Thursday, April 14, 2005

This apple really sucks

So, I'm eating a completely flavorless apple right now and I realized that I've been a total blogging slack of late. I could blame it on attempting to be a good worker, and actually, shock-horror, that's a little bit true. Our laptop totally died, so now my only interwebby connection is at work and I feel guilty every time I start to type. I'm trying to get over it though, since, I'm neither appreciated nor paid enough to fret over spending 10 minutes a day on myself.
I've been listening to a ton of This American Life archives this week. My friend Lisa told me about this one that she heard last week about Elizabeth Smart, or more accurately about how all of Salt Lake City let her walk around, right in front of us for months without noticing. It was, on top of being an incredible piece, sadly true. I used to work at a downtown, independent book store where I saw Brian David Mitchell several times a week. Of course back then he was just "the Jesus bum." I was always nice to him, because he seemed so gentle, but he never failed to give me the frickin' willies. I took note when he acquired his first lady friend, the now infamous, Wanda Barzee and when Lars and I saw the two of them and a new girl digging through a dumpster behind Beto's on 4th South we didn't think much of it. Salt Lake has more than it's fair share of bizarro-regulars...they're so much a part of our landscape that we just ignore any new aspects to their freakiness. The unique and grotesque make this place lovely with their harmlessness.
Take the "Babydoll bum" for instance. When I moved to Salt Lake almost 10 years ago I saw this guy at the Crossroads mall carrying a "baby." At first I thought it was really sweet, but then as he got closer I realized it wasn't a baby at all that he cradled in his arms, it was a doll. He's had many different babies over the years. My favorite stage was the "tiny baby." I'm not sure if he was attempting to ween himself off of the actual baby-sized dolls or what, but for a while he had this teeny, tiny baby doll that fit in his pocket.
The Babydoll bum is one of the reasons that I love Salt Lake. The Jesus bum used to be one too and I was devastated to find out that he wasn't harmless after all.

1 comment:

Miriam said...

Last week's TAL was sooo GREAT! That show always makes me think. Whenever I'm feeling low or uninspired at work, I just do some mindless typing and get one of their programs going. THere are so many that I just love to death and will listen to over and over again. I esp. love David Sedaris pieces in them.
M