My grandmother is being discharged from the hospital today and my utterly useless relatives are going to help her over the weekend so my mother can go home and take of her house before returning to PA to deal with this whole mess. Why am I not there? Well I asked Mere Lapin several times if I should come up and she said no. Things seem to be OK, but she'll keep me on alert. But thank you for all your kind thoughts, and the next time something of this caliber happens this year I swear it's gonna be a male prostitute and martini jamboree at my place because I just can't take another craptacular moment this year.

So I'm off to meet Bakerina and cheat on Passover and have some rose chai and try and get back on track with the 17 pounds of work I have.

Until then I leave you with this lovely image of a German easter card from 1914. (Why are they on a teetertotter? Anyone? Freakin' goys are so wierd.)
I was going to do work and write a post when I got the phone call from my mother. And of course, no one was around. So I drank enough red wine to stop crying and sleep through the night.

Now I have to do the work that I was supposed to do last night as well as run errands, and go to this party tonight. Can't tell you how not in the mood I am to do it, but, well considering that certain persons weren't invited just so I could attend I figure I should go.

Just kill me. I'm too tired to deal with any of this anymore.
I've been reading Stephen King's Cell. I know. I generally hate King. Let me rephrase that. I like his stories, but I hate his novels. Yet, over the years, I come across people whose opinion I trust who try and convince me that my completely justified opinion of an author is wrong and I should give him/her another shot. And this is how I end up doing things like reading novels by novelists I know I hate.

And thus I end up reading Stephen King's Cell, which is kind of a shorter version of the Stand only with the disease that wipes out mankind actually being a cellphone transmitted madness, which eventually also a communal consciousness and the ability to levitate in the "phoners" (as opposed to the "normies"). The idea might have worked had it been written by someone a little more hip to the cellphone/IM/text/sidekick culture. As it is, it's kind of like my great grandfather trying to write Tron.

Still despite King's classic, pardon me while I kill the only character you like tactics, his clumsy attempt at using meta (the main character is a comic book artist who at the climax of the story envisions penning a comic book titled Cell-guess what it is about), his heavy handed commentary about consumerist American culture. (All these people turned into a shared communal consciousness by using cellphones? Once they become mindless phoners, they indulge in all manners of junk food. Sounds a lot like vilifying adolescence, doesn't it?) I could have tolerated all his antics until I hit this sentiment: "Survival is like Love. Both are blind."

After reading that sentence, I am beginning to wish I was blind too.

* Joe has nominated me for a thinking blog award. I shall be posting about that later tonight, I swear. But to all of you who came here expecting brilliant literary analysis and found complaining about Stephen King, I apologize. Tomorrow I'll write something about Voltaire, I promise.

Labels: cellphones, horror, stephen king

I have pictures of my cat on my phone.

It's not right. At thirty-two, I should not have pictures of my cat on my phone. I should not be hanging around at bars on Saturday night without dates STILL. I've been doing since I was in college, as an undergraduate. The same thing I do now. Wait until after midnight, get dressed up, and go to a bar where I am comfortable or familiar enough with the bouncer/bartender to be OK as a Woman Alone.

And the first person to tell me I have to be OK with being alone, I swear to G-d, a mack upside the head for you. Because I've been going to bars alone for a DECADE now. I've been going out to dinner alone SINCE I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. Let me repeat that, not dining alone, but taking myself out to dinner. I've gone to France alone. I've been living alone for six fucking years. I can't tell you how OK with being alone I've been.

Enough. I've had it.

Welcome to the Saturation Point.

Oh and incidentally, that person who hit on a friend of mine by talking about how depressed I was in front of me. Well, now they are in love. And I have to find this out from some anonymous twit in a bar who sidled up to me and said, "Well I hear B--- is in love and you're the one responsible."

So although I am the Cure for Romantic Love, I can apparently find nice work as a cupid. Christ what is it about me? I can seduce anybody. Popes if given a chance I'm sure (but seriously ewwwwww). But love. Nope that's not gonna happen in this life apparently.

And it only gets worse.