April 1, 2009
I ran into a guy I used to play hockey with and hadn’t seen in years:
Me: Hey man, how’re you doin'? What have you been up to?
Him: Don’t ask. A year ago I got frostbite and nearly died but just had to have some fingers amputated (holds up hand), my daughter is in jail in Peru for smuggling animals, my wife is having an affair, I’m not sure who with but I know she is cheating because she never wants to have sex but always smells like she just had it, my boss wants to promote me but I’d have to move to Toronto and the rest of the family says no way, so I’ll probably lose my job if I turn down the move, and the scumbag who lives next door wants to sue me because my son wrecked his prize winning orchids after breaking into his greenhouse and trashing it with his delinquent buddies who I think thought you could get high by smoking orchids. Let’s see, the contractor who I hired to build a sunroom ripped off part of our roof which now leaks into the kitchen when it rains and when I refused to pay him for the crappy job, put a lien on my house. The guy I hired to reroof the roof made it worse and now it leaks even more than before, so I didn’t pay him either, which really pissed him off and made him kind of unstable, so who knows where that’s going to go. My car is in dire need of a transmission. I think I’m coming down with the flu. So what’s new with you?
Me: Oh...not much.
Him: Well, I gotta go, I’m following my wife to see who she’s cheating with.
Me: Ok then, good seeing you, man.
Him: Likewise.
April 2, 2009
What I dream of is an art of balance - Henri Matisse
juicyverve
Or you can stop dreaming and use Photoshop like the rest of us - Keith Ryan
April 3, 2009
Today I’m picking up 2,500 fir seedlings from the local reforestation nursery and will spend all weekend planting them in our field. What makes this daunting is the body wracking cold I came down with yesterday. My nose is sore, my throat is sore, and I feel stupid weak, but the trees must go into the ground. So if I kill myself in the process, succumb to a terrible death due to tree planting overwork, at least there will be a forest on our property. And I can be buried among my firs. That’s poetic, eh?
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Fir trees are green,
Here lies Keith.
April 4, 2009
Why is it second nature to fight your first instinct? An instinct arises out of some whole body recognition separate from our physical senses that we then invoke the brain’s reasoning and categorizing elements to dissect and rationalize until the instinct is sliced and diced, accepted or rejected. Uh, why can’t we just go with the initial gut feeling and trust in the validity of that?
April 5, 2009
Tired of sitting in church and listening to the same old rhetoric? How about a Sunday sermon worth thinking about? Ahem. Everything has consciousness – rocks, dirt, water, the electrons on this page, the air we breathe. So, um, what does that mean for you?
April 6, 2009
The bone chilling fact that the Demon 3 had room for a fourth quickly dispelled the old wives tale that the devil and his henchmen didn’t work in winter.
April 7, 2009
I used to be so taken with the brave new online technical world where a layman like me, willing to learn HTML, XML, CSS, could participate in the cutting edge and create a niche. But the Net is maturing past the point where regular folks still dig in, get their hands dirty with new code and truly keep up. My site is ten years old, and the exuberance for the new and digital has passed. Though the creative side has remained fresh – the Internet is still a writer’s medium – I’m afraid the technical is all about maintenance now. This is neither sad nor sorry, it just is.
April 8, 2009
To the woman who felt it was ok to jump the queue at the bank by using her enormous laser beam breasts to cut an opening at the head of the line in front of a mesmerized older man who couldn’t remove his eyes from her mammoth twins and mumbled, Sure, when she shook the kids and said, Do you mind?, cutting six of us off from being one step closer to a teller, I say, Lady, don’t ever expect the world to love you for who you are, because at some point in your life, probably when they’re down to your knees, and you realize no one ever took you seriously, you’ll decry the tradeoff.
April 9, 2009
The Earth and all its beauty is not enough to make me want to come back and go through yet another lifetime among the idiots and heathens. I want to move on to another plane of existence where those who have met Earth’s challenges reside. I’m not quite ready to say take me, take me now, as I have some unfinished business still, but when I do shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m ready to make the leap. Uh huh, am too.
April 10, 2009
Trevor was scared, very scared, although he didn’t know of what, or if it was even scary, but he was, he knew he was, and it made him even more afraid to be so afraid of what he didn’t know.
viknanda
April 11, 2009
The squirrels are mad, the birds are mad, the pheasants are less than pleased. I’ve had to remove the seed and suet feeders because the bears are awake and hungry. Having a 500 pound beast climbing into our yard looking for food is not our idea of a good time. So the seed has been put away and those who have come to depend on it are put off. Bummer for all.
April 12, 2009
I saw an old man taking his kitty out for a walk. He had a cane and moved about the speed of molasses, yet he had this lively young cat who kept bouncing all around his feet as they worked their way up our dirt road. The little cat was always in motion, yet never moved more than a couple of feet away from him, wasn’t on a leash or restraint, and seemed oblivious to everything else except the shuffling old man. I half expected the guy to trip over the kitty or plant his cane onto its tail, but neither calamity transpired. Instead, the old and the young continued on until a neighbor’s dog started barking at them. At that point, the man picked up the cat and put it on his shoulder, where it rode until the two of them were out of sight. It was a sweet exhibition of friendship, and it made my day.
April 13, 2009
Futurilla
You walk through this door, your life will change forever. It could be your worst nightmare or your wildest dream. It could be everything you ever hoped for or nothing you’d wish on your worst enemy. This is the doorway into another life. Go on now, what’s it to be for you?
April 14, 2009
I used to talk with another writer about writing, and it was silly how differently we approached the actual doing it part. He would use 3 X 5 cards and plot everything out with a beginning, middle and end, whereas I would sit down with a vague concept and start to write, having no idea where it would take me, what the outcome was, or indeed, even what the story was. I would discover it as I wrote it, whereas he wrote to points and beats and structure. Of course, there is no one way to write, even if his way was wrong, something I often told him and he rejected completely.
April 15, 2009
I don’t know where these orbs are located, or if they’re extraterrestrial in nature, but seeing as how they’re attracting innocent barefoot tykes, I have my suspicions about their motives, and why they’re gathering in such large numbers, and why they look so eerily alike. I'm just sayin’.
DSharonPruitt
April 16, 2009
As I look at my keyboard, without a doubt, the grottiest, filthiest key cap is the 4. I hardly ever use the 4. Really, who does? While conversely, having worn away the lettering with my brutal two fingered pounding, the most popular key seems to be the A. Ok then, that’s all the valuable keyboard secrets I can give away today. If you’re good, tomorrow we’ll talk about which ones bring me the most pleasure.
April 17, 2009
The NHL Playoffs have started. Hockey every night for months. All over Canada, wives will suddenly take trips to visit their Mums for extended stays. Men everywhere will huddle in front of the warmth of the telly. In a cold climate, it’s our rite of Spring. By the time it's over, it's Summer.
April 18, 2009
It’s tax weekend around here. Now we’ll see where all the money went. Ugh.
April 19, 2009
A guy who bought a brand new $100,000 Peterbilt tractor to haul the Ice Road this year, got some tough questioning from his wife. She asked him what happens if he breaks though and sinks the new investment? She reminded him that they took out a second mortgage on their house for this unit and god forbid what would they do, where would they live, if he drops it in the lake? A little bit later, for the third time, she asked him what they’re going to do if he crashes through the ice and crashes to the bottom and crashes the truck and dies? Of course, he reassured her he wouldn’t do it, crash, die, ruin the truck, ruin her life, any of it. And by gar, he didn’t. There's your happy ending.
April 20, 2009
And now, for your moment of zen.
April 21, 2009
My greatest moment in 3 years of high school Spanish class came when a substitute teacher called on me to read something out loud. I did, and afterward she asked me if I was Spanish, or if my family spoke Spanish at home, because I read the paragraph so fast and beautifully with no discernable accent. I told her I wasn’t, my family didn’t, and she seemed even more surprised. Funny, after all these years I can remember her face, that moment, but I can’t remember a word of Spanish.
April 22, 2009
It’s Earth Day.
Ain’t she a beaut.
April 24, 2009
I can’t believe America is all caught up in a torture debate. They’re actually wondering whether it's cool to do it or not. Where is the human moral compass down there? And if torture is ok, when does it go domestic? Can the FBI use torture? The local police? Will it go all the way down to mall cops? Will mall cops be able to torture their captives? Jesus.
April 25, 2009
How can it be that I am right handed in everything except for hockey? I brush my teeth right handed, I write right handed, I play hockey left handed. I grew up assuming I was a right handed shot, and played for half my life using a right handed stick, because I played baseball right handed, played golf and tennis right handed, threw a football right handed, and still, the minute I picked up a left handed hockey stick and played one game that way, I knew it was my natural side. Well jeez, how can that be? How can I be hand specific for specific things? And while I’m at it, what the heck is handedness anyway?
April 26, 2009
When asked for an example of true human folly, the contessa replied, “Tanning beds.”
DSharonPruitt
April 27, 2009
As a child you are told how special you are, how different you are from all the other regular children, how no one else is like you, and then you grow up and all society wants you to do is conform, be a sheep, fit in with the masses, and don’t stand out for anything unless you want to become a train wreck like Britney Spears. Mixed messages, people. Tsk tsk.
April 29, 2009
To the person who e-mailed me to ask if I was a nice guy in real life: I’m a Canadian! for cripes sake. It’s the law up here. Of course, I’m nice. Why, what have you heard?
April 30, 2009
This is what it’s been like here for the last month – half way between Winter and Spring.
telljeeves
What will May bring?
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KeithSpeak May 2009
