More Pets Of The Future!

Tiny dogs like chihuahuas are so delicate they do not make practical pets. Yet they are so adorably hideous people cannot but help loving these pissy little beasts. Thanks to the ultra modern science of gene splicing you can now have a robust little pet that retains all the abominable charm of the original Mexicanine! The armahuahua combines the finest qualities of Americas two favorite illegal immigrants, the armadillo and the chihuahua. Instead of jumping around and pissing everywhere when alarmed the armahuahua curls into a ball and starts bouncing around in random directions. This is highly stimulating to children and helps them develop hand eye coordination as they try to literally catch their pet!

Neither armadillos nor chihuahuas have much of a sporting reputation, although armadillos are sometimes used as a ball in games of automobile polo. Armahuahuas are sporting dogs! Not surprisingly their sport is futbol! (soccer to you whitey!) It takes a relatively large armahuahua but when they curl up they make a decent soccer ball. Finally after a lousy crappy day at work you can come home and kick the dog without feeling guilty about it! Everybody is going to want one of these little hybrid mutts. Science scores a, GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

However if the armahuahua does not appeal to you perhaps the lhasopossum will. These quiet omnivores are an ideal pet for shift workers or anyone who stays up late and sleeps all day because like an opossum they are nocturnal. Lhasopossums are shy and sometimes one will hide in a closet hanging from a hanger rod by its prehensile tail. If the family pet chooses to hang from the shower rod it can be upsetting for both of you! Lhasopossums do not react well to be sprayed with water. They are generally easy to maintain and have an appetite for garbage which makes them a favorite pet for avid recyclers. They are not especially playful but not surprisingly they are really good at playing dead. They hate shaking hands and usually mistake a proffered digit for a tempting morsel, ouch!

Lhasopossums are extremely prolific and generally produce a litter of a dozen or more! Becoming a breeder should be easy but you will have to make your profit by selling in volume. Seeing a mother lhasopossum skittering around with her pups clinging to her erect tail is a heartwarming sight. The pups are tiny but develop fast. The puppies wrap their prehensile tails around their mothers tail to hitch a ride. This propensity can be used in a charming way during the holiday season. If you are giving pet lhasopossums as gifts you can simply hang the puppies from your Christmas tree by their tails. Children love finding the cute pet Santa left for them hanging on the tree! Be careful though because lhasopossum pups have a taste for tinsel and the shiny pellets they defecate are attractive to children, yikes!





Russell

I Am A Caffiend!

I really like coffee, alot! I don't adulterate my coffee either. I know people that claim they like coffee but, what they drink is some kind of syrupy sweet tan milk product with a vague coffee flavor. Coffee is an acquired taste. Nobody was born craving coffee, it takes discipline! Real coffee is a dark brown liquid with an adult flavor not some sweet kiddie drink.

What happened to percolators? Does anybody remember them? I decided to buy a stove top percolator. I figured I had time to actually percolate my coffee. I decided to buy a cheap aluminum percolator I could set on top of the stove. I went to the grocery store, nada! I went to Walgreen's, zilch! I went to Target, null and void! I actually went to Walmart and they didn't have any percolators either! This was a Super-Walmart too. Ace Hardware had a camping percolator, the kind you use on a campfire for Chrisakes! I felt like I was asking for a buggy whip.

I think I could buy a percolator online. It would probably be manufactured in India. Somehow it just seems crazy to go online in order satisfy some bizarre retro tech impulse for genuine percolated coffee. But then again I am blogging about it.

One day I found an online store that sells old fashioned candy. Not homemade candy, just brands and flavors that haven't been popular since the Eisenhower Administration. That is so weird because who would buy it? Nobody that ever ate the stuff shops online and nobody online ever heard of this crap. Well there is me of course. I mean it's tempting but I remember how bad Necco Wafers really were and I only buy stuff for my daughter online.

Maybe I will look for a percolator on the net. Right now I'm going to load up the Mr. Coffee dripolator and drink some manly coffee in a manly way out of a manly mug! Well actually I am going to drink it out of one these cups I hand decorated. That doesn't sound to manly does it?







Russell

Cartoon Physics

I think this may be my first incarnation. I just don't seem to have the hang of it. Have you ever gotten some of that Ikea furniture and somehow lost the directions? There you were with all this one sided veneer particle board, assorted bolts, some unidentifiable slotted metal cylinders, an odd number of tiny wooden dowels, and some kind of pygmy wrench. Remember how lost and confused you felt? I don't feel that way all the time, sometimes I am in denial. That's fun! But then reality yanks the floor out from under me. It's like cartoon physics.

I believe in cartoon physics. Cartoon physics is so much more relate-able than are quantum physics or relativity. Einstein and Schrodinger had nothing on Tex Avery! Schrodinger and Einstein had some good ideas I guess but they didn't know how to defy gravity! Tex Avery understood how to do it. It's the first law of cartoon physics. You can in fact walk on air as long as you don't look down! That's where I go wrong every time. I just can't help looking down, and there I am standing on nothing!

Life is a pop quiz in a subject I didn't know I was taking this semester. I'm here doing improvisation because I have the wrong script! That's how I feel when I pay attention. Fortunately I rarely pay attention. Nearly all the time I am blithely strolling along on thin air. Only occasionally does some shiny bit of reality distract me. Then I realize how unprepared I am. It's damn uncomfortable!

There are those people who always seem to have it together. Those people that always say the right thing. Those people who seem to have it all figured out. I am probably being petty but I like to believe those people are fakes.




Russell

Romney's Song

I was irritated by Mitt Romney's craven politically motivated comments regarding the attacks on our embassy and our president. So I wrote a song. It's to the tune of "Wake Up Little Suzy" by the Everly Brothers. It's called "Shut Up Mitt Romney." Here it is;

Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!
Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!

You're completely full of shit!
You're such a stupid git!

You opened your mouth!
And the bull came out!

And that bull is full of shit!

Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!
Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!

You're such a stupid ass!
You really have no class!

You're campaign went south!
So you opened your mouth!

And you really showed your ass!

Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!
Shut up, Mitt Romney, Shut Up!

Why don't you just shut up?!



Russell

My Dharma

I've been trying to enlarge my spiritual life. Some times I am not even sure what that means. Here is the deal, I have found that I sometimes act like a jerk. Actually it may not be an act! Whatever! is the reality I want to change it. I want to be a much better person than I am. I have tried on my own for years but never really seemed to get anywhere. A lot of people have suggested asking a god of my understanding (they said God as if it was somebody's name but I know it's not) for help. This is tough to do when you have no god of your understanding. I have always figured any god I could understand wouldn't really be anything like a real god. If I understand it, it is not God, in other words. So you see that makes me pretty much an agnostic. It sucks, I want to be a better person, but consistently fail on my own. I can ask a god I understand to help me but I do not have one. And I know that if I did have one it would not really be God! So there!

I used to say I was an atheist. That was based on the fact that I have no theology. I thought atheist was short for a-theological you know, without a theology an a-theist. I am definitely not a theist. Apparently being non theist is not being atheist, who knew? I sure as hell didn't! Oh that's something else I do not believe in either, hell. Hell, from my infidel viewpoint, seems more important to most true believers than heaven. They seem to dwell on it more. The Devil seems pretty popular with the true believers too. (That's probably not a nice thing to say but, damn it it's true!) I have to admit I do admire Lucifer as portrayed in Milton's "Paradise Lost." God has devastated the rebel angels and Lucifer is literally flat on his back in a lake of fire (I hate it when that happens!) but instead of whining and crying he defiantly states, "better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven!" Man what a stud! I digress, enough sympathy for the Devil, that's not the main thing. The thing is how theology gets so complicated. A lot of these Christians (maybe Jews too) are not monotheists they really have two gods, God and the Devil, and they believe in both. I definitely do not believe in the Devil. I am iffy about God.

I turned non believer as a child. I asked for evidence and of course there is none so I quit believing in God. I got interested in spiritual matters after trying LSD. I had a buddy who was into Alan Watts (a translator of eastern spiritual traditions for westerners) and I read "The Book" by Alan Watts, it was awesome! I really got turned on to Zen concepts. (Zen practice not so much!) These eastern traditions seemed more organic, they have spirituality inhabiting everything. Western traditions seem to posit two planes one is the sacred plane, the other one, this plane we live on, is profane. Eastern traditions seem to posit only one plane, this one, which is either sacred or profane depending on your level of awareness. I like the eastern (as I see it) paradigm. The thing is this viewpoint does not include the supernatural. There is no separate reality where God the creator lives. There is just reality and it's either holy or not depending on how you see it. Sometimes I see it holy and those times God is everything, a lot of the time I don't, and these times God is nothing.

It must be so comforting to "know" that the almighty creator has your back 24, seven and that he loves you and all that sort of stuff. I tell you though and it is true, there is no act of faith more profound than praying to a god you doubt even exists! I am not bragging! I think really believing is a mental luxury I will never get to experience and in a way, I am kind of jealous I guess.

The reason I decided to expand my spiritual life was not the pursuit of mental luxury. It is because it seems to help me act like a better person than I naturally am. So I started attending and reading "A Course In Miracles." Now I won't even touch the premise of the course, it's quite bizarre. I don't care about that since I just want the karma not the dogma. Let the karma run over the dogma as they say. So there I was reading the text which is written in very dense logical extrapolations which are deliberate mind benders and I start wondering if the authors were on LSD when they wrote it. The sentences sounded like the stuff people say when they are using psychedelics for philosophical purposes and they're tripping their brains out! Spirituality is tough for guys like me.



Russell

Quit Being A Loser

The stuff that we think is important isn't and the stuff we take for granted or even ignore is all that actually matters. If I just listed these it might come off as insipid or sanctimonious and I hate insipid and sanctimonious so I won't do that. A bunch of years ago we used to play cards with friends. This was back when I was married. I tend toward competitiveness and I always wanted to win. Actually I got obsessed with winning. I understand simple games and can make myself recall which cards have been played. I would concentrate on who had played which cards and did my best to be a fierce competitor. When my partner made an error in play or things just went wrong due to erratic play by another I got pissed! To me the point of playing was to win and the seeming incompetence of others ruined the game. The truth of course was that I ruined the game!

I thought the point of the game was to win! I was wrong of course. The point of the game was to enjoy the company of my ex and our friends! When I was a kid I got really upset when my older sister beat me at Monopoly! I was sure she cheated (I was probably right!) and it was totally frustrating to play against her, as I, being honest, had no chance. At age six I probably couldn't understand that the real objective of the game was not bankrupting my cheating sister but enjoying her company. I cannot blame my six-year-old self for this sort of confusion. The same sort of confusion is not limited to games. It seems to me this sort of confusion is pervasive and shows up in most areas of our lives. At one time it may have been mostly an American phenomenon but nowadays the rat race has gone global.

There is a certain cynical satisfaction in seeing billions of people worldwide exchanging any prospect of true happiness for the pursuit of happiness. I remember as a teen my dad once telling me that he earned a salary and owned a house in order to give us a good life. He said he would be fine living in a cabin and fishing all day. My response of course was we should do that, live in a cabin and fish all day. He told me I needed to grow up. The truth is circumstances whether they be a suburban tract house or a cabin in the woods are ultimately irrelevant! Now I do like clean sheets and comfortable shoes. I don't want to be exploited or mistreated. The point is, mistreaters and exploiters do that shit in order to win! They are bad sports, they are cheating at Monopoly or throwing the board in the air and accusing others of cheating, they are counting cards and missing the point of playing in the first place. The only real joy comes from how well you play with others.

Does this mean we should be insipid and sanctimonious? Hell no! Who enjoys any game that doesn't involve any challenge at all? Adults don't play Candy Land with other adults, it's a game for small children and no adult dreams of beating the shit out of their kid at Candy Land. Competition is good when it's fair and friendly but the win at any cost credo is really for losers. Fair play on a level playing field with the goal of appreciating and enjoying other players is the only way to win at life, in other words to be happy. Until we come around to realizing this simple truth we will remain victims and bullies, neither of whom is happy, both of whom are losers.

The good news is, all we need to do in order to bring about true happiness, is recognize what we really want and need. Nobody can prevent you from finding happiness in the pleasure of others and working toward that end.



Russell

The Denny's Test For Politicians

I can't decide if the political campaign season is too dirty or not nearly dirty enough. I didn't mind Joe Biden's remarks about Mitt Romney wanting to "put y'all back in chains." I did mind the official explanation that it was just an innocent gaff, that even though the audience was mostly African American it was not a reference to slavery. I figure that if you reference slavery you should own it. They should have said, "Romney has a secret plan to re-institute slavery" or, "Romney is going to essentially re-institute slavery" or at least, "y'all going to be virtual slaves!" If you say something mean it! And then Romney starts joking around about birth certificates but says he didn't mean anything by it. That's pretty chicken too! He should have just said what he meant like, "President Obama is in fact a bastard!" or, "who knows where this bastard in the White House comes from?"

The Republicans call Obama a socialist, I guess that's pretty negative. Then again Helen Keller was a socialist. They should just say he is the son of Joseph Stalin, that would play into the birther thing too. Democrats could say that not only did Romney strap the family pets to the roof his station wagon he tied their black servants up there too! We could really get this campaign stuff going maybe. It is too bad that Newt Gingrich is out because the Democrats could start their own birther issue by suggesting he is the bastard son of the Michelin Man! Sorry about that but it is hard to come up with really entertaining insults about two such colorless candidates as Obama and Romney (color as in personality not race).

How did we manage to select such drab candidates. Maybe they are both actually genetic experiments. Some mad scientist was trying to come up with the perfect candidate. Maybe they identified a gene associated with personality and managed to eliminate it. Personalities are offensive but the lack of a personality can also be disconcerting. They say that we don't just vote with our heads (IE. for the candidate that is most likely to do things which will benefit us) but also with our hearts (IE. for the candidate we might actually want to hang out with). Hmm... would I rather hang out with Romney or Obama? I suppose I would choose Obama since I can't imagine hanging out with anyone who reminds of Romney. But then again I don't think Obama would be that much fun either.

I might like hanging out with Joe Biden, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Ralph Nader and maybe Sarah Palin. I know it sounds crazy but imagine you're having coffee at Denny's, (a place which requires interesting company to be tolerated) who would you want to be there? Sitting listening to Obama and Romney would be so boring I'd probably turn suicidal! But listening Joe Biden and Ron Paul giving Sarah Palin a hard time for not knowing anything at all might be fun. Of course the truth is I might not want to hang with politicians at all but if I had to hang with politicians I would like to hang out with interesting ones (or at least entertaining ones).

So maybe Mitt and Barack can duke it out over who's least boring. Mitt could say that Obama is so boring that nobody bothered recording his birth. Barack could say Romney is so dull that his dog wouldn't even ride with him, preferring to be strapped precariously to the car's roof. The Democrats could say that even though the last four years have been boring that electing Romney would actually induce a political coma. Republicans could say that the last 12 years of Obama... what it's only four? It certainly has seemed like 12! How long was Gerald Ford the President? Too long! It's the same with either of these guys.




Russell