2.19.07: Worn-Out Pink Cigarette Lighter in the Wind

Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.
Lucius Accius, Telephus

Worn-Out Pink Cigarette Lighter in the Wind

February 19, 2007

Remember how, a few entries back, I was bitching about all the Gerald Ford funeral coverage? In retrospect, it doesn’t seem all that bad—especially now that I know that if Anna Nicole Smith had died right in the middle of Gerald Ford’s funeral, the networks would have cut in to the presidential ceremonies in order to show photos of the hospital roof where her body was taken and replay the 911 call over and over and over until it loses all its humor. And there was humor, folks—like when the caller says, “She’s not breathing and non-responsive.... um, she’s actually Anna Nicole Smith,” and when you first hear that recording, you think the caller’s adding a qualifying statement to the not-breathing comment, like She’s Anna Nicole Smith, so not breathing and non-responsiveness is fairly normal for her. And then you laugh and laugh... and then some killjoy tells you to stop laughing already, the poor girl’s dead, don’t you have any basic human decency, and that’s why I hate humanity, because humans are expected to do Basically Decent things like not make fun of dead people. Why not? Does being dead give you the gravity and dignity you never had in life? Well, if you were the poor mortician who had to handle Anna Nicole’s body, and you were trying to shift her bulk on the slab and her post-rigored anal muscles let loose and covered your smock with dead-psycho poo, you’d be too busy diving headfirst into a bucket of bleach to worry about petty little things like basic human decency or respect for the dead. So while the rest of the world is setting aside the snark long enough to blog somberly about a Troubled Young Woman (whom they never made fun of, no sirree) and wave their lighters in the air for a tear-jerking chorus of “Candle in the Wind”, I will still be pointing and laughing, pointing and laughing, always and forever. At last, Ms. Smith has been reunited with her brain.