Beware of imitators

A throwback of sorts to my high school weekends this weekend. I sat at home. Alone. Listening to music that pretty much guarantees solitude. It's not my fault that the unwashed masses amongst can't appreciate the subtle differences in Thurston Moore beating his guitar against his amp and merely beating his guitar on the floor. Cretins.

I digress. Already.

This time, however, my solitude was self imposed. Thanks to a cyst, bump, boil or something equally grotesque and yuckily named that picked last week to form and Saturday night to burst.

That night of nights when I would normally be out with the beautiful people doing beautiful people things like scoffing at those not in the know and, um, going to Target, was spent on the sofa with a hot rag on my ever expanding forehead. Marisol, trooper that she is, did an admirable job of making me feel like she actually did want to be stuck at home cleaning house on a Saturday night rather than doing something slightly more fun if less productive.

Like go to Target. Ah, the joys of early middle age.

Anyway, leaving out the gory details (you're welcome) things are getting better now and hopefully I'm on the mend. Special thanks to Cybil and her awesome nursing skills. Weep not for Marisol, she did get some flowers out of the deal.

Herewith a brief comment on words and context.

"Look out, that pot is about to boil. Better pour some down the drain. Please hand me my lance."

Three perfectly innocent sentences that describe rather mundane activities. Assuming, of course, there be dragons or whales about and one uses one's lance in one's everyday comings and goings. Nevertheless, dear reader, allow me to presume there was no cringing involved reading the previous example.

So why then does "I need to lance that boil so it can drain" cause even the steeliest of resolves to shudder? I have no point nor anything remotely clever (what's new) to add. It's like an Arsenio Hall "Things That Make You Go Hmm."* Which I suppose never had points or were remotely clever either, so...

The major drawback of all this unpleasantness was that my training was interrupted. No long run Saturday and no running at all since last Wednesday. I did get some great glute work in on the sofa and got pretty swift at going to and fro without my spectacles. Unfortunately, I suspect these skills will be of little use to when it all goes down.

Things should get back to normal tomorrow.

*Arsenio Hall was a syndicated late night chat show in the early 90's. A crony of the equally outdated Eddie Murphy, for a brief moment he made flat tops and moustaches da bomb and being a black chat show host the dream of hundreds of white youth. Mr. Hall was also skilled at making white people feel black and proud by using such urban slang as "posse" (group) "fly" (cool) "homey" (acquaintance) and encouraging us to bark like dogs whilst pumping our fist. It was all very "hood" and made us feel progressive, hip even, while still being something we could enjoy with a cold Snapple and some Ben & Jerry's, lounging in our PJs.

In addition to the above, his "Things That Make You Go Hmm" segment was always a crowd pleaser. Wherein Mr. Hall would do what George Costanza would a few years later call "observational humor", i.e. Why is Greenland called this when it's really all ice and Iceland called that when it has green? Ho, ho. The shelf life of such humor is about what one would figure. This is probably why by the time Monica Lewinsky blew up, so to speak, Arsenio was as dated as that Lewinsky joke.

P.S. My close personal friend Bonnie has got herself a blog tackling AFI's 100 Best Movies. It would go a long way towards helping receive a Christmas gift from me if you, dear reader, would make it a regular stop. Which is not to say a gift shall be forthcoming of course.

P.P.S. The irony of referencing Seinfeld in a snarky post about Arsenio/white people was not lost on me.