king kid

Another weekend gone, another nothing much to show for it. Just the way I like it. If laziness were an Olympic sport I would have gold medals coming out my ass.

On Monday I will ask my work friends (which is a category that does not actually include real friendship, just a kind of Stockholm Syndrome response to wage slavery) "how was your weekend?" And they will go on about Timmy's basketball game, that started at 8:00 AM on Saturday, but they had to leave the house at 6:30 so they could take the little fartlings to McDonald's first. Then after that Susie had a gymnastics meet from noon to 3:00, and then they all had to rush to Sam's club to buy a holocaust-sized bag of Starburst candy for the slumber party they were hosting that night for 15 8-year olds. Then Sunday they took everyone to Church.com and got home in time to spend the day listening to Timmy and Susie argue with each other in a sugar rush of bitter rancor and sleep deprivation, until it was time to go to the movie multiplex for a special Sunday School showing of The Passion of the Christ, which was good except for the shrieks of terror from the kids.

Then they'll ask me about my weekend, and I'll tell them about how after seeing a great show at Rubber Gloves on Friday night, I slept until almost noon on Saturday. When I got up, I spent about an hour and a half reading the paper and drinking coffee. Then I showered and took the dogs to the park for a while, and then met some friends for dinner at this great out of the way restaurant that just opened. Then, as their face starts to turn green, I will then tell them that Sunday I slept in again, spent another 90 minutes reading the paper, and then took my grandmother to lunch.

I suppose that having kids must be rewarding, or else there wouldn't be so many people doing it. (Speaking of which, have you noticed that when someone at the office gets pregnant, everyone acts like it's the best thing that ever happened? And the knocked-up acts like she's the first person it ever happened to? As if it's not the most common thing in the world. There's a funny story at The Onion that describes this phenomenon perfectly.)

As far as I can tell, however, children are parasitic life-drainers that lower the average adult I.Q. by 30 points. Because when you have them, instead of reading books, you wipe up poop. Instead of long dinners with good conversation with other adults, you go to Chuck E. Cheese. Naturally your brain turns to shit.

Fuck all that.

p.s. I am so tired of peeling eggs. Check this out.

imaginary conversation about gay marriage

"Can I ask a couple of questions?"
"Sure."
"These are all yes or no questions, so they should be pretty easy. Ready?"
"Shoot."
"I'd love to. Just kidding. Okay, here's the first one. You're married, right?"
"Yes."
"If gay marriage were allowed, would you love your wife less?"
"No."
"If gay marriage were allowed, would you be more likely to get divorced?"
"No."
"Would you love your kids less?"
"No."
"If gay marriage had been allowed before you proposed to your wife, would you have been less likely to get married?"
"No."
"Less likely to have children?"
"No."
"Do you personally know anyone who would have answered yes to any of those questions?"
"No."
"Okay. Lets move on to another angle. Still bearing with me?"
"Sure."
"Okay. Thanks for being so patient. If gay marriage were allowed, would you expect that the government would stop allowing you and your wife to file taxes jointly?"
"No."
"Would you expect that the government would suddenly stop honoring social security survivor benefits?"
"No."
"Would you expect to suddenly lose rights of survivorship to your investments or property?"
"No."
"Okay. So how exactly is gay marriage a threat to the institution?"
"Because the Bible says so."
"Okay, but do you think legalizing gay marriage would mean that your church would be forced to start offering ceremonies to same-sex couples?"
"No, of course not."
"Right, but City Hall might have to?"
"Right."
"Okay, so we agree that there's a distinction to be made between civil marriage rights and religious marriage?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Okay, so if Christian churches are free to continue offering religious ceremonies as they see fit, then why is gay marriage a threat to the institution?"
"Well, why stop there? Next, polygamists and incest fan clubs will be clamoring to get married. Why can't they get married too?"
"Okay, but you're changing the subject. We're not talking about polygamy or incest or pedophilia, we're talking about two consenting adults of the same sex. Focus on just that. Why is that a threat to you or anyone else?"

everyone's gotta right to be a victim

The Dallas newspaper has always been yeasty, but for the last two mornings, it's been taking a bathos.

Monday morning, there was a long front page story about this guy in South Texas. He’s a young guy - mid-20’s – a former star athlete in his small town high school. Later, he married his sweetheart and they got right to work having kids. He had a job delivering parts, or something. Very sweet stuff, until one day he got out of his truck and fell down. Then fell down some more. And some more.

This got worse and worse until he finally sought medical attention. Local doctors didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him and he eventually ended up in a major Dallas hospital where they diagnosed ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease. Hell of thing to happen to you at any age, but especially so young. From reading the story, it seems like treatment options are pretty limited, at best.

What caught my attention about this story was not his amazing bad luck – you can read about people experiencing terrible things every day in the newspaper – but his response to it. He has refused to go back to the hospital for treatment because (paraphrasing here) “they paraded him around in front a bunch of interns”. He quit taking his meds because they made him sick. He refused to see a physical therapist because he didn’t want a stranger around seeing him so weak. So apparently he’s just going to back home and wait to die.

In today’s issue, there was another front page story in the same vein. There’s this kid, a wrestling champion, in a local high school who smacked his head during a big match a month ago. He was taken to the hospital when he couldn’t answer questions about who he was. The hospital can’t detect any physical damage, but ever since, he has no short-term or long-term memory. The article describes how he doesn’t know his parents, doesn’t know how to take a shower, was completely confused about how to eat an orange, and so on. He’s not retarded, he’s just having to re-learn everything. The doctors don’t seem sure if he will ever regain his memories.

Now, as I mentioned, the Dallas paper sucks anyway, but this week has been unusually exploitative and depressing. I wonder what will be in the paper tomorrow? Maybe we can look forward to a heartwarming article about a cheerleader who volunteers in nursing homes every weekend, but contracts necrotizing fasciitis and becomes a quadriplegic. What the hell? What’s behind all the weepy stories? It’s like the Lifetime Channel and mainstream journalism have converged.

(lack of) wisdom teeth

I was just talking to a friend of mine who recently had his wisdom teeth removed. Apparently it's normally an awful procedure. I say apparently because I haven't had it done. For some reason whenever I tell someone that - you know, those casual conversations where someone asks you about your dental health history - I get a strange reaction. "What do you mean, you still have your wisdom teeth?" You would think having them ripped out by the roots is some rite of passage into adulthood, like marriage or divorce.

Yes, I have my freakin wisdom teeth. And my tonsils, and my appendix. I should start a support group for the physically intact. Where's the public service announcement against peer pressure to have your tonsils removed? If I don't get some recognition for my plight soon my self esteem will be in the shitter.

So anyway, his surgery wasn't as bad as he had heard. The worst part was he had to stop smoking for a week. You can get something called dry rot, which is when smoke gets into the bloody holes where your teeth used to be and causes irritation and infection. It's like gangrene of the jaw and you can lose half your face that way. Has no one sued Phillip Morris for this yet? I can hear John Edwards now, in his "Two Americas" stump speech, telling us about the little girl he met on the campaign trail, whose daddy, a textile mill worker, lost half his face to smoking after a root canal.

*Update* If you want to see someone who lost half his face, click here.

she has to poop in it, not me

Welcome to inauguration day.

How was my weekend? Thanks for asking. Friday was Travis' birthday celebration. 4 of us got together and went to (pretty much) the only nice restaurant in Denton. There are other good restaurants, but this is one of those that when you walk in the door it announces, "Helloooooooo, and what are those on your feet? Do you call those shoes? We call them Wal-mart on stacked heels." Which is pretty funny when your waiter is (what else?) a complete idiot. Travis asked for the rest of his meal to go and forehead instead stacks my plate on top of his and removes them both.

Of course, Travis is laid back enough that it didn't bother him, but Lisa and I went into full huff. I don't think we stopped snorting in derision for at least 30 minutes.

The most descriptive thing I can say about Saturday is that I didn't take a shower until 3:00. Ha, take that, hygiene nazis.

I spent today with my grandmother. Which for the most part was fine, except that we are getting ready to replace her bathroom floor. And you wouldn't think a woman who can hardly see would have high standards about what the new floor would look like. You wouldn't think that, but you would be wrong. We have spent the last couple of weekends now looking for new flooring that is both cheap and completely white. No, two dollars a yard is too expensive. No, beige won't do. If I were going to live 10 more years I might be throwing money around, but I won't.

I tried to tell her that the bathroom would end up looking like a hospital, or, I don't know, a gas station, but what the hell, she has to poop in it, not me.