Wishing a pox on your first-born would be way too forgiving, and simply confirming that you’re a douchebag wouldn’t have nearly enough pizzazz. So.
I pray that you explode with an acute case of full-blown syphilis – not contracted, not passed down through your mother, but an immaculately conceived instance of syphilis - so wretchedly bad that it splits your penis in two; so that next time you're screwing a crack-whore, said bifurcated dick has been rendered so unmanageable that it flings your tainted jizz into your own fucking eye, which immediately makes a bee-line for your frontal lobe, swiftly devolving the insides of your head into a substance not unlike Stouffer’s mac and cheese, ultimately landing you in a poorly administered, horrendously non-compliant, Monsanto-funded looney-bin where your schizophrenic ass bounces around in a straitjacket, spewing embarrassingly unfiltered, nonsensical shit until some big, lugging Lenny type does us all a favor by accidentally crushing your skull with a windowsill.
Never piss off a woman armed with a bottle of single malt and synapses full of vocabulary just waiting for even half a reason to fire.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tangent.
Step on the scale, please.
click clickclickclick
clickclick click
click
what the fucking fuck click
c lick cl ic k
There we go, the nurse's aide said proudly, as if she had solved a Rubik's Cube and shit.
According to the scale at - the Westside Family Health Clinic of Santa Monica - I weighed as much as a fledgling manatee at seven months. According to this scale, I might weigh only 13 kilograms - on the moon. I found myself getting irritated. It was short-lived, however, because they ended up throwing me in a room, where I waited. And waited. Then proceeded with being irritated some more.
I waited for them to knock politely, open the door and give me two giant pieces of Kleenex to put on. That didn't happen so I waited for someone to come in and hand me a pee-cup. Nothing. I waited and found myself staring at signs scotch-taped on bins marked BIOWASTE: Do not dispose of diapers in this bin. Please ask medical staff for alternate receptacles.
It was at that exact moment I realized I should really get the fuck up out of there. Too late.
Dr. Lady opened the door. She was an older woman, wearing red, no-nonsense Italian frames and a bunch of gold. She had a nice smile, though, which totally disarmed one from the fact that she's probably seen over sixty-thousand sets of genitals in her line of work.
Doctors, I think. What weird people.
She asked me what I was doing there, and I told her that I got hit by a car while riding my bike.
Does she ask where I got hit, or to show her the cuts or bruises? No. She looks at me for three seconds, and says that if I take some ibuprofen I'll be fine. Ibuprofen? A pissant Advil? Write me a prescription for fucking Vikes, woman. I think all of this. Almost very loudly.
I shrug. I guess that's all there was. I get up to leave and all of a sudden, as if she has some sort of a-ha moment, Dr. Lady's face lights up and she suggests:
Pap smear?
As if things just needed to be that much fucking weirder.
It was like she was offering me a cocktail shrimp, or a stuffed mushroom. She asked again.
Pap smear. Would you like one?
Um, no. I think I'm ok. Maybe if you asked me an hour ago.
I leave feeling extremely unfulfilled.
What is it with people that are supposed to help you? First Bob the Firefuck and now her. Maybe I've watched too much General Hospital but, when you have an appointment with a doctor, aren't they supposed to at least make you think they care?
I mean granted, at this writing, it's been a couple weeks but still. Eerily enough, you couldn't tell that I'd been jacked up at all. I usually bruise quite easily and for long periods of time. The oven-mitt sized welt on my left thigh had almost lost its purple. In fact, the cut on my hand had miraculously scabbed up in two days and the scrape on my neck was also in a nifty healing state, considering I took a fucking car door off its bottom hinge around fourteen days prior. My right hand still has a slight twinge in some of the fingers, but I figure that should go away given another week or so. My friends had started making Unbreakable jokes, the-lost-X-Man jokes. Yeah. That's me, except I'd be the X-Shmuck who has to do all the bookkeeping, stuck in Xavier's library, not allowed to go on dangerous missions: If I was a superhero, I was the equivalent of Baby Plas.
I can't front, though. The days immediately following The Clobbering were kind of hectic. I ended up not being able to go to work for the rest of that week. They say the next day after an accident is always the worst, and I found out how very true that statement is: I was so fucking indigo I looked like one of the Fruit of the Loom grapes. Although I hadn't broken anything OR even bumped my noggin, surprisingly, something about the impact rattled my brain, and the left side of my jaw felt like it was a balloon, I guess from soft-tissue inflammation. Days two through four, I went from not being able to talk for long periods of time to not being able to talk at all. I looked like the beat-up stepchild of Frankenstein. This is the part where the Vicodin would have been hailed like a giant bottle of Jesus. However, since I couldn't get a doctor's appointment until that Monday - i do so love a good HMO, don't you? - I had to improvise at home.
For five days, I didn't leave my flat and existed on a steady diet of Orajel and a bottle of Laphroaig. Couple that with occassional cups of Breyer's vanilla ice cream topped with Magic Shell, sprinkles of maximum strength Alleve, and finished with copious amounts of both indica and sativa. Scoff all you want. Obviously the shit worked.
Once I get back to the office, I call YooJin and tell her I've seen a doctor, and I'll be fine. She asks me where I'll be tomorrow evening, and says she'll actually be close to the Westside when I get out of work. She tells me to meet her at her church.
The next day, at exactly 6:45pm, I pull into the parking lot of the Los Angeles Friendship Center and see that it's GINORMOUS - I realized I'd had a hard time visualizing it when she told me the address because I'd driven past it a thousand times and had always thought it was an office park, it's that fucking huge.
I get out of my truck and she's there like, instantly - like...creepy...instantly, and she has her four- year-old son and mother in tow. He's holding a stuffy of a teddy bear and waving so much that I am initially blinded by his cuteness. YooJin's mother is equally as adorable. A Holy Trinity so perfect, they looked like they should have been glued onto a billboard, promoting the daily consumption of several servings of fruits and vegetables. Or something.
Mother gestures and we walk inside the church into a lounge-type area decked out with coffee tables and overstuffed chairs. There are many extremely content looking Buddhists of different walks entering for a service that obviously starts soon. I don't want to keep them. YooJin hands me a check and pulls out a sheet of paper for me to sign, that I'm not going to sue them, blah blah blah. I immediately sign it and hand it back.
YooJin looks at me and says
Okay, just so you know, it says that you just went to the doctor and that you are fine and we are settling for---
Sure. Whatever you need to confirm that we're handling this outside of your car insurance. It's totally fine.
The mother and daughter blink and glance at each other.
YooJin continues. Well, I told all of our friends what we were doing and that you seemed like a very nice person but they said to be careful, you know, because we don't know you and we don't know what you might be up to....
I hear myself saying
You kind of met one of the nicest people you could ever hit. Don't believe everything you hear about the majority of people in Los Angeles - there are still decent and fair folks around. You just have to believe that. And. Well. You know...
They're staring at me. I look around.
There are now a hundred people piling through the entrance to the inner church.
...as someone who comes here regularly, wouldn't you WANT to believe in some of them?
I turn around and start walking in the direction of the door.
I can still hear them reeling from my profundity.
I exit the church and for some reason, it feels like I can see Jake Ryan across the street, leaning on his Porsche 911 with Lloyd Dobler wearing a trenchcoat and holding up a boombox, standing next to Blaine and Ducky holding hands while starring in a play Max Fischer is directing.
Giving a Buddhist life-lessons? Priceless.
click clickclickclick
clickclick click
click
what the fucking fuck click
c lick cl ic k
There we go, the nurse's aide said proudly, as if she had solved a Rubik's Cube and shit.
According to the scale at - the Westside Family Health Clinic of Santa Monica - I weighed as much as a fledgling manatee at seven months. According to this scale, I might weigh only 13 kilograms - on the moon. I found myself getting irritated. It was short-lived, however, because they ended up throwing me in a room, where I waited. And waited. Then proceeded with being irritated some more.
I waited for them to knock politely, open the door and give me two giant pieces of Kleenex to put on. That didn't happen so I waited for someone to come in and hand me a pee-cup. Nothing. I waited and found myself staring at signs scotch-taped on bins marked BIOWASTE: Do not dispose of diapers in this bin. Please ask medical staff for alternate receptacles.
It was at that exact moment I realized I should really get the fuck up out of there. Too late.
Dr. Lady opened the door. She was an older woman, wearing red, no-nonsense Italian frames and a bunch of gold. She had a nice smile, though, which totally disarmed one from the fact that she's probably seen over sixty-thousand sets of genitals in her line of work.
Doctors, I think. What weird people.
She asked me what I was doing there, and I told her that I got hit by a car while riding my bike.
Does she ask where I got hit, or to show her the cuts or bruises? No. She looks at me for three seconds, and says that if I take some ibuprofen I'll be fine. Ibuprofen? A pissant Advil? Write me a prescription for fucking Vikes, woman. I think all of this. Almost very loudly.
I shrug. I guess that's all there was. I get up to leave and all of a sudden, as if she has some sort of a-ha moment, Dr. Lady's face lights up and she suggests:
Pap smear?
As if things just needed to be that much fucking weirder.
It was like she was offering me a cocktail shrimp, or a stuffed mushroom. She asked again.
Pap smear. Would you like one?
Um, no. I think I'm ok. Maybe if you asked me an hour ago.
I leave feeling extremely unfulfilled.
What is it with people that are supposed to help you? First Bob the Firefuck and now her. Maybe I've watched too much General Hospital but, when you have an appointment with a doctor, aren't they supposed to at least make you think they care?
I mean granted, at this writing, it's been a couple weeks but still. Eerily enough, you couldn't tell that I'd been jacked up at all. I usually bruise quite easily and for long periods of time. The oven-mitt sized welt on my left thigh had almost lost its purple. In fact, the cut on my hand had miraculously scabbed up in two days and the scrape on my neck was also in a nifty healing state, considering I took a fucking car door off its bottom hinge around fourteen days prior. My right hand still has a slight twinge in some of the fingers, but I figure that should go away given another week or so. My friends had started making Unbreakable jokes, the-lost-X-Man jokes. Yeah. That's me, except I'd be the X-Shmuck who has to do all the bookkeeping, stuck in Xavier's library, not allowed to go on dangerous missions: If I was a superhero, I was the equivalent of Baby Plas.
I can't front, though. The days immediately following The Clobbering were kind of hectic. I ended up not being able to go to work for the rest of that week. They say the next day after an accident is always the worst, and I found out how very true that statement is: I was so fucking indigo I looked like one of the Fruit of the Loom grapes. Although I hadn't broken anything OR even bumped my noggin, surprisingly, something about the impact rattled my brain, and the left side of my jaw felt like it was a balloon, I guess from soft-tissue inflammation. Days two through four, I went from not being able to talk for long periods of time to not being able to talk at all. I looked like the beat-up stepchild of Frankenstein. This is the part where the Vicodin would have been hailed like a giant bottle of Jesus. However, since I couldn't get a doctor's appointment until that Monday - i do so love a good HMO, don't you? - I had to improvise at home.
For five days, I didn't leave my flat and existed on a steady diet of Orajel and a bottle of Laphroaig. Couple that with occassional cups of Breyer's vanilla ice cream topped with Magic Shell, sprinkles of maximum strength Alleve, and finished with copious amounts of both indica and sativa. Scoff all you want. Obviously the shit worked.
Once I get back to the office, I call YooJin and tell her I've seen a doctor, and I'll be fine. She asks me where I'll be tomorrow evening, and says she'll actually be close to the Westside when I get out of work. She tells me to meet her at her church.
The next day, at exactly 6:45pm, I pull into the parking lot of the Los Angeles Friendship Center and see that it's GINORMOUS - I realized I'd had a hard time visualizing it when she told me the address because I'd driven past it a thousand times and had always thought it was an office park, it's that fucking huge.
I get out of my truck and she's there like, instantly - like...creepy...instantly, and she has her four- year-old son and mother in tow. He's holding a stuffy of a teddy bear and waving so much that I am initially blinded by his cuteness. YooJin's mother is equally as adorable. A Holy Trinity so perfect, they looked like they should have been glued onto a billboard, promoting the daily consumption of several servings of fruits and vegetables. Or something.
Mother gestures and we walk inside the church into a lounge-type area decked out with coffee tables and overstuffed chairs. There are many extremely content looking Buddhists of different walks entering for a service that obviously starts soon. I don't want to keep them. YooJin hands me a check and pulls out a sheet of paper for me to sign, that I'm not going to sue them, blah blah blah. I immediately sign it and hand it back.
YooJin looks at me and says
Okay, just so you know, it says that you just went to the doctor and that you are fine and we are settling for---
Sure. Whatever you need to confirm that we're handling this outside of your car insurance. It's totally fine.
The mother and daughter blink and glance at each other.
YooJin continues. Well, I told all of our friends what we were doing and that you seemed like a very nice person but they said to be careful, you know, because we don't know you and we don't know what you might be up to....
I hear myself saying
You kind of met one of the nicest people you could ever hit. Don't believe everything you hear about the majority of people in Los Angeles - there are still decent and fair folks around. You just have to believe that. And. Well. You know...
They're staring at me. I look around.
There are now a hundred people piling through the entrance to the inner church.
...as someone who comes here regularly, wouldn't you WANT to believe in some of them?
I turn around and start walking in the direction of the door.
I can still hear them reeling from my profundity.
I exit the church and for some reason, it feels like I can see Jake Ryan across the street, leaning on his Porsche 911 with Lloyd Dobler wearing a trenchcoat and holding up a boombox, standing next to Blaine and Ducky holding hands while starring in a play Max Fischer is directing.
Giving a Buddhist life-lessons? Priceless.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Accident That Started it All.
I swear it came out of fucking nowhere.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008. Approximately 9:45 a.m.
IT: the drivers-side-car-door belonging to a brand spanking white 2008 Honda Odyssey.
Alabaster---nay, a blinding ivory beacon. A glimmering ambassador from Heaven for soccer moms and four-star hotel airport vanpools everywhere, reflecting the sun as if it were Apollo Himself.
ME: a 12-speed,1986 Univega Viva Sport. Mixte. Silvery blue, with happy brown Oury grips and over 12 slightly obsessive hours of work put into its revival since I found it at a garage sale three months ago. The Bicycle was a gorgeous example of a fine, fairly inexpensive old road bike. In amazing shape, really. That is what I believed. From the first moment I checked it out up until the presently loud crunching sound of fiberglass hitting lugged steel and skin of now.
From what I can figure out, in 7 seconds:
door opens bike hits door front tire goes right handlebars hit neck and shoulder bending handlebars phloe hits door bike and phloe get thrown up into air bike flies back while gets thrown sideways into oncoming traffic hits pavement feels rings fly off fingers sees another car swerve within one foot of head rolls into fetal position and curses like sailor adrenaline goes into hyperdrive causing synapses to fire rapidly creating simultaneous doubt in everything and anything known to exist
Within thirty seconds of having the wind knocked out of me plus a very minute stint of blacking out, I can hear myself responding to various questions being thrown around in the ether:
How old are you?
Way too old for this kind of shit. Thirty-three.
Are you thirsty?
No, but I think I just got into a gnarly bike accident.
Do you need to be taken to the hospital?
Possibly. But I have a lot of reservations about managed care.
Cops CAN and DO laugh nervously, I found out.
After a while, I'm checking myself out, looking for blood: yes, there is blood. The side of my neck is missing some skin, my right hand makes me look like I am an extra waiting for cue in an Argento flick, and the back of my left calf totally gives me slasher cred. There is just enough blood to make me think: bitchin'.
The Ambulance rolls up, and two of LA's Finest Firemen get out to help me. Or so I think. One of the guys is apparently pissed off that they're on call duty while all the rest of his friends get to go fight the fire in Porter Ranch. Bob, I will call him. And. Bob. Is. Pissed.
Now. Unfortunately, Bob is: a goddamn HOT fireman. The kind you throw in the spank bank and don't tell people about when you're sitting in their jacuzzis. However. Bob is also a jerk. Which negates his spank feature instantly. Or, UPs it, depending on which side of the whip you fancy. But I digress. Bob is an asshole. Bob, descending upon said accident, and not bearing witnesseth to any carnage, is apparently filled with the fatigue of grotesque ennui, and does NOT want to be nice to me. I can only surmise that it has something to do with his probation of some sort: . Why else would he be exempt from fighting major fires in a media-covered frenzy of Southern California? Dig. This dude looked like the fucking PUNISHER.
He looks at my bleeding hand and says Well, I guess I'll get you something for that.
He turns back to the ambulance and emerges with some tape and a gauze patch. He proceeds to unwrap and stick the gauze patch on my cut.
Hold up. Where's your antiseptic?
What. Bob seems rather annoyed.
Antiseptic. Bactine. Hydrogen peroxide. Fairy dust.
For what?
Well, for starters, my hand was just drug on this slice of macadam pavement. Hence the blood. Don't you want to flush the rocks and shit out of it?
Do you know what Fireman Bob tells me?
Some people are allergic to hydrogen peroxide and Bactine.
I'm not.
There is an audible sigh from Bob.
Since some people are allergic, we don't carry those things. We have saline water. Do you want me to flush it with water?
I audibly sigh back. Duh. No. But is this what you do with everyone who has a boo-boo? I'm sure this doesn't go over well as a whole.
I can now tell that Bob is THIS CLOSE to kicking my ass.
Then I hear the sobbing.
I focus enough to notice a round-faced and petite asian woman, probably in her late 30s, trying to examine my hand and crying like there's no fucking hope of tomorrow. It dawns on me: this is the woman who owns the car door. She's in the middle of talking when I zone in.
"…and I called my insurance agent and they told me not to be nice to you, to tell you that this is all YOUR fault, but I can't! I'm…a Buddhist…I've…had…a..very…bad...month."
YooJin, she proceeds to tell me.
YooJin Kim is all she tells me before going into an almost hyperventilative fit. Inbetween bawling and about fifty Kleenex, she proceeds to tell me what a horrible month she has been having, and then this week she found out that her identity's been stolen, that three credit cards have been taken out in her name, and she finally got it together enough to come to the police station to file some kind of report and then- she can't conclude the story and collapses into almost child-like sobbing, but that's quite allright.
I found myself standing on the side of Venice Boulevard, using my one good hand to pat the shoulder of the person who owned the car that clobbered me.
What were the fucking chances of me getting decked by a Buddhist with Karma issues?
MONDAY PHLOE GOES TO THE DOCTOR. WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS...
Tuesday, October 14, 2008. Approximately 9:45 a.m.
IT: the drivers-side-car-door belonging to a brand spanking white 2008 Honda Odyssey.
Alabaster---nay, a blinding ivory beacon. A glimmering ambassador from Heaven for soccer moms and four-star hotel airport vanpools everywhere, reflecting the sun as if it were Apollo Himself.
ME: a 12-speed,1986 Univega Viva Sport. Mixte. Silvery blue, with happy brown Oury grips and over 12 slightly obsessive hours of work put into its revival since I found it at a garage sale three months ago. The Bicycle was a gorgeous example of a fine, fairly inexpensive old road bike. In amazing shape, really. That is what I believed. From the first moment I checked it out up until the presently loud crunching sound of fiberglass hitting lugged steel and skin of now.
From what I can figure out, in 7 seconds:
door opens bike hits door front tire goes right handlebars hit neck and shoulder bending handlebars phloe hits door bike and phloe get thrown up into air bike flies back while gets thrown sideways into oncoming traffic hits pavement feels rings fly off fingers sees another car swerve within one foot of head rolls into fetal position and curses like sailor adrenaline goes into hyperdrive causing synapses to fire rapidly creating simultaneous doubt in everything and anything known to exist
Within thirty seconds of having the wind knocked out of me plus a very minute stint of blacking out, I can hear myself responding to various questions being thrown around in the ether:
How old are you?
Way too old for this kind of shit. Thirty-three.
Are you thirsty?
No, but I think I just got into a gnarly bike accident.
Do you need to be taken to the hospital?
Possibly. But I have a lot of reservations about managed care.
Cops CAN and DO laugh nervously, I found out.
After a while, I'm checking myself out, looking for blood: yes, there is blood. The side of my neck is missing some skin, my right hand makes me look like I am an extra waiting for cue in an Argento flick, and the back of my left calf totally gives me slasher cred. There is just enough blood to make me think: bitchin'.
The Ambulance rolls up, and two of LA's Finest Firemen get out to help me. Or so I think. One of the guys is apparently pissed off that they're on call duty while all the rest of his friends get to go fight the fire in Porter Ranch. Bob, I will call him. And. Bob. Is. Pissed.
Now. Unfortunately, Bob is: a goddamn HOT fireman. The kind you throw in the spank bank and don't tell people about when you're sitting in their jacuzzis. However. Bob is also a jerk. Which negates his spank feature instantly. Or, UPs it, depending on which side of the whip you fancy. But I digress. Bob is an asshole. Bob, descending upon said accident, and not bearing witnesseth to any carnage, is apparently filled with the fatigue of grotesque ennui, and does NOT want to be nice to me. I can only surmise that it has something to do with his probation of some sort: . Why else would he be exempt from fighting major fires in a media-covered frenzy of Southern California? Dig. This dude looked like the fucking PUNISHER.
He looks at my bleeding hand and says Well, I guess I'll get you something for that.
He turns back to the ambulance and emerges with some tape and a gauze patch. He proceeds to unwrap and stick the gauze patch on my cut.
Hold up. Where's your antiseptic?
What. Bob seems rather annoyed.
Antiseptic. Bactine. Hydrogen peroxide. Fairy dust.
For what?
Well, for starters, my hand was just drug on this slice of macadam pavement. Hence the blood. Don't you want to flush the rocks and shit out of it?
Do you know what Fireman Bob tells me?
Some people are allergic to hydrogen peroxide and Bactine.
I'm not.
There is an audible sigh from Bob.
Since some people are allergic, we don't carry those things. We have saline water. Do you want me to flush it with water?
I audibly sigh back. Duh. No. But is this what you do with everyone who has a boo-boo? I'm sure this doesn't go over well as a whole.
I can now tell that Bob is THIS CLOSE to kicking my ass.
Then I hear the sobbing.
I focus enough to notice a round-faced and petite asian woman, probably in her late 30s, trying to examine my hand and crying like there's no fucking hope of tomorrow. It dawns on me: this is the woman who owns the car door. She's in the middle of talking when I zone in.
"…and I called my insurance agent and they told me not to be nice to you, to tell you that this is all YOUR fault, but I can't! I'm…a Buddhist…I've…had…a..very…bad...month."
YooJin, she proceeds to tell me.
YooJin Kim is all she tells me before going into an almost hyperventilative fit. Inbetween bawling and about fifty Kleenex, she proceeds to tell me what a horrible month she has been having, and then this week she found out that her identity's been stolen, that three credit cards have been taken out in her name, and she finally got it together enough to come to the police station to file some kind of report and then- she can't conclude the story and collapses into almost child-like sobbing, but that's quite allright.
I found myself standing on the side of Venice Boulevard, using my one good hand to pat the shoulder of the person who owned the car that clobbered me.
What were the fucking chances of me getting decked by a Buddhist with Karma issues?
MONDAY PHLOE GOES TO THE DOCTOR. WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS...
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