Thursday, November 30, 2006

skinning cats

There are so many ways to die. Lets count them together, shall we:

  • Old Age (which really means, Cancer or Heart Disease)
  • Fright (this is a slow death)
  • Embarrassment (oh, the horror)
  • Snake Bite (romantic)
  • Loneliness (just remember to "shine your teeth till meaningless" and you'll avoid this one)

Well, I count 5. Maybe that's not so many.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh wait, there are THE DREADED BANAL ROADS TO MORTALITY. These are the ways I am most afraid of dying.

Choking on food. This fear, coupled with my natural inclination to binge-y-ness, increases the chance that I will die while masticating wildly. Numerous are the times I've stuck my finger down my own throat (no, I am no purger, mind you) to grab what I thought might be my death sentence. I am also prepared to give myself the Heimlich Maneuver if need be.
Obviously, dying this way is a close kin of dying of embarrassment.

Anaphalactic Shock. I have no earthly idea how to spell this. But I like that my attempt is reminiscent of galactic. Which also reminds me of the word galvanic. None of this is related, but I used to know a man named Bob Galvin. He was a bit too self-important for me to like him, but I wish I'd known the word Galvanic back then. Anyway, I recently ate "something nasty in the woodshed" or maybe it was just shellfish, and my tongue swelled (swoll?) and my face puffed and I ran as fast as my four legs could take me to the local ER. I would hate to die this way. I love food. For food to kill me is the kind of irony reserved, I hoped, for real assholes.
I hope I am not an asshole in denial.

Dying of something I've already been accused of hypochondria about. Sometimes I have chest pains. "And sometimes I have the menstrual pains real hard."

(God, I'm quoting a lot in this post. I think I better go back in and add actual quotation marks before one of my thousands of devoted readers gets the wrong idea and thinks I'm witty. No, no, my lackeys, let me promise you this. I am but a tick on the back of true wit. I burrow my head into its flesh and live off its blood until I give it Lyme disease or it burns me off with a match. It is a sour, indolent life, but someone has to live it.)
Anyway, back to dying of something I've already blah blah blah. I go to doctors. That's part of my shtick. There's a Woodie Allen-ness to it, and by that I mean a sad and pathetic, self-referential, mother-obsessed, and tired. I tell them I have a pain here or there and they give me tests and say, "yeah, well, there's a little something, but don't worry about it. That will cost you $300 dollars." To which I always reply, "thank God I'm bourgeoisie white-collar trash, because I would not be able to afford your glorious bedside manner and inattention without shweet insurance and a tech job salary." To which they say, "True dat. Fork over the money, playa."

So, when I do die, how do I want to go? In a blaze of fucking glory, of course. I haven't quite worked out the particulars, because sky-diving and war make me nervous, and I can't think of other ways to die in an actual blaze of glory otherwise. Ooh, I know, I want to save someone's life and by doing so, meet my glorious demise, certain if there is an afterlife to be absolved of all my sins (I think this post alone has been proof of gluttony, pride, and anger) and welcomed into heaven with open arms. Hopefully they have improved things since the time Twain documented in Letters to the Earth. No one likes a lot of blasted harps and no sex.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Neither normal nor abnormal

I've been working way too much and forgetting to post to this blog at all. I have had thoughts I wanted to share with my devoted readers (ha!), but then I forgot them, too. Anyway, here's a few headlines from my recent life, in no particular order:

  • Doctor's Office Says Results of Stress Test Neither Normal nor Abnormal. I Say, What's New?
  • Enchantment by Corinne Bailey Rae, on Headphones, Prevents Woman from Setting Office On Fire
  • Paranoid Iguana on Key Biscayne Interrupts Lazy Reading of Sunday Times; Causes Chuckle
  • Germ Container (Miami Airport) Holds Austin Couple Hostage for 8 Hours. (Hey, fuck you American Airlines!)

Friday, October 27, 2006

The family needs closure

This just in: Rich People Have No Business Eating at McDonalds.

I would like to hear from any of you who care to comment on this story. Do you feel bad for the rich people who ate the rat salad? Do you believe their story? Do you think they just "need closure" or that they just "need 1.7 million dollars?"

Myself, I would hate to eat rat salad. But, it could be worse. You could drive home looking forward to the moment when you can devour the iceberg lettuce, grade-B chicken, and (oddly enough) Newman's Own Caesar salad dressing, and then, after a few bites, find Rush Limbaugh on its back with its mouth opened in your plastic carton. Now that would be worth suing over.

Monday, October 23, 2006

what is dead put its arm round you also

The themes for today are death and god.

First thing this morning, I overheard a coworker asking another to sign a card for someone we used to work with whose mother died. For those of you who don't know me, the words "mother died," have special significance, because, yeah, you guessed it, my mother died.

Look, I realize that everyone who is lucky enough not to die young is burdened with the loss of the woman who brought them into this world, and I doubt it is ever a pleasant experience, even if your mother was a junkie hooker who beat you with extension cords and died peacefully in her sleep after winning the lottery and fucking Clive Owen. But some ways that mothers die are worse than others ("and some girls mothers are bigger than other girls mothers"). Mine blew her brains out. So in most death-of-a-relative face-offs, I win. But my coworker's Mom died of cancer. CANCER. Cancer always wins.

Goodbye Sweet Ms. H

And speaking of cancer. I received an e-mail from a friend today informing the world that her sweet little doggie died on Sunday. She had cancer, too. And it was fast. She first told us about her pup's diagnosis only a few months ago at most. And I saw her a few weeks ago and the worst Ms. H had was a little cough. Cancer!

There's a reason that there is a saying that something grows "like a cancer." Because cancer grows fast, and unlike the pride you have when you measure your kid (unless she suffers from giantism) against the door frame and mark the progress she is making with a pencil, the date, and her name, or the joy you feel when you're 85 and you still know of one sure fire way to make wrinkles disappear, no one except the most sociopathic genetic researcher feels pride or joy when they see cancer grow. Cancer is, for lack of a better word, evil.

When I was 15, I looked around at my friends and did this tally. Of the girls I counted as my closest friends, all but one had lost her mother to breast cancer. My mother was still alive then, and I thought, "why am I so lucky?" My morose little brain thought something like this, "I have never experienced pain or loss, and so I will probably die young." That was my idea of balance. I felt that I deserved some pain and loss because I recognized that it was endemic to being human.

I feel like stopping now and eating the meal my husband is cooking, and looking at him and into him and reaching out for him, holding his arm/his skin/his body and holding it tighter (burning the experience of having him in my life onto me like a brand that can never be washed away by death, mine or his, or anyones) and if I could, consuming him, the moment, this house we're in, our pets, our friends, and all of the life we get to have because I want the pleasant feelings that come with a shot in the arm or a bag of tater tots and a chocolate shake. And it makes me understand communion and what Jesus might have been trying to satisfy for his friends as he ate with them for a final time and told them to eat and drink him. Which brings me to god, the second theme of this post.

By the way, the title of this post is a quote, from a poem written by Paul Celan. It's called Zahle die Mandeln, and I think you should read it. Come on, click here, I've made it easy for you and it's even in English.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Weltschmerz

weltschmerz \VELT-shmairts\ noun, often capitalized
*1 : a mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
Isn't that a great word?

Sadly, some other schmuck already took it on blogspot, AND on livejournal. So for now, I'll keep this one.

I want to apologize to the mythical reader for my last post. Of course I don't hate you -- I barely know ye!

And even if I do know you, and if I did hate you at that moment, there's a thin line between love and hate and I probably love you now. Fickle me pink.

I don't know what to do on a blog. I read a friend of mine's blog and it's so focused and full of art. I'm jealous of him because he moved to Norway. I don't want to move to Norway, but I'm still jealous. Partly because I think that to have a blog will require me to do things/think things worth blogging about. That's good, in a way, because I spend so much time on auto-kcuffing-pilot that it might wake me up. Ach!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Top 10 List

Things Ihate:

Myself
Blogs
America
My Job
Debt
My Parents
The Internet
This Post
The Reader of this Post
Everything Else

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Oh the pressure

The first post.

Like the opening sentence of a great novel, the first post should be a clue, an enticement, maybe even the mirror image of the coda!

If this first post will be anything remotely like the first sentence of a great novel, ipso facto this blog would have to be like a great novel, right?

Did I use "ipso facto" correctly?

Shit. I messed it up already. I feel like Grover.

That reminds me of my sister-in-law, who, when she was a tot in the 80s, thought the lyrics to Madonna's Dress You Up were "all over your Grover" instead of "all over your body."