Thursday, December 4, 2008

On Dead Bodies and General Slobbery

Last night, for some reason, I watched the local news at 11. Let me tell you these news stories were real gems.

Most notably, there was a piece that took place in North Hollywood, where I live, but thankfully not right in my immediate neighborhood.

It all started with a house that had always been a little ill-kept, but over the past year had gotten completely out of hand. The lawn was all weeds and dirt. There was garbage heaped around the property, rotting in the hot sun and attracting vermin and stray cats. The whole place reeked and a neighbor finally got fed up and called the police.

When the cops got there, they found a shriveled up corpse sitting in one of the living room chairs.

The inhabitants of this house were a man and his mother. And the mother had apparently died a year ago and the son just never really did anything about it.

A reporter interviewed a coworker of this man, who said that he seemed pretty normal, if a little gross and smelly.

I know. Who leaves a dead body in his living room for a year?

But if you think about it, after a few weeks I'd imagine it doesn't stink that much. And by a few months, it's probably hard as a rock. And then, it's very likely she just got buried in old soda cans and KFC buckets and he forgot she was even there.

It may seem like I'm defending this poor slob, but I'm not. Well, not exactly. It's just that right before I watched the news, Devin stepped out to take Seamus for a walk and as he grabbed his leash off the ledge by the door he said "Hey, this cat puke's still here."

See, the cat threw up over the weekend and Devin discovered it. And I was supposed to clean it up when he was out with the dog...but I didn't. And then I forgot about it.

And then the puke dried up and became less noticeable and got covered in junk mail and stuff.

But last night when I got home from work, I noticed it again. "Oh yeah...that..." I said to myself. Only, I still didn't clean it up. I just carried on with my life and made dinner and watched The Cosby Show.

And when Devin later reminded me about it, I still didn't clean it up and carried on watching the news.

But it's a good thing I did watch the news, because after realizing that I had so much in common with the unnamed slob on TV, I immediately got up and cleaned the crusted cat vom.


UPDATE: Thanks to reader Raych for providing me the link to this news story. Check it.

9 comments:

JenBun said...

See? The news is good for something!

I am reading this book called "Stiff," by Mary Roach, and it is all about cadavers. (I know, weird, right? I got it for my birthday-- it's interesting!) I just finished the chapter on decomposition...

That dude is nasty.

m said...

Um....

A year? He left his mother's body there FOR A YEAR?

I think you have a long way to go on the cat puke before you have TOO much in common with this guy.

raych said...

ugh. i just searched everywhere for footage. here it is - http://tinyurl.com/57xlg6


i should watch the news more often

saratogajean said...

You need to teach Seamus to eat cat vom. My dogs do and it really frees up a lot of my dinner making/Cosby show watching time.

Katelin said...

i would definitely be that lazy too...with the puke that is, not a dead body, eek.


ps. don't know if you got the email or saw my blog, but we're doing a la blogger meetup tomorrow if you can make it :)

Tia said...

ewww!

but, uhm, honestly, i can totally relate to the cat puke thing. hahah.

but a dead body? no way.

and seriously, did no one ask about him mom? or want to go to the funeral? weird.

Anonymous said...

Getting laid when you live with your mom would be hard enough. Getting laid while she rots in the other room?

Now THAT would be a challenge.

Unknown said...

Well at least you cleaned it up eventually right? I think you should be proud of yourself.

Riff Dog said...

Ha! We need people around us to do disgusting or annoying things so that we see them and realize how bad it looks. Once again, our local news performs a public service!