#3 Or Nummer Drei as the Germans Say

I’m about to be a father to my third child.

I know what you’re thinking – big whoop – a ton of dudes have three kids.

But ask yourself this: how many of those dudes had their first at the tender age of 41?

Yeah that is what I thought punchy.

Judge lest ye be judged – idiot!

JK.

To give some context to just how crazy this is, consider what I told my father-in-law who is in town for the birth and to help us with some home projects because, as I told him:

I lived in student housing for ten years and never had to mow a lawn or fix an appliance or anything like that so I never owned power tools; I spent all my money on guitar shit.

Now here I am with a house and kids and it doesn’t really help that I know the chords to Simple Man or how to play Auld Lang Syne fingerstyle.

What I could really use is some practical know-how (plus a volt meter) and some patience but you don’t’ exactly acquire these things naturally when you bachelor it up for twenty years catering to you and you alone. Why is it so hard to get out the door for school???

But, sometimes, my boys dig me (and my bad impressions of Bruce the shark from Nemo, or Christopher Walken or Al Pacino [“ranger choke hold Charlie!”] and they know I want to form a band with them named The Steaming Diapers so…

And maybe, just maybe, if I can keep it together as I prepare to lose a ton of sleep over the next 18 years, I might just live to buy some more guitar shit.

In Hands Not The Mind

“Come look at this,” she said. “It’s just over this ridge, down the hill where the old fort used to be.”

“The old fort,” he raised incredulously. “I’ll be a week older by the time we get there; why did I let you take me for a quote unquote walk? My pits are staining and my aorta is straining here. “

“Walter, walk, just walk Walter. We’re almost there.”

“Are we, are we almost there? Because it feels like I’m still walking.”

“SHUT UP!...and look, down there.”

“Whoa,” he floated in awe of the sight down the hill. “Is that?...”

“It ain’t Wendell Wilkie Walter."

“It, it’s beautiful. An oasis of junk in a perfect portrait of flora and fauna. Trees schmrees.”

A junkyard lay below them. Walter loved junkyards. Got misty just lookin’ at em.

“Here’s the thing though,” she said, “this thing is secured like the Louvre.”

Walter jerked his head around at warp speed to glare at her. “You bring me here and expect me to just look at all this. This ain’t a portrait of Sir McSire of the Sires of the realm; this stuff needs to be touched and manipulated and held and tinkered with. The progress of man is in hands not the mind. If you say forced dichotomy I will punch you in the brain and ask you how your mind feels.”

“Would you just take it easy Walter. I didn’t say one word about just looking or the progress of man or your parents forcing your lobotomy; I merely said the place is secure. Open. Your. Fucking. Ears. Tinker with em with your fucking hands if you have to but open those god damn things up. Shit Walter.”

“Sorry, I just see so much junk. Me want… me need. There’s auto junk there’s industrial junk, there’s atuo-industrial junk. And soooo much rust. If I had some WD-40 right now…”

“Whoa whoa whoa, I did not come out here to watch you get hot and heavy and talk about rust lubricant. What’s the plan and what’s my cut?”

“The plan depends on your cut.”

“Contingencies are a slippery slope to relativism Walter and you don’t want to be a relativist do you? You want lines and demarcations Walter. Black. And. White Walter.

Walter took his eyes from the junk to glare at her. “I think you may have forgotten your order in the pecking.”

“Do I look like fowl to you? There’s money down there Walter and you know you need me to get it. Stop wasting time; I hate wasting time! You wanna haggle then set a price and we’ll haggle but I don’t have time for contingencies and evolved social behaviors of fucking chickens.”

She cut her rant to breathe heavily and wait for his retort.

“It’s not just chickens but I get your point.”

He began scanning the yard in earnest and mumbling about acreage, entry points, and god damn pit bulls.

“You get the first stakeout.”

Merica

Well it’s the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

President Trump is going to honor the fallen by correcting his bone spurs or calcium prods or whatever it was that kept him out of Nam and enlisting as Agent Orange.

Per law, everyone else if going to grill animal flesh and watch Saving Private Ryan.

It’s Miles Davis’ birthday today so we can all pretend to like jazz for ten minutes.

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to authorities. Which make one wonder, was he even on the lam? Didn’t someone slap him in a restaurant in Arizona? Yet the police can’t find this guy? Too busy tazing people with more melanin in their skin for parking violations I guess.

Lots of sales going on this weekend to help us remember the brave men and women of the armed forces. I know when I think about honoring a guy that died face-down in Guadalcanal for my freedom, I think about using that freedom to buy a new car and a mattress and a washing machine with bluetooth.  

Merica.

They are going to make an entire movie about Boba Fett. You know, the character in Star Wars movies that said all (AND ONLY!) these lines:

                As you wish.
                He’s no good to me dead.
                What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me.
                Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.

Somebody ram the splintered end of a baseball bat into my adam’s apple please. Let me guess he’s a good kid in the beginning and only turned to bounty hunting to save his dying mother who turns out to be a droid that got knocked up after a bender at that bar in Tatooine.

It’s also Mike Myers’ birthday today. It’s rumored he’s going to make Austin Powers 4. Do we really need a whole ‘nother movie? Can’t we all just buy the teeth from amazon and get on with our lives?

The NFL is NOT doing enough by fining players that kneel during the anthem. Hasn’t anyone read anything about conditioning? Besides Pantene Pro being the best, you also have to reward the behavior you want to see. Soooo all players that stand proudly with their right arm over their heart and their left hand gently rubbing their balls will get an AR-15.

Merica.

Real Life Retorts

Movie Quote: Some men you just can’t reach.

Real Life Retort: Try attaching a robotic arm; it is 2018

Movie Quote: You had me at hello.

Real Life Retort: Attachment issues much?

Movie Quote: I’m ready for my close-up.

Real Life Retort: There’s cilantro in your teeth.

Movie Quote: Heeeere’s Johnny!

Real Life Retort: Here is a relative term.

Movie Quote: You talkin’ to me?

Real Life Retort: No.

Movie Quote: I coulda been a contender.

Real Life Retort: Not as a middle weight.

Movie Quote: I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Real Life Retort: Theoretically, any offer can be refused. You will be better suited by trying to find a middle ground and a win-win scenario.

Movie Quote: Warriors, come out and play.

Real Life Retort: What? Kick the can or stickball?

Movie Quote: E.T. phone home.

Real Life Retort: That’ll have to be collect.

Movie Quote: You’re going to need a bigger boat.

Real Life Retort: Correct. Let’s head back and get an aircraft carrier.

Movie Quote: He’s alive!

Real Life Retort: But is it a life worth living with bolts in your neck?

Movie Quote: Mongo pawn in game of life.

Real Life Retort: I see you more as a thimble in monopoly.

Movie Quote: If it bleeds we can kill it.

Real Life Retort: We? Who is this we you’re talking about? Hey if you feel froggy then jump but my ass is getting to the choppuh!

Movie Quote: I’m a nerd and I’m pretty proud of it.

Real Life Retort: Talk to me when your kid is bullied mercilessly in junior high and we’ll see how proud you are.

Movie Quote: You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.

Real Life Retort: You just got another one! What is that nine?

Movie Quote: Rosebud…

Real Life Retort: Rosebud schmosebud.

Movie Quote: Let’s go get a taco.

Real Life Retort: Fuck tacos. Burger it up.

Movie Quote: The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

Real Life Retort: I don’t know; that levitation trick is pretty dope.

Movie Quote: Never tell me the odds!

Real Life Retort: How about the evens?

Movie Quote: He drew first blood.

Real Life Retort: Oh, it was a pinprick. Besides I don’t even think it was on purpose.

Movie Quote: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I can’t allow to happen.

Real Life Retort: You should have thought of that before you plugged in to this extension cord.

Movie Quote: Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.

Real Life Retort: I appreciate your candor.

Movie Quote: I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Real Life Retort: Kansas the state sucks but I do like the band Kansas: Duuust in the wiiind…

Movie Quote: I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Real Life Retort: I prefer dichlorobenzene in the morning.

Movie Quote: You can’t handle the truth!

Real Life Retort: I can handle the verisimilitude though.

Movie Quote: If you build it he will come.

Real Life Retort: Title of my sex tape.

Movie Quote:  I see dead people.

Real Life Retort: You studied mortuary science! What did you expect?

Movie Quote: Houston we have a problem.

Real Life Retort: Yeah, the Oilers suck!

Movie Quote: Greed for lack of a better word, is good.

Real Life Retort: Why do we lack a better word? The dictionary is full of words.

Movie Quote: Surely you can’t be serious.

Real Life Retort: Shirley is serious as fuck.

Movie Quote: Mr. Blutarsky: 0.0

Real Life Retort: Yeah but if I retake those courses, the most recent grade will be the one that factors in to the GPA.

5/22/18 Haikus

In the breadth and depth
you are among and amid
you and yours, you’ll see

Broken shattered null
solipsistic and alone
love needs another

Time isn’t rare
experience needs just time
you’ll do everything

Attention! Has waned
gone the way of the dodo
focus is taboo

Autonomous cars
automaton people now
dumbed down and brain dead

Hope springs eternal
it must, otherwise, reflect
on only what is

Beauty! Imagined
all that is the case? Bo-ring!
what is not? Behold!

Hereby, ergo, thus
ado, hubbub, racket, fuss
has to needs and must

The end we know it

nearer, closer, to the touch

death reminds you, live!

via GIPHY

Unbuilding It

Thinking about progress and knowledge and, you guessed it, relativism.

I know you think it is my favorite subject and you are right.

In Pinker’s latest book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress he says

“The supernova of knowledge continuously redefines what it means to be human, our understanding of who we are, where we came from, how the world works, and what matters in life depends on partaking of the vast and ever-expanding store of knowledge."

Redefines? Strong word.

If humans are redefined by knowledge, changed, and continuously, then how can knowledge be absolute or objective in any sense?

Knowledge needs humans as much as humans need knowledge. If you don’t believe me, ask your pet how much they care about knowledge.

Knowledge doesn’t even exist without humans.

Therefore, it is relative, “continuously redefined”.

You might think 2+2=4 is eternal and a priori but it isn’t. If you don’t believe me, just ask your pet. You won’t get an answer because humans didn’t discover 2+2=4, they invented it. Superimposed it on the world.

And math is a nice thing don’t get me wrong.

But if it can’t be built it can be unbuilt. Just ask Robert Deniro in The Score (2001)

…if somebody built it, somebody can unbuild it.

See? Told ya.

All I’m saying is that knowledge and it’s symbiosis with us kooky humans necessitates its relativistic nature.

But don’t panic.

People worry it is all a house of cards if relativism is true.

But here’s the thing: it IS a house of cards and it always has been a house of cards and always will be a house of cards.

And look what we’ve done with that house of cards.

Pinker’s whole point in the book is about the progress we’ve made and are making.

But remember, at one point physics couldn’t explain how a bumblebee could fly.

KNOWLEDGE IS RELATIVE!

Why am I yelling?

What we’ve done is pretty impressive.

And we’ve done it with relativism being the case.

Anyone could accomplish feats if objectivity were the case; it’d be like getting a cab when you are white. Easy.

No no, the far more impressive accomplishment is getting stuff done when the rules aren’t fixed, when truth depends on this and on that and when this and that changes at the drop of a hat.

Or the drop of an apple.  Newtonian physics under attack!

So just relax and take it easy.

Would you just take it easy.

5/16/18 Monologue

You have to wonder what happened to Matt Lauer.

Until you realize that success breeds excess and power corrupts.

Once you realize these you start to wonder about dinner.

Have you noticed that a lot of headlines are things like people clapping back and apologizing for prior apologies and atoning for tone-deaf ads and this and that? To which I say, a clap back is an echo and an echo chamber isn’t a good thing.

My four year-old has probably made me listen to Shiny from Moana 300 times over the past 5 months. As a parent at this point I am very confident in my ability to set boundaries.

Tamatoa IWill Gladly Do So GIF from Tamatoa GIFs

I’ve also watched Captain Underpants 5 times in the past week but this is after the kids go to bed. “Your full name is Pee Pee Diarrheasteen Poopypants, Esq.?”

Did you know that forest bathing is a thing? Who woulduthunk that walking in the woods would be good for you? I am not opposed to taking a bath in the woods. Just as long as there are those two tubs you see in erectile dysfunction ads and I know I’m going to get laid after and not get poison ivy while I’m doing it.

They say the grass is always greener but what does that mean if you are colorblind?

Just think, someone is graduating with a college degree in philosophy this month.

If P then Q doesn’t imply that not P therefore not Q. This is called denying the antecedent and I’ve seen it a million times and never once have I realized my ability.

You might think that we are in a post truth world but if I say you’d be wrong and then if you say I’m wrong for saying you are wrong haven’t you then posited a truth and ergo been inconsistent and guilty of circular reasoning?

Which reminds me of the great line in Raising Arizona:

These balloons blow up into funny shapes at all?

Not unless round is funny?

via GIPHY

First Date

First Date

Young, very young couple, teens young, is out at a nice(ish) restaurant and they are noticeable to everyone that they are on their first date. One wonders who even drove they look so young. It appears they aren’t really talking just kind of being red-faced and embarrassed with nothing to say.

So some altruist, isn’t it always some dork altruist mucking destiny up, goes over and says “Hey guys. First date?”

What an asshole right?

He continues to torment them: “I’ve found that questions like if you were on a deserted island and could have only one music CD, what would it be?; or if you could have only one meal for the rest of your life or one tv show or one movie…what would it be? are good questions to stimulate conversation.”

What kind of freakshow altruist bothers people like this?

The boy on the date was gracious and lied to the man: “Thanks, very cool very cool.” But they were both absolutely disgusted at this hideous gesture and mocked him mercilessly upon his exit to his wife and kids.

They actually bonded over the mocking of the jerkwad and his stupid questions.

They had a lot in common it turns out: they both reveled in mocking other people and soon developed a website together: FootLongMock.com where stories or pictures of people were mocked and henceforth graded for:
Intensity
Sarcasm
Originality
Voice
and Mockitude

They ended up getting married just after high school but failed to invite the asshole altruist that mucked things up.

God altruists are assholes!

#FlashFiction

He’d gotten himself into some pretty kinky shit of late: married women, bondage, feet. He tried telling himself it was a phase and a phase he should enjoy now while he is single before he settles down and starts a family and all that jazz. Funny how short phases can be when a married man comes banging on your apartment door at 3 in the morning yelling at the top of his lungs about “fucking you up” and “don’t let me see you out in public motherfucker” and “don’t forget I know where you live.”
But what are you going to do when you work so hard to get to the status of lothario and feel a certain obligation. Was he just going to let his abs and his cock go to waste because some cuckold was a little upset? Of course not. He was going to stick to bondage and feet and throw in some role play. Starting now.

#FlashFiction

“It’s all theory,” he said. He was drunk but they were all drunk. So it didn’t matter; what he’d said. What mattered was getting drunk and getting laid. Which meant that what really mattered, in praxis, was getting drunk. So they got drunk and said stupid adolescent shit and enjoyed their inside jokes and immaturity for what it was but then, wanted laid. Or something like it. Anything like it. Some sort of friction if not love and caressing and intimacy of the highest order. Friction: pants on pants off-doesn’t matter. Some sort of tactile sensation involving the opposite sex. Those dumbasses never put two and two together to realize that getting drunk subverted getting laid. Idiots. The guys getting laid had girlfriends and guts and security to put themselves in front of a woman and offer themselves warts and all. In theory.

#FlashFiction

He’d climbed the ladder to the high dive; like he’d done hundreds of times. He was one of the few guys that could do a gainer let alone from the high dive. No one was really watching so it was quite the surprise when his body hit the concrete and not the water. The sound of tissue on the pavement registered even above the din of an outdoor pool in the middle of summer-like a circus strong man slapped a medicine ball as hard as he could. Then the melee bagan. People started crying, gasping, covering their mouths as they winced and children began running out as the monster of blood and death began to ooze from his head like unending spilled milk. The lifeguard was useless; pressure on the wound was impossible without turning him over and replacing the chunk of skull smashed apart from his head. Nothing for her to do but get blood on her hands.

As A Rabbit's Foot

You will be sensitive.

You will feel things more strongly and intensely than people you know. You will cry while listening to music and feel the depth of writing and marvel at details others never notice.

You will be acutely aware that you are poor and don’t wear nice clothes and don’t have your own room and live in a dirty house and have very few toys.

You will notice.

And never stop noticing.

You will be happy.

Sometimes.

Mostly when you are young and ignorant and unaware of what you are and how you are and your very real limitations.

There will be a time though when you are fearless and daring and beautifully unaware of what you are; it will be the best …

But it won’t last.

You will suffer.

Cruel and vile timing will serve as another trial and tribulation in your life.

Timing. Not your forte.

You will be years late to the puberty party.

Years.

And you will be changed and the trajectory of your life will arc to close off so very much of what you were and how you thought of yourself and your i-d-e-n-t-i-t-y.

It will take years to recover from this cruel twist of, what do they call it? Fate.

You will be in your thirties and you will have had one girlfriend that you took home to meet your parents. All the others you will never allow in; you will debase yourself to avoid avoid avoid. You will know nothing of love or intimacy or companionship.

But you can’t blame fate or timing for this. You can’t just explain it away.

You had choices you had options you had paths you could have taken but CHOSE not to.

No this is on you; squarely on your shoulders.

You did the best you could given your facticity but still, you failed yourself and by YOUR standards.

You will wonder to what degree anyone overcomes their facticity; not just you.

You will wonder but you won’t understand.

True happiness or self-actualization.

You will suffer.

But not needlessly.

You hope. You hope your suffering is for some reason, some philosophical just-world greater good.

It isn’t.

And you’ll prosper. Beyond your wildest expectations. Short of your ability but still…

You’ll marry and have kids and a job and a car that starts every morning and a nice home and weekends off to enjoy soccer games and swim lessons and you'll have nice clothes like you never had when you were a kid.

And you’ll know why. And you’ll think back to that so-called cruel twist of fate and realize that arc changed your trajectory for the better. As you will play guitar instead of sports and you will learn that with time and perseverance, you can do many things: like graduate college and earn a scholarship for a master’s program and then another. This is not the original trajectory. No it isn’t. In that other life you would have been fucked.

You overcame heartache. Sort of. Your relationships suffer as a result but at least you are alive to have at least stunted relationships.

You will be reminded of the perspective providing quotation: “You are going to die; which means you are lucky.”

As a rabbit’s foot you son of a bitch.

Weren’t You?

“Put that phone down!”

It’s for your own good. One could even say it’s for your phone good but that doesn’t mean one should say that. But phone addiction is a real phenomenon.

Addiction, surprisingly, has a low bar, as far as meeting the definition.

To wit:

Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response.
(via https://www.asam.org/resources/definition-of-addiction)

A low bar is hard in the limbo and it also ain’t good for being addiction to something.

And addiction is never good Captain Obvious. Never. Even if you are addicted to cereal with a ton of fiber.

Why?

See the definition above and know that by definition, addiction doesn’t come without "significant problems.”

Even if the problems result from something that started out as seemingly innocuous, like high-fiber cereal or…getting a cell phone.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people and cell phones in and of themselves aren’t bad or evil or worthy of becoming a luddite but, again, addiction, ahem, ain’t good.

And people are addicted to their phones.

I see it in the classes when I teach; college students either itching to look at their phones or flat out looking at their phones while the world could burn down around them.

Now knowing that addiction requires the preposition “to” and that the noun to which one is addicted, matters, a lot, the thing that really frightens me about cell phone addiction is best expressed by Questlove Thompson:

"Dare I hesitate to say that creativity might be in jeopardy because one of the key components of being creative is boredom and silence and isolation."
(via https://www.npr.org/2018/05/01/600852801/questlove-aims-to-save-your-brain-creativity-might-be-in-jeopardy)

Cell Phone = no boredom, no silence, and no isolation.

You do the math.

Just don’t use your phone to do the math because we both know that will turn into the fall down the rabbit hole of checking your apps and tweeting and instagramming and pokemoning and tweeting about pokemining and the next thing you know it’s time for bed and your brain won’t shut off because of all the blue light and there is after all a new Netflix show you can stream till 6am upon which you will enter tomorrow zombie-like and…

You see? How it dominoes?

And all those dominoes falling could be the
[record scratch]
death
[woman screams]
of
[audience gasps into hot, very hot, condenser mic]
creativity.

And what do you think led to the cell phone that will be the death of creativity?

You guessed it: boredom, silence, and isolation.

I think we’re in the upside down Toto. [mixed reference = grade of A+]

So set a weekly schedule, set a daily timer, make it a reward, moderate usage via an app, but remember that the will needs practice and…

PUT THAT PHONE DOWN!

We need you to put that phone down. You were meant for bigger things than snapchat.

Weren’t you?



via GIPHY

Mid-Life Crisis Blues (in Bb)

Mid-Life Crisis Blues (in Bb)

[Riff a la hoochie koochie man]

Summer’s a comin’
drinkin’s on my mind
but these meddling kids
jail me every time

Ain’t got no friends
no social life
I’m in parent teacher meetins
and you know it ain’t right

This mid life crisis
gone be the death of me
Oh this mid life crisis
sure wish I was 33

Thought about a sports car
convertible cherry red
but opted for braces
and a brand new tool shed

Maybe get the band up
learn a few tunes
but soccer and swim and homework
got me singing the blues

This mid life crisis
gone be the death of me
Oh this mid life crisis
sure wish I was 23

[guitar solo a la Hendrix/Page/Vaughan/ lasting 23:13 utilizing the following pedals: voodoo lab proctavia, Morely uni-vibe, Dunlop wah-wah, DOD envelope filter]

Shot up to middle management
been there ever since
my career has stalled
enough to make my wife wince

Thinkin’ bout boostin my T
you know what I’m talkin about;)
or maybe some lipo
but instead I got the gout

This mid life crisis
gone be the death of me
Oh this mid life crisis
sure wish I was younger than me

Mid-lieeefe crisis baby
prostate exams
Mid-lieeefe crisis baby
three gallons of milk a week?
Mid-lieeefe crisis baby
kid needs new shoes
Mid-lieeefe crisis baby
fall asleep at 9
…

[fade out over wanking guitar solo lasting 8:07]

A Matter Of Degree

How susceptible are you to marketing?

Never mind, it was a trick question; I know the answer: more than you think.

Hell you might be brand loyal for all I know. You might bristle (note to self – stop using “bristle” so much) at the thought of brand loyalty.

I do know this much: you live in a world of people and despite your protestations and hemming and hawing and your so-called rugged individualism, you deeply care what these people think of you.

Good news though: you are not alone.

Tis part of the human condition to care what others think.

The question is how much you care what others think? Which when you think about it really comes down to how happy you are.

Let us say that person A cares what people think about him/her and is happy. Let us say that person B cares what people think about him/her to the point of being unhappy.

Shopping the latest trends because of ads isn’t a big deal if you are happy; and aren’t in debt up to your eyeballs because or shoe purchases.

How many shoes can you wear after all?

Like most things it’s a matter of degree.

In this case Degree antiperspirant. The best dam deodorant both sides of the equator. All the famous people use Degree antiperspirant: Eva Gardner, Belloq from Indiana Jones, Mike Pence, Gertrude Stein, Ray Charles. All the cool famous people anyway.

What deodorant do you use? And why not be like cool people and smart people and know that it is a matter of Degree…

[sniffs underarm]

SCENE

via GIPHY

I Love Being Reduced To A Cultural Stereotype

Lil _____: Lemme axe you suh-in. Why you be all frontin’ wit da fake bling round yo neck like a damn dog collar and cheap ass grill look like tin foil when evreebody know you po as the last of the monf all monf long?

Britt Anlgo: Ah good query chap, I do say. A ripe old conundrum no doubt but the least bit cogitation reveals itself doesn’t it. Indeed, appearances matter my good man. Yes, yes, it is, better to look good than to feel good. My fiduciary matters notwithstanding, I do, as they say, make this look good. Cheery-o now.

Interlocutor: Oh snap oh no he didn’t oh yes he did!

Maroon Kneck: You can bet yer beer that looks matter and the south gone rise agin. Just uh soon as we mow this here lawn and go fishin and change the oil and…

Lil _____: Dats my point yo. You don’t look good, son. Look like uh a dirty wet dog in a doghouse made of shiz-it.

Interlocutor: Throwin bullets at em!

Maroon Kneck: I had a dog named Skeeter for him was Chester and for him was Laverne but she got knocked up. Dogs, they sure do do it, doggie style too.

Britt Anglo: Now listen here. This can be a civil discourse only so long as we refrain from the ad hominem. And certainly comparisons to the canine world are sufficient. Let me  say this another way then my good man, taste is subjective. You say tomato I say tomahto. You hear the difference? You see vile tasteless kitch and I on the other hand see sartorial splendor on a par with royalty if I do say so.

Interlocutor: Huh?

Maroon Kneck: Dogs is funny. Laverne once ate her own poop.

Lil _____: Dogs is funny dough. Still, look fake and broke down, like this cracker’s car.

Interlocutor: Oh snap, agin. Word. Probably the solenoid. Chi-wi chi-wi.

[sick drum beat enters at max volume with distorted guitar melody of When Johnny Comes Marching Home till a dope-ass record scratch fades to bagpipes playing God Save The Queen]

SCENE

Clearly Loved It GIF from Anniehall GIFs

Adulthood

Are you feeling “less than” these days? Have the months started to roll into each other from the monotony? The “grind” as they say? Are you experiencing less joy than you used to? In fact, are the years beginning to merge, separated only by holidays and industrial strength sicknesses requiring a trip to your “doctor?”

Well pucker up butter cup and say hello to adulthood. Yes, adulthood, everything you avoided in childhood, adolescence, college, grad school and perpetual bachelorhood, has put its foot down harder than a dropped refrigerator sized slab of concrete…from a fifth story window.

Responsibility? You got it.

Pressure? Up the wazoo.

Bills? Like you never imagined.

Debt? Through the roof you’ll have to re-shingle here in a few years at a mere 5-8k. More likely 10k.

Smile, smile for the pictures. Never let ‘em see you sweat. Or cry or seem frustrated or exhausted or anything but, you guessed it, an adult.

Sure adulthood is no picnic but having gone on a few, with kids, you realize in your wisdom, that a picnic is no picnic. And consider all the positives that come with adulthood…

Your credit score isn’t bad?

Your car maintenance is up to date?

Your wardrobe is refreshingly boring?

Your diet and exercise program are the envy of all triple bypass survivors?

Your caught up on Game of Thrones?

Cmon, would you really want to go back? To high school? Do you remember the acne?

Extreme/Confide

Life is lived at the extremes.

Can you believe I just wrote that bullshit? You probably can.

Edit: Life is felt at the extremes.

But what does that even mean?

Edit: Life is remembered at the extremes.

Ok, now we’re cooking with gas. Certainly, the extreme points of our life will be remembered more so than the banal, ho-hum experiences like commuting to work on a Tuesday in 2004.

But, [oh god here he goes] “extreme” [told you] is subjective.

[eye roll]

Climbing Mt Everest might be extreme for some while for others, ordering the veal, may be living on the edge.

I tell you this because this decade-long midlife crisis I find myself in has me thinking about life.

[fiercer eye roll]

However, with technology, the life lived in the middle, the heretofore, unremembered life, can now be brought to mind.

Behold: pictures.

Like this one I recently discovered in a box that had to be explored after our move.

That’s me there on the right with the Yahtzee teeth. Circa 1980 I am guessing, maybe earlier.

Pictures contextualize the ho-hum and the banal into a wistfulness for the mundane because you and me we were different then.

Remember?

Remember how happy go lucky you were and my god how confident you were with your let me at ‘em attitude and…

-Did you say you were having a decade-long midlife crisis?

Uh-huh, doesn’t’ everyone?

No and what are Yahtzee teeth?

That is when god has your teeth in his hand like a handful of Yahtzee dice and shakes ‘em around and then throws ‘em into your mouth all willy-nilly and however they land, there’s your grill.

You ever hear of braces?

Sure have. You ever realize not everyone in Barberton Ohio in the 70’s & 80’s had dental insurance? Or health insurance?

Hey, I don’t need this working-class hero crap!

You need something.

The point of the picture is that it reminded me that I was really a happy kid; even though we were poor and even though I needed braces and even though my clothes were often torn and often not very clean. I was happy. There on that beach on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, happy.

***

What does it mean to confide?

To whom do we confide and what does that person to whom we confide, say about us?

What if you confide to no one other than yourself? What if, as Adam Duritz sings in the song Speedway from the This Desert Life album:

I got some things I can’t tell anyone I got some things I just can’t say

Maybe you confide in others. Maybe you have people you trust. Maybe you feel known by others. Perhaps you aren’t lonely in the least bit. You might be secure in yourself and know that you are a good person and that even if you confide your fears and insecurities and all the negative space of you, that you will still be loved, by someone, in the world.

Remember how I said life was remembered at the extremes? I used to confide in people. I was a young man…and I used to confide in people; used to trust them…people.

I trusted the worst people. Trusted people that used that trust against me, in the worst possible way. And I am damaged as a result.

Irreparably?

Don't Want To Say I Told You So

But I will.

Remember in this blog how I asked:

But what will we do when technology can truly mask the giver of the information or simulate the authenticity of the giver of the information?

Remember how you scoffed, yes scoffed, at me?

You scoffed. Admit it. You scoffed with full and complete scoffedness.

Behold scoffer of men!

They asked faculty at Dartmouth College to predict the future.

Please proceed to The Death Of Credibility. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Everything In Moderation

Let us examine:

Everything in moderation. Especially moderation.

You see. It’s a little bit funny till you start to think about it. And you start to realize that language and words ARE LIMITED.

And yet, it seems that language is our vehicle to truth and objectivity.

Moderation in moderation means that sometimes you have to go to extremes. Consider life without stretching to an extreme. Drunkenness, sex, action movies, eating out: all, very extreme.

But then our adage is rendered untrue. Because moderation is contained within the everything that is supposed to be in moderation.

What is a homo sapien to do? Where can a guy or gal go to find a little truth and objectivity?

You don’t do anything. Sans abandon old saws like everything in moderation, which as it turns out, isn’t sharp enough to cut bread.

Nope you just sit back and enjoy the cool sounds and harmonic stylings of that old fan favorite – relativism.

It has everything you need to get by in a crazy world. And if you think it doesn’t, that’s cool daddy-O, just pop open a history book of your choosing and savor the relativism deliciousness and rest easy knowing that absolutism is a thing of the past. Just like sacrifices and cat torturing. Hell we used to know that a bumblebee couldn’t fly!

Relativism – the truth! As far as it goes anyway. Which, isn’t very far but still.

Captain And Officer

Captain: Foul play?

Officer: Poultry don’t engage in games sir; I believe play, with designated rules and desired outcomes, usually of the zero-sum type, is a solitary human endeavor. Why do you ask sir?

Captain: What are you talking about? The dead body here on the floor! Was it foul play do you think?

Officer: I don’t think birds had anything to do with it sir. Unless it was a murder of crows. Tee hee.

Captain: What do we know about forced entry or robbery at this point?

Officer: No sign of forced entry, nothing missing other than some decent decorating ideas. How do people live with these bland color palettes and mismatched materials not to mention a total disregard for feng shui?

Captain: Are you saying Chinese food is missing? Or was thrown away?

Officer: No feng shui is the use of energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. Sir.

Captain: Uh huh, you hungry?

Officer: We just ate sir. Donuts.

Captain: Yeah! Well I want to use some energy forces to you know, harmonize with my surrounding, environments to feng some shui into my belly.

Officer: Sir?

Captain: Any Chinese places around here?

Officer: Sir it’s 9am.

Captain: Yeah, that’s early. Even for hot and sour soup.

Officer: I’m an egg drop guy sir.

Captain: Can it with that egg-drop talk would ya! I’m getting hungry again. No forced entry, nothing taken. When does forensics get here?

Officer: He was called ten minutes ago sir?

Captain: Call him again! Tell him to pick up some Chinese food. I don’t care what time it is!

Officer: Sir, the usual?

Captain: Tell em to go heavy on the fortune cookies.

Out Sick

Hey Everybody,

I was out sick.

I was really sick.

"How sick were you?"

My head was so congested Keith Richards asked me what I was using.

My throat was so sore I sounded like Marge Simpson's sister doing an impression of an orangutan belch following a three minute keg stand.