Going back to St. Paul’s Hospital now is sort of like going to a college for an alumni weekend. As soon as I walk in the door, people start saying hello to me. I see a lot of faces that look familiar but that I don’t recognize. I nod at those faces. Those faces nod back. I engage in perfunctory catch-ups with the faces that I do actually recognize. Hey, how have you been? What’s new? You don’t say! We display a shared admiration and awe for the facility that we are standing in. Oh sure, this is an old hospital, but it’s still…
I read Lena Dunham’s book over the holidays, not because I’m a huge fan of Lena Dunham’s or anything but because I’d been having difficulty reading for months (see: my illness) and had assumed the book would be fairly simple to read and percolating with mildly interesting observations and, hopefully, some laughs. I like Lena Dunham, more than I sometimes want to admit to myself. I like the work that she does. Tiny Furniture, for example, is a terrific New York movie. I also admit that it’s impossible for me not to feel jealous, even resentful towards Lena Dunham sometimes. She’s a kid (28) who writes for The…
Science Fact You Probably Don’t Know: “ringworm” is a fairly common skin affliction with a melodramatic name. I was diagnosed with ringworm in late November. After devoting a fair amount of thought to it, I still don’t understand how the word “worm”—which is a terrible word, by the way—got jumbled up in its name. Because there is no actual worm involved in the affliction, unlike, say, “tapeworm,” which DOES, in fact, involve an actual worm. Yes, a tapeworm is a worm that lives in your butt. Which, frankly, sounds like the sort of thing that a worm would enjoy doing—living in a butt. (more…)
When you go through something like the fairly awful something that I’ve been through this year, on the far side there’s this feeling that you will somehow eventually be able to completely reinvent yourself. You’ll arrive at a moment when you’ll be able to pave over the old, marginally successful life, which is what I had, and start living the nonstop mardi gras that your life was always supposed to be. I saw hyperbolic headlines like STROKE BOY MAKES AMAZING RECOVERY and MIRACLE STROKE BOY KICKS ASS, TAKES NAMES. I’m not sure why I referred to myself as “STROKE BOY.” I suppose…
