Sunday, July 22, 2007

Death is a Media Conspiracy

OK, so maybe drinking approximately a bottle of wine for 12 nights in a row, give or take a day and a bottle, is not so good for one's mental configuration. Who knew? See, when one has a Midget Boss, an ant-infested Baby Alive doll, and an imaginary high school mascot named Lumpen with a mole and a curly-headed wig in one's history, only a certain amount of grape-juice-gone-bad can dull it. (Lumpen had friends, including a killer fork, a gimpy sheep, and a gay cat-and-dog duo named Honeybubbles and Moustache.)

I feel terribly bad about recommending drink to all the young people out there reading my blog. Don't do it. It's the debbil's own recipe. I ought to know; we have a painting of an actual devil hanging above our fireplace. With horns and everything. It's a long story, but it serves well to scare away the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons who stop by occasionally. Anyway, using wine as a painkiller for my back seemed to have had the opposite of the intended effect. Methinks excessive wine no go so well with medication. Like...it makes it NOT WORK.

I am a hypochondriac. A year or so ago, my Google searches would have revealed a panoply of terms including the following:

Heart disease [who isn't going to get this?]
Lyme lisease [ticks! they're everywhere]
Lupus [cousin died of it]
Chrondromalacia [I have that]
Brain tumor [what else could explain my symptoms?]
Tonsil cancer
Lung cancer
Skin cancer
Breast cancer
Ovarian cancer
Other assorted cancers
Vertigo
Dry skin
Seeing spots
Back pain
Asbestos poisoning
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Bloated tummy

And finally culminating in a search for depression/anxiety which led me to the source of the whole durned thing. Hypochondria is always a wolf at the door, however. I've learned that it's wise to avoid any stories of people with chronic DISEASE who just felt vaguely unwell until a visit to the doctor revealed tumors dangling from every appendage and cutting off blood supply to every meaningful organ, and some of the less important organs, too. At this point, I'd rather read the business pages or even the horrifying OK, Star, and Us magazines which chronicle every naughty bit flashed by Britney, Lindsay, and Paris. This is good safe stuff, and also frequently features "man candy" without their shirts on. The only guiltier pleasure are Lifetime movies, which occasionally feature people with chronic diseases but are so shoddily written and acted that one can only surmise that
a) These sorts of bad, bad things NEVER EVER happen; and from this it follow that
b) Death must be a media conspiracy.

Can I blame Lifetime for this conclusion? Not exactly. I've never seen a dead person. Not a one. Some people seem to have "vanished," yes, and I find that very suspicious. For all I know they may be in an "after death" colony in Florida, hottubbing, eating Surf 'n' Turf, cavorting around, and catching STDs from one another, and laughing about those on the outside who have succumbed to the Big Lie.

Well, once I saw what remained of "Tammy," my Dalmation, in a paper bag after the vet cremated her. The bag seemed awfully small. But whose to know it wasn't just granola or pencil shavings in that bag? I didn't look inside the bag. Would you? Yuck-o.

How can someone who is as deeply hypochondriacal as me believe that death is a big sham meant to sell more fear to the public, which means selling more deodorant, fattening foods, booze, and shitty Lifetime made-for-TV movies? Ah! It is not belief. It is fact. Witness: Funeral homes just kind of seem to sit there, right? Nothing much going on. Very rarely someone enters and exits. It's a money laundering front if I've ever seen one.

Next: Why do old people have to look all wrinkly and stuff? Doesn't that limit their funtime in the "after death" colonies? Food for thought.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Shitty LifetimeTV movies? Yes, but so delightfully and mind-numbingly shitty -- almost as good as a bottle of cheap wine -- once you're far enough into it, quality no longer matters! And so predictable -- one feels so superior when one can almost mouth the upcoming lines verbatim. Mmmm...... a mediocre bottle of wine and a LifetimeTV movie -- there's enjoyment fer ya!

From TJK/ 8/6/07