… make that champion of the UNIVERSE.
(the trophy says “#1 with the Universe”. I couldn’t get the spacing right or make it look cool (as if that was ever an option.))
[“In the gardens of belief. Meditate us turn the key”
(Shouldn’t that be “in the gardens of belief meditators turn the key”?)
“A Play Within A Play”
Jon and Vangelis
(how infuriating – I double checked that lyric online and found out that the “official” line is not as cool as I had always heard it when listening to the song.)]
After yesterdays I thought I’d post this one. A real visual masterpiece.
I have NO IDEA what the hell I was thinking when I playfully implicated that these three symbols would decide to vacation together in what appears to be Hawaii. (I hope they’re having fun.)
That happens more and more to me these days. My favorite playlist is an acronym … but I can’t remember what it stands for and it is starting to infuriate me. “MCATIS”
Will someone please contact my subconscious and tap into my memory to find out and then tell me?
Here’s another cheap shot that I had to look at three times to remember exactly who or what I was aiming my japes at.
Another day/week another cheap shot and pun.
If you were looking for Kierkegaard – you came to the right place! (But on the wrong day… catch me in another decade when I go back to rereading all my Hong & Hong translations.)
I have been doing that thing: deep breath for 3 seconds. Hold for 3 seconds and then exhale for 3 seconds.
It actually feels really good.
Then I feel like a genuine prat for intentionally taking 9 seconds to breathe.
Greetings from Chester! He’s the skeleton I keep in my closet. It COMPLETELY freaks out anyone that comes to look at the electrical box or phone lines. And that’s why I keep him there.
oh – he’s also the source of all my ‘Dark Powers’… I really wish they were useful for something OTHER THAN knowing that there is ice cream in the freezer.
I wrote an elegy for a little boy who had died in the community. The headmaster of the school seemed shocked that I wrote it. Considering that it sprang forth from the same mind as the person who envisioned THIS monstrosity ⬆️ I can understand his amazement.
Sometimes I amaze myself. That isn’t always great.
(Sorry – still no cartoons … well I have about 40 in reserve but they are heinous. Like – they make me question how I can be a husband, father, philanthropist and humanist …)
So – we are down to words
As the tag line states none are facts. The universe itself is temporary. All things in it are temporary. A priori thought is only temporarily eternal (the concept of the form of a perfect square can only last as long as the person thinking it).
Anyone selling facts is a fraud and needs to be ignored or mistrusted.
Do it. Don’t do it. Like it. Don’t like it. Right now is not the same as tomorrow or yesterday.
First – I feel badly about doing this – I’ve got my littlest Minion home with me while his sister is off in Shaolin learning to kick a$$ with the monks…
When I was a boy I was told that you shouldn’t start sentences with And or But. But sometimes it sounds better! And that’s all that matters when you’re trying to get people to read/digest/enjoy what you write.
I’ve been involved in thinking up, preparing and presenting business proposals for nearly 30 years. It is so ubiquitous in my daily life that I don’t always realize when it is happening.
I can however tell when they go all horribly wrong. I can tell you the dates and locations of all of those events.
Scott or the person I portray as “Scott” is really a nice guy; very calm, very, very classy… contrary to this space, you could say he was ‘to the MANNER born’.
When I talk to him I feel like I’m the world’s crappiest client (letting my dirty filthy subconscious run wild like this doesn’t actually help). I never feel like I’m worthy enough to be his client.
He’s got clients that wear shoes with laces!
He’s got clients that own boats.
He has clients that don’t actively attempt to compose the most profanity laden sentence in history… and then send it to random people. (One reason that almost all of you reading are wise: you NEVER give me your email addresses! Thanks for that.)
Anyway – I apologize in advance for breaking that dear, sweet man’s heart by depicting him as an empty-headed, insensitive and ineffectual jerk.
And his mirror trading strategy was something I agreed to.
… you can put the gun down now – I already made it look like “I’m” the bad guy here… is this mic on? Is it capturing what I’m saying?…
Apparently Bill HAS a good lawyer.
At times like these we see why sometimes a good lawyer is what you really need.
….I never liked Pokey – I always saw his true nature.
…what if Bob Dylan was your friend.
… what if he had your telephone number and called you all hours of the day and night to try to help him understand the mundane aspects of life that you NEVER expect Bob Dylan to be connected to???
God – I’m shameless.
That’s why you never hire a giant squid as your Chief Revenue Officer!
(Short post for Dragon Boat Festival.). Is that “The Mr Young” or “Them R Young”?
(And I get accused of poor branding!!!)
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!
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!
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
After yesterday’s rant about golf, I know it is possible for people to think I’m a ‘negative’ person. In actuality, I’m not. I’m actually a pretty cheerful person – yes – crappy things happen, but I usually find a way to find the humor in them or find creative solutions.
And I’m fully aware that crappy things happen to other people too. I don’t go around seeking pity.
So, today’s post is a good faith showing that I can be a ‘positive person’ from the outset.
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!)
“One day I’ll be famous. I’ll be proper and picky; go to St Richard so often that I’ll call it St. Ricky!”????
It doesn’t have the same lyrical appeal.
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.
This all started innocently enough. After 10-12 years of deep introspection (and complaining) someone told me that the solution to my problem was to just DO something. Do ANYTHING. Go for a walk. Go for a swim. Volunteer some time at a worthwhile cause that needs your help.
None of those things appealed to me so I decided to start converting some of the weird ideas milling around in my notebooks into these terrible comics.
In a way it doesn’t mean too much for me to say that I know, deep down, that they are not good. The ideas aren’t that bad – I get laughs with them IRL, but artwork is crap like you wouldn’t believe.
After I started compiling some of the hundreds of these little ditties it entered my mind that I could perhaps make more of it than just your standard ‘shouting into an empty room’ blogs that I’ve done before. This time it could be serious ‘… it could be a contender. It could BE somebody!’
… but that would require people like you and I don’t know how to find you. So I pay to place ads to attract clicks and readers (sometimes with hilarious effect! Not everyone is content to just ‘change the channel’ or ‘click elsewhere’. Some folks are really quite (ummmm) ANGRY? That I do this and that they see it.
For this – the last post in the month of April I want to make amends by saying “Sorry”.
Oh
BTW – starting in May I’m doubling down on a more coordinated attack through FB and IG to get even MORE people angry with me. Sorry for that too.
For those of you who actually click the “Like” button (there are a few of you!) I want you to know you’ve made a happy man VERY old. Thank you. If I hadn’t taken the ‘Price on Wilson’ I’d do something nice for each and every single one of you… well all three of you.
Drop me a line – this isn’t the product of a nameless/faceless corporation or sophisticated computer simulator. It’s just me, Mario.
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!
They say that the seeds of failure are sown in the field of success… I’ll go on the record to say that if you don’t know what you’re playing for and you don’t know what you want to do when/if you win – what is the point of playing???
So here we have the idea of a person, standing at work while wondering “when are things going to pick-up? When will things get BETTER?”
And then the opportunity for gain walks in the door… and it comes in the form of crushing reality that life is what you put into it and the inputs for life are crazily complex.
Yup – you sell shoes.
Yup – you’re having a sale.
Yup – a group of caterpillars just walking into your store looking for discounted shoes… good luck with that!
Someone told me I should do this. She is fan of yoga – blame her.
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 