Not dead, listening to live Elton John from 1971 when his band had the same configuration as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, but a completely different hairdresser. You don’t have to worry about me as long as I’m listening to Elton John. When I throw on Tom Waits, then the end will surely be near, but old pre-crazy Elton is cheery music, even the sad songs.
My doctor is still practicing, but only online. He sends me a link to a chat site whose name was maybe in a Neal Stephenson novel. The UI of the app is straightforward and professional. There are no filters, so you can’t force the doctor to talk to you while you’re a dog or a wizard or Gritty or whatever. Very trustworthy app that I’m sure will be broken into within weeks. He is wearing a clean shirt, and has a recent haircut, and sits up straight. We all pretended it was a normal doctor’s appointment as hard as we could.
It was the sweats last night that got me on the phone with the doc. Woke myself up three times. Snoring yourself awake happens to all of us, but sweating yourself awake is a bad sign. Doing it three times is an ill omen.
I described my other symptoms to the doctor. That my spleen was bothersome, that my schnoz was cocksnootled, that the cane was twisted up on my brazos. He refused me opiates, and suggested a Covid-19 test. The state is administering them for free at several drive-through locations near my home, but the state I’m talking about is Florida, and so there have been issues with thieves sneaking into people’s trunks while the driver is distracted. And, obviously, alligators have been involved. Florida leads all states in the category of “arguments settled by one party throwing an alligator at the other.”
Some of the food trucks on the farm roads now offer testing, but they just charge ten bucks to take a picture of your dick and give you a thumbs up.
There was also a walk-in clinic half-a-mile from my house charging a hundred bucks, and I contemplated my privilege and asked myself whether I wanted to involve myself with a system nahfuckthat I immediately put on my pants and charged outside waving cash overhead like a captured flag. A q-tip was then shoved into my medulla oblongata. The physician’s assistant pressed on it one way, and I could smell my old bunk in summer camp, and then she shifted it and my eyeballs shut off.
“One, two, three–”
IT’S IN MY MEMORIES, WOMAN!
“–four, five.”
And she withdrew the stick from my brain. I ask if there’s not, say, a blood test for the virus.
“Oh, yes. But we enjoy watching you struggle. Your leg went up and down like a little doggie.”
I thank her for noticing. She refuses me opiates.
The test will be sent to a lab. Or maybe they do it in-house. Or maybe they just throw away the swab and eyeball it? However they do it, pipettes are involved. Can’t do science without pipettes. Results in three-to-five days; until then, strict quarantine.
As far as quarantines go, it’s a teddy bear gig. This is the first plague with WiFi. Used to be you were locked in your house with a Bible and your dick, but now there is a Couch Tour, and that is better. You can also access various pornographies, or have a poor person bring you a pizza. You could even have powerful cannabanoids mailed to you. Those that suffered through the Black Death of Marseille in 1720 couldn’t even get ditch weed mailed to them, so temporal gratitude is in order.
You will be kept updated.
Ooooo . . . . Elton, Lake and Palmer. There’s my Time Sheath Pipedream.
Take Me to the Pictures at an Exhibition
Tarkus Connection
Karn Levon 9: First Impression, Part Two
Lucky Rocket Man
Your Piano Concerto No. 1
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Hope your hooties stop blowfishing and your heebies stop jeebying and your medulla stops oblongating, and that you feel much better soon.
And of course . . .
Benny the Bouncer and the Jets
Keep your Pecker up, and stick on the ice….,.or vice versa
Your most transparent donate campaign to date.
Get better, you brilliant fuck.
Mama Can’t Buy You Love Beach
Don’t Go Taking My Pebble
Captain Fantastic and the Brain Salad Surgery
A Single Manticore
(I Believe In) My Father’s Gun
Fanfare for a Single Man
(You wake up with the sweats. I wake up giggling about Elton, Lake and Palmer songs).
The reality of something like this was surprisingly close, per Sid Smith’s King Crimson bio: “Astonishingly, EG’s Mark Fenwick – without asking Fripp – booked singer/songwriter Elton John to perform the vocal duties for the second King Crimson album. However, once Fripp heard John’s solo albums he put his foot down. despite the cancellation, John pocketed £250 without ever having sung a note or entered a studio with Crimson.”
Sending good vibes your way. We need you, Thoughts.
Wish I had more to offer than good thoughts & positive vibes – but I’m sendin’ as much of those as I can muster.
How many edibles do you suppose it takes to get an alligator wasted … and how could we test their status without cruelty to small dogs, or poor children?