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July 4, 2006

of mice and tears

I awoke this morning to the strains of "Ordinary World," which made me burst out laughing. During the early, make-him-think-I'm-deep stage, the AW once dedicated that song to me.

(An aside to female readers: if Gladys Knight's "Midnight Train to Georgia," Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous," or Dave Matthews Band's "Lover Lay Down" make you think of me, do share. If a Duran Duran ballad causes you to think "John," kindly keep it to yourself.)

When the AW is trying to win the attentions of a man, she veers maudlin. The waterworks are carefully choreographed. I, myself, mistook her many, many tears for depth of feeling. This lovely woman is not understood. She is criminally neglected. She must be saved.

Contrary to rumor, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes...and male vanity.

Anyway, thus inspired, I just rummaged through six-year-old data for a particularly ripe instance of AW pathos, from the same day as the Duran Duran dedication. And I found it. Yep, there it was: an early IM in which she was uncharacteristically in her office, trying to talk me into letting her come over.

"My mousepad is stained with my teardrops," she wrote.

Yep. That's a quote.

Amusing though that line is, it's unfortunately surrounded by evidence of my own fawning stupidity. If you really want to know the meaning of pain, go back and read some of those early correspondances with a lover, back when hormones staged a coup de etat on your brain. It's utterly humiliating. Let me never utter things this moronic again.

Not that I won't still offer half of everything to the next beautiful woman to make eye contact. But I can pretend.

posted by john at 9:55 AM  â€¢  permalink