You say tomato...
…I say esophagogastroduodenoscopy.
Which is the procedure I’m scheduled to receive a little over a month from now to see if I am, in fact, allergic to wheat, or if my self-diagnosis is simply a continuation of a lifelong cycle of school absences and sick days. All of which are part of a pathetic desire to just have someone bring me soup and rub my head as I watch “Wings” reruns on the couch, then share my joy when I fart under the blanket and disperse the fumes into the living room with my ankle undulations.
The Rumination of the Night, therefore, is as follows: Did James Joyce (or Dostoevsky, Bergman, etc.) worry about things like wheat intolerance, or am I just, as one of my dear (and recently engaged – but that’s a whole other entry) friends likes to put it, “a little bitch?”
Let’s take a step into Imagination Land to see if we can’t work this out…
Alexis: So, Fyodor, I’m kind of worried about this bloated feeling I get every time I eat pasta. I’m thinking it might be this thing called Celiac’s Disease.
Dostoevsky: Really? That’s nearly comparable to the fear I felt when I stood blindfolded in front of a fucking firing squad in fucking Siberia, praying that I would die a quick death from the bullets tearing apart my vital organs rather than suffer the slow delirium of hypothermia.
Alexis: Oh.
Dostoevsky: But then I went on to write Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, so, you know, no biggie.
Alexis: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’ve got this blog…
So on a toughness scale of 1-10, 10 being Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, I’d say I fall somewhere between Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle and Powder.
The thing is, I don’t feel all that bad about it. I don’t think we humans can ever truly grasp the ephemeralness of our mortality until we find ourselves in front of a firing squad or realize our roommate sprinkled the cupcakes with arsenic again (shhhhh…). And even when we do catch the occasional glimpse, that memory and its urgency are bound to fade until the next Maxwell’s Demon comes along to temporarily reverse our inevitable progression toward emotional stasis.
We can fight it, of course. Some people use drugs, others use art. Some even use love, or at least those moments of love when it's most like a movie.
Personally, I prefer the old car-battery-hooked-up-to-the-nipples trick, but that’s just me.
Which is the procedure I’m scheduled to receive a little over a month from now to see if I am, in fact, allergic to wheat, or if my self-diagnosis is simply a continuation of a lifelong cycle of school absences and sick days. All of which are part of a pathetic desire to just have someone bring me soup and rub my head as I watch “Wings” reruns on the couch, then share my joy when I fart under the blanket and disperse the fumes into the living room with my ankle undulations.
The Rumination of the Night, therefore, is as follows: Did James Joyce (or Dostoevsky, Bergman, etc.) worry about things like wheat intolerance, or am I just, as one of my dear (and recently engaged – but that’s a whole other entry) friends likes to put it, “a little bitch?”
Let’s take a step into Imagination Land to see if we can’t work this out…
Alexis: So, Fyodor, I’m kind of worried about this bloated feeling I get every time I eat pasta. I’m thinking it might be this thing called Celiac’s Disease.
Dostoevsky: Really? That’s nearly comparable to the fear I felt when I stood blindfolded in front of a fucking firing squad in fucking Siberia, praying that I would die a quick death from the bullets tearing apart my vital organs rather than suffer the slow delirium of hypothermia.
Alexis: Oh.
Dostoevsky: But then I went on to write Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, so, you know, no biggie.
Alexis: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’ve got this blog…
So on a toughness scale of 1-10, 10 being Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, I’d say I fall somewhere between Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle and Powder.
The thing is, I don’t feel all that bad about it. I don’t think we humans can ever truly grasp the ephemeralness of our mortality until we find ourselves in front of a firing squad or realize our roommate sprinkled the cupcakes with arsenic again (shhhhh…). And even when we do catch the occasional glimpse, that memory and its urgency are bound to fade until the next Maxwell’s Demon comes along to temporarily reverse our inevitable progression toward emotional stasis.
We can fight it, of course. Some people use drugs, others use art. Some even use love, or at least those moments of love when it's most like a movie.
Personally, I prefer the old car-battery-hooked-up-to-the-nipples trick, but that’s just me.
posted by Alexis C. Jolly at 12:52 AM
3 Comments:
I believe it was the great social commentator Chris Rock who said, "We've got too much food in America. We've got so much we're allergic to food. Hungry people ain't allergic to sh*t. You think anyone in Rwanda has a fuck*n lactose intolerance?"
I don't think you're allergic to wheat. You're probably just living too comfortably. I prescribe a week of living on the street. You should be fine after that.
SICK!
3 out of 3 ASP students (myself, Devon Mulligan, and Dan Beeler) agree, you should write a book. I mean film is spiff and all but the voice on this blog doesn't get heard as easily in that medium. And this is a very enjoyable voice.
ps-i liked your script.
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