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!)
I’m sure this has happened – and that’s gross!
Theory of Relativity… no – wait! Relationships!
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.
Friday is Medical Day
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 moreDear Dairy (Diary)
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!)
Back to the doctors!
More tests and more blood. I think I’ll ask if I’ll be able to play the violin after the blood draw!
I swear I thought this was funny at some point
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.
Liquid Crystal Display?
Sorry, no. Lowest Common Denominator.
Sometimes that’s the limit of my capabilities.
Clinko Di Mayo
Too many Minions in the house still… have to parse out my time better!
Werewolves of London!
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!
More of the human side of superheroes
Back to superheroes. I really did love them when I was a child. I remember that I had a really cool toy once: It was a Batman that had a parachute attached to it. You could pull back on the hard-plastic Batman and send him flying into the air and then watch him float down.
I used to fire this guy off of the roof of our house and watch him go up what seemed hundreds of feet… and then float down (realistically it was more like 20 feet- but hey!). Sometimes he had a load of ants taped to his belt… because THEY wanted to experience the exhilaration of flight too (don’t they?)
This toy was taken away from me and thrown in the trash by my mother. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to fire it into the back of the head of the person standing in front of us as we waited to pay for my older-brother’s reading glasses. 45 years later and I can still remember that feeling of being totally frustrated. Oh well.
Fast forward 19 years and I was applying for a job at a major international money manager. I had just read that it was important to look professional and to collect business cards from all of the people you speak to on an interview so could send them handwritten notes. The chap that interviewed me must have been the guy I hit with the Batman ‘slingshot’ because when I asked for his business card he said “Just address all of your correspondence to “Mr. Luthor”…”
I didn’t get that job. Probably because Lex never got my handwritten note.
Onward and upward!
What did YOU do this weekend?
I know a great number of people who ‘live for the weekend’. It is a great feeling when that whistle blows and you are free to do what you want to do. Maybe that’s the first time all week that you get to be the real ‘you’?
What if the real you is a monster? Parts of the real “me” are not monstrous. (Maybe the tension created in the typical work setting is a necessary evil!) When you don’t have any boundaries stopping you from going over the line, you go over the line!
These days I try as hard as possible to NOT be a monstrous person. I’m keenly aware of what I eat (and that’s not a small feat!). I meditate – sometimes I meditate myself to sleep. Most importantly – I’m aware of all of the things that tempt me over the line and I avoid them like the plague!
Same Trope as Yesterday… different tact
This still makes me giggle.
If you wanted to spar about Kierkegaard or Kant you caught me on the wrong day. Today I’m still the naughty little boy. Sorry.
Beyond Bad Taste
Sometimes I just can’t suppress the naughty little boy that lives inside of me. He sees things or sometimes he just imagines things and he giggles openly.
There are a few fundamental things that adult relationships are based around. One of the ones no one likes to fiddle with (unless you are ready to throw your keys into the bowl) is fidelity/exclusivity. Somewhat like electricity we expect to find it wherever we look in our relationships. Sometimes it is there, right where you left it. Then, sometimes it isn’t. What if that jarring moment was amplified by finding out that your spouse was the office tart? Now you find out that you no longer have exclusivity or discretion – yikes! Then you have to deal with pity (that you don’t want) and ridicule (that you probably don’t want either).
Thank heavens that I’m only a naughty little boy and this is only a cartoon! If I didn’t have a tablet with this software it would be scratched onto the back of my algebra text book!
Is That Really Necessary???
(Who the hell is this guy?)
I’ll come clean: I know two official pimps and one guy who can get you company if you need or want it. Two are in London and one is in Paris. They are actually OK guys… except for the fact that they have access to men and women who … well – you know.
As a person who sometimes has trouble distinguishing between words (aided by my hyperactive imagination) I have always thought that it would be funny to encounter an entrepreneurial bartender (btw two of the three pimps are disguised as bartenders in high-end bars) who goes out and tries go buy a …warehouse.
Did I tell you that this was going to be classy? (No!)
“It’s not Bertrand Russell. But what do you want???”
F_t_l_st_c Y_g_
I like profound things as much as the next idiot. The subconscious is ovumrated. And for the record, sperm cells are nasty little buggers; always practicing self-flagellation.
Welcome to ‘Fatalistic Yoga’
Fatalistic Yoga is an expression of that part of my brain that I just can’t make SHUT UP! It wakes me up in the morning with unusual thoughts. It talks right over the top of all of the stuff you and other people say to me all day. It is the reason I carry small notebooks with me at all times (to write down its tiniest musings). It puts me to bed at night and fills my head with crazy dreams. It wakes me up in the middle of the night with far-fetched ideas that need to see pen touch paper before morning.
BEHOLD
My son had no idea what was going on… he just found it amusing that daddy ALSO likes to play with action figures (though he is still puzzled as to why “Steven and Aubrey” (the red and yellow guys that used to be part of the Power Rangers Universe (if such a thing exists)) always try to sell people horrible tasting muffins and cookies.
incidental artwork by Timothy John of Adelaide, Australia. He’s a deeply passionate and dedicated artist and would be frustrated as heck to know that his works were implicated in anything this low-class. Sorry Tim.
To The Spanner Born 