Drain Snakes and Riders

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a stranger with the subject line “seeking skilled female fighter for private fighting session.” The email requested a female with a sadistic streak to fight the male sender and then listed several stipulations, remuneration (including hotel room, flights, etc.). Now, I will fully confess that when something bizarre and off putting like this happens in my life I immediately work it into the comedy routine that I am constantly writing in my head for an audience of one. The next thing I did was take a screenshot of it to share with my friends.

After writing the previous post about not dealing with my sister’s death, I stopped in to see my brother, probably craving some of that family trademark dark humour. We laughed a lot. My brother is a very funny man when he isn’t being moody, mean, or annoying (in other words, an older brother). During our conversation I showed him the aforementioned email. The friends I had sent screenshots to said things you would expect, “that is bizarre” and “how do you think he got your email address?”, then obviously made jokes about the money. My brother’s first words were, “this guy is too picky”. He then went over the stipulations that I should demand to be removed from the contract (especially the part about not putting the guy in the hospital) and told me I needed to find out what part of Florida this was supposed to take place. “Tell him Miami, everyone should go to Miami once. Not that fucking Disney area, forget about it”. He also told me the money offered was not worth the requested 90 minutes and advised me to give the guy an hour. First, though, I was to find out what hotel he was booking me into. We parted smiling, me forgetting all the other, very funny things we talked to each other about and him going home to finish working on my tour rider.

All media inquiries please contact Lisa’s manger brother, if he doesn’t have a plumbing call to attend to.

How to Not Deal With Death

With another month of too many celebrity deaths I’ve been doing that middle aged taking stock of my life. Since there isn’t very much inventory there to take stock of my thoughts have turned to the way I can completely wallow over the demise of a stranger whose work I admire (this is a new development for me, Bowie was the first celeb death that I reacted to with anything more than, “that’s unfortunate” and it hit uncharacteristically hard. I still have no idea what that is about), but expect myself to deal with losses that are close to me in a couple of days. My sister died in June after nearly two years of battling with cancer. I know that sounds like a cliché, but if you have ever watched a loved one terrified of dying and struggling every day just to sit up and pretend to eat, it feels like a fucking war.

We knew she was dying but hoped, became hopeless, hoped again and as with everything else, hid our despair behind our collective dark sense of humour. That’s how we roll, dodge and get out of the way of life in my family. Not to be one-sided, we are equally flippant about the good things. To this day, my immediate reaction to a compliment is to make a self-deprecating remark because I am much more comfortable with an insult and even with those, I often try to get a cutting remark about myself in before the other person can.

My sister, who was slipping in and out of lucidity in the last few days of her life, still got in some punchlines There was a moment when, speaking slowly to her, almost like you would a child, trying to reach her through the Ativan and morphine haze, my brother-in-law explained that oncologist was going to turn her case file over to a doctor closer to her, as at this point she was living with my niece in the city. Holding the sippy cup of sport drink she had just been given she asked, “and is that doctor the one who told you I would drink warm juice?” My big sis went down swinging.

I thought I had adequately mourned her and was moving forward. I cried the day my sister died and at her funeral, of course I did. For a few minutes, then I forced myself to stop and started trying to take care of the people around me because at that moment having no dark jokes to hide behind, I hid behind being useful.

Two days after her celebration of life I was back at work, trying to catch up on what had not been done in my absence, and the growing list of overdue assignments because, with a dying sister, I decided it would be a great idea to go back to University part time. Shut down the heart, we’re relying solely on the brain to get us through this.

A couple of weeks ago, ridiculously wallowing over the death of another celebrity stranger by revisiting his back catalogue I came across one that I had not heard before, “Life Becomes Noises”, Sean Hughes’ show about the death of his father from cancer. Lying in my bed in the dark listening (alone, obviously) I laughed and sighed in equal measures until that last fucking line, at which point I had a break down as the heart insisted on having its turn.

I’m not taking any courses this term and I got laid off from that job – which is fine, I hated it and the layoff was a tremendous relief - so now I have a lot of time to myself to think and feel and apparently pretend that the loss I am mourning is that of someone I’ve never met because I still feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach every time I must refer to my sister in the past tense.

My Google, My Self

Yesterday, after I posted, I checked the blog to ensure the formatting was ok and discovered there were advertisements for dating sites on the page. What bothered me most is those are exactly the type of ads I would place on a page like mine to annoy the blogger. This indicates that Google algorithms might actually get me.

I must rethink my entire online experience in light of this revelation. Perhaps I should start reading those "trending news" alerts that I have been automatically dismissing without opening because, according to Google, I am craving updates about the breakdown of Ewan McGregor's marriage every hour. 

What other signs have I been missing? Have algorithms been holding the key to my happiness all the time and I've been ignoring them like a fool? I better order those "Prepper" and "Prison Fit" books Amazon was recommending, but I blithely mocked. Maybe I very much do like k-os the way iTunes insists, and I've been lying to myself all these years.

Then there is Twitter, which keeps recommending I follow Justin Bieber. Fuck You Twitter!

Irredeemably Me

I decided, in a moment of weakness, to give Tinder a go. At my age. It was fun for about 30 minutes and then it began to remind me of something from my past – 90’s chat rooms. Some people have fond memories of those old chat rooms, but I could never connect with anyone on them. I’m a silly, old fashioned person who goes outside and doesn’t think a text can replace sitting in a room with someone. If Tinder is truly the app of hook ups, either mine is broken or I’m irresistible to shut ins because so far it has been a high volume of messages back and forth, and then as soon as they write “you’re awesome” I don’t hear from them again. They are really missing out too because I've been described as an animal in bed. Well, I'm a method actor, so if you insist on dressing me up like an alpaca...

It was suggested to me that being a karate instructor might be intimidating to a man of a certain age. When I look at a middle-aged man with a middle spread I see a good looking, lanky guy screaming to get out, break up with me because my best friend is the kind of girl he always imagined himself with, go on one date with her, leave her at the bus stop and then spend the next 30 years complaining to me about each other (I love you both).

Thinking about trying to connect with someone online puts me back to those awkward, no one has a clue what I am on about, experiences of those chat rooms. I found that I wasn't even using Tinder to meet someone, it was just a platform for writing. Didn't I used to have a blog for that?

A lot of press I have seen this week has really annoyed me about how single adults are portrayed. It is still assumed that anyone over 30 and single is a lonely fucker living alone due to some irredeemable character flaw rather than, I don’t know, that they might prefer it because not everyone wants exactly what you have. Though I suppose someone as irredeemably flawed as myself would say that, wouldn’t they? At least there is gender equality in the bias against single people. Cheers to progress.