Keriosity

Ok I appreciate that marketing and media outfits have been trying to inspire us women & boost our self-esteem after all the years of crushing our spirits and our body-images…everywhere we turn now, there are positive go-getter love-myself hear-me-roar messages on products, in magazines, on commercials, advertisements…

The LAST place I expect to find such messages is on my tampon wrappers. Inside the wrapper of a piece of Dove chocolate? That’s fine. On my Special Lady Time products? No. I do not appreciate that. (Besides, it’s unnecessary, considering all the inspiring Dove wrappers I go through during Special Lady Time.)

First of all: It makes about as much sense as putting inspirational thoughts on band-aid wrappers. We ladies are too consumed with the uncomfortable task at hand to stop and read the tampon wrapper. We just want to do what we need to do and get out of there quickly, so we can go back to our cramps and misery.

Second of all: By default, Special Lady Time (SLT) means that we are not feeling our best and we can even be a TAD irritable. Tampax can go eff themselves with their “get up and dance!” and “get off the bench!” messages. I don’t wanna move, let alone DANCE during SLT. “Get off the bench” ?! “Get off the couch!” would be a much more appropriate message during SLT but it would be just as insensitive. At least they don’t say things like “Haven’t you had ENOUGH ice cream today?” Then I’d have to stage a full-out boycott.

And (c): The messages are all sports-themed. They don’t inspire me during SLT. I already feel like a fat bloated lazy slob during SLT but now I’m reminded that I DON’T DO ANY SPORTS so there’s the risk I will remain a fat bloated lazy slob long after SLT is over.

Thanks a lot, Tampax. You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself!

So, due to reasons explained in my last post, I have been living under a rock for the past several weeks.  Preoccupied, busy, overworked, underslept…and apparently losing my grip of the english language.  ”underslept”?!

If that even was an actual word, would it be an adjective?

Anyway, now that the swine flu “epidemic” has become newsworthy enough to become the topic of jokes (my favorite: www.doIhavepigflu.com), I am finally hearing about it.  And in the last 5 minutes, it’s been upgraded to “pandemic” status.

Pig Flu Pandemic!  A pig illness that has mutated and can now spread between humans!  Sounds very scary and very contractable!  Here are the latest statistics on the damage this “pandemic” has caused:

• 2500 sick people and 160 dead people in Mexico, a country with a population of 109 million people.  Of all of those cases, 49 sick people and 7 dead people have been confirmed to have pig flu.
• 100 people sick and 1 person dead of the pig flu in the United States, a country with a population of 304 million people.
• 10 countries have confirmed or suspected cases of pig flu, for a grand worldwide total of 195 confirmed cases.
• 53,000 children in Texas didn’t have to go to school this week because the 1 U.S. fatality occurred in their state and children make excellent vectors.
• $105 Billion requested by President Obama from the Federal Government for the development of vaccines.  (That would be $344 million spent PER PERSON in the United States! F*ck the vaccines - just give us the cash!)

Btw - the regular plain old-fashioned FLU flu, which I had two weeks ago, has caused the death of 13,000 people in the U.S. since January.  Imagine the cash we could bilk out of the feds for THAT flu if we only had the foresight to panic and give it a silly name.  The Keri Flu has been spread to at least 3 people I work with, btw.  I must be stopped!  Here I am in cahoots with my buddy Swiney, who is now known to the World Health Organization as “Pig Zero”:

Seriously though,  why are we panicking?  People have been dying of common illnesses for a while now - haven’t we gotten used to the concept yet?

In the olden days, we called these people “sickly people.”  They were frail and were treated gently and couldn’t go outside in the winter and they wore depressing gray clothing and always looked pale.  At least that’s how they looked in movies about the olden days.  They were “sickly”, which meant they got sick easily.  Sometimes they died of a simple cold and while everyone was sad, it was acknowledged that they were not exactly strong and healthy to begin with.  And now, sickly people are called “immuno-deficient” and they’ve become the barometer of the world’s health.

We don’t like when people die of “simple” illnesses because that means the REST of us could die from it too.   The truth is that the rest of us are NOT going to die from the flu.  The sickly people die from the flu.  It’s sad, but it happens.  It’s nature.  That might sound cold, but if we were gerbils, we’d eat the sickly ones.  Instead, we humans spend billions of dollars on vaccines to give to healthy humans because a couple of sickly people got sick and a few of them died.   Can’t we spend billions on making sickly people healthy instead of making healthy people less afraid of things they shouldn’t really be afraid of anyway?

Ok I’m going back under my rock now…I hear there’s a Norwegian Black-footed Sheep Flu that’s about to mutate so that it can be spread to sheep with other colors of feet…a sure sign that it’s going “human-strain” in no time…

…that’s a loong time with no posts, I know. Unacceptable really. What’s my excuse?

A major life change - some people will find it shocking, others will win some longtime bets, and many will say they always knew I’d eventually feel my clock ticking.   I had always insisted it would never ever happen, but, I’m 35 and I’m not getting any younger.  I changed my mind and I don’t believe I will regret it.  Of course, I say this now with a little time left until the blessed event actually occurs.  I hear the pain is almost unbearable but once it’s over, you forget all of the pain and focus on this new beautiful life you’ve created.

And today I see this video that opens up a whole new world of why the decision is the right one for someone like me…

….oh my god I am SO only kidding.  That would be insane!

I’m not having a baby. I’m just getting divorced.

Yikes…I know this post is very glib about something that’s very sad. Remember my keriosity manta - “annoying stuff happens. always find the humor.” up there at the top of the right sidebar? In the “About Keriosity” section?  Under the little bird and above “subscribe”?   Well right now the mantra is more like “devastating stuff happens, try to keep your sense of humor.”  And I’m really trying.  I haven’t been able to find the humor in quite some time, which is the real excuse for why I haven’t posted anything.   Now, more than ever, I need to keep my sense of humor, because, in reality, I am far from laughing.

Although if I had a mop baby, maybe I’d chuckle a little.

If you’ve read enough of my essays, you know that I am a ridiculously clumsy person both in action and in speech. But in case you’re new, you can catch up by reading my posts about this email blunder, this hour of dumbassery, the time I got molested by a giant ice-cream cone (which sounds much more graphic than it was), my always-fun “paranoia mode”, and how I guaranteed my place in hell, sent my air-conditioner on a 5-story free-fall, and sustained a head injury that required physical therapy for my eyeballs. And those are only the ones I’ve written about.

But for now, I will tell you this short story of stupidity:

Last Friday, Emil and I were taking a post-dinner stroll down a little shopping street in our town.

We came upon an outdoor art show featuring the work of Sophia Gasparian, an artist neither of us had heard of. Her art was sort of cartoonish, some featuring children and animals, sort of a dark tone overall. We were reminded of another artist we like - Yoshitomo Nara. Here are two of Nara’s pieces:

Weird, sarcastic, dark humor appeals to us. So, when we saw the below piece at Sophia’s show, we felt it was of the same vein:

It also appealed to our OCD. (Instead of the normal ghost activities like shuffling around, banging on walls, and moaning, my ghost is going to vacuum and rearrange the dishes in people’s dishwashers. This painting spoke to me.)

And we had wine earlier. And I love Edward Gorey. And I’m an idiot. So…

We met the curators and asked how we could purchase it. Emil said “It’s such a great piece!” and I said “Yeah, it’s totally our sense of humor.” They seemed confused, but they gave us the artist’s card.

When we got home, I went to her website and learned that Sophia Gasparian’s work is inspired by her childhood experiences growing up in Armenia. This particular piece is part of a collection of works depicting the Armenian Genocide of 1915. It’s a painting of an orphan who obviously knows her death is near and that she has no family left to care for her grave.

I wanted to vomit.

I am beyond embarrassed. I sent an apology email to the curators, attaching the Yashitomo Nara work to explain my spectacular ignorance.

I’d like to say this is the first time I have made an accidental yet terribly offensive remark involving someone’s cultural history. But no, I’ve done it once before.

Emil and I were at Disney World, in the Little Mermaid/Under the Sea exhibit, and there was a very clever demonstration of bioluminescence in sea creatures. We walked through a little cave and a light flashed, leaving our shadows on a glow-in-the-dark wall.   I blurted out…”Oh like Hiroshima”* and Emil shot me an angry look - we were at the Disney World in Tokyo.

I’m just going to stop talking in public.

*I’d like to clarify that I was not trying to make light of the tragedy at Hiroshima, I was in science mode, and while the Hiroshima shadows have nothing to do with bioluminescence, they are both effects of radiation absorption.