If Robert Pollard died, my wallet would be much thicker

The four days following my birthday, I received three pieces of bad news, one after the other, boom boom boom. Then I get up on the fifth day and check out a few Internet sites, only to discover that one of my favorite drummers, Michael Dahlquist, from one of my favorite bands that hardly anyone gives a shit about, Silkworm, was killed in a freakish car accident on my birthday. I'm too old to feel any personal attachment to people in rock bands I like, but I am sad that the band has decided to break up. I'm pretty obsessive about this band. They enjoyed a brief period of hipster buzz around '95, '96, but it didn't last because indie rock fans are scumbags with no loyalty. They kept putting out great albums anyway. The whole thing sucks, especially how he died. Dahlquist and two other Chicago musicians worked the same day job and were stopped at a red light on their lunchbreak. An ex-model had an argument with her mother and decided to kill herself by getting in her car, running a bunch of red lights at 70 mph, and hitting whatever got in her way. She hit them. All three of the men died. She just broke her foot. Silkworm is no more, and three people are dead because they didn't bring their lunches to work. Dahlquist's death wasn't even the top story on Pitchfork. They thought the guy from Broken Social Scene getting punched by a cop was a more important story. This jerk was buying drugs in the park, got busted, resisted arrest, and got roughed up a little bit. Now he thinks he's a big man, announcing from the stage that he's going to sue the NYPD. At least his proximity to the obituary made him look like an even bigger twat. So anyway, I'm thinking about how ridiculous and short our lives are, and how ridiculous our deaths can be, and lots of other stuff about the three pieces of bad news I mentioned earlier, and how fucking hard it is for me to find a job, and how I'm running out of money, and how directionless my life is at the moment, and about how lots of stuff I've been enthusiastic about in the past is not currently floating my boat, and I'm walking down the street, and a homeless guy asks me how I'm doing. "Alright," I say and keep walking. "Just alright?" he says. "You're great! You woke up this morning. You're doing great!" The homeless fucker's right, but he's still a jerk. I still didn't feel great. I had something else bad happen to me today, and it finally turned me around, pulled me out of the funk. I'm in the bathroom at the Arbor before the movie starts. I'm done. I'm washing my hands. I turn on the faucet. I push down on the soap dispenser. Something is fucked up with this soap dispenser. I push down harder. Soap shoots out of it in a direct arc toward my crotch. It splatters all over the groin area of my shorts, looking exactly like I pissed myself. I know a lot of people say that when they spill something on their crotch, but this time it was true. There would be no "maybe he spilled water" reaction. This could only provoke a "that guy pissed himself" reaction. This is absurd. It's kicking a man when he's down. With all my problems, I didn't deserve to have soap sprayed on my crotch in a dribbly urine pattern. I had to walk back into the theater, past the people waiting in line near the other screens. I pulled my shorts way up, pulled my shirt way down, and did the walk of shame. My shorts slowly moved down to their normal position. People looked at me funny. I walked in the theater, sat down. I looked at my crotch. My wife looked at my crotch. We both started laughing. I tried to tell her what happened. I kept laughing. I finally got the story out. Laughed some more. Now life is good again. It's been a good night. Saw a good movie. Ate a good dinner. Some productive things happened. Listened to good music. Getting ready to read a good book. Eventually, something will happen to make me angry or sad. That will last a long time. Then something good will happen again. This pattern will repeat. Then I'll die.