Warning: bullet points ahead

[constance]

1. I had an epiphany tonight as I was eating part of a box of Bottlecaps I bought to bring with me to the movies. Here is how I eat Bottlecaps (and, indeed, most candy): I pour out a little handful; I sort them by flavor; I eat one flavor at a time, starting with the flavor I like least, and working my way up to my favorite. And here is my epiphany, which I had while forcing a cherry-flavored Bottlecap down my throat (I usually love cherry-flavored candy, but for some reason cherry-flavored Bottlecaps make me queasy): CAMMY, a voice said in my head, YOU ARE A GROWNUP. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GO TO HELL IF YOU DO NOT EAT THIS ENTIRE BOX OF CANDY. IF YOU NEVER EAT ANOTHER CHERRY BOTTLECAP IN YOUR LIFE, NO ONE WILL SUFFER.
   
   And so I declare this an important day in the Education of Me. No longer will I force myself to eat the banana-flavored candy or the grape-flavored candy or whatever flavor it is that makes me want to claw my eyes out. I will no longer eat it because it is there.
   
   Here's to personal revelations, man.



2. I love me a new website: typedrawing. For those of you who've played with the tools at art.com, this will feel pretty familiar. It's a little limited as to scope, but I just love playing around with it. I mostly just draw and erase, draw and erase, but I did save one tonight, a portrait of Snape. It's #16324, if you want to take a look.



3. At a department meeting on Friday, we had a long discussion about grandmothers. Ever since I heard the horror stories that emerged, the beatings with belts and hairbrushes and the forced labor summer camps at their houses, I have felt compelled all weekend to say this. My grandmothers rock(ed). Breakfast in bed and weird experimental recipes and giant kitchen utensils hanging from the walls and forty-year-old negligees in which to play dress-up and homemade Christmas tree ornaments and orange three-wheeled bicycles and Delaware Punch orgies and days hanging around libraries and nights up late on the sofa reading romance novels.
   
   For all that they are not perfect women, I really lucked into them.



4. I choked at a restaurant on Friday night. We'd already finished our food, even, which made it doubly embarrassing. I had a mint in my mouth and I breathed it down my windpipe and spent half a minute coughing and gagging it up with anxious mothers and waiters hovering over me, ready to do the heimlich and then offering restorative glasses of water with lemon. It was a minor incident; I felt kind of feeble yesterday, from a cardiopulmonary POV, and I feel better now. But I hope I never have to go through it again. To that end, I am now like a chipmunk, storing my mints in the sides of my cheeks.



5. One of these days, I will see a movie set in Louisiana which features NOT ONE of the following things: Voodoo. Swamps. Moss-covered oak alleys. Decayed plantation homes. Ludicrous "Cajun" accents. A New Orleans with streetcar lines everywhere. People who make no money living in $2000-per-month apartments in the French Quarter. Murderous crazy inbred folk. Today is not that day, but I thank my lucky stars that in Skeleton Key, someone at least had the good sense to leave the accent alone.
   
   In fact, now that I am thinking, there is at least one such movie. On the strength of the existence of this movie, I would like to propose that only Steven Soderberg be allowed--legally, I mean--to make movies set in Louisiana.

Comments

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

Save the banana-flavored ones for me please they are my favorite okay?

*gives you belated Heimlich maneuver*

[tofty.livejournal.com]

*obligingly coughs up mint again*

I will definitely save you all banana candies I come across. I will not lick them first or anything!

[disdainty.livejournal.com]

I don't know what bottlecaps are but I thought I'd better tell you that I eat my lollies the same way and I'M SORRY, CAMMY, BUT YOU HAVE TO EAT ALL OF THEM. I can't believe you're trying to kid yourself out of it. One day you'll realise the deception you're trying to lead yourself into.

[woodyinvincible.livejournal.com]

I agree, if you neglect these less favorable candies and move right to the good stuff then it won't be nearly as good replacing the bad taste in your mouth for the good.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

WHAT. EVER. >:O

[tofty.livejournal.com]

NO I WILL NOT BE SUCKED BACK INTO THIS DESTRUCTIVE CYCLE GET THEE AWAY

[woodyinvincible.livejournal.com]

I was quite happy with the way Skeleton Key ended.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you have to make a voodoo-ridden movie where the characters are spooky and inbred and living in decaying plantation houses behind moss-covered oak alleys and the unsuspecting ingenues who move there from their insanely expensive French Quarter apartments and their magical streetcars that take them all over the city are in BIG TROUBLE, if you have to have that movie then it absolutely has to end the way that Skeleton Key did.

In other words, I totally agree!

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

1. All hail freedom from the tyranny of substandard candy flavors! I had this epiphany a while back and now make a ritual of stamping the wretched purple Conversation Hearts to dust when I encounter them. I'm only sorry it's a seasonal activity.

Which flavor is king of the Bottlecaps?

2. greasygreasygreasygreasygreasy! I love this. Also, you draw Snape just like I do, but you face his nose the opposite way.

3. Yay for non-whippin' grandmas! Mine had enticing old lingerie, too, and we danced round this very living room to the dulcet tones of the Lawrence Welk show. Good times. I wish one of them had had an orange 3-wheeled bike, though!

4. Poor you! How awful that must have been. I'm forever almost choking to death on a microscopic amount of my own spit, so I can't imagine how much worse it would be to have something of substance stuck in one's throat. Glad you're better, though. And pouching those mints is a good idea, especially when you're driving. Zoe's former kindergarten teacher could'nt suggest that often enough.

5. Being fairly ignorant about the area, I can take all the rest, but dear God, don't attempt the accent. Especially if you're English. *still shuddering over Judas Kiss, which didn't even need to be set in New Orleans*

My apologies for extreme loquacity. I think someone put something in my coffee this morning.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

1. Literally, you do? There may be something to that. It would be very satisfying, if I hadn't already promised my banana-flavored candy to Bow, to pound it to smithereens, like Ramona and Howie playing Brick Factory in the driveway.

2. I did try the nose both ways, but you have to go from left to right for the writing to read right side up. Plus that is the way that came most natural-like; I wonder if it is a left-handed v. right-handed thing? Whic hand do you write with?

3. We did Lawrence Welk too! And cafe au lait with lots of sugar (which is still the only way I can drink coffee). And oh, man, this one pair of bright green alligator pumps from the fifties that still number among my all-time favorite shoes.

4. Hahahah! Leave it to me, the clumsiest person on earth, to have to remind herself to eat the way a kindergarten teacher would tell you to.

5. I did not see Judas Kiss, and I am grateful every day for that fact.

6. Do not apologize! I love getting long comments from you! :D:D:D:D:D!!

:-*

[somniesperus.livejournal.com]

I adore you, positively. I just thought you should know.

Re: :-*

[tofty.livejournal.com]

:*:*:*:*:*!

The feeling is entirely mutual. *holds your hand*