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It's something unpredictable but in the end it's right
by anna at 07:01 PM on July 19, 2005
My earliest memory is deciding to stomp all over a huge red ant colony near an outdoor patio where my parents held wedding receptions. I jumped up and down and it collapsed like a sinkhole. Soon the voracious varmints were all up in my pants and eating me alive. I went screaming onto the patio, ripping off my pants. The bride and groom were just saying their I do's. I know about this not from memory but from the constant retelling of the horror story throughout my childhood.
It was my 1st embarassment and may have been the last time I did anything truly spontaneous. I've never been one to flit off to New York for a shopping trip on the spur of the moment.
But I dig spontaneity as a concept. I took all kind of ribbing from my clique in high school over the Solie Incident. Solie was actually Marisol, a diplomat's daughter who'd always been part of the In Crowd. In her senior year she decided to screw all the so-called freaks. When my turn came it didn't work out. I told everyone her jock brother had caught us and partly that was true. But she told him to piss off and cooed, "Now where were we?" The whole thing smacked of slumming and it seemed so stilted too boot. I couldn't go through with it. The spontaneity just wasn't there. I'd sooner do The Wave at a sporting event.
Solie was her nickname and that's what everyone called her. Nobody knew where it came from. Unlike such luminaries as Jennifer Lopez aka J Lo or Sean Combs aka Puff Diddy or P. Daddy or whoever the fuck he is. Perhaps because no one else bothered, these a-holes deigned to nciknaming themselves. You can't do that. And don't even get me started about Jennie from the Block. If Lopez ever returned to her Bronx 'hood, they'd give her a curb job and empty her fancy Gucci bag faster than Lucy would go Waaah! When you've got rocks on your fingers the size of Ron Jeremy's balls, you ain't Jennie from the Block no more, girl.
Nicknames must arise spontaneously. You can't force it. I learned this in 6th grade, when I decided that people should start calling me "The Kid." Some other guys had acquired monikers and envious, I wanted one too. I got as much flak about that debacle as the Solie Incident.
Yet contrived Corporate American despises spontanaeity and its cousins randomness and unpredictability. So long as we all remain satisfied with our dutiful quasi-lives as automaton consumers of their goods and services, they will continue tightening their grip on all aspects of everything; suffocating all creativity in the process. They are like The Alien with their tentacles snaking their way into our lives at every turn. Buy this, don't buy that, this is better, this is worse.
Consider that ABC once put talking devices in urinals to tout it's moribund show Norm.
comments (13)
Did it have Norm McDonalds face in the urinal? I would like to piss all over him while he told me about his show. Is that weird?
by Long Time Lurker at July 19, 2005 9:07 PM
No, LTL, that's not so deviant. Now, if you wanted to do an Emeril on the device...
I've had a few nicknames. Phoenix was one, and Dr. Evil was another. I got both from other people. One named me after the character in X-Men, and the other gave me my nickname because I got merciless on the chairman of our company once at a staff meeting. That was a pretty good day. I got a lot of pats on the back from that one.
I don't know where Marisol was from, but I've noticed among my Hispanic acquaintances that all females have nicknames. It seems to be the thing to do, like if you name your baby Esmeralda the family calls her Mera, and if you name her Esperanza she's Pera. Imagine if it was standard to call all Elizabeths "Beth" and all Christinas "Tina". I think that's how it goes. My two favorite Hispanic girl's names are Luz ("light"-- why is there no equivalent in English for such a cool name?) and Xochitl (actually Indian-- I love it because it looks unpronouncable).
In my mind your ant story plays out like the opening scene in "The Wild Bunch." Heheh.
by jean at July 20, 2005 2:29 AM
Oh no it's not weird at all to think about giving a golden shower to some washed-up SNL alum. At least I assume that's what he is.
Jean I have noticed that as well. It is like a status symbol to get a nickname. I suppose Solie was just short for Marisol, but it always made me think of Soiled. Especially after her senior year exploits. In the yearbook she has this knowing smirk on her face that spoke volumes if you knew the context. She revolutionized my high school's social hierarchy.
by anna at July 20, 2005 7:53 AM
Why am I here and how come I can't find my way back home
by ericatruth at July 21, 2005 4:33 PM
Why am I here and how come I can't find my way back home
by ericatruth at July 21, 2005 4:33 PM
a better question would why do you repeat yourself when under stress?
by anna at July 22, 2005 7:25 AM
Ooh, that sounds like a good story. If you can, I would like to hear what she did to the school hierarchy some time.
Did she sleep with all the second-tier guys, bumping them up to first and downgrading the guys on top? Did she scramble the female pecking order with brilliant manipulation and backstabbing? Hmm.
I think the Spanish-name nicknames aren't a status symbol because they're so common. Maybe Solie made hers look like a status symbol to the rest of the school. For me, I think the Evil name stuck because I used to be a bit of a hardass. But I was nothing next to my college newspaper editor, whose nickname was actually "Captain Hardass".
by jean at July 22, 2005 5:55 PM
What she did was break down barriers that prevented jocks' girls from messing around with scrawny freaks and in some rare cases, even geeks. Soon a lot of her smoking hot cohorts were popping up at our smoke-filled dens of inequities. Much to the delight of my pals. We never liked those hippy-dippy chicks that were attracted to us before (with self-dubbed nicknames like Sunshine and Jade.) But like I said, it always smacked of slumming. I am sure when they went off to their fancy colleges they became drunken sorority whores.
by anna at July 22, 2005 6:25 PM
Wow. That's wild. Isn't high school something else? Kids blatantly use each other for personal gain. At least when they're older they have to start hiding their motivation a little.
by jean at July 29, 2005 8:13 PM
I do a lot of work with unwed mothers. You know helping them get their start.
by Long Time Lurker at July 30, 2005 3:24 AM
LTL, that reminds me of one of my favorite pick-up lines: "Wanna go half-sies on a bastard?"
The scary part is that I learned that line in 8th grade. On the bright side, I said no.
by leaffin at July 30, 2005 2:40 PM
My go-to line was always, "So, can you buy me a drink?"
by anna at July 31, 2005 9:29 AM
i love this song
by poop at October 1, 2006 10:09 PM