Pessioptimistiche

Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

- by Grunthos the Flatulent

Putty. Putty. Putty.

Green Putty - Green Putty

Grarmpitutty - Morning!

Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!

Discovery.....Oh.

Putty? ..... Armpit?

Armpit ..... Putty.

Not even a particularly

Nice shade of green.

First, thanks to my friend over at MB, for the link to the Onion.  I have been suffering through a vicious head cold for the past couple of weeks and nothing seems to help!  I have tried copious quantities of Single Malt Scotch Whiskey that are said to have medicinal qualities and tried inhalers that would make Grunthos the Flatulent pass out, but nothing seems to help.  So, when I ran across this this book on Amazon, I went into this semi-trance.  You know, like when you have a cold, and you're feeling sorry for yourself, and you are laying on the sofa with a limp willie, and drool is coming out the side of mouth, and the T.V. is on, but you're not really hearing it kind of a trance.  I was trying to think about how it would feel to be healthy and happy again.  Then I thought, if I had never felt like I had been ate by a wolf and shit over the side of a cliff, then I really wouldn't be able to distinguish between feeling good and feeling bad. Or as my friend Jerry Jeff Walker liked to say, "If I'd never felt the sunshine then I would not cuss the rain (if my feet would fit a railroad track, I guess I'd a been a train)."  

There are times when you just want to sit and think, when you want to get away from the life-is-a-party way of thinking.  But is there a middle way?  Can you actually be a stoic, like Marcus Aurelius, without experiencing the extremes?  Or, are these extreme feelings part of our genetic make-up, without which we wouldn't know whether to fish or cut bait?  I have a psychiatrist (fizzy-key-a-tryst, thank you Ricky Ricardo) friend that tells me all of our emotions are legitimate.  They are mechanisms that are triggered to enable us to respond appropriately to different situations.  My problema, she tells me is that my emotions are FUBAR, that I REALLY don't know shit from shine-ola.  I told her she was making me feel paranoid, she said, "Hon, you ain't paranoid enough!"  She did say I had one outstanding quality, that I was a good listener.  I asked what that meant.  She said, "You're not listening!"  I think I'm going to find a male psychiatrist, he will probably be much more sympathetic to my childish needs.  He will probably have some of his own childish needs and call me wishy-washy.  In which case, I will return to her.

I don't mind being a little paranoid.  It's being outrageously maniacal when the phone rings while I'm watching the tube, or cursing the idiot that swerves in front of me on the highway, or being domineering and selfish and wanting it MY WAY (Frank Sinatra summed up Brokow's greatest generation with that song), that causes me consternation.  You know I've tried everything, Crystal gazing, Zen, Yoga, being kind to dogs, if it is supposed to help you get in touch with your Inner Tube, then I've tried it.  Hell, I've even been to the Unitarian Church! Nothing I've tried has helped me to become more considerate. thoughtful, or kind.  Until.  Until I discovered I had SLEEP APNEA!

That's me!  I had wires hooked up everywhere and the nurse kept assuring me, "Don't worry, we only electrocute about 1 out 10."  I went to sleep thinking of that Beavis and Butthead song, "When I was young and had no sense,  I took a whiz against the electric fence.  Hurt so bad, shocked my balls, took a crap in my overalls."  The nurse came in and woke me up again, to see if I was sleeping, what else is new?  I finally went to sleep again, only to wake up thinking that a miniature spacecraft had come from Tralfamdore seeking a specimen for their Zoo of the Absurd.  It was only the red light shining from the tip of my finger, that was hooked to some device that was measuring the Oxygen in my blood.  They told me I snored, LOUDLY.  They also told me if I would buy a machine that would pump air into my nose all night, that I would wake up healthy, wealthy, and wise.   I asked, "Why can't I just buy a Gaze Ball and stare at it before I go to bed at night?"  They said that would work only if I had a machine that blew air into my nose.  I know, I know, it's time for a cheap joke about "smoke being blown into another orifice" but I am trying to be more considerate.  At least they weren't trying to sell me bundled mortage securites or Credit Default Options.  Maybe, they just haven't thought about that, yet.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another sleepy Zorastrian Cowboy,

Seeking a way to get Dem Deep REMs that involves Summer Glau

Fata Morgana in Texarkana

An invitation to go on a strange trip

Is like a Dance Lesson from God.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Recently, one of my daughters was traveling back to Texas to leave her children before she deploys to Afghanistan for her second tour of duty.  As the careful observer might deduce from the photograph, the kids have racially mixed parents.  Of course, I think they are much more beautiful in person than any photograph could possibly capture, but hey, I am the very proud granddad!  You might think that with a racially mixed President, that we might have seen an end to the racism associated with children of mixed blood, that this bigoted  boogeyman might have been spanked and put to bed.   Not so, in Far East Texas.  It appears as though at least one of them has not gotten the word yet and where's there's one, God knows, there might be TWO. But as the story was related to me there was only one.  This one particular bigot refused to allow my daughter to buy gas, after she saw that my daughter's children were mixed.  It upset my daughter considerably, she tells me it was nothing new, it just surprised her.  It was one of those totally unexpected moments.  Thank God, she does not have her dad's playground sense of justice, she just put the kids back in the car and drove to New Boston and filled her tank.  I would have waited outside the gas station in Texarkana and when the offending attendant walked out, I would have turned up some music real loud, maybe Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', because it would go with the Bruce Willis words from Die Hard I would scream at her, "Yippee Ki Yo Motherfucker", right before I brought the two-by-four down between her running lights.  

Of course, that's just a granddad's instinctive response, my daughter's course of action seems to have been the better choice.  When we were discussing it she said, "Dad, calm down.  What goes around comes around."  I don't know if I believe in Karma all that much, I just think she made a better decision than I would have at that moment.  I'm not sure it's okay to ignore bigotry any time, there comes a time when we do not want bigotry 'coming around'.  I keep asking myself, "How long, Martin?"  How long do we have to put up with this kind of ignorance?  Can change come through education, over time or do you have to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four?  In California recently, the good folks there voted against a Proposition that would have allowed Gay couples to marry.  The amount of energy spent on trying to limit the rights of different people, could have been better spent on acts of love and kindness expressed by so many of those 'religious folk' that supported banning gay marriage. Why do some folks think that some people are inferior to them?  Where do they get these crazy notions?  What is it that prevents folks from recognizing that we are all on the same trip together?  Does that sound like Karma? Sorry.

Hell, I'm no great fan of any particular religion, but I have noticed that most of them espouse some pretty basic beliefs, i.e., not stealing, not killing, not lying, and respecting your fellow human beings.  Even though most college freshmen can point out the innumerable times that the great religions have lied, cheated, killed, stolen, and reeked havoc on their fellow human beings in the name of God, but they can not give you a very definitive answer about why so many are drawn to organized religion.  My guess is that they need to be told what to do.  They can't read a Bible or Koran or Torah for themselves, so it's easier to be told how to live your life.  People who belong to a particular religious sect act and think that they are a little bit better than those who don't.  So there is a religious elitism involved.  Don't believe me, just look around.  There are 'Christian' bookstores and 'Christian' radio and TV stations, and 'Christian' plumbers!  A Friend of mine said he saw a pickup truck in Deep East Texas with a magnetized sign on the side that read, "His Hands - Plumbing and Septic Tank Services".  It is as though the name itself carries some type of magic, that it makes you better than somebody else.  From this elitism there evolves a type of spiritually rationalized entitlement.  If you don't do it this way you are going to hell Syndrome (or worse yet miss out on the virgins!). It is a form of religious  terrorism that is abhorrent to most rational thinking religious folks.  

So what does all this have to do with the rude ass gas station a-teen-dant? I'm getting there, just give me a minute.  I tried to put myself in Jesus' (Mohammed, Buddha, Moses, etc. take your pick) sandals for a minute and ask myself what would he do to change the situation.  ASIDE:  My wife just walked through the room and wanted to know why I was wearing sandals because it 33 degrees outside.  Then she wanted to know where I got them and how much did I pay etc. for about thirty minutes.  Then I had this AHA moment.  Jesus would have looked at the Gas Station Attendant and said, "Where'd you get dem shoes?'  They would have talked about shoes for awhile and sure enough Jesus would have got his gas and left the attendant feeling loved and special.  Damn, I wish I could be more like that, NAH!  I guess I'm just too damn cynical, but maybe my daughters and granddaughters will have a better luck being the kind of people we all strive to be, walking humbly, seeking justice, and sharing kindness.  Like my youngest daughter the Voice Major likes to say, "It ain't over until the petite lady sings!" 

Until next time, I remain,

Just another Zorastrian Cowboy

seeking to become a costumer for Anna Netrebko  

(I still am having a problem picturing Jesus' with His Hands in the septic tank, but hell, he would probably be the first one in!) 

Tom Brokaw - America's Greatest Twit

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay

Sleeps all night and I works all day."

- Monty Python

I love words.  There is magic in them for me.  There are some words and phrases that just roll from the tongue, like Boolean Logic.  In Neal Stephenson's new book, Anatheum, he has created the phrase, "Hylean Theoric Flow".  Sometimes the symphonies that good wordsmiths are able to compose, can impact us as much as the meanings of the words.  Of course, I could be "hoist by my own petard" if I did not mention an old friend, Bill Shakespeare, and his uncanny ability to create phrases that are still in use (or should I say overuse?).  Why do I want to talk about words?  Because they have meaning and because they can do great things by those who read them, listen to them, and act upon them.  Why talk about words now?  I just finished listening to President Obama's Inaugural Address for the third time, and I believe words have meaning for him and that they are important to him.  And when he speaks them, he moves people emotionally.

Why is Monty Phython's Terry Jones pictured as the Naked Piano Player?  Because I was thinking about America's 'Greatest' Twit, Tom Brokaw.  Obviously, because Mr. Brokaw has been reading the  news over many years in his best melodic voice he has come to believe that his opinions are fact.  A situation that is innocent enough, but extremely dangerous.  I certainly do not mind Mr. Brokaw having an opinion as to the WW II generation being one of America's 'great' generations, but when he calls them the 'greatest' generation, he is leaving out many generations he has not a clue about, generations as yet unborn.  You may think this is a petty complaint.  Maybe so.  But I think it may be a small reflection of a much larger problem.  People who are hired to read the news of TV are hired to do so because they have melodic voices, good delivery (occasionally), and are not too repulsive for the viewer to look at on the Tube.  Hell, in the 21st Century, pronunciation is not even an issue.  They are not hired because of their intellectual brilliance.  When a journalist states his opinion as fact, especially one who is well respected within his profession, s/he moves into a new category, that of Twit.

Twits outnumber journalists on TV by an alarming number.  Print journalism is becoming increasingly similar.  That leaves the Internet to actually discover the facts about a story.  Ah, but at one time it was so easy, today it is a bit more difficult.  Tom may not be the 'greatest' twit, but he is one of the 'great' twits of his time, spewing his little redundant homespun homilies as though they were facts about a story and not his opinions.  Hell, they do not really qualify as opinions, but that's another story.

Until next time Kimosabe, I remain just another Rodeo Clown watchin' the evenin' news, you betcha'!

 In the beginning was the Word...

John 1:1