I'll Never See Your Smilin' Face or Touch Your Hand

This blog post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

This week was my birthday.  I took it off, which is a luxury when I can do it.  Since I turned 50 I have always taken a leisurely, ironic stroll past the neighboring graveyard on my birthday (is it a surprise that I live next to a graveyard?) but that seemed a little close to the bone this year.  I've been struggling with my blood sugar and especially my blood pressure lately.  My glucose monitor has several choices to pick from after you prick your finger and I always hit "I feel fine" because there isn't one that reads I FEEL LIKE HELL QUIT ASKING.  But I will lasso this in.

The beast of it for me is that when my daughter was married in 2014 I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes (after having an incident of disorientation I thought was because of all the stress). I went down four pants sizes and lost around 50 pounds and have stayed off insulin. My doctor said I was 1 in 100 patients but it could still catch up to me one day. Which is funny because until a month or two ago I felt better in my 50s than my 30s.  But i guess I can't outrace the devil forever.

So now my son is getting married, and I am doing the ceremony, on September 10 (not a Satanic Mass).  The reception is at my house.  And I mentioned last time my dog died.

I loved my dog like a person. She was our empty nest baby when my daughter went to college. She was a princess. It happened very quickly, over 72 hours. I think she had a massive stroke at 14. Her face was notably slack and she was stumbling around, whimpering and pacing all night. She was a West Highland White Terrier and that's about all they have in the tank as well. It was a hard decision to make but I respected her too much to let her suffer very long.

So maybe hitting the stress button hard and getting on some meds.  It would be awkward for everyone if I died right before the wedding.

I'm wanting to get started on a new project, so I decided to push the reset switch and just sit on the couch on my birthday and watch movies.  I burned my free seven-day SHUDDER preview I've held onto forever and watched GLORIOUS and ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, the first because an Indiana guy wrote it and the second because so many people have talked about it.  GLORIOUS is funny and original, about a Cthulhu-type monster trapped in a rest stop bathroom, and I'll leave it right there as to why it is called GLORIOUS.  ONE CUT OF THE DEAD is an incredibly meta zombie movie about some people making a zombie movie, and the storyline keeps nesting like Russian dolls.  This is a great, wild movie I'd recommend to anyone for an October watch.

I was going to watch BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION and make it a triple play but I took a nap, these new blood pressure meds take some getting used to.

Been trying to feed my head in other ways too; I finally decided to tackle Grant Morrison's run on DOOM PATROL, mostly because I saw all three volumes in TPB at the public library.  It never struck me as a younger comic book reader but I have wanted to tackle this head trip as an older guy.  It's not like anything else, which is the kind of thing I need to put my eyes on sometimes.

I read a book I could recommend to my subscribers called SLEEPWALK by Dan Chaon.  It's about a mercenary and his loyal dog in a dystopian near-future (struggling to keep up with our real one) who starts to question his life when he finds out he has a daughter.  Our tarnished protagonist rattles through various genres on a number of broken highways, and it's a pretty original read.

I got a Carhartt hoodie for my birthday which finally made me articulate how I'm ready to put this busted-ass summer behind me.  Wishing all of you the best.