Crumbs, Disguised as Courses

As a Moment of Truth approaches with this Vermont position-in-awaiting (I've really done my best for this one), there is only jetsam to report, with each unit of flotsam having floated off into the night like so much flotsam in the night.

Some puzzling components, that I'll update as the day progresses:


* Desmond and Ivor have continued to listen to Christmas music, like it's just sort of always there. (This, I suppose, is what happens when you give youngsters Christmas music for Christmas.) Neither Molly nor I have any problem with this, especially because some of it is drawn from the inestimable stockpile of Motown's holiday-greetings performances (both originals and renditions). But then I got to thinking of something that's rather awful. The Jackson 5ive have a number of holiday songs on the collection--among the more irritating of the bunch, it is certain--and then I realized,Wait a second! The whole Jackson family were effing Jehovah's Witnesses!

Don't even try to tell me that that's not the most thoughtlessly sinister thing to do: to get ALL (or most, at least) of your kids, NONE of whom are permitted (by religious order of YOUR OWN imposition) to celebrate any holiday (for any occasion), and have them perform a damn song about the mystery, magic, and mythology of what is arguably the most child-centered holiday of the lot.
Damn, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson! That is cold.


* Typing (not speaking) of cruelty, I'll provide another story. But this one begins with a lengthy expository digression.

In my pre-teen days. I didn't watch much television (aside from the Weather Channel), but my still-supple memory retained everything that I encountered. I'd occasionally catch the Comedy Channel, back before Ha! network began and subsequently merged with them to form Comedy Central. I enjoyed it the most that some of their programming was not even slightly funny. A lot of it was old, too--they'd broadcast spots from something called the Laff-Off from 1979 like it was new (featuring a then-obscure Jerry Seinfeld), shows by Carol Leifer (Leifer Madness), Rachel Sweet (The Sweet Life), and Rosie O'Donnell (Stand-up Spotlight).

Anyway, they had this newsything (I forget the name) that was co-hosted by (a then-obscure) Jon Stewart. (Really, I'd look it up, but Wikipedia is so frequently incorrect that it would be appropriate to accuse them of attempting to re-define reality.) In any case, I distinctly remember a segment in which the FDA testing of an aphrodisiac was underway. I never heard of it again in this context, but its name was Wellbutrin (with the accent on the first styllable rather than the second). Even though the drug resurfaced as an antidepressant, that's neither here nor there. What's fascinating is where they tested it.

In space! With astronauts! It was only then that I realized the pinnacle of human cruelty--giving an aphrodisiac to a person in a spacesuit. Oh my god. Just imagine being that person. You wouldn't even remember why you were suffering. And that's far, far removed from anti-depressing.



* Whenever I have an MRI (Magnetic Resource Imaging) test to assess the structural (but not artistic, thank goodness) integrity of my nervous system, they shut me in a tube, and I have to hear loud, graceless machine noises at relatively unpredictable intervals. This is standard. An aspect of this that I find especially weird, aside from being ordered not to swallow for 10 minutes at a time (which SUCKS),  is that the proctor/administrator/technician offers to play music as I lie there in that tiny tube. I always ask for Billy Joel, so that I can imagine the MRI machine noises as being either an auditioning musician or somebody in the backing band losing his or her composure. It's very satisfying.

Adjustments: Undue Homework

In "preparation" for twenty twelve (whose name I'd write numerically, were its sequence of numbers not so, you know, counterintuitive, which is to say nearly nothing per the stunted force inside of me believes that unabbreviated living will somehow lead to a life of unfathomable bounty in tender of tremendous importance that is not necessarily negotiable), and amid chronic financial emergency, I have been inspired to review all sorts of "material," shocked to understand at last and at length how very little of it is actually tangible. In a year of precipitous peaks and troughs, I see their collective occurrence as having been dictated and defined by forces and systems of human construction.The weight of this reflection, and the futile hilarity of its implications, feels rather like trying to speak, yet emitting the sound of an activated whoopee cushion in lieu of a voice.

(time elapsed)

It must be stated at this point that I have yet to determine the structure and/or frequency of these posts. It's very clear, during the tumult of the season, that we have to give ourselves over to cleaning; there seems to be little choice by now. I guess that it's sensible to do this, but more significantly, it might keep people from injuring themselves on pernicious obstructions that masqueraded once as "gifts." While it's unfair to inflict attributions of motive upon inanimate things  (as if I know, for instance, that those legos on the floor want to cause pain to my bare feet), I don't think that I care any longer whose interests are at stake.

(time elapsed)

what a fizzlefest cleaning has been! hell if the rooms that i "tidied" are not substantially less navigable than the rooms to which others attended.

certain close associates think that multiple sclerosis has eroded my executive function, and they should be right, but i think that it's more my un(der)developed sense of personal boundaries that has done me in at every turn. it's how come stress acts as a toxin to my body, how come i'm challenged to request compensation for my work, and how come i'm reluctant, despite what most people think, to admit what it is that want. i smell a resolution approaching; i am replete with vague, ominous nausea.

i think that i'll go and prepare for New Year's Eve by ending New Year's Eve Eve.