You're Doing It Wrong

Last night I finished my book: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. How to describe this book? It’s funny, induces squirming and is super interesting. I learned a ton.

I did not know that cadavers are used in auto safety testing. I did not know embalming is very temporary. I did not know a whole lot of gruesome details about early medical procedures (used to illustrate how doctors learned about medicine without cadavers in the olden days) and I could have remained happily ignorant on that. There’s a bit about studies of guillotine victims and whether they have any consciousness after the big separation. I’ve always wondered this: do you die instantly or do you feel your head bounce around in the basket?

There’s a chapter on cannablism which includes a hilarious scene of the author visiting China to track down a story of a crematorium worker who allegedly whacked off a bit of flesh here and there and gave it to his brother who made it into dumplings at a popular restaurant around town. Can you imagine you and your translator getting a meeting with the director of that funeral home to ask about this story?

Before I read the book I was not excited about the idea of donating my body to science. Just the idea of people poking around my saggy dead boobs and shriveled privates and making jokes made it unappealing. Both the author here and the author of The Undertaking (Book #18) point out that once you die, what happens to your body is irrelevant to you so no point in getting worked up about it. Also, there is some good work to be done, like research to help develop protective gear for people who work around land mines. My cadaver could do that.

And then there’s plastination — my cadaver could be made into a big rubber model that would last for 10,000 years!

Actually my favorite is the compost. Freeze dry, shatter and throw me in the garden. After a long healthy and happy life. That would be my first choice.

SomethingAwful.com has hilarious Star Wars valentines. You should go to their site instead of hotlinking here.

I still felt crappy when I woke up this morning and I was thinking: enough already. That headache.

I did some yoga and took a shower and ate the rest of my peaches and felt closer to human. I dragged my butt to the grocery store so we’d have something to eat.

You know how you should avoid grocery shopping when you’re hungry because everything looks so good? Pop Tarts, yum! We should eat franks and beans! Tater tots never sounded so delicious. Let’s get a 2 lb. bag!

Well how about shopping when you are not and haven’t been hungry for a week? I had a list so I did put food in the cart. I skipped the entire deli aisle. Cheese? We’ll never eat that! Later I told Bob this and he agreed, who wants to eat cheese? I should explain that under normal circumstances, Bob and I eat tons of a wide variety of cheeses every day. But not this week.

We still had a lot of food in the fridge because we hadn’t been eating much. I had to clear out some old icky stuff. This is something I am pathological about: a cleaned out fridge. I don’t want anything close to past due hanging out in my fridge.

When I came home from the grocery store I was exhausted and rested on the couch for a few hours. But I’m coming around. I’ll be at 100% tomorrow.

I love the digital camera. Since the weather turned nice I’ve been leaving the office in the afternoons and wandering around taking pictures which is a nice break for my brain.

Yesterday I felt a wee bit sketchy as I was driving to work but I thought I might be imagining things since Bob had been sick and I figured once I drank my tea and started working, I’d be fine.

I held onto this notion, even as I felt gradually worse and worse. I had one project I wanted to finish and a couple things to follow up on. But I felt tired and headachy and not hungry so I figured I’d cut my losses and go home early and go back to bed and I’d feel fine on Thursday.

By the time I had gathered my stuff and was leaving the office, there was nothing wee bit about sketchy. As I drove home I developed a rapidly escalating fear that I was going to yak in my car. The speedometer crept up to 70 – 75. I passed on the right. I rolled down a window. I assured myself that I was fine, but hurry.

Drama for nothing. I arrived home intact. My innards continued to roil but since I hadn’t eaten anything, no action. I put my jammies back on, sipped some water and collapsed onto the couch with a pile of blankets and commenced to be achy and fevery and unhappy.

This morning I felt better except still a bit achy, a wicked headache and weak from not eating. The idea of food has become interesting again, but the actual eating part not appealing.

I found some bread and thought: hey bread, that’s neutral. I had two bites and that was enough. Later I opened a can of peaches and picked at a toddler sized portion before putting the rest in the fridge. Maybe I’ll try some soup later.

Vancouver WA cow

Somewhere I have a picture just like this of Bob in Germany posing with a cow. I’m going to look for it this weekend.

Bob went down with some horrible non-Superbowl related flu on Sunday. He’s been staggering around here with a sad look on his face. One more day at home and he should be back in action.

This morning I finished my book The Dirt by the band Mötley Cr&#252e. I was a big Cr&#252e fan back in the day and saw them when the Shout at the Devil tour came to the UCSB campus. I would love to have been a bug on the wall in the ECEN (the venue) admin office the Monday after that show. I’ll bet a few heads rolled. My own personal experience of that weekend lived up to the Cr&#252e search and destroy ethos and was fun the way that the irresponsible and inconsiderate asshole behavior is when you’re 20 years old. We’ll leave it at that.

At one point, I owned every album up to Girls Girls Girls. I didn’t think I had any of them any more but I was wrong. I still have Too Fast for Love AND Shout at the Devil. I listened to a little Shout at the Devil yesterday afternoon and it sounded fantastic.

The first 100 pages of the book is hard to read without running to the bathroom to take a shower. A phrase like pure unmitigated debauchery doesn’t begin to cover it. And they went on like that for years. Drugs, booze, women and destruction. And they’re pretty straightforward about their personal shortcomings.

But after awhile they’re just whiny and come off as addicted to their own victim-drama. How sorry am I supposed to feel for a filthy rich and famous rockstar who’s indulged himself in every urge to please himself at the expense of everyone around him? Like it’s a major personal insight that life is hard and less of an insight that they brought a lot of it on themselves.

After I finished the book I did a quick trip through the NY Times and there’s a story about Jay McInerney and he’s going on about what it was like being young and successful and famous and how hard it was to hold it together. wah.

I am already tired of Bode Miller.

I wish I skied. I don’t think there will ever be a better day to ski in the PAC NW than this Sunday.

100 Best First Lines from Novels

#7 riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. -James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

On the basis of this I can tell you with great confidence that I will never read this book.

#17 Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. -James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Now I can tell you that I will never read James Joyce, period.

#21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. -James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Oh. Maybe I’d try this one.

Two favorites from books I’ve read:

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. -William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

Two favorites from books I haven’t read:

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.-George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.-Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)