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Sunday, February 12, 2012

Sometimes A Pizza Is Just Not Enough

Some days it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps in the morning. This was one of those days when you should have just stayed in bed, warm and comfortable, because waking up was the absolute highlight of the day.

Reason enough to talk to anyone.
See, Zelma and I were bored. Terribly bored. So bored that we in our desperation went to the library. Big mistake. While there, we came across a friend of ours. Frank. Frank was a rail thin, socialist vegan who refused to carry arms in the military. He believed in women’s rights, shared wealth and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was frankly the only reason why I talked to him at all. He was a very nice fellow, though, despite his appalling habit of not eating things that had given their lives to be lunch. Frank also occupied rotten old buildings, entertaining some strange delusion of the buildings actually having some kind of historical or cultural value. When he wasn’t being arrested for free-thinking, he staged protests and demonstrations and workshops for lost souls in search of meaning in their existence. Or, as it would turn out, bored souls in search of adventure and pizza.
 
I bet you can guess what happened next. That’s right, Zelma and I were in fact in possession of two extremely bored souls, and in search of pizza, so when Frank, bless his long-haired emo-heart, asked us to participate in a workshop for women, we agreed to do so for the very reasonable price of a pizza. A workshop for women, he said. He didn’t have enough participants, and we were gullible and easily bribed.

Reason enough to do anything.
We entered the room, apprehensive and, frankly, still quite bored. In the middle of the room there was a table, and around the table a few women, couldn’t have been more than five. They all seemed a little lost. All, except for one. She exuded confidence and quirkiness, two things our teenage selves found off-putting and strange. But, thinking about that pizza, we sat down and decided to play along. A few silly get-to-know-each-other games later, our boredom level had spiked to never before seen heights and we were only getting started.

Filling with dread, we watched as the quirky hippie leader brought out magazines, scissors and glue. Lots of glue. No wonder she was so strange. She told us she wanted us to access our inner feminist. We were supposed to flip through the magazines and cut out pictures that represented the feminist inside of us, past experiences and future hopes. She wanted us to express in pictures why we decided to attend this feminist gathering and why it meant so much to us.

Silently I cursed Frank and tried to find a picture of a pizza. There was no pizza in any of the magazines. I cut out a picture of piano keys. Then a black shoe. Then a pretty white flower. And a picture of some liquorice. Zelma and I worked in silence with the other girls. They all seemed completely engrossed in the task and Zelma and I did everything we could not to accidentally look at each other. I knew if we did, we would burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Zelma and I are definitely not mood board people. We don’t cut out pictures from magazines and glue them to a piece of paper. In fact, we’re the kind of people who paint our nails purple and laugh at people who make mood boards, while drinking copious amounts of my own home made salmiakkikossu and listening to The Dark Side of the Moon.

Mood board, most definitely not made by me.
 And then, our eyes locked. I pulled a muscle in my side trying to keep from laughing out loud, and I can only assume the other women thought Zelma had a weird habit of snorting every now and then, just because she could. I have no idea how we made it through that meeting. I made up some kind of bullshit story about liquorice representing female liberation, and tried to explain the fact that my mood board was mostly black whereas the other women had cut out pictures of sunflowers and bright hats. Zelma just pretended she had laryngitis and couldn’t say anything.



The pizza?

So not worth it.
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23 comments:

  1. Okay, this was freaking hilarious. I don't know what's funnier, the way you described Frank, the mood boards, or Zelma pretending she had  laryngitis!

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  2. Hum....I thought for sure your mood board would be puppies....er...kitties and rainbows.

     

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  3. If pizza represents the feminist inside, then I am all woman.

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  4. Ok, you just reminded me that I lent my copy of Hitchhiker’s guide to one of Nicky's friends like 5 years ago. And I never got it back. 
    That bitch.

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  5. I am so NOT a mood board sort of person.  And getting pizza wouldn't have been worth it for me, either.  I think I would have come close to stabbing someone before that day was done, so I admire your restraint.

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  6. It just occurred to me Ziva Darling, that you, Zelma, and my pit bull Zoe all have names that begin with a "Z".  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  I love the image of you and Zelma preparing your "mood boards" and trying so hard not to break into hysterical laughter which would have been received about the same way it would be received at a funeral.

    Frank sounds utterly charming, in a dirty kind of way.  At least I hope it was decent pizza.

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  7.  Oh yes, I had some pretty elaborate plans for where to shove those scissors, but eventually decided I was too young to go to prison. It might have been worth it, though.

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  8.  It was probably one of those feminist vegan bitches, too.

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  9. Ohh, kitties! I better start making a new mood board right now.

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  10. Thanks, Meleah! It was all pretty funny, and it took us a couple of years before we could talk about the incident without breaking into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

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  11. We do, don't we? Coincidence? I don't think so either. ;)

    I'm amazed we had the decency to be ashamed about laughing at the mood boards. It was just so utterly ridiculous, how could you not laugh?

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  12. My mood board would have been very black too. Black leather, black stilettos, black furry handcuffs, black lace, a beautiful dark haired Finnish girl with a black heart ... yeah, I think the whole feminist movement was lost on me.

    Oh, I just thought of something not black that would be on my mood board. A banana.

    I think I just heard Gloria Steinam sigh.  

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  13. Was the liquorice red or black? I think that might add significantly to your description. By the way, why do they call it liquorice? There's no liquor in it. Now that might have added significantly to your description.

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  14. My mood board: a blank sheet of translucent vellum. Sitting next to it on the table: a wood-fired pizza topped with fresh basil, crumbled bacon and sweet piquanté peppers, and a large, frosty tumbler of that salmiakikkosu you mentioned. For music: The Dark Side of the Moon. I owe my entire knowledge of astronomy to it, and it was, and remains, my favorite composition about my favorite celestial body. As for women's workshops like the one you described, you couldn't make me attend one if you strapped me to a table and caned me. What silliness.

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  15. That's a lot of black for a girl who wears a purple condom and red sunglasses. Personally, I suspect you're secretly fond of pink.

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  16.  Does this mean we can have sleepovers and braid each other's hair while we talk about how much men suck?

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  17. I think I'm in love with your mood board. Or the banana, I'm not sure. Could also be you, of course. I'm very confused now, and I don't feel very feministy at all.

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  18. There's no liquor in it? Then why have I been eating it all these years??

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  19. Well now, aren't you the artist. Or cook, I'm not entirely sure if you described your mood board, or dinner. I'm happy no one is calling for your attendance at a women's workshop, though, I would hate to have to beat you with a stick to get you there.

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  20. Anyone that incorporates The Guide, The Dark Side of the Moon AND pizza into a single post is worth of a medal and at the very least, hero worship.

    Truth is, I'd happily participate in a workshop for women if the path to get there involved any of the above.

    Maybe liquorice is actually the key to female liberation and somehow the world has missed it. I  certainly feel liberated when eating liquorice and I'm not even female.

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  21. Thank you! I've always said I'm worthy of hero worship, but people tend to just smile and nod and then they usually lock me up and throw away the key and then it gets REALLY ugly.

    Maybe liquorice is really the key to male liberation and that's why all those feminists gave me dirty looks when I couldn't stop talking about it?

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  22. Hey Ziva! Shameless! Some girls will go anything for a slice of pizza. Just one. True story. Roth x

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  23. Anything? And you know this, how? ;)

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