Thurs., Sept. -27, 1999
"This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"I think it's about to happen again. An eviction, I mean. I think this time it's August that's had just about enough of me. I'm not sure why. I haven't done anything bad to August that I can think of. In fact, I haven't done anything at all the last 5 days as I continue to recover from foolishly flipping two calendars in the same evening without taking a break in-between. I'm beginning to suspect that there's just no pleasing August. August might very well be just a bad ass month. What experts used to call "incorrigible" before street slang took over the ivory towers. I mean, we know that August took out Rudolph Valentino, Marilyn Monroe, Lenny Bruce, Elvis, and Princess Diana - we know that. And we know that it also took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And just look what it's given us in their place: Ivan the Terrible, the eruption of Krakatoa, World War I, the Berlin Wall, Hurricane Andrew, and Jacqueline Susann. As David Byrne once put it so well (with regard to August 10, I think): "This ain't no party! This ain't no disco! This ain't no foolin' around!" I don't know why it's taken me five whole days to figure out exactly what sort of month has been slowly squeezing the life out of me. I mean, Barbara Tuchman didn't call her famous book "The Guns Of July" for a reason. Come on, Danny Boy - buy a clue already! "Well, I would have this very afternoon, but I've been busy watching CNN's live day-long coverage of this guy in Nevada who kept his appointment with his counselor this morning, drove to the office he worked in, walked calmly to the water cooler without saying a word to anybody, then took his Prozac without warning. He just popped the cap off the medicine bottle he'd hidden in his pocket - POP! - and started downing the proper dosage - gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp. Then, as his co-workers attempted to go about their business, he went straight to his supervisor's office and successfully resolved some outstanding issues from the day before without even raising his voice. He's on his way home now after having been denied permission to buy a handgun at a local gun store because the Brady Bill-mandated background check revealed a history of manic depression. Man, have you ever seen anything like this?! Hang on - Bernard Shaw just announced that there's another guy in Michigan doing the same thing!! They'll be going to a helicopter shot of him arriving safely home and kissing his wife and kids any moment." Wow, let me see that! Hey, that isn't any guy in Michigan - that's Sen. Trent Lott saying that there ought to be a constitutional amendment forcing every day trader in the country to post the ten commandments above his desk! "Oh. Sorry. My mistake. I must have dozed off there a sec." Well, wake up and smell the danger! There's a crazy month at your throat and if you don't watch out it's gonna kick your butt right out of the summer! "Does that mean I won't have to mow grass anymore?" You'll be pushing up daisies instead! "Oh, it's just doddering old August. No threat to anybody. Sure, it hit me with the first ads for winter coats today. And the first display of Halloween decorations I've seen. But aside from those minor little idiosyncrasies born of lack of self-confidence, it's a good month." Oh. Well, nice time to tell me that, now that I have most of this entry done. Now what do we do? "The sun is a great antiseptic." Say what?! "We can save the entry by adding a little useful factoid. People will remember the factoid and forget all about your stupid Chicken Little warning about August." Do you think? "Sure. Factoids are in this season, warnings are out. All the magazines said so. Where ya been, buddy?" And is this factoid true? Is the sun really a great antiseptic? "Sure. Well, that's what the guys performing an operation on the beach told me as I walked by, anyway." DOH! In a desperate, last ditch effort to inject something worthwhile into this entry, the author would here and now like to express his extreme willingness to sign a Non-Correction Pact with the author or authors of any other journal. This Non-Correction Pact would contain the following few but important clauses: 1. Signatories to this pact agree to overlook any and all breath/breathe confusions which occur in the journals of other signatories. |
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Back To A Simpler Past |
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| In a hopeless post-last-ditch effort to put something memorable into this entry, however worthless, the author hereby offers to add a secret appendix to the above Non-Correction Pact. This secret appendix consists of an even more secret extradition treaty between the the author and the authors of other journals in which all signatories agree to extradite any bad words that may have escaped from a journal back to that journal if caught in the journal of another signatory. To get things rolling, the author shall now attempt to extradite the very bad word "Fuck" from clause 5 above to the journal he heartily suspects it came from. If it actually did not come from this journal, sorry Crick! Feel free to pass it along to the journal of your choice. |
