Conflict of interest

The sign on the door: DR. EVRETT'S DOCTOR'S OFFICE.

Dr. Evrett's Doctor's Office is in a building that looks like a house. It is unmistakable--there's the homey den; the small, carpeted foyer; the dark, neglected kitchen; the two-and-a-half baths. It would be a nice place to live. But the building is zoned commercial. The top floor is Dr. Evrett's Doctor's Office and on the bottom floor are the offices of Big Ed's Junk Shop, which owns a lot across the street strewn with steel and other metals, mostly in the form of car frames, discarded wire and pipes, misc. beams, etc. It can be seen from the window of Dr. Evrett's Doctor's Office.

"Dr. Evrett?"

"That's Dr. Evrett. No e."

"Sorry. Dr. Evrett."


"Please," said Dr. Evrett. "Call me Tedward."

"OK."

"Tell me, what's the problem?"

"Oh, I'm just all achy again. It's my knees, I'm having trouble walking."

"Mmm hmm? So why couldn't your old doctor, Dr.--"

"Everett?"

Dr. Evrett frowned.

"He sent me to you, Tedward. Or, rather, his widow did."

Dr. Evrett reclined in his leather chair, smiling, looking up or past the ceiling. "Ah, yes." He turned back to the file in front of him. His eyebrows shot up. When he spoke, he spoke quickly. "Says here you had a steel pin of some kind in your hip?"

"Yes, that was years ago. I kept losing my balance. It crushed my hopes of ever becoming an Olympic gymnast."

"Did they even have the Olympics when you were a girl, you old hag?" The patient frowned. "Returning to the subject of the steel pin in your hip, is it real steel?"

"I believe so."

"It's no some alloy, is it?"

"Not to my knowledge. 'Real steel,' Dr. Everett told me."

"Because if it turns out to be some fucking nickel alloy--"

"No, Tedward, it isn't. Real stainless steel."

Dr. Evrett jumped out of his chair. "Stainless!" He sat back down. He wiped some saliva from the corner of his mouth and began stroking his chin. His gaze drifted out to the junk shop across the street.

"What we're going to do," Dr. Evrett said later, with his patient laid on her side on top of a sticky rubber examining table, "is cut into your hip and remove that steel pine that's been causing you so much hip pain."

The patient began to speak, but Dr. Evrett quieted her by putting his finger to his lips and "ssh"ing her sensuously. He began rubbing his hands up and down her body, moving her paper gown out of the way so it was his hands on her body. After two passes, he settled on her hip and began massaging it. He felt the pin. He imagined her could take it between his finger and his thumb and simply lift it out of her pelvic bone. It would be so easy...

"Doctor, what you're doing is pinching me," the patient said.

"What I'm doing," Dr. Evrett explained, "is pinching you, to see if the pin is creating any pressure in your knee. Does your knee hurt now?"

"No, my hip feels pinched."

"We'd better remove that pin, then," said Dr. Evrett. He leaned in now, lips against the old woman's cool, purplish skin. "Hear that, pin?" he whispered. "I'm going to have you. Oh yes I will." And then he welcomed the point of the old woman's pelvic bone into his mouth as he might have the tongue of a schoolgirl years ago. "Just one kiss," he told the pin in the woman's hip. "No more until after the operation."

"Oh, but Tedward, it's not my hip that hurts, it's my knees!"

"Same difference," mumbled Dr. Evrett, by now preparing his equipment.

"But you don't need to remove my steel pin. I need it to balance when I walk."

"Yes I do."

"But doctor. I'm not quite sure why you think it's the pin causing my knee pain.

Dr. Evrett sighed and ripped an anatomy poster off the wall, tearing it at the top-left corner, which wanted to stay stuck. "Here," he said, pulling a Sharpie out of his coat and turning the poster over to the blank side. He drew this:



"Convinced?" he asked, not really asking.

"I'm still not sure I want to go through with this operation," the old woman said. She was still lying on the examination table. Dr. Evrett straddled her and punched her in the back of the head with his right fist. She let out a little surprised "ooh!" and moved to shield her head with her hands, but Dr. Evrett had her arms pinned down. Just as quickly as he had jumped on her and hit her the first time, he hit her a second time with his left first, directly in the nose. This knocked her unconscious. Her face hung down off the examination table. Dark red blood leaked out of one or both of her nostrils, dripping insistently on the off-white tile.

Dr. Evrett heard a siren. He rushed to the window in a panic--how could it be? It was just a fire truck. Still, "I have to hurry," he said.

Teach your kids about suicide, misery and the illusion of free will!

On the cover of this DVD (Thomas & Friends - Percy Takes the Plunge. Dir. David Mitton. DVD. Anchor Bay, 2008.), we see a green train named Percy, smiling at his own reflection, staring up from the surface of the glassy water in front of him. Percy--being a train--is affixed to some tracks, which are leading directly underneath the water. From the way the splash is moving--up and out--we can see the Percy is headed into the lake. Looking down. Smiling.

Is there any doubt what we are seeing?

No. There is not. We are seeing a train commit suicide.

Admittedly, the misery and nihilism of this image (marketed to children, keep in mind) is bottomless, but let's try to examine it to the best of our abilities. Perhaps there is some more innocent explanation for what we are seeing. It is possible that--yes!--Percy is not committing suicide at all! Maybe the lake needs to be traversed (for the benefit of some children or orphans, perhaps, or perhaps more realistically, some factory bosses who need their raw materials--steel and machine parts and whatnot--delivered post haste lest production slow and jobs must be cut to compensate) and Percy is the only one with the guts to go through with it. This is possible, isn't it?

I'm afraid an objective analysis forces us to discard with this sloppy theory outright. A train could not survive being totally submerged in water. Its engines would flood and its mechanical pieces would lock up (and that is if we suspend our disbelief enough to allow that a train can run without humans at the controls--because they would surely be drowned). Once Percy hits the bottom of that lake, there is no coming up, unless he becomes dislodged and floats to the top. Dead, naturally. At best, what we are seeing is a foolish, futile shot at some kind of misguided heroism that will end in Percy's untimely death.

But maybe, we think, something more nefarious is going on. Because why should Percy be smiling as he goes under, if he knows he is putting himself in mortal danger? Even if--in his mind--he is exerting himself and putting himself in danger for the good of others, one would not expect a smile. Do our brave soldiers smile dumbly when they're throwing themselves on a grenade? Does the firefighter running into a burning building that is about to collapse in the hope of saving just one more person do so with a tight, blank smile on his face? Of course not. He does so without thought, and for their sacrifices, we are forever indebted. Something very different is happening here to Percy. Why the smile? Clearly based on the grade of descent from the shore into the lake, he is descending into a body of water that gets very deep very quickly. Maybe he was told that it would be a simple dip, and that he would be on the other side and back above water in no time? Perhaps what we are seeing is the first cold dagger of realization stabbing (or, perhaps, "plunging") itself into Percy's heart as he realizes--here comes death, and there is no coming back, and I hope everyone remembers me fondly.

But no. Percy was not deceived. He knows exactly what awaits him at the bottom of that lake. We can see it in his eyes. His eyes--ecstatic, yet sad; anxious, yet ignorant; expectant, yet terrified--they hold the deep and disturbing feeling of this image.

This suicide is what Percy has been planning for--no, dreaming of--for as long as he can remember. What precipitated this? Unresolved parental issues? The teasing of his friends for his girlish name? The stifling confinement of living one's entire life upon tracks, one's every movement subject to the whims of conductors and engineers? Perhaps all of those; perhaps none. We do not know the answer (watching the DVD might provide an answer, but we are too afraid to risk falling into the same existential hopelessness as our old friend Percy). The intent is now irrelevant, because what we see before us is the execution.

Look deep into Percy's eyes. The irises gone. The pupils swelled to the size of platters. Just the slightest, smallest twinkle. And the smile, pushing up those big meaty cheeks. He knows that eternal quiescence is just a few short yards away. Drowning is easy, Percy is thinking. Hold your breath and oxygen deprivation is like one final light-headed high, and you won't even feel the water filling your lungs.

But perhaps the focus on the eyes is merely a charade to distract us from the bleak hopelessness of the eyebrows (please, brace yourself, but unfortunately, clicking on the above image for a larger view is necessary for our analysis). No, the eyes are just a small part of the horror. The eyebrows--they tell the real story. Who can fail to read the unexpected regret on Percy's face as the cold water begins climbing up his steel frame? The sudden realization that--oh shit, this isn't just a fantasy anymore, to keep us from crying in bed when I want nothing more than to not wake up the next morning so I don't have to face this, this is for fucking real this time! What is he doing? He had no way of knowing until the first cold droplets fell on his face. He is ending his life.

Does this image not look more natural?



Yes. Here, the mouth--further from the brain, perhaps, and slower to receive the message that something majorly fucked up is going on right here--has finally caught up to the eyebrows. Perhaps this is what the film itself looks like, just a few frames after what we see here on the cover. This is the truth behind that smile, which fools no one, least of all Percy himself who, we must remember in the depths of our own despair, is the one actually doing the dying. We are the lucky ones--witnesses to horror, but unharmed witnesses. Pity poor Percy; he knows not what he does.

But even in Percy's disappointment as he stands on the brink of suicide, there is still deeper to go, more despair to uncover. If this suicide is a rebellion--Percy's attempt to exercise one last bit of control over his fate as he dies--it is pointless. Reader, who is almost rooting for Percy in a perverse sort of way, to exercise his will and speed himself towards death, as if it were a kind of choice, do not jump to any "happy" conclusions before examination of the whole of the picture is complete. Percy is still on tracks!

Poor, poor deluded Percy. You who thought your death would be an assertion of your autonomy, a subversion of those who would have you toil forever with no free will of your own. Have you missed the bigger picture? Who laid out those tracks, proceeding through the gentle forest from the station to the lighthouse we see in the background to the place where you will die? Was it you? Please. Your suicide is no subversion! It was preordained! Even the ultimate personal, self-destructed act is not yours! This was their design! Will they shed tears upon news of your death? Or curse you for throwing a wrench into their plans? No. They will build another train--faster, more powerful, less likely to question their authority (and even if it does, so fucking what)--and you will be forgotten. How many other trains have taken this exact path, thinking that this made them unique, and that they would be remembered as heroes, for bucking convention, and what was fated for them? Can we even venture a guess? No, the number is too large. Perhaps this explains the eyebrows. Percy realizes that his death will change nothing. Its only effect will be to hurt the ones he loves.

No less an authority than the esteemed William Safire

Wackadoodle

This is how adults behave

This was in the hallway, a door or two down from my apartment.


(click to enlarge)

(About an hour later, the mess and the note were both gone.)

Your heavy-handed political allegory of the day

Hillary Clinton picked a horse named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby. Eight Belles was the only female horse running the race. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown. Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Their little party in my den

I was driving. We had been at my mother's house for a barbeque. I pulled onto our street and the first house we saw was on fire. It was a dim night and the fire lit up the street, shadows crouching and jumping on the road.

"Oh honey, look at that," Deb said. I nodded.

A few feet down, we passed the Johnsons'. If we have any friends in the neighborhood (we don't), the Johnsons are them (or they). They were out on their front lawn, staring dumbly up at their house, which was on fire.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Deb. "Those poor Johnsons!"

By the third or fourth burning house, that's when I started to get worried. One burning house on your street, that's too bad. Two burning houses and that's a queer coincidence. Six, then seven, then eight--that's when you start to fear for your own house.

Every house was on fire. From an airplane, they would have looked like big rectangular torches--some large religious ceremony.

We pass twelve houses before arriving at ours. They all burned; ours stood undisturbed, dark, sleeping. We were relieved.

"Our poor neighbors!" said Deb.

We got inside and I checked the basement, just to be sure. No fire, no smoke. It smelled like it always does--dust and sediment and ground-up, compacted shavings of wood.

I went up to the den and sat down and turned on the TV. The Red Sox bullpen had blown the game while I was in the basement. I grumbled.

"I just can't stop thinking about our neighbors," Deb said, arms folded, standing in the door between the kitchen and the den. I changed the channel. "All those houses..." The Yankees were losing, so the standings would hold, at least.

The doorbell rang. It was the Davises. Two boring people and their two annoying kids who are always climbing our trees. The black sky behind them was streaked with flickering orange, like a bad painting that's a bit too heavy on the symbolism.

"Can we stay here?" they asked. "Our house burned down."

"Oh, of course," Deb said. "Come right in."

"Too bad about those Yanks, eh?" said Eric Davis, sitting down on my couch, opening a bag of chips he had taken off Deb's kitchen table. "Oh well, we'll get 'em tomorrow! Go Yanks!" I regarded him silently out of the corner of my eye.

The doorbell rang. Our old friends the Johnsons. They needed a place to stay, since their house had burnt to the ground and all. "Of course," said Deb, "don't say another word." I resolved to answer the doorbell the next time.

Within 20 minutes, the house was packed, full of Davises and Johnsons and Smiths and Clarks and Cartwrights and so on. Every family in the neighborhood. No one seemed too broken up about all the fires, except for me. Deb was practically glowing with charity.

POP! A champagne cork flew across the room. No one was sitting now, except for me in my chair. Glasses were passed around; the lights were dimmed; upbeat-downbeat saxophone music started coming from someplace; someone snatched the remote right out of my hands and turned off the TV. The room was filled with the inane, indistinguishable chatter of boring people pretending they're interesting. I was handed a faux-silver platter of cocktail weenies and little bricks of cheese impaled with toothpicks.

A party! I shoved my way past a Haverford and two Danielses to the light switch. I tried to raise the lights but the dimmer wouldn't respond; I tried to flick them on and off and received the same discouraging result. A Hammond grabbed me from behind and tried to get me to dance, grinding up against me, and I shoved her away. She crashed into and over the coffee table and got up laughing uncontrollably, and the small crowd around the table--Rileys and Cains and at least one Pauley--helped her up and all started laughing too.

I ran into the dining room and grabbed the hatchet hanging over the fireplace. I tore into the drywall separating the dining room and the den. I kept going until I had cleared a hole in the wall and was looking in at them, at their little party in my den. That got their attention.

"Excuse me!" I called. "I think you are taking advantage of my hospitality!" A Chadbourne chuckled. A Jamison joined in. The laughter built. Soon the whole room was roaring, and kept roaring until Deb tapped delicately on the side of her champagne glass with the little fancy butter knife she was holding.

"Now that I have everyone's attention," she said, "I'd like to make an announcement. I'm the one who started those fires! I'm the one who burnt your houses to the ground!" The party erupted in boisterous applause and appreciative hurrahs. Deb blushed.

It wasn't true. She had been with me the whole time--on the drive home, and at the barbeque, and at church before that, and on the drive to church, when all the houses had been standing, distinctly unburnt. Why had she lied? I tried to ask her across the room, "why did you lie?" but she couldn't hear me for the noise--"I can't hear you," her lips went. "Why did you lie?" I asked, but she just cupped her hand to her ear, and then she was pulled away by the revelers.

I tried to get back into the den through the hole I had made in the wall, but I had a tough time of it, trying to maneuver past stray boards and jutting pipes and papery insulation. "Why did you lie?" But she had been swallowed up by the Fosters and Wilsons and O'Malleys and Taylors, and I couldn't find her.

Hey sh**bird

Email to Greg from his roommate:

Hey sh**bird, you f***ed up the rent check in two ways:

1) Quit putting “sensual massage :)” on the f***ing memo. The last thing I need if I ever get audited is for the IRS to pull up images of checks for $830 with that on the memo. A) How am I going to explain the revenue I didn’t pay taxes on. B) That sh** is illegal.

2) You spelled Helen’s name wrong. It’s Helen Y*******, not Charles Atkinson.

Give our landlord a call and explain to her why the rent has been late every month since you moved in.

Get me another check for her.

Flava of the Month, by Colson Whitehead

Outstanding. Just a completely vicious takedown that somehow excoriates its subject even while sorta kinda completely understanding.

Dateline: early spring. A time of renewal. My last visit with Margaret takes place at her loft in downtown L.A. It looks like a Design Within Reach catalogue exploded and someone garnished it with a year’s worth of Dwell. Her advance was modest, she assures me, but she scraped up a down payment by selling some Pan Am stock she’d inherited. It seems she’s really escaped her circumstances, been granted the dream of half-white, half-Cherokee kids who are adopted by black families everywhere: She is truly movin’ on up, and I ask her if she’s a little scared about how normal things have become. We’re a long way from the ghetto, after all.

“Actually, it’s only a five-minute drive, but to answer your question, no. There’s the book, and there’s my life. Two separate things. In the book, I had to keep it going, or as I put it, ‘Double it.’ When I came up with a showstopping set piece, I had to top myself every chapter. I think that’s true for everyone, no matter what kind of memoir you’re writing. That’s two shipwrecks, two killer grizzlies, two penknife amputations. Double it! If you’re writing about how your plane crashed in the Andes and you had to eat all the other passengers to survive, what if when you get rescued, your rescuers’ plane crashes and then you have to eat all of them, too? Double it! Without sacrificing psychological complexity, of course.” She blows on her cappuccino. “But in real life, there’s just living.”

It’s getting dark, and I’ve grown tiresome with all my questions. She reaches over and wipes a smear of foam from my mustache. It’s a surprisingly tender gesture, and I can’t help thinking of all the people she’s killed. “A lifetime ago,” she says, reading my mind. There is no more Pebbles. Only Margaret.

Hilarious. Best thing I've read in a while.

(by the way, this will probably make negative sense unless you are aware of the background)