Grave Plots

My parents came into a couple grave plots. (I don't know how.) They're trying to flip them, since they already have spots reserved. They say that the cemetery in question isn't as desirable as it used to be, so they want to unload them fast. Especially since cremation is getting more popular.

My mom on cremation: You don't amount to much. Just a two-pint Ziploc. She dumped her mother's ashes illegally off the Pacific coast, by where the Twilight movies were shot. The remainder was pressed into a bead that she keeps on her Pandora bracelet. (This one aside, she has about $1300 in charms on it.)

Notice

I've come to understand the things I've left at my parents' house, since moving out, as horcruxes. I'll keep them there safe—my old t-shirts and books—in case I'm cut down in the street. (Tho if I was hit by a car tomorrow, this and everything else on my computer would be lost forever.)

This month I had to delete the first dead person from my email contacts: an old boss, aged 66, a Marlboro man. Put into the bin and then the bin emptied.

I received a Google Alert when my grandfather's Obits4Life page went live, since I was listed among the bereft. My inheritance remains obscure. It's like I was left a set of shoe trees, but threw them out, not knowing what they were for.

Old Man Mallicoat

I plan to bald gracefully. I'll keep it real short and see if I can slide by for a couple decades. If it gets too bad, I'll shave it all off and be done with it.

My eye doctor says that, if I keep using computers, my eyes will slowly get worse and worse forever.

My dentist says that I grind my teeth in my sleep, probably due to stress. So now I go to sleep in shorts and a mouthguard like a boxer.

After a weekend in the city, I'll have black snot and my fingers will be swollen red around the nail. I feel like my body is already rotting. Like I'm being fitted for the big & tall in the sky.

For my wake, lay me out on a California king. Run my obituary in the Kansas City Star, my preferred newspaper of record.

Vanity

My desk dictionary memorializes Christopher Columbus as thus: 1451-1506 Ital. navigator; disc. Am. I doubt my legacy will be abbreviated so succinctly.

They think Los Angeles will been underwater in 100 years. I estimate I've eaten 4800 peanut butter sandwiches in my lifetime.

Bell peppers change color from green to yellow or orange and then to red. I suspect this is the original metaphor for traffic lights.

Implicit in everything I write here is the assumption that the world has never ended. Now that it’s been said, I don’t know why that seemed like such a statement to make.