Smokey Mountain Breakdown

There is this ad playing ad nauseum on one of the local top 40 radio stations that's been setting my teeth on edge. Every time it starts, I switch over to NPR's Begathon. It's so incredibly east Tennessee.

A young woman's quite reasonable voice interrupts my listening pleasure of Lady GaGa with:

Be famous...for God!

WTF?

She goes on to explain that I might not be happy with the current role models coming out of Hollywood and that if I think I can do anything...any old thing at all along the lines of singing, dancing, modeling--maybe yodeling that I should show up for this enormous cattle call for a Christian talent agency. (Which is all fine and dandy except this so isn't how this is done.) So...

Be famous...for God!

She tells me Christian actors and models are taking Hollywood by storm! It's revolution! (Obviously the invasion hasn't begun, or they'd know by now exactly how many days of LA sunshine it took before their Christian soldiers were snorting coke off a 21 year-old blond's firm buttocks. I swear, there's something in the bean sprouts out there...)

God evidently wants me to be famous. I wonder if God has his own photographer that He will insist I use for a modest fee of around 800 dollars. Or if God runs His own acting/modeling school on the side He might insist I enroll in. I wonder what sort of signing fees God is charging these days? And what's His cut?

I think this is Porn & Donuts fodder for sure--right up there with the Christian sex toys trade.

...a real shitstorm is brewing.

I often wonder about the karma thing. It seems to make an awful lot of sense in my case. I've noticed that positive experiences are usually followed by horrid ones of equal or greater magnitude. Strangely though, the converse is not always true. You can have horrid events any old time and there doesn't seem to be a need for something happy or lovely to happen to balance them out. I desperately long for a mediocre, uneventful life.

I haven't updated in a long time, I know. I had the most fabulousest vacation down to the Lowcountry ever. I got to see my brother and sister, walk out on the dock, eat lots of local seafood, hang out at the Oyster factory and even drove up to Charleston to see the Angel Oak. It was so special and I felt restored, healed and so many other wonderful things. I probably have some stories to tell--the Bambipocolypse, for one.

But...I don't know...things just went south real fast when I got home. Bad things. Really bad things beyond post vacay blues. I can't really get into it all, but Fat Buddy is paralyzed in his hind end and he's hard to lug around, I'm sick, exhausted and so depressed I don't know what to do with myself. And of course the effing insomnia. You know, I need lots of rest after a major exertion and the vacation was certainly that. It just doesn't take much to send me over the tipping point. I can't sleep--when have you ever known me to update the blog at 7 a.m.? Now I've got the mother of all kidney infections. All I really want is to curl up by myself. I vant to be alone...

Have you ever noticed that when people know you want to be alone and you are pretty clear about it and it's a sort of dire need that it's like cats and the people who hate them? They understand you want to be left alone--but they seem irresistibly drawn to getting one last word in. Or one more tchotchky dusted. (Yes, dear, I'll be leaving this room as soon as I ...) But I've always been this way. It's the most canine thing about me. Like old Fat Buddy. He's totally acting like everything is OKAY. Except his hind legs don't work and he can't walk. (I'll steal snacks without any legs!) The more wounded a dog is, the more he wants to spend that time with himself. That's how I am.

And really, all that last word, whether it's comfort or condemnation , is going to do is prolong my suffering. I just need to curl up in my hidey-hole until I can work it out for myself. Don't worry. I'll come out eventually.

Either that or you'll find me here dead with some very obese cocker spaniels.