Areas of Unrest

27 March 2005 - Advance Directie

I sometimes forget that non-Jews don't know all the old Jewish jokes. I brought hamantaschen and rugelach to the office on Friday for Purim. And I got a lot of humor credit by explaining that all Jewish holidays can be summarized as "they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat."

As for other stuff I did this week, it was pretty routine. I did get tickets to Spamalot, but that won't be until September. I also arranged a trip to Kansas City (baseball related) and I need to make at least one or two other baseball trips this summer. I also have to figure out how to get tickets to a game in Japan for my trip there in August. I'm not sure what it says about my life that I think that arranging tickets to a sporting event in another country is routine.

The real news story of the week, in my opinion, should have been the revolution in Kyrgyzstan. But the media were entirely filled with Schiavo case. I have to admit that I find the idea of removing a feeding tube to be more disturbing than unplugging a respirator, but I find the idea of the federal government getting involved in this considerably more disturbing. Accordingly, here is an attempt at probably sick humor on this.

In the event of something happening to me, preventing myself from making my desires about medical treatment clear, I wish the following things to be done:

1. Two teams of makeup artists are to be set to work, each working on one half of my face. One team will use pasty greenish shades to make me look more pathetic, while the other will do everything feasible to make me look like the robust picture of health. Competing videographers will comb hours of tape to show that I am either the wittiest creature ever to be comatose or that I have the remaining brain power of a giant sea slug.
2. Dozens of specially trained protestors are to picket the homes of everybody I have ever met, demanding that my life be spared.
3. The United Nations is to convene a special session to vote on my fate. The Secretary General is to be personally woken up in the middle of the night to sign a directive permitting the World Court in the Hague to declare my life a matter of vital international interest.
4. At the last minute, my lawyer is to produce a document in which I explain that my feeding tube is to be filled with chocolate, causing me to die of a theobromine overdose.