Archive for the ‘Ditties’ Category

1. 

   Half-baked ice cream meets my half-baked idea for a divinely inspired, holier-than-heck, frozen dessert. 

   Amish Barn Raisin’ – A very sober version of Rum Raisin

2. Quakers ‘n Cream – Vastly superior to Quakers ‘n Oats
3. Chunky Catholic – Ben & Jerry say they conceived of this ice cream immaculately. It’s filled with chunks of guilt, ribbons of redemption and dollops of dogma. Made from the milk of baptized cows, this ice cream is so decadent that eating it is actually a confessable sin: “Bless me father for I have licked.” 
4. Episcopal Popsicles – A tasty treat for the Frozen Chosen
5. The Nifty Swifties – No one can resist our new Overlord. She comes plain or dipped in sequins.
6. Televangelist Dough – Oh they’re rollin’ in it.
7. Pralines ‘n Puritans – You can tell which are which by licking them
8. Amish Garcia – Get your pious Grateful Dead fix satisfied with a sober scoop of this clear-eyed version of Cherry Garcia
9. Pentecostal Pecan – So good you won’t bother speaking in tongues; you’ll start licking in them
10. Rosicrucian Crunch – Mostly Boneless Ice Cream. An acquired taste. Like most religions, it’s usually acquired from your parents.
11. Rocky Road to Heaven – ♫You’re going to find your way to heaven is a rough and rocky road, if you don’t stop and smell the Rose-icrucians along the way♫
12. Heathen Heath Bar Toffee – Popular with Atheists. It’s topped with a blast of blaspheme and tastes positively sacrilicious.
13. Amish Cheesecake – I never thought the two could mix (the austere and the temptress). Comes with a racy Amish calendar in which some of the women appear bonnetless.
14. Russian Orthodox ‘n Hydrox – A smash up of the Eastern Coptic Church and proto-Oreos. A precursor to Oreos ‘n Cream. Not advised for those who are Putin-intolerant
15. Branch Davidian w/Cashews, Walnuts, Pecans etc. – As you might expect this Branch Davidian sect is absolutely filled with all kinds of nuts
16. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Ice Cream – A frozen confection for disbelieving atheists
17. Double Dutch Reformed Church – This tasty little number is served in a little wooden shoe
18. Blended Mormon Clusters – Somehow manages to marry several individual flavors into one big happy family
19. Creaminess Is Next to Godliness – A heavenly ice cream from God’s lips to your cone
20. Hedonism – When the only thing you can’t resist is temptation.
21. Romulus and Remus Ripple – Rome’s founders will melt your heart and all over your hand if you don’t slurp them up lickety-split.

The following flavors are in the planning stages:

1. Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program
2. Jehovah’s Goiter
3. Jehovah Falls Down Goes Plop
4. Seventh Day Adventist
5. Third Trimester Adventist
6. Second Semester Dentist
7. Note: Sneaking this in to see who my friends really are, if you would please post on my wall a jpg of a whale with the comment, “I think Cephalopods have a swell head,” then (and only then) can we remain friends.
8. Shakers-n-Quakers-n-Bears, Oh My!
9. The Mostly Reformed Church of Generally Unrepentant Moravians…and the women who love them.
10. OMGs – filled with Emojis and acronyms
11. Vanilla Sex – Try it. A classic. It’s made with Love 

Alright, 21 full-fledged flavors and 10 flavors in the formulation stage is probably enough ice cream for one sitting. If you can find more flavors, that will be a scoop.

What’s in a name? Well, usually letters, arranged to motivate.

As the housing market continues to fragment into ever-narrower segments, the housing industry has responded with creative communities designed to address underserved markets. The following is a sample of these new communities reflecting the unique lifestyle of their target market:

1. Habitat for Profanity – A sweat-equity community built for poor people who like to swear.
2. Heaven – As you might expect, it’s a gated community. Background checks are mandatory and only those without sin are allowed to enter (entry also helped by knowing Felicity Huffman).
3. Almost Heaven – West Virginia community popular with John Denver fans
4. Uncommon Commons – An exceptionally ordinary development noted for its outrageous normality. If you’re especially mundane, have we got a home for you.
5. Birch Crossing – Although built in a serenely sylvan setting, be advised that crossing that birch too often could get you birch-slapped
6. The Necropolis at Forest Lawn – Available only to people 6 feet and under. This is a below-ground community for the permanently retired. Tagline: “Sorry I can’t come to the door right now. I’m buried.
7. Bayou Perish – Louisiana version of The Necropolis. Due to the Mississippi flooding, it’s an above-ground community for the permanently retired. Available only to people 6 feet and over. Tagline: “Y’all do realize we’re still part of the United States?”
8. Crestfallen Heights – As the contradictory name evidences, it’s very popular with the bipolar crowd
9. Infarction Junction – A heartfelt community were homeowners are called patients and, just like their vascular system, are encouraged to circulate freely. Be forewarned, speeding hearts racing down the Main Artery are not tolerated and are placed under cardiac arrest. Most homes are 4-chambered. You get the picture. Brochure promises “2 EMTs on every corner and a defibrillator in every garage.”
10. My Happy Place – Finally you can go to your happy place. If you lived here you’d be smiling already. A giddy development where all meals are happy meals and all insulation is pink cotton candy. Many homes are made of gingerbread.
11. The Barracks at Andersonville – Taking its cues from the Civil War prison, this lavish reimagining of a dismal POW camp is weirdly popular with guys who still watch Hogan’s Heroes…and the women who love them.
12. Honey Bucket Meadows – An upscale mobile home park (if such a thing is even possible) with an occasional blue splash of elegance
13. Iodine Estates at 3 Mile Island – The only development where both the homeowner and the home have a half-life. No need for a microwave. Just take your food out of the refrigerator and it will spontaneously warm. A healthy thyroid gland is a must.
14. Chair Noble – Not a housing development. I just wanted you to say “Chernobyl” without realizing it.
15. Fallen Manors – A rude development recently zoned for spitting, jaywalking and graffiti.
16. Isn’t it funny how we don’t really understand what we’re doing here and yet we carry on like we do? This is not a housing development, it’s just me making a mid-list observation as a humble acknowledgement of something much greater than our little ego selves. The doors of perception are open for business, now if we could just find the key. We now return to our analgesic entertainment already in progress…
17. English Spellings at Ye Olde Apothecary’s Shoppe – Experience thatched roofs, warm beer and bubonic plague – and that’s just on Drury Lane! Move here and you’ll learn to set your watch just by glancing at Stonehenge.
18. Bunny Hutch Corners – For the hare-raising experience of a lifetime
19. The Sands at Iwo Jima – For the flag-raising experience of a lifetime
20. Yeast of Eden – For the bread-raising experience of a lifetime
21. Lazarus Estates – For the dead-raising experience of a lifetime
22. Sugar Plantation at Chattel Village – For the cane-raising experience of a lifetime
23. Adam & Eve’s Garden of Earthly Delights – For the Cain-raising experience of a lifetime
24. Noah’s Park – For the rain-rising experience of a lifetime
25. Echo Chambers at Walla Walla – Double your pleasure in Walla Walla. The town so great they named it twice. Partial list of homeowners: Yo Yo Ma, Honey Boo Boo, Richie Rich, JJ Abrams and Chi Chi Rodriguez
26. Fresh Dressings at Wounded Knee – Not really a housing development, but I worked on this one too long to just delete it. Ummm, buy now and receive a free walker with the purchase of any teepee
27. The Cribs at Interscope Ranch – Hip hop living was never so bulletproof. Free rap or scratch classes at the Dr. Dre Community Center.
28. The Crabs at Mustang Ranch – Available in soft shell or STDs
29. The Heights at Acrophobia – Each home features a 30-story atrium with loft bedrooms accessed by ladders. Only the Navajo or steeplejacks need apply.
30. The Heights of Impropriety – OMG, voyeurs and exhibitionists living side by side. I mean it’s see and be seen in this fetishistic paradise. Weirdest VFR you’ll ever experience. Please note, during ground fog it’s IFR.
31. Fresh Kills – An actual city and landfill in NY. I’m not making this up: Fresh Kills, Worst Name Ever

Thank God these newly discovered books of the Bible weren’t included in the New Testament. Its hard enough reconciling the original ones.

In an unprecedented discovery, never-before-seen books of the Bible (scrolls actually) have been unearthed at an excavation site near Jerusalem. They were discovered by a team of archaeologists from UC Berkeley who were astonished by their outrageous fortune remarking, “Can you believe we finagled a grant to dig around the Middle East for 6 months? Unbelievable – oh yeah and stumbling upon these Bible books was pretty cool too.”

The scrolls, written in ancient Aramaic, were found in an amphora (large 2-handled clay vase) marked “Burn these when it gets cold – looks like King Solomon’s son is at it again with his heresies. What a waste of good papyrus.”

Fortunately for posterity, these written ruminations weren’t reduced to warming embers. UC Berkeley Press has collected and curated these strange and wonderful writings that give us a window onto the ancient world and has published them in a bracingly numinous compendium called “The New Testament for Dummies.”

It’s apparent from the tenor of these writings that this early version of the Bible was intended more as a Self-Help Guide Book to assist newly minted hominids in navigating the unhygienic world of ancient Babylonia without contracting typhoid. It was a time without organized religions. When spirituality was a personal experience practiced, not through intermediaries, but from direct personal interface with what today is called consciousness, but back then was called “that thing that makes me feel guilty when I covet my neighbor’s ta-tas”

But before acolytes realized what was happening, well-intentioned malefactors tricked worthy men into organizing the inexplicable cosmos into defined religions, and now religion has become this external thing you pay homage to rather than the deeply felt presence of immediate experience ~ UC Berkeley Press

Irrespective of man’s codification of the spiritual experience, the following is a list of the Bible scrolls recovered at the site, along with a brief summary of their contents. They are attributed to King Solomon’s son, Prince Kanye:

1. The One Commandment: This was simply the Golden Rule whereby you treat others as you would like to be treated. And it worked beautifully…until it was sent to committee, where they kept adding amendment after amendment.
2. Do Unto Deuteronomy as You Would Do Unto Mitt Romney: How someone from antiquity could foretell the existence of Mitt Romney is startlingly prescient.
3. 50 Shades of Truth: The less said about this book the better. Way too much focus on spanking.
4. Numbers: Not numbers but numbers. Let me explain. This long forgotten book was once a helpful list of 5-star dentists (middle eastern barbers really) in the greater Judea area who knew how to effectively use Novocain. Therefore, because of their anesthetic abilities, they were numbers (silent “b”) not numbers (audible “b”).
5. King Herod Deals with Hemorrhoids: The Great One tries to reconcile God’s Majesty with a prolapsed rectum.
6. Laminations: A precursor to Lamentations. This rather pedestrian scroll deals more with medieval flooring than the Human Condition. In Laminations, the prophet Linoleum speaks grandiloquently of scuff-resistant, non-permeable surfaces as a foundation for hygienic living. It is believed this is the first mention of cleanliness being next to Godliness.   
7. How to Avoid Getting Stoned: Not the “far out” kind of stoned. This book deals with avoiding the kind of stoning where suffocating rocks are pressed down upon one’s chest to encourage behavior modification. This method of negative reinforcement was really just a medieval reminder to not take the Lord’s name in vain, or to take narcotics in vein.  
8. Burning Taint: STDs to avoid while visiting Sodom
9. Up From Animals: We we’re barely more than livestock when this scroll was written. At that time humans were lucky to eat spelt or alfalfa sprouts. Most food was absolutely offal, or those awful falafels. Even more worrying was people’s fear that if they beheld heathens in the act of fornication, they would fall from grace and instead of being a pillar of the community, they’d become a pillar of salt.  
10. Flatulence of a Lesser God: To quote that prophet Bob Dylan “The answer my friend is-a blowin’ in the wind.” Yes, even in ancient Masada they had street food featuring taco carts. Most found it long-winded.
11. Goliath’s Kidney Stones: Why do you think he was always so ill-tempered? Spoiler Alert: It’s the stone David used to slay him.
12. Hummusphobia: Fear of Hummus afflicted many Anti-legumers who were uncomfortable with these same sex ground beans. Favored by the LGBTQ crowd – Legumes, Grapes, Beets, Turnips and Quince eaters.
13. The Book of Termination: An apposite companion piece to the book of Genesis, this apocalyptic End of Days quatrain presages the coming Social Security time bomb.
14. OMG, Guess What I Can Do?: Really a defense of God’s perfect justice. It explains how orgasm is God’s way of making up for Smallpox
15. Deuteronomy to Me One More Time: This tuneful verse somehow prefigures the Captain and Tennille’s “Do That to Me One More Time.”
16. Love Will Keep Us Together: Somehow, once again, the Captain and Tennille divined.
17. Muskrat Lust: Downright scary. This is where the Captain and Tennille divination should’ve stopped.
18. Book of Antiverbs: A response to the Book of Proverbs
19. Weights and Measures: Keeping things in Biblical Proportion. Scroll goes to great lengths in discussing cubits, stadions and reeds. I couldn’t fathom it.
20. Ob-la-di Obidiah: Jaunty little book proves that life goes on…brahhh. La la la la life goes on. So if you want some fun, sing Ob-la-di Obidiah.

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1. 

   It’s deja vu all over again.

   Two Lives to Live – A soap opera based on “One Life to Live.” It follows the multiple lifetimes of actress Judith Light.

2. Judas, is that you? – Embarrassing hijinks ensue when at a college reunion in 1975, Apostles recognize each other from the Last Supper.
3. Been There. Done That. – Kinda like Ground Hog Day, but with lifetimes.
4. How I Met Your Great-great Grandmother – Silas Finch describes to his daughter Marisa, meeting her great-great grandmother Prudence Howell (who was also his former wife) at the inaugural Dodge City Hootenanny in the 1850s. Lots of hoedowns and plenty o’fiddlin’. This show is rated “Cover Your Eyes” due to: Windblown hoopskirts, fleeting glimpses of bare ankles, loosely tied bonnets and the drinking of hard cider. Beware: Both the pretzels and the language are salty. 
5. Pull My Finger – Has nothing to do with reincarnation. Funny now. Funny then. Absolutely timeless.
6. Osgood’s Lament: Life Insurance is Now Obsolete – An all new comedy. With people now recognizing their eternity, they’re just not bothering to buy life insurance anymore. Show focuses on insurance man Osgood O’Connell transitioning from writing insurance policies to selling Instapots.
7. This Reincarnation Thing is Killing Me – A humorous take on interminable rebirths
8. Infomercial: How to Avoid Being Reborn as a Refugee– Ex-human traffickers offer tips on choosing the right parents in the next lifetime to avoid becoming an immigrant. Theme song: Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee.”
9. Eternity – Will it Ever End? – A heartfelt and frustrating look at the time-space continuum from people who can’t get off it.
10. Shirley MacLaine’s Do You Believe Me Now? – Futurist and peripheral Rat Pack member Shirley MacLaine discusses how she chose to be Warren Beatty’s sister this lifetime.
11. Déjà vu – Similar to the show “Been There. Done That.” And if you like redundancy wrapped in duplicity, inside a croissant…then this multilevel French Baking show is for you.
12. I Love Lucy – Not that Lucy, but the 3.2 million year old, pre-human hominid from Ethiopia. This docudrama delves deeply into the past lives of a troop of Australopithecines roaming the Serengeti in search of food. The show is much more understandable when listened to with the audio program selected to “Grunting as a Second Language.” Why these barely bipedal prehistoric munchkins are all traipsing about wearing Tommy Hilfiger says more about the financial clout of the fashion industry than it does about life on the Serengeti.

Bodies don’t last forever. But while they do…

Preamble: As Danny DeVito once said to Shaquille O’Neal, “I’ll be short.” And in a similar way I’ll be, if not short, at least concise in this little amuse bouche of an essay seeking to define who I am in this Digital Age of torrential technology. This is a worthy pursuit if only because it’s another 3 hours until lunch and with that kind of existential hole to fill I turn my thoughts unto the nature of me and by extension, the nature of all of us (alright, maybe I won’t be that short, but I certainly won’t be uninteresting).

Amble: It was Socrates who said, “Know thyself.” He said it in ancient Greek so it sounded a lot different back then. But his larger point being that the unexamined life was not worth living. And when I say, “the unexamined life was not worth living” you all think, “Well that’s very true, but of course it doesn’t apply to me. I know what I’m doing. But for other people, whoa, they’ve got some serious examining to do.”

It’s always the other guy isn’t it? God forbid we should be self-reflective and see the faults within ourselves and do something to transcend them other than blithely observe, “Oh yeah…there they are again. Hey faults. What’s up?” How do we square that? We ignore it and kinda blame the rest of humanity for lack of “not seeing things as I see them” or maybe we depend on a God we barely acknowledge to, “Explain it all to me once I’m through with this life.” Some might say there are worse things to procrastinate about than endeavoring to “Know thyself.” And if you’ve ever tried to ignore a kidney stone you know what I’m talking about.

The Thing: In any event, and irrespective of my little indictment of the human race above, I’ve plumbed the depths and shallows of my being. I’ve discovered there are ample areas of shallowness and a few deep pools of cosmic connectivity. My self-definition is influenced by the Digital Age of technology which has relentlessly cascaded upon us like a newly formed and torrential waterfall (not bad writing, eh). I’ve designed this personal descriptor, as a reference book for all humanity. As if there were a dictionary whose content included every earthling who has ever existed, so that if you looked up the meaning of David Hardiman, the definition would appear thusly:

David Hardiman: A human platform streaming original content at no charge to interested end users. A multi-function app powered by both good intentions and bad choices. Like many born of mammalian parents, he’s a temporary flesh puppet occupying a renta-body that’s long, willowy and prone to excessive thinking. While not buying into the foolhardy view of life as pointless duality, he nonetheless contends with it like a parent does with a whiny child – he loves it immensely, but just wishes it would behave. Hardiman lived his life by Oscar Wilde’s maxim, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

Also see: Marx Bros, Einstein, Ram Dass, Lennon, Jesus and Steve Martin.

1. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Let’s just hope it’s consensual.
2. It’s one of those English baking shows where they teach you how to use a rolling pin
3. No money was exchanged, although a little later, phone numbers were exchanged
4. Bottom guy to top guy: “Gees mister, your church sure has a weird way of praying. This is a church – right?”
5. TSA “Pat Down” class…as taught by a substitute teacher
6. This is from a Holistic Laxative Clinic where practitioners have found a kinder, gentler way to encourage movement. I’ve heard of “greasing the skids,” but this is ridiculous
7. I think the guy on top is a recent immigrant who lives at the facility and owes traffickers thousands.
8. Police Frisking Class: New method of ass-uaging the perpetrator
9. That is one helluva suppository.
10. Firemen getting in-service instruction in FST: Fart Suppression Training
11. And in actuality it’s a pic from Syracuse University Football’s Strength & Conditioning operation

Silver Linings Where You Least Expect Them

1. For the first time in your life, when someone says, “Hey dude, kept it real.” You can legitimately respond, “Don’t worry. I am.”
   

   A sliver of silver illuminates awl.
   Great, now I’ve got a light shining on my awl.

2. On wrestling with “Tis better to give than receive”: Predicting what some distant family member will get you for Christmas and trying to buy them a gift of equal or lesser value…no longer an issue.
3. Gun to Your Head Clarity: Without having to 2^nd guess yourself, you finally see the true value of everything. Then you breathe easy and realize: “Aaaah, so this is what enlightenment looks like. I like it.”
4. Some things will never change. Rap Music will still suck.
5. The myth of feeling aggrieved, angry or contemptuous is obliterated forever. You realize your strong convictions merely made you a convict rather than a free thinker. And you shake your head and say, “Great. Thanks God. Thanks for the Stage IV metastatic pancreatic cancer. It took being on deaths door to prompt this life-affirming realizations. And now because time is so short I can’t even get a book deal.”
6. You never again have to worry about your cat sneakily licking your armpits
7. Beautiful Hallucinations of Fortune: “Am I near vanna yet?” “You mean Nirvana?” “No. I mean near Vanna. I just want to be near Vanna White.”
8. You become relaxed and let things go. You come to know it’s OK to be bad, with both names and faces now. How liberating. Now when you see someone you’re vaguely familiar with, you can just point at them and say, “Woof.”
9. You’ll get to see John Lennon soon. Of course you’ll also have to contend with Phyllis Diller and Tiny Tim, but not to worry; Einstein, Siddhartha and Jesus’ company easily outweighs Charlie Callas, Charlie Ponzi and Typhoid Mary’s.
10. Peaceful, volitional suicide? Suddenly it’s not such a bad alternative. In this way you can go out on your terms and not some pre-programmed termination you never signed up for. This is where opioids have a legitimate place at the table.  
11. You can now park in handicapped spots without a placard. And when called on it by the scolding parkinazis, you smile and say, “You’ll pardon me, but I’ve got Stage IV pancreatic cancer. So while I recognize the impropriety of my brazen action, I do say in all candor, F*ck you – deeply and vigorously.” It’s called playing the “I’ll be dead in 4 weeks card.”
12. You will realize: “We have met the Lord…and it is us.” My God, how did I miss that? I’m as much God as anyone or anything else. Micro Macro. It all coalesces. How did I fail to realize it again – for the 6000^th time? This reincarnation thing is getting tedious. Next lifetime, I’m going to participate, but at all hazard, I’m not going to forget this realization. Of course I said that last lifetime too. Oh well, it sure beats having to wait for an AT&T service man – 8-12 my ass. He showed up at 1:30!