Portland, ORE. (AP) -- Beloved blogger Comrade X died early last week from ignominy sustained while trapped under a local streetcar. This reporter would like to present Comrade X's obituary as it appeared in the New York Times (2/14/11):
Internationally-unknown blogger Comrade X, one of the last crusaders in the struggle against capitalism, died last week from a severe disinclination to live, coupled with heightened boredom and the stress of finding his rather corpulent body trapped under a streetcar. Raised during the height of the Cold War by fromageurs on an artisan cheese farm in then-barbaric Minnesota, Comrade X was exposed early to communist ideology and lectured constantly about the evils of capitalism. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Comrade X, were locally famous sheep-cheese artisans in a state whose prime source of revenue consisted of cow cheese manufacture, and were consequently marginalized by the local populace of Uddertown, MN. Comrade X excelled in school despite the incessant taunts of his lactose-infused schoolmates. He graduated from at least three universities before this reporter lost count, then spent years riding the rails, criss-crossing the United States in order to fully understand "the extent and utter imbrication of capitalist ideology in the vacuous minds and dessicated souls of everyday Americans," as he put it in his recently-unreleased autobiography, Too Fat To Live, Too Ugly To Die: The Untold Story of the Incessant Struggle for Freedom of One Comrade X, American.
After college(s), Comrade X devoted his life to teaching, hoping, in his words, "to educate these poor fucks who never had a chance, due to the utter contempt towards education in this country, and the resulting disdainful and self-hating and utterly worthless people who go into that particular occupation." After years of struggling in academia, Comrade X succumbed to a regimen of anti-depressants, anxiolitics, and alcohol, which caused, in the words of one of his closest friends, Comrade Y, "a kind of, you know, what do you call it? Umm, like, break in his ... umm, his, like .... you know?"
Comrades X and Y met one sultry summer afternoon in the Brokeback Bar in Venice Beach, called by many "the darkest, dankest, fucking dirtiest bar in the country." Comrade X was vomiting by the jukebox while Comrade Y was trying to play a Tom Petty medley. A friendship was instantly struck, and Comrades X and Y then went on to create the world-unreknowned Irritable Blog Syndrome blog, established for the sole purpose of defeating capitalism in all its various insidious manifestations.
After almost a year of hard labor, writing the blog and pursuing an unrewarding career path, Comrade X began to exhibit symptoms of depression worse than those he was known for. "That dude was fucking depressed, man," one of his former students commented. "Fucking depressed!" Loss of income, constant job stress, and the myriad pressures of daily blog writing forced Comrade X to seek psychiatric care. "Yes, he came to me, seeking help," said his former psychiatrist, Dr. Nowan Sowat, "but I could do nothing for him. He was too far gone." Comrade X then sought refuge in alcohol and sugar-based food products. "Oh, yes, he would come in and buy a week's worth of beer and Sara Lee, and then come back the next day and buy the same again. I wondered what he was up to, but of course I couldn't refuse to sell to him. I saw he had a problem, but I have kids to feed, you know? I thought, let him eat cake, so what?" said local merchant, Singh Flamabel, whose bodega Comrade X frequented daily.
Drinking and dessert-binge-eating took its toll, until that fateful day when Comrade X screamed those memorable words, "I don't wanna live!" and threw himself under the streetcar, his ice cream cone akimbo. The rest, as the Bard says, is silence.
Memorial services will be held somewhere at some point. The real memorial is, as always, in the hearts and minds and souls of Comrade X's ever-vigilant, ever-revolutionary followers. Viva la révolucion!
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