Sunday, October 12, 2008

the boney life

[Canadian Thanksgiving morning. Palinode and Schmutzie are in bed, embracing inertia. Outside the sky is gathering its weather, but they don't care. They're ignorant.]

Schmutzie: I think we have a pretty good life. Do you think we have a good life?

Palinode: All I know is, if you want a good life, you need a skeleton.

Schmutzie: That is SO true.

Palinode: Once your skeleton falls out, that's it. Your life sucks. In fact, it's over.

Schmutzie: I think it's more that we fall off our skeletons.

Palinode: So that's life? We're just along for the ride until our skeletons buck us off, and then we're dead?

Schmutzie: Not necessarily.

Palinode: I think you're necessarily dead when you reach bonelessness.

Schmutzie: There are people born without bones. You just don't hear about it.

Palinode: Goddamn liberal media.

Schmutzie: People are born without bones sometimes and they live.

Palinode: But not well.

Schmutzie: No.

Palinode: In fact, they live so poorly that it would be more accurate to call them dead.

Schmutzie: No.

Palinode: And all these boneless people are going around dead, always asking for some sticks or rebar to prop them up.

Schmutzie: That sounds like a terrible life.

Palinode: Death is the worst life of all. Especially when you don't have any sticks.

Schmutzie: I can't tell if this conversation is more gross or stupid.

Palinode: That's why in some cultures, they place sticks in the hands of the dead. So they'll be presentable in the afterlife.

Schmutzie: I'm going to hit myself in the head until I go back to sleep.

2 comments:

Waffle said...

So I should avoid getting reincarnated as a jellyfish presumably? Vishnu, take a note please.

Also, what is your position on exoskeletons. Fun, or not so much? I have always thought that life as a giant stag beetle might be entertaining.

Her Bad Mother said...

skeletons are good, but skin is also good. as is muscle. but you're right that absence of skeleton would make a lot of things difficult. like typing, for example.