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20060625
The 8th Great Conference of the International Association of Obituary Writers, Part II
If you've never heard of Las Vegas, New Mexico, it's because there's absolutely nothing there to hear of. One is challenged to find a grocery store in this town. Just because a particular convention regards death does not mean the conferees favor dead towns. I wonder why anyone would schedule a conference in LV, NM. But then again, I don't.
Conference Coordinator and IAOW founder, Carolyn Gilbert, is, in my fictional fantasy, the old-money wife of, for example, a Texas oil barron who never struck oil but who held a hefty life insurance policy, which was bestowed upon Carolyn after she clandestinely murdered him, and without making a single chip in her bright red nail polish. She flaunts "federal judges" and "attorneys" as her drinking buddies, and claims as an occupational title "public policy consultant." Which I suppose means that she gets blitzed and banged with policy makers. But behind her five pounds of glimmery eye shadow and mascara-- five pounds on each eye-- she's got the eyes of a snake. A cold-hearted, greedy, libertarian, Satanic snake. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Libertarians or Satanists (one and the same, no?), but I don't want any crossing my flower bed, if you know what I mean.
Carolyn speaks with a sexy Texan drawl; words like "elite" and "professional" are her favorites. At profile, her personage is shaped like a capital 'P.' P is probably her cup size. It is also the first letter in Proud, and she sure is, even at the ripe age of 65-ish. She reminds me of my grandmother, except I don't like her.
Don't be fooled by any hint of Southern hospitality. Carolyn's way is Southern hook-line-and-sinker. And ObitsCon '06 was a sorry excuse for a professional/literary conference. I shouldn't care; I crashed it. Showed up, then skipped out without paying the registration fee: $250.00. This amount would have been appropriate for a conference held over the course of three or four days (rather than two), in a town offering attractions and amenities other than the clouds (a grocery store would have been nice), and taking place in a space larger than a 12 x 20 brick room (multiple rooms, even).
**As un unrelated side note: right now, I am watching a man edge his lawn. He is wearing brown slacks, a yellow dress shirt, and a glitter-blue motorcycle helmet.
Two hundred and fifty dollars is what one might pay for attendance at, say, the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, held in a major city, attended by thousands of people, and offering hundreds of different panels. I have revealed the depths of my dorkish snobbery, I know, and I wonder why I keep going on about this when, as I said, I DID NOT pay the conference fee. But really, I think writing and literature and death and obituaries are important topics, and I wonder why these people bother coming to such a small conference with a painful dearth of significant content, when they could clearly participate in larger events more beneficial to their work and livelihood.
I didn't pay. I didn't even pay for airfare. I don't like this paragraph. It's uninteresting. But what is VERY interesting is the way the ink is flowing onto this yellow paper. It's very wet. And it makes an audible sound. You don't know because you're reading this on a screen, which is unfortunate, and which reminds me of one of m y purposes in life, which is to remind everyone that there are few sounds more exciting than a human throat so close that you could smell its attached armpit.
**As a somewhat related side note, I would like to say that I really DO love the smell of a freshly sweaty male armpit. Temples are nice, too. I encourage women to spend more time with their noses in said armpits. And actually, you may never need Xanax or Lorazepam (or any of the -pams) as long as you have a good, sexy armpit to sniff. It's true. Here, look: http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/article.php?608&sci
I'm tired now.
Conference Coordinator and IAOW founder, Carolyn Gilbert, is, in my fictional fantasy, the old-money wife of, for example, a Texas oil barron who never struck oil but who held a hefty life insurance policy, which was bestowed upon Carolyn after she clandestinely murdered him, and without making a single chip in her bright red nail polish. She flaunts "federal judges" and "attorneys" as her drinking buddies, and claims as an occupational title "public policy consultant." Which I suppose means that she gets blitzed and banged with policy makers. But behind her five pounds of glimmery eye shadow and mascara-- five pounds on each eye-- she's got the eyes of a snake. A cold-hearted, greedy, libertarian, Satanic snake. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Libertarians or Satanists (one and the same, no?), but I don't want any crossing my flower bed, if you know what I mean.
Carolyn speaks with a sexy Texan drawl; words like "elite" and "professional" are her favorites. At profile, her personage is shaped like a capital 'P.' P is probably her cup size. It is also the first letter in Proud, and she sure is, even at the ripe age of 65-ish. She reminds me of my grandmother, except I don't like her.
Don't be fooled by any hint of Southern hospitality. Carolyn's way is Southern hook-line-and-sinker. And ObitsCon '06 was a sorry excuse for a professional/literary conference. I shouldn't care; I crashed it. Showed up, then skipped out without paying the registration fee: $250.00. This amount would have been appropriate for a conference held over the course of three or four days (rather than two), in a town offering attractions and amenities other than the clouds (a grocery store would have been nice), and taking place in a space larger than a 12 x 20 brick room (multiple rooms, even).
**As un unrelated side note: right now, I am watching a man edge his lawn. He is wearing brown slacks, a yellow dress shirt, and a glitter-blue motorcycle helmet.
Two hundred and fifty dollars is what one might pay for attendance at, say, the Modern Language Association Annual Convention, held in a major city, attended by thousands of people, and offering hundreds of different panels. I have revealed the depths of my dorkish snobbery, I know, and I wonder why I keep going on about this when, as I said, I DID NOT pay the conference fee. But really, I think writing and literature and death and obituaries are important topics, and I wonder why these people bother coming to such a small conference with a painful dearth of significant content, when they could clearly participate in larger events more beneficial to their work and livelihood.
I didn't pay. I didn't even pay for airfare. I don't like this paragraph. It's uninteresting. But what is VERY interesting is the way the ink is flowing onto this yellow paper. It's very wet. And it makes an audible sound. You don't know because you're reading this on a screen, which is unfortunate, and which reminds me of one of m y purposes in life, which is to remind everyone that there are few sounds more exciting than a human throat so close that you could smell its attached armpit.
**As a somewhat related side note, I would like to say that I really DO love the smell of a freshly sweaty male armpit. Temples are nice, too. I encourage women to spend more time with their noses in said armpits. And actually, you may never need Xanax or Lorazepam (or any of the -pams) as long as you have a good, sexy armpit to sniff. It's true. Here, look: http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/article.php?608&sci
I'm tired now.
20060620
The 8th Great Conference of the International Association of Obituary Writers, Part I
A series of odd coincidences went something like this:
One morning the alarm radio came on and kept playing because I kept ignoring it. Some of the words made sense in my sleeping head-- something about death and dying and a conference of obituary writers. These words woke me up.
* As an unrelated side note: I encourage everyone to stop using ketchup in packets. Ketchup packets ARE -THE- inconvenient truth.
So anyway, I opened my eyes and had a listen to the morning NPR report. There was going to be a conference of the international association of obituary writers. And I had to go.That day at work, I Googled the thing, but the first hit was for a book-- Marilyn Johnson's "The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries." My campus library didn't have it, which meant I would have to wait at least three days for the thing to come by mail.
In the meantime, I found the IAOW homepage. The conference was 2 months away. For a week or so, this great idea got lost in the shuffle of laundry and cat food, and then the notice from the library came: "The Dead Beat has arrived and is waiting for you."At work the next day, I stopped off at the library to pick it up. When I came back to the office, there was a pink message slip, scrawled by our student assistant, waiting on my desk:"The obituary writer from the Press-Telegram called. She would like to speak with you about writing an obituary."
I wish more pink message slips gave me the chills. This one sent an unequivocal message: the universe was speaking to me.
[You're probably wondering and so I'll tell you. The obituarist called to inquire about my department's relationship to a recently deceased, prominent community art patron.]
When the universe speaks, I listen. And so I would go to the conference in fabulous Las Vegas... New Mexico.
June arrived.
My travelling mate was the artist occasionally known as Nix. If you've never met Nix, just imagine a person you can't possibly imagine. It took about three years for our "friendship" to progress from conversations held exclusively in barnyard animal noises to meaningful exchanges in Modern English. And now he is one of those really great male friends who I can be open with about pee or menstrual blood even though we don't have sex or even touch at all for that matter. Those are the best kinds of boyfriends. Handshakes are the extent of our physical intimacy. It is unfortunate for me that I require sex for mental health. Everyone I know who is "asexual" is so much happier than everyone else I know. Asexuals and Down's syndrome people are the happiest people on this planet. Orgasms are disgusting, if you think about it. Orgasms and crotches are just sick.
Importantly, I would not have been able to attend the conference were it not for Nix and some air-travel-related favor somebody owed him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had mafia relations. But in any case I knew I could count on him to monitor me while I was totally ripped on Ativan for the duration of our flights.
I remember very little of anything that occurs while I am under the influence of Ativan, but at LEAST I can sit on the plane without having a panic attack. I do remember the first thing that happened to me at the airport.
Mike S. (another handshake boyfriend) dropped me off, and I wheeled my junk into the lobby to fill out the NINE nametags which must, as ritual, adorn each piece of luggage I carry. This time, I had only one piece. I grabbed 9 tags. With both hands, I rummaged in my purse for a pen. Everything in the purse felt very wet and sticky. This is normal for some girls, I know, but not for me.
I pulled out my hands to find them completely covered with... fine Italian chocolate. One little Italian chocolate had melted and enveloped every item in my purse and now my fingers, too. With one clean knuckle, I wiggled the phone out of its chocolate-less pocket and onto the counter. I used my chin to dial Nix, who was waiting for me somewhere in the terminal.
"Nix, help! I need HELP!" I cried into the phone. "I can't do anything right now!" I noticed that my dramatic speech was turning a few heads, so I just held up my hands and whined, "I'm covered in chocolate!"
I felt no shame, only the childlike ease of an inactive amygdala. On the line, Nix asked something like "So?" or "For whom?" or "Is that a side effect of your medication?"
Before he found me, an innocent bystander found sometissues and helped me clean myself. She gave me only one tissue, and when I asked her for a few more, she gave me ONE. I guess she's wise to conserve now in preparation for the upcoming economic meltdown/Kleenex extinction.
I don't remember the flights to Albuquerque. When we arrived, the available rental car was a sparkle cherry red PT Cruiser convertible, which I was far too intoxicated to drive.
TO BE CONTINUED...
One morning the alarm radio came on and kept playing because I kept ignoring it. Some of the words made sense in my sleeping head-- something about death and dying and a conference of obituary writers. These words woke me up.
* As an unrelated side note: I encourage everyone to stop using ketchup in packets. Ketchup packets ARE -THE- inconvenient truth.
So anyway, I opened my eyes and had a listen to the morning NPR report. There was going to be a conference of the international association of obituary writers. And I had to go.That day at work, I Googled the thing, but the first hit was for a book-- Marilyn Johnson's "The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries." My campus library didn't have it, which meant I would have to wait at least three days for the thing to come by mail.
In the meantime, I found the IAOW homepage. The conference was 2 months away. For a week or so, this great idea got lost in the shuffle of laundry and cat food, and then the notice from the library came: "The Dead Beat has arrived and is waiting for you."At work the next day, I stopped off at the library to pick it up. When I came back to the office, there was a pink message slip, scrawled by our student assistant, waiting on my desk:"The obituary writer from the Press-Telegram called. She would like to speak with you about writing an obituary."
I wish more pink message slips gave me the chills. This one sent an unequivocal message: the universe was speaking to me.
[You're probably wondering and so I'll tell you. The obituarist called to inquire about my department's relationship to a recently deceased, prominent community art patron.]
When the universe speaks, I listen. And so I would go to the conference in fabulous Las Vegas... New Mexico.
June arrived.
My travelling mate was the artist occasionally known as Nix. If you've never met Nix, just imagine a person you can't possibly imagine. It took about three years for our "friendship" to progress from conversations held exclusively in barnyard animal noises to meaningful exchanges in Modern English. And now he is one of those really great male friends who I can be open with about pee or menstrual blood even though we don't have sex or even touch at all for that matter. Those are the best kinds of boyfriends. Handshakes are the extent of our physical intimacy. It is unfortunate for me that I require sex for mental health. Everyone I know who is "asexual" is so much happier than everyone else I know. Asexuals and Down's syndrome people are the happiest people on this planet. Orgasms are disgusting, if you think about it. Orgasms and crotches are just sick.
Importantly, I would not have been able to attend the conference were it not for Nix and some air-travel-related favor somebody owed him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had mafia relations. But in any case I knew I could count on him to monitor me while I was totally ripped on Ativan for the duration of our flights.
I remember very little of anything that occurs while I am under the influence of Ativan, but at LEAST I can sit on the plane without having a panic attack. I do remember the first thing that happened to me at the airport.
Mike S. (another handshake boyfriend) dropped me off, and I wheeled my junk into the lobby to fill out the NINE nametags which must, as ritual, adorn each piece of luggage I carry. This time, I had only one piece. I grabbed 9 tags. With both hands, I rummaged in my purse for a pen. Everything in the purse felt very wet and sticky. This is normal for some girls, I know, but not for me.
I pulled out my hands to find them completely covered with... fine Italian chocolate. One little Italian chocolate had melted and enveloped every item in my purse and now my fingers, too. With one clean knuckle, I wiggled the phone out of its chocolate-less pocket and onto the counter. I used my chin to dial Nix, who was waiting for me somewhere in the terminal.
"Nix, help! I need HELP!" I cried into the phone. "I can't do anything right now!" I noticed that my dramatic speech was turning a few heads, so I just held up my hands and whined, "I'm covered in chocolate!"
I felt no shame, only the childlike ease of an inactive amygdala. On the line, Nix asked something like "So?" or "For whom?" or "Is that a side effect of your medication?"
Before he found me, an innocent bystander found sometissues and helped me clean myself. She gave me only one tissue, and when I asked her for a few more, she gave me ONE. I guess she's wise to conserve now in preparation for the upcoming economic meltdown/Kleenex extinction.
I don't remember the flights to Albuquerque. When we arrived, the available rental car was a sparkle cherry red PT Cruiser convertible, which I was far too intoxicated to drive.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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