A New Job Applicant

We all know that my final day of employment at my quaint little non-profit is August 27th. Well, okay, maybe "we all" didn't know that, but now we all do. Sorry-- sometimes I think you're a little more involved in my life than you probably are. After all, I'm not the only one on your blog-roll, even though I should be.

(Love me. Pet me. Reassure me and, while you're at it, switch on the nightlight, too, please.)

The current plan is to go back on the street as an emergency medical technician, scoring a job at a first-rate ambulance company and enjoying the pleasures of a uniform allowance, twirling and flashing red lights, a stiff pay cut, and coming home to my wife smelling like a mixture of blood, urine and diesel fuel every day until my back gives out.

While that's the plan, it doesn't hurt to have a contingency plan. That's just what my parents advocated when I told them I was going to major in theatre in college. And look what happened.

After last night's passage of the historic health care bill, I think I've decided what my contingency plan is going to be. On the off-chance that I do not get hired at an ambulance company, I am going to apply for a position on one of these new-fangled "death panels" everybody's talking about.

While they haven't officially been formed yet, I know President Obama is hard at work on the creation of these panels, which will be critical to the success of his new healthcare initiative. After all, nothing says "healthcare" quite like "death panels."

I think I would truly be an ideal candidate to participate on a death panel. While I admit that I don't have any actual, practical experience in killing people, I certainly have enough scholarly knowledge about anatomy and physiology to complete the task expeditiously. I know all about the choice killing points in the human body: the carotid artery is a good one to slice & dice, as is the femoral. Of course, if you're not into gore, you can always smother grammaw with a pillow. Pillowcases are easy to wash and there's no insidious-looking "murder weapon" that you need to worry about hiding from the po-po.

There are other key points that make me a superior death panel candidate:

* I despise old people.

Let's face it: they smell and are relatively useless. Get one to start yammering on about the price of a loaf of mayonnaise in 1937 and you'll need to ram a loofah bar down his throat just to get him to shut the fuck up. I'm not some teary-eyed sentimentalist who would leap at the opportunity to sit at the gnarled, hammer-toed feet of some crinkly-assed cardboard-face and listen to her drone on and on about shingles or Sears & Roebuck or whatever the fuck old people talk about and pretend I'm getting pearls of wisdom dripping from the corners of Merlin's eyebrows. Man-- fuck that. Let's ice these creaky people.

* I can make the tough decisions.

Not that it's a tough decision to pull the plug on some wasted away, Chicklet-toothed, ventilator-hogging great-great-grammaw with one lung and a partially-deflated basketball for a head. Just like at the Colosseum: Thumbs DOWN, motherfuckers!

* I like the word "panel."

Discussion panel. Wood panel. Panel curtains. Panel saw. Solar panels. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The Walt Disney World Moms Advisory Panel (for real). Crossing the English Panel. Seriously-- I'm all about that word. I even like the sound of it. "Panel." It's not pronunced "Pain-ul." Because that would be too close to the word "Anal." And that's just wrong.

* I'm obsessed with death.

What better job could there be for someone who can't get enough fetid detritus, decomposition, and demise? I mean, besides being an on-scene accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board or a vulture.

I'm always talking about death in one respect or another, and I live in constant fear of my own death, contrary to my mother's instructions. I constantly go to doctors and have them inspect moles and cut them out and show them my penis because I'm convinced I have some life-altering social disease and I am always looking for sores inside my mouth because I know I have oral cancer because I smoked cigars when I was twenty and maybe being around actual as opposed to imaginary illness and death would be a good thing for me.

* I like to get dressed up.

I'm assuming that, being on something as serious-sounding as a Death Panel would require at least a shirt and tie, if not a sport coat or an outright suit-- at least on decision dates.

I certainly hope these panels get started up and that the White House starts disseminating application materials for interested applicants soon. I'm sure they will-- I know it's the Obama administration's ultimate desire to murder as many elderly and infirmed people as humanly possible. And he'll be great at it, too. If he hires me to help out, of course.

I can't wait to get started on my new career!