students! some of which really WANT to do well. anyway because I KNOW I KNOW I FUCKING KNOW, i am not now complaining of crippling back and neck and chest pain. contrary to what you might expect, i am not now DYING OF A BROKEN BODY.

what i am doing is, err, a cute little dance. a jig a la ashleeeeee simpson. the dance looks like this:

7 WEIRD THINGS ABOUT MAMIE

1. she doesn't wear underwear.
2. people have always thought she was gay.
3. she was gay, for a month.
4. she's been in therapy since she was 12. which makes me question my sessions.
5. more than anything, mame wants to be a housewife. she uses phrases like, Take care of my man. will grin sloppily and declare something about the joy of folding laundry and blahblahblah CUFF LINKS. while she's doing this, i'm looking round for a new best friend.
6. she knocks. on wood. superstitious doesn't even do it justice. and the more she has to drink the more she knocks. 'i was driving down the road,' i'll begin and notice that she is discreetly knocking knuckles on the table. 'this woman died,' i say--to test her--and both her little fists just start pounding a nearby tree.
7. she's ocd--can't tune the radio backwards. tuner must only go forwards.
8. in college, our little sommelier's drinks of choice were: tom collinses and white zinfandel. WHITE ZINFANDEL.
9. omg, i can't stop. when mamie first played basketball she scored a couple of points. for the other team. which won 3-2.
10. at a private school dance, when mame was fat and wore tons of makeup, she turned up in black combat boots, magenta socks, a grey jumper,and asked out paul dent, who was actually popular, & after he rejected her, went around demanding of everyone: What's wrong with him???
11. she'll tell you she loves to gamble, and then throw out the figure $40.
12. every morning, the security guard on her campus charges at mamie shouting, What is your purpose?
13. carlyle is from denmark. the town. dunno. anyhow, friend of his has a daughter who went to school with mamie and remembers her as the girl with glasses who is REALLY ALTERNATIVE. sort of like when i wore doc marten's and a flowy skirt and a white tank and a lumber-jack shirt around my waist and some other 12 yr old said i was so NEW WAVE.

jesus. mamie is shouting about a 2-in-1 post and to me it just sounds like she's screaming MANIFEST DESTINY! over and over.

**************

okay, my turn! this is the first time we've blogged together in the same post. momentous and subtle, like touching knees at the movies.

goodreads.com/al qaeda: in college we played this game where someone would say, "i'd never date a guy who ________." (i have the strange feeling i've blogged about this before.) and i'd respond with, "has a dave matthews/confederate flag/OBX sticker on his car." the karmic effect of that, of course, is that i now live in a home that sports d.m. oil paintings and a roommate who has a huge dave tattoo on her back. now, though, these days, i'd have to go with: any guy who uses the word "networking" not ironically in a sentence. it's so clinical. and slick. tends to involve business cards and hair product and some man in a bar slipping me a vodka tonic. or the guy who slipped me his card at the bar last week with a note on it: "have dinner with me monday. -bill" while carlyle was sitting on the other side of me. or "networking," only everyone on networking site is 14 and stalking each other. when i quit myspace and joined facebook, i should have known. while it seems less skank, more collegiate, it's even trickier stalking-wise. as in, facebook DOES IT FOR YOU. so, like, after a bottle of wine, carlyle and i changed our status to "mamie is in a relationship with carlyle" and vice versa. only, face sends all your friends this message with a heart and all. and if we fix the lameness now, they'll send out a picture of a broken heart and a message that says, "carlyle and mamie are no longer dating."

so, we should have known with goodreads.com. we should have known when there was a space devoted to: "about me--my own personal canvas to express myself." are you fucking kidding me?

this morning, i get 73 e-mails from stevie lynne via goodreads: stevie lynne gives franz wright's walking to martha's vineyard 4 stars; stevie lynne thinks that transtromer's selected is "delicate and beautiful." i hate this thing. i thought i'd be reading more, not running back in tears to maxim's open arms. now, i love anything stevie has to say about, well, anything. but you know she has no idea this has happened, little kohler way up there in the alaskan mountains...

also, i tried telling my smart friend ashley the riddle. only, i kept opening it with, "this dwarf gets on an elevator." then muttering, "shit shit shit" under my breath.

okay, jig: okay WEIRD HANNAH STUFF:

1. when she was 14, hannah dated a drug dealer who wore a hearing aid named leif.
2. after breaking her elbow on some sort of outdoor gymnastic balance beam, she had to wear a waist to neck body cast, and her arm was positioned like she's about to say the pledge of allegiance.
3. oh, i don't know: she gave birth to two elementary schoolers.
4. she forged her report cards for three years.
5. also, she forged field trip slips that didn't exist and then rented villas on islands near jakarta.
6. ran away for two weeks and lived in a seedy hotel.
7. participated in a fashion show--and this wasn't that long ago--at a gay bar where she strutted down the catwalk in doc martins (i had to) with a crossdresser named topaz.

okay, are we done now. that wasn't fun, dais, and it's putting a wrench into mine and hannah's relationship.