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Listening to: From the Choirgirl Hotel. Not for long, though... it's not really matching my mood quite like I was expecting it too.
Currently Reading: Just barely started Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music. Kind of saving it for the train, as well as a stack of others (both fiction and non). Also, I recently read Laurie Notaro's I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl (again) in like two days, and peed myself laughing. Highly recommended. I also devoured The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel in, like, a mere few days. Laughed until I peed. Also highly recommended.
Wishing: income. Lots of it. Other than that, life's pretty good.
I couldn't be more right now.
Buy "Civilised Conversation..." Merchandise! Please? All the cool kids are doing it....
Please help me pay for college by purchasing items from Amazon.com through this link!!
23 February 2005 | 8:43 PM
An Announcement.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen: an announcement I never thought I would make in my entire life!
I, Christopher John Etienne Ronk, am going to get a tattoo.
Last night, I looked at the completely vertical scar on my left ankle and realized how funny it would be if I added little arms and little legs and a huge circle for a head so it would be a little stick figure, but people could draw faces on it at parties, if they wanted to. And add squiggly hair or something with a different-colored-ink pen. FUN, huh?
So today, I called my mother with the news. Here's how I expected it to go:
Chris: I'm going to get a tattoo.
Mother: [Pause] What?
Here's how it really went:
Chris: I'm going to get a tattoo.
Mother: Cool! Of what? Where?
Chris: [See explanation above.)
Mother: That is so cool!
You see, it was my mother's pact with the devil. Let me explain.
The way I'm told the story is that when my mother went in to labor, she was none too pleased. Honestly, who would be? I envision her there, in her thirties, thinking �what have I gotten myself into?� While my father is in the admitting office filling out paperwork, my mother pants in her wheelchair in the hall, waiting for this whole thing to be over with. And who can blame her? I imagine I wasn�t exactly into it myself, even in my pre-natal state of being. They say fetuses can be very intuitive, you know.
I can picture it as if I were present for (and at least mildly interested in) the entire ordeal. An elderly lady looking somewhat disoriented pads down the hallway toward where my mother is rubbing her engorged-looking mid-section. My mother hopes she will just pass and leave her agony uninterrupted, but my mother has never been so lucky.
�Are you going to have your baby now?� the woman asks my mother slowly, but excitedly, expectantly. She is genuinely looking forward to hearing my mother�s answer to this thrilling query. She�s really, really into it.
�I think so,� replies my mother, flatly, with barely a trace of sarcasm and irritation in her tone.
Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo.
�Oh,� the woman sighs, �childbirth is the most�.� she searches for the word� �excruciating and terrible experience you will ever encounter in your entire lifetime.� The woman explains the horror as if it were the greatest story ever told, enamored with it, reveling in it. �You will feel like you�ve died a million deaths, and you�ve got a million more to go. It�s like a million daggers right in your area. And you�ll cramp like you�ve never cramped before. What with the size of that baby, you�ll feel like�� the elderly woman is interrupted by a younger-looking version of her (presumably her daughter) guiding her down the hall.
�Time to go, Ma,� she coos to my mother�s oracle. �Sorry! Really sorry!� she mouths to my mother behind the teetering old woman�s back.
Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo.
Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo Hee. Hee-hoooooooooo.
My mother�s facial expression is flat, almost disappointed-looking, but you can feel the rage pulsing through her every vein. If she weren�t larger than a cathedral in her expectant state, she would probably outwardly express whatever sentiments are boiling deep down inside her very core right now, but things as they are, we�ll have to settle for my mother breathing heavily, completely stoic, except for maybe her perfectly waxed left eyebrow raised a bit higher than the perfectly waxed right.
She rests a puffy hand on her womb. �My child,� she bargains, �if you are a caesarean section, then I will let you do anything you want when you grow up.�
They wheel my mother, now on a gurney, into a room where they start preparing ladies� parts for the miracle of childbirth (the way mother tells the story, it�s basically a pube-shaving slash enema-ing factory (�so you don�t end up shitting all over your newborn kid,� my mother would later explain to me), but I prefer not to think about it in too much detail). On the other side of the curtain from my mother, another pregnant woman screams, �I don�t want to have a baby!� She has got to be kidding. �I change my mind,� the reluctant woman in labor declares.
�It�s a little too late for that, sister,� my mother telepathically condoles through the useless paper curtain. �Hold on tight and breathe when they tell ya, honey. Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo. Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo.�
Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo.
Hee-hee-hee-hoooooooooo? �That offer still stands, kiddo. Now more than ever.�
Bitch didn�t have to ask my ass twice.
It was a done deal. Always one to go the extra step to take the easy way out, I rotate a few more degrees than is healthy and am declared a breach presentation: I will have to be removed surgically. Bitchin�, perfect, no one move. Scalpel? Scalpel. Hemostat? Hemostat. Baby? Baby. Alright everyone. Show�s over. Nothin� to see here. That�s right, move along.
And that, my dear friends, is why I am getting a tattoo with no parental protest.
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Oh, Whoops. - 10:34 PM , 02 September 2005 In Like Hula-Hoops. - 11:28 PM , 12 April 2005 A - Z - 4:37 AM , 26 March 2005 w00t - 12:15 AM , 25 March 2005 Just Let Her Go. - 12:12 AM , 20 March 2005
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