It is often said that to lead a happy life you should, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” I get that. But with a twist. What brings me joy is to, “Write like nobody’s reading.” And based upon my Google Analytics of late, that statement has never been truer. There’s no denying what brings us joy. The heart wants what the heart wants.

So as I bathe myself in literary pixie dust in preparation for a writer’s journey into rapture, I find myself in my element. I’ve got my backlit keyboard, my predatory imagination and I’ve just cracked open a fresh ginger-hibiscus kombucha. I’m not only in my element, I’ve become an element: Hardimanium – a rare psychoactive literary element consisting of all Higgs bosons and a knowing smirk.

Now as I gently loosen the tethers mooring me to conventional and unspectacular wisdom, I feel the motivating presence of a million eyes not reading this. Such exquisite freedom. My gatekeepers have been put on administrative leave and in their absence no bureaucratic censor exists to burden my thoughts. The swirling excesses of my cerebral vortices are tamed only by the limits of the English language. 

Yes, it’s the perfect literary storm and the NWS (No, not the National Weather Service, but the Narcotized Writers’ Sanctuary) is calling for a lacerating Category 5 hurricane once the literary storm travels up your optic nerve and saturates your consciousness. But please don’t evacuate yourself just yet. I promise to keep you securely within the eye of Hurricane David, at an observationally safe distance from its high-velocity humor and killer premises. You might get a little wet, but that’s only in keeping with the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who mused so eloquently: “Into each life some rain must fall.”

I thank you for the absence of your presence. How else can I write so uninhibitedly?

 

Cutting and Pasting My Inner Dialogue

What if the Pep Boys were Impressionists and not Auto Parts bobble heads? Instead of Manny, Moe and Jack, they’d be Manet, Monet and Jacques.

 

Are there boats that ship dead people to ports of final call? And if so, would that ship be a place where corpses are berthed? Cuz I would think it would be pretty difficult to berth a corpse…I mean the gestation period alone.

 

Amazing Feet: Marathoner wins race 7 years running.  

 

So I guess “new train smell” is just something I’ll never experience.

 

Things not often thought about: At the height of his popularity Elvis was drafted into the Army. And he actually had to go. No dispensation for the King of Rock & Roll. Can anyone imagine Eminem or Jay-Z having had to serve a 2 year hitch in the Army? “Nope, I’m sorry Mr. Mathers you’ll need to guard an ammo dump at Fort Benning for a couple of years.” Or…”Tough luck Shawn Carter, these potatoes won’t peel themselves here at Camp Granada.”   

I’m a Lightning Rod for Statically Electric Ideas, These Quips Seek Me Out, not Vice Versa

Have you ever put your iPhone in your pocket and then pulled it out a few minutes later after it has been rubbing against your leg, activating any number of functions. You look at the display and it shows the nuclear launch codes for the United States or some kind of portal to the Cosmic Architecture of the universe. You think, “Jesus, what did I do. I hope I can get it to revert to its default state.”

Well this is essentially the same hope I have for mankind.

 

A List of Better Known Marx Brothers:

Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Gummo

A List of the Lesser Known Marx Brothers:  

The Communist:              Pinko

The Master Mason:          Stucco

The Cowboy:                   Gaucho

The Mexican:                   Taco

The Snack Eater:              Nabisco

The African-American:    Oprah…OK not quite, but Oprah backwards is Harpo. So there’s that.

 

The Lesser Known Ritz Brothers:

The Ritz brothers are already lesser known therefore no one could know their other brothers any less (or is that fewer?). BTW, it’s a little known fact that the Andrews Sisters agreed to marry the Ritz brothers, but it turned out it was a prank – they were just putting on the Ritz.

 

I bought some extra sharp cheddar cheese. I was very careful not to make a predictable remark about cutting myself on this extra-sharp cheese – after all, I’ve made enough cutting remarks. What will I do with this cheese? – I’m putting on the Ritz.

 

Dear Colonel Parker,

This is really stupid. Not this list, but the fact that you’re still reading it. I mean c’mon. I’m not gonna stop writing till you stop reading. I will neither cease nor desist in this carnival of verbal confetti until you feel it has become a farrago of defecatory graffiti.

BTW, couldn’t you have done anything to keep Elvis out of the army?

Blah, blah, blah. How are the kids? Has Kayla’s prosthetic intelligence taken hold?

Signed Yours Truly,

Calvin Ritz

 

Really? Ritz? Again? – You’re putting me on. The Ritz.

 

Transparency in Writing

I hope I’ve made myself clear. Actually on second thought I hope I haven’t made myself clear. Who wants to be looked through like an aquarium? I mean life in a fishbowl is one thing, but life as a fish bowl? – That’s not for me.

 

Doctor:        Who’s the next patient?

Nurse:          Well, the invisible man is here to see you.

Doctor:        I can’t stand that guy. Tell the invisible man I can’t possibly see him today.

 

My hair raising experience: I found all the hair I lost. Now what? It goes on eBay tomorrow as a “Do-it-yourself merkin.” Oh, you don’t know what a merkin is? – It’s an American whose had his A shaved off. A merkin.

 

Favorite WC Fields line: I don’t drink water. Fish f*ck in it.

 

BTW, that so-called nameless horse; I have been thru the desert on her. I found out later her name was Cinnamon. Take that America (the band and not the country).

 

I want one of those self-driving cars for my dog so I can get his ass to the vets w/o all the drama. “Here Grover. Get in, you’re going bye-bye. Siri, ‘Get directions to the veterinarian.’ Hello Dr. Hadfield, Grover swallowed the melon baller again. He’ll be there in 11 minutes under current traffic conditions. Please deal with it, then send him back home. Thanks doc.” Boom. Done.

 

Phrases you don’t read in great novels; “We arrived back home by kayak, refreshed and rested. Why it was upstream both ways I’ll never understand. I’ve heard of wind shifting, but streams reversing direction? It was a good thing Sadie packed the merkins.”

 

Speaking of same, I ask you:

“How much yak, would a kayak yak, if a kayak could yak wood?”

 

BTW, FYI a FAQ is LGBTQ? 

 

It’s just doesn’t pay anymore to sculpt Confederate Generals on horseback. The market has tanked; and I’m not just Whistlin’ Dixie.

 

See if you can fill in the blank of this well-known phrase:

Opinions are like a_____s. Everybody’s got one.  

Readers respond: Really. Now you’re making us say *sshole in our head.

Writer retorts:                   What’s an *sshole doing in your head? You’ve got the hole thing backwards.

 

For as long as I live I will never memorize phone tree options . Therefore no automated answering phone tree has to tell me to “listen carefully because some of our options have changed.” And what’s worse is when, after you answer one of their pre-programmed questions, they make those phony little pitter-patter noises between the silences; like they’re scurrying from one file to another like Keebler Elves, hustling for you while supposedly processing your information. Phone trees should be chopped down.

 

Settle, Settle

I sometimes forget the human predicament: That we’re all just in between bowel movements.

For me it’s similar to the 3^rd movement in Beethoven’s Fifth. Did you know Beethoven kept his 5^th hidden under the strings of his piano. he took a snort only when he thought no one would hear him, which was pretty much always because he was deaf.

  

Dana. Are you there Dana? Stay with it girl.

 

Kansas City is so great they had to put it in two states – a state of high anxiety and, of course, Missouri.  

 

I visited Japan recently. Just call me the Occidental Tourist (thanks Raney)

 

The Unappreciated Perfection of Earth’s Operating System

So many things automatically go right to not spoil my day. I thank you flawless Overlord for your autonomic precision in:

 

My pupils properly dilating (and whatever the opposite of dilating is) according to the amount of ambient light present. I never think about that. I don’t have to. Some other factor does it for me. If my pupils did become fixed and dilated I’d be screwed or maybe mistaken for dead, or for a Stepford husband. In any event I’d probably have to wear sunglasses at inappropriate times.

Suppose I was meeting the Pope and my pupils were stuck in the fully dilated and locked position. And there I’d be getting my Ray Bans blessed by the Pontiff – the optics on that would look really bad. And, perish the thought, but what if just one pupil was dilated fully and the other shrunk to compensate? And what if I had two different colored eyes like David Bowie? Wow. There I am in an audience with the Pope, with one brown eye fully dilated and the blue one shrunk to the size of a pinhead. He wouldn’t know whether to bless me or burn me at the stake. Mercifully I don’t have to worry about things like that thanks to our Earth’s flawless operating system. All hail Mr. Gates.

 

I’d also like to thank water for evaporating, otherwise I’d rather be an amphibian like Michael Phelps #whatthefuckamItalkingabout. And besides, who likes to be damp all the time. I mean besides Madonna.

 

Although gravity sucks I’d like to thank it for not being any more oppressive. I mean isn’t the poetry of Dylan Thomas heavy enough (don’t worry, I don’t quite get that one either).

  

I’m at a loss for words now……                              

Psych! This ain’t over till I stop writing or you stop reading. And I don’t think you have it in you to stop. “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.”

I believe the title of my forthcoming book sums it up best: Don’t Sweat the Onions…It’s All Onions.

 

Random Bold Lettered Heading

How come all the letters of the alphabet have one syllable except W which has 3? Same with states. Of the 50 states (13 states if you think it’s 1789) only one has a single syllable. Wanna guess? Spoiler Alert….It’s Maine. Here’s another spoiler alert for you: My cottage cheese went bad.  

 

BTW, do I remember the Alamo or the Maine first? I’ve forgot to remember.

 

A motorcyclist got his girlfriend pregnant. From the video you could see he wasn’t wearing his helmet.

 

The question shouldn’t be, “How many stomachs do goats have?” but rather, “Alright already. Enough with the 4 stomachs you primitive digesters. What the hell is wrong with you stupid ruminants? – chewing your god-damned cud for hours and transfering the slime from one stomach to another. Stop playing with your food.”

Then again, maybe if I had to eat grass and twigs all day I couldn’t stomach it either; and it would take me 4 stomachs to choke down one mulberry bush. I apologize unreservedly to all ruminants, in all cloven-hoofed walks of life for I now realize that eating shrubbery is hard work, and it takes a village – or at least 4 stomachs – to eat branches. I’m wrong about a lot of things. Maybe I shouldn’t ruminate so much.”

 

Little known fact: Picasso suffered a diagonal stroke in 1909 which briefly paralyzed his right leg and left arm. While diagonally compromised the great artist rededicated himself to painting. Thus began his Cubist Period.

 

Can prostitutes be considered First Responders? And if so, shouldn’t we thank them for their service. Oh well, as sex workers often say, “The pay might suck, but the tips are tremendous.”

 

All-time euphemism: Did you know the Japanese refer to Prostitution as Compensated Dating? I suppose then, if a sex worker gets pregnant she can file for Workmen’s Comp.  

 

The worst inadvertently repugnant advertisement was a tagline for Chiffon Margarine in 1971. The jingle went like this:

♫If you think it’s butter but it’s not…It’s Chiffon♫

Which sounded to most people like: ♫If you think it’s butter, but it’s snot…It’s Chiffon♫

Not exactly the kind of “spread” you want to slather on toast.

 

Is the band Foreigner ever coming back? I’m tired of going to see their tribute band Immigrant play…..Pardon me…What was that?…Oh I see. So they don’t play in the States anymore now that Trump kicked them out of the country because they were Foreigners.

 

When you die (notice how I said, “When YOU die.” I have no plans to let death catch me unware) I bet that after reconnecting with all your family, relatives and pets, it’s kinda like, “OK, now what? Do I have to start buying birthday presents for you guys you all over again? Jesus. And “Listen, it’s not going to be Thanksgiving at my house every year again. I’m still missing my gravy boat from 2005…Linda.”

 

He’s an alienated guy. For example, instead of Words with Friends he’s only able to play Words with Acquaintances. For a while he couldn’t even play solitaire with himself without feeling suffocated. 

 

There should be a law against celebrities and Halls of Fame. The law should target fanatics and not celebrities. They can’t help it but the worshipers can. We just need more awareness – and that’s where death comes in: frightening, ego-extinguishing, liberating death. Let’s just call it a portal to the calming explanatory realm.

 

BTW, I wish my fans would stop sending me money. Gift cards or coarse ground mustards are fine. Basically anything that’s not traceable. Wait a minute. I just said, “Coarse ground mustards are fine.” That’s not true. They’re not fine. They’re coarse.

 

Some of my ideas deliberate in 4 distinct sections of my brain before I regurgitate them. Maybe I am a Goat after all. Hell yeah! I am the G.O.A.T.

 

I’m great with names and faces, just not together.

 

BTW I know a guy who’s great with middle names and torsos. If he gets one look at someone’s trunk and is told their middle name, it’s forever committed to memory. That guy’s name is Stupido – also a lesser known Marx brother.

 

I know another guy who’s great with aliases and prosthetic limbs. His name is James, but he’s also known as Peg Leg Wilson

 

I know a guy who can find anybody in a crowd. His name is Waldo – a Marx half-brother.

 

A fellow named Clive writes on his blog that he knows a guy whose cerebral cortex is equipped with quips. Somehow I know he’s referencing me even though I never met Clive. Please follow along otherwise I’m gonna turn this thing right around and head home.

 

From now on, no one is allowed to use the word “pubes.”

 

Page Break

This purgative exercise in free association (in which I pluck low-hanging comedic fruit) is just one of the myriad ways in which I celebrate the world. The other ways I celebrate are more a matter for the courts to decide. Cuz when I do this kind of unedited writing, I feel God’s pleasure in small doses. And I believe God feels me scratch his itch.   

What do you do to celebrate life?

 

{The Empty Space Below is for You to Write, Contemplate or otherwise Consider how you celebrate life. Relax now. Assume a feeling of being, all light and airy. Imagine you’re a Pillsbury Doughboy. Why not? Where has hunkering down gotten you so far? Don’t be who you think you are…be who you are.}

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Paige Brake. This One Misspelled. Incidentally, Paige Brake is also the name of my headstone etcher.

For reasons I’d rather not go into, I once took a shower at a do-it yourself car wash – true. I almost castrated myself with the high-pressure hose. But, as the saying goes, that which does not castrate me only makes me stronger. Guess I’m eunuch that way.

The other bonus part was, I power washed my pubes right off. I know I promised not to use the word “pubes” but I’ve had a change of heart. Something similar to this also happened to me at my cardiologist’s yesterday when the doctor and I were discussing my upcoming heart transplant. I told the doctor I couldn’t go through with it. She asked me why and I said, “Oh I don’t know. I guess I’m just having a change of heart about having a change of heart.” The whole event was heartening really. Unfortunately it was heartening of the arteries.

There’s no groaning here. There is no groaning here. You read it, now deal with it. I wrote this days or even years ago. These words are for you, for this moment. I’m long since done with them. It’s like the song Day Tripper. A great song when the Beatles released it in late 1965 as part of the Double A-side with “We Can Work it Out.” Day Tripper is great anytime, but the Beatles are long since done with it. In fact there isn’t even any band called the Beatles to be done with it. Rather it is for us, the living, to deal with Day Tripper, just as in a similar fashion it is for you, the reader, to deal with this salmagundi of cerebral sentiments. 

 

I hope I’ve made myself clear. OK maybe opaque. My opacity is one of my endearing traits. I don’t want you to see write thru me. And yes, I meant to write the word “write” my literary brothers and sisters – Write on!

 

For What It’s Worth, There’s a Dearth of Girth Birth Stories.

We’ll Take a Pregnant Pause Here to Highlight One

 

BTW, if this densely-packaged verbiage from yours truly came with a nutritional label, you’d’ve had 12 servings already – and all of them empty, satisfying calories. So now you you’re full of it. I on the other hand still have a full tank, so praise God and pass the jocular kitsch. Jocular kitsch is not to be confused with jock itch, which is not to be confused with Jacques Etch – one of the Early Impressionists. Other Early Impressionists include Frank Gorshin, David Frye and Rich Little.  

I think I may have created a new kind of word (a neologism) with the earlier use of the term you’d’ve – I call it the Double Contraction. As in I’d’ve, we’d’ve, they’d’ve. Double contractions are also what moms suffer from when birthing twins. This event is referred to in the lyrics of Foreigner’s: ♫Double contractions get the best of me ♫

 

This Has Been Quite a Party

Is it morning yet? Yes, well somewhere it is and that’s my point. How can the sun simultaneously be rising and setting someplace? How can it be in 2 places at once? Let’s ask the lesser known Marx brother – the astronomer named Pluto. No. I made that up. There is no Marx Brother named Pluto and if there was he’d be downgraded to a planetoid by now. So even though that particular tidbit may not be true, everything else I wrote is.

 

Tributes I’d Like to See

A paean to a pecan

An encomium to incontinence

An elegy to elephants

A eulogy for euthanized ewoks

And finally…An Unctuous Praise for a Parsnip.

If the presenter is not up for praising the parsnip then he can just braise it instead. Actually he can braise it in anything he likes. He doesn’t necessarily have to braise it in stead. In fact this phantom “he” I keep referring to doesn’t even have to be a “he.” “He” can be a she, or an it, or an ewok. Maybe even a Lutheran. You see I don’t play favorites – except with my chosen few.  

Gratuitous font switch.

I’m writing a new book about a Seafaring artisan who makes custom fish ladders for classy salmon who want to spawn upstream, but with style and dignity. The thing is, I don’t know how you can glamorize a salmon squirting fish sperm into a rocky stream bed all by himself.   

I had a strange and wonderful dream where I’m sitting in the grandstand at a Gay Rodeo watching all the events going on in the arena. As I’m sitting there observing the bull riders, calf ropers and barrel racers I have an epiphany and wonder why I didn’t see it before? It was right there in front of me. I suddenly realized that the cowboys were all straight. It was the animals who were gay.

 

You’ll have to remember, I’m still suffering insulin shock from a bowl of Super Sugar Crisp I had in 1966 so a lot of what I say is metabolically driven.

 

You’ll also have to bear in mind that up until this point in my life my nose hair was completely in check and my ear hair was still soft short and downy. The only wrinkles I had were in my clothes and crows feet were a delicacy I ate with black bean sauce. My follically-advantaged scalp qualified me for any big-haired band of the day from Motley Crue to Def Leppard. I didn’t smoke and as mentioned I didn’t drink alcohol or take drugs. Masturbation was another issue (poor choice of the word “issue” there). 

 

I’ve breathed in too much clumping cat litter in my lifetime. My left lung has almost entirely clumped into a bronchial fossil.

 

My forthcoming autobiography: Oh, Won’t Someone Please Take Me Out of This Medically Induced Coma?

 

Little known fact about me: I was voted most promising nephew for 2018 by Nephews Magazine. Look for my hunky April spread in their Naughty Nephew holiday calendar.

 

What happened in the world in the 2 hours between the death of Farrah Fawcett and the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009?

 

My dad, a Bostonian and WWII pilot, matriculated to Syracuse University via the GI Bill. My mom a Catholic Syracusan, came to Syracuse as the class valedictorian from a local Catholic high school: Our Lady of Shame. I came to Earth as a product of their loins in 1961. My parents always reminded me I was conceived shortly after they’d seen the movie Psycho in 1960 – a good omen if ever there was one. As I recall the history of the time: JFK was shot, the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, King was shot, the other Kennedy was shot, CBS cancelled Mayberry RFD, Kool-Aid happy face mascot pitcher haunted my dreams, there was something about a moon landing, Sandy Duncan received favorable notices on Broadway (even with the eye thing), humans seemed to be the predominant species and the Beatles broke up when Yoko grafted herself onto John’s hip. OK so that brings us up to 1970.

 

                                             

Almost Jokes

My niece from Nice lives in a perfect prefect in Japan

 

Let me describe my eager entitlement this way: Put me in coach, although I’d prefer first class.  

 

When I’m on a plane I get a special thrill when the flight attendants slowly walks down the aisle with the trash bag and starts collecting garbage. As they approach my row I get way too excited about tidying-up my little 3 cubic feet of personal space. My allotted territory has parameters and thine shall be sanitized, decluttered and redeemed. All hail the gaping maw of the flight attendant’s opened trash receptacle!

 

The Last of the Mohicans takes last straw and proclaims the experience 2^nd to none

 

Does a period know when it’s in italics?

Does a period know when it’s in Times New Roman?

If a period is out of tampons, does it know?

 

Waitress:      And how would you like your eggs cooked sir?

Customer:    To perfection please.

 

A young man developed exceptional homespun knowledge. His parents lived close to the land and the boy was tent-schooled.

One time I posted on Facebook an instructional manual on oral sex. It got only 2 Comments, but over 31,000 Licks.

Four, forty. Why does forty lose “u”?

They’re very rich. They use 14-ply toilet paper.

 

 

This is the End

Well that’s it then. All good things must come to an end. In this case it might be your patience. I don’t want to try your patience anymore. However I invite you to try mine.

 

My patience may be thin, but I don’t Bogart it; I Lauren Bacall it.

 

My patience may be thin and that’s OK. Thin patience is culturally more acceptable. I mean who wants fat patience? Maybe bariatric surgery doctors want fat patients, but that’s going beyond the scope of this piece – the endoscope.

Thin patience is just how God made me.

Inner Dialogue: Oh great, now I’m playing the God card. Well maybe that suits me. In fact I wonder what suits God cards come in: clubs, spades and maybe double-breasted suits. And if you’ve never come in a double-breasted suit you’re really missing something (Yeah, it’s called sanity).

 

But back to ending this little organism of a story. I said I’d end this mental travelogue earlier and now I finally will. By having my valet brush my dentures. My valet’s name is Gummo – one of the better known Marx brothers.

 

Thank you Cleveland. You’ve been great!

 

This second to last sentence is to inform you I have left the building. If you’d turn off the lights before you go, my carbon footprint would appreciate it.

 

Audience Reaction

Jesus, what in the Hell was that all about?

I don’t know, just smile, nod and keep moving. He doesn’t really know who we are yet. Oh yeah, and maybe turn off the lights before you go.

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