When we watch the televised funerals of Michael Jackson or Ted Kennedy, Leader suggests, we are engaging in a practice that goes back to soldiers in the Iliad mourning with Achilles for the fallen Patroclus. Our version is more mediated. Still, in the Internet age, some mourners have returned grief to a social space, creating online grieving communities, establishing virtual cemeteries, commemorative pages, and chat rooms where loss can be described and shared.
Meghan O’Rourke’s history of grief in The New Yorker
Feb 5
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Jan 26
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i know the feeling
All day I was just, “sausage, sausage, sausage!”
Guy at the table next to us without a shred of self-awareness
Jan 13
Dec 31
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Holidays are Exhausting, from the desk of Barkley Q. Barkerton
(Unmitigated Handsomeness)
Listen, people on the computers:
Holidays are exhausting. First, there are the friends. So many friends! You have to put all of your energy into making friends love you the most. Second, there are the snacks. At holidays, people are always eating snacks. You have to look at the snacks and let people know how much you please, please want them now. And finally, when you are tired and full of snacks, people want you to be HANDSOME for PICTURES. As you can see, even in difficult circumstances, I can still manage to be at my most handsome all the time, but it is not easy. My advice? Have a happy rest of your holidays, people on the computers. Put the computers down, take your shoes off, and fall asleep with the TV on. Then, make a New Year’s resolution to give me all your snacks, please now.
Sincerely,
BQB:vkl
Dec 14
Dec 9
Nov 5
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All of the above
Seventh Grader: Mrs. Lund, which is better, Dinosaurs or PeeWee Herman?
Mrs. Lund: That depends. At riding bicycles or tearing apart prey?
Seventh grader #2: All around. You have to pick.
Mrs. Lund: not emotionally equipped to deal with this choice.
Oct 23
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Call me crazy…
I got the H1N1 shot today. DePaul had vaccines available for at-risk individuals, and since my right lung is a whoopee cushion and my left lung is a broken toy accordion, I qualify as at-risk.
I stopped by today, and outside the doors of the fitness center stood two men with clipboards. One man asked me if I was getting the vaccine today.
“Yes.”
“Do you mind if I talk to you a minute about your decision?”
I figured he was taking a poll. On a university campus, there are always people taking polls or surveys for one class or another. I’m sympathetic because I would hate to have a task where I have to talk to strangers for any period of time. So, I said sure. Talk to me.
“Why did you decide to get this vaccine today?”
I explained my reasons, and that in my opinion, the dangers I face if I get a respiratory infection are greater than the risk of complications from the flu vaccine.
Ooh, wrong answer. Didn’t I find it curious that usually, pregnant women and the elderly are advised against receiving the vaccine, but this year they are encouraged? (Actually, my memory is that usually, elderly people are allowed priority for all flu shots.)
Why, he asked me, would we throw away 40,000 years of medical wisdom just because drug companies and a corrupt government want to convince us to buy more vaccines? (Actually, anything that medical science did 40,000 years ago is NOT something I want done to me now. Please, no trepannations. I like my demons just fine.)
He went on to ask me, very sincerely, how I could be so willing to take a vaccine when Bobby Kennedy has proven that vaccines cause autism? And by the time he got to the London Train bombings being a government conspiracy, and how the same people who perpetrated the myth of 9/11 are the people who got Barack Obama elected, I knew one thing for sure:
Getting the H1N1 vaccine is the sanest choice I have ever made.
But, if you want to read more crazy, check out www.theflucase.com (which can double as a Halloween scare. Because it’s further proof that there’s more cuckoo out in the world than you’d find in a Swiss clock factory.)
