I still haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11. I've tried to go two times, and each time, the theater has been sold out. Now that I think of it, maybe the showing wasn't sold out; the theater could just be controlled by the vast right-wing conspiracy, which wants to insure that I remain a complete idiot when it comes to politics. Perhaps they reckon I'd see that movie and then vow to use Goulash as my bully pulpit. Gone would be the days of Haim vs. Feldman, replaced by pictures of me shaking my fist at Capitol Hill, with captions saying nasty things about Medicare. Well, no worries there, shadowy government-like entities; if I can't convince Octopussy to stay out of my room at night, I have very little chance of toppling the Establishment. Not only that, but I save most of my spite for those who attempt to argue with me in the "Who'd Win in a Fight Between Bebop and Rocksteady?" thread on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle message boards. My point here: just let me see the movie.
Now, a disturbing new revelation: I have lost the ability to spell. For a long time, I was like the Sudsy Monchik of spelling: I certainly wasn't world-famous for my mastery, but the true afficionados appreciated me. As recently as a few months ago, I still had it. I watched the Spelling Bee on ESPN, and during the last few rounds, I got like 70% of the words correctly (I'll have to find my score sheet from that night to get the exact percentage). Then, sometime in the last month or so, I started slipping. Goulash came first. I had formerly relied on my immaculate command of my mental dictionary to balance out the idiocy I unleashed here, but all of that was lost the first time I let "accomodate" slip out. Since then, it has been nothing but down.
Friday night, I reached the very pits when I, formerly the golden boy of spelling, couldn't correctly spell snorkel. To be fair, I was drinking and I had to spell it backwards. Nevertheless, it is increasingly clear that I'm in the tail-end of a Flowers for Algernon-like decline. These last few days of coherency must be savored, so I will be hunkering down in Powell Manor, feverishly trying to get down on paper the Tao of Powell. If, a few months from now, you happen to see a guy who looks like me wearing a Nascar shirt and eating mustard packets, shed a tear and look away.
Posted by Cody at July 6, 2004 6:10 PM