Political Downfalls and Holes In Cheese

Rumsfeld's was not the only downfall yesterday.

I toppled down a flight of steps. And it was political!

Some asinine city council candidate had left a bag of trail mix on those steps, a "thank you" for letting her put up a campaign sign in my front yard. Who thinks about scanning the front steps for random bags of trail mix when you're racing out of the house?

Not me.

Bam!

It was a peculiar sensation, falling. Remembering not to try and brace myself with my right hand (that way lies wrist fractures.) Tai kwon do training from 20 years back guiding my body – you try to land and roll on your shoulder. Not as easy to come down on concrete as it is on a mat – I almost bit through my upper lip.

I sat up. The adrenalin left me shaking but numb.

"This isn't so bad," I thought. I imagine that's what a lot of people think when they're sitting in the front seat of their totaled car. My mouth was bleeding profusely. I was wearing a white shirt. I was worried that the blood would leave an indelible stain on my white shirt; I wanted to scurry inside and look for my Tide stain stick. It was very important that my bloodstained shirt be white again; if anything, it needed to be whiter, more virginal and pristine than it was before the accident took place.

But I couldn't move.

I sat there trembling like that for five minutes before my legs would obey me.

I could feel nerve impulses that I supposed was my body in pain, but I didn't recognize them as pain, they were Morse code from some alien planet.

An extremely odd sensation.

Very bruised right rotator cuff this morning, a mouth that only Frankenstein would want to kiss and, of course, regret (because if I'd known that Nancy Selfridge, the city council candidate, was so dumb she'd leave stuff on the steps instead of in the perfectly visible mailbox, I never would have voted for her, let alone allow her to take over my front lawn for two weeks.)

But I suppose I'm lucky. No permanent damage.

Rummy may not be so lucky if Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) gets his way.

Yesterday was just a baaaaad day. Cirque du Méprise is crashing through its last two weeks on the road but I haven't heard from anybody there in over a week, not since my last tense phone call from JDK. This is just bad management. I haven't been able to pitch the circus successfully since Oklahoma City and while I don't think this is my fault – I mean, the circus comes to town: not a story. The circus installs a miniature circus at the neighborhood Boys & Girls Club on display while the circus is in town: a story. The circus stages "parade" of ultra-cool John Cerney art: a story. Even circus publicist runs amuck and threatens to shoot self unless Michael Fucking Barnes, the super-snide entertainment editor at the Austin American-Statesman, agrees to run a piece: a story – I feel as though it's my fault because when push comes to shove, I have very poor self esteem: everything's my fault. Or haven't you noticed?

Plus Cannery Row is just a morgue.

Got all weepy on the phone with Lucius yesterday: "I'm just such a fucking failure…"

"You're not a failure," he assured me. "I wish I'd taken you to France – you would have loved it."

He won a Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire while he was there. "Plus I discovered the difference between the two-cheek kiss and the three-cheek kiss –"

"Three cheek kiss!" I said. "Invented by Jerry Lewis! Right cheek, left cheek, right buttocks –"

"No! Three-cheek kiss: Swiss variant on two-cheek kiss. Right cheek, left cheek, right cheek."

"Not as good as the cuckoo clock."

"Or holes in cheese," said Lucius.