Posthuman Blues

My apartment needs a new look. I still like the ubiquitous weird postcards, but I want to move on, reinvent . . . actual framed art would be nice. There's a killer decorating store down the street called Z Gallerie; they have a mind-boggling stock of really cool prints. Of course, they're incredibly over-priced.





I have a few "nice" things to work with: a reasonably stylish black up-lamp, a rather industrial-looking futon; an androgynous life-size glass head from Pier 1; the obligatory lava lamp (with tripod "rocket-ship" fins); rock specimens from an alleged UFO crash site in New Mexico (not Roswell -- another one). And then there are the knick-knacks: glow-in-the-dark aliens; plastic dinosaurs; King Tut; Mr. Peanut; the Mars Pathfinder mission ensemble . . . On a bookshelf, diminutive injection-molded astronauts diligently inspect an omnipresent layer of dust.

Meanwhile, my wall and ceiling have succumbed to an engagingly organic-looking decay as leaking rain moistens the plaster, causing it to swell into strange shapes. The paint traps most of it in blisters, which are subject to uncontrolled growth. One of them has grown quite large in recent weeks; it looks cyst-like, something from a David Cronenberg movie. I half-suspect it will rupture noisily at any moment.

The inside of my main closet is actively disintegrating -- a whole chunk of wall is easing out of place like the lid of a horror-movie coffin, announcing its emergence with the intermittent patter of plaster on videocassettes and obsolescent computer hardware (which I've since moved).

I've told the management, so I assume they're going to come in and basically re-do the entire north-facing wall. They could have spared themselves the trouble if they'd actually fixed the roof-leak the first time this happened, but I don't exactly blame them for not wanting to tackle this at the source. I imagine the ensuing confrontation will be the remodeling equivalant of Sigourney Weaver single-handedly storming the hive at the end of "Aliens."