it doesn't seem to me that a person who doesn't want attention should dress like a clown and drive around in a yellow volkswagon with "PINGO" vanity plates. in a fit of silliness, i waved gleefully and made a gruesome face, expecting pingo to wave back, and maybe squirt water from the flower pinned to her lapel. instead, she scowled at me, mouthed something, then floored it and cut me off, narrowly missing my fender. there's nothing funny about road rage. it was sort of like the time that amish guy gave me the bird out the window of his buggy. it just seemed to throw everything off, somehow. nothing much happens around here. i sit for hours in booth twenty nine. sometimes i take part in The Greasy Spoon Jeopardy Challenge, which might sound mildly exciting but is really nothing more than a couple of weathered old roofers, a middle-aged fry cook, and yours truly, sitting around a formica-topped table and shouting out questions (answers). you know how it goes. the cook tells me i'm his best customer. "ya know," he mutters through a cloud of smoke, "ya really are. all these old farts gotta have everything just so. but not you." this is untrue, as i certainly do have to have things just so. it's just an easy sort of "so." black coffee (no need for a spoon) and ice water, which i never actually drink but always order anyway. "see that one over there?" he gestures somewhat discreetly with his sooty thumb. "that's lorraine. she's gotta have Egg Beaters and diabetic syrup, half decaf and half regular, and no ice in her water. extra napkins. if you fuck it up, you hear about it." i look at lorraine. she looks like she's been rolled in flour. there is a smear of matte red revlon where her lips used to be, and her feet look like two fat yams shoved into moonboots. she's attacking her scrambled Egg Beaters as if she has to hurry and eat them before they start eating her. it's easy to tell that she learned to smoke through careful observation of glamorous old movie stars. she looks sort of beautiful that way, perched there on the little chrome stool like an orange balancing precariously on a spool of thread. is it worse to be a depressed clown or a mime with something really important to say? also, i was wondering...when the first identical twins were born, what did people think? when TWO of them came out, and they looked exactly the same? and what can you make of a powdery old woman who wears moonboots and has a crepey neck and watery eyes and still manages to remind you of audrey hepburn? (assume that you love audrey hepburn.) and finally, a question that has puzzled me since fourth grade, when i read it in a paperback joke book that i hid under my bed so that my mom wouldn't know i'd spent my book club money on a joke book instead of on something like 'anne of green gables' or 'five little peppers and how they grew' or another selection that didn't have a drawing of a guy with his finger up his nose on the front cover: if a tree falls in the forest and crushes a mime, and nobody's around to hear it, does anyone care? love kirsten http://www.care2.com - Get your Free e-mail account that helps save Wildlife! +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+