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Part I: Star Trek, Depression and Alcoholics
When I was 24 my dog died. She didn't just die, she was really sick and I had to take her to the vet and have her put
to sleep. At the time, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I used to imagine how hard it would be if that wasn't just
a dog, but someone I loved. At the time I imagined having to be there when my wife was dying, and what that would be like.
Now that I am divorced, of course, I still imagine it, but for completely different reasons.
I've been alone for so long that I forget what it's like not to be alone. All my time is spent with my kids and taking
care of them, and then when they're gone for even just a few days I get depressed. It's not so much that I miss them (even
though I do), it's just that I realize how much my life sucks and there's nothing else to occupy my time.
So at times like this, I watch Star Trek. I'm on the third season of Enterprise now, and it's a much
better show than I remember it being when it was on regular TV.
It's ironic that I get depressed because I don't have a woman, and the more I get depressed the more I watch Star
Trek.....and yet, the more I watch Star Trek, the less attractive I am to women. In that sense, being a Trekkie
is kind of like being an alcoholic, like when you drink because you're depressed and unattractive, but then it only makes
you more depressed and unattractive.
I really like Star Trek though, and I don't really care what anyone else thinks about it or what it implies
about my social life. I like it even though a big part of brain that could probably be curing cancer or doing something productive
to even just improve my own life, is filled with stuff like the Klingon word for Victory and the name of the guy who designed
Data's positronic brain. I like it even though there's really nothing else to say about it than just that I really like it,
and in that sense I'm like one of those teenage bloggers who think it's deep to write six paragraphs about how much they love
a song that probably no one reading their blog has even heard of.
Here's an excerpt from the blog of Bethany Cooper, 16, of Amaraillo Texas:
I'm listening to Bastion Day by Shran. It is such a great song, it touches me deep deep down inside, I cry
and I laugh and it makes me think of Rob. Rob is so awesome. I love Rob so much. Rob are you reading this, sweety? I love
you! But at the same time the song makes me want to get up and dance, and act inappropriately slutty! It's so great.
If you haven't heard this song, you need to go download it. Especially the part where Jongo goes "whooo hoooo jongo
jongo!" What a rush! It's so awesome! Yesterday I was sitting in class and I just went "Whoo hooo!" and then Christy goes
"Jongo jongo!" and we just cracked up! It was incredibly amazingly hilariously funny. And then Rob came up to me and he was
like, "What's up?" He's so awesome!
| This is Shran |
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| He will kick your ass |
Actually I just made all that up. But you get the idea. And in case you're wondering, yes, "Shran" is the name of a character
on Star Trek. He's an Andorian. They're blue with antennae and they kick ass all over the place.
Part II: Eels
I ate eel for the first time the other day, and I added them to my list of Animals I Have Eaten even though Tara says that they're fish and don't count as a new animal. What I mean is, she says that they're fish,
but we didn't debate it because she would say that keeping a list and posting it on the internet was immature and stupid.
I don't know that they are fish, and I don't really care. I do know that they're really really chewy, like you can
just chew and chew and chew and it's like rubber, so much so that if you could get it to taste the same you could probably
feed someone an actual rubber eel and they wouldn't know the difference. I believe all this despite the fact that my friend Deb
doesn't think that chewy is a real word, even though I think anything is a real word if you can say it and have more
than half the people listening to you know what it means.
It's kind of like eating calimari, which is I think the Italian word for squid even though Oriental people apparently
use it too. I always try to eat a little bit of squid every time I go to the Chinese restaurant, not because I like it but
because it's about the only thing I can think of eating that would probably eat me first if I saw it in the wild. Like, at
the beach or something.
Part III: Die, Black Jelly Beans, Die!!!
My boss keeps a jar of jelly beans on her desk. From what I can tell, they all come from the same bag, which I don't
understand because about one in every 20 jelly beans is like twice the size of the others. They're like these mutant, monster
jelly beans that you would never guess were related to the others.
And then there's the black ones. Black jelly beans are so vile and so disgusting that they're not even like candy. They're
like the exact opposite of candy, like something that the devil made up and called it candy, only he didn't know that candy
was supposed to be sweet and taste good, so instead he made something that's really bad for you and rots your teeth and tastes
disgusting and no one likes.
Black jelly beans don't even go with the other ones. I mean, you can eat a yellow one and a green one together, or a
purple one and a red one, but you can't eat the black ones with anything else. The red and yellow and purple ones don't do
anything to improve the taste of the black ones; the black ones ruin the flavor of every other one in the bag. Sometimes if
they're even just close to the others ones, some of the flavor gets on them and they taste bad.
So one day I was eating some jelly beans and I found a black one in there with them, and I took it to the men's room
and I threw it in the urinal. I didn't do it out of scientific curiousity, or convenience: I just did it because I hate black
jelly beans and I wanted it to die a lingering death for all of the torment that they've caused me over the years. I went
back the next day and it had turned white and was all fuzzy underwater, and gross. Grosser than it was before I threw it in
the urinal, I mean.
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