And Here’s Another Thing You Don’t Like About Me

Periodically, I conduct an audit of my flaws. One of those flaws is that I’m a CPA, and I have to keep a general ledger on everything. Including my flaws. For each of the flaws present on my general ledger of flaws, I have a subsidiary ledger that tracks the nature and extent of the flaw. Don’t be alarmed. This isn’t part of some self-help program that enlightens one to one’s own flaws and provides a 12-step program for overcoming them. I chart my flaws to ascertain that the list is growing, and that I am achieving my fully flawed potential. If an audit of my flaws shows no new activity, I feel I have stopped growing as a person.

My foundational, cornerstone flaw - the one that serves as my personal mission statement and defines my style - is my uncommunicative nature. That flaw has been repeatedly addressed on report cards, within performance evaluations and psychological screenings, and as grounds for divorce proceedings. It also functions as a spontaneous combustion point for general-purpose scoldings.

I’m confused. To this day, as I conduct my flaw audits, I don’t know whether to classify my state of incommunicado as an asset or a liability. My detractors most certainly classify it as a liability; otherwise I don’t think those veins would be bulging in their necks and foreheads. Apparently they don’t understand that, were I to suffer enlightenment and begin communicating with them, those veins would explode upon the impact of my communications. If it’s better to say nothing at all when you can’t say something nice, these people should be thrilled that I’m a voluntary mute. Had Helen Keller shared my mindset, her awakening would not have been such a heart-warming tale. She likely would have been drowned in the very tub of water that elicited her first utterances.

So what’s wrong with being uncommunicative? Why is it anybody’s damned business what I’m thinking? Why does the rank-and-file population suppose it is their inalienable right to share in my personal introspection? Or my personal cerebral vacuum?

The mucosal pile of worms in my cranium is not public domain property, and I am not mandated by any law, whether natural or legislated, to open the gate to anyone. I’ll gladly pass title to any sorry bastard who is willing to bear the burden of ownership. Be forewarned; it’s a high-maintenance parcel. It’ll suck the joy right out of a ticker-tape parade. Vocalizing what goes on in here is like hitting your thumb with a hammer. Then hitting your other thumb with a hammer. First I think it; then I have to say it? How redundantly painful!

Ever since I was filling diapers with Gerbers, chatty people have attempted communication with me. I tried precociousness for awhile:

"What do you want to be when you grow up, Bradley?"

"I want to be interesting. I’ve yet to note any competition in that field."

"If you want to make friends, you should try to be more social, Bradley."

"And you should try to be better looking, so I guess we both have a project."

Having cleansed my parents’ home of any willing visitors, I decided it was best to fall back on catatonia. It was better if people couldn’t quite put their finger on why they didn’t like me. Maybe it was their fault.

The ensuing years of voiceless stupefaction elicited hearing tests, vision tests, Rorschach-blot tests, "special" sessions with "special" teachers, and general confusion among those trying to "help" me. They never understood what I understood: most of what they communicated to me was not worth communicating at all, and I feared sounding like that. I heard inane babble, and I hated the idea that I, too, may only be capable of inane babble. Listening to other people made me yearn to rip the fuckin’ tongue right out of my own mouth as a selfless, preemptive gesture of compassion for others. While adults prodded me with stimuli, I was thinking, "I hope I don’t grow up to be as stupid as you are." Now, as an old man, I sit dormant among adults while the babble swirls around me and I think, "I hope I didn’t grow up to be as stupid as you are. I’ll just sit here silently so none of us finds out."

I can impart All Of The World’s Knowledge According To Brad in about four minutes. Then I begin repeating myself. That grants me elite stature, given my observation that most people are good for about two-and-a-half minutes. But they continue, unaware that their taped loop has become worn and scratchy. They fill the void with ultramarathonic dissertations on their favorite subject: themselves. They equate their vocal cord vibrations with a heartbeat; if it stops, they must be dead. Imagine how serene and quiet this world would be if people only spoke when they had something to say.

That’s half of everything I know. Any questions? Good. I was going to answer them with silence anyway. Just to piss you off.

Whatever You’re Doing, It Appears To Disagree With You

I’m sportin’ a new look this summer that is all the rage in my social circle. My clique, my club, and my peer group consist of a party of one. I’m it. And we say gaunt is in.

It wasn’t by design. Perhaps it’s the hot, humid summer we’ve been enjoying in these here parts. Or maybe I finally have that cancer that refuses treatment. Or early onset of Alzheimer’s, and I’m forgetting to eat. I don’t remember. But I’ve got that strung-out look that sends young moms and their strollers to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Fat people tell me I should eat, and fit people admire my six-pack. When fit people start telling me to eat, I’ll know I’m making headway.

Once my new look began creeping up on me, I decided to capitalize on it and see how far I could take it. My goal is to look like one of those skinless anatomical drawings in medical textbooks. Just a bunch of muscle and bone strapped together with blood-filled twine. A full-scale mock-up of Keith Richards’ and Iggy Pop’s ass-baby with fetal alcohol syndrome. Skin that’s haggard, yet snare-drum taut. Veins-a-poppin’ like ivy on a light post, like piano wire wrapped around a totem pole, like spaghetti splattered on a tile floor.

With minimal hydration and maximum sodium intake, partnered with abundant unprotected exposure to the midday sun, I should be able to take my pulse by watching my thorax convulse in the mirror. Real scary. Real cool.

I want the body fat percentage of a veteran laboratory cadaver. If the paramedics have to peel me off the asphalt after a motorcycle accident, the time of death will be a question mark on the coroner’s report. Send ‘em off in search of previous autopsy results.

My next birthday gift to myself will be the horrified look in a person’s eyes. The look that betrays the spoken words. The lying lips will utter "you look good for 50" while the truthful eyes will shout "you’re only 50?"

For my 60th birthday, maybe I’ll get fat. Unless this really is cancer. Then I’ll be dead. Unless this really is Alzheimer’s. Then I’ll forget. Unless I assimilate into society and behave like a normal person. Forget that…I might as well be dead.

When It Wears Out, Throw It Away

I recently stumbled across the historical life expectancy tables published by the National Center for Health Statistics. The life expectancy for a white male born in 1901 was 49 years. By 2002, a newborn white male’s life expectancy had increased to 77 years. And for each year the kid survives beyond birth, additional expectations are tacked on the back end. Is that fair? Even convicted felons get time off for good behavior!

The boneyard where I plant has been swallowing carcasses for about 150 years now. We still have handwritten burial records for residents who were born around the turn of the 20th century, and damned if a whole bunch of ‘em didn’t croak at right around 49 years of age, more or less. Most conspicuously, the handwritten records indicate that "consumption" was all the rage in choice of exit strategy. In the medical parlance of the mid-twentieth century, "consumption" was jargon for tuberculosis, and the term was descriptive of the symptoms that caused the body to waste away. The word "consumption" is also a lot less tongue-tying. Let’s hope there is no outbreak of tuberculosis during our current president’s term. He’d asphyxiate himself trying to pronounce that one.

Here’s my theory: I think 49 years is still the life expectancy. The NCHS tables are a ruse. If you don’t believe me, listen to 50-year-old white guys talking to one another. At 50, box scores and broads have taken a back seat to PSAs, cholesterol, blood pressure, knee ligaments and rotator cuffs. After 49 years, their warranties have clearly expired and they are leaking fluids and replacing parts.

And the corollary to that theory? We are still dying of "consumption." We spend 49 years accumulating a modicum of wealth, and the medical and pharmaceutical rackets spend the next three decades "consuming" it. The patient’s financial resources waste away as he gobbles synthetic pills and installs bionic parts to replace the original equipment. But make no mistake about it; the guy was dead at 49.

I am 49 years old. Seems about right for a life expectancy to me. I’m running out of shit to do. Hell, I’ve done some stuff twice.

Now that I have broken the story on the statistical life expectancy sham that has been perpetrated upon us, I am pulling the plug on all artificial attempts to re-engineer my 49 year old, lifeless form. My doctor doesn’t know it, but he has been fired. His eyes lit up when I turned 45, because his handy pocket guide said I was heading into the pre-season warm-up for the Rebuild, Replace and Resuscitate Games. I was going to be incurring more shop time at peak season rates. But now that I’ve had my sampling of fistings and blood-suckings, I am going to take my ball and go home. I win and I quit. I have beaten the odds according to the 1901 rules, and I choose not to adopt any subsequent rule changes.

What’s my PSA? Don’t know. Don’t care. What’s my blood pressure? Don’t know. Don’t care. What are my HDL and LDL cholesterol numbers? Don’t know. Don’t care. If my knee hurts, I’ll limp. If my shoulder hurts, I got another one. Keep your syringes, centrifuges, MRIs, CAT scans and mail-in fecal sample pouches away from me. Keep your fingers, scopes and cameras outta my ass. I’m a dead man walking, and I have no intention of fueling the spiraling inflation reflected in the NCHS life expectancy tables. I’m on borrowed time, and I will not pay interest on the loan.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m just going to wake up dead some day. My organs are free to follow independent plans to kill me, or they can hold meetings and plan a concerted effort to shut down all operations. It’s a suicide mission on their parts, because they are going down with me. With all original equipment intact. Parts may be worn and weathered, and some might be dragging behind me in a shower of sparks, but I got a few miles out of this body and the maintenance won’t eat me alive. It’ll just quit runnin’.

Just like the 1901 models.

Are You Fucking Blind?

The Associated Press reports that the government has ordered impotence drug warning labels to indicate that some users have developed a form of blindness known as non-arteric anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION). NAION manifests itself as sudden vision loss when blood flow to the optic nerve is blocked, and is considered one of the most common causes of sudden blindness in older people. Risk factors include diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and OLD AGE.

Need we accumulate any more "hard" scientific evidence before halting the consumption of boner pills by fossilized old men?

What motivates a physician to prescribe pocket-rocket fuel to an anthropological relic with three stints in his chest, a medicine cabinet filled with blood pressure meds and an insulin pump permanently installed in his onion-skinned belly? Father Time can’t digest solid food, but he wants a solid member?

Take a hint, grandpa. When your little soldier is humming Auld Lang Syne it’s time to reconcile yourself to the fact that your memories have been made. Bread doesn’t cost a nickel anymore, penny candy costs a buck, the coal bin is empty and your peenie is but a placeholder in your diaper.

When you are the only patron at Country Buffet who isn’t aware that you pissed your pants, you are done screwing. If you can’t find the toilet with your molten piss stream, how do you expect to find Hazel’s dry gulch when you’re blind and blood-engorged?

When you sit on the stool in the next aisle of the YMCA locker room, and I have to be careful not to step on your balls, your money shot days are over. You could complete an elder hostel rug-weaving course in the time it would take your goo to reach the summit of that gravity-defying climb.

Have you been signaling a right turn since the last county because you are blind, or is your ancient magic-stick jamming the turn signal? Prop that petrified lumber against the accelerator pedal and coax your Seville up to 19 miles per hour!

Is it not enough that you are confounded by the everyday Rubik’s-Cube-like obstacles presented by traffic signals, ATM machines and door locks? Do you now have to direct your remaining nominal blood flow from your eyes to your liver-spotted wee-wee? When a plant dies, you can stop watering!

So now I not only have to be paranoid about potential terrorist acts, but I also have to guard against blind, geriatric, skeletal human shells cattle-prodding their way through grocery lines with a built-in curb feeler.

If you went to school with Abe Lincoln, a withered wonder-wand is just a hint that you have started the decomposition process. Moisten the reed on your death rattle and tune it in the key of C-ya.

And watch where you’re pointing that thing. You could put an eye out.