Why no post for days and days? Been unexpectedly called away from the bungalow to Plano Texas, the Teen Suicide Capitol of the World, on urgent auntly business.
I haven’t even had time to check the comments, so it there’s a fight breaking out, be sure to publicize it widely. This will ensure essential continuity in the Feminists Are Nutjobs narrative.
I cannot, I’m afraid, ever guarantee a post worth reading, but I may not be able to manage even a mediocre one at least until Sunday or Monday. Please turn to liquor and drugs as a substitute. Until then, sayonara.
Would it be impertinent to ask if you wanted to join me for some yumminess at a nearby Cafe Brazil? I go to school at UTD, and am just another fangirl lurker.
Twisty - I just barely made it out of Plano with my life, so my suggestion for you is to get out of there as fast as you can. Run, don’t walk, back to Austin as fast as your feet can carry you!
Oh dear. “Urgent family business” does not sound good. It’s never because someone just won $1M from the Publisher’s Clearing House. Rats.
Sigh.
Martinis at my place?
Ah, Plano. The Texas equivalent of the family’s wine-soaked mediocrity disguised as a dirty old uncle.
I echo Lily’s sentiments.
Hedonistic: I’ll have to stick with Bushmill’s 1604, I’m afraid. A martini with grape juice and Triple Sec just boggles my mind a little too much.
Bubba’s Nightmare, others’ reality: I do in fact have a dirty old uncle in Plano. Hi, Bobby!
May tequila, red meat, and very dark chocolate keep you and yours safe and well, Twisty.
Sorry to hear that you have to run off to Plano. I shall probably be subject to disciplinary action for posting this. I’ll defend myself by saying I did it during my break! (Actually, we haven’t had the tedious meeting with our program manager about what horrid employees we all are yet, but we’ve been assured it’s coming in April).
But enough about me - I hope your urgent business isn’t too depressing.
Well, I needed an excuse for a mango daiquiri…
Doesn’t anybody remember that NWA song Straight Outta Plano?
take care of yourself, twisty. we need your sparkling wit and brilliant blaming skills to keep the rest of us fired up and inspired to fight the patriarchy! good luck on your family issues, go easy on that fabulously boob-free bod!
Dear Twistylicious Spinster Aunt,
Nothing like a food fight with a little Orc slobber in a comment thread to distract you from the travails of urgent auntly business. You know you can depend on us, bwa ha ha.
You’re in Plano?! This town’s stock just went up a little!
Urgent auntly business. Lately I don’t like the sound of that.
Better luck to ya, hon.
Dear godinheaven. Plano. I spent four years there and was glad to get out with my soul intact. Well, reasonably intact. It was like living in the remake of “The Stepford Wives.” While I hope your family business isn’t too horrendous, I do look forward to your blog post skewering the North Dallas Wasteland.
Being a sheltered west coaster, I thought I would educate myself a little on Plano via the that online masterpiece of academia called Wikipedia. Here’s what I found initially:
“Plano’s parks feature playgrounds, several bicycling trails, and two nature preserves. The bike trails take advantage of several contigous parks to extend their range…The Arbor Hills Nature Preserve is located west of the Dallas North Tollway on Parker Rd. It features a shared pedestrian and bicycling trail which highlights the assets of the preserve, and the woods within the preserve are traversed by several unpaved trails.”
This plus the fact that it’s the home of Frito-Lay, and I’m thinking that Plano sounds like a little slice of heaven until I scroll down and find this:
“Plano students achieved notoriety following a cluster of nine suicides in 1983 that raised national awareness about suburban teenage depression and drug abuse. The drug specifically cited by many was heroin. This heroin problem resurfaced in the late 1990s, culminating in coverage by several major news outlets such as NBC’s Dateline and MTV’s Faces of Death. Heroin use in Plano eventually led to over a dozen overdose deaths of teenagers and young adults. Many more Plano heroin users suffered from overdoses that did not result in death.”
Which made me think Plano sounds a lot like Modesto. I think every state has its own Plano.
And to boot, Plano has unleashed both Lance Armstrong and Ross Perot upon the world.
Hmmm. Plano. Dallas, on the whole, fails to agree with me and Plano is a good example of why. Kas is right, though - Cafe Brazil is one of the shining lights of the area. Strangely enough, the one in Plano is amongst the most agreeable in the area.
If you two do end up swilling coffees over migas at one of the Cafe Brazils, may I join you?
Toasting you with tequila shot and bong hit: May your urgent auntly business turn out to be a mere molehill.
Ya’ll, the fun people are down in Houston. Come on down!
And on prom night here in Atlanta no less..Harrruumph
Liquor and drugs it is I guess
Godspeed with the Auntly Bidness
Lawbitch:
“Ya’ll the fun people are down in Houston.”
Yeah.
I spent 15 years trying to extract myself from that hellhole of mold, humidity, and flying roaches. (Yes, flying cockroaches. Big ones. Be afraid.)
Prejudice, smug white suburbs, underfoot godbags, Marvin Zindler, and all of the disadvantages of a big city with few of the advantages.
I like Texas, I just can’t stand Houston. It should be sawed off of the state and towed out to sea.
I eliminated the entire state of Texas from my dating pool after dating a Houston dude. It was that bad.
Drinks for me. Is it too early in the year to start drinking margaritas? You be the judge……
The flying roaches are the WORST!!!
Bubbasnightmare, you were hanging with the wrong crowd. I’m fun, I promise. No putting up with godbags either.
After being in various places, I’ve learned that you’ve got to blaze your own path–to find or build your own community. That’s what Twisty in doing on this website. I’d bet that there are women out there doing the same all over the world.
The auntly business sounds worrisome. Good luck and I hope the business finds itself happily resolved.
Austin has flying cockraoches too. Just sayin. (I think the entire state supply breeds in my bathroom!)
I never knew Lance Armstrong was from Plano!
lawbitch, thank you for showing a little Houston love. There’s a lot to hate there, and I’m not sure that I would move back; but it is big enough to find yourself a good community, and I found a lovely one of some great, progressive, patriarchy-blaming women. Something about being in the minority as a feminist made everyone band together.
By the way, could the auntly business be related to a certain Rotel having a birthday? Let’s hope that it is something nice like that.
Hey, Houston may be hot, humid, moldy, infested with rednecks and flying roaches, beset by Marvin Zindler and his lavender sunglasses, swarming with godbags in megachurches, but… what was that thirty-fifth part again?
(Native Houstonian)
Huh? Am I the only one who thinks “urgent auntly business” sounds fun?
Personally, I think the measure of the cockroach is in poundage. With or without wings, the really big ones win. My brother and sister-in-law live in Houston, and I saw a cockroach the size of a dachshund stroll into their kitchen through the back door one evening. It just walked right in, as if to say, “I’m a ten-pound cockroach! I can do anything I want!”
And then there was that time in Hawaii. They have some large cockroaches there, believe you me. That was the trip when I found out that my spouse was *not* going to protect me against giant roaches. Part of what you get for being a feminist, I guess.
Houston, Dallas: they each have their charms. I like the pine trees and refinery lights of the former, though the Rothko Chapel always sends me into a fit of existential despair, however much I thinks its going to be different this time. I love Marvin Zindler also, just because my grandmother used to think he was so funny. Dallas lost its two main attractions- the flying red horse, and the gaily-colored planes of Braniff International- some time ago, but it still has some pretty cool architecture downtown. (The Republic Bank building has this strange propensity for showing up in my dreams.)
Also: Never underestimate the antipathy that Houstonians and Dallas-whatevers have towards each other. I’ve lived in Texas for 33 of my 34 years, and have been to Dallas only three times, because fuck that craphole. You’re practically Oklahomans.
Spoken like a Houston-native, norbizness! (The thirty-fifth part would be the brown air.)
Well, I was born in Houston and raised in Dallas. The latter has many unpleasant traits, but it ain’t Oklahoma.
Dallas hair eats Houston hair for breakfast.
Now, you folks aren’t supposed to make me LOL with comments while I’m at work.
I left Houston mostly because of the climate, but the incessant “Jesus Saves!” messages that a neighbor used his backyard radio to broadcast to one and all might have had something to do with it, too. Yes, I should have picked my community better, but when you live in the smug white suburbs so your kids can get the least indecent public education, and your (now ex-)spouse is half a godbag herself, it’s tough.
Norbizness:
You are actually a rarity. There are damned few native Houstonians because the city was invaded by feriners (def: people from outside Texas) in the 1970’s when jobs up north were few and the price of living in Texas was low. I’ve read somewhere that less than 10% of Houston residents are native.
Twisty:
[frissons of horror] Dallas Hair. Marvin Zindler’s lavender glasses. Dr. Ed Young and the Second Gigunda Baptist Church. (Honestly, folks, how can you get a legitimate doctoral degree in religion?)
Little known fact #2351884: Houston is home to the largest LGBT community in America outside of SF and NYC.
(Participating in the Houston Pride Parade during the anniversary of Stonewall is insane. Drinking enough water to survive it requires normal humans to pee sometime during the parade.
(My comment got spammafied. Rats! It was so elogquent, too.)
1. Less than 10% of Houston residents are native Houstonians. Most of the rest are refugees from the Great Job Migrations of the 1970’s when up-North jobs were scarce and the cost of living in Texas was cheap.
2. Little known fact: Houston has the largest LGBT community in America after SF and NYC.
3. Anyone who voluntarily participates in Houston’s Pride Parade on the anniversary of Stonewall is f%$!!ing nuts. Do you know what the June sun is like??
4. Dallas hair does indeed eat Houston hair for breakfast. Both, however, are easily outdoon by Killeen hair.
5. It’s hard to find a “good” community in Houston when you’re forced to live in the smug white suburbs in order for your children to get the least indecent public education available.
A shot for tequilla for Bubbasnightmare. Better make that 2 shots for me because of #5.
Dallas ate my hair, too. That’s why I don’t have big hair. I keep it short and spunky.
Does this mean I have to start citing Wikipedia now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisty_faster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisty_faster
This is crap. And wrong.
You have to change it then. Or someone.
What I mean when I said “crap” was that the entry contained agonizing capitalization, grammatical and factual errors. When I said “wrong” I meant that, while it is flattering, Twisty Faster is insufficiently noteworthy a personage, by Wikipedia’s own standards for biography, for an entry. Especially one that has been edited by an anti-Capitalite.
So I blanked it.
I’m going to hazard a guess. There’s a sub-community within the Wikipedia community that tries to keep Wikipedia up-to-date on blogging matters. Your blog reached the 1,000,000 served mark; hence, a Wikipedia entry for “Twisty faster.”
I’m still trying to figure out why “faster” is all lower case. I think it’s probably due to the fact that your entry was worked on by three bots, which didn’t interpret that word as a name.
Right. Shoot first ask questions later. What’s an anti-Capitalite? Punctuation or commerce?
Vera. Geeky!
Sorry!
Nooo I love it. Depend on it.
Twisty it’s still there.