Thursday, March 08, 2007

Gangrene, Joan Cusack & Other Horrors



OK, so back to my first breakfast in Akiko’s kitchen…


Beyond the dining table, you could see a small kitchen area. There, two large windows provided ample light, as well as a view of Akiko's garden. Some of the counters nearest the table were cluttered w/ miscellaneous knick knacks, (my favorite—a ceramic figure of an old bearded guy doin' martial arts,) small bottles of homeopathic remedies, a greeting card, and so on. Next to all this stuff was a small bland aquarium. The water was cloudy, and there were only 2 (maybe 3) fish swimming around inside it. It was depressing, if you looked at it very closely.


Later, Akiko told me she kept it around for the sound of running water it provided. Now, I ain't no vegetarian, as you probably gathered from my disturbing tendency to periodically transform into a walking advertisement for Burger King... Holy shit, what would that look like? I mean, first of all, would I be a print ad, a radio spot, or a TV commercial? Whichever way you go would raise very serious ontological questions—possibly dependent on quantum physics, chaos, string and/or unified field theories, fourth dimensional geometry and good taste.


'Cuz like think about it: If I were a walking print ad, would I become two dimensional? (For any assholes out there who want to point out the fact that even paper is three-dimensional, as even paper has some depth—it’s just very very slight—to you I say "So what?") (Or if you wanna make w/ some snappy gags about how I’m already two dimensional, have at it. You can catch up w/ us later…)



But see, if I were a print ad, would I be the actual ad, or would be the contents of the ad, i.e. what the ad was representing? See, 'cuz like I could be, y'know, a piece of paper walking around. (Like Shellie Long, remember?) And would I be the size of a magazine ad, or like, would I be a human-sized print ad? And remember, I would be a piece of paper
walking around
. So like, what am I walking on? The legs that I have now? If so, we’d not only be grappling w/ that size question again—would my legs be normal sized or smaller? And would the piece of paper correspond to my leg size or not? 'Cuz I'm sure you'd agree, it could get pretty unwieldy if my legs weren't proportional. I mean, like picture a magazine page walking around w/ 2 human sized legs. See where I'm going w/ this?


But so like that raises some more questions about my legs, like f'rinstance OK, if I still have the legs I currently have, (scaled down or otherwise,) and my body is a piece of paper, where's all the blood coming from that needs to circulate through my legs to keep them from getting gangrene or something?


And I'm not even gonna get into the image of a piece of paper walking around—which I guess it wouldn't even work to walk around in this scenario, 'cuz its legs probably wouldn't work at all—or rolling or whatevering around on 2 gangrenous legs. I mean, I saw gangrene once. See, I was in high school, and they had this whole spend-a-week-w/-a-parent-who-does-something-you-think-you-wanna-do internship thing. (Most likely this was not yr. own parent, as you were probably cool, and therefore were ungrateful, and therefore thought your parents were lame, and therefore thought their jobs (or job, if you grew up in a “no-wife-of-mine’s-gonna-work” type family like I did) were really lame, and therefore had no desire to do them whatsoever, and might in fact violently not want to do them, and plus like show me a high school aged kid who wants to spend an entire day w/ one or the other of his/her parents.


Oh wait, I knew some people who woulda. Gladly even, and no offense if you woulda jumped all over that, but I always thought people like that were sorta creepy. Sure, they had high self-esteem 'cuz Mommy n' Daddy thought they were da bomb. But see, thing is that, who needs self-esteem anyway? One way or another, sooner or later, yer gonna get it ground outta yeah like cow flesh emerging from the bizness end of a meat grinder, or play-doh comin' out one of those press thingamacallits that has like different shapes, so you can have these big long star-shaped or cylindrical sticks of play-doh sorta, which always reminded me of takin' a shit.


Mattera fact, this 1 time, I took some of my shit—it was a pretty sturdy and voluminous bowel movement cuzza all the fiber I used to eat before I got hip to the wonders of _________ .(I ain't even gonna speak the name of that restaurant chain for which I may be an ad.) Well, but so, I ran my shit through the play-doh press thing. And it worked pretty well, altho' even a pretty sturdy hunka shit doesn't have the structural integrity (Shit! Now Harold Washington's got me saying that. Fuckin' asshole!) of play-doh. But so then I had these big long sticks of shit that were shaped like stars and cylinders. But it was kinda messy because of that structural integrity thing. But then see, these sticks were pretty messy? And plus they smelled bad?


Uh huh. Are you paying attention? Not that my shit smells any worse than anybody else's, but it'd been sitting around unflushed for some time now. And so anyway, the shit was messy, and I got it all over the wall, and my mom was pissed, 'cuz even tho' I was a kid, I shoulda known a little bit better. But the cool part is that my mom really didn't get mad and not because she's a coprophile or -phage or both, but because it really didn't happen when I was a kid. It happened when I was grown up and living alone. 'Mattera fact, it happened yesterday. So my mom didn't know about it. So she didn't get mad. But I should prob. clean it up before she visits me next time. But I'm not gonna do it right now, 'cuz following through on this play-doh/shit experiment has kinda worn me out.


But so back to that high school internship thing, and get this! I thought I wanted to be a doctor!!!! Hahahahah! A medical doctor!!!! Haw haw haw! So for a week, I'd go to this friend of mine's (except she wouldn't fuck me, tho' she admitted she really wouldn't mind doing it except for that I had a girlfriend already. I mean, how lame is that?) dad's office.


And he actually let me sit in on a few examinations, when the patients were willing. Once or twice, he even made me draw blood. The patients always seemed less freaked out by that then I was. Here's this high school kid w/ a syringe, comin' to exsanguinate you They'd sit there and read
Reader's Digest
or whatever—they were all like centenarians or something. And but this one time this heavy set, younger lady, i.e. around 60, dressed in bluish-purple sweats comes in, and she's got this gauze wrapped around her hand. Seems she got her hand—not her fingers, but like the side of her hand caught in her lawnmower. While she managed to get the situation (um, sorry about this) in hand before things got too out of control and hadn't lost any fingers, the side of her hand had gotten mowed down pretty well—asin, to the bone. ‘Cuz the side of yr. hand ain't the most fleshy area on yr. body, ‘tho she was relatively lucky in that respect cuz she really was pretty fat.


But here's the interesting part: The doctor gently removed the gauze and this godawful stench fuckin' rolled out at us. It was like spoiled meat and burning tires, but w/ something sickeningly sweet in there too, like maybe long-bad fruit. And as he got further down to the inner layers of gauze, you could see they were all grass-stained, and the flesh was exposed, and this woman had a full-blown case of gangrene goin' there, and it was all puffy and red-lined w/ all this green from the grass stains (I hope) and black crackly areas, etc.




I will never forget that. Why the woman hadn't cleaned the wound up I don't know, but she had been really embarrassed about how she'd hurt herself, and she'd just let it go for a while, and now things
had
gotten outta control. I don't know what happened in the end, as the doc suggested I go air myself, (for which I am grateful,) but that was my one encounter w/ real-life gangrene.


And so I think if I were a magazine ad, and my legs didn’t get any blood, something like that might happen to ‘em. And that would pretty much suck, except maybe if I was a print ad, I wouldn't feel any pain, because where the hell would I fit a brain anyway? Would all my internal organs just have to be so fuckin' thin that they'd fit inside a print ad, or would I have to grow a simple rudimentary brain to control my motor functions and nerve responses and so on like a dinosaurs had in their asses? And once you started putting organs inside a print ad, wouldn't it lose its structural integrity (damn it!) as a piece of paper? Wouldn't really become something other than a walking print ad? Huh?


I know, it's all terminology. Perhaps you think I'm being too, too stringent w/ the rule of thumb, too weighed down by an anchor of linear thinking. Wo! Dude! What would an anchor of linear thinking look like? It'd probably be all big n' heavy n' never mind. That's how we got into this print ad shit in the 1st place... Moving right along...


OK, the other possibility of this walking print ad thing is that I would become a print ad in a more figurative sense. (See? I can be non-linear too!!!) Like I'd become the stuff in the ad, which would give me this protean-type fluid-type aspect—arguably divine in nature, because, well, depending on the print ad I got stuck w/.


And wouldn't it be weird when whatever I was advertising lost its relevance?: That'd be kinda depressing from where I'd be sitting, or standing, or whatever the hell I was doing again depending on the ad. I mean like I could be one of those shitty Capitol One ads w/ like the hordes of barbarians they ran thoroughly into the ground--except are there even print ads that represent that whole barbarian campaign? I've never seen any, but like for a really long time, I’d never heard those obnoxious Joan Cusack ads on the radio, and I couldn’t imagine how they’d work w/o the alien n’ alienatin’ image of Joan’s face.


BTW—not to sound like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby or somethin’, but what the fuck is wrong w/ her face—Joan’s, I mean—esp. her mouth BTW??? Could somebody explain it to me? Speakin’ of protean-type fluid-sorta stuff, her whole face is fluid. Her body just looks like kinda really plain dumpy white-chick-like. But her face is like this roiling mass of something—well, maybe fluid isn't right. It'd have to be a pretty thick fluid to compose Joan Cusack's face, and while I'm not sayin' that an appropriate fluid doesn't exist out there, I am saying that I think it might be more useful to think of her face as a mass of crawling animals—y'know esp. like when insects get all clumped together.


Admittedly some mammals also do this when they get cold, but there's usually not as many of 'em snugglin' up like insects do. And isn't it funny that it's cute when baby mice all roll up in this wiggly group, but when ants or even roaches do it (or larval stuff like maggots) it's gross. Is that bigotry or what? And I want you to think about that the next time a maggot asks for yr. daughter's hand in marriage, or maybe when an ant applies for work at yr. place of business (w/ its entire hive coming along for the ride of course, since lone ants don't function so well in any sorta more complicated capacity).


(And now I realize that it may appear that I’m likening insects to minorities, a trap that I walked into w/o even thinking about the implications, and I'm pretty disgusted w/ myself for doing so. I feel grosser than Joan Cusack even. Really.)


On the other hand, I think it's absolutely appropriate to liken the cockroach case at the Brookfield zoo, say, where they've got like dozens and dozens of roaches crawlin' all over one another… (roaches'll eat one another too remember, so you might wanna think harder about what that might mean for human cuddlin') …I think it's appropriate—admirable, even—to compare that grotesque ever-writhing mass of flesh that is Joan Cusack's face—and esp. her mouth—to that cockroach case.


You might think that's stretching things a bit, but John Cusack, at least, is from Chicago or maybe he isn't and he just hangs around here a lot. But the Brookfield Zoo, while not in Chicago proper is damn close to the city limits. And so you see I got some evidence of a connection here.


Circumstantial? Ah, you just don't wanna see Joan Cusack's face for what it is. I'm decades, maybe centuries, ahead of my time. One day society will look back on this epiphany I've had about Joan Cusack's face w/ the sorta awe now reserved for Michaelangelo's work at the Sistine Chapel, or Einstein's theory of relativity, or Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos or even the complete works of Elizabeth Elmore. (Which are better than any music some fuckin' kraut w/ an unpronounceable name could come up w/ anyway.)


Except for that you won't look back on stuff like that, 'cuz nobody gives a shit about it anymore anyway, 'cuz you're all so busy consumin' shit and watchin' porn & reality shows and bein' cowardly, fat bigots to care about anything that matters. Unlike me. I perform hours n' hours of charity work, I study whittling w/ great devotion, I consider the words of God in every cultural form they take—Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Judaic, Muslim, Shintoism, and many, many more! except for Scientology or that Jehovah's Witness shit, 'cuz those guys (the Witnesses—not the Scientologists) are always knockin' on the door when I'm tryin' to serve and uplift humanity in the privacy of mine own home by devising new inventions to stave off the growing water shortage crisis, by considering the behavior of polar bears in hopes of rescuing these noble giants from the jaws of annihilation, by writing the songs that make the young girls sing, etc.


That is, when I'm not being a walking advertisement. In this case, a walking print ad, remember? But so I didn't believe there were radio spots for thia Joan Cusack campaign though I'd seen the TV ones more times than I've prematurely ejaculated, which is a lotta lotta times, unfortunately. Like I said, I just really couldn’t imagine how they’d work w/o that wriggling, filthy mass of insectile movement we spoke of earlier. But y'know, she must be a great talent—a real natural—'cuz every time I hear one of those ads—which is not often, 'cuz I try not to listen to the radio any more than is absolutely necessary—well they evoke that noisome horror that is her face. Yep. It's almost like you're right there.


Which I actually am, when I'm bein' a radio spot. But we've run out of time for considering how I might take on the form of pure sound, what would constrain me to the aural contents of a given commercial, whether I'd retain my own voice somehow, tho' I've never done any voice work, whether I'd have a catchy little jingle a-bouncin' w/in my being till such time as my signal degrades into small electrostatic particles—if in fact, I haven't been digitally recorded or something and that would somehow affect my structural integrity. (Fuck! I give up.)


And like I never even finished all that print ad shit and whatta nightmare it would be to be a print ad of Joan Cusack (They have those too. When will the obscenity stop?) Except it would be even worse to be a TV spot of Joan Cusack. You'd be like bouncing around offa satellites, which might be sorta cool—pure energy—depending on how the whole thing would work. (You could maybe just be earthbound pixels on a monitor. I don't know.) Which sounds depressing enuff—but here, worst of all, you’re a sentient TV ad of Joan Cusack!


Actually, what might be even worse would be if you were a personal promotion type appearance of Joan Cusack, 'cuz you'd, like, be her. Your face would run and roil like a black, oily bog, filled w/ decaying matter, and there wouldn't be a single thing you could do about it. Except maybe you'd get lucky and being a personal appearance by Joan Cusack wouldn't mean you had to be her, exactly. You might just be the concept—just a horrible idea somebody had--which'd really be like getting off light…


Or what else’d be bad, but still not as bad as really being Joan Cusack—if that’s what this personal appearance stuff came down to—you could just be sorta like the holistic phenomenon of a Joan Cusack public appearance. The lighting, the microphones, the crowd, the cellular phone co. assholes—can't remember which co. Joan pimps for—who hafta run around making phone calls and getting Joan her special danish (rotted and smelly so her mandibles could really get down in there and work and enjoy) cuz she is Joan fer fuck's Cusack! (Except—Ug!—who would wanna fuck her?) She's the star and you better treat her right!


You could be all that. And while you'd still have Joan Cusack as part of yr. synergistic makeup, you wouldn't be exclusively her. So see, you’re still getting off pretty light. Joan wouldn't even necessarily be the biggest part of you. There's the air, the beverages, the clothing, the pigeon who got a lucky shot in and besmirches Joan's sensible hair, thereby causing bird shit to dissolve and run down into a well of organic corruption that—


Oh fuck… Actually, that that might be a really bad scene.


I mean, we have no way of knowing how pigeon shit would interact w/ the foetid ichor of Joan’s face. J'ever read The Novel of the White Seal? Huh? Didja?


I mean, think about it. It could become anything, and unless pigeon shit has some undreamt of neutralizing properties vis-à-vis the nightmare well that is Joan's uh visage—well, unless that's true, logic would lead you to think that while pigeon shit is nowhere near to being that disgusting, it is a little gross. And that grossness might work into some further synergistic reaction not just compromising the structural integrity (forget it! forget it! forget it!) of our reality, but the relative healthiness of it as a reality. Or something.


Anyway, I'm horrified, so let's just let this walking advertisement biz go, 'cuz otherwise we're never gonna get anywhere, and plus even a man who's pure of heart and says his prayers at night can turn into a walking advertisement when the price is right. Or something.


But so where were we?


Ah yes, Akiko's aquarium. Well, while we have established the fact that, among other things, I am not a vegetarian, I did feel bad for those fish, swimming around listlessly in this murky water in their sad little aquarium. But Akiko's the enlightened soul. What do I know?



Next: An Exciting & Tasty Breakfast!!! Boyoboy! I can't wait!!!...