Law & Order
You know that beginning scene on Law & Order, when the people are just sort of chilling and bam! dead body? It always seems sort of interesting and glamorous, as if finding dead bodies is awesome.
I never really had an opinion on it until Thursday. Most people don’t find dead bodies, but then every once in awhile someone does. And it might look something like this: you realize that your neighbor‘s shoes haven’t moved in a couple of days, his mail is piling up, and his plants are sort of wilting. And, then, maybe if you’re sort of out of it and these things aren’t evidence enough, his co-workers will stop by and tell you that he’s missed three days of work.
Then you’ll put it all together and realize, it’s time to call the police.
But you’ll call the landlady first, and she’ll get here and want to open the door. You want to discourage her. But she does it anyway. She’ll call the police and unlock the door. The door will be chained from the inside, and there will be an unmistakable and completely unforgettable odor.
And you’ll realize that someone who was awesome and amazing and a huge presence in the world is dead, and you found him, and you’ll get really sad.
Just because someone lived alone doesn’t make his life somehow less valuable.
None of this is awesome as Law & Order. None of it.
Piano Jazz Friday
Oh yeah, and there’s a freaky bird in there, too. [click the video below]
Cute mutants. Makes me more optimistic about our radioactive future.
Circular evolution
Yowzers. Gmail is offering stickers. In order to get them you have to send in a SASE. To an email company. I’m all wowed.
(Doesn’t stop me from wanting the unicorn bookplates)
I can see you, Ana
I keep wanting to write about the eery connection I have on facebook to a random girl who is very pro-ana, and the disturbing glimpse this gives me into both her world and my voyeurism. I want to write about how I can’t bring myself to un-friend her, and yet her self-destruction, made visible in this faux-friend environment, leaves me complicit with each status update and lil green patch invitation I get, but.. everyone’s writing about facebook and myspace these days.
I think that the sheer exuberance in the writing on networking sites eclipses the underlying issues that have always been there. Sure, anorexia changes now that there are support networks for people who inflict extreme self-harm on themselves, taking loathing into public in new ways. Is this worse than secretive self-loathing? Any why must everything be parallel? If we’re constantly recreating our issues in virtual spaces, why do we guffaw over the format?
Don’t worry. Next time I post it won’t be so curmudgeonly. Unless I write about the major craters the department of water works is creating in my neighborhood in an attempt to keep me unwashed.
The Shanty Kingdom 