Wednesday, October 26, 2005

harvest a living, clean an attic

A whole corpse—and I hate to put it so flatly, he said—goes for about $100,000. Fingers go for about $15 each, sexual organs about $125 each. This, upon starting my car to drive to work this morning. Turns out—I just caught the end of it—a group of businessmen based in Brooklyn were arrested for selling body parts in the New York area. One of the deft crew is an ex-dental surgeon having given up his license after being arrested for using cocaine and other narcotics. Another "has interests in real estate, poultry, corpse transportation, and funeral homes." Beware: this one may be in on the spread of the bird flu. Why else dabble in both corpses and poultry?

The radio then offered
update on the kids selling candy on New York subway cars. In yesteryore, the youth claimed to be selling M&Ms to fund their obviously phony basketball team. Now they hinge on honesty: they sell candy to keep themselves out of trouble. As one young vendor put it, it just became unbelievable that there were that many basketball teams needing help getting uniforms year-round. Furthermore, the reason you hear the same script from most is that some veterans have other kids selling for them. (This is also why those assholes at Borders ask you if you want to join their mailing list every time you make a purchase.) One boy has been peddling empty calories for nine years. He began when he was 12; do the math. He makes enough money--and has been making enough money--to pay rent for his own New York apartment.

Does anybody have access to a
neurofeedback machine? I’ve been doing some research and I’d like to learn to lower my theta waves to temper me out like a good valium would. However, a good valium apparently caused rapper DMX to impersonate a federal agent and crash through a parking gate at JFK International Airport. Probably just idiosyncratic, but one must be careful popping pills and tampering with brain waves.

Very busy today. Before this began, though--and before I got in the car and learned the price of dead body parts--I walked out my back door (we use the back door as the door at my house) and saw a sky like a sky I’d never seen before. Despite having in the past stayed up all night and seen the sun rise, I don’t recall ever having walked out under a sky at this particular juncture between night and day. Dark purple clouds were pulling slowly back showing a light yellow sky, and a shade stilled over the cars and grass with the highest definition clarity, an open fulcrum moment out of which anything could turn in any way. For a minute I stood in it.

5 Comments:

Blogger Mr Anigans said...

much too early i say

9:09 PM  
Blogger {illyria} said...

the reason why i'm donating my heart is because i have this niggling suspicion i'll be cheated at the black market.

12:18 AM  
Blogger kim said...

I just recently saw a Law & Order on that very topic. Apparently you can sell kidneys (out of your living body) on the black market. I need to sell candy...hmmm....

7:15 PM  
Blogger Sara said...

mr anigans, i keep telling myself it's relative.

transience, that's a crazy-ass bjork to the right of your comment. there's is an odd moment during her movement backward where she looks uncannily, disturbingly, like michael jackson. how odd.

mr doom, it isn't every you have the opportunity to buy human body parts from an ex-cocain snorting dental surgeon. but i'm sure you'll get the chance again soon. don't fret.

kim, for some reason the winds of coincidence blow hard and persistently. i keep seeing bits here and there on organ vending and doncation.

11:29 AM  
Blogger Sara said...

hudson, yes i did hear about the pipes replacing body parts on corpses. that's awful. and just as void of heart as it tries not to be.

finnegan, that's funny. I'm glad you saw the Bjork-Michael Jackson morph too. sort of like that video of his...song's called something like Black or White? No, I didn't know about Body Worlds. Will pay a visit.

2:42 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home