Archive for June, 2022

People never have to leave home now. They can be home-birthed, home-schooled and work from home. They can have meals and groceries home-delivered.

If they get sick – homeopathy.

All their friends – homies.

All their hits – homers.

They can even visit the Great Outdoors by sitting on their ovens where they’re Home, Home on the Range.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

1. New England Damn Chowder – Favorite soup of Tourette sufferers
2. Cyrillic Alphabet Soup – It’s Greek to me
3. Split Bee – It hear it gives you a buzz
4. Chicken Poodle Soup – Made only from poodles who were euthanized
5. Vicious-soise – A stone cold soup made from really mean potatoes
6. Gaznacho – Another cold soup of congealed cheese and tomato
7. Maxistrone – When minestrone just isn’t enough
8. Italian Wedding Soup/Italian Divorce Soup – These soups have you coming and going
9. Dense Onion Soup – It’s a French Onion Soup, you just can’t get through to
10. Me So Soup – This soup is all about you. Also called Narcissisoup.
11. No Alarm Chili – Chili for white folk
12. Lobster Disc – A hard shell, hard drive programmable bisque

1. Walla Walla, Washington now Stuttgart Stuttgart, Washington
2. Shakespeare’s birthplace now Stuttgart-upon-Avon
3. Muslims would now make their annual pilgrimage to Stuttgart.
4. Plane ticketing would be very tricky, but at least you’d never land in the wrong city
5. More conversations would sound like this:

Where you from?

Stuttgart.

Really! Me too.

5. Truth or Consequences, NM now Stuttgart or Stuttgarts, NM
6. Bombay, India now Mumstuttgart, India
7. The Sinatra hit New York, New York now New Stuttgart, New Stuttgart
8. Conversation:

So where have you lived?

Well I was born in Stuttgart, but I was an Army brat so we pretty much moved from Stuttgart to Stuttgart

9. Conversation:

We honeymooned in Stuttgart Falls.

Oh, it’s beautiful there. That’s near Stuttgart isn’t it?

No, you’re thinking of the one on the Canadian side.

     10. A Gambler’s Complaint:

I’m so pissed off about the World Series. I can’t believe Stuttgart beat Stuttgart. I mean Stuttgart had all the players and yet Stuttgart still won. I hate Stuttgart.

      11. Reworked city of Rome phrases:

Well, Stuttgart wasn’t built in a day

When in Stuttgart do as the Stuttgartans do

All roads lead to Stuttgart

       12. And finally, Fairbanks, Alaska would still be a miserably cold place to live in

As they say, “There’s a lot to unpack here.” But my stuff will never get unpacked. How can it? I have way too much baggage. You too? I thought so. I’m not worried though and neither should you, because eventually it all gets put in its place. Fraught, little David may experience pangs of free floating anxiety at his mountains of baggage to be dealt with, but serene, knowing David is completely equanimous about his barrage of baggage. More baggage, I might add, than can be found on Carousel 8 at LAX International Terminal after an Airbus 380 unloads its baggage hold for its 525 passengers. That’s a lot of baggage and a lot to unpack. So let’s start.

 

You may wonder how you produced so much baggage to begin with. I mean you were just going for one lifetime on planet earth. It was advertised as a 28,000 day, 27,999 night, no expense paid trip to the 3^rd rock from the sun, but somehow you managed to pack enough for 3 lifetimes. And now you’re stuck with all this baggage. And because of the profligate manner in which you spent your onboard ship credits (Free Will), you managed to produce a whole other lifetime of karmic baggage. You forgot rule number one: when you’re in a hole, stop digging. Well at least you were smart enough to avoid the Time Share sales pitch. You were smart enough to avoid that right? Don’t tell me you’re going to do a 2-hour Time Share sales pitch – well, more baggage for you. I just think you could’ve invested your time more wisely.  

 

This idea of “stop digging” is akin to the doctor’s creed of “First do no harm.” And as this pertains to the traveler’s journey here on earth the creed should be, “First, just bring what you need – which is nothing. Well nothing but an open heart and a closed mouth. And stop producing more baggage. Jesus Christ! Can’t your stuck mind be a little more flexible?” We wish it was that easy. But who among us isn’t guilty of trying to shape our world to suit us and consequently produce more baggage than Samsonite does in a year.

 

Oh, d-d-dear. What’s to be done about all this unbidden baggage? It feels like there are 1200 separate Pandora’s Boxes in my head. Who would want to open them, let alone unpack them? Let’s examine quickly the schemes and plans I’ve hatched to rid myself of unwanted baggage: Maybe Goodwill will take it. Maybe if I ignore it, it will just go away. Maybe if I get rich enough I can distract myself for an entire lifetime so I don’t really notice my challenges while I focus on fun stuff like writing clever little essays or choosing just the right tone for my spray tan or binge-watching Real Housewives of Cell Block H – Yuk! In all cases, never underestimate the power of distraction.    Read the rest of this entry »