January 31, 2021

Last night, Mitch and I watched DO THE RIGHT THING. Written and directed by Spike Lee. Neither of us had seen it before. The only Spike Lee movie I had watched was BlacKkKlansman. Now, I've been keeping a movie log (a Mlog) and a book log (a Blog) in addition to this warm-up morning blog. And I am behind on two books and two movies. So I'm just going to write my Mlog on Do the Right Thing here and then copy and paste it into my Mlog, so I can go about my day. 

**SPOILERS**

DO THE RIGHT THING
1989
Directed by: Spike Lee
Written by: Spike Lee
Watched: 1/30/21

        It's hot in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. People hang out in the street and in the open windows of brownstones. Sal, an Italian American, opens his pizza place with his two sons. One of them, Pino, doesn't want to be there. He's upset that his father's restaurant is in a black neighborhood. Mookie, the main character, delivers pizzas for Sal but takes his time doing it. Kids unscrew the fire hydrant and play in the spray. Radio Raheem plays Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" on his enormous boom box. It's the only song he'll play. Vignettes make up the first half of the movie. It feels kind of like a Norman Rockwell painting plus a bunch of cussing. Everything seems to be about race. The latinos on their front stoop want to play their salsa music and get outplayed by Radio Raheem's hip hop. Older men on the corner discuss the new supermarket run by Koreans. They bemoan the fact that all the businesses in Bed-Stuy seem to be run by outsiders. Bugging Out complains that there are no African Americans up on Sal's Wall of Fame. It's his restaurant and he says the wall is for Italian Americans only. Smiley, a young man with a deep stutter, tries to sell his illustrated postcards with photos of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Mookie's girl, Tina, tries to get him to spend time with her and their son. Tina's mom curses Mookie out in Spanish. 

        Eventually these vignettes come together. Sal's had a good day at the restaurant and talks about how he's proud to have been the pizza that the kids in the neighborhood grew up on. He's been there for 25 years. He tells Mookie he's family. They're closed, but Sal lets in one more group of kids for a slice. Then Bugging Out and Radio Raheem bust in. Bugging Out wants to shut down the restaurant until Sal gets some brothers up on the wall. Radio Raheem is mad that Sal made him turn off his boom box earlier. Sal is livid that the boombox is back in his place. He smashes it with a baseball bat. Everybody gets in a fight. Radio Raheem throttles Sal out on the street. Sal's sons try to pull him off but Radio is strong. The police arrive and bust up the fight, but they strangle Radio to death while detaining him. The cops carry a limp Radio into their car and leave. With Radio Raheem's death, the neighborhood tears Sal's pizzeria apart. Mookie leads the way throwing a trashcan through the front window. Smiley sets a match and the place starts to burn. 

        Firefighters try to put out the blaze, but they direct their hoses on the crowd of people as much as they do the building. It's like a sad violent version of the kids playing in the hydrant water earlier. Inside the restaurant, Smiley hangs up one of his Malcolm and Martin postcards on the smoke-blackened wall of fame. 

        I spent so much time on the summary because I think the movie speaks for itself. The admonition of Do The Right Thing is undercut by the impossibility of anything right. Quotes at the end of the movie from Malcolm and Martin seemingly contradict each other in their attitudes towards violence. Radio Raheem's brass knuckles say HATE and LOVE. Sometimes love wins out, sometimes hate. But it seems to say they both go together. Except for the angry and pointedly racist Pino, no character comes off as being a villain. The police feel like as inevitable as fate -- closer to something like blight or famine than people. Everybody's pushing and pulling and loving and hating within the system. And like it says in the beginning, the weather is making this system hot. 

Rating: ★★★★ 

January 30, 2021

I'm in that UCLA Extension class for screenwriting, and I turned in a couple of pages on my protagonist's backstory for homework last week. My instructor included a link to an Enneagram profile in her feedback. I vaguely remember certain people seeming very excited about their Enneagram -- it's the same people who feel invested in their identity as a member of one of the four Hogwarts houses. 

My complaint with the personality tests is that they will just reflect the information you put into them. They're also not situation-specific. Like they want to know if you're confrontational, but they won't ask if you're confrontational around your boss, for example, vs around your employees. They assume a person will act the same in all contexts, and in my experience, that is obviously untrue.  A test that included different contexts and one that used your input plus the input of people who know you well would be better. 

Complaints aside, I found the enneagram helped me to nail down some strengths and weaknesses of my protagonist. Surely characters can't hold the multitudes that real human beings do (at least that's true of characters I write at this stage -- a real person would be too much to hold in my head). So a kind of flattened personality profile actually helps. 

I ended up spending the $12 to take the test. I know, after my complaints and disdain for the Hogwarts people, I still gave in. Were the results surprising? No. Would I recommend it? Eh, if you want and aren't going to miss $12. But I will say that the relationship type combinations are interesting. I took my top result and matched it with the category I think Mitch falls into. We got some fancy results: 

"No other couple is as vivacious or gregarious as the Three/Seven couple." And:

"Sevens bring breadth of knowledge and experience, boundless enthusiasm and good spirits. Threes bring a focus on goals, on staying practical and grounded, and on observing healthy limits. This can be a fun, articulate, generous pair, virtually sparkling with vitality and the joy of life. This can sometimes seem to others to be an almost magical couple."

Magical. That's right. 

January 29, 2021

Yesterday evening I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Today my arm hurts and I feel a little sluggish. (But when don't I feel a little sluggish.) I got dressed up in a dress and jacket. I straightened my hair for the first time in ages, and I put on mascara and a bit of glitter. You only get inoculated to COVID-19 once, hopefully. Better make the most of it. 

I posted a photo on instagram of me with my filled out CDC card. It's getting a lot of likes. I feel slightly guilty and dopey about it. Look at me! I'm 33 and healthy, but I got immunized in January! But on the other hand, I feel like I need to take my wins when I can get them. Like I probably should watch The Last Exorcist, which came out last year. I wrote the original script, and while I'm worried the finished product will be embarrassing... I wrote a script for a movie that got made. It's probably okay to acknowledge that. 

I finished reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler again yesterday. It's more misogynistic than I remember. Philip Marlowe heroically slaps a number of women. But this was a good line, that's stuck in my memory: "Shake up your business, and pour it out. I haven't got all day." 

Speaking of, it's 9am, and I should get to work. 

January 28, 2021

One of my favorite new things in quarantine has been going to Australian comedian/satirist, Alice Fraser's, zoom salons.  She offers them every other week for people who give her money on Patreon, and you sit there and chat with her and other fans around the world. 

She seems very willing to be engaged with her fans, which is great, but I think I would be too nervous and awkward to do what she's doing. (I am making sure to establish myself as a not-very-creepy fan. I think it's going well.) 

I'm not sure if I'll keep up with them once we're out of lockdown. The zoom chat hangout format might not hold its appeal once I'm able to see people face-to-face. 

This daily blog thing is starting to feel hard. Maybe this is where I figure out I'm not very interesting. 

I get my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine tonight. Have to remember to bring my CDC card. I figure I'll be somewhat wiped out tomorrow because of the immune response, and then after a few days I'll be immune. That'll be wild. Like I've personally traveled back to October 2019, but everyone around me is still in Jan 2021. A few months more, and maybe I'll get to see my friends -- who by then will hopefully also have their shots. Then in August, maybe the Edinburgh Fringe Festival will be back on, and Mitch and I can go and watch comedy, and camp, and get drunk. Maybe Alice Fraser will be there too. 

January 27, 2021

I was remembering - probably eight or nine years ago - when I got so excited that a beer garden was set up in the middle of DIA. The breweries weren't remarkable, and Mitch and I must've been waiting for our ride. So we sat with our luggage and drank some tasters out of four-ounce novelty glasses with airplanes on them. I was thrilled. What a treat. What an adventure. We were adults and the world was ours. Pleasure could be found anywhere. 

The ability to drink beer has lost some of its shine since then. Maybe it's because I'm not so newly 21. Maybe it's because enough of our friends have already become alcoholics or gone sober. Mitch said, "It's not ad adventure anymore, it's more like medicine." Which I said felt very dark. 

My parents aren't drinkers. Plastic handles of blueberry schnapps and bottom-tier tequila stay in their liquor cabinet for decades. If my dad wants to go crazy, he drinks a Mike's hard lemonade. 

It's been a drink or two a day for me since quarantine (which at this point has lasted almost a year). It's a treat, a shortcut, a way to tell my body to slow down, that the working day is over. Because the working day never feels over. Because maybe it's not really over until you've done all the work, which is never going to run out. 

I still like a good beer. A piney west-coast IPA -- no haze, -- a black lager, a crisp full-flavored pilsner. I've been staring at this last line for a while, not knowing how to end it. So I'll just sign off. It's time to start work. 

January 26, 2021

 Is this a story? 

January 25, 2021

"Only that which bears the imprint of our choice, our taste, our uncertainty, our desire and our weakness can be beautiful." - Marcel Proust 

"If, as Proust suggests, we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought." - Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life 

"While reasons for imagined Black English range from affinity to mockery to monetization, they generally follow the same pattern: By 'reshaping the meaning of the borrowed material into forms that advance their own interest,' borrowers make the material 'useless or irrelevant, or even antithetical, to the interests of the donor community.'" - Manuel Arturo Abreu, "Online Imagined Black English," Black Futures

"Now that white people have declared 'bae' over, black people can use it in peace." Robin Boylorn, The Guardian, January 14, 2015

Ironic that in a post where I want to think about what it means to write in my own voice, to come up with my own language, I end up mostly quoting other people. I have a couple friends -- one in college and one later on -- who like to bend language in everyday conversation. One uses vocabulary beyond her range -- words she's maybe only vaguely confident about what they mean -- and she's usually wrong, but it does lend her speech originality. And when she messes up it's funny. Similarly but different, my other friend makes portmanteaus, stretches sound, pronounces things badly on purpose. Is that what Marcel Proust is hoping for? In both cases, I got the sense that this creation of language was to stave off a boredom felt in their present company, or in their lives in general. To tinker rather than to express. But maybe it counts anyways. 

Since I started kicking this idea around in my head -- the idea about the created language -- I've been disappointed in books where the writer has not done that. (My book on screenwriting for my UCLA class comes to mind.) I remember reading the handouts Vic Bobb, one of my college professors, would give us. His writing would immediately make an impression. You could tell he deftly created his sentences with humor and ease and a slight nihilism. It felt like you were bumping around in his head for a page. 

I read The Swimmer by John Cheever the other day. Same thing. The sentences leap, without the use of slang or regional dialogue or any type of agrammatical flourish. "It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, 'I drank too much last night.'" 

More from The Swimmer: 

"The pool, fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green. It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud, so like a city seen from a distance--from the bow of an approaching ship--that it might have had a name. Libson. Hackensack. The sun was hot. Neddy Merril sat by the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin. He was a slender man--he seemed to have the special slenderness of youth--and while he was far from young, he had slid down his banister that morning and given the bronze backside of Aphrodite on the hall table a smack, as he jogged toward the smell of coffee in his dining room. He might have been compared to a summer's day, particularly the last hours of one, and while he lacked a tennis racket or a sail bag, the impression was definitely one of youth, sport, and clement weather." 

January 24, 2021

Mitch and I watched Mulholland Drive last night. (Alexa calls it "Mulholland Doctor.") Afterwards, I went to the internet for theories on what happened. Maybe I shouldn't have because it immediately started casting my viewing experience in a different light. So, I'm going to get down my own version of What Could Be Happening while I'm somewhat close to it. 

If I were to have come up with the idea for Mulholland Dr., it would have started with a question of formalism. Could you have a movie where halfway through two of the actors started playing different characters? Interesting question. I think it happens in plays, right? Where a small cast will play multiple parts in a production. Then I'd go about trying to make it work. 

In order to get people ready for a character switch, you could cast a bunch of similar-looking actors. So that throughout the audience is already asking - Wait, is that Naomi Watts? When it is Naomi Watts playing a different role it won't seem out of the blue at all. Because of the doppelgängers, we're already primed for it. 

Plus, we know from the beginning that Rita is a different person from the one she's inhabiting. She just doesn't remember who she is. We're waiting for her to pick up another identity as soon as the previous reality of her life is made known. How to make sense of one actress playing two characters? Make the first character someone who doesn't remember who she's supposed to be. 

From there you reach for the story. And Lynch is a Hollywood director, so he didn't have to reach very far to get -- an actor new to Hollywood and newly in love, an actor ground up by Hollywood and burned by love, her lovers the same but different: a successful starlet and the woman she'd be after a head injury, although of course these two show up in opposite order. Why play her backwards? Because the first woman is a question and the second is a possible answer. The mystery of the woman's identity drives the whole first half. 

And from there maybe you get to the first half being a dream. My point is that I don't think the dream idea came first. Or at least if I wrote this movie it wouldn't have for me. The most interesting question/experiment is the role shift, so we start there. And the intention: Let's see what happens if.... 

January 23, 2021

I'm in week 2 of the Feature Film Pro-Series class at UCLA Extension. It's 9 months long, all online and asynchronous. I hope it's going to be great. The textbook for the class is Cut to the Chase, an anthology of essays/guides on screenwriting compiled by UCLA Extension professors. I'm in Chapter 2. 

It's not the first I've hear it, but... I'll quote: 

"Be true to your own originality. What makes you laugh when you are alone? Did you move a lot when you were younger? Do you have a close relationship with your grandfather? Are you obsessed with the Elizabethan era? Do you love ballroom dancing? Are you a gifted ventriloquist? Do you run a dachshund rescue? These could be clues to the type of screenplay that you, and only you, are perfectly suited to write. Be true to your singular vision and tell a story that is uniquely your own. Write a screenplay that no one else could write besides you." 

I'm on board with most of that -- how could you not agree that it's best to be true to your own originality? -- but the "write what only you could write" advice seems unnecessarily limiting. Sure, if you have a once-in-a-generation experience, I mean yes, write about that. But then what? Do you have to stop writing until something equally as singular happens to you again? 

For new writers, it makes good sense from a business angle. Why would someone pay you to write a story that one of their established and experienced writers could easily write? But surely, at some point, the advice is just to write what you're interested in writing. If it's a story idea that you like enough that it'll keep your interest for the year it takes to write a script, then it's probably your story, right? 

1. "Be true to your own originality." Put yourself in the story. 

2. "Write a screenplay that no one else could write besides you." Write about yourself. 

I'm not knocking the second one. I just don't think that every script has to be semi-autobiographical. Of course it doesn't. It feels like Hollywood is more comfortable with judging people -- do you have an interesting life? -- over literary material -- is this an interesting script? 

This is starting to sound defensive. And really what they're asking for is newness in the script, and they want a dazzly person behind the script to help the newness make sense. So that they can make art that costs a massive amount of money and employs as many people as a small corporation. And we can all collect our checks and go home and turn on the television and watch ourselves reflected back at us in a way that's surprising but also achingly familiar. 

January 22, 2021

I took a Mind Print test yesterday. The school I work part-time for is rolling out to their students to help identify strengths and weakness and therefore better formulate educational strategies. And anyway, teachers were allowed to test it out. Here are my results. 

The only thing that surprised me really was the visual memory category. I've known my memory isn't especially good. That's a big reason why I chose Physics instead of Biology. The test for visual memory showed me an assortment of irregular 3-D geometric shapes, and then later showed me a variety of shapes again, and I had to say whether each was one of the original set. I was surprised to be able to recognize the shapes -- I couldn't really connect them to anything when the initial group passed by. 

It makes me wonder about how other people experience memory and reality. Like if they have a lot more words and fewer pictures bouncing around in their noggins than I do. Does it mean I'll remember people's faces longer after they've died? How does it impact my experience of trauma? 

I guess, it's important to note that the Mind Print test is only testing short term visual memory. Maybe my mind's visual window into the past is just as blurry as everyone else's, as long as you give it a day or so. 

I'm also wondering about whether the specific abilities on the test matter that much. America makes a lot of high-powered trucks, brimming with horsepower, that spend their days in suburban garages or cruising unencumbered down I-25. The best and most important tool is the one that gets used, I think. 

January 21, 2021

I rolled over in bed this morning and grabbed my phone to look at Instagram. I'm not that enthusiastic about Instagram, but scrolling in the morning is one way for me to trick myself into waking up. (I did that thing yesterday where I worked too hard and too long, so I rebelled and reasserted my own control and freedom by staying up until one AM playing Animal Crossing.) The first post I saw was by Alice Stone Collins, and I thought I can blog about her this morning. 

She's artist based in the Atlanta Metro Area who uses bright opaque water colors and cuts out her images before overlaying them to form collages. Her stuff is amazing. It's suburban surrealism. Bubblegum optimistic and vaguely threatening. It's got me thinking about how the suburbs are a kind of liminal space. (Liminal is a word I learned in the last couple of months and since then have seen everywhere. Meaning a boundary, a threshold, a space between spaces. Either I've just been noticing it more because I now know what it means or it's one of those words du jour that everyone's already getting sick of.) Collins takes advantage of this Suburban eeriness, of the settings that are supposed to be aspirational - outside the city but not really rural - the repetition of house, house, house... life, life, life. Not quite visible but not wholly obscured. 

As someone who's chosen to live in an apartment in a city, I'm biased. But this morning, the suburbs feel a little bit like death, spreading a flimsy blackened film over the living. 

Anyway, here are a few of my favorite works by Alice Stone Collins: 

 

January 20, 2021

Going to write about this morning rather than yesterday. Today, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took over as President and Vice President of the US. Whoops, maybe I don't have a lot to say about it other than the usual things. I feel relieved that there was no further attack on the capitol. I feel encouraged and proud to see our first Madame Vice President take office. I feel moved by the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony. 

I'm remembering Obama's inauguration in 2009. Two million people packed together on the mall. Freezing my ass off, trying desperately to stay connected to our group. I was there as part of a college Jan Term class called Prejudice Across America. We were studying racial injustice and traveled to Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and DC. (I liked Chicago so much on that trip, that Mitch and I moved there two years later.) With the first election of President Obama, the trip was infused with hope, optimism, and joy. It motivated me to switch political parties. It'd be hard for anyone not to get on board. 

I'm participating in a book club organized by Roxane Gay this year. The book for January is Black Futures. It's a collection of art, music, interviews, recipes, and miscellany from black artists and activists. Taking it in reminds me of what it was like to be on that trip. It has passion, joy, cynicism, and purpose. It seems impossible to read it with curiosity and a healthy appreciation for what's good in life and to not get on board. It's okay. Don't fight it. Get on board. 

At President Obama's inauguration, 1/20/09 

January 19, 2021

I got overwhelmed and cried and freaked out last night. I was supposed to plan for the classes I'm teaching today. And I worked on it -- trying to find good virtual labs, useful videos, a sense of where we're going in this unit, a sense of what's important to cover and what's tangential and can be skipped, -- but the five hours I put in came up with nothing. 

The overwhelmed emotional breakdown is a reoccurring phenomenon for me, something I've been trying hard to break. I've got a mood app and a daily and weekly planner. I prioritize. I schedule. I try to do things in advance and not wait for the last minute. But it seems like eventually, and no matter what's on my plate, I eventually get back there. Frustrated and feeling like a failure. Like nothing I do will come off right. Like I'm letting myself and everyone else down. 

The first time I remember this happening (other than the years when my mom put me in 4H, and I'd be up late at night crying over my wobbly stitches at the sewing machine) was junior year of high school. I took on 5 classes in a 4-block time slot. I needed to cram in a class in order to be able to take French, which was only offered every other year. I had to stay up until 11pm most nights doing homework, and I was upset about it. But after throwing a few fits, I eventually got used to the workload and I remember things getting better. 

Maybe the struggle is part of the terrible process? The reality being that I have to work relentlessly hard and that I'm angry about having to work so hard? That I have to vent it eventually. The rage and sadness and lack of confidence in a future that's anything like a walk in the park. 

Still, I hope I can get better and that I don't have to lose any more nights to dark emotional vortexes. 

January 18, 2021

 I made overnight oats last night. Blueberries, almonds, chia seeds. Blindboy has mentioned them several times on his podcast as being part of his mental healthcare. He has to fight a feeling of dread in the mornings, and it helps to know that he's prepared himself some lovely food the night before. 

(I feel good in the mornings, at least I do after I fully wake up and have my coffee and everything. The time of day I struggle with is the evening/night, where I tend to feel like a failure, another day wasted. Like I'm going no where and doing nothing of any consequence.) 

He talks about how he finds cooking meaningful. The process of going to the shop, creating a delicious meal for himself, and then enjoying it enriches his life. It's tough to feel like anything matters, especially with quarantine making all the days since last March look the same. I've been trying to emulate Blindboy in focusing on creating little bits of meaning in my life, whether it's cooking, writing down my thoughts in my various logs about the movies I've watched or books I've read, or trying to be better about relationships. 

I want to be able to carve out a satisfactory little life for myself, and I guess I'll start with overnight oats. 

January 17, 2021

Last night Mitch and I watched A New Leaf (1971). Written, directed, and starring Elaine May, the movie depicts a wealthy man, Henry, who's informed that he's spent all his money. He's grown up rich, and he has very expensive tastes. He's "keeping alive traditions that died long before you were born." And he has no skills, and no one likes him. His butler encourages him to ask for a loan from his uncle, to cover expenses and save face in the meantime, and then to find a rich woman to marry. The uncle agrees as long as Henry pays back the loan within six weeks. Henry has to scramble to find a wife, and when he finds one, -- a wealthy klutz with no manners who has even fewer skills than Henry (except for that she works as a Botanist) -- he schemes on how to kill her. 

A plot summary! Marvelous. 

The movie was great, quotable laugh-out-loud lines. Wonderful acting. Stupid bits. It's the kind of film I'd watch again just to be able to get the lines exactly right. I had rented it because it popped up on a list of the best movies directed by women. I hadn't put together that Elaine May also wrote The Birdcage. If I work remotely from Colorado again this year, I want to make sure to show it to my parents. 

I've been surprised by how good movies from the 60s and 70s are. I have a bias that says, If I haven't heard of it already, then it's probably not very good. Being able to watch movies from different eras, different countries, and different traditions is hopefully helping me explode that misconception. 

January 16, 2021

The temperature was in the mid-eighties yesterday, and I met Sarah at the Mar Vista Rec Center on her lunch break. Like everyone else in Los Angeles, I bought roller-skates to help cope with lockdown. On skates, I am committed to not falling. Whenever I fall I break my wrist. So while Sarah is watching YouTube tutorials to advance her skating abilities, I just go for the basics. 

The rink in Mar Vista is surprisingly fun. People lug their big speakers and blast music. It's the closest thing to being in a club that's allowed anymore. Sinewy skaters dance in retro outfits and record themselves for Instagram. We all annoy the hockey players who are trying to practice.

Yesterday, a man skated backwards, complimenting me on my skates, into a trashcan. "I forgot I put that there!" He managed not to fall down but only just. 

I rode my bike home, listening to Adam Buxton's 80's playlist, sweating like crazy in that dry hot way where you end up smelling like dust and UV radiation. 

Got a bunch of homework left to do today and some more editing on Sarah Someone. Hoping to make it to the rink again soon. 

Sarah tries tricks that I won't dare: 

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A post shared by Sarah K (@sk.skates)

January 15, 2021

I talked to my mom on the phone the other day. She told me that my dad had been experiencing vertigo. With the COVID pandemic raging on and no clear indication of when my parents will be able to get the vaccine, I've been especially worried about my dad's health. Coincidentally, one of my parent's friends was also getting vertigo. Her doctor gave her some medicine and a set of exercises to help. The active ingredient in the medicine was an antihistamine. So my dad started taking Benadryl and doing the exercises. He said he felt better. 

My mom had health complaints of her own, waking up with headaches every morning. She said it wasn't super unusual for her, but it had become more severe and more frequent. Finally, things started to click when she smelled natural gas. 

My dad sprayed soapy water on the pipes attached to the furnace, and sure enough: bubbles. There was a leak. The carbon monoxide detector was out of commission as, several years ago, the battery was running low and the detector was screaming to have it replaces. My parents did the sensible thing: removed the battery and never replaced it. (Mitch and I have a similar thing going, only it's with one of our smoke alarms.) My dad popped in a new battery, and the display displayed 199 in glowing red. Anything above 20 and below 900 is bad news. 

My dad thinks the vertigo and the headaches are the result of my parents accidentally poisoning themselves. Somebody's going to go over and take a look at the furnace pronto. My dad has stopped doing the exercises. 

In retrospect, my mom reflected that they should have known something was up when all the house plants died. 

Stay alert, folks.