You've all been on the edge of your seats wondering, "Where in the world is Prunella Jones?" while humming that Carmen Sandiego song, right?
Okay, probably not. (Curse you!)
Where have I been, though? Was I out taking the virginity of all three of the Jonas Brothers?
Nah, I already did that back in January.
Actual photo of me with the Jonas Brothers, hours before I made them into men. Well, that is, I made two of them into men. The prettiest one turned out to be strictly dickly, unfortunately.
Was I out partying?
This hat is much more comfortable than it looks.
Usually that's a safe bet, but nope, not this week.
Well then, obviously I must have been hanging out in a creepy old hotel in Colorado with my twin sister, Mary Kate, wearing fabu ball gowns and practicing bulimia, right?
Actually, we are not bulimic! Bulimia is sooo yesterday. We are anorexic. Duh!
Surprisingly the answer is no. I haven't been feeling well enough to do anything much -well, besides play around with Blingee - I have been sick as shit. I think I may have even had (cue the scary music) THE SWINE FLU!
I'm not sure if I did or not since I didn't go to a doctor. But, damn, was I ever sick! Holy shit! I could barely get out of bed most of the week.
It started on Friday. I was feeling a little...off. Not bad, but not so good as usual. My energy was really low.
On Saturday I woke up with a sore throat, but I figured I could power through, so I swallowed a ton of Vitamin C, loaded my pockets with zinc lozenges, and went on to Earl's.
Attention Classy Earl's customers: I'd like to apologize for coughing in your faces like that. Hopefully all the alcohol you guys were guzzling killed any flu germs that may have drifted your way.
Also, to the Asian gentleman with the Buddy Holly glasses: I was just joking when I said that my spitting a zinc lozenge on your lap cost extra. I did it accidentally while trying to suppress a cough and tried to play that off to cover my embarrassment. Thanks for the extra twenty though!
By Sunday morning I realized that I could be dying, so I took to my bed and stayed there. It really sucked.
I looked up the symptoms of Swine Flu on the CDC website. Basically, it's just the same as the regular flu, headache, fever, sore throat, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing (lots and lots of coughing.) I also had a bit of runny nose and some nausea. It could have just been regular flu, I guess. If so, it was really hideous one. I hardly ever get sick usually, and when I do I'm able to shake it off after a day or two, but this - holy crap! This was horrible!
At one point I actually called a friend and asked her to get in touch with Dr. Kevorkian for me. He's out of jail now, right?
Anyway, I'm glad to be feeling better. Still not 100% but much, much better than yesterday. Hallelujah and praise almighty Xenu!
Bad as it was though, I gotta say I had some really amazing ideas while feverish. Super genius stuff! Like, it occurred to me that once we get this cloning stuff down pat, we should totally clone Jesus. Wouldn't that be cool? If we did that, we would - in essence - be becoming gods ourselves by bringing the messiah back to the world on our terms instead of waiting for God to get around to it. Can you imagine? The fundies would go apeshit! Especially when Jesus told them all to quit being such hypocritical cocks. Oh man, I would love that so much! I'd spend the end of days laughing my ass off.
"But Pru," you are probably thinking, "we'd need some of Jesus' DNA in order to clone him. We don't have any."
Yeah, I know. That bugged me too. Then it hit me. We could use The Shroud of Turin. If it's the real deal we should have no problem getting DNA from it. And if we can't, then that would prove once and for all it's a fake. Good idea, huh?
While in my feverish state, I also decided that we should clone Rasputin. Mostly because I was a history major and have always been intrigued by his hypnotic eyes and rags to riches to freaky death story.
Okay, that last part is a lie. I really want to clone Rasputin because he was rumored to have a twelve inch dick which he used to fuck the ladies of the Russian court all night long. Supposedly he could go for hours and hours. Therefore it is crucially important that we clone this guy. I need him to be my sex slave.
Not that I wouldn't welcome Jesus as a sex slave too. Of course, I'd love that! What girl wouldn't? But I figured he'd be too busy helping the sick and poor and casting the money changers from the temple and stuff. He probably wouldn't have enough time to get busy with me. :(
Anyway, one of them really needs to rise again, don't you agree? And by them, I mean either Jesus or Raputin's giant schlong.
I know what I'd vote for. Which would you pick?
So to summarize, the swine flu (or whatever it was) really, really sucked ass. I'm very glad I survived it. And, we need to ferry some of that stimulus money to a cloning program STAT!
Growing up, my brother and I were pretty good kids. We did as we were told, got decent grades, and didn't fight too much. At least, there was no physical fighting. We never hit each other or even had very many real disagreements, but we did enjoy verbally needling each other with the worst insults we could think of. We could (and did) do that all day long, much to my mom's chagrin.
Since cussing was forbidden in our house, we couldn't just call each other an "assbitch" or a "shitbrain" like most siblings do. We weren't even supposed to say "shut up" because my dad thought of that as swearing. So we were forced to be a little more creative, and looking back, my parents should have just let us cuss. Then they'd have probably been spared all the offensive crap we came up with instead, like blasphemy.
For some reason we got into the habit of constantly telling each other that Jesus hated the other one. Man, that was fun. I can't remember why it started. Probably because we both loathed church, particularly the Sunday school my mother dragged us to every week. I especially hated that class, and would spend the entire hour arguing with and haranging the teacher with all sorts of sacrilegious questions.
"Why should I worship God when he was such a jerk?" I'd rant. "I mean, look how he treated poor Job? And turning Lot's wife into a pilar of salt just for daring to gaze back at her home was way harsh. If you think about it, why should anyone fear the devil? He never killed anyone, unlike God who would happily smite entire villages just for not praising him enough. It seems to me that Satan was the unsung hero of the bible for being the only one who refused to put up with God's abuse of power!"
I'm sure that teacher detested me.
Anyway, my brother and I came to really enjoy trading blasphemous insults. One of our favorites was telling each other that Jesus hated him. This had the added bonus of upsetting our mother too.
"Hey, guess what? Jesus hates you."
"Jesus called. He left you a message," we'd say while sticking up a middle finger.
"Guess how much Jesus hates you?" Spread arms wide in crucifixion pose. "This much!"
Poor guy, probably doesn't find that joke too amusing.
My mom, who was quite the churchgoer back then, was horrified.
"Stop it right now!" she'd hiss at us, looking around nervously as though worried that God would strike someone dead for our heresy. "Don't say things like that!"
Naturally that just egged us on more.
We then took to making up songs about how much Jesus hated the other one, usually sung to the tune of whatever cheesy song was playing on the radio at that time. I've forgotten most of them, but I do remember one he sang about me that went like this:
Sung to the tune of "Sussudio" by Phil Collins
There's this girl with a flat behind who's stupid all the time p-p-pruudio oh oh Now Jesus don't even know her name but he hates her just the same p-p-pruudio oh oh
I retaliated with this:
Sung to the tune of "We Built This City" by Starship
Well Jesus really hates you, especially your face and God himself agrees, that you're a big disgrace Knee deep in the hoopla, you make them want to puke all three of them together - Father, Son, and Holy Spook!
But our hands down favorite thing to do was question each others paternal heritage, which we did constantly. We loved to speculate on what sort of disgusting mutant had raped our mother in order to produce such a freak. A typical exchange would usually go something like this:
"You have a butthole in your chin."
"So do you."
"No, mine is more of a handsome cleft. Yours is definitely a cavernous butthole, and it's also slightly off center, which points to especially low quality breeding. Your father was most likely a mouth-breathing carnie who raped mom at the county fair."
"Well, your father is obviously a dwarf. Or possibly an elf. Or maybe both. You were probably conceived from the sperm of a hundred little people when mom was gang banged at a munchkin convention. You are a dwarf elf and this is your theme song.
Slightly under 4 feet high with a ruler for a nose and three glass eyes so hideous he'll make you cry it's Dwarf Elf! Dwarf Elf!" I'd sing.
"Oh yeah," he'd counter. "is that what the voices are telling you today? It's so sad to watch your mental deterioration as the schizophrenia slowly overtakes your brain. It's inevitable, you know, since mom was raped by that demented guy who covers himself in tin foil and impregnated with you. Soon you'll be joining your real father down at the supermarket parking lot, babbling to everyone who walks by about how the CIA developed killer bees in a lab while trying to assassinate Castro. You are already starting to grow some bitchin hobo whiskers just like your pop. And once he makes you your own tin foil hat you'll be the spitting image of him."
If my dad happened to overhear one of these exchanges he would get upset. Although not, as you might think, at the suggestion that he wasn't our father, or that his wife had been gang raped by various trolls and lunatics. Instead he would be pissed off at the cussing.
"Did you just say the B word?" he'd yell. "Go to your room right now!"
My parents got used to these daily exchanges, I guess. We never really got in that much trouble for them. Except for this one day when we drove our mother over the brink.
I can't remember what we said that set her off. I'd like to think it was the time I told my brother that the real reason Jesus hated him was because God came down from Heaven one day after getting drunk on sacrificial wine and raped our mother while disguised as Phil Collins. And because God's sperm had been contaminated with Phil Collin's DNA, the resulting child - my brother - was a dwarfy idiot with bad musical taste and a propensity towards early balding, whom the angels referred to as Jesus 2: Electric Boogaloo.
"Look Jesus," they'd elbow him and smirk. "Here comes your retarded brother lil' Jesus "Shabba Doo" Shrimpstone. Wow, you must be so embarrassed to be related to that spaz!"
I'd like to think it was that one that drove our mother over the edge, but I can't really remember if it was or not. But lemme tell you, I'll never forget what happened next.
My mom, who must have been in the laundry room, came charging into the kitchen where we were washing the dishes while taunting one another, screaming angrily at the top of her lungs.
"Stop it! Stop it at once! I can't stand it anymore!" she shouted, her face the color of a tomato. "You children are horrible! Absolutely horrible!"
Then she snatched up a damp dish towel and began flogging us with it while screaming about how horrible we were.
That was a bit surprising because she'd never smacked us before, but not really alarming. The wet towel slaps didn't hurt much. No, the really alarming part was that she did all of this while not wearing any pants! No underwear either, just totally naked on the bottom. She was wearing a shirt, though.
I guess she'd been doing laundry and thrown her pants and undies in? Whatever the reason, it was really disconcerting to have her yelling and smacking us with towels while her furburger was totally on display. We were pretty shocked.
And when I say furburger, I mean it literally. It was obvious that my mom didn't believe in using a razor down there. Her bush was positively sasquatchian.
(I know sasquatchian is not a real word. I just made it up to try to describe the hairiness of my mom's pubes. It did kinda look like she had Bigfoot in a head lock.)
My poor brother didn't know where to look. "Mommy, please put on some pants!" he pleaded, while trying to shield his eyes.
By that time she was in a frenzy and kept whipping us with the towel and yelling that we needed to be taught a lesson, and she was going to tell our dad to beat us with a belt when he got home.
Like I said, it was shocking. My mom was usually pretty modest. Not that she'd freak out if you saw her undressed, but she was never one to walk around naked or anything, especially not in front of my brother. We just stood there open mouthed and gaping, unable to believe what was happening.
Then, just as she began winding down, the absurdity of the situation struck me and I started laughing my ass off, which made my brother lose it too. Our laughter fired mom up again and she grabbed another dish towel so she could double flog us as we rolled around on the floor laughing.
"How....dare....you....disrespectful....horrible...." she panted in between whippings. I honestly tried to stop and get a hold of myself, but every time I looked up and saw that giant bush in between her petite little legs staring me in the face, I lost it again and cackled even louder. My brother laughed silently, shoulders shaking and shaking until he hiccuped.
"That's it!" My mom finally screamed. "Get out of my house, both of you! Get out now! I don't want to see you again until you learn some respect for God!" With that she threw the towels at us and stalked off. We got up to leave, but the sight of her angry little bare ass wiggling as she marched up the stairs set us off yet again. By the time we made it outside to the driveway we were clutching our stomachs in pain.
You know how it feels when you laugh so hard you kinda strain your stomach muscles? And it starts to hurt really bad, but even then you can't stop laughing? That's the kind of pain I'm talking about.
We spent the rest of the day outside on the grass, blaming each other for driving mom insane and bursting into fits of uncontrollable giggling that nearly made us gag, until she called us in for dinner. My mother seemed to be over it by then and never referred to the incident again.
If you ask her about it now, she claims not to remember ever doing anything like that and claims I'm making it all up. I know I didn't hallucinate this, though, because anytime I feel like needling my brother all I have to do is hum a few bars of the Primus song "Winona's Big Brown Beaver" while he's taking a drink. He ends up spitting and choking every time.
My mom has never understood why we nicknamed her Winona. She thinks this song is dumb.
Last night was trippy. My back was hurting, so I took half of a Vicodin at 9 PM and sort of putzed around in a happy little cloud until midnight when I went to bed. Then I had a panic attack.
Ugh, I haven't had one of those in ages. What happened was this – I was lying there under the covers listening to some music, eyes half closed and dreamy, when I started to experience a bit of cotton mouth, you know, very dry - so I got up to get a glass of water. I was just standing at the sink, sleepily filling the glass from the fawcett when it occurred to me that my throat could close up and I wouldn't be able to breathe. I'd seen that happen to a patient on one of those reality medical shows and it looked like an awful way to go. The doctors had to cut a hole in the person's neck to open up his airway but he'd still died. My heart began to pound in alarm at the thought that it might happen to me. In fact, it seemed entirely possible that I was having an allergic reaction at that moment.
Now I knew it was a silly. If I were going to have an allergic reaction it would have been immediately after taking the Vic, not three hours later, but you know how panic attacks are. (If you don't consider yourself lucky.)
I could picture it happening so vividly it was almost real - the horrifying feeling of my throat swelling up tighter and tighter, the desperate gasping for air, the frantic fumbling for the cell phone to call 911 and not being able to find it (I always misplace that sucker) and finally collapsing on the floor and dying, with my hands clawing my neck and my eyes bugging out of my head. Gah! Damn immagination! My heart was racing and my breath became ragged and a horrible feeling of doom descended on me.
"Doom, doom, doom," my brain bleated over and over, and the room became a bit spinny and I nearly fell.
But my rational mind recognized this as merely an anxiety attack, so I put my head between my knees and took deep breaths and told myself I didn't have time for this bullshit and it went away a few moments later. Freaky. They are so awful.
Afterwards, I got back in bed and started thinking about prayer. A panicky friend once told me that she prayed during her attacks, and she found that it helped hers to go away quickly. That led to me thinking about the time my grandma taught me the proper way to pray when I was a little kid. She showed me how to kneel in front of my bed and put my hands in the steeple position and recite this little ditty:
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Now I'm sure she meant this as a comforting thing as most people find comfort in prayer, but it terrified me. I spent a lot of time analyzing those lines as I was wont to do as a child. They made me extremely uneasy. I mean, if you break it down it's not really very soothing.
Now I lay me down to sleep --- okay this line was fine since it was true, although I never really liked going to sleep as a kid. I had terrible fears of being attacked by monsters, or possibly having a freezing cold, demonic hand reach out from under the bed and grasp my ankle and suck me down. Plus, it was just so boring to lie in bed.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep --- wait a minute, what exactly was I authorizing here? Was this really a good idea? I wasn't so sure. God seemed like a mean bully from the stories I read in my children's bible. He made a flood and killed everyone but Noah and some animals! He turned Lot's wife in a pillar of salt just for looking back at her old home! And he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden just for eating fruit from a forbidden tree. How unfair! Why did he put the tree of knowledge there if he didn't want them eating from it? The Sunday school teacher never did answer that one satisfactorily.
I knew I'd have gone straight for the tree. No snake would have been neccessary to tempt me. I was always getting into trouble for stuff like that.
After seeing the movie Star Wars, I began to picture God as looking like the Emperor, all shadowy with his face half hidden. Did I really want him keeping my soul? Heck no!
If I should die before I wake --- I'm convinced that these words are what initially started off my panic attacks. They set off gong sized bells of alarm in me. You mean I might actually die while I was sleeping? What the fuck? Why then were adults always poo pooing my fears of being killed by monsters during the night? Apparently it wasn't so far fetched.
I pray the Lord my soul to take – This was also disturbing. I pictured Jesus lumbering into my room with a hobo sack full of other people's souls, grinning dementedly at me as he prepared to pluck mine. And then what would he do with it? I knew my chances of getting into heaven were dubious at best, and besides, the way my grandma described the afterlife - full of choirs of angels playing harps and singing praises unto the lord as they flew around gold lined streets - well, frankly it sounded really boring. Almost as dull as church which was tortuously dull except for the part in Sunday school when we got to eat donut holes.
I knew I'd scream and fight Jesus if he tried to take my soul and he'd get pissed off and end up throwing me into the gaping jaws of Hell. Is it any wonder that I've had life long insomnia?
Even now that prayer strikes me as creepy. It didn't take long for me to substitute my own prayer. It went like this:
Dear God,
Please don't kill me while I sleep.
Thank you.
Your friend,
Prunella
(Although I just put the "your friend" part in there to butter him up, I was still terrified of him. Religion depressed me as a kid because I was convinced there was no way I'd ever be able to get into heaven unless my mom and grandma could persuade the angels to let me in. Otherwise I was screwed.)
I'm still not much for organized religion - none of them appeal much - but I do sort of believe in some higher power. Nowadays when I try imagining God I see him as looking more like Obi-Wan-Kenobi. The old Obi-Wan that is, not the hunky, Ewan McGregor version. (That would lead to blasphemous and improper thoughts!)
Yes, I am a huge Star Wars geek, thanks very much.
Anyway, maybe for the next panic attack I'll try praying. I know just how to start it off:
