slightly irregular guys.
I don't think being handsome matters at all. The most rapacious pussy hound that I ever knew was butt ugly and I'm not even talking human butts here. I'm talking about the north end of a south-bound Mandrill baboon, and yet this guy was getting in the pants of the best looking girls in the swamp. What he had was SELFISH AUDACITY. I don't exactly know what selfish audacity is, but I know it when I see it. As a young man, I was one of those who got it all wrong. I tried to play the nice card, which when sowing wild oats is the equivalent of drawing to an inside straight.
There is a reason for that old saying "Nice guys finish last." And what's really disgusting is that I figured this out early enough in the race to change mounts and I couldn't. Nice is so ingrained in me that I can't be anything else and thus I am condemned to a lifetime of hand me down, single mothers. I am the bon vivant of pissed off sloppy seconds. Now maybe I'm being a little shrill here. My life is actually pretty good, and I'm OK with it until I click into a blog by some codependent female crybaby whining about all the sorry-assed and selfishly audacious men who have jerked her around all her post pubescent life. Open question to these serial dumpees, Where were you when I needed you? Just because I was nice doesn't mean that I didn't want to bump bellies with you.
And then we could have eaten soft ice cream and had a nice little conversation. But nuh uh, I was stuck sitting around sipping tea with the grannies while you were in the bushes doing the wild thing with some outlaw type. So now you and the other burned out, high maintenance mavens of rotten men can just shut the hell up. You don't want nice guys. You don't even want handsome, nice guys. You're getting exactly what you want, so stop whining about it! Nice guys, can I get an AMEN.~~ back to table of contents
PRACTICE
Why do people who obviously have never seen a naked woman attempt to draw them? Yes, graffiti retards, I'm talking to you here. I don't mind the obscene poems and limericks. Some of them are actually cute. I don't mind the all out of proportion spread shots drawn on the walls of public bathrooms. Those pictures are just between us guys and maybe it's asking a lot of you to grunt and strain and draw at the same time. But when you draw this crap on exterior walls and overpasses and places where women can see it, it's embarrassing.
By making women look bad, you're not making men look good. I would put this down to the fact that you have to work fast, but there seems to be a pattern to the lack of proportion, especially in the spread shots of long Barbie legs culminating in an asshole the size of Mars and a vagina that looks like something you'd send back at a seafood restaurant. Handle drawing graffiti nudity the same way you handle sex. Get a Hustler, Penthouse, or something and practice in private before you go public.~~ back to table of contents
BE A PROFILE-PHILE
Many times when I change jobs, join an organization, self publish, or whatever, I'm asked to do a bio or profile, sometimes including a picture, of myself. Profile Now there’s a good word for you. Pro means for; so my profile must be a file that is on my side. In this world, it’s important to take care of the things that are on your side, so I gladly update my profile.
I’m always a little daunted by the task. The problem is that the picture on my profile looks like it was taken by somebody yelling, “Turn to the right!” and then “Turn to the front!” Well, if my picture looks like a police mug shot, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have to write at least a thousand and one words just to break even. That’s more words than are in a whole episode of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
I could try taking another picture, but if I'm being honest, I don't think it's going to get any better. Maybe I should turn to my profile archives. My favorite profile is one I wrote a long time ago for a blog. It’s just a list of things that I don’t like. Unfortunately, there’s little that I don’t like, so I’m not going to get my thousand words there. Come to think of it, I wonder if it would be all right if I just updated my profile with my police file. That’s gotta have at least a thousand words in it, and it goes with my picture.~~ back to table of contents
TRY TO REMEMBER THIS KIND OF SEPTEMBER AND...
At work, I get these emails and somewhere in the email, there will be a line that starts with “Leadership has decided that…” I don’t know what this new entity Leadership is, because sometimes the word Leadership is capitalized even when it falls in the middle of a sentence. It's like when you’re writing about God, you write He instead of he. (I wonder why we never write She.) That capital L must be a group noun sort of thing, but if there’s a Leadership, there must also be a Followership. I’m a follower and damn proud of it! Heaven for me will be a yellow-brick road. My favorite line from a song is Try to remember this kind of September and if you remember, then follow… follow… follow… I love that song!
I don’t what Leadership (capital L) is, but I know what Followership (capital F) is. I saw the definition in a movie once. Two guys, A and B, are waiting for guy C to show up. After a while A looks at his watch and says to B, “Let’s go. C is dead.” B asks, “How do you know C is dead?” and A answers, “If he weren’t dead, he’d be here.” That is Followership:: an unshakable faith in each other. The secret is in the “each other”. Try following by yourself. That’s why, oddly enough, when pursuing any objective of worth, the followers always--always--get there first.
A noteworthy example of a good follower is General Grant. Most of the "smart" Union generals, great leaders and losers all didn’t think Grant had enough sense to walk and chew on his stogie at the same time. They certainly didn’t think he could win the Civil War, and maybe he couldn’t. But he had enough faith in his soldiers not to stop them from winning it. He never commanded them to retreat when they wanted to go forward. That is great Followership, and somehow it seems a lot like great leadership (lowercase l). What worries me is it that when I talk about Followership, I can hear my own echo?~~ back to table of contents
LIBERAL TRUMPS CONSERVATIVE
What's the real difference between liberals and conservatives? Liberals play offense and conservatives play defense. Basically, conservatives try to counter proactive, or offensive, change with reactive, or defensive, status quo. Defensive change is the equivalent of passing a bill against illegal immigration. Offensive change is securing the border.
The US started off as a liberal--some would even say ideologically radical--country, but countries are like most people. As we age, we tend to become conservative and start playing defense. When the US was young, the Army and the Navy used to be part of the War Department. Now that we’re the oldest democracy in the world, the Army and the Navy are part of the Defense Department. As soon as the War Department became the Defense Department, its budgets skyrocketed, but we are less safe than ever. A persistent offense will always overwhelm even the best defense, and the threats to humanity only play offense. That’s why thirty years of either conservative or moderate governments have left the country in a mess. Moderate governments don't get it done either. It’s a sink or swim world, and dogpaddling ain’t swimming.
The US needs a liberal government that will play some serious offense, not just against the challenges confronting the US, but against the challenges confronting the developing world as well. A good place to start is with renaming the Defense Department to what it really is, the War Department, and slashing its budget to a fraction of what it is now. We can better use the money to combat global warming, overpopulation, and world hunger; and to improve a national education system so bad that kids with their pockets full of quarters can’t make change for a dollar.~~ back to table of contents
JOYOUS MUSIC
I love music. I spent hours the other day listening to some damned bird, a member of a species I didn't recognize, show off his or her pipes. To hell with records and CDs. As far as I'm concerned, music, real music, is in the birds--and in churches.
When I think of man-made music, I think of church, not those modern day phoney baloney, look-at-me Sunday social clubs, which ha
ve bands and choir directors. I'm talking about churches where people shout and get happy and make a joyful noise unto The Lord.
When I was a kid, I used to attend such a church, and I used to sing with the other members. Sometimes the old folks would cry or cry out as they sang. I didn't understand them then, but I do now. Very rarely, I'll go to my mother's church and sometimes they get close, but they have drums and a guitar now. Not quite the same.
I don't listen to a lot of recorded music. Real music is not something you listen to. It is a state of being that washes over you and you lose yourself in it. Wasn't it Nietzsche who said "God is dead". Without music, he just might be right.~~ back to table of contents
LAST STRAW
I live in the state of Arizona, which has a law that says that you are allowed to wear a gun into a government building unless the taxpayers provide a conveniently located locker in which you can store your weapon. I seldom do business with my local and state governments because my local and state governments are stupid. I prefer to give the politicians my money, let them piss it away, and just pretend that I don't know them.
Sometimes, however, the State of Arizona just gets too stupid. On the few