Before you go nuts, let me clarify that I’m referring to the old-and-sick. If you’re elderly with “underlying health conditions”, maybe your time is up. Maybe we weren’t meant to live lives extended by pharmaceuticals and pacemakers and stents. The planet can only bear so many people, remember?

I thinks it’s amazing to see normal healthy people hoarding toilet paper and going around wearing masks. If they would read the statistics, they would see how little their actual risk is. Being sick is awful, of course, but a virus that threatens the health of the elderly is not going to fuck you up if you’re outside this group. If you have a compromised immune system, you probably already practice safety measures in your everyday life.

Humans are so tenacious of life, it strikes me as poignant all the time. I have a friend in his 60s who goes around freaking out about an oil refinery a few miles away from his community. He’s afraid it will explode or be targeted by terrorists. I mean, those are real possibilities but what makes him worry about it so continuously? I’ve exclaimed to him more than once, “You really love life, don’t you!”

To constantly be aware of what catastrophes might befall you is to be absent from your immediate experience. How can you drive anywhere when the car coming toward you could smash into you at any moment? When you go to a movie, a fire might break out, or a guy in a batman outfit could burst in with an assault rifle. When you eat a chicken wing or a hotdog, you’re just minutes away from choking to death.

Real threats should be avoided, unless you’re a daredevil. I just read a sobering article in the New Yorker about mountain climbers and the grief their families must learn to process. They know it’s part of the territory but the climbers themselves are driven to test their mortality again and again. I’m not sure if they’re nuts or just wired differently. I wonder if they give a shit about the coronavirus.

There are so many ways I don’t want to die! I don’t want to be eaten by a polar bear. That’s at the top of my list. I don’t want to have my head chopped off or be set on fire. Oh wait, I don’t want to be trampled to death on a pilgrimage to Mecca or after a soccer game. I don’t want to die under a pile of metal shelves in CVS during an earthquake.

The right time to die is when I’m old and sick, in my own bed. That’s the best place for everyone to go, even though in the US, that privilege is only granted to around 17% of us. If the coronavirus wiped out ten per cent of the sick elderly people who become infected, that would leave more room for everyone else. Maybe millennials and Gen Z would be more open to the idea of procreating.

I discussed this with a Gen Xer last night and he was impresses by my “zen attitude.” I like that he didn’t accuse me of speaking from depression. I am depressed but obviously I’m not looking to die on purpose since there are plenty of opportunities for that.

I just see the value of thinning the herd.

What about you scaredy-cats? How much Purel have you got on hand? Or toilet paper?

Photo (c) courtesy of  Dr. LaRue

On Saturday night, I went to take off my eye make-up and got a couple of those flat cotton pads you use to remove your nail polish.

GUESS WHAT COMES NEXT!

Correct! I absentmindedly reached for the nail polish remover instead of the make-up remover, dampened the pad with it, and rubbed it on my eyelid. I smelled my mistake immediately.

What followed after a bloodcurdling scream was a dramatic episode of eye washing, attended by my poor husband who stood ready to drive to the ER while I whined, “It won’t matter if I’m already blind.” I didn’t want to open my eye to find out, until rinsing my eyelid a few hundred times. Then I poured distilled water in my eye for around 15 minutes. In the end, I was deeply shaken but still fully sighted.

Now I know that I can’t be trusted to do anything involving household products, matches, medications, what else? I’ve known for a while that my hands don’t always know what they’re doing, and I might throw away something valuable if the other hand is holding a used paper towel. It’s gone beyond the state of “not present.” My brain is somewhere else entirely, and often the somewhere else is literally oblivion.

Naturally I feel scared of what’s to come. I went to take that little online test to screen for senility and scored one point less than a couple of years ago. I googled dementia and Alzheimer’s and learned that you need a whole work-up to get a diagnosis. The drugs you’re taking, your levels of vitamin B-something, depression, all these things could be affecting your cognition.

The meds I take can all affect memory, and my sleep deprivation is no joke either. Deep down though, I’m pretty sure I’m losing my mind.

When I can’t use words, it’s going to be unbearable, unless I forget that I love words. I guess that could work out. But surely I’ll know if I can’t think of common nouns or the names of my loved ones. The other day, I couldn’t remember Anderson Cooper’s name. It took forever to retrieve it. Right now I can remember Steve Mnuchin and Mike Pompeo, but I just forgot the name of Rev Al Sharpton. Do I need these names, one might ask, and the answer is yes! I need to remember everything I know!

If only we could selectively control our memory files, deleting Taylor Swift stuff to make room for new passwords. I want to hang on to all adjectives! Laying in bed this morning (unless it’s lying in bed, I CAN’T REMEMBER) I couldn’t think of the word “transcend”. It’s not as dire as putting nail polish remover on your eye but still, it’s upsetting.

Many years ago, I predicted the advent of nursing homes for baby-boomers, where music of the 60s would be piped in all day long. There would be a chain of these facilities called “Summer of Love”, where residents would know all the lyrics of every Dylan and Beatles song, even if they couldn’t recall their own names. Just as every cynical joke about the future has now become a grim reality, there are already nursing homes and elderly day-care centers that try to create a bygone era for the comfort of the residents. They use facades of 50s diners or 40’s gas stations, and set up fake little bus benches for people to congregate around. To me, this is gas-lighting, but to the companies behind this business model, it’s a useful way to control behavior.

Now that it’s just around the corner for me, please don’t put me somewhere where they play Eric Clapton or the Eagles! In fact, once my hair stops looking good, I’d like someone to kill me, swiftly and humanely, with a heavy frying pan.

Do any of you have a bottom line for “quality of life” or do you look forward to hiking well into your 90s, bragging about your Boniva and reverse mortgages?

I was surprised to read a post on Instagram by an African American photographer who said he wasn’t up to watching When They See Us, the new series about the Central Park Five. Even more surprising were the 250+ comments voicing the same feeling. In my simplistic thinking, the series would be a must-see event for black audiences.

Personally, I watched the first episode and could barely get through it. It was crushing. I felt guilty about giving up after one episode. I figured I owed African Americans at least that much, the witnessing of this horrible injustice. But I gave myself a pass, on the grounds that I can only take so much trauma before I break.

Now I see that, duh, it’s a million times more traumatic for African Americans to re-experience this event, even though it’s an important story. The Instagram commenters expressed a literal dread of more trauma. It was simply too painful and not worth it. Their hearts were already broken, many wrote. Parents said that it was too awful to imagine their own children suffering like the wrongly accused teenagers. Many had tried to watch but had found it too harrowing.

So here’s what’s been on my mind. TV is not just entertainment. It’s a powerful agent of communication that can have long-lasting consequences. Like the nightly news or movies on the big screen, TV shows transmit messages into your brain. When you Netflix and Chill for hours and hours, you’re inviting stuff into your brain. And the more well-acted and well-produced the input, the more intense are the effects.

But you never know what will fuck you up! I can watch hours of Charles Manson or Ted Bundy crap without getting upset. I can even watch Jim Jones footage without freaking out. Making I’m just used to those stories or maybe the body count is too high to make an impact. But I’ve seen a couple of true crime documentaries that will haunt me forever, or at least until I achieve full dementia.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been watching an Australian TV series about a chaotic but close-knit family called Offspring. I love it so much! It’s a wonderfully written mix of drama and comedy, with great characters and endless plot twists. But I was shocked when a central character was abruptly killed in a fluke accident. Now, I’m a big baby, everyone knows, but even my husband was speechless. I kept saying, “This can’t happen, maybe he’ll come back.”

I waited for him to open his eyes and be alive again but he was gone. It was “just TV” but in my brain and heart, I experienced a deep shock. It triggered my PTSD and my grief in a way I wasn’t ready for. The next day, still thinking about it, I went back to bed in the middle of the day. I wanted that guy back. Why had they taken him away? I needed him back. It was about that guy and about Max. I couldn’t feel the difference. I still can’t. The character was a gentle young man with a darkness around him like a halo, a sweet face and a wounded boyishness. Max. Not Max but Max.

I skipped the funeral episode. Why would I put myself through it?

That’s how you may regard When They See Us, or Holocaust movies, or even Trump interviews. If you’re dreading it, don’t put yourself through it. You are excused. You are not here to suffer for anyone’s sins except your own.

Beware of your TV. It may know what you want, but only you know what you need.

Let’s pretend you live in another solar system and you don’t follow celebrity gossip. I’ll try to get you up to date. Asia Argento is an Italian actress with a penchant for the dark side. She’s covered in tattoos and she likes to be shocking. Anthony Bourdain fell in love with her in the last year of his life. She has been a leading voice in the #MeToo movement, having publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of raping her in a hotel room.

Okay, so recently, it was reported that Argento paid hush money to Jimmy Bennett, a 22 year old actor who claims she sexually assaulted him when he was 17 years old, a crime in California, where the incident allegedly took place.

Argento made a statement denying Bennett’s story, insisting that he had been trying to extort money from her for some time. She denied having any physical relationship with the actor, who played her young son in a film she directed years ago.

But people got mad, because that’s what they do. They called Argento a hypocrite and  whore, and took out their anger on Rose McGowan, another outspoken #MeToo leader (and Weinstein victim) who had formed a close friendship with Argento.

Poor Rose McGowan didn’t know what to believe, but asked her followers to “be gentle.” This inflamed people even more. Why should they be gentle to Asia Argento, who had not favored gentleness toward Harvey Weinstein?

So then, TMZ published some private texts between Asia and an unnamed person, who presumably had leaked it. In their conversation, Argento admits to having sex with the actor, who “was horny” and “jumped her bones” in a hotel room. (note: stay out of hotel rooms.)

So now, we have Asia admitting she did it! But she’s pissed off because she herself had an older lover when she was 17; big deal. Plus, Anthony was the one who wanted to shut the actor up, fearing it would harm her reputation.

But then, someone leaks Asia’s text conversation with Bourdain, in which he offers to pay the actor $380,000, if that’s what she wants. He can see that Bennett is a screwed-up person and feels sorry for him. Of course, Anthony Bordain can’t weigh in, because he killed himself a few months ago.

In the days prior to Bourdain’s suicide, Argento was photographed in Rome, holding hands and making out with a young journalist. THIS DOES NOT MAKE HER GUILTY FOR HIS DEATH. And yet.

Now, pay attention! Rose McGowan has made a long statement, conceding that Argento molested the young actor, and should be held responsible for her actions.

How does she know Argento is guilty? Because the person who leaked the stuff to TMZ is none other than Rose’s partner, Rain Dove!

Now, Rain Dove is a model whose pronoun is they. McGowan refers to them as a “being” in her statement about how she came to learn the truth about Asia, who may not be a being but is certainly a cunt, I feel it is safe to say at this point.

Here is how Rose says she wised up:

But then everything changed. In an instant. I received a phone call and series of messages from the being I’ve been dating- Rain Dove. They said that they had been texting with Asia and that Asia had revealed that she had indeed slept with Jimmy Bennet. Rain also shared that Asia had stated that she’d been receiving unsolicited nudes of Jimmy since he had been 12. Asia mentioned in these texts that she didn’t take any action on those images. No reporting to authorities, to the parents, or blocking of Jimmy’s social media. Not even a simple message “Don’t send me these images. They are inappropriate.” There were a few other details revealed as well that I am not at liberty to mention in this statement as investigators do their job.

She had me at “being,” obviously. I mean, what more could you want here, except for Anthony Bourdain to have never crossed paths with Asia Argento??

If you were the god in charge of shit like this, what would you want to happen next? Please show your work, unless it’s a mystery to be revealed in the fullness of time.

This year I’m not going to write about Mother’s Day, but the next best thing, death.

I’ve just came across the work of photo-journalist Alain Schroeder in a series called Living for Death, and the story blew my mind. I want to share it and hear your thoughts.

In Toraja,Indonesia, the rituals associated with death are complex, require extensive planning and are expensive. Therefore, when a person dies, it can take weeks, months even years for the family to organize the funeral. During this time, the deceased is considered to be “sick” and kept at home. Relatives continue to interact with them offering gifts of cigarettes and betel leaves, drinking coffee, having meals by their side and conversing with them. While, it remains a sad time, the transition from life to death is a slow and peaceful process strengthening family bonds. Depending on the family, the body may be kept uncovered, bundled in layers of cloth or in a coffin.

The funeral ceremony, Rambu Solo, lasts 3 to 7 or more days according to the social status of the family and includes, traditional dances and processions for receiving guests, buffalo and coq fighting, animal sacrifice and large feasts. In the region of Pangala, the Ma’ Nene, or cleaning of the corpses, ceremony takes place in August after the rice harvest. Coffins are removed from their burial sites and opened. The mummies are cleaned, dried in the sun and given a change of clothes. Expressions of sadness are mixed with the overall happy atmosphere surrounding these moments of bonding with loved ones and honoring ancestors.

I find this culture’s attitude toward death immensely moving, and wonderful. The first person I discussed this with one person who was mildly disgusted, and observed that it seemed very primitive. Another person was delighted.

Maybe primitive isn’t so bad. The First World has divorced itself from most primitive customs, starting with childbirth.

I remember in every detail the birth of my first child, and reaching out for him. It was totally without thought, just a primitive reflex. But instead of handing him over, the nurses took him and wheeled me alone to the recovery area. I still feel cheated out of those first moments of motherhood! Now, many of us believe that children should be born at home, and that’s a great step backwards, toward the primitive.

I wonder if our culture is capable of a step backwards in its attitude toward death. We are so squeamish about it that The Neptune Society is making a fortune off of our rush to be rid of our dead. Just hurry up and throw their ashes into the sea so we can begin our Journey of Grief, or of Fighting Over The Will.

Everyone seems to like celebrating Dia de los Muertos, with it’s Goth costumes and other hipster friendly activities. But the Toraja take it to another level. Maybe somewhere between their culture and ours there’s a way to accept and embrace death as part of a natural cycle if not a voyage to the other side.

In Mexico, it’s not uncommon to surround your dead loved one with ice until all family members have had a chance to visit and say goodby. In the deaths I’ve experienced, there’s a haste to get the body out of the house. Because death has suddenly made the loved one a piece of refuse? People probably had more respect during the Plague than they do now in the US.

Looking at Schroeder’s photos, I noticed in one that far from looking primitive, a mourner is carrying a fucking nice handbag, probably a designer knockoff.

So perhaps it’s possible to straddle both worlds, the modern and primitive, in a way that connects us to our humanity and spirituality while still allowing for nice handbags! This is my dream.

What about you?

How many Netflix series can you watch concurrently without losing your mind? Right now, I’m watching a bunch of them, and it’s impossible to keep the story-lines straight.

It doesn’t help when an actor from one series pops up in another. It’s like the shows are leaking into each other, and not in a good way.

I’m trying to follow Imposters, Seven Seconds, and Shut Eye, as well as Homeland and The Chi, on Showtime. I’m not intentionally looking for violence, but I spend a certain amount of time every night whining, “I’M COVERING MY EYES! TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER!” People are always getting stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, or poisoned. If they overdose on drugs, the camera lingers on their vomit. I’ve seen several fingers chopped off.

Sometimes, I wish the writers would pay more attention to details. Or at least they could make more of an effort at rudimentary logic. I have trouble keeping quiet about these lapses, and it’s taking a toll on my husband, who exclaims, “It doesn’t matter, it’s TV!”

I also find that I have to google the actresses to see how old they are. I need to know if they’re incredibly well-preserved or aging horribly. This also annoys my husband, who thinks I should be able to put this off until the end of the episode.

I have come to l realize that a trope you can’t avoid is the death of a son. Never daughters. The writers must know it’s the worst thing that can happen, so they dish it out with total, almost malicious abandon, focusing on the lifeless bodies and the facial expression of the horrified parents. If you can’t take triggers, don’t watch TV, is my advice. Toughen up.

Lately, there are too many troubled professional women, paired up with an insufferable man who will eventually become a love interest. There are too many alcoholics, too. Just like in real life.

The actress Mel Harris, who was once famous, is in everything, and I’m happy to report that she’s younger than me but looks much older. Inbar Lavi is in everything, too.

In between the death and violence, I’m watching a show called Crashing about a dorky stand-up comic who isn’t funny, starring a dorky stand-up comic who isn’t funny.  In the show, we watch him watching other comics, who aren’t funny either. I almost want someone to stab or bludgeon him. But no finger chopping.

I’m still not watching Game of Thrones or The Crown, and no one can make me.

What shows are you watching, and how do you keep them straight??

I was lying on the couch, talking on the phone to my adopted son Chris. We talked about getting our knuckles tattooed together. He told me that he recently went to the ER when a little red bump on his leg turned into a great big red blotch. They told him it was a spider bite and gave him some stuff to put on it.

An hour later, I noticed a bright red blister on my wrist. Much brighter than this picture. It’s hard to use your phone to photograph your hand. It was an angry purple-red. I looked through a magnifying glass. Does it look like a tiny penis burrowed in there? I was concerned.

I Googled spider bites, since I’d just been talking about them. And the photos looked just like my wrist! How could this happen? It’s too much of a coincidence.

Was it a Hobo or a Brown Recluse? Would it cause necrosis of the flesh, or vomiting and paralysis? I washed it wish soap and put neosporin on it. It got bigger and looked inflamed. More Googling and more dread.

It was nearly midnight and I was home alone. I called Chris and I called my nephew, who said he would come over. I called a free 24 hour nurse hotline and she told me to keep it clean. She read a statement absolving her of all responsibility.

Meanwhile, my stitches hurt. Ten stitches under the arm for a biopsy that no one is worried about, a whole other story.

Stitches, spider bite, I’d given up dairy products for two weeks to see if that was good, insomnia, Trump, senility, and so on.

My nephew arrived on his bicycle and we Googled spider bites together. I told him about the 5 Kinds of Becky and he told me I wasn’t a Becky so stop taking it personally. We discussed the parameters of the words “problematic” and “angst.” I love him so much. Times 100 or even a thousand.

I told him that if I died in my sleep from the spider bite, it would be okay because it wouldn’t be my fault. No one could get mad at me for dying. He was alarmed and told me that it wouldn’t be okay with him.

I woke up alive. Chris had texted me, “mommy, are you alive?” and I was touched that someone cared. I went to the Nurse Clinic at CVS, where a lovely nurse named Anulika confirmed that it was a spider bite. She told me how to care for it and prescribed something. We talked about how much we love Swiffer, and about eyebrows. We felt strongly about both topics and for a moment our souls were as one.

So in the end, I am ready for death but I’m a people person. Plus, I get to be Best Man at Chris’s wedding, a dream come true if I make it to October 31.

I’ve been getting them for a couple of years, and it occurred to me that it might be nice to share them with those of you who don’t have death breathing down your neck, in the form of cremation offers.

The Neptune Society has the market cornered in name recognition. There are many companies that provide the same services for less than half the price, but in California, most people think Neptune Society. In fact, that’s what my mom arranged for herself.

(Remember when she left me one dollar in her will? She thought of everything!)

Inside the envelope is a syrupy letter explaining why you should ease the burden on your loved ones by planning your cremation in advance. There are a lot of euphemisms, naturally, but here’s the essence of the pitch:

Cremation planning grants your family time to grieve your loss and celebrate your life rather than face confusing choices and high costs.

Fuck my family, know what I mean? Let them face the confusing choices, I’m certainly not going to do it for them.

Here’s what I love about the Neptune Society letters – this hilarious insert.

It’s their clever way of getting your phone number so their salespeople can torment you. Because who could resist a PRE-PAID CREMATION! They make it sound like a trip to Hawaii. And why does that guy with the baby look so happy? Did he just win a cremation or did he find out his parents “planned ahead”?

People in my neighborhood by the harbor are inclined to borrow a boat and throw their loved ones’ ashes into the sea. It’s a DIY kind of thing that really appeals to me. I once wanted to be scattered at Nordstrom, but now I’m conflicted.  And truthfully, I’ve been spending more time at Marshall’s.

As an unwavering Doubter, I wouldn’t trust the Neptune Society or any company to scatter my ashes at sea. How would you know they didn’t just throw you in the trash in a Walmark plastic bag full of coffee grounds?

If you want to see a comprehensive breakdown of fees for cremation and burial services, go here. Note that it’s $25 extra to remove a pace-maker.

Maybe there’s a way to get these fuckers to take me off their mailing list, but it’s a nice reminder of my mortality. Plus, it inspires me to face a new day, just to spite the Neptune Society.

Years ago, I posed in these big black boots, aware that they looked stupid with the dress but probably thinking I was cool anyway.

It was eight years ago and a whole other life.

The boots are in my closet, languishing with all the other shit I’ve wasted money on, always forgetting that I don’t like to get dressed up and I have nowhere to go. Each time I get out my credit card, I’m under a spell where I believe I’m someone else.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve worn the boots on two occasions. They cost around 950 bucks (I know!) so that’s $475 per use.

But wait.

Today, I clicked on the Maison Margiela Autumn 2016 collection and discovered that there’s hope for styling my boots after all.

I can wear them with a big upside-down orange coat-blanket thing, cinched at the waist with an uncomfortable belt! I even have the pasty white legs for this look.

Or, there’s this:

Okay, so a silver hooded cape (unless that’s a hat?) over a silver mini-dress  with a nice kangaroo pouch.

It’s good to switch things up, I’m always hearing. Why wear jeans and a t-shirt every day? I’m not getting any younger. Even if I’m just going out for coffee or groceries, there’s no reason not to throw on an upside-down coat and rock my huge boots.

Another idea is to forget about the boots and patiently wait to die so that some girl with size ten feet and an appreciation of offbeat overpriced crap can be the happiest person ever.

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Alex James is some cunt who has a menswear line called ‘Pleasures‘ whose first collection features t-shirts and jackets printed with Kurt Cobain‘s suicide note.

Listen you cunt Alex James: Kurt Cobain has a daughter who is a human person, as was Kurt himself. Can’t you find another way to get attention?

I don’t mind that the lookbook for this cheap crap is filmed in a graveyard. Memento mori, I get it.

Show off your dark sensibility, revel in your hipster miserableism, just leave real human suffering out of your attempts at commerce.

What a little fucker.

As a bonus, he is ‘creative brand manager’ for another street-wear company called ‘Publish’ whose manifesto is a classic piece of gibberish that includes the line “Casual with an heir of sophistication.”

LEARN TO SPELL, MOTHERFUCKER!

To sum up, Alex James is a fucking cunt and he’s ruined my evening.