11:17 am | 06 March 2003 | the merry blues

"So it's really early in the morning and the televison news program is reporting that there are notable threats that terrorists are going to attempt taking out a big domestic American target. And with no previous relevant context my mother blurts out: 'Why don't they just paint a bullseye on Rosie O'Donnell.' I decided instantly that her observation was going to be my quote of the day."
-the Buddhist Punk

Ah. It's a good day. I've got the kind of hangover that's like wearing a veil, just diluting everything a bit, subduing it. Don't come in here and badger me for your memo, dude. Your arm-flailing imprecations mean nothing to me, muffled as they are by the cotton wool crammed in my ears. The beatific smile spreading across my face? No, it has nothing to do with your ridiculous email forward. Even the pathetic, malingering squeals of the on-its-last-legs copy machine do nothing to disturb my weirdly optimistic yet tranquil suffering.

Ladies and gentlemen, as i trudged through a three-foot drift in front of the funeral home this morning, a random businessman said Hello, wished me a good morning, and said i looked like Geraldine Chaplin in my big funny Russian hat. This was a small thing, but it made me happy. We'll all be dead in a week, but until then, the snow is white, and fluffy, and funny, and Guinness has to hop through the deep, deep drifts like a spring-loaded flea, burying her head up to her ridiculous ears in order to sniff the ground, and even when i fall down, now, it doesn't hurt. The world has been padded specifically for my coordination-impaired person. This is a happy thought, too: a week without bruises interrupting the flat white planes of my pallid, cadaverous legs. I guess it's the edge of hopeful and dead that i love. I guess it's the Merry Blues.

My father has become depressed. I now feel like we are finally connecting on some level. Is this wrong of me? My dad was completely flabbergasted (to the point of a brief period of disownership) by my gothic stylings in tenth grade...and now? And now this man, the same man, looks mournfully at me from across the table at Applebee's, moustache drooping a little, talking about when his father died, not needing an answer, just needing to get it out. And so here's me, a little older now, calmed down a little, not wanting to die every day, and here's my father, older still, having once died and made it back, saying things like "Once you've died you will understand" and "We are all dying. I am dying right now." And now part of me wishes i could go back to jolly avuncular fishing-show-watching Daddy, the man that grounded me for drawing dozens of pictures of girls being hung, because it frightened him, and part of me knew this dad, this dark and mournful dad, was there all along, and wonders if it wasn't that he changed, but that something tiny flipped a switched in me to be able to see it. clm.

DUDES. Just as i finished typing this entry, my dad send me this link. Uh, Dad? You're like fourteen years too late, buddy.