Day 220: Live this day as if it were your last.
Posted: February 23, 2012 Filed under: The Book | Tags: alcohol, Bill Murray, children, death, sadness, sex, violence Leave a comment »There are a lot of asinine proverbs out there, and “Live every day as if it were your last” is one of them. It can’t be done. You know why? This is why:
Damn, Bill Murray.
Of course, the Book doesn’t want me to live every day like I’m going to be dead tomorrow—just one. It even provides me a handy hypothetical scenario—a meteorite is about to obliterate the planet, and only I know!—so that I’m healthy and there are no consequences, for me or anyone else. I’m Phil Connors for a day, I guess.
What would I do with a day like that? Have a ridiculous breakfast, yes—but I’d be drinking champagne from the bottle, and not coffee from the carafe. I’d be drinking all day, in fact. I’d play with my kids, I’d take my wife on a date (for lunch, before I got too drunk), I’d ignore the stacks of work that I’m mostly ignoring anyway. I might pick a fight with my asshole neighbor. No, no, I wouldn’t do that: I’d just burn his house down. No consequences, right?
Living a “last day” that’s radically different from all your other days seems, I don’t know, wrong somehow? I mean, I wouldn’t go to work if I knew I was going to be dead in twenty-four hours—but I also wouldn’t walk through a parking lot smashing car windows, or hire a van-ful of prostitutes, or gorge myself on french fries and doughnuts and cupcakes. I wouldn’t do any of those things anyway: why would I do them just because I was going to be dead soon?
Because my life is sad and miserable, and I need the extraordinary circumstance of my impending death to enable me to do what I’ve secretly desired to do all my life, the things that will finally make me happy, finally make my life worth living, when it’s finally too late——that, at least, is what the Book assumes. Stupid fucking book.
Contagion
Posted: November 30, 2011 Filed under: Literature | Tags: disasters, disease, movies, sadness 1 Comment »I just got back from watching Contagion (there’s a dollar theater in Plano—I didn’t know those were still a thing): it’s been on my list of movies to watch since I heard about it, and I went tonight instead of waiting for the DVD release because I’m going to be teaching the film in the spring. A colleague and I are putting together a writing course on disasters, and Contagion is one of the texts.
One of the things that means is that there will be more posts about this movie, from a more critical/pedagogical perspective, as I actually teach it—and so for now, I’m just going to talk about how awesome it was. Also: there will be spoilers.
The film opens with Gwyneth Paltrow, coughing, and we know very quickly that she’s going to die (if, in fact, we didn’t know that going in). When she gets home to Minnesota from Hong Kong and hugs her son, who is about seven, we know he’s going to die, too—and we might expect her husband, Matt Damon, to die as well, but he doesn’t. There’s a fair amount going on during the opening minutes—we’re introduced to some other major characters, we see the early spread of the virus—but the mini-arc involving Beth (Paltrow), Mitch (Damon), and Clark (the kid) is one of the best parts of the film. Beth is sick, sure, but then she collapses at home, is rushed to the hospital, and dies—very quickly. Damon’s performance as he’s being told of his wife’s death is … well, excellent: it is not excessively (obviously) emotionally manipulative, and it gives a personal, individual weight of grief to the sufferings of countless millions that the film gives us. And when Clark dies while Mitch is at the hospital, well, you know that the film isn’t fucking around.
The cast was uniformly good. I was particularly impressed by Kate Winslet—which reminds me that I should watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again soon—and by Jennifer Ehle (though I must say that Regency-era dress is more flattering than an orange biohazard suit). I am always impressed by Matt Damon.
Jude Law did well with a shitty character—my initial impression is that the blogger he plays is an antagonistically-written caricature, but I may change my mind. The character is used to make some interesting and salient points about the way misinformation spreads virally (get it?), but he also feels one-dimensional in a way that even more minor characters don’t. That’s one of the film’s strengths: despite the large cast of characters, and the ensemble cast, everyone feels like a real person—except Law’s Alan Krumwiede, despite his admirable efforts. I mean, what the hell kind of name is Krumwiede? The next stupidest name in the film is “Cheever,” and that’s not stupid at all.
I’ll end by saying that this is one of the most terrifying films I’ve seen—even though it ends better than one might expect—and now I feel compelled to stockpile canned goods and bottled water and vegetable seeds and ammunition and batteries, and et cetera, so that I can quarantine myself and my family when this shit actually happens, because we’re overdue for an epidemic.
Also: apparently chefs in Asian casinos don’t wash their hands after handling raw pork. So, watch out for that.
Day 215: Welcome a new life.
Posted: August 4, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: advice, disappointment, disasters, life, music, sadness, zombies Leave a comment »I’ve linked to the Census Bureau’s population clock before: you have to reload the page to get new numbers, but this one updates as you watch, which is cool, but also a bit disturbing.
If I wanted to go into it, this would be the time to discuss the unsustainability of our current population growth curve, and the ever-increasing likelihood of some sort of catastrophic collapse in which most of the population dies, and what this has to do with late-20th and early-21st century apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fictions … I don’t really want to, though, because it’s depressing to think about. Also it’s late, and I’ve had a few bourbons, and I have to get up early and dig post-holes and put posts in them and put concrete around the posts in the morning.
So.
I’m going to take the easy way out, and offer someone else’s advice: “wear sunscreen,” &c.
I’ll make a few additions, also borrowed, but from other sources:
Life is hard, and then you die. It is the fate of all living organisms to become food for other living organisms. Death and destruction. Smoke if you’ve got ‘em. Alcohol doesn’t make life worth living, but it helps sometimes. All you need is love. Shit flows downhill, and payday’s on Friday. The Dude abides.
When the zombies happen, stay the fuck out of the cities.
Rock over London; rock on, Chicago.
Day 198: Have a good cry.
Posted: July 19, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: alcohol, children, death, disappointment, sadness 1 Comment »Originally scheduled for Sunday, July 17.
There are people that enjoy “having a good cry” on occasion: I am not one of those people. Never have been.
I don’t cry at movies. I don’t cry at weddings. I don’t even cry at funerals.
I cried when my children were born. Each time, it was a spontaneous losing of my shit. I though I was prepared the second time around, but no, I wasn’t — I cried more than either of the kids did, and they were the ones transitioning from the comforts of the womb (I guess wombs are comfortable?) to the harsh reality of being alive.
Other than that, I don’t cry. I mean, I’m sure I’ve cried in moments of extreme stress a few times in my adult life, but those were brief moments, and I have no desire to repeat them. I don’t find crying cathartic. Maybe that’s a sign that I should do it more often? How would that work? Have a few drinks, watch a sad movie — but which one? Steel Magnolias? — and maybe drop a hammer on my foot for good measure: that might do it, but only the “have a few drinks” part sounds remotely appealing.
Also, there was that one time that I cried in the shower — but if you haven’t heard that story, you’re out of luck, because it’s not getting told here.
Day 190: Follow these directions.
Posted: July 10, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: disappointment, sadness, walking Leave a comment »The directions in question are walking directions: walk so many minutes in one direction, take the next two lefts, walk so many more minutes, cross the nearest bridge, etc.
This is a task I very much want to do, but the day it fell on — the day before I left for a weeklong, school-sponsored workshop in Taos, NM — was not a good day for me to spend a few hours out walking. I had to pick up the rental car (I and three of my fellow graduate students drove), I had to finish packing, I had to finish some reading — and I had to not entirely ignore my wife and children, who won’t see me for the next eight days, though I ignored them more than I should have.
Also, it’s hot.
So I’m officially postponing Day 190 — officially, to distinguish it from those three or four days I let slip past unblest, unburied, and unsung (days which I promise I’ll come back to, though I may cram them all into one super day).
I’ll probably get around to Day 190 sometime in August. It will be, if anything, even hotter then, but if I wait for pleasant weather, it won’t get done until after Thanksgiving, and I’ll have completely forgotten about it by then.
Day 186: Cleanliness day.
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: beards, body, disappointment, disapproval, sadness, social norms Leave a comment »Two hundred years ago, I’d have been a pretty clean guy. Suspiciously clean, perhaps. But by our current mysophobic and anti-dirt standards, I’m not particularly clean.
I don’t shower daily. I come close to it during the summer, but I average three showers a week during the winter. I don’t wear deodorant.
You’re probably all squirming a bit; tell people you don’t shower every day and don’t wear deodorant, and this is what they picture:
I’m not that dirty. I’m not anywhere close to that dirty. When I get that dirty — which happens, on occasion — I take a fucking shower.
I wash my hands regularly. I wash my face in the morning, and after certain meals (those meals during which I get food in my beard). I brush my damned teeth.
I took a shower today, of course, because it’s cleanliness day. I’d vaguely intended to get excessively dirty beforehand, but the most difficult thing I did all day was read Clarissa, and that didn’t make me dirty — not physically dirty, anyway. I did some jumping-jacks before showering, in an attempt to work up a sweat, but it was only sort of successful.
I cleaned myself more thoroughly than I have in a while. I washed everywhere at least twice, and with Dr Bronner’s Liquid Peppermint Soap — I came out of the shower smelling like a candy cane, and tingling like … uh, something tingly.
I’m certainly not going to start cleaning myself this thoroughly all the time — I’m just going to get dirty again, and I can’t tell any difference between today’s super-clean and my normal sort-of-clean. I guess the problem is that I wasn’t dirty enough to start with, because my normal clean always feel amazingly clean if I get into the shower caked in mud and grass and feces, which happens more than you might expect.
The secret to happiness is, after all, being really miserable before and after, so the brief moment of happiness seems that much better in comparison.
Day 168: Women-only day.
Posted: June 17, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: disapproval, sadness, sex, women Leave a comment »Alright, since I did manly things on “manly-things day,” I should do womanly things today. I guess? What counts as “womanly things”?
The Book’s suggestions, as with both manly-things day and gay-day, were less than helpful, and occasionally border on sexist. Accessorize? Gossip? Open your heart? No, no, no. Drive cautiously? Not a chance. Hate the food you’re enjoying? I don’t even know what that means. Stay home from work with a headache? I’m a grad student; I don’t go to the office in the summer. Entertain two contradictory thoughts simultaneously? I do that all the time anyway.
Cry at the movies sounded good, because it would have meant going to the movies, which I rarely get to do: tickets are expensive, and baby-sitters are expensive, and I’m usually too busy pretending to work, and so I don’t see movies until they’ve been out on DVD for a while.
Multiple orgasm sounded the best of all, but I’m physiologically incapable of that one.
What are some other stereotypical “womanly things”? I interacted with my children; I washed the dishes; I picked up dirty laundry; I put toys away; I swept the floor. I guess those count, or would count, if this was the 1950s — but I do those things all the time anyway, because that’s how I roll.
In the end, I decided to sit this one out: I dont have a vagina, and I think that disqualifies me from something labelled “women only,” in the same way that having a penis means I can’t use women’s restrooms.
Well, I’m not supposed to, anyway.
…and, for the record, I don’t.
Day 164: Share someone’s pain.
Posted: June 13, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: bullshit, death, disappointment, life, pain, sadness Leave a comment »I’m not sure there are four more insulting words in English than “I feel your pain” — because, in almost every case, they’re absolute bullshit.
Plenty of things people say are bullshit; the bullshit is not the problem, exactly: the problem is that, in this case, the bullshitter completely trivializes the pain felt by the … uh, the one feeling the pain. The bullshittee?
“I feel your pain” seems to get used in two types of situations. It is, on one hand, part of a ritual of kvetching: it’s insincere and bullshitty, sure, but the kvetching is equally insincere — or, if not exactly insincere, still passionless and unconvincing. I find this usage of “I feel your pain” insulting only because of the context, because I hate listening to people complain.
The other type of situation in which the phrase gets used — or, more probably, some variation of the phrase that contains the sentiment in different words, because I think the only people who use the exact phrase are assholes, in the technical sense of the word —— where was I? Oh, right: the other situations in which this sentiment is expressed are those in which actual pain — usually emotional pain — is being felt, and in such situations the bullshitter has no idea what the bullshittee is going through.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that my wife keels over and dies tomorrow (I love you, dear): I think it’s safe to say that other people whose spouses have died are absolutely not going to be the ones to say “I feel your pain” — because they, having experienced a similar pain, understand how intensely personal and unshareable that sort of pain is.
I’m not saying that sympathy and empathy are bad things, or that we ought to ignore people’s grief, or people who are grieving — I mean, I don’t ever feel sympathy for anyone, but that’s because I don’t have feelings at all — but there’s a difference between genuine sympathy and bullshit sympathy. Genuine sympathy doesn’t express itself in trite phrases.
All of this is why I interpreted today’s task much more literally, and smashed my thumb with a hammer. Somebody, somewhere, I’m sure, also smashed his or her thumb with a hammer, at about the same time, and I like to think that it hurt less, because I’d done the same thing, but on purpose.
That’s how it works, right?
Day 157: Human chess day.
Posted: June 7, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: alcohol, disappointment, disasters, gardening, houses, sadness, work 1 Comment »This didn’t happen how I intended.
I was picturing a bunch of people in the park, looking like idiots, playing a very slow and complicated version of dodgeball. Instead, I matched wits with my house, and lost.
We have a faucet in the backyard, attached to the back of the garage. It’s not particularly accessible anymore, because the previous owners built a deck around it; attaching a hose to it involves ‘harsh language’ during and a stiff drink after.
It started leaking this spring. At first I wasn’t sure what was going on, because the kids use the hose to make mud pies, and don’t always get it turned off all the way; eventually, though, I realized that the faucet was leaking — slowly, but leaking — and would have to be replaced. It was probably as old as the house, which is getting damn old at this point; if I remember correctly — and my wife will correct me if I don’t — the house was built in the late 1940s. (Tangentially: when I was doing the kitchen remodel last summer, I found a Coca-Cola bottle under the house, circa the 1940s, with “Sherman TX” on the bottom.)
So I got up this morning, had a cup of coffee, whatever, went to Lowe’s with the kids to pick up a new faucet and nipple, came home, and went to work.
In order for this all to make sense, you need to be aware that there are five distinct pieces involved: the copper pipe, the elbow, the nipple, the faucet, and the hose. (That’s one of the best lists I’ve ever written.) The plan was to remove and replace the old nipple and faucet; however, the whole mess had gotten so corroded that my attempts to loosen the nipple from the elbow actually loosened the elbow from the pipe. No big deal, though: just go back to Lowe’s, get a new elbow, swing by my dad’s to pick up the soldering stuff, and we’re back in business.
That’s what happened, basically, although it took a few more moves than I intended. By noon-thirty, though, the whole thing was put back together, and I had a faucet that no longer leaked — take that, house!
I went about my afternoon, which involved being somewhere other than my house. When we came home, I checked on the back yard — I’m paranoid about plumbing fixes, these days — and found a small pond.
Fuck. That’s the third time this year we’ve had a broken pipe and a resultant lake. At least it’s not under the house, right?
I checked the new elbow: no leaks. I checked the knob, thinking it might not have been all the way off: not that either. I looked — carefully — under the deck at the pipe coming up out of the ground: it was totally dry, except the part that was under water.
What must have happened is this: there’s got to be another elbow in the line, and my removal of the faucet was too much for the 70-year-old solder, and that elbow started leaking. Fixing it will be easy enough, I guess, but getting to it is going to be a bitch. There’s a deck built around it, for one thing: I’m going to have to remove a section of it in order to even verify that my hunch is correct (which is going to require borrowing a chainsaw and a reciprocating saw from my father). It’s also surrounded by mud, and mud is less-than-conducive to soldering copper pipe. It also another fucking plumbing disaster.
Today, the house wins. I’m going to kick its ass tomorrow, though, because I want to be able to turn my water back on.
If you don’t see what any of this has to do with chess, well, I’m not sure what to say to you.
Day 146: Famous last words: prepare yours ahead of time.
Posted: May 26, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: animals, disasters, paranormal activity, sadness, violence, words, zombies Leave a comment »I am going to be eaten by zombies.
It’s the year 2047, and I’m not as young as I used to be. Shit, I’ll be 65 for most of 2047 – the part I survive, that is – and 65 is fucking old during a zombie apocalypse.
Anyway. This zombies-walking-the-earth thing has been going on for a few years, and we’re surviving pretty well: we’ve got a fortress-commune going, out in a rural area, with good walls and hedges and ha-has and whatnot. We grow our own food, we raise some livestock, and we all get along pretty well, which is pretty good, considering that there are fifty-odd of us. We keep our heads down, and the zombies – and the roving motorcycle gangs – leave us alone.
That changes, though. A wandering pack – drove? horde? herd? what do you call a group of zombies? – a wandering whatever of zombies finds our commune. They can’t get in, but the incessant wailing attracts other zombies, and soon we’ve got a veritable army of the undead at our gates, and it just keeps getting bigger.
We discuss ways to kill them. Nuking them from orbit isn’t an option. Fire’s a possibility, except we’re likely to torch ourselves, too. Blow them up? Feed them poisoned livestock? Hope they go away? None of these sound like good plans.
We could lure them away. There’s a crater a few miles away – long story – and if we can get them into it, we can burn them before they can get back out. It’s a good idea, with one significant flaw: it’s a suicide mission.
I volunteer. I’m the oldest one in the commune, and I’m going to be a burden on everyone else sooner rather than later. This is a good way to go, a valiant and honorable way. Some people protest, but just for show: nobody else wants to do it, and nobody can think of a better plan.
We manage to get an old jeep running; it probably won’t run for long, and it doesn’t want to go much above 20 mph, but that’s enough. We kill a goat, strap it to the back, and slit its throat: to leave a trail for the zombies. They’ll follow me, down into the crater. I’ll have a flamethrower and a half-dozen grenades, and none of them will get out alive (not that they’re really alive to begin with).
As I’m leaving, someone says to me: “What if it doesn’t work? We’ve heard rumors that the zeds are developing intelligence.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, patting my flamethrower. “I’ll give them something to chew on.”
