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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 2002)
46 18. 2002 HUMOR High anxiety All stressed up and nowhere to blow 4 j/3ps fr £ liôllowcer « ) nâpîi ieri) f ) f in Oct 31st . - N oV. 3rd 1038 SW Stark St Portland, Or 97205 3 ìs * a 0 0 ts 219 NW Davis Street Portland, Oregon 503.227.5887 503-248-9135 wWw.cc-slaughters.com UPCO M ING EVENTS check online for details Jared & Jimmy’s PJ/Underwear Party 10/18 A Celebration of the Rose 10/21 Halloween Party! 10//26 The Hooker’ Ball 11/15 The Harvest Party! 11/29 CC’s Christmas Party! 12/14 CC’s New Years Eve ’03 12/31 Northbank g a y -o w n e d & o p e ra te d 106 W 6th St Vancouver, WA 360-695-3862 Featuring the infamous Boogie Boys in the FLESH! Start at 8pm Make us your First Stop! NEW OWNERS NEW MANAGEMENT NEW ATTITUDE We w elcom e ALL diversities Hours Tues&Wed - 12pm-12am Thurs - 12pm-lam Fri&Sat - 12pm-2am Sun - 12pm- 12am 2512 “NE” Broadway I 2512 NE Broadway » (503) 287-4210 | “Make us your first & last stop’ Patrick iiul<‘iv n on the piano liallcw een Costume t ontest Thursday, Oct. 31! ~ Casual Dining ~ Lounge ~ Game Room ~ Open 4:00 Daily 120 N W Third Avenue, Portland, OR 97209 • (503) 224-3285 Parking Validated Smart Park Davis & Front www hobos citysearch.com ~ ~ ~ ~ t’s said that the Roman Empire was destroyed not by one attack hut by “a thou I sand small cuts”— that the continual barrage of hostility from Barbarian armies eventually wore the empire down. 1 know just how Rome felt. I don’t handle stress well. Last year after the Twin Towers collapsed and some of my friends and family hack east weren’t accounted for, I coped in my usual time-honored way: 1 ate an entire half-gallon of ice cream. “It’s World War HI,” I thought. “Screw the diet.” But it’s the day-to-day hassles that really work my nerves. I’m partially responsible, of course. Working two jobs for the past five years has left me feeling overworked and underlaid. My personal to-do list looks some thing like this: Pick up last year’s dry cleaning. Buy groceries. Never mind about the groceries. Be creative with remaining contents in fridge. Go to gym. Avoid eye contact with hostile straight guys. Fix broken lamp. Fix broken table. Fix broken promises. Write screenplay you can sell for obscene amounts of money to escape this mundane life. Wallow in doubt and self-pity. And that’s just before I get to work. It’s no wonder I’m so cranky and impatient. The other day I found myself standing in front of the fax machine screaming: “For Chrissake, hurry up! I haven’t got all minute!” But I also blame my family. Not just because it’s convenient and fun, hut because I’ve inher ited a genetic predisposition for anxiety, descending as I do from a long line of small, worried people. Consequently, anytime I get a backache I always think, “That’s it, the cancer has eaten away at the hone, just like it did Debra Winger in Shadowbnds." I’m easily overwhelmed by the simplest aspects of everyday living, like using a cell phone, for instance. I finally had to stop wear ing mine on my hip— not only did it spoil the line, hut every time I put my seat belt on it speed-dialed my friend Tim (the ptxu soul who made the mistake of showing me how to set up speed dial in the first place). So now I leave it in my car, which is fine, except I don’t know how to retrieve my calls. My phone will say, “You have three unplayed messages,” and I’ll just think, “Hmm.. .hummer.” It’s the same with comput ers. It t(X)k me the longest time just to realize there was no such thing as the “Any" key. And as far as I’m.con cerned, chatting online still means flirting with the hag hoy at the grocery store. But since my CPU insists on making a noise that sounds like a flock of pigeons, I have to enlist the THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARC b y M a r c A c ito aid of more technologically advanced people (like anyone without a serious head injury). But they always end up showing me some fea ture I don’t care about like how my monitor can he used as a microwave oven or as a means of contacting the dead. Above all else, though, it’s home ownership that pushes me over the edge. We have a very unhealthy relationship, my house and I. It’s always coming to me with some problem or other (“I’m leaking, I’m rotting, blah, blah, blah"), and I’m always hailing it out by writing checks. I was just about to organize an inter vention when my HVAC system started smelling like dead fish. That was two years ago. Since then a changing cast of repair guys (some with butt cleavage, some without) have come out to fix the problem, hut all they know for certain is that a fish did not crawl into my ductwork and die there. Meanwhile I’m con vinced Floyd and 1 are going to develop leukemia from breathing tainted air. I’m ready to call Erin Brockovich. It’s endlessly frustrating to tum to experts for solutions only to discover they don’t know what to do, but it did make me come to an important realization: Nobody really knows anything— not me, not the HVAC guys, not diKtors or ministers or even Oprah. All we can do is guess. Most of us woke up Sept. 11 thinking it would he just another day, maybe a really g(xxl one because the weather was so beautiful. Now every time an ambulance passes I think, “Right new someone is having the worst day (if their lives.” It’s very humbling, and it proves you can never know what will happen. So I’ve stopped trying to resolve every little inconvenience in my life, which means I prob ably won’t get around to fixing my house until I try to sell it. But I figure with so much truly beyond my control, there’s really nothing to he gained by worrying. And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. JH M a r c A c it o ’ s column appears in a dozen papers nationwide. Write him at m arcacito@atthi.com .
