NOW, MORE THAN EVER,
NOT THE NEW ANYONE

From: (someone)@aol.com
Date: Fri Nov 28, 2003 6:08:29 PM
To: wendy@candyboots.com
Subject: Your female?

You might try finding a more creative, useful hobby.

Well, okay. Maybe I’ll take up cross-stitch.

So I was in a hospital waiting room reading O magazine the other night because I’d taken my grandmother to the emergency room. She’d fallen and broken her hip. She’s okay; she had surgery yesterday. I’m thankful she’s okay, even if she does have to lie around in a dinky suburban hospital where time has a different meaning, with all the volunteer desk clerks drifting around in their nutty slow-motion underwater world as they try to look up my grandma’s room on the computer. And then they point down the hall to Elevator 5. And then I have to ask them, “Is Elevator 5 still out of order?” And then they nod, and point in the opposite direction. This happens every time. But I don’t think the people who are actually taking care of my grandma are like this.

I’m driving out there to visit today and then coming back to the city and spending Thanksgiving with friends I’m, you know, thankful to have. It’s a long drive but I just downloaded that Alice’s Restaurant song, and that’ll help.

Oh, shut up, Mary Schmich. (login: poundy/poundy) If that stupid sunscreen column you’d written a few years ago had been a blog entry instead of in the Tribune and in that dumbass Baz Luhrmann song, you would have peed yourself with joy over your own site traffic. And if you’d had a blog your column probably wouldn’t have been ripped off and attributed to Kurt Vonnegut in an email forward, either.

I’m just a little tired of this old joke that weblogs are the primary source of insipid pointless who-the-hell-asked-you blather. Because the other night I spent three hours in a hospital waiting room with only a copy of O Magazine and, O yes, I can now prove otherwise.

a new entry in the journal.

Today is the three-year anniversary of my first post on Pound. When I put it up I didn’t even have the poundy.com domain; I had a crappy click-and-build Homestead.com site. Homestead my ass. If we’re going by that analogy my site was the digital equivalent of a fucking sod house, and I had to walk fifteen miles through the deep prairie snow just to upload a page. That’s how it felt, at least.

If you must send congratulations please don’t use the word “journalversary” or I will smack your ass face hard. Thank you.

The subject line of this latest one has sort of a plaintive approach, a new voice in the pro-penis-enhancement discourse. It says: Why be so tiny?

I like the sound of this, since it sort of implies that there might be a reason to be so tiny. Why be so tiny? Well, maybe a guy wants to use it to paint figurines. Or clean his computer keyboard. Or maybe it could live in a nice little cottage in a Thomas Kinkade Christmas Village and it wouldn’t feel threatened by the itty bitty train at all. Awww. Tiny!

I’ve been told that while my hair does not quite shout it’s “definitely not using its inside voice.”

And heads up (speaking, you know, of heads): next week Pound turns three years old. It’s been a long time since I posted anything in the journal (and that’s been a conscious choice) but I might do something for the occasion.

I know, I know. Tumbleweeds are blowing through here lately. But you can go see my guest posts over on my friend Michael’s blog today and tomorrow. Read about our nutty college days full of naps and cigarettes.

So I’m doing Weight Watchers Online again, where there is a handy database of “Activity Points” to help you chart your exercise. I looked at the whole list the other day and it seems “ax chopping” is a legitimate workout activity. Also, um, “hoeing.”

And I’m going to get something done to my hair this afternoon. I’m not sure what but it’s going to involve color. I am usually all about highlights but the high has worn off somehow. My friend Richard, who does my hair, thinks I need a hit of something else.

“Do you want to whisper, talk or shout?” he asked me. That’s a hair metaphor, see. He went to Stylist Finishing School and everything.

“Um, talk, I guess,” I said. “But wait, what’s shout?” I guess I am going to find out today.

So I’d heard that three of the staff members from this magazine were in town and I decided to catch one of their bookstore appearances, but first I stopped to get lunch at a place down the street. And there I saw a group of women sitting at a table and caught snatches of their conversation and thought, I bet that’s them. I bet they’re from the magazine, but I wasn’t absolutely sure, so I didn’t approach them. Because, see, if you’re going to go up to a table full of women in a coffeehouse in Andersonville and say, “Excuse me, but you’re the BITCH ladies, aren’t you?” you damn well better be right.

It turns out I was right, but I kept quiet until I got to the bookstore. I met Lisa, Andi, and Marisa, who were very cool. I sang the Women’s Workout World jingle for them and they weren’t too frightened. And remember when Pamie told you to subscribe to Bitch and you figured you’d get around to it but then that show Paradise Hotel came on and it made you all distracted and stupid? Here’s another opportunity. Pass it on.

I have been on a bidness trip, people, at a corporate retreat in Texas. And there I stayed in an alarmingly faithful replica of The Alamo. I mean, I saw the name of the building and expected maybe some half-assed Spanish Mission shabby chic, but no: it looked just like the Alamo. Except probably the real Alamo doesn’t have cable.

Last time I was on a business trip I stayed at a bed & breakfast where the ceiling fell in, and I didn’t think I could top that in terms of More Excitement Than One Deserves To Have On A Non-Vacation, but sleeping in a room decorated with battle paintings and portraits of John Wayne sets the bar a little higher. I stayed in the James Butler Bonham Room, named for a Texas hero who was evidently the hottest guy to die at the Alamo. Wow!