Sickness and Napkins
if marcel marceau actually lived inside a box I don't think his act would be considered nearly as funny. People who knew him would tell him, "Marcel! Desist! You're only forcing me to think about the one circumstance in my life that is in fact utterly destroying my soul!" And you know what he would do? He would shrug. Or possibly give people the finger. Or spit. Mimes have few avenues with which to defend the validity of the their art.
I'm sick today and therefore I thought I would share a couple thoughts with you. Whoever you are. 
My girlfriend's family descended on my blog recently in a spate of juvenile copraphilia, filling my comments section with the vilest one word posts imaginable. There were no explanations. Just foulness, spurted across the page. Gentle reader, if you were offended, I can only say that I was too.
I feel stupid asking this. But do you remember V?
It was a made for Television movie about Aliens taking over our planet and harvesting our bodies for food and our water for drink. It came out in 1983 and it dominated playground culture at my grade school even more than ET or The Dark Crystal. I was seven or eight at the time (I think it came out in the fall of 1983), and I'd only been at St. Roch Catholic School for a year or so and the games we played a recess really made me aware of the pecking order involved at our school. The choleric hero of the show, Michael Donovan, was invariably played by Ryan P. who was in fact a latter day incarnation of the fictional character, Jack, from Lord of the Flies. The other 
characters were doled out- and if someone in the class was sick I had an outside chance of getting to be the black guy. Otherwise I was stuck playing the Robert Englund character. Who was in fact not even a human being. He was turncoat, a fifth columnist, who liked to guzzle hedgehogs in peace. And this was a year before the first Nightmare on Elm Street so I couldn't even have known that I was being force to identify with a child murdering knife fingered former janitor.
Accoring to Wikipedia (cited here without permission)
The story remains a Nazi allegory, right down to the Swastika-like emblem used by the Visitors. Later, throughout the TV series, the Resistance Network's TV news bulletins report stories of erstwhile enemies uniting in common cause against the alien occupiers, such as black and white South Africans (the series was produced when South Africa was still under apartheid). In addition, direct figure analogies are used, such as the senior Visitor scientist, Diana, who is a direct analogue of Dr. Josef Mengele.
However I chiefly remember it for the baby with the snake tongue. And lizard masks that lived under human masks. And also a lot of really teased hair among the Alien vixens. And I put it to you- if you remember it- was this the greatest mini-series of your childhood? And did it tip the balance of power on the asphalt at recess?
Lastly. I sat at a diner and scribbled on a napkin.
Thanks to technology you can now see what I wrote.
Sickness
on days like today
I explore everything
at a hound dog's pace
Sounds
Smells
the mind allows nothing to be
known.
(I know the staff at this
diner. I know their politics.)
But now, ill, I keep my hat
on. Feign Foreigness. And
Dispose myself to the great
mysteries of our time.
why is the sugar dispenser
sticky. Who thought to put
Mineral water on the table.
The pen releases controlled
Mess into the napkin.
While my nose runs free.
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