I'm typing! On my blog! SHADDUP!

Back by mediocre demand, I thought I'd give this tired old hag another go of it. It's probably going to be a half-hearted attempt, but some heart is better than none. I've been suffering from a sort of malaise known as 'work' and 'life', and it totally gets in the way of being cynical and depressed and rigidly fatalistic. In fact, I think I've actually gotten cheerful about mucking through life like a pig in a box. Fan-fucking-tastic. I've become my worst nightmare. Oh, goody, the doom is starting to come back.

At my last knitting group, the topic of time-travel came about. I think it had to do with someone having to frog an entire project and saying something like: "Oh my holy Jesus I wish I had never started this thing." Anyway, we started to conceptualize time-travel, and query each other of where we would go, what we would do, who we would be and/or meet. The answers varied widely. Some people wanted to re-visit times in their own histories. Others wanted to galavant with Newton and calculus (these people are obviously on the fringe of society, and we accept them as they are). Someone mentioned the Age of Reason, and we discussed the many merits of corsets and physics. Obviously, we are a highly cerebral and intellectual group.

While I was marinating on the concept of reason and its age, it dawned on me: I know exactly where I would go in time and what I would do. I would go to any pest-ridden, garbage-infested, overcrowded mush of a town in Europe during the Black Death. I would absolutely be one of those weirdos who hauled corpses to mass graves. Why? Because of the word buboes.

Buboes are exactly what the world needs. Not hobos, not hubris, but buboes. Nasty little pus-filled sacs developing in unmentionable areas of the body. Lymph nodes gone awry. Tactless purple noodles of mortality, screaming out to all the world: "I'm ugly, and I'm going to wipe out humanity." That's amazing.

It's absolutely beautiful and perplexing that infected fleas managed to wipe out all of the problems in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. What those fleas also managed to do was wipe out a whole hell of a lot of really dumb people. These are the same dumb people who flung pooh out of windows onto the heads of other unsuspecting dumb people. This is not a group of people we needed around. Mostly, they were city-dwellers, and we don't need those around today. Think about New Yorkers. Got the image? Exactly my point. Unnecessary creatures; when given the opportunity, the cab driver from Brooklyn would be more than happy to throw pooh off of his balcony of his overpriced apartment onto the head of meter maid.

Now, I admit: I've been on 'world disaster' kick ever since watching old episodes of 'Jericho', and maybe (just maybe) I should actually be a victim of a world disaster for watching the show--the obvious plot-twists, the scientific oblivion, the transparent acting--technically, I should be drawn and quartered for even considering the merits of this show, but I digress. Three weeks ago, I was memorizing facts about nuclear fallout, thyroid cancer, hydrocephalus, and Chernobyl. Then, I read up on atomic bombs and Hiroshima/Nagasaki. After that stint, I pored over pictures of people suffering from smallpox (ew...and very cool...). Somewhere along the line, I watched five episodes of Ultimate Fighting on some man channel. I'm telling you, this stuff is fascinating.

We watch the world die slowly every day; why, thanks to this concept of flushing old medicine down the toilet, I've probably ingested toxic amounts of Viagra. But I'll look beyond myself: people in India live amongst heaps of computer parts. Commercial hog farms are poisoning small towns in Virginia, and tigers are escaping from zoos. Bozos are running corporations and criminals are running countries. China is finally realizing that girls are actually an important variable in reproduction rates, and the Baby Boomers are now feeling sorry for Gen Xers who will never receive social security checks. These same Baby Boomers are retiring and using their SSI checks for trips to Vegas. In short, we're dying of our very own commercial, guilty, hybrid plague.

I think I know what this fascination really is all about: I want to watch us implode from buboes or die with pockmarks. I don't think it's fair that after all the damage we do to the earth and to one another, we get to die in tidy hospital beds with tubes running all around. I don't really want to be cremated or buried in a pretty coffin--I think I belong in a great, big decaying heap of gross stuff, because honestly, that's what I've amounted to in life. My waste, my unguided consumption, has teetered this planet right up to extinction. Why shouldn't I embrace oblivion in the same manner as my silly, ridiculously stupid ancestors? Why shouldn't pooh be flung right down upon my goofy head, and why can't we smell the shit we've immersed ourselves in?

So, the next time you see a very graphic rendering of the bubonic plague (or MRSA or necrotizing fasciitis or a car accident victim), take a moment to appreciate the visceral nature of mortality. We are part and parcel of every problem and every solution--ever. We are the victims of tiny bacteriae, and the creators of horrendous wars. Don't shy away from the blood and guts of it all. It is what makes us so dastardly stupid and disarmingly loveable.