Recovering from the flu, yo. Dude, I am seriously going to die in the next flu pandemic. Normal respiratory illness almost does me in, let alone a contagion of truly heinous power. I think I’ll go stencil a t-shirt to say “Future Captain Trips Victim.”
I have a project cookin’ up for the new year, just a little something to keep my mind off the doom.
It should debut on the first, so see you then…
I share one of my offices with another employee (an employee of another company, oddly enough — don’t ask), but she’s out of town this week. She did, however, leave behind a jar of store brand peanut butter poised proudly on a dais-like postal scale. It looks so regal there, this humble jar of low-cost protein, standing tall against all financial odds as if to say: “LO! I have come to rescue you from high-cost low-calorie nourishment!”
Except, you know, it can’t rescue me. When I eat peanut butter, I get cold sores.
There’s no one right answer to any question, not even dwindling grocery budgets.
Another example: Just recently I restrained myself from getting into an argument online. I’m part of a quasi-environmental discussion group (that meets online and off), and one of the members posted an article with a childfree stance. I mentioned that I had read a piece recently that industrial countries with lower than replacement rate birth rates have succeeded in making children an unacceptable burden, and how I thought that we were heading the same way. I used my own life (citing mainly financial reasons) to illustrate my point — though I was honest about not wanting children in the first place. Another member (who never posts) immediately responded with a vehement pro-breeding post, going through my hypothetical list point by point to rebut them.
Except, you know, her rebuttal was from fantasy land — at least as far as my life goes.
Luckily the original poster replied in a reasonable way, and I was glad that I hadn’t posted the scathing missive I had written.
I mean, I know intellectually that she and I will never, ever see eye to eye. I even understand that several of her points were valid for people in other circumstances. It was simply the fact that she was trapped in her one-size-fits-all thinking that my personal example had to be refuted by her entire world view, which was correct and perfect for everyone else. I never said, “Dude, you should never, under any circumstances, breed. For it is wrong and stuff.” I said, “Hey, it seems like children are a financial burden that most lower and middle class people can’t easily afford, including me.”
I couldn’t figure out why she had pissed me off so badly, except that she was so glib, but I realized later (while reading a different online argument that I wasn’t even involved in) that we weren’t even point/counterpoint, we were simply living two different approaches completely. I’m pretty sure that she is mostly a “feeler” — someone who feels a certain way about things and ignores anything outside of her particular gut instinct. And I know that I am a “thinker.” Never those twain shall meet.
It’s just a live and let live situation — or a breed or don’t breed, if you will.
There is no one right way to live. Not when it comes to children, not when it comes to peanut butter. The sooner we all figure that out, the better off we’ll all be.
Bonus:
The main reason I did not send my reply was a particular phrase that was vile and mean, even for me. But I would like to share it, because it’s something I have thought many times when dealing with Ishmaelites who declare that the solution to overpopulation is simply to stop producing food. In the unsent e-mail it went a little like this:
“Are you (or your imaginary yet-to-be-conceived children) volunteering to be the people who starve to death when we stop producing food? Nah, it’ll be those other people, somewhere else. Right? Probably brown people. Foreigners for sure. Or just dirty poor people. Not you. Right?”
Told you it was mean. Maybe I’m not a feeler or a thinker. Maybe I’m just a fucker.
So, it’s snowing in Houston right now, and a friend just called me and asked me to talk her into getting a Greyhound ticket to visit family for the holidays. Instead, I tell her about the guy who got his head cut off by a (supposedly) Wendigo-possessed madman on the bus in Canada last summer.
I am a bad friend. Possibly also a bad person.
And now I’m afraid that the Wendigo might travel south. It likes snow.
(Please see “Hodge-podgination” for rhyming purposes.)
I have been reading More Information Than You Require , and I have come to a strange and oddly pleasant conclusion: If he is not lying (which is the actual area of his expertise), it is possible that John Hodgman is as obsessed with Emo Philips as I am.
Although I never purchased a zeppelin from him, I did meet Emo Philips once. It was a childhood dream come true, though I probably shouldn’t admit that in public. I wrote about it a good while ago on another blog, but the gist of the story was that Emo thought he had met me before (though he hadn’t), and to cover his embarrassment he said that I was “everything [he found] attractive in a woman.”
Come to think of it, I have been involved in the embarrassment of Emo on more than one occasion. The first time I saw him perform (which was a couple of years before I met him), I had just come back from London and was wearing a rather-too-tight “Mind the Gap” t-shirt that made my modest bust look rather less-than-modest. (I wouldn’t mention that except for the abrupt segue to London that Emo made in the middle of his act.) Anyway, I was sitting front row center with Evn, and Emo began to engage us in banter — which started out all well and good (I was referred to as a “hot mama”), but ended in Evn outing himself in the middle of a comedy club to explain why he was not my boyfriend.
(Note to self: Do not engage the front row in witty banter if I am ever a stand-up comedian.)
Anyway, during my recent preparations for Depression 2.0, I came across this lovely website which illustrates over 700 hobo names. It was (of course) inspired by John Hodgman’s almanac list. (I can only hope that a similar project illustrating Molemen and their occupations will soon follow.)
I don’t think we’ll all be hobos, though, despite current economic calamity. I mean, we don’t really have trains anymore, and that’s an important part of the hobo mythos. Perhaps Obama can make revitalizing our rail system part of his first 100 days?
The Future Hobos of America would surely appreciate it.
Some random items:
1) There is nothing more punk rock than cutting your own hair. For realz. I did it, this method works. My hair looks better than the last time I got it cut at a salon, even. And it was free. That Instructables author should get an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony just for writing this thing.
2) I’ve got Scrabble fever, which isn’t something even Dr. House could cure. Oh, he could diagnose it, sure — but he couldn’t cure it. He’d probably make 13 or Cuddy give me the bad news, though. And then he would come in just to say something incredibly rude to further the plot, then leave to torment Dr. Jimmy…um, I digress. Scrabble. Right. I hadn’t played in years, but suddenly I’m making everyone I know plunk down some wooden tiles with me. I have no explanation for this, but perhaps it is related to an alien abduction experience I cannot recall? Maybe, probably not. Fun, though.
3) I used to work next door to a terrible Chinese restaurant. The food was bad enough, but the worst part was when they would clean their grease traps, and it would smell like rotting, burned onions for at least a four block radius. Being right next door, our entire office would reek for three days. That restaurant is now gone, but I’ve been temping at my old office and watching them gut the old restaurant to put in something new. Somehow just watching this process has awakened a new irrational fear: I am now afraid that our post-apocalyptic future will smell like the old restaurant’s grease trap. It’s bad enough that we face rapid climate change, overpopulation, and the continuing scourge of reality television — but now my visions of future calamity also smell really bad. It’s just not fair.
And there’s your update. Good day.