Maybe I'm Just Bitter 'Cause I'm Klutzy

There was some kind of hippie concert thing on campus today. I was walking to class and there was a band playing, a woman singer with a thin wail and a random cluster of instruments behind her. (Actually, they might not have been that bad, I don't know. I wasn't really listening. I heard it as buzzing occasionally broken by the singer's wails.)

But mostly I was disturbed by my fellow students' ebullience. They were leaping across the green like athletic-shorted gazelles, snatching frisbees from the air, their charming attempts at facial hair lit by the joyful late afternoon sun. I looked to my left and saw a physics professor demonstrating gravity by playfully lobbing freshly picked apples at his students' heads.

Well, no. I just expected to see this. Because I was pretty sure I had walked into a college brochure. And so I stood there thinking, "oh, come on. I do not really go to school here." And then I walked into the building for my next class, leaned against the cold wall in the shadowy hallway and felt much better.

Best of all, by the time my class ended, both the music and the ebullience had died.

Is There a Drug For This?

I can't remember the last time I ordered a chicken barbecue pizza and gnawed on it absently for four consecutive days. I can, however, remember the last time I prefaced my sauteed chicken with a roasted red pepper and feta salad (last night), and this disturbs me greatly. All that saved me from complete adult emulation was the fact that both courses were consumed with me sitting on the floor watching Monty Python - but even then, I was sitting on an actual floor pillow, and the space around the pillow was free of crap magazines and empty milk dud boxes.

And this morning...I made an omelet. A real omelet. A tasty, herb-seasoned omelet, which I washed down with a tall glass of orange juice, all while reading a book that I marked my place in before leaving for work. With a bookmark. A bookmark picturing a white rabbit under a tree in the snow.

Next thing you know I'll have my own car.

So We Stopped At This Sketchy Gas Station

There was a curb I had to step over on my way to the door, which was coated with a thin layer of dirt and smeared with breath. The cashier was a disheveled, heavy-set woman whose long, yellowing fingernails bore curving strips of glittery blue polish - crack nails, Anna called them - and she tapped them menacingly on the counter as I walked by. When I looked closer I saw that the nail on her middle left finger was beginning to detach; it dangled by its corner, swinging with the motion of her hand.

On my way to the cooler I passed a tall kid with delicate, slightly feminine features, who stared hollowly ahead at the wall in front of him. His mouth was a straight, fixed line, and he held something against his leg, covered with his hand. I pictured a knife, or a razor - something that would appear, suddenly, between his fingers, slicing through the air and turning my life into a Lifetime movie. (Two girls on the road, victimized by a teenage psychopath. Two mothers, bent on revenge - at any cost.)

I got a Sunkist from the cooler and stood in line, behind Potential Psychopath. At the front, a balding man with a body lumpy and pale as a pierogie pounded his fist on the counter, crying, "but I don't want to sign. Why can't you sign?"

Crack Nails tapped his credit card on the counter and smirked. "Well, I guess I could sign. I could sign your name."

"No! I'll sign my own name." Pierogie drew a loose slipknot slightly below the line, then looked back up and whined, "I don't cause problems."

"You don't cause problems?" Crack Nails dropped his card back on the counter, then folded her arms across her chest, digging her crack nails into her upper-arm skin.

"I've never caused problems."

"Alright, you don't cause problems."

"That's right, I don't."

"Bye, William."

Potential Psychopath's hand shifted slightly as he watched Pierogie leave. I embraced my histrionic side and flinched, stumbling back a couple steps; and then my suspicions were confirmed when he lifted his hand and held up a sleek, gleaming silver razor.

Or rather, Razr. Like the cell phone. I'm an idiot.

Knitted Limbs Are Creepy

So the new Knitty is out, right? And it's got some cute stuff. Like really cute armwarmers, and this quite interesting shell with armwarmers, and, well, lots of stuff to protect my arms. This issue is just chock full of armor. (Good Lord, am I witty.)

Unfortunately, it also features actual knitted arms. With hands attached, no less.


FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEONE SAVE THAT CHILD.

Because, in addition to "Hug" featuring some truly hideous knitting - what size needles did she use, anyway? - it kind of looks like it's about to drag that adorable creature into a cave littered with bones. And that just isn't right. The kid knows it, too. He's doing everything he can not to touch those arms. And his face is just crying out for help.

This hideous piece of crap totally reminds me of the "Therapy Buddy" from American Inventor - you know, the creepy blue doll with arms that wrapped around your shoulders (or wherever) and said "everything is going to be all right." Remember that?


No? Well then, I envy you.

But seriously. I bet that all over Manhatten, pampered upper-class moms are firing their nannies and knitting "Hug" as a replacement. Which is really pretty sad, is it not?