Heidegger never mentioned this in Being and Time. [Photo credit: cpj79]
Well, friends of me, I write this to say that August is the cruelest month. Though it did bring my fair city some welcome relief from our weather, which had resembled that of the planet Venus for the past year, it also brought a lot of sadness and worry at a time when I felt as though I was at my limit for handling both. About the only thing that I think can go wrong at this point would be for a complete stranger to find me on the street and kick me square in the testicles, for no other reason than that the winds of fate had blown me across the path of his testicle-kicking at precisely the right moment to receive the unwelcome gift.
Like my inevitable death, this suffering belongs to me and I understand that it is a part of my destiny as a being in the world. In fact, from its location in my own future it pulses, like a beacon, so that even in the present moment I understand how it will happen. Someday—when exactly is the only detail I cannot determine—I will be walking briskly up a busy sidewalk, dodging pedestrians and panhandlers in a desperate effort to deliver an important parcel to the post office before it closes. My focus will be shattered by a breathless feeling of dread. Even in my coat, a chill is inescapable. I will feel claustrophobic within my own skin. The edges of my vision will darken and converge. I will turn around a split second before the fatal foot plunges deep into my perineum in a parody of childbirth, cleaving and crushing my scrotum. Waves of nausea ripple throughout my midsection. My kidneys explode with the pain of a thousand kidney stones. I don’t know if I am screaming because the blow has momentarily deafened me.
Falling to my knees, I glance upwards and our eyes lock. His glare is steely; determined. He has found his man and together we have each helped the other fulfill his purpose, understanding each other in a way that only antagonists can. In his eyes I see my own agony reflected and it’s there that I watch myself involuntarily expurgate a dinner I ate twelve years prior at a going-away party for a dear friend, pieces of congratulatory words from the cake still clinging to bits of frosting. I am aware of a hollowness, an ambiguous sense of loss seemingly without object yet suffused with an understanding of the universe and my place within it that I could not have attained without taking his boot into my taint. Wordlessly, he will break away from my gaze and walk his path unimpeded. We will never see each other again.
My friends, do not ask for whom the boot kicks. The boot kicks for thee.
I was never a fanatic about Star Trek: The Next Generation. I've been watching it recently because I only get five channels and it's better than Family Guy and usually it's funnier than Family Guy too. In the intro Picard announces his intention "to go where no one has gone before" (boldly!). That's when the intro shifts from the contemplation of the majesty of space to bold action. Watch as the Enterprise zips by from the left! Now from the right! The names of the cast members appear suddenly as though formed from the engine's wake. This is a great way to advertise the show's font. It's a very action-packed font. The words slant forwards. They are in motion. Do they want to be in the future so badly that they lean towards it from the present moment? No. They just want to get the hell away from this lame intro. They're not even allowed to be in the same frame as something cool like a planet or a nebula. Or even the Enterprise itself. It wants to get out of this intro so bad, it's actually making whooshing sounds in the vacuum of space! Its urge to flee is so great not even the laws of physics shall remain standing!
In space, no one can hear you yawn. But apparently everyone can hear you redline your impulse engines to escape the humiliation of being a shakespearean actor getting a late-career renaissance in the vacuum of syndication.
All my koosh are belong to swine. [Photo credit: Erin Williamson]
I wanted to get sick because I want my immune system to get stronger and better, but now that I am sick I am not really enjoying myself as much as I thought I would. I really imagined it as some kind of vacation. I am not the kind of person who takes vacations or who enjoys them, but I expected this to be a biologically-necessitated period of cookie-ingestion and daytime-television-consumption. It turns out having the flu actually sucks, and that ice cream doesn’t cure it, no matter how many pints of “H1-PeCan” you eat.
My fever—101.5˚ at the moment—burns from the inside out like it does when Lindsay Lohan pees. I pee about 3 times an hour because of all the water I am drinking. I call it my take-a-sip-leave-a-sip policy. I’m peeing so often there isn’t even water in it anymore, I only pee the sound of peeing. It echoes up out of the bowl to mock me. But with my fever I am more popular with the cat. She seems to like sleeping on me a whole lot more. And every time I line up some Tylenol to try to bring my temp down, the cat knocks them off the table with what looks like glee.
I was worried about getting sick during the school year though because now I’m a teacher and I have students and I have this sense that they need me. This is a delusion brought on by my fever or perhaps by my profession. University professors and their graduate mentees are often delusional. It’s a proud tradition. It’s what gives us the idea that we should be telling people who are nothing like us that they should live their lives exactly like we do. Although my girlfriend told me she needs me. She’s having cramps and she wants me to lay across her belly. She said it’s greener than using the electric heating pad.
I read that if I get a flu this season, it’s probably the swine flu. I have my doubts, though. Sure, I didn’t get vaccinated—who has?—but I do ride public transit. That’s vaccine enough. It’s like giving your lymph system a copy of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” I for one credit the bus system with vaccinating me against ever quitting flossing.
I still remember how in April, the news started to report on the “deadly” swine flu. Then the study came out that told us that up to 117% of the population was going to get the virus. Now I get emails from the university telling me not to go to the doctor if I have flu-like symptoms and not to get the vaccine because I have no serious health complications. It’s probably better that I not try to get the vaccine, because there’s almost none of it to be had. It’s a chicken-egg problem. Because American companies make the virus for the vaccine by growing it in chicken eggs. According to pharmaceutical companies, newer technologies to make the vaccine faster are not profitable for companies, and it would take government leadership from the highest levels to transform flu-virus production. Which came first? Lack of action on innovations in vaccine-production technology, or lack of governmental leadership?
While companies struggle to produce the seasonal flu vaccine alongside its porcine counterpart, we’ve known about the actually-deadly avian flu for at least 6 years and, as of February of this year, we only had about 26 million doses stockpiled. I can’t wait to see the lines that form when even the people who are afraid of Guillain-Barré and Autism are desperate enough to get the shot.
Not wanting to wait for the CDC to determine if I have swine flu, and being told that a good citizen does not burden the healthcare system by an unnecessary doctor’s visit, I went on WebMD to do some research on swine flu. I learned that one of the most common sex mistakes women make is not initiating sex with their partner. Sorry, I got distracted by an article called, “6 sex mistakes women make.” Sex mistake number 7: initiating sex with me. Especially in my current condition. Though if you see someone walking the vaccine lines outside of health clinics offering the women “swine jobs,” don’t let on that you know me. I really need the money.
deciding how we will clean the house is a chore in itself. my girlfriend likes to use "natural cleansers." like vinegar and baking soda. she reminds me that vinegar is an acid. i remind her that we're cleaning the house, not douching it. to me, a surface isn't clean unless i've removed a layer of it. when you take a deep breath in a clean home, lingering chemicals in the air should burn the nose and esophagus; it should not smell like a side salad at tgi friday's. the former is the smell of chemical burns on the fingertips and the extinction of a plankton species as substances once used to torment axis soldiers on the hindenburg line race through storm drains to open water; the latter, the smell of a frat boy's last-ditch attempt at conquest. all that's missing is axe body spray, which, as we all know, is the smell of overconfidence and desperation.
on cleaning day, my girlfriend cleans most of the house. she does this and does not ask for a thank you. i clean the bathroom. i do this and then i parade around the house in celebration, and i make my girlfriend take pictures of me with the toilet. i taunt her with my bathroom-cleaning superiority. to some this may sound arrogant, but i'm very good at cleaning bathrooms. i'm so good at cleaning i could probably turn paris hilton's vagina into amy grant's. that would kill off another species of plankton.
