I know that every year I bemoan my lack of holiday spirit, but seriously, I am sort of looking at Christmas like it’s a guy I knew from high school and I’m desperately hoping that he’s not going to come over here’oh shit, he’s totally coming over here’ Heeeeeeey! How are you? What have you been up to? Man it’s been, what, fourteen years? Yeah. Yeah. No, I haven’t heard anything about a reunion. No, kidding, you’re selling Amway now? You don’t say. Wow, that’s great, really great. Well, it was good running into you again!
Maybe it’s because snow continues to evade us. Over the weekend, I drove to Pulaski (hometown of people who work for the smelly factory place and also my neighbors, the Clampetts) looking for some cookies, because I had a major jones for frosted sugar cookies and sometimes the non-squicky butcher has cookies from a Pulaski bakery that are unbelievably wonderful, even though they are often kitschy designs like smiley faces and whatnot, because the smiles are made with piped chocolate and the cookies are made with crystal meth. I (perhaps you should know that just now, I hit the ‘i’ key so hard that the crack of the key made the cat jump and now the middle finger of my right hand sort of hurts. (I don’t know why I felt compelled to tell you that. I’ve had these weird compulsions to overshare recently. Last night while driving home from Milwaukee, I called Esteban to inform him that my hind portions were so chapped from repeatedly* using the UWM’s vellum-esque one-ply industrial grey toilet tissue that I was contemplating bringing my own roll of Quilted Northern to class but then it would necessitate buying a book bag, as right now I just haul in my purse, notebook, liter of Dasani, and whichever book we’re talking about that week. Esteban commented that only I could turn a chapped ass into a reason to go shopping)) hit a bunch of deer hunting traffic coming south. Each car was covered with a good three inches of snow. At the one stop sign in the middle of town, there was a stretch of about fifteen feet of road, wet with slush where the inertia of stopping would send snow sliding off the cars. It looked like someone had smashed a fifteen foot tall snow globe right there in the intersection. Everything else was completely snow free. I considered driving north, to find out where the snowline was, but then decided that I wasn’t that curious and had a ton of (fucking) laundry to do. Which I then didn’t do. Such is a weekend. But I did make some really good homemade bread instead. Priorities, people!
Then, last night after class, as I was walking out of our weird urban jail-type building, it was raining. As I crossed the courtyard, it became sleet and then I watched as big fluffy white flakes landed on my black t-shirt. I turned back and could still see rain in the light by the building. In crossing the courtyard to the library, I had traveled through the beginning of the weather system that then followed me halfway home. There were giant flakes, accumulation, slushy crap, black ice and idiots driving too fast for conditions: everything that makes winter in Wisconsin a marvelous thing. And then it all stopped again and there was just dry road and starlight and the faint glow of the Borealis as far as the eye could see (and tragically not, as I originally typed, ‘Boreanaz as far as the eye could see’). Apparently the wicked wizard Winterbolt is messing with Northeastern Wisconsin. Frozen Tundra, bah. Utah is making us look bad, and that’s just not right. Come on, Jack Frost! We’ve got a reputation to uphold here. Ah well, at least we can buy alcohol on Sundays.
*This was due to a recent Taco Bell kick because I am feeling nostalgic for my college underclassman years where the extent of my dining out consisted of two bean burritos (minus onions) and an ice water from Taco Bell, all of which could be purchased for the princely sum of $1.59 and if I timed it right, would enable me to coast until Arsenio, when my entire dorm got together and ate Franco-America** canned spaghetti (available at the local supermarket for 50 cents a can, and I think hasn’t really been affected by inflation, unlike the lowly Taco Bell bean burrito, which now cost almost twice what they did in 1990). I also feel compelled to tell you that I cannot eat bean burritos from Taco Bell in front of my coworkers or anyone, really, because I always have to massage the filling up to the tip of the burrito before sticking it into my mouth and it feels very pornographic, stroking the filling up through the shaft like that and then planting my lips around it. And then biting and tearing off a hunk. Actually, that’s were the metaphor sort of unravels and goes into a very scary place. I would like to take this moment and apologize to my male readers for the above paragraph. You may now unclench your legs.
**For readers who like to play the home version of Dumber Than A Box of Rocks, Franco-American’s brand name is being discontinued but can be found under the brand name Campbell’s, who really owned it (along with other surprising things like Pepperidge Farm Brussels cookies and perhaps the biggest shocker, Godiva chocolates), all along. I have to waste my brain capacity to know this stuff for a living and so I pass the wisdom on to you.
I had to break up the entry so you get confused and think you’re reading Mimi’s page and wonder where all the funny went (although sometimes I do torment Tilly by saying ‘Cat! Now! Cat eat eat cat meow meow meow!’ except that it is not cute because I am not Nora and I am also not two years old. Tilly however doesn’t care as long as she gets to gorge herself on Science Diet and then purge rather dramatically over the side of the basement steps, as she fancies herself a feline Jackson Pollack and is just waiting for the money to start rolling in so she can rid herself of our annoying cover stealing asses) but by now the preponderance of parentheticals should make it quite obvious that You Are Here.
Esteban : Babe, Rudolph is on.
Weetabix : Rudolph!!!!! EEEEEEE!
Esteban : I knew this would happen.
Weetabix : Oh, it’s mostly over. They’re already on the Island of Misfit Toys, see? That means I missed my favorite part where Clarice sings ‘There’s always tomorrow, for dreams to come true’. Now I totally want a red polka-dot bow for my hair.
Esteban : Ah Hermie and Yukon Cornelius, the most misunderstood love affair of our time.
Weetabix : I sort of dislike Yukon Cornelius. He calls the Snowmonster a Bumble because he can’t pronounce Abominable. He’s the type that misspells words to be cute too, I’ll bet.
Esteban : Yes, certainly, Yukon is a fan of the written word.
Weetabix : Polar bears and puberty’ man, it must be tough to be a reindeer.
Esteban : (as Rudolph gains antlers)Hehehehe’ he’s horny.
Weetabix : Yeah, whatever. Dork. This is one of the few Christmas specials were Santa is kind of a crochety old bastard. ‘Oh Santa, where is my mom and dad and sexy deer girlfriend?’ ‘I don’t know, Rudolph, but quite frankly, but what about MY needs? Me, me, me!’
Esteban : Santa clearly has a lack of people skills, which explains the North Pole thing. Oh, the Abominable Snowmonster, with a weakness for barbecue.
Weetabix : And this plan, I never understood. Take away his teeth and he’s a what’ incredible angry strong animal with jaw pain. And then the writers fake you out, like they killed Yukon and all of the little dogs, including the Pomeranian. Sure, he’s only dead for like, a minute, but still.
Esteban : Did he just say ‘had to get the women back to the North Pole’? (laughs) Tell me, babe, do you feel the urge to give the Burl Ives snowman a lecture now?
Weetabix : It’s all part of the times. It was apparently ok in the sixties to cast out noncomformists if you were absolutely sure that you wouldn’t have a use for them in the future. Oooh, it’s the ‘Eat Poppa Eat&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- that’s probably my favorite line of the whole thing. Of course he didn’t want to eat. That apple is GREY.
Esteban : Fresh fruit is probably hard to come by up there.
Weetabix : Whoa’that elf is totally Ted from Queer Eye.
Esteban : All elves are gay, actually, because there aren’t any girls.
Weetabix : There are so many things wrong with that sentence, but the first being that there are so girls.
Esteban : Where?
Weetabix : See, right there.
Esteban : ONE! Like Smurfette.
Weetabix : No, and there, in pink, see? They all wear pink. Actually, they are all exactly the same girl elf, over and over and over.
Esteban : They’re just Stepford Elves.
Weetabix : That’s not fair. The boy elves get some personality. Look, there’s the hipster elf, in Wayfarer sunglasses. I’ll bet he’s a pain in the ass when the other elves talk about a cool band, he sniffs ‘Oh yeah, them? I saw them at CBGB’s in 94, back before they got too didactic.’
Esteban : You know, YOU’RE the hipster elf.
Weetabix : I haven’t worn Raybans since 1993. Aw, look, Hermie got himself a beard.
Esteban : A beard?
Weetabix : You don’t know what that is, do you?
Esteban : No, and I don’t want to know.
Weetabix : You should know. It’s a pop culture thing. It’s what you call the girlfriend of a guy who is in the closet.
Esteban : Oh, you’re totally not the hipster elf.
