Archive for March, 2009

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I talk too much.


2009
03.24

Posted in depression | 1 Comment »

To myself, that is.

#1 – This morning, printed on a side of a cereal box:

What are GDA’s?

My answer, made for my own benefit (and possibly my dog’s, if he counts, which really? He probably doesn’t since dogs have neither the ability to roll their eyes or tell their owners that they’re acting very scary? So please stop cracking yourself up?):

“G-Damn aardvarks!”

#2 – Upon setting my coffee on a desk filled with bills, cancelled checks, years worth of tax returns and basically every document that we would need to prove our laughable net worth:

“Awesome! Let’s spill some coffee ’round here! Woo hoo!”

#3 – To my dog, whose inability to register concern for my deteriorating mental health I’ve taken as permission to talk – alone – as much as I wish, resulting in my reading passages from Alan Greenspan’s book The Age of Turbulence. I don’t think he understood very much of it which, I suppose, puts him in league with about 98% of the American public.

…and now I shall turn off the computer and ponder what comes first: loneliness or depression?

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My paper white mask of not-so-much-evil-as-general-disagreeableness


2009
03.14

Posted in friends, mortuary school | No Comments »

As part of my education in the fabulous field that is funeral service education I am enrolled in a course titled “Restorative Arts”. As the name suggests, the course involves our ever-patient professor attempting to impart his artistic ability upon students like myself without throwing up his hands or coming at us with knives.  

We have been told that it is the sincere hope of our department’s instructional staff that – upon completion of our restorative arts coursework- we students will be capable of repairing the remains of deceased individuals in such a way that would make them acceptable for viewing… axes to the face, head-on collisions and self-inflicted shotgun wounds to the head be damned.

We’ve been given tools: 

…and wax: 

…and have also been instructed to make our very own human heads. To wit:

This is the start to my human head. I am modeling it after my friend Cindy, a delightful gal who is a mother, research scientist, medical doctor, triathlete, hates big meanies, loves her mother, enjoys long walks on the beach and prefers puppies over kittens. Cindy’s being a doctor meant she was delighted to have her likeness rendered in wax. This is, of course, is a welcome reprieve from several of my other friends who regularly put their hands over my mouth and say things like, OH NO NO NO… STOP RIGHT THERE whenever the subject of my current romp through education comes up.

At any rate, if you look at the photo above you might be tempted to think that it’s an ok start for a freshman attempt at molding a human face so long as the face in the photo above belonged to someone who wore their sweater tied around their neck, considered polka a legitimate form of music and had all the rhythm of a seizing epileptic. Unfortunately for me however, Cindy’s not white and my project is hopelessly hee-haw and all this means that I get to experience the joy that is scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch which makes me use long run-on sentences about how I would really, really like to make some statement about suffering for my art but I think you all know me enough by now to realize that I don’t suffer for my art so much as get cranky when my homework cuts into the all-important Cocktail Hour.