Orange On The Head

Like me, you were probably confused by the title of this post when you first saw it. It’s like one of those movies where, for the first few scenes, you have no idea what is going on, and it all gets tied together in the end.

I was tied together in the end once. It was unpleasant, but I’m happy to have experienced it. Something to tell the grandkids about, know what I mean? It’s nothing a few dozen White Castle hamburgers and a case of Stroh’s can’t cure. But, if you are tied in the end too much you may die of copraemia, which is a condition where you are poisoned by your own excrement due to constipation. Although, to be fair to excrement, I guess it’s not considered excrement until it is expelled from your body. So, we’ll call it crement. We all know how nasty it is when a sewer backs up and floods the basement. Well, it’s not so pretty when it happens inside your body. A couple of mops and a bucket of pine cleaner won’t do you much good.

What’s worse is you’ll carry this stigma with you forever. You’ll be the laughing stock of the afterlife. Imagine gathering around the afterlife drinking hole, reminiscing with other dead things:

“Jim here died while saving forty helpless infants in a hospital fire. Marge over there was killed when she jumped on a grenade aimed at the pope. Harriet succumbed to a brain hemorrhage she developed after a woman in a fur coat beat her over the head with a fire extinguisher when she threw goat’s blood on the woman’s coat. So, what’s your story, pal?”

“Er, I, um, I ate a bit too much cheese one night.”

“A bit too much cheese?! Hell, a little cheese never hurt no one!”

“It does if you eat enough to tie your colon into a permanent knot.”

Then the laughter and the finger pointing begin. You look for a way to save face, but realize it is futile when you hear a voice in the ethereal crowd say, “We are going to ostracize you for eternity, Draino!” And they’ll do it, too. And why wouldn’t they?

Speaking of why, most of us have heard the urban legend where the philosophy professor whose final exam had a single question: Why? As legend has it, one clever student handed in the completed test with a simple, “Why not?” and xe received an A+. I have a few issues with that story.

First, who gives a crap about a philosophy class? People only take those classes to satisfy blow-off elective requirements. It’s not like philosophy is a real subject like kinesiology. Urban legends are too important to our society to be wasted on trivial subject matter. Second, that professor was either drunk and forgot to prepare a proper final or xe was being too profound for any of our own goods. It seems to me that a teacher should know the answer to the questions xe sticks on a test. I doubt that xe had a standard correct answer in mind when xe created the test. I demand more effort and competence from our purveyors of higher education. Third, “why not” is a stupid answer and incorrect. That student should have gotten an F and a demerit for contempt of education (which goes on xe’s permanent record, by the way). Ask any kid under the age of twelve and xe’ll tell you the answer is “because”, which is closer to the true answer, which is “Who gives a shit?”

If I was the teacher, and for some departmental reason I was forced to give that one word, one question test, the only person I would give an A to is the one who answered, “Who gives a shit? You suck for asking such a meaningless question and I want my damn tuition back if all you can teach me is to answer one damn question, you drunk, lazy, tenured whore of a professor.” Good answer. I like the way you think. Everybody else would get an F and a note saying, “Take a real class next time. You just wasted your time and get no damn credit for this course. The answer is ‘Who gives a shit?’ which is what you should have said to yourself when your saw this class in the schedule of courses.” My one regret in life is that I never became a philosophy professor.

By now the meaning of the title of this post should be clear to you. It has certainly cleared up for me. In fact, the whole world makes more sense to me now. I’m glad. And a little bound.

I Am Dead

I am dead. I died. Who knew it would happen this early? There was a report on the news recently about the West Nile Virus. Last year in the Chicago Metropolitan Area there were one hundred and fifty cases of West Nile Virus reported, of which only ten people died. I thought my chances of not being killed by it were pretty good. I went to bed feeling safe. The next day, I was trampled to death by an ostrich who was delivering day old newspapers.

So, I am writing to you from the afterlife, which is a misnomer. It is not really an afterlife. It is more of a continued existence, as if I had gone somewhere on a bus, never came back and never bothered to write. Except, that I am writing. I’m not sure how I have the ability to do this, but I do. I’m new here, so I’m not sure what is going on, yet. “Here” is another misnomer. Words like “here, there, that, vicinity, parallax, ramrod, etc.” don’t have any meaning here (for lack of a better word – remember, I’m new).

I would like to tell you everything about this “place”, but I don’t want to ruin it for you. It’s better that you don’t know. Trust me. But, I will tell you this – the longer you wait to get here, the better. I kind of screwed myself for letting that ostrich get the better of me. I’ll be alright – I have some catching up to do. That’s all I can say about that, Forrest Gump.

Nobody has told me the meaning of life or anything like that, but I do have a better perspective of life on Earth. Things that happen there make sense. A lot of those things suck, like war and disasters and boy band music, but they fit the vibe of planetary life. So do the good things. Planetary life. It seems like such an odd concept now. I don’t know how you people do it. I wouldn’t want to do it again, but I’m glad I went through it (not that I had a choice) – kind of like owning a pig and then selling it after a year to get new brakes for the truck. It is true that things do happen for a reason on Earth (and on other planets), and it’s all for the same reason, which has nothing to do with any of our lives. So quit thinking you are so gosh durned important.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to write a sermon. Speaking of which, none of the religions or philosophies or speculators or comet suiciders have it correct. Sure, being good to each other is a nice idea and will make your lives better if everybody did it, but it’s not necessary. As for worshiping, your time would be better spent licking paint to make it wet and then watching it dry. In fact, beings here watch worshipers as they would watch sit-coms on Earth. They are actually quite farcical.

Science hasn’t figured it out, yet, either. They (the smart people) may be able to figure it out once they start moving around the Universe. Listen to me, Mr. High and Mighty, like I know what the hell I’m talking about. I don’t, really. Remember, I’m new here. And, I get the feeling nobody likes me. It’s so hard to make friends when I don’t know how to communicate or move or eat or sleep or if I’m even supposed to be able to do any of those things. I’m not sure how sleeping or eating would help me make friends. They didn’t give me a manual when I emerged – not that I would read it, or whatever you would do to it to internalize its information. I hope they have bars here.

They’re telling me it’s time for srkimarl fosz cobobobunmnus cobobus il, so I gotta go. I don’t even know who “they” are or even how I know they are telling me this. It’s very confusing here, yet soothing. I don’t see any ostriches so I feel safe.