On Today’s Episode, Tulane Chris Answers Recent Readers’ Questions, Then Goes on a Weird, Emotional Tirade about Breast Cancer in Advertising

“Will you make bad internet dates a regular feature on the blog?”

Not regular, although I might get drunk enough to do it occasionally. I don’t have a huge amount of free time, and I’m a little nervous of where the feature might lead. I’m afraid I’d develop a tolerance pretty quickly, and then it’s all “Is this guy posing with a power drill and a cow’s skull really weird enough? I don’t know. Maybe I should go with the leper.”

“What did Giant Camel say about the internet date post?”

He said, “That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written. Are you going to marry him and triple-barrel your name? Blogger-Blog-VenomKitty? Wait, is this the fat guy who hangs out in front of the art supply store and hits on the road crew?”

“Doesn’t Tulane Chris live with Giant Camel?”

Not at the moment. Giant Camel allegedly went back to Texas to take a contract job, but I suspect something more sordid.

“Why don’t you make ‘sorr’ cards for special occasions?”

I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, part of the beauty of ‘sorr’ is its spontaneity: “Did you vomit in my purse?” “Sorr about the bag…” On the other hand, I would love to see nice ivory cardstock, deep-embossed with legends like “Sorr you’re such a bitch,” “Sorr your marriage has failed as disastrously as your business” and “Sorr your children were such bitter disappointments.” File this one under development. Someone did make a “sorr about the bag” e-card.

“Why don’t you create a nemesis for Kevin Yang called Kevin Yin?”

I don’t mind this idea. Kind of an eternal “Spy vs. Spy,” played out in every bakery, interracial gay bar and Vans outlet between Florida and Hong Kong. I’m hitting a wall imagining Kevin Yin, though. Would he just be barely skewed Kevin Yang? Different color sneakers, hair parted on the other side, goes on disastrous non-dates with Hispanics? Works in a diner instead of a bakery, smokes pot instead of drinks? If they ever meet, the universe will be instantly eradicated by the explosion into life of another, grander universe, full of powdered sugar, incoherent similes, and shitty makeouts on an air mattress? I bet we could sell this as a comic book if we worked on it.

“How about an ‘Around the World with Tulane Chris’ feature?”

I’d like to quote here a conversation I had the other night with a friend who’s teaching English in Vietnam (Vietnam. Imports: French, American, and Chinese soldiers. Exports: French, American, and Chinese soldiers with gonorrhea):

College Friend Nora “Apples” Podjeska: Oh, you should come visit me here.

TC: That’s not terribly realistic. I buy irregular underpants in bulk . I don’t think I could afford…

CFN“A”P: But you’d love it. There’s so much history, and there are all these beautiful gardens, and the food is so good and cheap. You like Asian guys, don’t you? I bet for five bucks you could go to town.

TC: As tempting as that sounds, I’m not entirely sure…

CFN“A”P: It would take a little getting used to. There are crowds everywhere – Chris, everywhere – and we live next door to a dump so there are minor odor and vermin problems. Just wear a lot of cologne and wash your hands a lot.

TC: I already do.

CFN“A”P: You might have a little problem… I mean, the thing about eating dogs is true. It’s fairly upsetting the first time you pass a butcher’s, and anyway, you’ve always been good in a crisis. You’d love it. Except for the crowds and the dog-eating. Oh, and leave your shirt on so they can’t see your “Better Dead than Red” backpiece. It’s not really funny here yet.

Did you catch that she described my theoretical vacation as a “crisis?” I would like to visit her and see Vietnam, but somehow setting it up as “spend a lot of money to interact with your three least favorite things: people who hurt dogs, large crowds, and totalitarian government” didn’t… sell it. I do love to travel and I do regret not having the money to do it. When I was younger (last week) I used to fantasize about becoming a travel writer. So, if you send me somewhere, within reason, I will write about it. However, until then, we’ll have to settle with tucking a little imports/exports behind every country I mention. (India. Imports: tech support calls. Exports: the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and then on again, sir” in perfectly grammatical, heavily accented English)

………………………………INTERMISSION………………………………

"If a tree falls in the woods and no ones around, does it raise awareness of breast cancer?"

I’ve waffled on writing about this because I was worried it would be misinterpreted, but after seeing someone else with similar opinions, I decided to wade in. I’m tired of breast cancer branding. It upsets me and I don’t think I’m alone.

Point the first: ubiquity. I have seen breast cancer-branded: wine, eggs, yogurt, snuggies, football games, Waxahachie Fire and Rescue, water, meat, tennis balls, scrubs, soybeans… Overexposure makes anything stale. Notice how even Leno gave up Paris Hilton jokes? When something’s completely expected, it’s simply not a grabber anymore. The newspaper seldom reads “Sun Rises in East; Proceeds Westward Across Sky.” It’s just another bland truism: congress is bickering instead of running the country, today’s teenagers are shocking, and there are little pink ribbons on every available surface.

Point the second: What do they mean by “awareness?” These labels all seem to read that they’re trying to raise “awareness.” Well, of what? The overwhelming majority of people know that there’s a disease called breast cancer. Just saying “breast cancer breast cancer breast cancer” over and over doesn’t do anything. The snuggie isn’t embroidered with the phrase “Women over 50 should have regular mammograms.” One egg in every dozen doesn’t crack open to reveal a little folded sheet explaining how to do self-exams. At halftime, Garrett “Sugar Balls” Hartley didn’t show a PSA about how some high-risk women may need to be screened for the BRIC gene. Just because someone’s talking doesn’t mean they’re saying anything. Is it too idealistic to just want a poster that says, “Get a damn mammogram?” Ellen and Designing Women both did Very Special Episodes about breast cancer, in which characters went to the doctor and learned about it. It wasn’t just Jean Smart and Delta Burke sitting around saying:

“Did you know that breasts can develop cancerous tumors?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Do you think I should tell Julia? JULIA! DID YOU KNOW….”

Point the third: How much money is actually going to breast cancer research? I can’t say for sure, but I’m inclined to agree with the author of the post I linked to above that changing the packaging probably costs more than the donation, at least in some cases. This makes it, essentially, an advertising expense, on par with adding the word “X-TREME.” A lot of products say “a portion” of the proceeds go to breast cancer research. That could mean any damn thing. 0.001% is technically a portion. Yes, it’s still better to have the money for research than not, and it’s naïve to expect businesses to do anything for the common good, but still. It’s slimy.

Point the fourth: It is ghoulish. When I was a child, my mother had a breast cancer scare. Everything turned out to be fine, but it was very tense for a while. It offends me that these companies are essentially profiteering off this. “Don’t you wish there was a cure? Buy these green beans. If you care about the women in your life, you’ll buy this battery!” I get enough nagging about whether or not I love my mother from my actual mother – I don’t need Piggly Damn Wiggly weighing in. And besides, don’t you think women who have breast cancer deserve a break? They can’t leave the house – hell, they can’t open the cupboard – without being reminded that they’re sick. But they’re not struggling in vain! Their illness helped sell some peas. If this blog folds, I’m going to start making candy and selling it under the name “Chris’s Costochondritis Snaps.”

This wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be, and I realize it’s because I’m genuinely angry. I’m willing to concede that a lot of individuals involved in these marketing decisions may have been very well-meaning, but I also don’t think that’s really the point. Good intentions are useless without common sense. A small check to a reputable charity does more than a cartful of pink-ribboned groceries, and it’s more civilized. If the breast cancer branding is as successful as it seems to be, we may be perilously close to seeing Uncle Ben’s colonoscopy.

Also about women: My school’s sororities recently did their community service push. One of them chose violence against women, so they covered the lamps on the main campus thoroughfare with sheets of awareness-purple acetate… which made the whole area much darker… and significantly more dangerous…

Little shitting, snotting angels

A few blocks from the new apartment, there’s a restaurant I’ve wanted to try for some time now. It’s a combination diner and bar – which deserves to be on the male fantasy top ten alongside things like “nymphomaniac who owns a liquor store” and “Lamborghini with a gun turret.” (Who has an erection? Show of hands?)

Giant Camel was in town last week, so we stopped in for dinner the other night. It was magical. Decade-neutral décor, so we could have been in any time in the last 80 years. One of those ridiculously extensive diner menus – eight single-spaced pages and a specials insert, including such unlikely dishes as veal Milanese and Italian rum cake. Personal, just-for-your-table jukeboxes with an enviable selection of Motown. We got the dinner special – soup, an entrée, a vegetable and dessert, plus bread. I was with someone I love, I was a little drunk, and I was gorging myself to the sound of “Please, Mr. Postman.” You can keep your clouds and harps; heaven for me is the Marvelettes, fried seafood, and a BAC between .03 and .10. It was even my favorite weather outside: overcast with light rain.

“Giant Camel. You know what? Wouldn’t it be great if this diner was a spaceship, and we could…”

“Travel the galaxy, solving mysteries with the help of a talking pug?”

“How did you know I was going to say that?”

“I’ve known you for two years, and every fantasy you’ve ever describe to me ends with either the phrase ‘travel the galaxy, solving mysteries with the help of a talking pug’ or the phrase ‘now that I am king, Adrian Brody will gleefully submit to my advances.”

“You make me sound like a dangerously unbalanced man-child warped by sexual perversion and ‘Murder, She Wrote.’”

“…I love you?”

“You may love me, but when I’m king you and Adrian will OBEY me.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Only one sour note marred my evening. It was the same sour note, over and over again. About twelve feet from us sat a family with a little baby who was screaming. He seemed content and was looking around the room with bright, interested eyes… but he was screaming, with the same “a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaaaaa a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaaaa” pattern as a garden sprinkler.

You all know that I’m six cats and a case of the menopause away from being a fussy old maid, so you won’t be surprised that I absolutely hate loud noises. I hate a lot of things, so it’s saying a lot that loud noises are in the top five. I inherited this from my mother, an agoraphobic pacifist and devout Christian who nevertheless once turned to me in a restaurant and said, “If that woman shouting behind us doesn’t be quiet, I’m going to slap her motherfucking face off.”

(“Do you ever write about your family?” “Oh, only my mother’s threats of violence and the imaginary affair between my father and my co-writer, who is 35 years his junior.”)

So, eventually the family took the child away, leaving me in peace with the reflection: My God, I don’t like children. I’ve spent the last several years saying unspeakable things on a regular basis (for example, “retarded,”) but somehow nothing really takes the wind out of people’s sails faster.

What I say: “I don’t like children.”

What People Behave as Though I Said: “I don’t like children, but I feel compelled to have at least five to ensure the future of the Glorious White Race. If they’re too expensive, I’ll just beat them until the state takes them away. Do you have a cigarette?”

I don’t hate children on a Herod scale and I like my baby cousins, but my paternal feelings are limited to dogs. Here’s why:

As discussed, children make loud noises. I would rather be in physical pain than hear a child fuss or cry. I can’t handle loud and/or sudden noises, period, paragraph.

I am a worrier. A man who has night terrors, who pays his bills weeks before they are due, who while cooking bends over repeatedly to make sure the flame hasn’t gone out and allowed the room to fill with gas, a man who every time he leaves a friend or relative thinks “well, they’ll probably die before long,” is too worried to have children. Sharp sticks, child molesters, SIDS, asbestos, juvenile arthritis, devil-worshipping rock and roll bands, Hare Krishna recruiters, bullies, girls who develop early, chemical weapons – all these can warp, kill, or maim a child before 10 o’clock in the morning. I’d be dead of a stroke before it was three.

I am a loner. If I had a child, I wouldn’t be able to be alone for years. Spending an entire day in my bathrobe watching “Murder, She Wrote” while eating grocery store crab dip and writing for the blog? GONE.

Oh my God, the fluids. I barely bother to clean up my own secretions. I don’t think I can wipe for two, to be perfectly honest.

I have the attention span of a retarded developmentally disabled fruit fly. While writing this post I have:

- Gotten up to make bread

- Gotten a beer

- Put the beer back because I have to work tomorrow

- Decided to have the beer anyway and gone back for it

- Made bread

- Made corn

- Written “made bread” twice because I forgot I already said it

- Read a chapter of a murder mystery

- Set my alarm

- Watched an episode of “King of the Hill”

- Peed

Is this a man with the wherewithal to raise a child until it was eighteen years old? Eighteen hours old?

I drink too much. Mix up your Tom Collins thermos with the child’s apple juice Thermos even once and it’s an “incident.”

I have weird opinions. “Class, who can tell us who our state’s governor is? Yes, Grace?”

“An inbred, glass-jawed shitsplat who should be making license plates in a Moldovan prison camp with a dozen live scorpions nailed to each testicle.”

“Class, who can tell us what the United Nations does? Yes, Grace?”

“Daily makes God regret allowing Noah to build an ark.”

I’m weird in general. My son would be the only six-year-old boy dressed as Lizzie Borden. Not for Halloween, just, you know. Out for the day.

I swear a lot for someone as polite as I am. The kids wouldn’t know which was which. “Would you be so kind as to give me a lollipop, you fucking prick?”

Let’s face it, I have a hard enough time interacting with adults. I call it putting the “Er…” back in “Asperger’s.” (Yeah, I went there.) This is how weak my understanding of human interactions is (tampon cannon, Dad): once, after a late night, I woke up in a friend’s guest room. There was a naked man in the room who, when he saw I was awake, got into bed with me. My first thought was, I swear to you, “Oh, I guess he’s cold.” I didn’t understand his intentions until they were… beyond apparent. (“He sure is friendly!”)

The secret, especially selfish reason I don’t want to have children is this. If I had children, they’d know they were going to inherit and not necessarily coddle me in my own age. If I dangle an inheritance over my baby cousins and make them compete to see who gives me to most comfortable living in my declining years… and then give it all to the NRA, I’ll totally get the last laugh!