From the End of the World

I’m trying to keep it light, as it’s BlogHer this week, and many people are traveling tomorrow. And I? Am not the least bit jealous. Nope. Not jealous. Not annoyed that I won’t get to spend the entire weekend at Whinger’s with Whinger and Partner and Dog and Cat and meeting all the other fine ladies of blogging. Nope. NOT AT ALL. I’ll be here contemplating poking my eyes out with sharp objects to get away from the madness. A smattering of the maddening madness:

– We’ve had such bad thunderstorms these last few days that I’ve been afraid to go downstairs. I have, in the most embarrassing of fashions, taken to bed. I am afraid that the lightning is going to come through the lanai doors and zap me on the couch. I have obsessively unplugged every single item in the house before we even lost electricity, because it was coming! For me! FOR ME SPECIFICALLY. You don’t understand. The lightning was right there. RIGHT THERE. I heard the sizzle and saw this entire bar of blue – BLUE – lightning going into the lake outside my door – steps from where I was resting my pretty little head. Repeatedly. And then it hit the grass and burning! There was burning! And crying. God, I was crying. And hiding under a blanket. And the hail! Jesus, the hail that pounded on our windows. It was the size of nickels, pelting down on us like little electrified bubbles, waiting to strike us down.

– Tonight at dinner, I ordered crab cakes and a side salad. My side salad came with no less than a full half-pound of raw bacon on top of it. Raw. bacon. RAWBACON. And when I tried to send it back, the waiter looked at me as though I’d lost my mind, “So you’re saying you don’t want it? The bacon, I mean. Do you want me to just take it off and bring it back?” While I realize bacon is cured, um, I really don’t think that the FDA advises eating any sort of uncooked pork products, no? And who puts pork products on a SIDE SALAD without warning? I ordered “mixed greens,” and ended up with a pile of swine. And no. No, I didn’t want it back with raw bacon grease after you took it off, spit in it and brought it back. No thank you.

– With all of the rain, the frogs are back. No, I’m not talking about Evil Toads, I’m talking about the frogs. They’re everywhere and then some. Covering our door at night. Clinging for warmth to our lampposts and climbing trees and walls and cars with their gummy little legs all OVER the place. It’s like some kind of freakish infestation we can’t shake. I can’t walk out the front door without displacing at least 25 frogs.

- I learned that a weird little group down here is opening up some sort of alternative burial site for people who wish to be cremated. Um, they’re offering the deceased the opportunity to be part of a “living reef” project. As in, you donate your ashes or, I’m assuming, the ashes of your loved one, as ashes can’t talk and how can the deceased be offered ANYthing? – ahem, anyway, you donate someone’s – a neighbor, a dog, whatever – ashes, and then they mix the ashes with all of these other people’s ashes and some sort of “eco-friendly compound” and then they are making some sort of GIANT MAN-MADE CORAL REEF off the coast, where manatee, dolphin and shellfish will frolic with your loved ones, apparently.

Um, okay. I haven’t seen a shellfish frolic in a long time, or maybe ever. And it’s a man-made “coral” reef made out of dead people. A death reef, if you will. The man-made death reef is just a cover for something more sinister, mark my words. But let’s face it, even if it’s not: what the hell? There’s a deadline to participate sometime next month. So if you’re itching to be part of the Death Reef, then you’d better off yourself, and soon.

– And lastly, it’s a blessing I’m not going to BlogHer. My normally-brilliant hairdresser cut my hair to resemble a circumcized penis, which would not bode well for people who just met me. I’d be remembered not for my sparkling wit or charming personality, but for the head that looked like it was about to ejaculate.

*ELO, from ‘Time’ the greatest album of all-time. All-time, get it? Gah. Boring. So boring today.

18 comments July 26th, 2006