I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but probably the most terrifying words I read with any consistency are “UNRECOGNIZED PASSWORD”.
…all those apps and OS features designed to make keeping passwords safe and secure have one MAJOR flaw: they are merely idiot proof.
I am much, much more than an idiot.
The things that make me laugh are varied but all linked by the connective tissues of irony and/or plausibility/implausibility.
Could this happen?
If it can happen – how humiliating would it be for everyone I know to see it happen to me?
If it isn’t likely to happen is the pay-off (the humiliation factor) so great that it is worth pushing the envelop of statistical probability to try to reach the point where it IS likely to happen?
Is it ironic?
If it happened in front of people would they instinctively think that I deserve this kind of humiliation?
If it didn’t happen in front of people, would the think it so humiliating that they would either be willing to believe it happened because it would please them or at least pitch it up against my track record of humiliating myself publicly to think “…yeah – he really did do that…”?
I guess what I’m saying is that the thing that makes me laugh is humiliating myself. That explains a lot about the past 40 years.
The fundamental reason I’m not really happy as a person (as though I might ever be happy as a coffee table!) is that I’ve never been what I wanted to be.
I always saw myself as an artist. When I made friends who were artists they would point me in the other direction and tell me that I was more ‘suit’able for business. When I was in the corporate world people would recoil every time I said anything because I was too free spirited and unpredictable “you know… like an artist…” so that wasn’t ever destined to work out.
About 20 years ago I was really struggling. I couldn’t keep down a job. I was able to find jobs and get them – but some of them only worked out for a week or so… one only lasted for 2 days. I needed help! I went back to my old school to speak to a career counselor. There I took a test to see what my personality was like and to match me up with other people that I was most like and then to find out what careers they were most happy in.
My top three matches:
1) airline test pilot
2) a person who arranges displays of food
3) a musician or actor who performs on stage.
I can tell you that I do NOT like turbulence (I’ve been through some SHOCKING moments!)
I actually DO like presenting food and have taken part in designing and producing about a dozen parties that hosted multiple hundreds of people… that was cool… but I was paying for the parties and after a while THAT kind of sucked.
Not gonna lie – I’d love to be a musician. But there are only TWO things that keep me from it: lack of talent and lack of practice!
… so now I do THIS instead!
And this has happened to me.
But WHO CARES? It’s Friday!!! The week’s half over!
I’m old enough to remember people turning their nose up at Japanese cars… I’m also old enough to remember how the first few early adopters that I knew laughing at everyone else because they kept their cars for decades and hundreds of thousands of miles!
I’m worldly enough to have driven in Chinese made cars. People Stateside are probably very dismissive of Chinese cars. Chinese cars 15 years ago – yeah – dismiss them. They were junk. Chinese cars today??? Mmmmm I don’t know. Some of them are pretty nice. Point of fact – no one is going to bother to design a car with obsolete features and functions! If you’re making a car today, you make TODAY’S car.
I’m also very very lucky to know a bunch of people who design cars (as a kid the one thing I always talked about was designing cars! My much younger self would have been well chuffed to know that his older self would know folks who make cars!). These guys are very slick and very sophisticated.
….what does any of this have to do with long-term relationships?
I
D
K
I get messages from the beyond. It is always the same sort of thing: I ask “Am I doing the right thing?” And all I ever hear back is laughter.
Sometimes it feels like all my kitchen can produce with any consistency is STRESS! Stress sandwiches for lunch and dinner. Stress cakes for breakfast. Bacon and Stress on weekends. For a midnight snack I can sneak into the larder to spread a bit of stress on a pita bread.
I need to lay off all the stress.
I think I’m going to switch back to chocolate!
This has been one of my favorite jokes for the past 15 years. Of course – it doesn’t translate into text – it’s a spoken word jam at best.
I’d tell people “you remind me of the riddle of the ass!” …’ you mean “and the two bales of hay”…’ to which I would quickly and deftly reply. “NO – two halves and a hole (whole)!”
… look – I KNOW! I KNOW! I never said I was Noam Chomsky!
(Maybe ONCE I said I was ‘like’ Noam Chomsky…)
I was on the phone with a friend. He’s not a big believer in what I’m doing (that’s a scary proposition because HE is the dreamer and I am usually the practical one!)
This came to me while we were on the phone. He doesn’t know that this is out (not a lot of my friends (none really) ever look at these.)
…he couldn’t understand why a porpoise would be a peristalsis poster animal. I suggested that a penguin would be worse for hygiene reasons. Apparently he didn’t understand why peristalsis needed a spokesperson. That’s a valid point. I’ll get back to you on that later.
Sorry to go for the low hanging fruit, but HEY! I’m human and by that I mean lazy.
… and I’m certain that this sort of thing HAS happened before. (Ewwwwwwwwww!)
Relationships and how we see ourselves in relationships are another of science’s great mysteries. In an ideal setting both parties sense the gravity of the situation they are in and respond with parallel or at least symmetrical(ish) actions.
Sometimes however, things go south FAST!
You see a situation and try to find the easiest possible solution; your mate may decide to take a different tact.
For instance – the coffee pot is BROKEN (OH NO!).
Your solution is: go online and order a new pot… spring for overnight shipping.
Your partner may decide that the easiest solution is to move out and keep your record collection.
Oh well.
I don’t know about you (how could I?) but I’m constantly stuck in a paradox:
On one hand I try to exist HERE and NOW… in the moment.
On the other hand I have kids and I don’t always feel comfortable asking them to live in the Zen of life – so I plan things out.
To the best of my knowledge and my abilities I don’t feel comfortable making plans that go out beyond the shelf-life of green bananas. Oh well – I suppose to keep both sides of the ledger happy I’ll just let the $h!t hit the fan and then act ‘in the moment’ to see what I can do!
Wish me luck!
What if the soliloquy from “On The Waterfront” took place in 2020/2021 – via ZOOM?
Friday is spent ferrying between doctors; part of my neurotic drive for immortality (“you’ve got ‘Fatalistic Yoga‘ as a legacy! What more could you want???”)
I do in fact want more…
Now we are in the realms of the holistic and the natural -I’ll let you know how it goes in 12 years!
Read more
Golf and people who play golf, or worse are GOOD golfers are not to be trusted: they have some deal with the devil that allows them to bask in the glory of the sport while their personal lives seem to cruise control from one success to another. (Hint: that’s how they have time to play the game!)
Their model of achievement in the universe can not be applied to people who are bogged down with changing diapers or building businesses.
(‘But people do business on golf courses!’)
People also do business at Starbucks! And I trust deals that are made over coffee (a fundamental building block of human life) over deals made obsessing about having “skill” as it pertains to knocking something that fits in the palm of your hand into a predetermined hole a mile away!
YOLO
FOMO
Acronyms that are supposed to describe how we feel/act towards things. Maybe it really is as simple as fear and greed? Throw in a dash of ignorance in the fear camp and a splash of arrogance in the greed crew.
What was the computer’s sage advice in that ancient movie with the kid who played games with a government computer : “the only way not to lose is to never play the game”
…how boring! And who likes hyper-moralistic computers anyway???
In case you couldn’t already tell, my weight is a constant source of interest for me. I keep a few different paper journals of my food intake and my moods and my weight (please note – I don’t take it very seriously because I don’t COMBINE THE THREE!)
One very telling post from the other day read: “I guess chocolate cake is NOT my secret weapon in the war against obesity!”
(Those are kilograms – not pounds! 😦
… and that’s why these glum, portly characters beset my thoughts.
In fairness to myself – I’m not actually that dumb.
(I’m DUBMER!)
More tests and more blood. I think I’ll ask if I’ll be able to play the violin after the blood draw!
So, here’s how this works.
I get home from taking my kids to school and having breakfast with my wife… I stare blankly at the walls.
Something funny comes into my mind. Normally I’d just giggle and go back to staring at the walls. Now, thanks to Fatalistic Yoga, I try to visualize that funny notion and make one of these crappy cartoons.
I use Canva – mostly because it is very, very easy. That’s a good thing because I’m not actually too smart – so the easier the better. I create “Volumes” every week and try to produce anywhere from 5 to 10 of these little ditties.
After I stare at these (as opposed to the wall) for a long enough period of time I export them and stick them in a folder.
Every few weeks I go through all of my published posts (like this that you’re looking at now) and all of the scheduled posts and try to create (if you can but believe it) a cohesive flow of images and words…
But I don’t just publish them all at once – no. I schedule them days and even weeks into the future. Monday through Friday at 5:55AM UTC they hit the world!
(what the hell is this madman talking about and WHY is he talking about it?)
What I’m trying to say is, as sad as this is going to sound, there was a moment in my life when the idea of a person with gastrointestinal problems talking to a Scottish doctor (with haggis on his mind) was extremely funny to me.
Now, months later, as I look at this I have to question my own standards.
FYI – if you have the need for a surgeon – go Scottish. It’s a long story… someday I’ll write about it. That will be one of my “The WORST day of the rest of your life” stories.
“They say I got brains – but they ain’t doin me no good (I wish they would)… I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.” Brian Wilson
It just seems tougher and tougher to get to ‘that place’ where everything works. So many things are in flux. Time is in flux. Chemicals in flux. Money in flux. Motivation is in flux. Aptitude is in flux. Enjoyment and dread are in flux.
I wonder if the pendulum ever finally sits still or if some other variable comes along to tilt the plane and put it all in flux again.
Oh flux it!
Too many Minions in the house still… have to parse out my time better!
One of the most disappointing things that I have to endure is life is when everything goes exactly the way I anticipate it will… but at the wrong time. It usually comes down to a simple misunderstanding; I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t realize now was not the ideal juncture in the conversation to: laugh,cry, scream, jump up out of my chair and hoot and holler.
Eventually I’ll ‘get that faculty together’ – to wait patiently and read the signs before turning off the highway.
One of my ‘Minions’ is home this week, so I haven’t got a ton of time. Let me look in the fridge and see what I can re-heat…
(That’s awful…)
(it even looks like crap…)
Call me weird but I don’t really mind giving blood or blood tests. That wasn’t always the case, and like a lot of other people I’ve found myself in some scenarios where it wasn’t really an option. In those ‘back to the wall’ moments you start to appreciate how (when we succumb to the red flashing “PANIC” signs in our minds) we can make more out of things than they really are.
That said – I’ve had a few blood tests that were pretty grizzly. Once a nurse didn’t want to put on a pair of rubber gloves to draw my blood. I indicated that it was NOT NORMAL to do that. She indicated to me that in her country it would be considered rude for her to wear gloves because it would insinuate that the patient was ‘dirty’… I was finally able to get her into a set of gloves and everything went just fine.
Another time I was flanked by a whole team of nurses who had no idea what they were doing. They couldn’t get a drop of blood out of either forearm or inner elbow… the most senior nurse among them came up with a rather ingenious (and by that I mean so utterly bizarre that looking back on it I can’t believe I actually agreed to play along!):
– I had to lay down on a gurney
– then they inserted the needle part into the top of my hand (that hurt!) and got me to
– flop my arm over the side of the gurney WHILE
– one nurse massaged the blood from my shoulder down to my elbow AND
– another nurse massaged the blood from my elbow down to my hand!
I only needed to give seven (7!!!!!) vials of blood that day!
Two weeks ago I needed to give another five vials of blood. The nurse told me to stop looking at the needle. I said “But I’m not scared of the needle!” That’s when she indicated to me that it made HER nervous!
I make it a point to rewatch a collection of Kubrick movies at least once a year. “The Shining”, “2001”, “Dr Strangelove”, (sometimes, but not always) “Barry Lyndon” and “Eyes Wide Shut”,
I don’t always watch them in conventional ways. For the last four or five years I’ve made it a point to sit down and ‘look at them’ with no sound. It allows me to focus on how each scene develops and how each frame of film is (well) framed. I look at all kinds of details and try to figure out if Mr. Kubrick did little things intentionally or benefited from the occasional fluke (like the arrangements of the cans and boxes in the storage room in “The Shining”… did he REALLY arrange all of those? I don’t know if he could/would. They say YES – he was totally committed to the smallest details… did he keep a journal or a record saying he did? If he did, I’d love to read it.)
Anyway – this is an adaptation of a scene from “Eyes Wide Shut”. It isn’t just a filthy movie – it is a visually fascinating movie too! What does it mean? I don’t know. Sometimes I’m close to figuring it out and then it goes. Then again I’m sure there have been moments while on long, long walks when I understood EXACTLY what “Tales From Topographic Oceans” by “YES” was supposed to be about… and that meaning too left my brain as soon as I got to where I was going at the time.
So much of the social order has been turned on its head recently. Relationships with family and friends and even the relationship with school – not just the people or the classes but also the institution. To know you’ve taken part in something, that you’ve written your name and your chapter in a longer work…
…yeah – what if your school is using you? What if your school is the one friend that fishes for compliments? What if it was using you for money?
WHAT IF school didn’t really see you as a student and instead saw you as just a ‘friend’?
Just another way that life can twist around on the vine and rot instead of ripen.
I used to work for a guy who I won’t name. He was a pain in the a$$! He would call me into his office and give me “special projects”:
“…call my lawyer and have my will changed so that it specifies which months of the year each of my children can wear my wristwatches…”
“…call XYZ movers and tell them that I want them to move all of the watercolors from the first floor to the second floor and all of the watercolors from the second floor to the third floor. Then put all the watercolors from the third floor in storage until next year..” (What about the Acrylics?) [Look of disgust and finger pointing out of the office (my cue to leave)]
Another memorable one:
”Call the people that service my Saab. Tell them that I want them to find a way to optimize how the windshield washer spray hits the windshield so that it is an even amount…”
(this time I pushed back): ‘Ydnar – they already did that!’
”Did they? When?”
’When they designed and built the car; its a Saab! It wasn’t designed by 14 year-old kids goofing around with pens and pencils… they are Swedes! They are engineering fanatics!’
”… you had better be right!”
maybe I was/maybe I wasn’t but I didn’t have to humiliate myself to call Saab and ask them to recalibrate his windshield washers!
It is cliche to say that people’s bathroom habits are one of the major causes of friction in a relationship. But without getting schmaltzy I am now and have always been totally besotted by my wife. Sincerely.
But I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the way she leaves her toothbrush in the cup in our medicine cabinet! If you’re reading this (and I know you aren’t): Stop letting your toothbrush get stuck inside the bristles of MY TOOTHBRUSH!!! GROSS!
… A clown.
If you’re hear from my ad on Facebook, you will know this picture.
Not much to this one: bulls ride around in large trailers or train cars. Clown cars are more crammed for space.
I was born in the year of the Ox so I can identify with the Ox on certain levels. I am a pure and utter idiot, so I can see things from the clown’s perspective too. I don’t know who wins.
When I’m not doing this stuff, I’m usually either pontificating about something that doesn’t exist to a person that I can’t prove is real or designing something real that will never get made. One of the great joys of being a designer is conning people into thinking that it is essential to mimic nature. Nature is after all perfect. Well – nature doesn’t make any excuses for itself…
What if nature is wrong? What if there were some sort of totally unknown, inorganic, extra-cosmic/universal ethos that we never saw because we never learned to embrace the random/chaotic aspects of life (what if they themselves are part of nature, parts we simply don’t love and admire???)
Anyway – I don’t have a cat. 🐈⬛ but if I did I wonder what it would be like if I could stretch like one. And what if it thought I was a total and utter twat because of that mimicry?
Dogs (I haven’t got a dog either) 🐶 probably love it when we get down and roll around and play with them. Cats – I’m not so sure.
No, not all lawyers are bad. Some of them die.
Lawyers make me feel like I’m in a bad nursery rhyme… like I’m about to hire a dog to chase a cat (who is the dog’s best friend) to scare a rat (who is the cat’s neighbor and also a shill for the dog!)… you get the idea. It never ends.
…time for a segue!
Let’s delve into my other life, managing money. I’ll introduce some different bits and pieces under the moniker “Brokers and Jokers”.
I interned for a brokerage firm – it was the first time I ever had to wear a tie on a daily basis! Anyway – all the calls would go through the front desk. Debbie would route the calls to each of the brokers. New inquiries would go to the “Broker of the Day”. Debbie had a list of all the new brokers. Someone (I don’t know who, but I do have my suspicions) put a post-it note on top of Debbie’s list with the word “JOKER” on it… and ‘Joker of the Day’ was born!
And now “Brokers and Jokers” will see the light of day.
And if we are all lucky it will go the way of the brokerage firm I interned with: it will flourish and go from strength to strength!
(Actually – what really happened was that I had to chase some mid-level funky (just like me) for payment for some SWAPS my client had sold them. “Call me at 9AM – I’ll get my manager to approve payment…”
“Listen – call me back at 1PM – he’s going to come out of the meeting he’s in and I’ll get him to sign-off on payment”
… by 4PM they were gone. POOOF! Like they never existed.
… and punishes the stupid.
My poor toothbrush. He’s just not very smart or very tactful (neither is his owner.) He sees things on tv and wants to try them at home. [Find: “tv” / Replace with: “Pornhub” … Find: “home” / Replace with: “in bed”.]
Not very smart.
Renee Descartes … I think, therefore I am. Sure – everyone knows that. Who remembers: “there can be no mountain without a valley”? Delving into the essential relationships between the antitheses of things. Light/Dark. Up/Down. big/S M A L L. Trust/AntiTrust.
Maybe not the same type of thing…
Is there anything more withering than bad eyebrows? I shouldn’t always voice that opine aloud as from time to time I need to get the weed-whacked out to clear the channel between the right and left brow.
But what about people who go TOO far?
The most painful thing I see again and again is when a friend takes them all the way back and then tattoos a “New and Improved” brow line in… but in a color that is just ‘off’. YUCK!
I guess I’m not really a friend then.
If I were meant to be a gymnast, I’d be shaped like a gymnast. If I were meant to be a soloist in a ballet company, I’d be shaped like one.
Instead I got through life shaped like a person that a gymnast or a soloist would call to belly-but their refrigerator off of a balcony so that they could watch it crush a car.
I am as God made me.
I love reading stories about how cereal murderers and rapists get to live into the late innings of life without so much as tooth decay.
Meanwhile the rest of us (who am I kidding? I get ONE viewer! (Me)) are dodging cancer, heart disease, dyspepsia and taxation!
Perhaps I need to do something heinous (like these posts?). NOOOO! REALLY UGLY (yeah – like these posts!) so that I can get sent to an immortality clinic – rather – penitentiary!
I try to tell my wife that this is real work and that she’s can’t cope with the fact that I’m my own boss! (The downside to being your own boss is (in my case) working for a moron.)
I wonder if candles ever think “geez – I wish I’d been born one of those fancy candles that people get and never use… just put in the corner of a room to look sophisticated”.
Instead, some of us are born as candles that get shipped to hotels and restaurants for daily use. Sad.
Worse – imagine being born a birthday candle. Used once for just a few seconds and then pitched in the rubbish. Very sad.
Don’t mind me… my mind has a tendency to
…. yes. Yes it does.
I don’t eat
I don’t sleep
I do nothing but think of you….
One time my oncologist slapped me in the face. If it weren’t such a horrifying moment in time I’d have found it more hysterical. I lost my composure and he full-on slapped me in the face! (The only people who had ever slapped me like that were my father and my priest – and in both instances I’m sure I deserved it!)
He said he was tired of listening to me whine… I hope he was a bit more forgiving to his other patients.
I spell it FATALISTIC YOGA… my moral authority to make fun of everything in the universe (and considering that my firm belief is that I’m the only person in the universe and everyone else is a crazy idea in my head – that means ME.)
Sorry, I initially forgot to say something witty about this.
First and foremost, the guy with the backpack is me. Proud to get everything I need for a flight (1 hour or 18 hours) in a backpack. Sadly, I don’t focus to much of my effort on getting “ME” into one seat on a plane. I kind of take up one and a bit seats. That’s ok when I’m flying with my family – I can just invade my son’s seat a bit. When the person next to me isn’t a relative it isn’t much fun.
I knew a guy who did that (French kiss a dog) … gross.
One time about 40 years ago my mother asked my father for a fur coat. He didn’t miss a beat and said “NO!”
My mom asked why he said no so quickly. His response: “you’re too short! If someone sees you walking around in a coat like that they’ll think you’re a badger and call the animal rescue people to catch you!”
Dad had a peculiar sense of humor and he was as quick as a fencer when defending his wallet!
I wonder if it really will be this bad when we have interplanetary friends
Didn’t we just land on Mars?
A friend asked me why we invest so much time and effort into going to other planets. I suggested that he look at the dismal mess we have turned THIS planet into and tell me how HE plans to fix it.
My friend, a Kung Fu master (no – really – he’s a legit Shaolin master!) asked how going to another planet will fix this one. “It won’t” I said, “but it will buy us more time and give us more lands to pollute.”
He didn’t laugh.
I wasn’t joking.
Everyday I watch my poor toothbrush cower and hide from his counterpart in the cabinet. It chases him. It corners him. It abuses him. Sometimes he’s locked bristle to bristle and I KNOW that makes him uncomfortable. Poor fellow. In the grand scheme of things being subjected to having to clean vacuum parts isn’t so bad, is it?
To The Spanner Born 