Numbing Neti Nose News

So today I was walking into work after I had gone to the Barnes & Noble bookstore at lunch in the rain. Did I mention it is raining again? Did I mention I feel as if I live in a car wash? Anyway, as I approached the ol' brick building, my glasses misted, I was slightly sad about the prospect of going back into work when all I really wanted was to find a comfy spot all alone where I could start reading the new book I'd just bought. But no, I had to push through the revolving door and go upstairs and make believe I fit in for several hours, and as I thought this through the following phrase popped into my head, the one with the still overgrown and Lyle Lovett-like hair:  Numbingly unfulfilled. That's how work makes me feel these days, numbingly unfulfilled, like a toy robot who can only perform one or two tricks, I go through my routine in a quiet but listless malcontent funk. Really, it either needs to stop raining for awhile or I need to find another job. In the meantime I will hang onto this phrase because it is the most descriptive and creative thing I've thought about all week. Numbingly unfulfilled. I like it. Maybe I'll have my name legally changed to that.

 

Oh speaking of books, I finally finished the endless book "Loving Frank" this morning on the train, all 350–plus pages of this plodding tome. Thank God. I placed it on my bookshelf at work this morning, never to be read again. It looks very impressive there beside my copies of Revolutionary Road and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. Anyway I got a new book that I started this afternoon and I am already feeling the first pangs of a new-found love. The book is another memoir (natch) and is called "This Boy's Life" written by a guy named Tobias Wolff.  I actually purchased it because years ago La Sooze and I saw the movie made out of this book and I loved it, mainly because it starred Robert DeNiro who, let's be honest, is probably my all-time fave actor along with perhaps Ronald Colman, Montgomery Clift and the incomprable Ida Lupino. Anyway DeNiro plays this kid's step dad in the movie and he's a super duper prick and he keeps yelling at the kid by saying the following: "shut your pie hole." How could you not like a movie that uses the line "shut your pie hole?" You could not. Anyway I read the first few pages of the book tonight on the way home on the crowded subway with a bald-headed guy in a tan trench coat pressing against my left arm and I am feeling it - the book, not the bald guy. In fact as much as I did not love Frank I may love Tobias Wolff. This is what is terrific about books, you toss one aside and grab another until you find one you like and you never have to make excuses because reading is completely self-governing. No one is quizzing me on chapters.  I am thrilled that I have a book to love.

 

Also, tonight I bought a Neti Pot. I shit you not. I got it at Bed, Bath and Beyond which is  a very strange store, high class kitsch for your bathroom and kitchen, which is precisely what this country of ours has needed for years.  A Neti Pot for the uninitiated is a cute little tea pot, short and stout, that you fill with warm salt water and then you jam the spout up your nostril and you pour the warm water through one nose hole and it pours out the other as if you have a hole in your head. It looks very dignified, I assure you, though I suspect it's not the kind of thing you want to do in front of a potential beau on your first date. Anyway this fabulous little tea pot flushes out the ol' nose cleaning it out of, um, shall we say, debris. It is a yoga thing, this Neti Pot and according to the trusty Internet has been used in India for many a day.  Indians are apparently always shoving tea pots up their snouts. It's supposed to help stop sinus problems and colds, and now La Sooze (who btw looked very cute today in a little wool skirt and boots) tells me she has read that it helps prevent the H1N1, or swine, or "Heiney" flu. So too does Listerne mouthwash a few times per day, apparently. I bought some of that today as well.  I have not tried the Neti yet, btw but plan to flush the ol' schnoz before I hit the Country Squire tonight. So why did I purchase this little whiffer washer? Because I have been feeling crappy the past two days and of course these days when you sneeze you know you will be dead from swiney heiney flu in a matter of days.  Anyway La Sooze and I had talked about the Neti awhile ago and when it came up in convo tonight I immediately ran to the Bed, Bath and Beyond and pushed my way past 100-thread count sheets and pedicure sets to the pots. Somehow I feel better already.      

 

I had other stuff to tell you tonight but my Neti Pot is calling. Remind me to tell you about PriceLine and TripAdvisor tomorrow because I have criticism for that shill William Shatner. In fact I would like to punch his fat face in.

 

But that is for tomorrow. Tonight I close with a joke that was forwarded to me today by my Cousin Nancy in Connecticut. The joke actually had a picture embedded in it on the e-mail she sent but the picture did not bring anything additional to the joke table so I will leave it out.

 

Oh the joke has a name, it is called Itlian Women Are Tough, and it goes like this:

 

An elderly Italian man lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite ravioli wafting up the stairs.

He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed.  Gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen, where if not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven for there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were hundreds of his favorite ravioli.

Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of love from his wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

He threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in a crumpled posture. His parched lips parted, the wondrous taste of the ravioli was already in his mouth.

With a trembling hand he reached up to the edge of the table, when suddenly he was smacked with a wooden spoon by his wife.

"Va fanculo!" she said. "Questi sono per il funerale."

Translation - F-off! - those are for the funeral.