BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I could just as easily have called this Hell House: Welcome To Hell…

I’ll explain that in just a sec. Keep reading. Or don’t. But then you’ll never know the answer…

You see, I was listening to NPR the other day. I do that a lot. Either NPR or CD’s. It’s not that I believe they are completely fair and balanced in their reporting. There is no such organization. Even back when I was learning from Martha Ackmann that the primary goal of the journalist is to be objective and report the news, the professionals out there doing it had biases bleeding through their words. Now, it seems like it’s even worse. Or maybe it’s just that my idealism committed suicide somewhere around my 30th birthday and I was suddenly able to see the emperor’s new clothes for what they really were… or weren’t as the case may be.

However, I’m chasing a whole different chicken with that. Take notice, I said chasing, not choking… Let’s not get the title confused with the prose.

So, anyway, I was listening to NPR and they had an allergist on there who was doing a study about some manner or regional pine tree allergy in the PNW that had gone undiagnosed and untreated in thousands of people over the years. In the process he was giving some basic info about how allergies work, how they form, and how it can be different for certain folks. Like being born with them, or being exposed to an allergen in small amounts over a long period of time – sorta like death by saccharin, if you believe that effed up study.

And, in some cases, a massive exposure to an allergen triggering a reaction that just sticks with you for the rest of forever.

Enter, Hell House…

If you’ve read my previous blogs on the subject of Hell House, then you know that when my father passed, part of his estate was a house that my sister and I now own. With my sis being far and away, the bulk of the duties regarding upkeep have fallen to me. If you want all those gory details, with pictures, just look up the Hell House blogs here on BL.

But back to those damnable fornicating avians and insects…

The previous tenant to whom my father had been renting Hell House was all about plants, and had quite the weed patch going in the exceptionally large back yard. I say weed patch because if a plant isn’t a tree, grass, or something that produces an edible fruit, root, berry, or seed that I would find on my plate during a meal, then as far as I’m concerned it’s a weed.

Now that we’re on the same page… When the tenant moved out we had to do some work to the place before re-renting it. Part of that work involved cleaning up the weed patch, which ended up happening in the fall when everything was going to seed. E K and I spent countless hours one weekend, mowing, digging, chopping, and stuffing dried up, alien kudzuish whatevers into yard barges. The work was hard, sweaty, dirty, nasty, and otherwise unpleasant, but it needed to be done. And, if there’s one thing I can say it’s that E K and I do not run from hard work.

However, by the time we arrived home and I had myself a nice hot shower, something began to happen. My entire body itched, my face turned into a misshapen Murv balloon, and breathing was no longer a concept my body could wrap said balloon head around. Fortunately, a healthy dose of Benadryl re-enabled my ability to process oxygen, but it didn’t even take the edge off my case of the miserables.

Not long after that I heard the Doc on NPR.

I’d never had allergies before. Now I do. Every time the avians, insects, and weeds engage in their inter-species orgy of public fornication – spring and fall – I turn into a dwarf with an identity crisis. I can’t decide if my name is Itchy, Sneezy, Stuffy, Snotty, or Achey.

So, Hell House: 157, Merp: 0

Oh well… at least I’m not allergic to sex.

More to come…

Murv

With a title like that to start this off I can imagine you might be thinking, “Oh no, not another End Of Days blog. Has Sellars bought into the whole end of the world prophecy nonsense all because of a earthquake?”

Come on… You know me better than that.

However, could we be talking about the end of something else? Because of the changes in tech, newspapers are folding everywhere, and I don’t mean just so they can be laid upon a table. Columnists are penning their farewell letters for page 7D – or 2A, 6F, ad nauseum – as they retire, or go in search of different outlets for their creativity. In some cases though I have to wonder if it is more that they have just run out of things to say.

I’ve been blogging, twice weekly, here on Brainpan Leakage for several years now. It began sporadically, often times just being announcements about where I would be on book tours or something of that sort. Then it grew into a public debriefing about the places I’d been on said travels. Before long it turned into a regular “column,” so to speak. A venting of my woes, a story from my past, a story from my future – those were always the hardest to write. And yes, an occasional blip about where I would be, where I had been, or special sale on books about which I had been made aware.

But now, sitting here this morning, I have to wonder… Is this the end? Blogging takes work. It takes energy. It takes time. Over the years I cannot say that I have been able to measure any appreciable gain in book sales because of my blogging, so what does it get me? I haven’t received any awards (the kind with cash prizes attached, I mean). No movie deals… No television deals… Not even a bag of Cheezy Poofs or Snacky Cakes…

Moreover, sex certainly has not been any better because of it (of course, that’s a whole ‘nother blog, and by that, I don’t mean blog entry, I mean whole ‘nother blog and it would definitely be NSFW, but I digress…)

So with all of that in mind, why go on? Perhaps it is time time to plug the leak and skulk back off into the sunset… Maybe, just maybe, I’ve said all I’ve had to say. Perhaps there’s nothing left in my noggin’ that is funny, poignant, or even blog worthy.

Or… I suppose it could just be that I have a really wicked sinus headache this morning…

More to come…

Murv