Today in France. When form and function begat art and beauty, when brilliant engineering and scary high roadways come together as a modern marvel and a sight to behold, you might be forgiven for thinking, Why can't all projects be like this lovely lovely span? Ha ha, the chuckles come. Because silly, there are many fewer great men and women with talent and vision than there are journeymen, mechanical robots and poseurs. That's why.
December 2, 2015
Is the Scottish accent not the most mellifluous? Sure you can't understand half of what they're saying, but it sounds so sweet, and isn't that the hallmark of an agreeable accent when even the garbled words sound dulcet? Of course it is.
December 3, 2015
Overheard in a store.
-- These prices are too high.
-- You think?
-- 200 bucks for that?! Pul-leeze.
-- It is pretty though.
-- Sure it is. That's why they can charge 200 for it.
-- Then isn't it worth it?
-- That is definitely worth 200. Maybe more.
-- So it's a steal.
-- Hell yes it's a steal.
-- Then I'm getting it.
-- Me too. That's too good a price to pass up.
December 4, 2015
This produce guy was telling me how much he loved loved loved Brussels sprouts. Couldn't get enough of 'em; glad he worked in produce so he could always get his fill of his beloved Brussels sprouts. I looked him straight in the eye and told him that those things taste vile. They should be outlawed, people shouldn't be allowed to eat them, and at the least, Belgium should be ashamed. He was mortified. I could have gone on of course. He looked like he was going to cry. Well crap, what's the deal with taste buds where I can hate the thing he loves?
UPDATE: Cripes, none of you guys answered so I had to go out on the Interwebs by myself. I'm back now. Ok, it seems that half the people in the world have a mutant gene that makes some native chemical in the Brussel sprout taste bitter. A MUTANT GENE! I kid you not! Could you imagine it would ever come to this? Those with the gene unmutated find Brussel sprouts to be quite lovely indeed. So basically, it's a chemical thang.
December 5, 2015
A while back a bear tore through our page wire field fence, but I was thinking what if it wasn't a bear, but it was a Sasquatch instead? What if I found big assed foot prints all inside our field? I spent a little bit of time thinking about that. Leastways until I came across the recently killed deer carcass. Hmm, is Sasquatch a vegetarian? Frankly, the whole fantasy hinged on that one question.
-- Look mister, this boat is made of wood. You put wood in water it leaks and rots. You will not live to see another day.
-- Then how do you use your boats?
-- On land, like everyone else!
-- On land?
-- Of course. Just as you see here. We put stuff in them and then pull 'em along. Such ridiculous questions!
-- Have you...have you never heard of the wheel?
-- What?
-- The wheel?
-- Oh Will. Yes, he'll be along in a little while to help push. It's empty now so I can manage by myself. But I must be going. The wind is picking up. Sometimes I have even thought of putting sails on her! Could you imagine! Anyway, if I don't hurry the tide will come in and she'll get wet. So bye, mister.
December 7, 2015
An agent says to me: Every scrap of paper Picasso ever wrote or scribbled on was valuable and worth something. Perhaps you should be saving your throwaways? Just in case? I'm sure I mustered a smile as I imagined my basement, garage and barn full of useless discarded pages, the shreds that didn't work, all the changed sentences, paragraphs and pages, the full discards that deserved to die and the flights of fancy that never panned out, all of which were never meant to see the light of day. Why, the whole notion of a writer saving everything is preposterous. But he was an agent. Enough said.
December 8, 2015
How come we're told not to eat chocolate for breakfast but some super sugary cereal or donut or pastry dripping with frosting is ok? Who are these anti-chocolate breakfast people? Doesn't matter. I'm here to announce that chocolate is good at any time. That's right. There are 24 hours in a day and chocolate fits in well with any one of them. You wanna eat that 7AM candy bar, you go right ahead. You want to eat chocolate cake for breakfast, you lucky dog. If others tsk tsk your choices, remind them that Keith says chocolate is delicious at any time. When confronted with the undeniable truth, any sane person will then leave you alone to savor your early morning chocolate eating experience. Way to go!
December 9, 2015
Don't pretend that you are not in control of your life. You are the one who chooses to do what you do, eat what you eat, think what you think. Accept that. When you realize that you are the sole arbiter of all you do and all you are, well, there's no going back.
Depending on where your mind takes you, this picture could be poignant, relaxing, comforting, sad, reminiscent of old times, or a promise of a future. It could be the beginning of a story, or the end of one. It could be anything your thoughts shape it to be. See, what you think about things is what they become to you. And only you. Because these are your thoughts about something - all the things you believe in, all the things you hate, all the things...period. Is it worth examining your thoughts? You bet it is. Is too.
December 11, 2015
Dude was tiptoeing in the dark down his own second floor hallway so as not to wake his wife who might then realize he was getting home at 3:30AM after an evening spent carousing. Only he stepped on a kid's toy and it squeaked, causing the dog to bark out, the kid whose toy it was to start crying and his wife to come flying out of their bedroom leading with the service revolver he kept in his night table, and seeing in the dark a fully dressed man smelling of sex and alcohol, she just pulled the trigger, a couple of six times. Other people's lives.
December 13, 2015
So some volunteer humans want to go on a one way trip to Mars, set up a bunch of colonies, found the New New York or whatever. Uh, why? When the best thing about living here is this magnificent planet itself and all the animals on it, why would you want to go to a barren, lifeless, animal-less, average temperature -81F Mars? Look, to those who want to die on another planet, I say fare thee well. Me, I'm staying here. In paradise.
December 14, 2015
My wife is on sabbatical from her private practice, so no one had been in her office in a while, which is in a separate building located on our property. For a few days I had been having this feeling that I should go check it out, but never did. Finally, I went over and knew something was wrong as soon as I opened the door. The building was frigid. The gas furnace had gone out and the whole place was freezing. Fortunately the water pipes hadn't yet burst. Can't get a furnace guy out until tomorrow. Intuition, ignore at one's peril, eh.
December 15, 2015
A friend who does not use computers was required to have an Android smartphone for work. He told me he got it a month ago and hasn't used it once. He doesn't even know the phone's phone number. I sat down with him and showed him the basics. He got overwhelmed pretty quickly. It was obvious that without knowing a thing about computers, software or the ways to interact with them, the smartphone might as well be a freakin' time machine.
December 17, 2015
Underperforming Martin defiantly unveiled his new "guaranteed orgasm machine" to his unsatisfied girlfriend Delilah, who seemed dubious at best, but said she was game nonetheless.
It would be nice to have something super valuable just crash down on our acreage. Perhaps a tiny asteroid or a rare meteor or even a smallish UFO. Boom, this thing lands directly in our field. But softly. I don't want some big ass hole up there ruining the aesthetics of the place. Anyway, I'd hear a crash, go up there and find a meteor or asteroid or wrecked spacecraft, still smokin'. Oh boy! From there, well, sky's the limit.
December 20, 2015
I heard a conspiracy believer talk about NASA's hidden agenda and how they are currently conducting a war offplanet with some aliens. Dude was convinced NASA had a complete black ops wing that already had astronaut soldiers on other planets waging war under the flag of Earth, and I thought to myself, Earth has a flag?
December 21, 2015
I drove past a kid on a tractor plowing a farm driveway. At first I thought he looked like a teenager. but as I slowed down, I saw that he couldn't have been older than maybe 9. He was driving a large 50 horsepower Kubota with a bucket on the front and a snow plow on the back. He was focused on what he was doing but he was also pleased as punch. What 9 year old operating a substantial piece of heavy equipment wouldn't be? I imagined his dad looking out the window, drinking his second cup of coffee and thinking that all the screaming and puking that kid did as a baby was now worth it.
December 23, 2015
Neil Armstrong and the Wright Brothers were born and raised 59 miles apart in SW Ohio, Dayton to Wapakoneta. And it's said that Wright Patterson Air Force base in Dayton is where all the alien bodies alive and dead from all the UFO crashes are kept. I know! The men who invented flight, the first man to walk on the moon, and all the aliens the military can get their hands on are all in the same place, each no more than a 57 minute drive from the other. What is it about Dayton, Ohio?!
December 25, 2015
Because very few adults can remember when as children they found out Santa wasn't real, means it wasn't too traumatic to find out your parents and the rest of the civilized world had been lying to you since birth. Still, is it a healthy practice for adults to make stuff up, tell children lies about it and then later admit it was all a fabrication and a joke on them?
In a bold move designed to rattle the competition, Bachelor 4 decided to move ahead of Bachelor 1 effectively creating Bachelor 0. Although there was nothing in the rules preventing this highly unorthodox move, and Bachelors 2 and 3 didn't seem to care, Bachelor 1 saw it as an affront and nothing more than plain ol' queue jumping and he was hopping mad. The question is, would she be drawn to the apathy, the hothead or the shrewd mover?
December 27, 2015
In a casual conversation I once compared myself to a national hero of another country and his countryman, the fellow I was talking with, promptly told me that I was a far cry from said named person and any comparison between the two of us was ludicrous. Sez you! Alas, he was right. I am like nobody but myself.
December 28, 2015
Overheard at the hockey rink.
-- I told you to put the phone away and talk to your brother.
-- He's a dork.
-- He's your brother.
-- He never says anything good.
-- Lucinda, for the umpteenth time, your brother is autistic and he shies away from contact and conversation, but the doctor says his family - that's you - needs to engage him more to bring him out of his shell. So talk to your brother.
-- No.
-- No?
-- What are you doing?!
Mother snatches phone and puts it in her purse.
-- God.
-- Now talk to your brother.
-- God.
December 29, 2015
New Years is coming and we're almost 16 years past the millennium. I suppose that's groovy and all, but do you realize that it's not 2016 for other calendars of the world? In China it will be the year 4714, and for the Japanese it will be 2676. In the Jewish calendar it is already 5777. And don't get me started on the Byzantines (7525)! I dunno, by comparison, 2016 looks like it ain't that much to celebrate.
December 31, 2015
Good, bad or mediocre, things come to an end. We have reached one here. Tomorrow shall be another day, and another year. Goodbye. Hello. The pendulum swings...
