Reflecting Upon A Brief Relationship Between Two Financial Anarchists Who Like To Play Banjo Kazooie

He's prone to handing poor downtrodden sods a dollar

Because he's a deep believer in faith, hope, and charity

                                                  Those are the rudimentary requirements, he swore

        To living a righteous, deliberate and unrehearsed life

He's been walking the straight and particularly narrow

Ever since he heard the great and glorious word

                                      That saved him from the evils of pilates and acting

         Elevating his consciousness from banality and strife

He whistles while he works and listens to Marlowe

All the while calculating how long it would take him

                      To memorize all the lyrics on Angelic 2 The Core by Feldman

       While cutting through a frozen banana with a rusty butter knife

                                           Ooh Mao Mao

                                        Zedong Mao Mao

                               Falling asleep on the dance floor 

                                    Bicycling to Pao Pao

She's got him on at least three charges of using trigonometry

To seduce a thrice-divorced matron he met at the automat

                                             A woman of high-standing though low morals

         Who claimed to be great in geocaching but really lousy as a wife

She's been known to use caressing a well-used cheeseboard 

As a means to gathering insights while meditating

                                 Being as how it had been cleaned with potato whiskey      

         By an under-assistant barber found running down a Saharan saif

She cannot afford to be out in public without her trusty blue apple

It helps to soothe her mind when she's feeling a little saudade

                            Like a butterfly she deftly plays the hydrocrystalophone   

        Much to the delight of both the woefully wealthy and offensively rife 

                                             Ooh Mao Mao

                                         Zedong Mao Mao

                            Falling asleep on the dance floor

                                      Bicycling to Pao Pao

                 

It's National Photography Day! Whoo-Hoo!

    Yes folks, it is National Photography Day. A grand and glorious day indeed! Somewhat better than National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day (which was last week, btw), but not quite as noteworthy as International Whiskey Day (that's March 27th).

   To celebrate, I did what I do most every single day - I took some pictures. Here are a few from my walk around the reservoir this afternoon:

   Slap me on the  ass and call me Galen Rowell.

How Schools Inadvertently (Or With Malicious Subtlety?) Encourage Innocent People To Join Cults*

    It's the class projects.

   That's it, TLDR right at the get go.

   Kids are subdivided into smaller groups and told to work together as a group in order to accomplish a compulsory goal.

   And if you, as a kid, reject the idea of having to be in a group in order to succeed, you are written up for it, as in "doesn't play well with others."

   That right there is the first glowing ember of cult recruitment. 

   As kids progress from grade to grade, the group projects become more and more important grade-wise, and participation is closely monitored.

   "C'mon Jonesy, where's your school spirit?"

   Until, eventually, you are being dinged on your report card for not participating, and in the comments section your teachers start writing "not a team player, does not exhibit a desire to cooperate with others."

   We will teach you how to be one with your fellows indeed.

   At the college level it amps up to eleven making it a graduation requirement, essential to the actual awarding of the degree you so assiduously have been working toward by requiring you to volunteer with some group or other. 

   Of course, the college labels it "community service" and states that it's necessary in order to develop valuable life skills and may even be beneficial for your career progression, but the truth about community service is it's just cult prep.

   Take a look around you and do a little research into how cults recruit, and then tell me I'm wrong.

*Look, I'm being half-assed sarcastic here...let's not take anything I write too seriously, eh? 

A Time & Place Best Not Discussed

The morning walk was going as uneventfully as ever

Until a woman walked up and said "Didn't we know each other in '94?"

In over twenty years of morning walks the total times anyone 

Had ever said anything to him at all

Equaled a grand total of, well, never

Staring intently at her face as if it were an unusual flower

Wondering if maybe she had mistaken him for the guy who lived next door

He repeated the question to himself and replied

"If we did that would mean we were locked up in the same psych ward"

The woman seemed to stop breathing when she heard that 

And then laughing said, "Well, now I'm quite certain that we did."

Which, if you factor in that he now was living seven states from there

Meant that a random coincidence of geography was afoot 

The chances of such a meeting had to be a phenomenal stat

The woman stared at him and realised he was being serious

As he stared right back with almost irrational intensity

Trying to remember a time he had spent years working to forget

Which made his efforts an exercise in futility 

"I must apologise," He said with courteous grace

"For I cannot rightly recall you or your name at this moment"

The space between them seemed to widen a little

And she spoke an apology with a hint of sadness

"My mistake, I thought I recognized your face"

After slight mutual hesitation they both resumed

Their walking in opposite directions on the same path

Both leaving the presence of the other with the same thought

That sometimes it's best not to revisit an old wound

                               

The Hardships Of The Laboring Classes

Quitting Is For Winners

    I saw a decal on a car bumper the other day that stated "Quitting Is For Winners" and due to the fact I was driving along behind said car on a fairly hazardous road, I was not able to get a picture.

   I was able to get a picture of the road I was on (see above) because I quit driving, put the vehicle in park, and got out to take a picture, even though the car that was sporting the decal had long since driven out of eyesight.

   The picture I did take is fairly nice, what I would call a "winner," so yeah, in certain circumstances, quitting is definitely for winners.

   Which I believe I have seen elaborated upon on signs somewhere - signs that say "If you find yourself stuck in a deep hole, quit digging," and "If your job requires you to lie, quit now." and so on.

   Now that I've been thinking about it for a long minute, several other examples of when quitting is the best way to be a winner have sprung to mind, such as when you are reading a dull book with a lousy plot and no character development - just skip to the last few pages, find out how it ends, and then go out and find a better book to read.

   Same advice applies to bad television shows and movies. Your time is pretty damn valuable, don't give it over to undeserving tripe.

   Heck, if this little diatrible I'm putting together is boring you, quit reading it. Respect yourself and use your time, resources, and energy for whatever you find fulfilling or at least interesting. 

   Hmmm...that is advice I should heed myself. I'm outta here, maybe I'll change my front brake pads or some such more important (and productive) chore.

   

The Lure Of The Thrill Of The Stage

   He said his biggest thrill in life had been the two years he spent trying to break into comedy, which took all of us by surprise. 

   We had been sitting at the small table in the bar located across the street from the restaurant which had become our usual Sunday evening gathering spot, and the question of the night was "What is the biggest thrill you have ever experienced?"

   All of us had answered with a singular event - sky-diving, solo sailing between several Hawaiian islands, climbing Mt Elbert, the birth of a first child, going on a dive bomb run in a fighter jet, and becoming a published writer. 

   TCR was the one who answered with trying to break into comedy. Most of us had known TCR for at least the past decade, and none of us had ever known about his foray into comedy.

   So he pretty much had our collective undivided attention as he elaborated on his biggest thrill.

   He started off by explaining that it was at a time in his life when he didn't have much going on - he had dropped out of college for the third time (all three attempts at a higher education had been at different colleges), was living by himself in a studio apartment, and hated his job as a shuttle bus driver at a large amusement park.

   Pursuing comedy as a career was, he said, something he had thought about since his high school days, when he had dated a girl who was way out of his league but had told him she went out with him because he was funny.

  So five years after that one girl had made that comment to him he finally found the courage to get up on stage at a local comedy club's open mic night and spout off a few jokes and wisecracks.

   He told us that the first experience was fairly innocuous, but he did get a few laughs, and most importantly, he wasn't booed off the stage.

   Furthermore, he said he met another comedian that night who asked him how much time he had spent preparing his material, and when he told that fellow comedian that he hadn't spent any time preparing his material, that he had just got up on the stage and winged it, the guy nearly fell out of his chair.

   That fellow comedian recommended that he stop winging it and start preparing at least 15 minutes of material that he could recall without thinking, as the well runs dry pretty quickly when you rely on the sporadic funny bits you can come up with on the fly.

  Realising the truth he was being told, he said he then started writing down everything and anything he could remember saying or experiencing that was even remotely funny, and that he would spend hours putting it all into a cohesive routine he could readily recall.

  He elaborated that, as it was in the time when television was limited to three, maybe four channels, and you watched whatever the channel masters wanted you to watch, his only exposure to practicing comedians was limited to whoever Johnny Carson or Tom Snyder was giving a few minutes to, or to occasional visits to Comedy clubs when it was open mic night or when he could snag an opening slot or get comped a seat.

   Saturday Night Live was a show he watched religiously, along with a few other variety shows of the day such as the Carol Burnett show and Shields & Yarnell.

   Albums, he said, was where he was able to hear the great comedians - he told us of the hours he spent scouring flea markets and garage sales for old albums by Comics such as Newhart, Bishop, Pryor, Wilson, Diller, the Smothers Brothers, Rickles, Cosby, Bruce, Rivers, Foxx, Youngman, Warren - even the Firesign Theater gang.

   Those albums, he claimed, were his textbooks for comedy school.

   With somewhat of a wistful look he told us that It took him a few months of listening and repeating and showing up at open mic nights to practice performing until he felt confident enough to take his act on the road and see if what he had would play in Peoria, and so he did,

   For almost two full years he said he traveled around the country, living out of his car or staying in cheap motels, working as an opener or a middle/second act to earn $25 to $40 a night, and sometimes as much as $100 to $200 if he got on a long weekend bill - which would be Thursday through Sunday and usually require 7 or 8 thirty minute routines.

   He paused his story for a few long seconds after that revelation, then continued by saying that, after nearly two full years of non-stop travel and performing, he was not only broke and worn-out, but he had an epiphany.

   And that was, he almost looked ashamed to admit, that not only did he not have the stage presence or charm that most of his contemporaries had, he was also not anywhere near as funny as any of them.

   At that point a few of us looked at him with expressions of disbelief regarding what he had just related, and KAP, with her usual blunt (though not crass) manner, asked TCR if he had ever met up with anyone during those two years who actually made it.

   TCR nodded his head affirmatively and said he had shared the same stage as Barry Crimmins at a club in Boston that Crimmins owned, and an Irish comedian named Dave Allen who smoked like a chimney but was probably the funniest person he ever met - never got big in the states though (which was obvious, as none of us had ever heard of him).

   KAP followed up that question by asking if he had met anyone that they had actually ever heard of, and TCR nodded his head again and said that, while he did open for a few comics that either were big or got big, and listed Gilbert Godfrey along with Barry Sobel among them, he said he never got to actually hang out with any of them. 

   We all kinda nodded our heads after that in a mutual silent agreement that that was most likely because TCR wasn't now and probably wasn't then the most sociable person to be around - he was a fairly quiet guy and for him to claim that he once made a go out of being a comic...well, it's not that we didn't believe him, but we all were thinking it was quite the stretch.

   Finally, RBG asked TCR to tell us one of the jokes from his routine, and after a few seconds, TCR cleared his throat and said that he always got laughs with this one:

   "The other night I played poker with a few of my friends and it did not go very well for me. I had to go home and tell my wife to pack her bags because I'd lost her to Jimmy Keaton on the last hand of the night. As you might imagine my wife got a little angry and asked how I could possibly have lost her in a poker game - I told her it wasn't easy, I had to fold with a full house, Aces and Kings."

   No one at the table laughed, though DV smirked a little.