This is one of the least explicit photos I could find. I think it’s Scarlett Johansen, the actress, but it wasn’t labeled.
Look, I’m not getting much sleep lately,
so chalk this up to grumpiness, if you want.
Or the back spasms…
And I’m no prude, believe me.
But I am a man who’s old, so most
of you would’t notice me on the street.
I’m a tad bitter about that, you might say,
but have learned what’s important.
Maybe, you could just listen.
I get it: Sex sells,
fantasy sex sells cars and everything else..
All those selfies of you on FB, Instagram,
You posed coyly just to show your good side,
your amazing boobs or butt, the come-hither look.
(And yes, I notice. ) Continue reading “Dear Ladies”
”There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.”
That was the central — and only — “conclusion” of a report submitted Thursday by an investigative committee of the local garden club.
“There’s a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware,” said Jim Holderman, chair of the committee and prize rose grower. The crowd murmured and nodded. He added: “I think it’s time we stop, children — what’s that sound? Everybody look! What’s going down!”
The sub-committee had been empaneled to make recommendations to the group after the results of a contentious and nearly psychedelic board election were eventually certified. Everyone was still confused.
Retired trout whisperer, Courtney Scales, stepped briefly from the shadows at the back of the room into the flickering old-timey moody candlelight and said:
“There’s battle lines being drawn.” Heads nodded in the gloom.
“Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong,” Scales continued, encouraged. “There’s young people speakin’ their minds, but getting so much resistance from behind.”
“It’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?… Holderman said again, then slumped back into his seat. No one took notice, as he did that a lot.
Everyone grew silent as Ruth Broadbottom rose with a great deal of rustling. (It was how she did everything, and gave off the smell of lavender. Always.)
She was the oldest member of the group and had lived through the great Rubber Duck Fiasco of 1962, and the Gingerbread Restoration Wars in town in the early 70s and late 80s. People wanted to hear what she had to say. She waited until the room was absolutely still, cleared her throat delicately and said:
“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep.” She paused and looked at every face turned toward her.
“It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line, the men come and take you away.”
At that, she rustled out the back door, trailing a cloud of lavender, and the meeting broke up. The people left murmuring in small groups as they went out into the night. The comments were all the same….
“…And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!…”
Lincoln’s Great Depression: “…In his mid-forties the dark soil of Lincoln’s melancholy began to yield fruit. When he threw himself into the fight against the extension of slavery, the same qualities that had long brought him so much trouble played a defining role. The suffering he had endured lent him clarity and conviction, creative skills in the face of adversity, and a faithful humility that helped him guide the nation through its greatest peril.Continue reading ““A Fearful Gift””
People have always been immoral, shiftless, and self-gratifying. It’s one of the most consistent themes in the human history of the world. It’s easy to look around and conclude there’s plenty of evidence that nothing much has changed since the days when our ancestors stole the Neanderthals’ lunch, caves, iPhones and women. In fact, the tendencies are, if anything, accelerating. You know, the internet….
My own opinion is that this is both true (that things really are as bad as they seem), but also self-limiting. The current level of world-class sinning, like a prairie fire, will burn fast but will eventually run out of fuel. The question is what will be left? The implications are that these attitudes and behaviors are ultimately self-destructive, and that sooner or later we humans tend to pull back at the edge of the moral abyss.
So, since I’m as susceptible as you are to any or all of these old standards, I looked them up again.
Pride:
Excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. Pride has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
Envy: The desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony: an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust: an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger: is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath. This is seen most often on internet comment sections and on the campaign trail.
Greed: is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth: (todays personal failing here) Is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work. Lust would be a lot more fun, but I’m just not up to it.
Potential murderer of empires and hope and vacation plans
There’s a difference between chaos and apparent chaos. I hope you’re sitting down.
It largely depends on whether you see it as just all that red ink in your credit card statement (did I really charge the Giganto Burger weekly special at Five Guys AND a year on my fitness membership?), or the fact that you have a teenager (which really IS soul-sapping chaos, but a different kind.)
I understand. If the wolf is chewing on your leg, you kind of have to take care of that first.
But I’ve tried to remember: the big picture is that there is also “apparent” chaos, and that kind obeys underlying rules. It’s just that I can’t really do much about things I can neither predict nor control. So all I can do is try not to do stupid things too much, and then learn how to roll with the punches.
Of course, it could also be that one anonymous, heartless (but beautiful) bastard/bitch butterfly in Honduras flapping his/her wings, setting in motion a chain of events that ends with the utter destruction by a level 16 hurricane of my beloved French Quarter. That would make me sad.
“The example of such a small system as a butterfly being responsible for creating such a large and distant system as a tornado in Texas illustrates the impossibility of making predictions for complex systems; despite the fact that these are determined by underlying conditions, precisely what those conditions are can never be sufficiently articulated to allow long-range predictions.
Although chaos is often thought to refer to randomness and lack of order, it is more accurate to think of it as an apparent randomness that results from complex systems and interactions among systems. According to James Gleick, author of Chaos : Making a New Science , chaos theory is “a revolution not of technology, like the laser revolution or the computer revolution, but a revolution of ideas.”
Now, about that wolf. Here’s a gun. Shoot the son of a bitch.
HemmingPlay 
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