Friday, May 18, 2012

Holding the Melon Together

Days off from work are good for reflection and reflection is good for putting scares into you.

I took the kids to school and then went to a lab so a relentless, sadomasochistic harpy with needles and tubes could suction half the blood out of my body. Got that done and went over to take care of my sister's cats, one of whom thinks I am Satan incarnate (the first animal I have ever known that didn't like me) and the other of whom, whom thinks (hehe) nothing of me.  In short, if the second cat is Wolfgang Puck, I am a microwaved hot dog (without mustard) in a grade school cafeteria.

In the waiting room at "The Lab of Horrors," I listened (had no choice) to the mediocre philosophizing of The Today Show hosts. (There is nothing worse than a gaggle of mediocre thinkers who think they are making illuminating points. Total idiots are, at least, entertaining. Mediocre thinkers with jobs on TV are dangerous, because they lead the other mediocre zombies in brain-seeking lines of cultural destruction.) "Host one" made a statement about Mark Zuckerberg and his tendency to wear hoodies. "Host two" was "offended" by that statement and tried to make it a "white/black" thing by connecting host one's tangential statement to the death of Trayvon Martin. "Why is it that when a black kid wears a hoodie....but when Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie..."

Holy crap. Sometimes my head feels like a sliced melon and I have to hold the two halves from slipping apart. Just: holy crap. I've little doubt the kid's death was racially motivated, but doesn't anyone know the definition of non-sequiter anymore? There's a fine line between uncovering a hidden connection and stuffing a humpback whale into sandwich bag. JEEEEZOOO!!


Sorry -- I try not to do caps.

So, I took care of the cats, despite their little elitist attitudes (even gave them treats and tried to play with them) and I stopped to eat a sandwich because I wasn't allowed to eat before my hemoglobular torture session. (I really think the needle had backward barbs on it, like an insidious medieval arrow. Needles never bother me, but she was somehow transferring her hate into my arm. I swear I heard her whisper "from hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee" as she twisted the needle into my arm. I'm no doctor, but are those things supposed to have wooden handles and a rope tied to one end?)

Anyway, I came home to a quiet house, petted my dog (who is a people's dog -- no superior attitude there, let me tell you) and cleaned up the place a little before getting on the treadmill. While I was walking, I watched an episode of Stephen Spielberg's Amazing Stories series, called "Ghost Train."

I almost fell off of the 'mill because of how emotional it got me. The episode was about a grandfather who had once been a little boy who, by falling asleep on the tracks (whatever -- he was a really heavy sleeper), had caused a train to crash. The engineer, the grandfather tells his grandson, didn't have the heart to run the boy over, so he locked up the wheels, the track buckled, and everyone on board was killed in the resultant crash. The grandfather carried that guilt all his life.

At the end, the grandfather, vindicated from everyone's belief (with the exception of his grandson, of course, who always trusted him) that he was suffering from dementia, gets on the ghost train (after it crashes through the house -- as he warned it would) and he goes to "the other side," saying goodbye to his grandson, son and daughter-in-law.

So, I broke up, watching this. There are two possibilities: 1) I'm an unstable nut; or (2) I tend to "see into the life of things" better than many. You'll have to decide, because they say that one cannot psychoanalyze one's self....

But whatever the case, from flights of Today Show, bad-logic-inspired rage to tears over the profundity of a fantasy TV show with a cliched exterior and the heart of a poem, it sometimes hits me that exploring the world around me with such intensity and thinking on my own could lead to the old melon slipping apart some day. But I hope not.

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