Let it roll, baby roll

Can we please have a moment of silence for my dignity? It died this week at work… on a toilet seat… much like Elvis did. Only there were no drugs involved. In fact, there was no toilet paper involved either, and that’s exactly where this week’s story begins. 

You see, when I’m at home, I accept that there’s never toilet paper when I need it. Though I buy it once a week and restock each bathroom in our house every weekend, for some reason there is never a square to spare when I'm in the loo. The roll is either as barren as Carthage or has a single, tattered remnant of hope still glued to the cardboard. 

But that’s not the point. The point is that you don’t expect that to happen at work. You don’t grab a roll on your way to the bathroom, “just in case.” Nor do you do a little recon before you “drop trou.” You assume that everyone has done their part. In other words, both you and the toilet paper roll are completely covered. Worse than that, at home, at least you have options: Kleenex… paper towels… packing tissue. I’m not proud, but I am honest, and there are days that the cocktail napkins in the kitchen drawer should be grateful they dodged a bullet.  At work, your only option is to twerk like Miley Cyrus to elevator music and hope you can actually drip dry with some modicum of success… which is precisely what I did.

However, before I can tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first. 

At the risk of blaming the victim, I should say that there was, indeed, some toilet paper on the roll when I walked into the stall. Not enough to line the seat, per se, about twenty to thirty squares, but definitely enough to take care of business. So there I was… jeans around my Dr. Martens… peeing… when I reached for the toilet paper… and accidentally pulled the entire roll with its holder off the wall. Yes. Really. The toilet tissue literally flew across my lap, landed on the floor, and proceeded to unravel as it rolled all the way to the restroom sink… while I helplessly watched in abject disbelief and horror.  

It’s times like these I wish I had more middle fingers so the universe knew exactly how deeply I wanted it to fuck off. Anyway, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m not sure what happened next. I like to think that by repressing it, I actually found some dignity. Note: If no one claims it within twenty-four hours, I’m keeping it.

Talk to you later.

Please, please, please wait a minute Mr. Postman

Today’s tale takes “going postal” to a whole new level. However, before I can tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first. You see… a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine’s dad suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly passed away in Florida. In less than a ten day period of time, my friend got the phone call, hopped a flight, drove to the hospital, and lived in a waiting room or by his father’s side until the decision was made to end life support. 

Having lost my own dad, I know how awful the whole experience can be. That's why, when my friend returned home to the Mid-West, we went to lunch so I could see how he was doing. As expected, we spent as much of the conversation laughing as we did crying; then, after an hour or two, we hugged our good-byes and he said, “Wish me luck. I’m off to the Post Office to get my dad.” Yes. Really.

Now, please believe me when I tell you that Mark Twain was right, “Reality is stranger than fiction because, unlike the truth, fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities.” And since there’s NO delicate way to say this, and my friend gave me the OK to share it on mkromd, I’ll simply be candid. His father’s ashes were sent to his neighbor’s house by accident. For one minute, imagine that you’re the guy who lives next door, and the mailman asks you to sign for a package… from a crematorium… that CANNOT be returned to sender… since that would be God.  

Because I don’t have a filter, when he told me that, I literally burst out laughing (which, thankfully, made him do the same). I mean, really… when a child loses a parent, it’s a tragedy; but, when the United States Postal Service does it, it’s just careless. That said, he told me everyone was GREAT about it. Maybe since all’s well that ends well, on the drive home, I found myself saying, “Self, if that’s going to happen to ANYONE, it’s going to happen to you. You’re going to die, and instead of DB getting your ashes and you meeting your Maker, you’re going to spend eternity in a Post Office. Seriously, if you thought mailing a package at Christmas was Hell, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

And that would be the BEST case scenario. What if they mail me First Class, with adequate postage (though I’m sure I wouldn’t weigh as much as they think I do), and I get delivered to some freak’s house who keeps me in a jar in his bathroom. You don’t know. Strange shit happens in suburbia. It does. And then, imagine if THAT person dies and bequeaths me to HIS kids, and so on and so forth until my remains become like the Elephant Man’s. I’ll be trapped in limbo screaming, “I am not an animal!”

At said moment, I realized that perhaps I’m the suburban freak people talk about, because I ACTUALLY wondered… what if I chose to have myself anonymously shipped to someone instead. What if I paid extra, and the crematorium put me in a pretty box, gift wrapped me, held me until the holidays, then mailed me like the ghost of Christmas present. That’s right, she who laughs last laughs hardest.   

And, just because it’s important to plan the work and work the plan, I logged onto FedEx’s and UPS’s websites. Neither will allow you to ship human remains. Only the United States Postal Service can do it. In other words, neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail will stop them from delivering you… to the wrong house. And to my friend who is reading this, I sincerely hope you laughed, if only for a little. To everyone else, talk to you later.

Your Own Personal Jesus

While Depeche Mode was the first band I ever saw in concert, this post isn’t about them or that song. It’s literally about buying your very own Messiah. You see, last weekend I began Christmas shopping, and God bless Amazon (no pun intended) because their “If you love that, you might like this,” algorithm recommended biblical action figures to me. Yes. Really. You simply cannot make this shit up. 

Anyway, as a result, I’m now the proud owner of a Deluxe Jesus, who comes COMPLETE with a toy amphora (to turn water into wine), two fish, and five loaves of bread, so I can feed the masses… of other dolls I’ve purchased… including:

• Moses, who comes with a stone tablet and his very own glow-in-the-dark burning bush, and

• Adam, who was ACTUALLY marketed as "still having all of his ribs," which would explain why I cannot find an Eve doll anywhere. It’s OK, I kind-of want a shiksa Barbie anyway.

Also noticeably missing from my growing collection are the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Gandhi. On all that is holy (pun intended), I swear to you, if I owned those three action figures, I would take them to each and every happy hour simply to be able to say, “A Catholic, a Buddhist and a Hindu walk into a bar…” And no, that joke would NEVER get old. 

On the up-note - I did, however, find an Alexander the Great, a Sigmund Freud, and a Big Foot (who sadly is not made of real hair), and I may need to get them. That way, if I ever want to play Armageddon, I’m ready. I’m joking, you don’t use them. They’re collectibles. Helloooooo. That’s why I can’t understand DB’s fear of walking into our house and finding Moses in the kitchen sink parting the dish water… especially when he knows I’m FAR more likely to put Adam on a Barbie Love Couch so he can be psychoanalyzed by my repressed, German sounding Freud doll, “So Atam, tell me about yor mutter. You did not know her, ya?”

OK, I just talked myself into buying them, and (for the record) SEVERAL of you should expect them as presents this year. Who knows, if I’m lucky, I may even find a Lao Tze with a Kung Fu grip for myself. A girl can dream.

Talk to you later.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs

Ugh, I have writer’s block, and I’m not kidding you… it’s like all of the voices in my head have gone on strike. Don’t get me wrong, when I’m sitting in traffic or reading the news, they sound like they’re at a Cubs game. Only they don’t swear like sailors. They enunciate… like fucking ladies. But then, when I sit at the keyboard, nothing. Maybe Groucho Marx was right. Maybe, “It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” I just don’t know.

That said, I DO know that it took me five hours to write the paragraph you just read – not the whole post, JUST the intro. In other words, I spent approximately one hour on each line. No wonder prisoners call jail time a sentence. But I digress. 

The point is that I’ve had writer’s block before. Only when it happened, I could get on my mental merry-go-round and eventually find something to say. This time it’s different. This time I find myself counting the number of times the cursor flashes (I made it to 927 once - yes, really) or thinking about songs with the same beat (for the record, the only two that work are your ABCs and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). 

When neither of those techniques worked, I ended up Googling tips for dealing with writer's block. One blog said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Everyone’s just doing the best they can.” To which I said to myself, “Self, that cannot be true. You cannot be the only person on this planet doing the bare minimum to get by most days.” And that’s when I began wondering - what did real writers do when this happened to them? Can you imagine Hemingway, sitting there with a bottle of absinthe, thinking, “I’m blocked. This typewriter deserves to die, alone, in the rain.” Or better yet, Dorothy Parker, whom I love beyond words (no pun intended), and who actually once said, “I’m not a writer with a drinking problem. I’m a drinker with a writing problem.” 

I don’t know, maybe that’s it. Maybe I need a scandalous vice. The current ones - doughnuts, reading, and running are closer to Hunger Games, the home edition, than inspiration. In fact, I would argue that jogging in the heat has crushed my will to live. Seriously, by the end of mile zero, I’m ready to hang up my shoes and call it a day. But do I? Yes, sometimes I do, but not always, and you would think there would be SOME return on investment for that. But is there? No. Unless a runner’s high feels like a stroke, I have NO idea what they’re talking about. Instead, I disdainfully slog through it, come home, stink, and stare at a blinking cursor.  

And I promise you on all that is holy, on more than one occasion, I have put the curse into cursor, especially last week, when I posted, This Amp goes to Eleven, and Blogger decided to crash on me. For those of you who read it, thank you. You know who you are. For those of you who visited mkromd only to find nothing, sorry. I’m still trying to figure out what happened. Either way, talk to you later… hopefully :)

Train in Vain

Hands-down, The Clash is the greatest band of all time, period. It’s also what I’ve been listening to while running through my neighborhood these days - which is crazy because it’s like a surreal, post-punk soundtrack for my suburban life. No really, it’s true. I feel like I’m trapped in a David Lynch movie as I listen to London Calling on my iPod and wave at Stepford wives with strollers and affluent business men with accessory dogs, all-the-while waiting to see an ear randomly lying on the road. But I digress.

The point is that a few weeks ago I started running again. And by running, I mean that I’m lying to you. I’m actually doing the Couch Potato to 5K, which goes something like this: after you map out a route, get new shoes and make a play list, you have to actually use all of it… at the same time. Now, for the record, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there are as many stages of grief as there are kilometers to finish or that they intersect at key points along the way. For example:

At 1K, I immediately go into Denial. This is the part where I say to myself, “Self, I don’t care if I stroke out and die. I’m actually ready to meet my Maker.” That said, whether or not God is prepared to meet me is an entirely different question. Personally, I’m betting no, which technically means that I shouldn’t need to run after all. I’m just saying.

At 2K, I hit the second phase, Anger. At this stage, I find myself furious at people who name races. Instead of things like The Kafka 5K or Dante’s Marathon - Where you think you’re getting hotter but it’s only because you’re going through Hell, they misleadingly call it stuff like, “Run for your life…” which is ironic, because my life was actually better and happier before I went for a jog. Seriously.

At 3K, you begin to Bargain. No lie, I will actually begin to believe that I should just go on Lipitor because it’s possible to achieve better living through pharmaceuticals; which makes me think that I lost the war on drugs; which makes me think of George Bush, who said the same thing about America’s War on Drugs; which makes me laugh because somewhere a bunch of stoners are eating Doritos and winning.

At 4K, because I realize that someone is eating junk food and watching Cheech and Chong while I’m sweating profusely and silently swearing at strangers, I become Depressed. I don’t want to be this person. I don’t want to be bitter and hostile, but I have to be, because God hates me and my cholesterol sucks. That’s right, I’m the victim here.

At 5K, I transcend into Acceptance. In other words, the pain stops but only because I'm finally home. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, if you were to see me pull into my driveway, you would think I had just finished a half-marathon. One because of the amount of time I was gone, and two because I look like Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. No wonder my neighbor stands at his mailbox and yells, “Finish strong!” I want to scream back, "Fucking really? The only thing I finish strongly are books, doughnuts and New York Times crossword puzzles." But I like him, so I don't. Instead I politely wave and listen to Death or Glory as I limp into my air-conditioned house.

Talk to you later.