Blogspot, Abandoned Pools song,

I bit my lip on the elevator down from work yesterday. I didn’t bite down awfully hard, but I did it with one of my sharper teeth and in the middle of the scar of a recent cold sore, so I drew blood. It turns out, a good amount too—I could feel a drop coalescing and beginning to roll out of my lip.

Thinking back on it, I wonder what the lawyers from the 21st floor, my elevator-mates for this ride were thinking. On one hand, I guess a single drop of blood sliding down the corner of some young thing’s mouth is a little romantic. Then again, I don’t think I've ever made a very convincing consumptive libertine.

As it were, I guess it was pretty gross, so I wiped it off with the back of my hand. People on the street would just assume it was a burgundy tattoo of an amorphous streak--all the rage among the downtown kids, I'd say. To stop the bleeding, I started to lick the wound, figuring that if it was good enough for White Fang, it’d be good enough for me. It kept bleeding for another minute or so (my powers of healing rivals those of Wolverine’s obviously), during which time I ate enough of my own blood to make me a little nauseous, like during a nosebleed.

An interesting side note: one of my co-workers went to medical school at Mt. Sinai for a year and tells me the nosebleed nausea stems from taking in too much iron at once. A tip for you anemics out there: When you feel faint, just drink your own blood.

As a whole, other people’s blood doesn’t bother me all that much anymore. I saw a heroin user this Saturday while volunteering at the ER who had a huge abscess on his arm. One of the physician’s assistants opened the abscess lengthwise with a scalpel. Pus and blood rocketed out and hit him on the face shield. To clear the area, the PA pushed on the surrounding tissue. The extruded liquid ran progressively less pea soup colored and more red. A couple years ago I might have been grossed out more by the experience, but my verdict: pretty fucking sweet.

In contrast, I had to have my own blood taken a few months ago as part of a checkup. The nurses tell you to ball your hands into a fist when they insert the needle and tell you to relax after the sample reaches a certain volume. To hear the nurse tell it, I was so fixated watching the vial fill up that she had to tap me on the shoulder to tell me to un-ball my fist. God help me if I ever need dialysis.

A weird contrast: seeing other peoples’ blood as a vessel for gas exchange, nutrition and hormone transport and seeing my own as red(dish) gold. Just another way in which I am selfish, I guess.

Blogspot, far from cell phones, emails and deadlines.

I've been recieving travel brochures from state tourism agencies at work for the last month. They're piling up in a box atop my PC tower. The only reason I haven't decoupaged the computer is that I'm afraid it might jam the DVD drive. The latest, a pamplet from the Gettysburg, PA bureau of tourism telling me to "Come for the history, stay for the fun!", has a glossy cover and keeps sliding off onto the floor. It's annoying.

I'd thought this was a harmless prank until today, when I seriously considered popping in a complimentary DVD about sailing aboard a Maine Windjammer. I'm reminded of that storyline in Amelie, where she sends her father's garden gnome on a postcard-documented tour of the world in an effort to get the elder Poulain out to see the world. Someone out there wants me to take a vacation, and a confluence of forces...

• At work today, a client made a request that lead me to daydream of booking a flight to San Francisco just to stab his face (maybe grab some Rice-a-Roni, but mostly for the sheer thrill of sudden violence)
  
• My recent dissolution of a 2.5 year LTR
  
• Endless grey days. This year's El Nino makes me feel like I live in a cement mixer.
  
• Syzygy

...make me inclined to agree.

Well, it's a good thing I have all these pictures of nuclear families fly fishing.

*I'm blogging at work. I am. so. sick. of this pancreatic cancer bullshit.

Blogspot, purple potato.

Last night I went to a dinner party in Williamsburg that was different from most dinner parties I've experienced, as the emphasis was clearly on the meatloaf and mashed potatoes, not the wine or whiskey. For me, attending a dinner party where the accent actually fell on the food felt like seeing a film populated entirely with character actors (perhaps with Julia Roberts playing the supporting role of the kindly librarian) after a lifetime of watching Ocean's 11 on a loop.

But beyond foreshadowing the diminished post-college role that alcohol is fated to play out in my life, that party supported a vision of my future absurdly similar to my memories of childhood (or, more accurately, my parents' early adulthood). Fucking terrifying.

Let me explain: At one point during the night, all the males at the party were sitting in the living room talking about the logical incongruity of India's continued existence as a democracy despite the perverse gap between the country's rich and poor. Meanwhile, all the ladies were in the kitchen making us dinner (later, washing the dishes).

I'd like to think they were also talking about makeup, shopping and child-rearing. Say hello to separation of spheres! Say hello to every Chinese barbeque I've ever been to. Fucking terrifying.

I had lots of fun though. I am secretly fond of talking about things I don't understand (i.e. India). They also had a really cool coffee table book with an electron micrograph of pollen on the cover. That was pretty sweet.

Blogspot, Warner sibling.

This is my 75th post, which isn't a big deal, considering that TV series only become ripe for syndication after the 100th episode (RIP: The OC). Nonetheless, it's only fitting that this post arrive after protracted hiatus (what, 4 days?). I like to think of it as time bided, in order to increase the moment of the moment (planning the queen's Golden Jubilee didn't happen overnight).

So I'd like to use this landmark event to talk briefly about my new George Foreman Grill. My co-worker Pia gave it to me for the 'holidays' (bitch is Hindu, they believe in nothing), citing her belief that, of all our firm's employees, I'd benefit most. I must say, the grill is magnificent. Had she been born with the soul of Sylvia Plath instead of that of a Tyrannosaur, Star Jones could easily cook her head in this baby.

And yet, such power came in such an innocuous package, since Pia decided to transport it to me in a giant, garish Talbot's bag. The night I took it home, I told my boss I was making dinner that night with Pia's present, pointing at the bag. Now she probably thinks I'm a wild beast who feeds on raw pork chops he 'cooked' by smothering in ugly sweaters.

Do you think that's what Tyra Banks does? Harriet Meiers?

Blogspot, foul social construct!

So I wake up with a hangover. Other stuff happens (my room is covered in roach poison, purple molasses is flowing down the staircase) and then, cliche of cliches, I wake up.

...with a hangover. I'd seen Waking Life with Joe a few years ago, a movie wherein our protagonist cycles through an unusual number of dreams before coming to realize that he had died. Death, in the mind of some wacky color block animator-director, involves moving through an endless corridor of dreams. So I wonder aloud, to myself, still in bed: "Did I just die? Am I damned to involvment in horrible elevator accidents, to repeatedly lose the teeth in my lower jaw, to go on nonsensical field trips to Disneyworld with my Intro to APA studies recitation ad infinitum?" Turns out, no--as I reasoned that the likelihood of having the same hangover dream twice in a row as my first two dreamings of death was unreasonably small. Combinatorics saved my soul.

So I moved on. And since my life is defined by movies*, I thought about that scene in the first Matrix wherein Keanu Reeves falls off a skyscraper in the simulacrum. Waking up, he discovers that his nose is bleeding and our wise sage Laurence Fishburne says something to the effect of "the mind makes your imagined injuries real." (How this would vindicate all my self-pity!) Is this hangover the result of a dream of a hangover?

Well, turns out I'd gone hardcore drinking with work friends last night, a motley assortment of Irishmen, crazy people and an alcoholic brown biomedical engineer. I remember talking to one of them about tittyfucking Giada de Laurentis (jaws ahoy!). So no, as far as I can tell, I'm not cycling through progressive layers of perception. I'm just very hungover.

*
Dear Baudrillard,

Hello!

xoxo,
Byron

Blogspot, feature 981.

Joe and I formally broke up last night (there was a treaty signing and a dignitary luncheon) and it was, above all, a civil parting. I think there is no better way to gauge your boyfriend's character than through observing how he handles the end of a relationship. We had a good run.

I'm glad Joe didn't react by trying to kill me and I didn't have to protect myself using martial arts moves that I pulled out of my ass. My life is not an Ashley Judd movie.