Check Mate.

More often that not, my days are almost ridiculously devoid of bad news. I mean, yes, there are terrible news to be found online at any moment, but they do not affect me personally. And, sure, I may catch the sound of an ambulance siren in the distance, or catch a glimpse of a car wreck on the street, but I never get a call soon after saying, “You need to come down to ________, something happened to _______.” 

And, obviously, I’m fine with that. No one wakes up thinking, “Oh! What personal tragedy will I experience today!?”

Yet, today was different.

I’m pretty sure I heard the rooster shout, “Go fuck yourself today!” in a thick Boston accent instead of crowing at the break of dawn, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”, because no sooner had I opened my eyes that I see that my mother is calling to tell me that she needs an MRI. At once. And that I should “not worry” and just “go on with my day”, even though she had to, “go immediately.”

Well that got me out of bed faster than a Henry Hill dreaming about cocaine and meatballs.

The cloud hanging over my head, though, only started to grow darker and darker as the minutes passed. But, I thought, “I can only rely on Twitter this morning to lighten up the mood, right?” — Wrong.

A woman who I met through Tumblr and consider to be a lovely person had been MIA for more than week, so I had sent her a DM last night asking if she was okay. Of course, I was expecting the usual, “Oh, I was on vacation and decided to unplug for a bit.”

Wrong again. And although I cannot discuss details, it was readily clear that the message did not contain any good news whatsoever.

Still, I kindly replied to her message and hit F5 because some tweets had already accumulated and the first goddamned tweet that appears is from Sarah Lewitinn, who works at Nylon, and it says, “I’m seeing reports that Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys has passed. I really hope this isn’t true.”

Well, it took about an hour and a half to confirm, but, guess what? It was true, as you all know by now. 

At that point I just threw my hands up in the air, and then covered my face with them, but was soon interrupted from winning an Academy Award for best dramatic performance by text messages from various friends saying that they could no longer come to a charity event with me tonight because they had decided instead to go to a corporate-sponsored party that will be giving out gift bags.

If “Miranda Priestly” had stormed in seconds later to throw her coat at me and then do a double-take before asking, “And who are you again?”, I would’ve just stared, start laughing manically, and sit there before being dragged to the nearest asylum.

In all cases, this rant is over. I’m going to get on the first flight to Syria to get some perspective, but not before beating this Friday to the ground with my cane-sword.