Spent a lot of time during the workweek getting to know my co-clerks. Love them. One of my co-clerks and I had this conversation Friday night: Her: How much would I have to pay you to put "TTYL" or "OMGWTF" or ";)" in an opinion? Me: I would do V.v.V [crab] but not OMGWTF because at least you can just make it look like a typo. Her: No, it can't just be a typo-looking one. Me: How about LOL? Her: No, but ROTFLMAO works. How much? Me: Right now $5,000. Next September, $100.
I failed to convince my co-clerks to come to the corn maze with me, but I went anyway yesterday because it was the last weekend the corn mazes were in operation. Corn mazes are things that happen in the midwest and elsewhere there is corn. I rented a Zipcar and drove with my two friends in Chicago named Jason to Homer Glen, IL. Didn't know what to expect. Thought it might be dozens of acres of cornfield to run through like when Frodo and Samwise run into Merry and Pippin in Fellowship of the Ring, but it was not at all like that. The corn maze itself was small and was fenced gravel paths. Nothing to get lost in at all. But there was a mini-fairgrounds next to the maze, where Jasons and I saw things like (1) a pig race, three heats, we bet turkey legs on all three and I only won once; (2) a small plot of land overrun by black and white bunnies, (3) baby goats, (4) a straw tunnel, which is just hay stacked into an L-shaped 50-foot long tunnel, thrilling, (5) hundreds of pumpkins, I lay across a dozen of them rolled together to form a bed (6) a pneumatic punkin chucker in action, launching pumpkins 200 yards across the cornfields, (7) a hot dog stand, (8) and a "haunted barn" that was dark and disorienting but not scary at all.
I failed to convince my co-clerks to come to the corn maze with me, but I went anyway yesterday because it was the last weekend the corn mazes were in operation. Corn mazes are things that happen in the midwest and elsewhere there is corn. I rented a Zipcar and drove with my two friends in Chicago named Jason to Homer Glen, IL. Didn't know what to expect. Thought it might be dozens of acres of cornfield to run through like when Frodo and Samwise run into Merry and Pippin in Fellowship of the Ring, but it was not at all like that. The corn maze itself was small and was fenced gravel paths. Nothing to get lost in at all. But there was a mini-fairgrounds next to the maze, where Jasons and I saw things like (1) a pig race, three heats, we bet turkey legs on all three and I only won once; (2) a small plot of land overrun by black and white bunnies, (3) baby goats, (4) a straw tunnel, which is just hay stacked into an L-shaped 50-foot long tunnel, thrilling, (5) hundreds of pumpkins, I lay across a dozen of them rolled together to form a bed (6) a pneumatic punkin chucker in action, launching pumpkins 200 yards across the cornfields, (7) a hot dog stand, (8) and a "haunted barn" that was dark and disorienting but not scary at all.
The latter two left me with my second migraine in a month; the last was brought on by bratwurst, so I think it is time to leave phosphates-laden meat tubes aside. I've gotten migraines about once a month or two since 2003. Funny coincidence, SL gave me a stack of lovingly hand-photocopied Joan Didion essays when I saw her last week and I read the first one yesterday: Didion's observations on her problem with migraines. Mine are problematic but by this point I know what's coming. I get floaters and blind spots and I know that I will be throwing up and unable to move in half an hour. So I said to Jasons, I know what's coming, and one of the two of you needs to drive the Zipcar and we need to leave. Unforch. But we had exhausted the farm's activities anyway, and it was the right time to leave.
We filled the trunk with pumpkins, which rolled around and thudded against my back as I moaned in the backseat. I wrapped my scarf around my eyes and put my forehead against the cool pane of the window. I almost made it to Chicago but when we pulled onto the Dan Ryan, I said, Jasons, excuse me, but I'm going to barf into a plastic bag now. So I did. Undigested, unchewed chunks of hot dog into a warm plastic bag. The Jasons sat quietly in the front seat. Jason W. politely turned on the radio to drown out the sounds of me heaving and spitting into the bag, and Jason A. unrolled the window. Jason A. was very kind and dropped off the Zipcar for me even though it was only the first time we'd ever hung out (we were acquaintances in law school and I occasionally sat next to him in Art Law and made snide comments about AA) and I'd barfed in a bag and by all objective measures he should have turned tail and ran from the situation. I thought he was all around a very good guy. We talked about the End of Days on the way to Homer Glen. I said, "It has to happen sometime, you know." He said, "Well, I hope it's a weekday." A right funny thing to say.
After getting home, I threw up some more and had diarrhea immediately afterward. Always a good way to feel like an attractive human being. Then Jason A. came back from dropping the Zipcar off and I forced him to look through my kaleidescope glasses at my desk lamp, since it looks like there are nine lights when you look through it. Then I handed him his pumpkins and a diploid acorn and said thank you for being so nice to me. He left, and then I lay in bed.
My Bavarian man called after a while and we chatted for a long time. He sent me a card this week that said: "I'm a bit in sorrow because there was a newspaper article telling that Sarah Palin's fashion style is copied by many American women, and I've tried to imagine you with her design glasses from Kawasaki (MP-704) and a S-Palin coif, just a short time after your 28th birthday happened...Oh my God!! I can only say that I find you very pretty like you are now! And I enjoy our talking; I really feel attracted by you!" I find the combination of 90%-there English grammar and weirdness and vocabulary something to be attracted by also. I said, Let's have phone sex, and he laughed demurely and said he preferred real sex. I can't help it; I'm horny; it's weird.
But then I talked to BFFAEAE an hour tonight and learned that in addition to occasionally sampling Internet porn (remember: don't waste your time conducting embarrassingly worded Google searches, just go to YouPorn; it's free, it's consolidated, it's plentiful), BFFAEAE (1) gets aroused by New Yorker reviews of biographies of John Stuart Mill, and (2) used to practice the solitary vice to pictures in The Subjection of Women - so I don't feel so bad that I'm feeling more libidinous this week than I maybe ever have. BFFAEAE quoted The Office to me: "Michael Scott says, 'I once went 27 years without having sex, and then eight more years before having sex again.'"
We filled the trunk with pumpkins, which rolled around and thudded against my back as I moaned in the backseat. I wrapped my scarf around my eyes and put my forehead against the cool pane of the window. I almost made it to Chicago but when we pulled onto the Dan Ryan, I said, Jasons, excuse me, but I'm going to barf into a plastic bag now. So I did. Undigested, unchewed chunks of hot dog into a warm plastic bag. The Jasons sat quietly in the front seat. Jason W. politely turned on the radio to drown out the sounds of me heaving and spitting into the bag, and Jason A. unrolled the window. Jason A. was very kind and dropped off the Zipcar for me even though it was only the first time we'd ever hung out (we were acquaintances in law school and I occasionally sat next to him in Art Law and made snide comments about AA) and I'd barfed in a bag and by all objective measures he should have turned tail and ran from the situation. I thought he was all around a very good guy. We talked about the End of Days on the way to Homer Glen. I said, "It has to happen sometime, you know." He said, "Well, I hope it's a weekday." A right funny thing to say.
After getting home, I threw up some more and had diarrhea immediately afterward. Always a good way to feel like an attractive human being. Then Jason A. came back from dropping the Zipcar off and I forced him to look through my kaleidescope glasses at my desk lamp, since it looks like there are nine lights when you look through it. Then I handed him his pumpkins and a diploid acorn and said thank you for being so nice to me. He left, and then I lay in bed.
My Bavarian man called after a while and we chatted for a long time. He sent me a card this week that said: "I'm a bit in sorrow because there was a newspaper article telling that Sarah Palin's fashion style is copied by many American women, and I've tried to imagine you with her design glasses from Kawasaki (MP-704) and a S-Palin coif, just a short time after your 28th birthday happened...Oh my God!! I can only say that I find you very pretty like you are now! And I enjoy our talking; I really feel attracted by you!" I find the combination of 90%-there English grammar and weirdness and vocabulary something to be attracted by also. I said, Let's have phone sex, and he laughed demurely and said he preferred real sex. I can't help it; I'm horny; it's weird.
But then I talked to BFFAEAE an hour tonight and learned that in addition to occasionally sampling Internet porn (remember: don't waste your time conducting embarrassingly worded Google searches, just go to YouPorn; it's free, it's consolidated, it's plentiful), BFFAEAE (1) gets aroused by New Yorker reviews of biographies of John Stuart Mill, and (2) used to practice the solitary vice to pictures in The Subjection of Women - so I don't feel so bad that I'm feeling more libidinous this week than I maybe ever have. BFFAEAE quoted The Office to me: "Michael Scott says, 'I once went 27 years without having sex, and then eight more years before having sex again.'"
We lowered our voices two registers and laughed deeply at that. BFFAEAE also told me about her amazing, amazing Halloween group costume ideas, which are so great I have to share them with everyone:
- Dogs dressed up as other things. Dogs dressed in graduation gowns. Dogs dressed as cats; as pigs. Dogs dressed as Sarah Palin. Dogs dressed like plumbers.
- This I just have to quote. "So Jabba the Hutt has a party. It's a costume party. And everyone from Star Wars is invited. So they all put a lot of effort into dressing up for the party. But when they get there, it turns out all of them have dressed like Sarah Palin!" So you have Hans Solo dressed as Sarah Palin; Leia as Sarah Palin, C3PO as Sarah Palin. BFFAEAE pondered how to be Leia as Palin since both characters are defined by their hair, until I made the brilliant suggestion of doing an updo and the ear muffs. It is true that I went to Harvard.
Per Shivakamini's and CH's separate but similar observations, there is no gut anymore. There is no intuition. I really don't know what I'm feeling. Who cares? All of the emotions, and none of them. It's much easier to just write about the little weird things that capture my imagination, so that's I think what I will be writing about from now on. I think SL said something about that being the meaning of life?
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