If your bags are lost, and everything you have is in them, are you sad for what was and will never be again, or do you see this as a sign, a clean break from the past and a way to reinvent yourself? If you said you are sad (or angry, keenly upset, pissed off, mad, disgruntled, or in a boiling rage/tempest over the lost baggage), that is the correct response. No one rebuilds their life from something stupid Air Canada did. Give yourself one point if you got the correct answer.
April 2, 2015
A gym rat asked me what my definition of a real man was. Hmm, who would I think was a real man and gain my instant respect for what he had done if I were to meet him... Well, if you told me you have raced in the Dakar or the Isle of Man TT, you would have my instant respect. If you told me you rescue stray and wounded animals, you would have my instant respect. Is that what you mean? He looked confused.
Let's face it, who am I kidding, I'm no good at this. I can't catch a thing. I don't scare anybody. I'm so depressed.
April 4, 2015
I was reading about how the super rich are getting bored with their material possessions and are no longer excited by their conspicuous consumption of Gulfstream jets and $5,000 bottles of champagne; they yearn for something more. The article claimed it's health. It seems the rich have come to the realization that money can't buy them health; that basically money has nothing to do with health; so having the most money doesn't make them any healthier than anyone else. Which means, of course, that they are just like the rest of us. Well, fancy that.
April 5, 2015
I was asked by a would be writer how he could stall off becoming famous and well respected after publishing his first blockbuster novel because if all the accolades and money come too early and he's famous and faced with myriad temptations it would make the second book that much harder to write. Expectations, he whined. I told him not to worry about a thing. And I meant it.
April 6, 2015
Overheard on the street.
-- Get this, I got asked out by the schlub in IT.
-- Who?
-- You know, that guy who tucks his sweater into his pants.
-- Ew, why would you go out with him?
-- I'm not. I just said he asked me out. I laughed in his face, of course.
-- I would hope so. He's disgusting.
-- I can't even believe he got the nerve to talk to me.
-- You're so beautiful and he's such a pig.
-- I know! It wasn't even flattering, just gross.
-- That guy has some nerve.
-- Tell me about it.
April 7, 2015
She says her name is Candy. The job interviewer asks her if that's a nickname. She confirms that Candy is her real name. The human resources guy frowns and says that Candy is not a very corporate kind of name. Candy flips. You're not offering me the job because my name is Candy?! That's discrimination, buster. No, hastily responds the interviewer, I didn't say we weren't going to hire you, but if we did, would you go by another name?
Oh, ok.
Maybe Samantha or Gina.
Sure, whatever. As long as I got the job.
Well you're hired...Samantha.
Call me Sam.
I like that. It's very corporate.
Candy, has left the building.
What do you mean?
You know, Elvis has left the building.
Elvis? Elvis Presley?
Of course.
Oh Sam, corporate people don't talk about Elvis. He's, um, not our clientele.
I wasn't talking about him. I was making a reference to him with my personal spin on it. See, Candy loves Elvis. But now Candy's gone. So Candy's left the building.
Look at that face. Inside that bird is a conscious being living the life of an owl. People ask if we are alone in the universe. Is that not another world?
April 9, 2015
Keith,
What was your first real job and did it prepare you for the life you lead now? I kinda need to know. I'm being pressured by me dad.
Signed,
ZeroG Devil
ZeroG Devil,
My first real job was working in a machine shop. I was sixteen. At one point I was operating a punch press (which required me to put, by hand, a small piece of metal onto a die, step with my foot on a lever to activate the fast downward slam and retract of the multi ton punch press, then reach my right hand in to pull out the stamped metal and with my left, insert a new blank piece, step on the lever, etc. It was a symphony of putting your hands under a crushing machine and coordinating with your foot so you don't mangle your hand), and I'm sitting there on my stool trying to find a rhythm and wondering how my father ever let me take a first job that could well maim me for life. But that quickly faded (as did all thought) as I experienced the mental death that is the mind numbing boredom of a repetitive task that in the end just sapped my will to live. I swore at age sixteen I wasn't ever doing that kind of work again. And I haven't. So yes, ZeroG Devil, my first real job did prepare me for the life I have led ever since.
Signed,
Keith
April 10, 2015
The circus is in town. Politicians hungry for power have begun their pandering for the Presidency. The sad part? One of the clowns will get elected.
April 12, 2015
This is a dilemma. You meet a jokester. To him, everything is funny. But then he gets a solemn look on his face and he says something serious. Is he still joking? As soon as you commiserate with him, will he laugh in your face? - Ha ha, the joke is on you. But if he was being serious, are you heartless not to respond? Ok, now I will reveal the solution to this dilemma. In a fake foreign accent tell him you don't speak English. Explain this to him in English. Then shrug. That will nullify the dilemma and make him start to question what the hell is happening and whether it's funny or not. The tables have turned, my friend. Well done.
April 13, 2015
Because it's Monday and you're back at work and that feels as awful as it sounds, later this morning, when you're ready to pull your hair out or stab a co-worker, take a time-out at the beach below. Get away from it all. Your hair and imperiled co-worker will thank you.
If you're older and wish you were younger, why? Why would you not embrace the actual age that you are? Wanting to be some younger version of who you used to be is just ignoring who you are now in favor of a fantasy. Why would you ignore yourself?
April 15, 2015
The kid was ridiculously talented in multiple sports. He was recruited by two different professional leagues, neither of which would let him play the other sport if he signed with them. So he had to make a choice. The money was better in one league, but the career longevity seemed to favor the other sport. In the end he picked one and never looked back. That's how you do it. To wonder if you made the right choice is superfluous, counterproductive, living with regret, not giving the choice you made the respect it deserves, and doubting yourself to yourself which is never good for confidence or morale.
April 16, 2015
All heavy equipment, including tractors, count by hours, the literal amount of time the machine has been used. But what do they do on robot alien worlds, where everything is a machine? What if an hour there is like a year here? What if they don't even keep track of time itself? Which means they don't know how old they are. Which means their civilization has no past. Plus, there'd be zero amenities there. Robot machines don't need to eat, sleep, rest or recreate. So don't expect any hotels, restaurants or golf courses on their planet. All of which means they won't be the greatest hosts. Anyway, these are the things we should keep in mind when we first start to visit robot alien worlds.
April 17, 2015
Well isn't this a tad inconvenient. Bees are nesting underneath our hot tub cover. Every time I try and use it, a hundred bees fly out to let me know that it's not our hot tub anymore. It's theirs. They have these guard bees that hang out on top of the cover. If you try and get near, they attack. Every day that goes by they get more entrenched. But fret not, I have a plan. It's still getting below freezing at night, and bees barely move in that kind of weather, so tonight I'm going out when it'll be the coldest and I'm going to collect as many inert bees as I can, and hopefully the queen if she is in residence, and I will drive them a long ways away and drop them there. Then I will come home and bee-proof the hot tub cover, wallah, problem solved, I hope.
April 18, 2015
Worst prom rejection ever?
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
You?
Ew.
April 19, 2015
A while back, this guy described his girlfriend as being "too much of one thing and not enough of another." I didn't know what he meant, but it didn't sound like it was destined to last. I recently ran into him again and asked him about the girlfriend. He smiled broadly and told me they were now married. I said, What about the too much of one thing and not enough of the other? He said, Huh?
The only nation in the world where F1 is considered too girly, is also the only nation in the world where steamroller racing is king. Here, series points leader Yuri Antropov trash talks his rival, Dev "The Sheik" Agarwal as they enter turn 2 on the famed Grand Prix street circuit, which now, thanks to these racers, is flat as a pancake.
April 22, 2015
What an extraordinary regular day: Saw a woman at the mall walking around in a bathrobe and high heels, drove past a street fight between a skinny high school kid and a fat high school kid, watched a guy struggle to repaper a billboard in high winds, stood in line behind a guy wearing a fur coat with white spray paint on it, ate a meal that should have tasted better than it did, watched white caps on the lake, passed a golden retriever carrying a Raggedy Ann doll in its mouth, saw my first hummingbird of the year, and found that instead of DVR-ing a playoff hockey game, I have instead taped 3 hours of HGTV home renovation shows. And to think this is just one of the 20 thousand or so days I have lived. Good stuff.
April 23, 2015
Overheard at a lunch spot.
-- I hate my boss.
-- Join the club.
-- No, I mean I really hate him. He's smug and condescending and thinks he knows everything. I want to punch his stupid face every time I see it.
-- You go, girl.
-- He knows I hate him too. He called me into his office to give me grief about something but I couldn't concentrate on anything except grabbing that Schaffer pen and stabbing him in the heart with it. He kept twirling it between his fingers like he was taunting me to do it.
-- Did you? Did you stab him?
-- I should have. Next time I probably will.
-- I dunno, maybe you should look for another job?
-- Before or after I kill him?
April 24, 2015
Someone proclaimed that when they die they will go to heaven and sit on a cloud and play the lute for all eternity. There were questions.
-- Do you play the lute already?
-- Well, no.
-- Don't you think you'll get bored sitting on a cloud for all eternity?
-- Uh...
-- You haven't really thought about this at all, have you?
April 25, 2015
A trove of dinosaur eggs was recently discovered. Just imagine if you could have said to the female dinosaur laying those eggs, that in a couple hundred million years they will be found by a race of little people called human beings, investigated by their science, and eventually put in a box in a museum in some back room essentially to be buried again. I'll bet the expression on her face would have been incredulity.
April 27, 2015
A scientist named Stanley Gaspar Jr. has found a way to make metal talk. "It's funny," he said, "interview a structural steel beam and it may speak of having a bad back supporting all that weight, but talk to an instrument of war, and the problem becomes the horrifying nature of its stories. These are killing machines and metal has a memory. Can a dagger have PTSD?" Upon hearing this, the military-industrial complex gasped, afraid they would have to pay benefits to freaked out weapons of war, so they killed Stanley Gaspar Jr. and went on with what they were doing before anybody, this nobody, began talking to metal.
Some day in the future some person will go through what will by then be the usual practice of reincarnational regression to view their past lives, and some hapless schmuck will find out he was formerly George Bush the moron, mass murderer, liar and all around goober. Surprise!
April 29, 2015
Listened to a psuedointellectual talk art, ideology, great literature and philosophy. He spewed out facts and first paragraphs liked he skimmed a lot of Wikipedia articles. Someone tried to expose him as a poseur. He got a panicked look in his eyes, just like Frankenstein in the burning building as the frenzied townsfolk mobbed with pitchforks and torches. The real intellectuals smelled blood. The psuedointellectual's jig was definitely up. My, what would happen next?
April 30, 2015
A little baby spider no bigger than the head of a pin crawled across my desk and disappeared into a ventilation hole on my tower computer. I imagined it sitting on top of the motherboard thinking, Now what?
