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Advice For The Young

Although I'm always pleased whenever young people approach me seeking advice about what they should do with their lives, I have to confess that this isn't an easy question to answer, especially since I have always been the type of guy whose one and only flaw is that, when it comes to caring about the concerns of others, I guess that, sometimes I just care too much.

(A doctor once told me that my heart is four times larger than that of the average male.* **)

Since I respect these young, inquisitive souls so much, the last thing I want to do is to bore or patronize them with a predictable platitude, such as "follow your heart."

Such advice always sounds empty, obvious, condescending, and absurd. Think about how it sounds to a hip 18-year-old. "Follow your heart to where?"

One might as well advise them to "follow their kidneys."

High School Seniors are quite adept at detecting when elder is feeding them a Happy Meal-sized portion of steaming horse shit.

Maybe that's why my advice is so highly sought after by America's best and brightest teens. They've heard from their own respected peers that for well over two decades I've made it a practice to never bullshit anybody, and that practice extends even to fuck-witted teens.

So, what do I advise these folks?

Well, first, let me say that, when it comes to giving advice, one size does not fit all, unless you're advising 18-year-olds. Then, it's pretty much "six of one/a half dozen of the other." Anything goes. Just don't confuse them with profundity. They'll get plenty of that in freshman philosophy classes.

I tell each and every one of them that they should "play it by ear."

For whatever reasons, this advice always resonates.

The looks of gratitude I receive after uttering those four short words would be truly humbling to a less confident man.

Yes, there are tears, embarrassment, and nervous laughs, or girlish giggles. And, I've got to admit that sometimes the emotions that are expressed make the moment feel feel a bit awkward and even kinda creepy. Especially when the teen is stoic and I'm the only one emoting.

But there are also the rewards. The bear hugs. The heartfelt "thank you." The friending on Facebook.

And is there any better feeling than that of watching someone, whose life you've just transformed, walking away, feeling better than he or she ever thought possible?

Of course, there are, but not many. ***

When the young one is halfway down the block, I usually cup my palms around my mouth and then shout out a cheerful reminder: "Don't forget! You owe me now! Big Time!"

I love helping people. It's just who I am. I guess you could say that by helping other people find their callings, I wound up finding my own. And I guess you could also do a lot of things. Just do us both a favor and don't come to me for suggestions.



* Rick wasn't technically a practicing medical doctor. His degree was in something to do with government, or poly-sci.

** A Male Howler Monkey.

*** Here are just a few feelings that are better:
all orgasms;
an epic bowel movement;
winning (while someone, who bugs you, loses);
finding a magic lamp;
vending machine drops two candy bars for the price of one;
meeting a leprechaun.

The Real Reason Why Bush Attacked Iraq

We've all heard many theories about the real reasons Bush launched his insane war on Iraq, but there is one that hasn't been mentioned ... until now.

I put all the pieces together this morning.

My theory was inseminated a few nights ago, when Michael Jackson's body was finally buried. I was tinkering around in my bedroom with Flickr photos, while CNN was providing background noise. Out of the blue, I thought, "What about Bubbles?"

During the endless coverage devoted to Michael Jackson, I hadn't heard a peep about the late entertainer's NBFFA (not best friends forever afterall).

I googled.

Rest easy. Bubbles is still alive. He's now living in a Florida chimp sanctuary.

It turns out that Michael had banished him from Neverland after the chimp became too physically aggressive. Bubbles was immediately and unceremoniously dispatched to a local chimp sanctuary.

Depressed. Exiled. Fallen from grace.

He became understandably despondent. Who wouldn't? One day you're the toast of the town, posing for one of Jeff Koons's six million dollar sculptures, and the next, you're discreetly farmed out to a glorified petting zoo.

In 2003, Bubbles attempted suicide.

The news of his failed attempt was hushed up, but the psychiatric experts at the local sanctuary concluded that Bubbles would be better cared for in the Florida facility.

The experts were right. Bubbles is alive and, by all accounts, happy.

*****

This morning, I'm reading a facebook comment from a friend, who, in a playful, yet somewhat wistful way, confessed that she frequently wishes someone would "whisper sweet nothings in German" into her ear.

My first thought was, "Well, honey ... join the club."

But upon further reflection, I stifled my base instincts, and offered up a morsel or two of some somewhat helpful advice.

I suggested she seek comfort in the healing works of the legendary Las Vegas animal entertainers, "Siegfried and Roy."

It is a little bit embarrassing to admit this, but I wasn't 100 percent certain of the correct spelling (although I was fairly confident about "Roy"), so again, I used the google.

On wikipedia I learned the grisly details of Siegfried's tiger mauling during a sold-out Las Vegas performance in 2003.

Reading the article was, in itself, a horrific experience. This was truly an awful scene. Gruesome. Disgusting.

And that was before I came to the part about the mauling.

These two gentleman make for what some people call "a strange kettle of fish."*

****

See the pattern?

Bush launches the Iraq War in 2003. Bubbles attempts suicide in 2003. Siegfried gets severely mauled by his favorite tiger in 2003.

There is only one logical conclusion. During 2003, there was some sort of cosmic event that triggered the brains of Earth's animals to malfunction, go haywire, do things that defy rationality.

I can't pinpoint the event, but evidence of it is still all around us.**

And that, my friends, is the rest of the story.

The Old School ... Good day.



* I've always been troubled by the phrase: "strange kettle of fish." Certainly, it should be: "kettle of strange fish."

** Iraq, Florida, Las Vegas, Dallas, etc.

Lyrics from a song by PULP

Susan catches the bus into town at ten-thirty a.m.
She sits on the back seat.
She looks at the man in front's head and thinks
how his fat wrinkled neck is like a large carrot sticking out
from the collar of his shirt.

She adds up the numbers on her bus ticket to see if they make twenty-one,
but they don't. Maybe she shouldn't bother going to school at all, then.
Her friends will be in the yard with their arms folded on their chests,
shielding their breasts to try and make them look bigger,
whilst the boys will be too busy playing football to notice.

The bus is waiting on the High Street when suddenly it begins to rain
torrentially and it sounds like someone has emptied
about a million packets of dried peas on top of the roof of the bus.
"What if it just keeps raining," she thinks to herself,
"and it was just like being in an aquarium except it was all the shoppers
and office-workers that were floating passed the window instead of fish?"

She's still thinking about this when the bus goes passed Caroline Lee's house
where there was a party last week.

There were some German exchange students there who were very mature;
they all ended up jumping out of the bedroom window.
One of them tried to get her to kiss him on the stairs, so she kicked him.

Later she was sick because she drunk too much cider.
Caroline was drunk as well;
she was pretending she was married to a tall boy in glasses,
and she had to wear a polo-neck for three days afterwards
to cover up the love-bite on her neck.

By now the bus is going passed the market.
Outside is a man who spends all day forcing felt-tip pens into people's hands
and then trying to make them pay for them.

She used to work in the pet shop,
but she got sacked for talking to boys when she was supposed to be working.
She wasn't too bothered though, she hated the smell of the rabbits anyway.

"Maybe this bus won't stop," she thinks,
"and I'll stay on it until I'm old enough to go into pubs on my own.
Or it could drive me to a town where people with black hair drink
Special Brew and I can make lots
of money by charging fat old men five pounds a time to look up my skirt.
Oh, they'll be queuing up to take me out to dinner..."

I suppose you think she's just a silly girl with stupid ideas,
but I remember her in those days.
They talk about people with a fire within and all that stuff,
well, she had that alright.
It's just that no-one dared to jump into her fire;
they would have been consumed.

Instead, they put her in a corner and let her heat up the room,
warming their hands and backsides in front of her,
and then slagging her off around town.
No-one ever really got inside Susan, and,
and, she always ended up getting off the bus at the terminus
and then walking home.

"Inside Susan" by Pulp

A Blog Post Concerning The Practice Of Masturbation In Humans

"In my opinion, neither the plague nor war has had more disasterous effects for mankind than the miserable habit of masturbation."

Dr. Reveille-Parise (1823)



I've got a crazy hunch that the good doctor was doing something incorrectly.

I'm not very mechanically-inclined, but pounding my pud was one endeavor that even I was able to quickly master after one quick read of the instruction manual.

Once I grasped that "beat" didn't mean "beat" as in: "a pummelling with my fists," I took to masturbating like a hotdog to a bun. People today can write openly and freely in their blogs about the pleasures of self-pleasuring, but it always wasn't so.

During the Victorian era, many respected experts that that masturbation was evil. This is chiefly owing to the fact that most scientists and medical professionals were primarily of half-wits and simps.

They thought that donning the slick mittens would lead to insanity.

They spent a lot of time and money devising all sorts of contraptions that would inflict pain whenever one took matters into one's own hands.

Imagine my surprise when I read that graham crackers were invented by Sylvester Graham (1794 - 1851) for the purpose of ridding teens of the desire to become better acquainted with their own pleasure factories.

The gentleman who started Kelloggs cereal, John Harvey Kellogg (1852 -1943 ), was this country's most famous nutter on the topic of sex and masturbation.

Though he and his wife were married for over 40 years, they never fucked. Not once. (Probably not even a blowjob! How sick is that?)

They didn't even get down to business on their honeymoon. That's because Kellogg spent that time writing: Plain Facts For Old and Young, a book that extolled the joys of healthy living.

He had his issues with sex, but he was an especially zealous campaigner against the evils of masturbation.

Why?

Basically, it's because the man who invented corn flakes was out of his bleeding gourd.

Kellogg felt that doodling with ones privates was a recipe for destroying a person's physical, mental moral health. (He tried to make himself sound more knowledgable by going into specifics, claiming that masturbatuion cause: cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions (?), impotence, epilepsy, dimness of vision, and insanity.

He would often startle complete strangers by sternly admonishing them with this little conversation starter: "A masturbator literally dies by his own hand."

My guess is that Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg didn't get invited to many parties.



Kellogg worked relentlessly on the rehabilitation of all masturbators, but he was even more fervent in his desire to nip it in the bud early on.

How?

Easy!

Through the miracle of mutilation! (To the genitals of America's boys and girls.)

often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys to curb masturbation. In his
“A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision," he wistfully recalled in his opus, Plain Facts for Old and Young, "especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. ”

But, what about the girls? Don't you worry about a thing. Kellogg's got them covered, too.

"In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.”

Kellogg boasted that he had personally performed a clitorectomy on a 10 year old girl who was afflicted with the urge.

Like a kindly and wise old uncle, he'd dole out advice to parents who were worried about their kids engaging in the "solitary vice."

To these folks, Kellogg would, in his neighborly way, recommend that they "bandage or tie the kids' hands, or have ma get out the needle and thread, and then just sew the foreskin shut. Better yet," Kellogg said, "simply cover their genitals with patented cages."

Stopping adults from playing with themselves was a harder sell. With the men, Kellogg felt he could appeal to their intellects and common sense.

But what about the women?

So obsessed was he with stopping them from masturbating, Kellogg launched several big ad campaigns devoted to the subject. The method he recommended to America's self-pleasuring-crazed adult females, might seem to be a bit self-serving to our jaded 21st century eyes, but that's just because our senses have been dulled through excessive wanking.

If you're an adult woman and you want to stop pleasuring yourself, here's what you do: take lots of baths in cold water; give yourself a daily enema with cold water, and eat a spare diet that includes Kelloggs cereal in cold milk.

Later in life, Kellogg became an advocate of electrical shocks to the genitals as a "modern way" of jolting some sense into folks who, for whatever reasons, just couldn't quit themselves.

Let's Keep Killing Trees

Do bloggers have feelings?

Let's be honest: most of them don't.

They're pathological parasites, utterly incapable of empathy.

I'm not like those bloggers.

I have feelings.

I care.

Maybe that's why I do feel the occasional twinge remorse or mild spasm of guilt.

What could I be feeling guilty about?

You're looking at it.

While there can be no doubt that blogging revolution I'm leading is great, I do feel sad about the victims I leave in my wake.

Yes, I know that all revolutions, throughout history, have had victims. It's a sad, but inevitable, consequence of being so revolutionary.

If I were a magician I'd create a world where there were fewer victims as a result of my actions.

I would, for the sake of continuity, always win, but I'd make it so that no one would lose.

I win; but everyone else consistently ties for second place. No losers, ever.

Sadly, in today's world, my victories often come at the expense of others.

Right now, my blog is killing newspaters and magazines around the world on a daily basis. (The stench of ink and blood is everywhere.)

Some have claimed that what I'm doing is equivalent to a massacre.

That charge is absurd.

I'd say my actions are more akin to those of a cunning serial killer's. (One who travels wherever he wants, whenever he wants, dresses properly for every occasion, and seems to always have all the latest high-tech gadgets, a massive arsenal of firepower, and ready access to the world's sexiest women.)

The problem here is that I don't want to harm these periodicals.

Yet, it often seems that each time I peck at my keyboard, I might as well be bringing my hammer down upon another nail in the collective coffins of the publishing world.

It's a heavy burden I'm carrying.

I don't want to live in a world deprived of newspapers and magazines.

Luckily for everyone, I woke this morning with a bold new vision as to how we can all pitch in to help out the world's remaining newspapers and magazines.

WARNING: Now, don't get yourselves too excited. What I'm proposing won't be enough to save them. They're still going to die, but we should at least make an attempt at doing whatever we can so that they might be able to exist as comatose vegetables for a few years longer before they expire.

The plan?

I want everyone who reads this blog to think about maybe possibly considering buying a newspaper or magazine once in a while. Think of it as "throwing a dog a bone."

I'm concluding this blog post with a couple of examples of what you'll find inside of each.

The first is from a butter magazine. The second is an article from a newspaper. They may be dated, but, then again, let's not kid ourselves, they were already dated by the time they hit the newsstands.

(FYI: Newspapers and magazines can be purchased at many down-market stores.)

Pregnant With Possibility

I was just reading articles on the internet about the 50-game suspension of Manny Ramirez, the superstar outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He got nailed for using steroids.

As I read of the multi-millionaire baseball player's drug abuse, I realized this was an unfolding, real-life tragedy.

Now, after thinking things through, I'm left with just a single question:

How could someone who:

(a) is so young,
(b) is so talented,
(c) is so bright,
(d) is so good looking.
(e) has everything going right in his life,

be wasting his time (like I was) reading internet articles about that overpaid, drugged-out cheat, known as Manny Ramirez?

Euphemistically Speaking

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, this is the definition of a euphemism: the subsitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant.

For example:

Here are a couple of euphemisms that men commonly use:

well-hung: means I have an enormous penis.

well-endowed: means I have an enormous penis.

When we use euphemisms, we're saying the same thing, but we're not grabbing others by the back of their heads and shoving it in their faces. Not usually, anyway.

The two examples given above are, what we in the blog industry commonly refer to as being, "manly euphemisms."

But what about women? Do they use euphemisms?

Absolutely.

For example: Let's pretend that there's a young attractive couple of newlyweds, who don't mind us hanging out in their bedroom, as they are getting ready for bed. (As long as we're prepared to be quiet.)

Let's say the young wife is already in bed, reading this blog on her laptop as she waits for her husband to return from the bathroom, where, unbeknownst to her, he, too, is reading this blog from his laptop.

Why would he be doing that?

For two reasons:

(1) He knows that by reading this blog, he's gaining an edge over his competitors in the fast-paced, cut-throat arenas of commerce, quim, and ideas. He's not sharpest of bulbs, so he needs to utilize every nugget that falls from on high. After all, that particular nugget could be just the feather he needs to complete his arsenal.

(2) He knows that reading this blog is like gliding down an icy toboggan course of love when it comes to getting himself "in the mood." (Admittedly, this newlywedded husband may be dealing with SSA issues, but let's not judge. Please. For once.)

When he's "ready," he enters the bedroom sporting, what is for him, an impressive erection. It is poking brazenly out the fly of his designer shorts, like a stoutly built, bearded, tugboat captain surveying the action in a gay disco through the back door exit, while he tries to decide whether the cover charge is worth it. Don't be fooled. He's a salty old bugger. He'll pay. He always does. What else is going to do at this time of night?

His wife sees "the captain saluting," and knows immediately what is on her husband's agenda for the evening.

She frowns. She just wants to go to sleep. She grabs a Kleenex and blows her nose as violently as possible, as if she's sick. Then, slinking down under the blankets, she groans: "Oh, honey... I'm sorry .... I can't. Not tonight. I'm having my period, and I feel like I've got a migraine coming on. Plus tomorrow, I've got a big presentation I have to give before the entire board, first thing in the morning. "

This is a classic example of how a whole series of phrases is actually one fairly easily understandable euphemism.

In this case, what she's actually saying is: "Honey, tonight, I'd prefer to give you a blowjob, and then you can fuck me good and hard up my pooper."

Euphemisms are the unheralded diplomats of communication. It's time they received their due respect.*


* In a way, it tugs a bit at my heartstrings to come to the grim realization that, during the entire history of language, I am the only blogger to ever have paid tribute to our friend: the euphemism.

What can I say? I'm a giver.

( I'm just glad, that by virtue of my being so well-endowed, I can offer so much.)

The Fundamental Things Apply

A kiss is still a kiss,

A sigh is still a sigh,

A restraining order is still a restraining order,

But most internet blogs will always be

One-car pile-ups that no one will ever see.

Obama versus the GOP

In case anyone has missed it, as of today Barack Obama has been President of the United States for 100 days.

I think he's doing pretty well.

But what about the Republicans? I thought I might use this space to clear up a couple of common misconceptions about them.

Contrary to popular belief, not all Republicans are corrupt, hypocritical, war-mongering chicken-hawks, who think that torture is swell.

That is patently absurd.

Some Republicans are also sanctimonious, lying fuck-wits, who, when not out whore-mongering, find the time to enjoy gay sex with strangers in public restrooms, and then use the Constitution sop up the ejaculate oozing from their backsides.

Mister Softee

Think about all the weird DVDs, cable channels, stupid TV programs, and internet videos available to us today.

We are floating on a sea of shitty shows created for someone's viewing pleasure.

Surveys show that 99 percent of the population agree that 99 percent of the movies and shows are crap.

But when asked to name the one percent that isn't crap, everyone makes different choices. There are people who love really strange stuff. Religious shows. Shopping networks. Game shows. Slasher films. Fox News. Etc.

Every show, film, or genre has its audience. And it isn't difficult to imagine what kind of person it is who really enjoys whatever category you can name.

However, there is one entertainment niche that I am baffled by. I can't think of anyone who is deranged enough, or elderly enough, or stupid enough to be even remotely be interested in this genre.

It is: "soft porn."

Even its name is an oxymoron.

It doesn't have an obvious audience.


People, who would never watch porn, would never watch soft-core porn.

People, who like normal porn, would never watch soft-core porn, either.

Who likes it? Nobody.

Every adult in America, with the exception of your mother, can name at least one famous hard-core porn star.

Hard-core porn stars may not be universally loved, but they are respected. Why?

Because they're bad asses, who don't give a flying fuck about what anybody thinks of them.

And they make decent money. The audience for hard-core porn is massive. Who doesn't, every now and then, enjoy spending ten minutes or so watching a King Kong-sized cock sawing away happily between a pair of tits the size of igloo skyscrapers?

It's one of the things that helps make sex with your spouse, tolerable. Or, maybe I should rephrase that. It's one of the things that makes sex with your spouse even more fantastic than it already is!!!

When it comes to soft-core porn videos (which it never does), the best you can say about them is that they "don't suck," because they never do. Ever.

I pity the fool soft-core porn performers. Most of them entered the field, thinking that they were going to be admired for being "edgy," while still clinging to more of their dignity than they would if performing in hard-core videos. They were wrong.

It's not like members of “The Academy” any more respect soft-core performers, than they do hard-core porn stars.

And what about taking pride in one's craft? Is that even conceivable in soft porn?

Here's a bit of dialogue recorded on a limp-core porn set, after a non-climactic climactic scene:

Actress: "Mmmmmm......You were....like........totally on lukewarm out there!"

Actor: "Babe, when I'm with you, it's so unbelievably great. You are so fucking tepid -- I go nuts."

Director: "Keep it down, you two! Save that simmering, low-level warmth for the camera."

Actor: "That won't be hard."

Actress: "It never is."

Director: "Good.... That's why I hired you."

For the viewer, watching soft-core is like being a baseball player who comes to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning in a scoreless game. You hit a double, but wind up stranded on second base for eternity (or whenever the film ends -- whichever happens first). The game is called due to darkness and despair. The game never ends. Nobody scores, so nobody wins. Ever.

The One That Got Away

It's a saddest evening in the history of the universe.

Gazing out my window into the black empty sky, I can’t help but feel that, at this moment, I surely must be the loneliest man on the planet.

The future, and even life itself, now seems meaningless.

I'm missing someone. Pining for her. Tormented by her absence. Decimated by the hollowness within me.

Really, it’s much worse than feeling hollow; it’s more like being stranded on sand dune in a vast, desolate desert, and feeling miserable because of the hollowness inside you.... well, that, and the fact that you're way the fuck out in the middle of some stupid desert.

Then, at the moment you think you’re going to pass out from grief, a flock of large birds arrive. You think they’re going to lift you gently up into the sky and whisk you safely away like carrion luggage to your final destinations, but ... no.

Instead, they cut you open and start tearing at the inner lining of your torso’s shell with their bone-dented beaks, desperately ripping away any stray bits of gristle or "mystery meat" that still remain.

Satisfied that they've gotten anything worth getting, they then just stand in an informal circle and nonchalantly shoot the shit for a half an hour or so, before getting bored, tossing their toothpicks onto the sand, and flying away.

Things were bleak enough for you already, but then, by being forced to listen to brain-dead vultures talk trash about assholes you don't even know.....well... it has left you feeling more than slightly peeved.

Their behavior was just plain rude!

Unseemly.

Whatever happened to manners?

You try to heave, but all that comes out is a sigh.... a featherweight one, at that.

The sigh is followed by a floating bit of angel-soft vulture down that is carried away by the gentle desert breeze.

"Typical," you mutter to no one in particular.

Minutes pass in silence.

You feel absolutely gutted.

The situation is certainly less than ideal. Much less.

You're feeling even more hollow and even more alone than you were before.

There's only one thing left to say, but you're too weak to speak, so you think it, instead: "It looks like it's going to be one of those days."


How did this happen?


To say that she played an important role in my life would the biggest understatement of all time.

She opened my eyes to the beauty of all that is around us, and, in the process, completely transformed my world.

It was as if she had made me the beneficiary of the most spectacular Christmas present imaginable – life, itself.

She already had already received the present; and then she re-gifted it to me.

I loved, and still do love, her completely, devoutly, and unreservedly.

The fact that I don’t know where she went, or why she left, is something I refuse to spend time dwelling upon.

I just want her to come back. Right now. I can’t tolerate living my life without her.


Happier Times:

We met in Venice, just a few years ago.

I had been wandering around St. Mark's Square, trying naively to differentiate myself from looking like exactly what I was – just another American tourist.

It was while sitting at an outdoor café, sipping a cappuccino, and quickly skimming an Italian newspaper for the non-Italian words, that I spotted her.

She was alone in a crowd, strolling leisurely near the center of the enormous piazza.

Even from a great distance, it was apparent that she was like no woman I’d ever seen. Her beauty was so all encompassing; I found it physically impossible to avert my gaze.

As if in a trance, I paid my bill and began drifting in her direction. The closer I drew, the more intense seeming was the force that propelled me towards her. It was as if there were suddenly an undiscovered property of physics, called “irresistible allure,” that was as powerfully real as the one we know as “gravity.”

Any woman, who is blessed with awe-inspiring natural beauty, soon becomes accustomed to attracting the admiring gazes of men. In Italy, this is especially so.

Some of these women enjoy the attention, but most devise subtle ways of gracefully ignoring it.

I was standing no more than 10 feet away from her, staring like a love-struck rube.

She appeared to be lost in her own thoughts, and genuinely unaware of my presence.

Hunched down low to the pavement, she was, I realized, searching for something. What had she lost?

But, as she looked for whatever it was that she was seeking, she exuded an inner calmness and contentment.

Unlike the map-obsessed tourists all around her, she was savoring her journey, not mindlessly rushing towards her destination.

It was the moment I started to move closer, that she and I made our first eye contact. She looked at me as if our meeting were preordained by the heavens. Her eyes told the tale. She was mine. I was hers. For eternity.

On that day in Venice, and on each of the days, weeks, months and years that were to follow; Piccione took me under her wing.

The moment we met, magic came into my life.

I couldn't speak her language worth a damn, and she wasn’t much better at mine, but when you’re in love the formalities of speech are for the birds.

Between my odd assortment of clumsily pronounced words and labored phrases, and her endearing pigeon English, communication was never an issue.

When my Italian holiday was coming to a close, she agreed to return to New York with me.

Together, we relished the exquisite pleasures that life in any city has to offer. Activities that had seemed mundane when done on our own; became euphoric experiences when shared. The simple things became fun: sharing a newspaper, window-shopping, strolls, concerts and picnics in Central Park.

We didn't live together. Her Italian parents, and my landlord, wouldn’t have approved. She had her acting career. I had ornithological research position at the Museum of Natural History. We always ate lunch and dinner together. Whenever the weather was remotely pleasant, she preferred to dine al fresco in the park.

I always felt so proud when we were together. She once told me that I resembled an Australian actor who had been her favorite when she was a child. His Name was Rod Taylor. I was embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of him.

(I never her told her this, but later I had looked up Rod Taylor up on Wikipedia. He wasn't Australian at all. He was a Welshman, from New South Wales. She must have confused him with the late Australian actor, Richard Burton. Italians!)

Piccione was an actress, on her way to becoming a star. She’d already appeared in several films; her biggest
role came in the Macaulay Culkin vehicle, "Home Alone 2" (which was much funnier than the
first Home Alone, but, then again, I'm biased), where she had some scene-stealing moments with Kevin and a homeless lady in the park.

Maybe she resented our move back to my hometown of Seattle? If so, she kept it to herself.

What went wrong?

This evening, I've been haunted by the lyrics to the song from Hall & Oates: "She's Gone."

Now, I'd pay the devil to get that fucking tune out of my head.

The last time I saw Piccione, I had been regaling her with a tale of the late Graham Greene's childhood: how everyone in his entire family: his brothers, his sisters and even his parents were spies.

I had prepared a lovely candle lit dinner for the two of us, and I was perhaps overly enthusiastic about everything.

“Can you imagine the impact that the spy business had on dinner conversations in the Greene household?” I guffawed, perhaps too jovially.

“And just think of the gifts they must have given one another! ‘Gee whiz, Dad, thanks for the unusually large pen!’ ‘Thank YOU, Graham, for this unusually large tie-clip.’"

Piccione listened, but I recall that she wasn't exactly cooing with amusement, as she normally did whenever I waxed poetic about the romance of espionage.

Normally that kind of anecdotal spy intrigue stuff fascinated her. Some of her ancestors had done intelligence work for a variety of governments during the past seven or eight wars. (I'd even seen a photo of her great grandfather with Mussolini.)

Thinking more about it, I recall that Piccione's head had been cocked to one side, as I chirped mindlessly on about the Greenes earlier that evening. Perhaps, I had unknowingly ruffled her feathers, so to speak.

Also, at dinner, I recall that she had barely touched her squab.

Still, this sudden lack of interest in war stories should have triggered air raid sirens in me, but it didn’t.

What a self-absorbed fool I was! *

And why did I insist on teasing by saying I was getting her "Grecian Formula" for her upcoming birthday?

She’s been gone for TWO HOURS now! And not a peep.

If anyone sees her, please let me know. If I don't get back to you, it's because I'm posting flyers on telephone poles all around Seattle.

Sad to say, I don't even know her last name.

For the record: she's probably 6 inche tall. Gray with black eyes, and a shimmering bluish-green in her breast and wing tops. She looks like many other pigeons, but there's a strange magic in her beady little eyes.



The life, Piccione. Without you... the life ..... she has no meaning.




* Thank goodness, I've changed.

Blogger From U.N.C.L.E.

What an arrogant, audacious lot bloggers can be!

I just heard one imperious blogger say of another: "He doesn't write many sentences, but he owns every word that he writes."

Oh, does he now? Really?

We all know that "bloggers are the new rockstars," but did any of us expect that we'd fuck the shark Led Zepellin-syle so early on in the concert?

Blogging isn't even a decade old, and yet here we are -- past the Gladwellian tipping point of excess and decadent over-indulgence.

For some of our high and mighty bloggers, the use of ordinary words is no longer sufficient. They need to own the words they employ. .

Apparently, these snooty man-bitches blogs composed of sentences made up entirely of their own trademarked words, creating, in effect, what amounts to their own wholly owned, privatised languages.

(Not only is this an expensive, time-consuming endeavor-- it's an exercise in haughty absurdity. No blogger, no matter how wealthy he or she might be, can register words that are already in the common parlance, so what are these frivolous elites trying to prove?)

Sadly, this isn't science fiction. Privatised languages are here, and they're real.

Before long, the demon spawn of wealthy bloggers will be tweeting one another in the equivalent of their own "Blackwater-style" language.

I know of only one way for us to nip this trend in the bud: the immediate creation of a "Union of National Common-Language-Enthusiasts: Blogger."

UNCLE B could then force these privatized trademark-aficionado bloggers pay us fee whenever they use one of our common words: "to, you, and, me, he, she, and, they,-- words, like: shit, piss, cock, balls, fuck, or suck, will, always, be, mother, fucking, gold. mines."

The elitist bloggers still won't write many sentences, but they'll know who they're paying every time they're forced to use one of our common words.

Da Plain Truth

Why do so many remain silent when a travesty of artistic creativity is taking place right before them?

Fear? Apathy? Bladder control issues?

No doubt, all three of these rationalizations are in often play, but an even more commonly given justification for inaction comes from the conveniently misguided belief that someone else will do something to solve the crisis.

I am, of course, referring to the disasterous lack of imagination that is insidious in America's tattoo-parlor community.

My friends, it's bad.

I didn't realize how bad until this morning, when I went to "google images" searching for a tattooed image of the late actor, Herve Jean-Pierre Villechaize.

Nothing. Not even a shitty, crudely made tramp stamp (the kind a prisoner etches onto the lower back of his man-bitch, when they're both hopped up on cleaning solvents in a storage closet filled with several decades worth of redacted TV Guides).

Think about this for a moment.

The man who played the most memorable sidekick character, "Tattoo," on the ABC network hit, "Fantasy Island," has no tattoos in his own honor.

What is wrong with today's tattoo artisans?

I think I know the answer.

They're basking in complacency. Afterall, they've been awash in easy money from the gen-x kids, who made tattoos and tramp stamps a rite of passage.

The fat cats who run the tattoo industry saw no necessity for new images while their current stock of cliched images was still selling well.

Sound familiar? General Motors? Chrysler? Lehmen Brothers? AIG? William Wegman?

Someone needs to wipe the smug smirks from the faces of unimaginative tattoo parlor executives, before we taxpayers are paying for another bail-out under the guise of "they're too sleazy to fail."

I would, but I know how psycho-pathological these muscular tat-titans can be. (Absolutely asshole-ish.)

Plus, at the moment, I'm kinda busy. Hello.... a blog doesn't write itself.

I don't want anyone to worry, but recently I was diagnosed with a particularly pernicious strain of verbal diarrhea ("blogger's bloat") which doesn't allow me to move more than a few meters away from my bathroom laptop. It's nasty, but not life-threatening. (Was that a huge sigh of relief I just heard from all corners of the globe?)

So, I'm counting on you to take care of the "no Tattoo tattoo" fiasco.

Call or visit your local parlors. Tell them how upset I am. Yes, it is that important.

There Ain't No Way To Hide Those Lyin' Lies

"City girls just seem to find out early

 How to open doors with just a smile"

So sang The Eagles on their 70s hit, "Lyin' Eyes."

It pains me to say this, but, once again,  lovers of  classic American soft-rock have been blatantly lied to by one of their most cherished sources of easy-listening advice.

I've always been skeptical of this assertion by The Eagles, but I refrained from calling them out on it,  because my views seemed at odds with those held by powerful industry insiders and their highly-paid cabal of pony-tailed entertainment lawyers and a virtual army of "so-called-experts." 

For years, as I was contiually and relentlessly subjected to this song's mendacious message, I valiantly maintained my sanity through tantric sex, breathing exercises, and heroically pointing out the lie to various opinionmakers  in the media.  

Sadly, I was a lone wolf howling on a hilltop under a sunless night sky.  Not once did anyone in the media ever even mention me or the lie I was trying my darnedest to expose.

I learned a number of things that may contradict what the average American assumes to be true.  Here are just some of the key whoppers my investigation uncovered:

• Most Americans think the recording industry is all about nice people making nice music for other nice people.  (It isn't.  The music business has its share of major dick-wads. That's all I'm going to say about this for now, but, believe me, I heard some stories that were real eye-openers for me.  Drugs!  In rock music!) 
  

• Most Americans think the eagle and the dolphin are friends.  (They're not. They're mortal enemies. I have a Chinese sculptural object, made entirely of asian plastic, that proves this, conclusively.)
  

• Most Americans are in desperate need cranial-rectal-inversion surgery.  (They don't.)  (With a quart of name brand olive oil, a pair of Rubbermaid Cafeteria-Sized Salad Tongs, and the assistance of a trusted, reasonably-focused friend -- anyone with a head that is normal-size or smaller, should be able to survive this cheap and relatively simple procedure in the comfort of his or her own home; without the embarrassing trauma of being forced to wear those perverted, pathetically ridiculous hospital gowns while strangers stand their making light-hearted jokes to one another while probing around in your butt.)
  

• Most Americans think the music business is owned by corporations, which in turn are owned by average investors, like you and your neighbors.  (It's not.  Who does run it? Well, keep reading and I think you just might be able to figure it out.  I'm not going to spell it out for you, but I'll give you a couple of subtle clues.

People do tend to get spooked by this topic, so I'll try to put it as delicately as possible.  The music industry is a "family" business.  There are lots of "Sopranos" who have made it big.   It employs lots of "hit men."   When a song becomes popular, people "mob" the record stores to buy it.  

What does this mean for an investigative blogger?

I'll tell you what it means.

 

It means that where ever I went to get answers to my questions,these Italian sausage-sucking goombah ginnies had already rammed their greasy message down everyone's throats, ordering them not to talk to bloggers.  They explicitly told these potential question answerers that they didn't want anyone helping out a blogger who was just trying to "piss on their pasta."

I couldn't figure out why they thought I'd do such a thing.  Why would anybody do such a thing?

Later, some well-meaning soul took pity on my plight and explained that this was the mob's way of indicating that they were serious about protecting this particular revenue stream. Apparently, this stream was a lucrative one.  It included some of the world's most commercially viable musical acts, including top-selling soft rock bands, like The Eagles.  And they wanted to make certain that no one said anything that might in some way pollute the stream and cause harm to the ecological subsystem that thrived within it.

If I understood the explanation correctly, it was a shocker.  Pissing in pasta sauce could be lethal to humans.

The corporate entertainment media understood the message in a completely different, and to my mind, simple-minded context.  They thought the message was "don't talk to investigative bloggers about The Eagles.  PERIOD. 

The music magazines refused to even mention the "Lyin' Lies" scandal.  The publishers of these magazines seemed to be saying that they favored the advertising revenue they received from recording companies owned by the mob, over a story that might intrigue their readers about lies that were told in a 35 year old song by The Eagles.

I know.  It's hard to believe, isn't it?  The media was putting dollars before sense!

Everyone in the media was afraid of the story.   Everyone except me.

I'm a blogger, damn it!  Money does NOT factor into where or when or who or what I choose to gently probe.

To me, it's all meat for the gristle.

So, for the past three years or so I started putting the pieces of several different puzzles together. 

I was surprised that everyone else was so afraid.  I was out there asking questions, knocking on doorbells, slipping dolls mickies, you name it.  And I never heard a peep from the mob. 

Sure, there were dead fish being delivered to me on a daily basis, along with my morning paper-- and, on two seperate occasions, I awoke to find a severed dolphin head laying on the pillow next to mine.  (Even out of water, it looked so gentle -- staring at me with big, sad, and, sadly, dead, eyes.  Absolutely adorable.   Especially the first one.  You never do forget your first one, do you?  The second was lovely, too, in its own way.)  

Eventually I learned why I was receiving so many unordered seafood products. 

(No, it wasn't kids from the local college out playing some harmless pranks, as I had, at first first, suspected.  I suppose a belated apology to the college is now in order for that series of unexplained frat house burnings.  Mistakes, admittedly, were made.)

Granted, I should have interpreted the meaning sooner, but, keep in mind,  the frat guys were so prankish (even waggish, at times) in their general demeanor, I can easily understand why I didn't understand why I might be a targeted for daily sea creature carcass dumps.

It was only when I acquired the Chinese sculpture (for only $12.99 at Goodwill, and it was unused!) that the pieces fell into place.

I knew, at last, what it was that my enemy was trying to tell me: Lay off the Lyin Lies blog.

The soft-rock-mobsters had finally managed to deliver its message to me, but they would soon learn that they had picked the wrong guy to try to "muscle" into silence.

The only things of which I have even the slightest fear are: drunken or jittery clowns,  being stared at by young republicans, family reunions, and hobo encampments.

The only thing that really scares me is a combination involving all of the above simulataneously.     

Did the mob frighten me?  Not in the slightest.

Maybe it comes from an inbred form of self-confidence that I learned from my moms and my dads and my uncles and my aunts at the TOS compound.  (Family owned and operated for generations.  No outsiders allowed.)

I've always firmly believed that any large group of angry bloodthirsty villagers, even those who come armed with torches and pitchforks, can be persuaded to see reason if one is capable of speaking to them calmly and reasonably. (If the speaker also possessed matinee idol good looks and possessed a deep voice with a rich tonal quality, the task was even easier. )

I know from first hand experiences that such speeches work --  especially when the majority of the mob is made up of  half-wits, goofballs, and imbeciles.   (Well,  to clarify, I'll  say that such speeches always succeeded in getting us to leave whichever village we had angrily amassed in. I vividly recall us standing there shoulder to shoulder, pitchforks and torches in hand.   We'd always be jeering loudly at first, but then we'd settle down.  Even the men folk had a tough time not starin' at the speaker's rugged good looks.   And them words he was sayin'...so purdy the way he said 'em...and, before long, we'd all be group-thinkin' that the fella was makin' more than just a lick of sense.  By the end, there was no doubt we'd be headin' back to the compound.  The return was always quiet. We'd be thinkin', wearin' sheepish expressions, scratchin' our heads and wonderin' what it was we was all so riled up about.)

Possessing, as I did, an insider's view of the mob, I had to chuckle whenever I thought of all those people who truly fear mobsters.  If they only knew the real story!

Still, it is one thing to make the accusation that the Lyin' Eyes lyrics are lies, it is another thing entirely to convince the general soft rock listening public that your accusations are true.  

Soft rock listeners are a notoriously skeptical bunch. I'm not suggesting that they won't listen, because they will.  They'll listen to anything, over and over and over. Even the same thing.  If it's innocuous, they'll listen. The problem is getting them to pay attention. 

To get their attention, I'd need something sparkly.

I'd have to blind them with science.

Scientific evidence.

Over the course of the past year and a half, I conducted interviews with 893 city-dwelling women, ages 18 to 83, and now, for the first time ever, I can conclusively assert, without fear of contradiction, that:

The Eagles are liars.  

Fabricators.

Prevaricators.

Not one woman, out of the 893 interviewed, had ever opened a door with just a smile.

All but 13 of them denied ever trying to put their lips anywhere near a door knob.

In response to my gentle urgings, seven of the more drunken and slutty interviewees agreed to try to open door knobs with their mouths, but only three were able to do so, and none of them could do it while smiling and turning the knob at the same time.

In the appendix, I've recorded the makes of door knobs used in these experiments.  A copy of the videotaped footage is being stored in the National Archives of the Library of Congress.  

The original masters are NOT located under my bed.

As this investigative blog goes to press, I'm negotiating* with several science journals regarding  the amount they're willing to bid for the rights to publish my findings.

When those details are nailed down, I'll probably be forced to give interviews to various prize committees, etc.  

After all that, I'm not about to rest.  Where ever there's a soft rock lyrical lie, I'll be be laying in wait.

* In the interests of accuracy, I should clarify that when I say, "negotiating," I mean:  "waiting for responses from."  

For those of you unfamiliar with the rather genteel machinations of the publishing world,  this long lag time between the the submission of the article and its publication in the journal itself can be surprisingly lengthy.

It is like returning to the 19th century.

That these scientific journals still manage to survive is amazing, particularly, since they are inevitably attract to their editorial staffs: the worst and the dimmest.

Lazy cunts who think that their publishing mission is to spend the day playing grab-ass with one another, rather than reviewing submissions that could alter the way the people of the world think about one our most cherished soft rock classics. 

Is it any wonder that these dead-tree are gasping, sweating, and stumbling around?  They're not dead, yet.  But the "funny smell" is slowly but surely amassing into stench status with a steroids kicker.

If I don't hear back from any of these scientific journals fairly soon, I have a hunch that they'll soon be feeling the white, hot laser of this blog's scrutinous eyeball beaming upon them like a powerful flashlight.  

Not out of retribution, but  out of evotribution.  

We'll then see if they're fit enough to survive the onslaught of scrutiny.

Keep in mind, up until now, I have had nothing but the utmost respect for the science world in general, and individual scientists, specifically.  I'd been operating under the assumption that the  flow of respect was two directional in nature,  but perhaps I've been misguided. 

That would be easy, seeing how all science journal editors are nothing but sniveling sphincter-lickers and bald-faced liars!

I hope I haven't ruffled any feathers.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sleeping It Off

Every man in the world has heard (and probably tried) the old maxim: "Sit on your hand until it falls asleep.  Then, when you have a wank, it'll feel like it is being done by someone else's hand."

That's all well and good.  Kudos to whoever conceived this technique.

But, the fact that a technique is good, doesn't preclude its being improved.

Here are a couple of methods that I've devised for young self-curious men to get a still more intense bang for his effort expenditures.

(1.)  Sit on your cock until it falls asleep.  Now, it will feel like you're jerking off someone else. You go, playah!

(2.)  Sit on your cock and your hand until they both fall asleep.  Then it will feel like someone else's penis is getting stroked by yet another handsome stranger.  (Feel free to imagine that the hand belongs to a beautiful woman, but, c'mon, dude, if you look at it realistically, you'd have to admit that, although she may be gorgeous, she's still got 'man hands.'  

Addendum:  For those of you who have expressed concerns about being tagged with the "voyeur" label,  you can completely eliminate this as a potential source of embarrassment by remembering to look away while stroking.

That's it for this morning.  I'll see you next time.

   

The Impish Impulse That Pulsates Through Strangers

Not a day goes by, it seems,  when I'm not pestered by at least one seemingly well-intentioned stranger asking me: "What's your all-time favorite New Yorker cartoon about dogs?" 

Without hesistation, I tell the questioner: "It was one of the New Yorker's rare two panel cartoons.  In the first panel, there's a boy who appears to be drowning in a river.  His dog, a collie, is looking at him worriedly from the riverbank.  The boy shouts to the dog, "Lassie!  Get help!"

In the second panel, Lassie is laying on the couch in a psychiatrist's office.

*****

That cartoon imparts to me one important message: Yes, dogs do have issues that they need to work through sometimes.

*****

Lately, I've been questioning one of my own issues: impulsiveness.

Sometimes, my spur of the moment decisions are not, in retrospect, the wisest.

For instance,  back in 1995, when I decided at 3 a.m., to get my first and only tattoo.  

I liked it at first, but now I'm having second thoughts.  

Maybe I should have put it on another part of my body. 

  

Maybe I should have gone with a traditional tattoo parlor-style illustration (like a hula girl, a dragon, or a satanic clown).

But, no.  I had to be different:

A Maverick.  

A Lone Gun.  

The Big Cheese.  

Hondo.  

Hud. 

Hoss. 

The Grand Pooh-Bah.  

Brave Heart.

The Wolf Dancer.

The Horse Whisperer.  

Chromosome Boy. 

The Boss.  

The King. 

The Champ. 

The Prince.  

The Artist.  

Ice, Ice, Baby. 

 Mr. Cool.  

The Kool-Aid Kid.  

The Choosiest Mother. 

The Fifth Dentist.  

Kinky the Hospital Attendant.  

"Ski-Dude."  

The Gipper.  

The Skipper.  

The Professor.  

Thurston Howell, III.  

The Big Swingin' Dick.  

Mr. Goodbar.  

Spartacus.  

The Decider.  

The Hammer.  

The Ball.  

The Peen.

Mr. Clean.  

"Big Mac."  

The Quarter-Pounder.  

Hot 'n' Juicy.  

Butch.  

Truck.  

Car.  

Minivan.  

Scooter.

Officer Friendly.  

Mr. Interesting.  

Donkey Kong.  

The Captain.  

Tenille. 

Bazooka Joe. 

Bungalow Bill.

Dr. Pepper.  

The Squirt.  

The Sprite.  

"Pimpy."  

So, naturally, I chose tattooed words over a tattooed picture.

And I chose to have that tattoo etched into my forehead, instead of a more discreet location, such as on one of my bi-ceps, a shoulder, my buttocks, or my lower back.

Certainly, at the very least, I wish I'd chosen something different than what I chose:

"Ask me about my all-time favorite New Yorker dog-related cartoon." 

But, at the time, 3 a.m., I thought I never get tired of talking about the craziness of dogs.

As it turned out, I was already weary of the subject by the following afternoon.  

In fact, I had to almost immediately concede the point that most dogs are, in fact, pretty normal.

Today's message of hope and courage: If you want to make a permanent point at 3 a.m., make it as vaguely ambiguous as possible.

Why I Blog

This is truly exciting.  A first!  I'm going to write two blog entries in one day!

While I watched the Seattle Mariners get mauled like Roy Horn of "Siegfried and Roy" by the Detroit Tigers this afternoon (8-2), I started thinking about dogs.

There's only one joke that Jesus is ever reported to have told, and it concerned dogs.

"Why do dogs lick their balls?"  "Because they can."  

Oh really, Jesus?

He obviously never met my dog.  Elroy will be three on July 22.  He's half Pug and half Boston Terrier.

He can't lick his balls.  His body shape doesn't allow it.  He seems not to notice that he is unable to do what most other dogs can do anytime they feel like.  (One doesn't sense that he's bitter about it, at any rate.)

I wonder how the average human male would react if all the other human males could lick their own balls whenever they felt like it, except for him?

Not as well as Elroy, I'd bet.

And, if guys could lick their own balls, I bet there would be a lot fewer males blogging.

Today's Lesson: Start taking yoga lessons to increase your flexibility.

You may not reach the mountain top with me, but I'll describe it for you better than you would see it with your own eyes, anyway, so, it's win/win!

Yesterday was brutal, yet beautiful.

I don't want to burden anyone with my epic struggle, but I thought it might be instructive if I enlightened you a little as to what's going on with me behind the scenes, while you're all relaxing and living your ordinary lives, so that you might gain a better appreciation of everything that I do.

Friday (4-17-09) was, of course, blog innauguration day.  

Saturday, while you were sleeping off your hangovers from of the galas, balls, keggers, B&D dungeon parties, or prayers-of-thanks gatherings that were celebrated around the globe -- I, typically, was hard at work doing all the unsung things I do to make this world a better place.

Many of you think that writing a blog isn't much different than writing an e-mail, or posting an anonymous comment to some random website.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Writing stupid e-mails and making idiotic comments are merely the computerized version of squeezing a duck's butt.  You can do all of those things for as long as you like, but.... well, at the end of your small journey, you're still at the same place you began, and the duck is slightly  confused and possibly annoyed.

  

Writing a blog is completely different.  Here, it is YOUR name on the marquee.  YOU are the attraction that people aren't paying money to ride.  

If you don't deliver the goods,  the handmaidens of destiny will seize you by the scrotum, drag you to the scribe's anvil, place your man sack upon the flat iron, and then hammer your testicles into a dismal porridge. 

Blogging, needless to say, is not without its pressures.

(This is possibly why there are so few bloggers these days.)

Don't worry about me.  Not only are my balls as steely as my mind, they are like Kryptonite to handmaidens.    (Untouchables!)  

No.  I face a different sort of dilemma. One that is self-imposed. 

My problem is that I care too much.  

I'm the kind of person for whom great isn't great enough.  

I've written many pieces that people say changed their lives forever. (Often for the better.) 

I receive whelbarrows full of  e-mails everyday.  

But I don't read them, because I feel a need to stay untainted by the intangibility of the unforseen consequences that might surely come from exposure to the internet-using public's unbridled flattery and adoration.

This is my way of remaining the same humble vituoso of sagacity that everyone has always loved, cherished, and fantasized about.

I'm well aware that most of you operate under the illusion that I am the "perfect"  man.

Well, here's some breaking news for everyone: The level of accomplishment one would need to reach in order for most you, in concurrance, to conclude that it had definitely attained what we call "perfection," I  would consider to be my "base camp" near the bottom of the mountain. It would be the starting point of my quest.  The place where I meet my sherpas and load my pockets with power bars and powdered yak milk.

Most people's pinnacles aren't even close to my minimum standards.

In order to achieve what I achieve, I need to ride myself like a four-wheel drive Ferrari up a mountain that has a herd of hippos coming straight at me.  (At first, I can't tell whether these hippos are dead and that this is just just a hippo avalanche, or, if they're alive, which would mean it's a hippo stampede.  The split second determination I'm required to make can mean the difference between life and death.  The differences between how to best negotiate hippo-festooned mountain terrain during an avalanche vs. a stampede are so vast and varied that I can't go into them here.  HUGE.)

Yesterday is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.  Friday's first blog, was, by all but one account,* "perfect."

*You've probably guessed already who had the dissenting voice.  (His initials are t.o.s..)

The first batch of enthusiastic comments that came in early Friday evening told me that my first blog had serious problems.  

"Just perfect?" I mumbled glumly.

Never one to gracefully accept defeat as a "learning experience" and then move on, I made a vow that I would rectify my errors on Saturday.

Up before dawn (she sleeps until 2 p.m. or later on the weekends) I rewrote that first blog from top to bottom -- infusing it with heart, grit, soul, pathos, and wisdom.

When I finished, I vowed never to read it again, because, knowing myself as intimately as I do, I know that it probably take a couple HOURs, at least, for it to ever be good enough for me.  

Thinking about myself, I chuckled, smiled, then slowly shook my head at the absurdity of the standards I impose upon myself:  "TOS," I said to myself lovingly, but still chidingly, "You could be sitting on a giraffe, atop the Mount Everest of Perfection, and you wouldn't be satisfied unless you were pirouetting precariously atop the giraffe's head."

I have to admit it, I was right.

Well, enough of the backstory.  That's history.  What about the future?

Sundays, for me, are always weird.  I don't know why.  They're not weekdays.  But they're not weekend days, either.  They're just floating randomly out there four or five time a month, untethered and uncontainable.

As for how I'll spend it?

I'm going to a baseball game this afternoon.  

I haven't decided whether or not to clip my toe nails myself before I go, or to seek out a pedicurist at the stadium.

That's the nice thing about the future.  It's like a mystery where you get to have some say in the plot's development.  

Today's message of hope: "Keep on keeping on.  It's worth it.  Trust me."

My Most Generous of Gifts

"When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

Attributed, incorrectly, to Buddha.  Due to the fact that he was a chubby Chinaman, it is highly unlikely that he would have said much in English.

(Plus, anyone, who has ever sat in a classroom waiting for a tardy professor, knows the fallacy of this statement.)   Sigh.... People are so gullible.  It makes me sad.

**************

"Those who give, will receive way more back than they ever gave."

Anonymous

(I'm hoping that this one is true. I should have proof, one way or the other, within days.  Stay tuned.  If it's not true, I'm ready to take names and blow whistles.  I'm deadly serious about this.)

***************

This is a blog created by me as a gift to those of you who have been urging me to share my feelings with the world at large.  

I've always considered myself to be a private person, but, lately I've started to realize that I've been greedily hoarding my bounty.  I've been blessed with an abundance of treasure, and, believe me, I've enjoyed it immensely.  But, I started thinking about the second aphorism above, and it occurred to me that I should roll the dice.  Share a bit of what I have in order to increase my ample takings. 

So, even though there's a part of me that worries that this may be reckless and irresponsible, I've decided: the time has come for me to share a little bit of myself with all of you.

Hey... Hey... Hey!   Control yourselves!  There's no need for tears.  Not even happy ones.  

Look, I know emotions are difficult things for most of us to control.  We can't see them when they start, so by the time we're aware that they're about to inflict themselves upon the outside world, it's too late.

They can be controlled, however.  I know, because I've mastered them.

How?

Well, for me, it was quick and easy.  For the rest of you, the process will most likely prove to be time-consuming and difficult -- but, ultimately, worth it.

It's starts with understanding how your body functions.  (No, don't worry, I'm not going to give you a heavy lecture about molecular biology, although I'd be happy to answer any of your questions in private.  My e-mail box is almost always open.)

Once you understand how your body works, you have to learn how to "listen" to what it's telling you.

Rather than talking of "theories" and "abstractions," I prefer to focus on real world examples of scenarios that all of you have experienced at a visceral level.

Let's start with your body's reaction to the news that I was finally writing a blog.

It sounds weird saying "your body's reaction," rather than "your reaction," doesn't it?

I said it that way for a reason.

Right now, you don't know much about your own body. 

And what you do know is mostly superficial stuff.  How shallow!

How do I know that?  I don't.  But I do.  (I still believe in Buddha and Zen and the Beat Generation, as you can undoubtedly sense.)

Your Body's Reaction To News Of This Fantastic Blog:

Unbeknownst to you, there were several things transpiring simultaneously throughout your body, the moment your eyes spoon-fed word of this remarkable news to your mind. 

Naturally, your brain went electrically giddy (nearly berserk) upon getting the announcement. Like a middle school-aged kid who has received a hot new video-game weeks for before its official release date, your brain goes nuts making certain everyone knows about this fact as rapidly as possible.

As the news spread throughout your anatomy, you may have detected some of the more obvious manifestations of your body's physical reactions:  

• a quickening pulse, 
• involuntary leg motions leading to a hastened form of eager foot-tapping, 
• stirrings of sexual arousal (the strength of which would vary from person to person, depending on factors such as: age, sex, general health, and whether or not he or she is active enough to read a blog like this one).  

In laymen's term: the men hardened and the women moistened.

Most of you felt compelled to launch into an impromptu Irish jig.

Does anything say "happy" quite as exuberantly as a group of drunks (of the same ethnicity)laughing and crashing into tables as they  attempt to revive an ancient homeland folk dance in a pub crowded with city workers who are tired, bored, and jaded?

Your jig wasn't like that.  Yours was private.  More Americanized. What you lost by way of authencity, you more than replaced with your youthful pizzazz  go-for-broke attitude.

Do you want to see what I see when I see you dancing because I'm writing?

I thought so!

First, I'm going to ask you to do me a small favor.  

Are you ready? 

[DON'T ANSWER!] 

Never answer a question automatically.  

That's how Bush got us into all those wars for Dick Cheney.  

You're not a robot.  Think first, then respond.  

(It's OK to be a  phony automaton, as long as you're aware you're being a phony automaton.  Assuming, of course, that you know how to switch out of that mode at the appropriate times.)

Now, are you ready?

....

....

Great!  You waited before answering.  That's good. (Yes, some will callously assume that you're just slow on the uptake, but that's OK because they'll be easier for you to exploit later on.)

 Here we go.

I'd like you, right now, to find a place nearby where you can spend a few moments alone and disruption-free.  You need to find a  peaceful place.  A place that is for you, and you, alone.  

Now, find a spot to sit down.  It doesn't matter if it's on the floor or in a big comfy chair.  Once you're seated and comfortable, I want you to relax.  You're quiet, rested and completely at ease with the solitude and the silence.   

Think of nothing except the fact that you are a very real part of the entire universe, and that you're at one with yourself, within yourself, within the universe, and that the universe is also within you.  You are it and it is you.  Where'd you get that outfit?

Now concentrate on your breathing.  Breathe slowly and deeply.  You feel your lungs expanding and contracting.  The rhythm of life made manifest with each breath.  The exhaust of the city.... Gathering gloom..... Exhaled away!  

Women may find this journey we're untertaking more relaxing if they remove their blouses and bras. (Probably not a good idea if you're at work, in one of those glassed-in conference rooms, unless you're comfortable being observed by groups of middle-aged Lookie-Loos wearing suits. Where does HR find some of these characters?) 

Now breathe deeper.  Concentrate on inhaling and exhaling as slowly as possible.

Close your eyes.

Once you're truly relaxed and at ease with the peace you're feeling within,  try to envision the following concept:

Think back to 1990.  It was a different time.... The Beatles,  Elvis Presley,  air travel, Santa, hobo villages, wife swapping parties, snow machine races with Todd, parades, the funny man selling balloons, the way your voice sounded when you inhaled the helium, the way your penis felt when the funny man put it in his helium-filled mouth, and the way your ejaculate looked when it floated out of the funny man's mouth high high high up into the sky, and then how heavy your coat felt when you later realized that you had accidentally pocketed the funny man's suede money pouch while he was otherwise engaged...you could have returned the pouch, but you were too excited following the floating bubble of you-goo to allow yourself to be sidetracked.  1990, man, it totally rocked.

Now imagine a scenario where Jennifer Beale, fresh off of her "Flash Dance" fame, had just given birth to a baby boy that had been sired by The Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley.  

Can you see the baby boy?  

It is a touching scene, isn't it?  The baby looks like he's going to have Jenny's eyes, and Mike's lip-smackingly taut bum.  Lucky l'il fella!   

Now let's return to back to 2009.   The "baby" is now 19 years old, lithe, good looking, and he definitely has his father's ass --  on steroids.  The fucker looks like it's made out burnished titanium.   If you were gay, you'd continue rhapsodizing about it's superiority over the asses of mere mortals, but you're not, so you don't.

 

The ass god's mother has just concluded the final season of the hit Showtime series, The L Word.  His father has proven definitively that Americans possess the world's largest attention spans -- they never tire of paying to see the same folksy line dances by people in tight, sequin-festooned attire.  Give the show a different name and the Americans won't know any different.

As for Kid Dancer.... 

Well.... Here's a "what if" for you to ponder.

What if America had a Royal Family?

What if that family was made up entirely of commercially successful (hucksters) dancers? (Unlike traditional and avant-garde dance troupes that have lots of highbrow cache, but no highbrow cash,  these dance companies have somehow choreographed a way to get America's normally tight-fisted middle-to-low-brow masses to whip out their Visa cards whenever there is a new product to peddle.  

Michael Flatley would be this family's aging King.  Kid Dancer: The Man Who Would Be King.

On this day, however, there is trouble in the land.  The dancing prince is told that he will be forced to dance what will be the dance of a lifetime on live TV in front of millions of viewers.

To make matters worse, for him, his performance will be judged by four Simon Cowell clones.

If he doesn't dazzle all four of the Simons, both of his parents will be brought out on stage, and then executed before a live studio audience.

In his kindly heart, Kid Dancer knows all to well that if he doesn't dance well enough to save the lives of his parents, he will be blamed and ridiculed by most every citizen in the land for  causing the death of his parents.  "That would suck, big-time," he said to himself solemnly.

(For the record: If the kid's dance wasn't impressive enough to save his parents' lives,  I wouldn't be one of those who blamed the kid for killing his parents softly with his dance. Why wouldn't I? Because he's a kid, God damn it!   And besides, Simon's an asshole.  He produced the show, and he knows darn well that America was practically drooling for a double celebrity execution.)

The kid takes the stage.  He looks fantastic!   There are lumps in the throats of the nation, at large.  The United States of America has come to a collective halt.  All eyes are glued (not literally) to tv screens.  The lights dim, the music starts, and the Kid swings into action!

Look at him dance!  That's not dance!  It's a low altitude solo trapeze act.  It's a vertical sex act that defies the laws of both physics and biology.  He's so good he's giving the entire nation a rousing display of visual foreplay.  The studio audience is on its feet!  So are the tv viewers! So are the Simons!  They're going on stage to form a  conga line behind the kid!  The whole nation is doing the conga behind its new King!  

The performance ends with a shuddering, toe-curling and un-furling collective national orgasm, followed by a brief standing ovation and a mad stampede to the restrooms.  As the credits roll, we see the Kid reunited with his folks.  We then catch a glimpse of one of the Simons handing Kid Dancer a card,  and then making the telephone to the ear hand gesture, and mouthing the words: "call me."  

The dance that Kid Dancer performed was exactly how I imagine you danced when you learned of my gift of blog coming into your life.  (Although, since you weren't a child of dance, yours was, in all likelihood, far more clumsy and amateurish.  And you weren't even dealing with the pressures that were being forced upon Kid Dancer.)

It's looks like we've run out of time for this offering.

How does that make you feel?

Gather your things, it's time to rejoin the "real" world.  Ha ha. Hee hee. Ho ho.

You can come out of solitude, now.

Do make sure you're not leaving anything behind.  No cups.  No glasses.  No seepage.

Next time, if I'm so inclined, I'll try to talk more about how you can get in harmony with your body's instant messages.

Maybe then, you'll be able to recognize the precise moment when feelings of any kind are created magically from an extra-special place deep within the bowels of your soul, so that when they begin to percolate, you'll know whether they are good emotions or bad ones.

Then, when the moment is right you'll be ready to channel them to your body's appropriate staging areas as they burble up through your innards towards their assigned destinations.

Remember, even the most heartfelt expressions of joyfulness and the deepest and most profound feelings of gratitude, love, and/or admiration can be highly embarrassing to you if they aren't given a formal seating assignment.

Whether they're caused by sadness or happiness, unchecked emotions will always find their way to the body's natural release valves -- your eyeball spigots -- where they burst into the world in the utterly common physical form of salty tears.  Ho-hum.  ****yawn****

The world has seen enough tears.  The world is kind of sick of crybabies.   As it happens, I think the world is just copying what I'm feeling.  In fact, I wish the world would learn to form its own opinions, for once, but that's a topic for another day.

Today's Zen-Like Bottom Line Take-Away :  "Learn to control all of your emotions.  If you don't, your emotions will control all of your learning.  And that would suck big-time." 

Peace.

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OK.  Good. Now that the first one's done, I'm going to sit back and wait for the windfall.  I accept pay pal.  (No personal checks, please.  Certified are OK, but I hate the thought of you waiting in a long line at some corporate bank. You can avoid the hassle by sending cash.)