A Happy Go Lucky Scamp

I will not lie to you. I am fairly drunk and a little emotional so you are going to get this post.

Tonight I won the Stumptown Comic Arts award for best writing for The Legend of Bold Riley. I got to accept an award for something I’ve dumped all of my time into for the better part of a decade in front of my loved ones and some of my most treasured peers tonight. There was a couple minutes between my fevered emotion tears to thank some people but there were not enough minutes to say out loud how many there are. Let me do that now.

My parents Gwen and Chris Weathington, endlessly emotionally and finacially supportive of me.

The artists of Bold Riley 1, who worked so fucking hard on this book, Vanessa Gillings, Jason Thompson, Konstantin Pogorelov, Kelly McClellan. You are the best of the best and working with you was a dream.

Zan Christiansen my publisher at Northwest Press.

My old crew, Couscous Collective, Liz Conley, Sheanon Garrity, Andrew Farago, Pancha Diaz, Chloe Dalquist. These guys were with me from the start of Bold Riley and were endlessly helpful.

And now my new Portland family, David Gerber my handsome boyfriend, Jonah Rose, Mikey Nielson, Bobby Roberts, Erika Moen, Ben Coleman, Allen Bethel, Michael Ring, Kielen King, EVERYONE at Periscope Studios, Liz Allie, Jesse David Morgan…Jesus, I know I’m going to miss someone and feel awful later.

Comics are all I wanted to do with my life and I may be over reacting to this and I could go on about how hard I worked or that I’m hot shit, but here is the thing…

Without you- I’m nothing.

Thank you for reading.

In yet another daring move I have written some filthy smut and released it unto the masses. I was not alone though. Oh no…my creative juices flowed forth upon ERIKA MOEN and she shared my boner dreams ant then we made a comic.

You can see our slavering depravity in the pages of SMUT PEDDLER along with a couple dozen other artistic hoes!

And for you locals, Erika and I will be reading out short story Easy out loud to a room full of perverts tomorrow the 18th! Come by and see us at the Jack London Bar at 8 PM , but please no touching us with your sticky, frotting hands.

I don’t want to blow any ones mind here, but I used to model.

No, no, no. Don’t curl your lip like that. I was a figure model. I worked at my art university for the illustration, painting and animation departments. I don’t know how much you know about art but in art it’s very important to learn to draw a vast range of forms so that you can properly art them. That includes people who look a bit like walking tubers wearing lipstick. 

Which is where I come in.

It was a pretty good job. Paid well, allowed me to set my own hours. It did generate some confusion in people who asked what I did to pay the bills. There seems to be some misinformation about what figure modeling entails. When I say “I pose for art students both clothed and nude so that they may better their craft by having a living example of how the forms of the body work or how clothing functions on a moving person.” What people hear is “I demonstrate female ejaculation in front of young adults for money! It’s just like stripping! I have daddy issues! Does anyone have any cocaine?”

After I get done explaining that I’m not sexually available to students or teachers the next reaction I would typically get was, “Oh, god! I could never let people look at my body for that long! You must be really comfortable with yourself.”

Which I suppose that’s the case. Or maybe I’m just resigned to it. I know I’m a fairly ridiculous looking person and I’m pretty comfortable with that. Also what sets me apart from no girl ever, is I’ve been called ugly plenty. It’s got little effect at this point. If I ever get sad about not looking like Rachel Weiss I just think back to all the ass I’ve gotten.

But one of the other fundamental differences between figure modeling and other industries where people look at your body, is that while you are up on that model stand? No one says can say shit to you.

Because figure models put themselves on display for the benefit of artists most studios have a strict policy about behavior around models. No disparaging comments, no talking when the model is posing, at all, No flirting, never, ever any touching. Students speak to the model only to request poses or correct the pose after a break. Mostly a model deals with the teacher and they know how to act. Maybe students talk about the models physical failings ( I know I’ve been guilty of it.) but they do it waaaaay the fuck out of earshot.

Periodically though, someone forgets themselves.

Bill Sanchez was, and from what I understand still is, a favorite at my old school. An exuberant dude from New York with the accent to prove it he’s one of those guys. That old guard illustrator you paid attention to. He knows form, shape, color. All of it. Coupled with his exuberance for illustration he was the guy to study under and his classes were in high demand. He even had his own catch phrase. Hunched in front of the easel he’d call all of his students around him to demonstrate.

“Okay, okay,” He’d flex his arm and shake out a piece of pastel. “Okay, Now you gotta look at it. You gotta looook at the way that sleeve is working, you gotta feeeeeeeeel it, okay? Then You gotta wrap that form around, Oh, yeah you gotta feeeeeeeeeel it then you gotta wraaaaaap it arrrrrouuuuund., ok, Wrap it aroooooooooound.“

I’m not doing that guy justice here. He’s a great professor to learn from and he’s was a blast to work for. I fell asleep on the stand during the hour-long lunch break once and woke up five minutes after starting time to find a chair on top of me.

“Oh, shit. Bill, I’m sorry- What pose did you want me to-” I started to get up and he motioned for me to stay where I was.

“Naaaaaaah, We’re gonna draw the chair, lay down! Lay down! Take yah nap! Relax! It’s just art school! Relax! Ok, now look at the girl! Draw the chair around the girl!”

Bill was also the only dude at our school you ever heard the words “Relax. It’s just art school.”  from.

One day I was working for his six-hour Clothed Figure II class. Models usually bring a few outfits to wear and I’d picked out a blouse, pencil skirt and black pumps. The class was fairly small and had gathered pretty close to the stand where I sat in a chair for a 20 minute pose.

On of the young men set his charcoal down and looked up from his drawing board over to Bill and proceeded to ask, in an out-of-doors voice:

“Hey, Bill? How do you draw the cankles?”

At that point three things happened simultaneously.

His classmates stopped what they were doing to glance at me and then stare at him, I mean really stare at him. I broke the pose to cock my head to the side and also really stare at him and Bill Sanchez asked with all of the wide eyed fascination of a child: “What are cankles?”

I’d like to take a moment in this anecdote to let other people as confused as Bill was in on what ‘cankles’ refers to.

Here is a helpful anatomical chart indicating the afflicted area.

Red arrow show the region.

This is common definition of Cankles from Ubandictionary.com

the seamless blend of calf into ankle. accomplished by inflammation, obesity, athleticism or a combination of the three. the affected leg takes on the shape of a summer sausage with a human foot at the end. there is no definition of the calf because it is obscured most often by fat which spills down over the ankle, hiding it, and causing a cankle to form.

It’s generally an unflattering thing to say to a woman. Which is why his classmates responded the way they did.

“Dude. She doesn’t have cankles.” One of his male classmates said.

“You don’t have cankles.” On of the girls reassured me.

None of this was helpful to Bill, who was still completely lost.

“How to draw the what? The crinkles? Cranckles?”

“The Cankles.” Said the student who began this teaching moment, a little more quietly.

“I don’t know what that is. What is that? What’s a Crimple?” Bill was looking from face to face for elucidation.

“It’s when there is no difference between the calf and the ankle. It’s a fat. ankle.“ The same girl told Bill. She looked up at me again. “Which she doesn’t have.”

“Oooooooh.” Bill danced up to the stand and squinted at my legs. “No, no, no. There’s some definition. Here, ” Bill held his hand for the curious students charcoal. “Here, lemme show how to draw a crinkle.”

“It’s a cankle.” I corrected him.

“A CANKLE.” Bill snapped his fingers. “See? I learn something new from you kids all the time! You’ve got all these new words! Okay so what you do is…”

I shifted back into my pose and watched Bill tutor this  young man who wore an XXL threadbare Pantera shirt over his knobbly frame and looked at the desperate whispy moustache that was trying it’s best to come in around the acne. I thought about what a shame it was that I was most likely never going to experience a night of pleasure with what had to be the reigning  masculine beauty of Stillrot Hollar, Tennessee due to my unacceptable lower leg regions. Did a single tear escape and roll down my cheek as I finished out that last pose? It may have my friends, It may have. How else do you react when you’ve come to a realization that romance has slipped you by? I gazed at his magnificent profile that could have come only from generations of his family fucking only the most shapely of first cousins and mourned.

Then it was lunch time!

I walked by my missed opportunity at love on the way to microwave to heat up my left overs. Maybe I could somehow salvage this?

So I slapped him on his scrawny back as I passed and let him know I was going to do my best by him.

“Hey, man. I don’t want you to worry too much. It may look like a lot of food in here but I’m just gonna throw it up after I eat it, ok?”

“What’s the point?” Thought Steve as he hung from one of the enclosures rope swings. He lifted his legs over his head and defecated elegantly. On the other side of the glass another one of the small monkeys that filtered through the outside cavern banged on the glass and pointed. Steve watched it’s mouth move soundlessly as it looked up at a bigger monkeys. They were all hairless. Their hands too small, their arms too short. Steve pitied them.

“It’s mother should have killed it when it was born. What’s it even supposed to do with those stumpy arms?” He thought and pooped again.

The short armed hairless gibbon jumped up and down and kept pointing.

Steve dangled listlessly from the rope and considered briefly going into the other enclosure to see what Phyllis was doing and see if she wanted to pick through his hair or tug on his penis for a bit. He  discarded the notion. To get to the other enclosure he’d have to walk by Joel who always wanted to talk about some bullshit.

“Fucking Joel.” Steve looked at him where he sat close up to the glass on one of the rocks that wasn’t a rock (you knew because they sounded wrong when you landed on them) combing the fur on his knees staring out at a foursome of hairless monkeys that stared right back, slack jawed and stupid looking. Steve had no idea what the deal was with Joel’s obsession with the other side of the glass where they kept the retarded monkeys. All Joel did all day was meander around trying to provoke a reaction from them. It was a small mercy he supposed. That was the only thing that kept him from bothering Steve with his inane questions, eating all the lettuce and trying to fuck all of the females, even Cynthia, the one with the wonky thumb.

“Fucking Joel.”

Steve swung himself up on to one of the nearby not-rock rock ledges, rested his long arms on his knees and wearily stared out at the not-tree branches in the center of the enclosure. A cluster of the dumb looking gibbons clustered on one side of the glass craning to see him where he sat against the wall.

“What does it all mean?” Steve thought . He listlessly pondered the futility of his existence. What was the point? Wake up, swing on shit, groom self, try to groom someone else (even, on occasion, Joel if he got desperate.) Look at penis, tug penis, eat  the things that were pushed through the small door in the back of the enclosure, poop the things, swing on more shit, sleep. Pick at his toes.

Every day, all day.

“Hey! Hey! Steve!” Joel called over his shoulder. “Steve! Hey!”

“Fucking WHAT, Joel?”

“If I showed these guys my balls what do you think they’d do?”

“I don’t know Joel.” Steve said dully. “Why don’t you go a head and try it.”

“Okay, okay, I’m doing it! Are you watching? I’m gonna do it!”

Joel sprang up latched onto and overhead not-branch branch lifted one leg over his head and displayed his woefully inadequate penis, giant black scrotum, and a generous helping of gibbon taint. The hairless gibbons went nuts.

“This is fucking amazing! I’m gonna show them my ass!”

Steve wasn’t even paying attention, looking not at, but through and beyond Joel’s ass, into the ocean of time that stretched into infinity only to be ended by a painful, no doubt tumor filled death. Things used to be fun. He used to throw the poop, see how fast he could swing around the enclosure, look at Cynthia’s weird thumb for the delicious, gross thrill it gave him, piss in Joels favorite water through… Now everything was just so…Blank, so empty, so colorless and bland. Nothing was fun, or important. Everything would end one day in the inevitable terminus of death so fuck it. He couldn’t even find the force of will to try to hang himself  from one of the rope swings. Every thing was meaningless.

“Sound and fury, meaning nothing.” Steve thought and congratulated himself on his melancholy cleverness. No one but him could find the words to so perfectly encapsulate the uselessness of existence. No one under stood anything but him.

“Steve! Steve! Okay, this is what I’m gonna do, Steve. I’m gonna Swing on the branch with my butt to the glass and I’m gonna try to shit on the glass. You gotta watch okay and tell me what they do when I get the shit on the glass!”

No one, and certainly not fucking Joel.

“

Sometimes I think the ruling emotion in my life is fear.

Fear of driving, fear of flights of stairs, fear of crowds, enclosed spaces, power tools and dogs. Fear of being lonely, fear of not being alone enough. Fear of slipping on wet leaves, fear of slipping on ice, fear of slipping on my bathroom tiles.

Fear of death, fear of money, fear of my parents becoming ill. Fear that whatever love people bear me is wholly unearned. Fear that, at the very core of my soul, I am a useless person and that my birth has been a lucky accident and squandered opportunity.

Fear of the teeth in my head.

Anxiety runs deep in my family. It’s just a fact, something I was warned about and built a series of coping mechanisms around using about two generations of shared experience. I know when the panic sets in how to boot on it’s throat and strangle it. I know that most of the things I fear are figments that will vanish if I can just shine a light on them the right way. Even if fear is present I can push it down because the reverse of that coin is a life ruled by it and that doesn’t seem work out well for anyone if all of the A&E television programs I watch are evidence.

But I’ll tell you what, if there is one thing on that list that I ain’t letting go of? My teeth. If there is one thing that induces an immediate terror blitzkrieg in my heart of hearts it’s when something happens to my teeth.

And holy shit you guys has stuff been happening to my teeth.

Way back when I was a tiny Weathington, in about 4th grade,I had a sweet ass bike wreck. Long story short it involved a steep hill, me on my huffy blasting down said hill singing songs from Lion King and trying to avoid hitting a car that parked in the middle of the sidewalk, failing, and eating shit over the handle bars of my bike.

Right on to the adult teeth that I’d just gone to a lot of trouble growing in.

I broke all four of my front top teeth and mangled my right leg.

It was pretty metal, you guys.

What followed I can barely remember but the following series of bridges and drilling under basic Novocaine planted a seed of fear. My pain threshold is reasonably high but it was that sound. The high pitched ‘WRRRRRRHHHHZZZZZZZZZT’ of dental tools and the grinding pressure on bone that drove me into a trapped animal frenzy. I was a little kid during the initial fix though, so that’s just a faded memory.

Less faded is having the bridge on one tooth fixed in middle school. This was when we lived in Ohio, land of staunch protestant backbone. The dental hygenist sneered when I asked to be put under. That right there was what cemented my ass clenching fear. I can still smell the burning enamel. I think i was too upset by the time the dentist finished to really understand what he meant by “Blunt force trauma can cause an abscess and it looks like you’ve got some of that starting in…”.

I didn’t go back to the dentist until I was in my twenties. As far as I was concerned. if nothing hurt, nothing was wrong.

Then the front of my face swelled up and I got dramatically sick. That abscess that was mentioned a few years ago decided it was time to have it’s coming out party right on my fucking face. Did you know if try to ignore those they kind of poison your blood? Haha! They do!

I nearly shit myself when I realized I’d have to go in to the dentist but you know what’s great about California? Everyone is a huge pussy so they just hand out opiates like party favors if you use the word “anxiety”. Two Valium, some laughing gas and my shit was fixed. Hey presto.

I’m not even remotely apologetic at this point about my dental terror. I walk the fuck up in an office now and the first words out of my mouth are, “Yo, You got drugs right?” before I even say whats wrong. I have worked hard to conquer my panic in other spheres of my life but you know what?

I’m keeping this one. 

So when I noticed a suspiciously swollen lump at my gum line a few months ago I started calling around for dentists because I knew one of my busted teeth had gotten infected again. Once again I opened up with my usual “Do you do sedation” and securing a yes made my appointment. I was in the dentist chair for less than five minutes.

“Oh yeah.” The dentist said,  looking at the X-ray. “I can’t fix this.”

“Eugghh?” I asked.

He sent me to his endodontic colleague in some hard to reach part of the Southwest. I showed up with my boyfriend and his sister who were treated to what it’s like when an oral surgery clinic tells me there are no drugs to be had.

Spoiler alert: It involves tears. So many tears.

I know I’m not supposed to say this, but it turns out if you start crying like a child when things don’t go your way people will work really hard to fix the problem. It’s because they are embarrassed for you and really want it to stop. They wrote me a prescription for Halcyon right then and there and told me to just go get it, it’s fine, they’d wait, take a couple more tissues. I fully intend to try the weeping thing next time I’m turned down at a job interview or a bar doesn’t have my favorite beer on draft. Has anyone else just tried the crying thing? Maybe it only works if you are a young woman…I don’t know, anyway…

Turns out I had not one dead tooth but two. Both would have to be root canaled. I giggled hysterically and swallowed the drugs.

“My face is your playground!” I said as I laid back and put my soothing Bon Iver mix on my ipod. “Do what you must!”

Now I’ll admit I was high when I came out of that office. It’s entirely possible that the nurse told me not to eat tacos or something terrible would happen. Something terrible like one of the teeth would come loose and then fall out.

Which it did. Tooth number 7 to be exact. Which I really wished had not happened.

One of the most frustrating parts of a chunk of face coming out was calling the professionals about it.

“What do you mean it fell out?” Asked the receptionist at the Endodonic clinic

“It’s not there. It is absent. It is no longer present in my head. It’s gone.” I wasn’t really sure how I was being unclear.

She pressed on, “I don’t understand. The tooth is gone? How much of the tooth fell out? A piece of the filling…”

“All of the tooth. All of it fell out.”

The words that were slithering out of the gap in my  mouth about the new situation about my teeth were apparently too esoteric for someone who deals primarily with teeth. I had to make another appointment to go in to their office and show them in person what I meant by ‘the tooth fell out, okay guys?’.

I went into the office, sat in the chair, opened my mouth and the endodontist looked in my mouth and said:

“Oh no. I can’t fix this.”

This means I had to go back to the dentist I’d started at. This is the point at which life became slightly more difficult and markedly more expensive. The gamut of procedures is roughly the following: Go back to endodontist and fix the other abscess (did I mention they only took care of the one?) wait three months for it to heal, Go back to Dentist see how it’s healing has progressed, get told that a deep cleaning must be done before we can even TALK about replacing the missing tooth. Do that shit. Get another appointment to discuss options of an implant or bridge, follow through with selected option.

initially I was going to go with the more permanent option of what’s called an implant. This means a bone graft is done and a chunk of titanium is implanted into the bone of the jaw and then a tooth is screwed into place. If you are wondering why there are so many italics in that sentence they are to mark the points at wich I peed a little bit while having this explained to me.

At the reception desk a young woman with very white teeth and exceptionally manageable hair printed out a quote for the procedure. I read the number at the bottom and looked up at her.

“I’m going to throw up on your desk.” I said flatly.

I thought about it for a couple days and called back to tell them I wanted to go with the moderately cheaper option of the bridge. A bridge is where they essentially file down the afflicted areas and glue in a molded porcelain replacement. Before that could happen though the dentist had to perform a root extraction. Now what that means is he has to remove the section of lucky number 7 that was embedded in my jaw, the remaining original tooth that was left over from the ancient accident that started all this bullshit.

If you think this involves pliers you would be correct. If you think that it’s a terrible thing to have done even while huffing a huge amount of nitrous oxide you’d also be correct.

After he was done yanking out the root tip and what felt like not a small amount of the inside of my right nostril I managed to fumble for his sleeve.

“Have you thrown it out yet?” I slurred.

“Um, no…”

“Put that in a baggie. I’m keeping it. I’m keeping that bastard.”

I came back home to David after they had done their bloody work and place me with a temporary bridge. I held an ice pack to the side of my face and winged the little packet onto the coffee table.

My white whale.

“Brought you a doggie bag.” I said and flopped on the couch.

“Oh, God.” He looked stricken for a moment, wondering if he had made a huge mistake throwing his lot in with a woman who keeps broken body parts laying around the house in baggies.

“It’s my trophy! I’m going to make a necklaaaceee.” Then I passed out for a while.

I’ve had about three more procedures since that one and another coming up. I have had a section of my face yanked out on four separate occasions now and I still don’t like it very much. To be frank I’d like to be done with this.

Also the last time I was in the chair I could totally hear the hygenist and the dentist making fun of me for doing more nitrous than they had ever seen a patient do before.

“Whoo!” I heard the dentist say while he made an impression. “Whooo! I’m starting to feel it! Just sitting next to her is makin’ me feel pretty good!”

I wanted to say, “I’m high, you motherfuckers, not deaf.” but his fingers were in my mouth to remove the mold.

So I’m pretty sure I bit him instead.

A commenter on my last post inquired if I have a paypal.  Well, shucks! I do now!

If you find my crass, anecdotal word-spew entertaining and you feel inclined to encourage more of it in a monetary fashion feel free to donate through paypal at leiamusthavedinner@gmail.com .

I’m trying to turn my writing and comics into a career I can support myself on full time so that the only thing I have to worry about is entertaining you fine people where the day to day concerns of not sleeping in a tarp and having a flush toilet are less of a nagging affair. Also a few of my teeth fell out recently and I’m pretty sure the hospital where they made sure my brain wasn’t exploding are going to want  money from me at some point as well.

Just remember every dollar in that paypal is another post about animal dicks or something I shouldn’t have eaten!

“I should really stop neglecting my blog” I thought a few days ago. Then I thought it again a couple days after that. Nothing particularly earth shaking came to mind to write about though.

Most of my time lately was finishing up my book. Exciting for me but not so much for everyone else. Entries that read “Dear internet, So I’m working on my book and my book is almost done but I’m still pretty stressed about my book and also are you aware that I’ve done a book? I have. I’ve done a book and you can buy it soon.” seemed pretty boring.

But then yesterday I woke up fairly certain I was having a stroke. If there had been room for any thoughts other than abject terror I’m sure I’d have thought: “Blog fodder! FINALLY.”

It was a little unusual when I woke up rolled over to grasp my water glass with my left hand. My brain sent directions to pick up glass, drink from glass and my left hand responded a couple seconds later, clumsy, like an inbred yokel.

I probably slept on it funny.

Pick up eyeglasses. Put on face.

My fingers fumbled for them, grasped and then spent a couple more seconds trying to jam the arms into my eye socket before getting them on the bridge of my nose. I flexed my fingers, numbly and got up to spend sometime in the bathroom practicing turning the faucet on and off. Then the left side of my mouth went numb and drooped and my thought process jumped immediately from “this is a little odd” straight to “I’M FUCKING DYING.”

I calmly headbutted the bedroom door on my way back in to make my sleeping boyfriend, David, aware of the situation. I gathered my wits and sedately let him know what was up by screaming,

” CALL 911! I’m HAVING A STROKE OR SOMETHING’S WRONG CALL 911 I’m FUCKING DYINNNNNGGGG”

If the way he jerked out of the bed and hit the wall was any indication I’d managed not to startle him too badly.

I tried to jabber out what was going on while he managed to stumble to his feet.

“I’m calling your mother.” He said and went to get my phone while I held down the fort in the bed room doing an impression of Sylvester Stallone crying.

He learns fast that one. If something is wrong call Gwen. Gwen always knows what to do.

“Go to the hospital. Go to the ER right now. Don’t wait.” My mom said through speaker phone after I’d slurred out my symptoms. We don’t go to the hospital for shit in my family so this was pretty momentous. David set about trying to call a cab while I did what seemed sensible and ran to my computer to see if our friend Jesse could take us to the ER.

If you want to scare one of your pals send him a facebook message at 8 AM on a workday that reads like so:

• jesse if I ask you for an enourmous thing could you do itazzz/

• could you do it?

I became less concerned with how he would react to that message than I was with the fact that I could not accurately locate and hit the shift key on my keyboard because my left hand was swinging loose and heavy. I wanted to do something simple that I did everyday and my hands wouldn’t respond appropriately. I didn’t think I had anymore shit to loose but it turns out the realization that if something was happening to my motor control my career as a cartoonist was over gave me a fresh supply.

What if something exploded in my brain and I had to do years of physical therapy to regain even basic control of my body? What if I couldn’t type, couldn’t draw, couldn’t even talk correctly? The trifecta of my  identity? What if something was going on in my body that stranded me there for long, mute years until the sweet release of death freed me?

Lord, take me now or leave me the hell alone.

I did the only thing that seemed appropriate and began wailing. I set a new record for how long one person can cry in one go as we sat outside and waited for a cab to the hospital. I flexed my hand and sniveled out on the concrete steps. I suddenly really wanted to go back to sleep. Was that good or bad?

Here is a recommendation to anyone in an ER and afraid that they are not being taken seriously by the admittance desk: Tell them you are experiencing numbness on one side of your body and they’ll put your ass in a bed tout de suite.

I was still sobbing when the nurses came in to do blood draws and  EKG and blood pressure checks. I became the proud recipient of something called an 8 gauge needle, which I found out is what a hospital uses if they aren’t sure if you could nearly die and need a blood transfusion fast. If the number “8″ doesn’t tip you off right away, spoiler alert: It’s a big fucking needle.

The nurses ran a gamut of tests to test for stroke. Push on my hand, raise your legs, grip my fingers. Then came a CT scan.

Nothing. Nothing at all. No blood clot, no tumors.

That’s terrifically good news obviously but I couldn’t help being slightly irritated by my body winning yet another round of what I like to call “Gotcha, Bitch!”.

the game is played thusly, I will develop a random ache or a persistent cough for a while. Just long enough to be convinced I have bone marrow cancer or Guinea Worm or something. Just long enough for me to consider medical help. Then the symptoms vanish. Or as in the case of a kidney infection in my late teens no symptoms at all, and then being suddenly, dramatically ill.

Gotcha,Bitch! It was just a random misfire! Enjoy paying off thousands of dollars 5 bones at a time into your late sixties!

I slept for about 15 hours after leaving the hospital. There was no concrete reason the doctor could find for sudden terrifying stroke like symptoms. The closes she could come was “Type of migraine.”

Whatever.

I called to let mom know I was okay before passing out.

I really should learn not to call her the second something disastrous happens because she had made herself  sick stress-eating pudding cups by the phone for the past three hours.

New Years resolutions, Are people still doing those? I’m in my twenties so I haven’t heard them very often from my peer group. I mean, there are a few but they mostly involve not having a stomach pump, avoiding sexual partners with herpes and cheating less on term papers.

Every now and then I trip over some ballbag that has big goddamned plans for the new year. They will become like some sort of trim, chemically abstaining jesus figure. They will not smoke weed to get through the work day, run 8,000 miles and eat hand crafted, locally produced, tofu sculptures of the Dalai Lama so as to become a better human being. This year! This year they will cut the bad habits and care about their nieces karate belts! This year they will finally sign the divorce papers because you do want to get on with your new life with Megan in Reno don’t you, Bradley.

Those people will fail. After the hangover that renders them too sick to do anything they would normally clears they’ll go right back to hitting the bong before clocking in at Radio Shack.

Aim low, is what I’m telling you. If a lifetime of experience has taught me anything it’s that if you set the bar of others expectations for you low then even tieing your shoes without knotting your own thumb into the laces will garner you high, satisfying praise.

Here is a list of Resolutions for the disaffected, the indolent and the can’t-be-fucked. Feel free to enact them as you see fit.

1: Eat a sandwich with a condiment on it you don’t care for. Just once, just to say you did.

2: Stop doing whipits from the whipped cream can. 

3: Stop stealing toilet paper from your place of employment. 

4: Admit out loud that you only started playing ukulele to increase your whimsical, hipster girl appeal.

5: Delete the photos of your ex from your hard drive. After point it’s just unseemly to masturbate to someone married with four kids.

6: Don’t say you are “Being bad” when you order deserts at restaurants. Say instead, “I’m a grown man/woman and I will excercise my right to eat whatever the fuck I want.” Then flip the table.

7:  Dress as a parrot mid march. Go to the supermarket, buy a bag of oranges. Pay with a personal check.

8: Spend less time with your family and more playing  Skyrim.

9: Admit the dental floss in your medicine cabinet is seven years old and just for show. Then throw it away and not buy more.

10: Throw away the dead potted plant that’s been hanging from your shower rod for the past month.

11: Recycle?

12: When problem drinking, try throwing up on a car as opposed to in one. 

From me to you, Happy New Year.

If you were going to send me a card or perhaps that young domestic helper from overseas that I’ve been wanting I’d prefer you do this instead.

Dawn Taylor is someone I got to meet here in Portland. She is super nice, super funny and does a really entertaining podcast. Her and her husband Patrick are getting reamed with medical issues right now and could really use some help.

I know a lot of you  are artists or otherwise creative types. Most of us are uninsured and skating by on luck alone that one of our organs hasn’t told us to eat a dick and failed. This could very, very, terrifyingly easily be and one of us. If you have any ability please donate to these people. 

What could be better than telling a bullshit kidney to STFU this holiday season?  With a donation you are basically doing just that, right to its stupid kidney face.