Luck 2.0

Shitstorm 6.0

One nice aspect of living through a shitstorm is that it's kind of restful, if you think about it right. Since everything needs doing Right Goddamned Now! it doesn't much matter what you pick up and fiddle with. It needs doing. One fairly awful night, Right After, R.A. The Stroke, Lynn was convinced I was the Governor of Louisiana. Well, we're not going to have a bunch of conversation tonight, I thought brightly, and diddled with a client's website design.

I was glad I had, when the Chairman called today. "How can you do this?" he asked. "Don't you have the Swine Flu and doesn't your husband have a stroke?" I explained patiently, that down here on the 8th circle of Hell, we're not just toasting marshmallows. We're still doing shit. One thing we're not doing is the laundry however, so all my jeans have fairly serious diaper butt. But meanwhile, I'd gotten four whole hours of sleep, surrendered my will over to God, talked to a member of the reality-based community, and felt like a monster of health. Had decided if Lynn was going to die, he was going to fucking die, against my most strenuous wishes, true, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I had to float on the wings of the world and trust them.

I was now wearing my black and white Chucks, my favorite Buddha t-shirt, diaper-butt jeans and a faceful of makeup. Planned to go see my boy.

But when I wandered out to my ancient war pony, aka The 15 year old Benz, it wheezed like an old whore. For this is the Law of the Shitstorm: If It's Big And Expensive And Breaking It Will Really Fuck You Up, It Will Happen. So I knew something horrible was going on with the transmission, and was not amazed. I was just grateful I didn't need to have both knees scoped too. But I was out of catfood. Oh Jesus. Can you do just one grocery run? I asked it and the war pony's headlights gleamed seductively. Wait right there I told it and raced back to the house. Had to call my boy. I thought about breaking down in that particular part of Dallas and shuddered. I'd be barbequed and eaten in a vacant squat, probably before nightfall.

Lynn picked right up and his voice sounded good: nice and rich like it really is. "You sound great," I said. I explained about the car. "I think the transmission's going to fall out on the floor, but don't worry. I got it covered," I said figuring quickly. I could do one transmission, but not a vacuum system. But then no one can do a vacuum system. We ancient Benz owners live in dread of something going wrong with the Benz' completely insane vaccum system that transports various vital fluids and gases. We think. None of us really knows anything about it except it's totally unaffordable and you are truly SOL when it goes.

"No. Shit no. Don't come," he said thinking about empty lots, pointless murders, awful drugs, and sketchy characters too. "I showed Heidi my blog," he said. Heidi is one of the army of creamy rosy-cheeked Baylor therapists.

"You did?" I said. "What'd she think?

"Oh, she was impressed. And then I said maybe we could get the communications up to what I'm more used to."

"She was treating you like a moron," I guessed.

"Yeah. But I think it'll be okay." I bet it will, I thought. I bet old Heidi's fucking shiny white veneers fell out on the floor when she got a gander.

See, my boy has a blog with upwards of 6000 viewers daily and sometimes 10,000. It's read worldwide, with 200 readers in the Vatican alone and about 20 in some yurt in Tibet. My theory? I think he's done TV so long that he just intuitively knows what tweaks people. Plus, he's ravenously curious about everything, so it's always an interesting effortless blog. His theory? People suck. "They just like the big tits, and weird stuff I do. And anything about Miley Cyrus." Actually it was moi, your very own Writer to the Stars, that caused him to go viral.

Now at my tiny blog, with my 10-20 dog-faithful readers, I really do write about weird shit and then draw curly inferences with each hand-carved letter. So I came upon this article one day, Man Marries Pineapple, about a guy in Germany with a thing for fruit. There's stuff that's actually too weird for me, so I sent it to Lynn. He'd just started Athensboy: The View Behind Blue Eyes and was averaging about 60 hits a day, which I thought was so successful, you'd have to be a greedy bastard to ask for more.

He posted it and then fifteen minutes later, he yelled, I think I'm going viral! The two of us stood there staring at the screen, watching different parts of the world map light up. Holy Shit! we breathed.Within two hours he had 16,000 hits and it's never slacked off much since. So old Heidi can go fuck herself. She's lucky just to get to hang around him.

But we'd already had The Talk. And I'd given him my view of rehab as I'd experienced it."See, I think it's like public school.They're really aiming for a good C average joe. They don't like failures and they sure as shit don't want any A's. So if you don't want to turn into one of those old assholes on a motorized chair, with a nice black lady trudging behind you, then you gotta fight. It's a head game. When I was a patient no one listened to me and no one believed me. So I just decided I would never, never, never shut up about the horrible pain in my shoulder (turned out to be a snapped rotator cuff) and I would not answer any dumbass questions beginning with the words Are we... " I shut up abruptly. He was dealing with enough. And who was I anyway?

Then I went home and sobbed for about four hours, feeling unequal to all of it, as I always am in the face of love and loss.