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Top five vaguely innocuous things that will eventually lead to a complete breakdown of society (including, but not limited to: wandering bands of angry mutants, sentient food, and a zombie-dominated political structure)
5. Social Networking
4. Neo-Keynesian Macroeconomics and Amateur Photography (tied for fourth)
3. Text Messaging
2. Ethanol
1. Perfume (and cologne)
I listen to audiobooks pretty regularly. Mostly while driving, but also while consuming a meal in blissful solitude. I am currently listening to a book by Chuck Palahniuk, the guy who wrote the book that the movie "Fight Club" was based on. While I cannot recommend this particular book to anyone not insane, hopelessly lost in existential ennui, or a book critic, it does have it's high points. For one, it is truly disturbing. For some people that might not be considered a "high point" (hence my hestitancy to recommend it), but to me, it is. The recurring themes tend to illustrate a little more of the author's issues than I'd like, but it is well written, and several segments are quite clever.
But to my point. I was listening to said book as I began today's lunch of teriyaki chicken, ready to enjoy a tasty meal laced with audio entertainment, when the narrative took a decidedly grotesque turn. It was complicated, but it mostly had to do with people-eating. Not "people eating," which described the action inside the restauraunt I was in, but "people-eating," the Donner Party/Chilean Plane Crash/Jeffrey Dahmer thing.
It was an interesting psychological experience, chewing strips of spiced meat while someone was whispering the details of the extraction and preparation of human flesh into my ear. Naturally, you start to feel like you, yourself, are eating people-meat. You start to taste that metallic flavor you get when you rip off a hangnail with your teeth or bite your tongue. You start to see freckles, tattoos, and the occasional still-attached leg hair on the skin of your meat. You speculate what part you are actually eating. Is it face meat? Leg? Rump? In summary, it makes the meal a little more awkward.
I did keep eating, though. You know, for the experience of the thing.
Since my wife has exposed the relatively meager scores she gave me on the "Mirror of True Womanhood" scale, I thought I would shed some light on a manuscript I just discovered, written in 1880, titled "The Principles of True Masculinity."
I might have chosen different qualities, but these are the ones in the manuscript, so I thought I should remain true. The scores (on a scale of 1 to 10) I give myself, as an expert on this subject, are shown below. The scores my wife gets are in ().
Forthrightness: 6 (9)
Stubborness: 9 (9)
Moral Character: 9 (8)
Power to Spawn an Heir: 9 (9)
Belief in one's own correctness: 9 (7)
Earns enough to support vices: 8 (7)
World-wise: 9 (3)
Mercy: 9 (6)
Realistic Outlook: 9 (2)
Giving Orders in the home: 4 (9)
Abjuration of fashion: 10 (4)
Control of self and others: 8 (7)
and
Appropriate genitalia: 10 (0)
So it turns out my wife doesn't fare too badly, if not for that darn genitalia issue.
A Modest Proposal
I closed the show with a flourish and a bow, careful not to disturb any of the still-mewling bodies onstage. Through the lights, I could see my sweetheart standing awestruck in the aisle between the rows of empty seats. Smiling, I hopped down and ran to greet her. Overcome by the moment, I quickly shoved aside the bits of gore around her feet with the tip of my boot, and dropped to one knee.
"My dearest Mary," I said, "Will you marry me?"
Top Five Worst Things To Wake Up Next To
5. Your "spouse"
4. Nothing
3. A bucket of live eels
2. An animatronic goat
1. Your arms and legs
It's looking like I might have to be on a panel or two at a regional Science Fiction convention in a few months. This is mostly due to my being dragged along by the coat-tails wrapped around my leg. If it wasn't for Ms. Newbery-winninng-New-York-Times-Bestseller-la-dee-dah Hale, absolutely no one would know who I was, and care even less than they do now. Which is generally the way I like it. Above the radar there are always too many eyes watching watching watching. A good skulk, ideological or otherwise, can only occur if you're in the periphery. If someone's looking square at you, you just look ridiculous.
Anyway, I mention this not because I need wardrobe help (I have several superhero t-shirts and a Starfleet uniform in my closet already), but because I'm looking for credentials that are quick and easy to get. Awards, certificates, recognitions, you know. When they introduce me, I want to be able to say something more than just "I'm Shannon's husband." Sure, there's "I'm big," and "I have a beard," but that's nothing the nerdscape hasn't seen before. I'd like to say "winner of the prestigious 'Nalgitas de Oro'" or "Silver Hammer of Durin." Maybe "recognized as one of the top ten sexiest men over 250 pounds by Clydesdale Magazine." If one of you could found some sort of organization dedicated to Very Tiny Horror Fiction or Disturbing Blogs of The West and let me win your first award, it would be stellar.
Prize money would also be great. I accept PayPal.
Here's what I'm thinking right now: Hot + Dark = Creepy.
Because things are supposed to be warmed by the sun. Or fire. Or plasma spheres, whatever. They glow. Things that give off heat should give off light. If they don't, like I said, it's creepy.
Warm little animal bodies sewn into the lining of your winter coat? Creepy.
The blind and idiotic hive of igneous men raging at the earth's core? Creepy.
The enclosed viscera of your constantly excreting body? Creepy.
Electric blankets? I mean, really! Electric blankets? Creepy.
That's why I prefer to pass my nights cold. To remind me I'm not trapped in the body of a fetus or being slowly digested in my sleep. No thank you. Sleep itself is creepy enough.
The Family Shame
When I found him, he was sitting in the corner with the
lights off, shivering amidst scattered jars, covered in formaldehyde and bits
of wet tissue.
“I…I ate them,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
“I’m getting the
bucket, Dad,” I said. “You’re going to have to puke it out.”
An intrepid reader pointed me to a site that proves anything you ever do has already been done (and in greater quantity), so I thought I would mix things up by numbering today's list with the ancient Mesopotamian base-60 numbering system also known as "Babylonian Freestyle."
The top ] things that, despite everything, I didn't expect to see today
] Blood on the sidewalk
:: Electrical wire stuck on the inner wall of the toilet bowl
.: My feet
.. Two instances of someone vomiting
. A dead mosquito-like thing at the bottom of my freshly-emptied water glass
As I was staring at my computer screen in comfortable stupefaction today, I hear this on the other side of the cubicle wall:
"Woah. Dude! Look at my pants!"
This really should have been enough of a cue for me to slip on the headphones and tune out whatever kitty-corner horrors might be happening. But, alas, I have that same morbid curiousity that slows traffic and kills cats. Here's how it played out:
Voice 1: "No, seriously, look!"
Voice 2: "All right, all ri...Whoa! What is that?"
Voice 1: "Freaky, huh? Look what happens when I do this..."
Voice 2: "Heh. Gross."
Voice 1: "Now I need to figure how to clean it up."
So, um, disturbing. It could have been anything. A sub-trouser cyst. Some sort of pupae, insect or otherwise. Nascent self-aware tissue. A mustard stain shaped like the face of Smiths' frontman Steven Morissey.
I had to know.
Turns out it was just a little sphere of ballpoint pen ink that the guy's stain-repellent pants wouldn't absorb. It was rolling about, mercury-like, until it fell and stained the carpet on the floor.
So, yeah. Sometimes it's better not to know. A life of imagined facts, while often more disturbing, might at least be more interesting.
