Act natural

( Monday, Sept. 30, 2002 11:31 pm )

>Idiot savant

My friend Justine from high school emailed me back today. She just started law school and is feeling overwhelmed and lonely. I feel terribly guilty, because I was being kind of snide in the email I wrote to her, because the last time we met she was being a little condescending and implying that me and Juney were stupid drunks in need of supervision. Yet now she is on a totally different page, so I feel very mean for striking the wrong note altogether. It's so hard to judge the right tone for an email, don't you find? It just kills me when the reply email is markedly different in tone from the one I wrote. If it's more businesslike than mine, or friendlier than mine, or longer, or shorter: just kills me. Email is FRAUGHT. I should really stick to postcards.

In other email-related news, I told myself I would not mention Schmitty here again, but the fact is he did write me a nice-ish email about a week ago, and I've been dithering around trying to think of an appropriate response. It's impossible. He thinks I'm him, is the trouble, and I'd hate to disappoint him. I mean, I'd like to be him, but instead I am a slackery weirdo, homely and awkward. However, it seems to be working for me. The people are clamoring for my own particular brand of weird, slackery awkward homeliness.

In other homeliness news, I was painting the bathroom today and inadvertently gave myself a blue skunk-spot in my hair, as well as dumping a tray of paint over my leg and foot (both frustrating and pleasurable. I may have an acrylic paint fetish). I was such a mess, and I'm really on the fence about whether the paint that Landlady Ellie picked out is nice-looking, or whether I should make the trim white again. Nevertheless, I'm glad to be painting, and tomorrow I get to apply the darker color to the paneling, so of course tonight I have near Christmas Eve levels of excitement.

And, you won't believe this, or maybe you will: I did not make it to Fake Church again this Sunday. I set out on time, with the best of intentions and a dollar in my pocket for the collection plate, yet things started to go wrong when the trolley unexpectedly took a turn it had never taken before. So, long story short, it was running a short route that day for some reason, and I had to travel an arduously slow 30 minutes to arrive at a station only 10 blocks from my house, and try to await the blue line into the city. By that time I was already five minutes late, with another half-hour's wait ahead of me, so I just cut my losses and headed home. The thing is that a Unitarian (henceforth, UU) would never say that a walk through the city on a nice day is less holy than an hour sitting in church, but I was still pissed off in a highly non-enlightened way.

Anyhow, June's birthday is coming up this Friday, so I have to think about what to get her. I already know I must go get a bottle of wine and perhaps some sticky buns from the Amish (or whoopie pies, but I refuse to ask for them by name), but present-wise I'm drawing a blank. The only idea I have is the penis-shaped ice cube trays she was admiring in Condom King (founders: Pierre Condom and Howard King).

Ah well, that's it for me tonight. Maybe I can stand to do some emailing now. Night.

Postscript: Oh my God, I'm going to die. I sent my email to Schmitty before I was ready! At least, I think I sent it. Arghhh! I didn't even get to sign my name to it, how unfriendly! ARghhhh. Postcards only from now on!

Post-Postscript: OK, no, I didn't send it, but I did delete it. Way to go. It was pretty clever, I don't know if I can recapture the magic balance of sarcasm and retardedness.

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