Sometimes I Feel Left Out

Sometimes I feel left out of Facebook.  I don't have a dog or a kid, and often posts of one's dog or kid dominate the news feed.  So, I feel like I should go out in public and ask to take pictures of other people's dogs and kids, and then post them on facebook like they are mine.  Do you think people will get creeped out if I do that?

Sometimes I feel left out of Twitter.  I don't have a personal account.  Well, I just took time to set up an account for this blog.  Not sure why.  Oh yeah, because I don't know what to write about here, so it was a 3 minute distraction setting up my account.

I just finished this book, "The Lampshade  A Holocaust Detective Story From Buchenwald to New Orleans".  I don't remember how I heard about the book, but I bought it on Amazon.com for like a buck.  Sad, because it came out last year.

Anyway, it's, as you can guess a book about a human skin lampshade.  The publisher very cleverly made the book cover out of this sheer white paper with the title on it, and the photo of the lamp in on the hardback cover of the book.  So, the photo is pretty stunning.  You can see the patterns really lit up on the shade.  Human skin lampshade.  I wonder if someone would do that for me?  Make my skin into a lamp, and I can make the FP use it as his bedside nightlight if he's still alive.

I know, I'm sick.  I'm always plotting what I want done with my body when I'm dead.  I mean, it's important.  The final disposal of one's body.  I still like the idea of my ashes being used to fertilize a plant or being scattered in the ocean.  But I also love the idea of being stuffed and the FP can keep me in the bed next to him, or sitting on the couch in front of the TV, with the stuffed The Fuzz on my lap. His two favorite girls!

Getting back to the lampshade.  Well, I don't want to spoil the book for you in case you go out and buy it or download it onto your kindle or your nook or ipad.  The thing about the lampshade was that the author was haunted by this inanimate object that was once an animate object.  And in creating this nonfictional narrative, the author wrote a haunting book about a haunting lampshade.

If you found what looked like a human skin lampshade, say in an antique shop for sale for $20, would you buy it?  And if you would, what would you do with it?  Would you use it?  Would you try to analyze it?  Most likely, one would regret taking possession of such a thing, but then the age old question, how to get rid of such a thing?  You don't just leave a human skin lampshade out on the curb for some unsuspecting dumpster diver to collect and unwittingly take possession of.  Yes, I choose to end that sentence with a preposition.  And it was an overly wordy sentence anyway.

I find it creepy that people collect Nazi memorabilia, yet I can understand the fascistnation.  To own something that a person so cruel owned, someone who could commit atrocities that most people couldn't dream.  A nazi gun or a uniform, objects that stand for the ultimate evil in human beings.  In that movie American Beauty, the weird neighbor is fascistnated by the Hitler plate (I think that's what it was) like he wanted to eat off it.  What would be more interesting to you - a plate of Hitler's or one of Roosevelt or Truman's plates?

The creepiest thing about reading a book like "The Lampshade" is that reading is a solitary task.  Unlike a movie, I can't turn to a fellow reader and say, that was crazy!  So, I did hand the book over to the FP, but he's so busy, not much chance of him reading it for a while.  So, I must carry these thoughts of this book and this lampshade in my head along with all the other uncomfortable thoughts stuff up in there.  Man, you don't want to know.  I think what I share with you on this blog is sometimes probably TMI already!

So, feel free to read this book and then add your two pfennigs here in my lonely recluse comment section.

The Lampshade
A Holocaust Detective Story From Buchenwald To New Orleans
by Mark Jacobson