Author: Fred Blahnik

…..it was all she knew. Being without money was all she knew.  So when rumors started circulating that some people actually had more than others—that their personal possessions far outstripped their basic physical needs—she was amazed by this startling revelation.  Why did certain people feel they needed more than the basic necessities?  What was wrong with these individuals?  Could they not harness their greedy impulses?  And she continued to ponder this question interminably, rolling it over and over in her brain while futilely seeking a solution.  She was perfectly happy and content living with only the bare essentials.  Why couldn’t others feel the same way?…..

Sometimes you’ve just gotta take that rightfully prescribed, horrible-tasting medicine–whatever it might happen to be–inhale a deep deeeeep breath, scrunch up your face some if that helps at all…..and subsequently swallow the awful stuff down with nary a complaint; that is the right and manly (or womanly) thing to do. Let’s be one hundred percent clear here:  Ya ain’t always gonna get your way in life, nor should you!  You can’t always behave like a spoiled brat.  You shouldn’t feel one bit self-entitled.  You are not exceptional to the exclusion of everyone around you.  Sometimes you’ve just got to bite down hard on the bullet and accommodate those around you.  There are over six billion other denizens sharing this planet’s increasingly crowded surface as part of one leviathan humanoid family, and you’ve gotta take their welfare into consideration part of the time too.  Cuz if you don’t, if you’re constantly only looking out for Number One—if you prioritize your personal interests over humanity’s on each and every occasion that not-rare conflict arises— I hereby label you with total honesty and sans one scintilla of sarcasm the most selfish, despicable, narcissistic son-of-a-bitch who ever inhabited our unique solar satellite.

Very rarely do you make a product, system, or process better solely by making it more complicated. That ordinarily makes things worse.  Less is more.  Brevity is beauty.  Simplicity is saintly.  The more moving parts you incorporate into a product or process, the greater the likelihood of a breakdown.  But wait…..there’s more!  Once this Frankensteinish monstrosity does break down, you then find yourself faced with substantially greater difficulty in fixing the damned, uber-complicated, over-engineered thing than had it been properly crafted and sensibly engineered in the first place.  In other words, showboaty complexity bites you in the ass every time and you lose all the way around.

“When”, not “if”….. “When” is the most impactful word in the English language, while “if” is the most negative.  “If” you don’t know whether you are going to succeed and you therefore leave wobble room for failure, that is almost certainly the outcome which awaits you.  Confidence is fueled by expectations, never by doubts. Therefore, jettison the word “if” from your daily vocabulary, given the fact its connotation invariably foretells failure.  Refer only to “when”…..when…..when…..WHEN…..because that word–and that word alone–settles you into the proper frame of mind for succeeding in life.

Life owes me nothing. Quite the opposite, I owe life EVERYTHING!!!  Each new day that comes my direction is a gift from above, a present bestowed upon me that could have just as easily gone to a potential being far less fortunate.  ONE egg cell from my mother conjoined with ONE sperm cell from my father to form ME.  I am just the extraordinarily lucky beneficiary of that chance union; if the presence or timing of either had been microscopically different, someone else would have been created at that instant and not me.  I am therefore eternally grateful for a stroke of fortune that I can take no credit for and which I can never repay; all I can do is celebrate life every day like it is my last one, all while giving heartfelt thanks for the pluperfect gift of consciousness.

Why?

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

The baby housefly was uncharacteristically blunt.

“Papa, why do we pester the humans so much, especially when it’s highly dangerous?  Why, just two days ago Uncle Ish got crushed to death on the humans’ kitchen table when he allowed his natural caution to lapse for a mere few seconds!!  Wouldn’t we flies be a lot better off if we just left the humans alone and focused instead on landing only on objects that are edible and taste good?!”

The elder housefly bristled at this suggestion.

“Absolutely not, Young One!!!  Pestering humans is something that we houseflies have been doing for millions of years and it’s built into our very DNA!  It’s an activity that you should take great satisfaction in doing and then proudly pass it along to your own offspring some day too!  Harassing humans endlessly and unmercifully is something that is integral to our core being, Young One; it helps define what we houseflies intrinsically are and why we were placed here on Earth in the first place!!!”

The baby housefly cowered under this verbal onslaught.

“Gee, I didn’t know you felt so strongly about the subject, Papa.  I’m sorry that I even brought it up.”

The elder housefly remained on edge and didn’t feel like being appeased by a wet-behind-the-ears fledgling.

“Of course I feel strongly about the subject, Young One!  Why shouldn’t I?!  And do you know why too?  Have you ever stopped to think why I feel so strongly about maintaining non-stop vigil on the humans—pestering them constantly, harassing them ruthlessly, making certain no area of their exposed skin goes more than five minutes without one of our ilk alighting on it and hopefully biting that patch of flesh if at all possible…..annoying those gigantic monsters over and over and OVER until they’re thoroughly enraged and ready to literally pull the hair out of their scalps by the roots…..do you know why this job of ours is so unfathomably important, Young One?!?!”

The baby housefly glanced downward and shook his head side-to-side.

“No…..no, I really have no idea why this job you are obviously deathly passionate about is so incredibly important, Papa.  Tell me then:  Why is it so??”

The elder housefly stood up straight and erect on his four spindly legs and cleared his throat to lend greater emphasis to what he was about to say.

“You see, Young One, humans are our natural enemies.  They persecute us, they swat us, they gas us, they pull our wings off, they kill us, they seek to exterminate us, they hate our guts for no good reason at all…..why, their unstated goal is to eradicate EVERY LAST ONE OF US from the face of the Earth!!!  That’s right—EVERY LAST ONE OF US houseflies, I tell you!!!”

The elder housefly stopped to catch his breath because his heart was all but pounding out of his chest, and his naturally bulging eyes were now seemingly jumping out of his skull.

“So then I ask of you, Young One:  What are we supposed to do when faced with that kind of flagitious onslaught???  Just fly away back into the furthest reaches of the wilderness and pretend that humans like us?!  That they’re our lovey-dovey friends and our new bosom buddies?? That they would now desire more than anything to forgot past hatreds and kiss and make up with us??  So we should just turn our tails and fly away and act as though everything is hunky-dory?!  That we’re living in some sort of dreamy fairy-tale world??  Huh???  HUH?!?!   No, no damned way, I tell ya!!!  Any fly worth their exoskeleton wants to stay right here and fight back against those despicable human beings, and the best way we can do that is by pestering them mercilessly every opportunity we get.  Every opportunity we get, I say!!!”

The elder fly stopped ranting at this juncture, took a deep breath, and stared down at his young, cowering protégé.

“Do you understand now why we houseflies harass the humans as much as flyly possible, Young One, despite the immense risks we run as well as the awful dangers we constantly face living in close proximity to those unbelievably cruel bastards???  We do it strictly because the humans are fully deserving of this level of contempt!!!”

The baby housefly was taken aback by his patriarch’s spontaneous display of raw emotion.  He had never seen the Old Insect so worked up and passionate about anything in his lifetime.

“Gee…..I never realized you felt so adamant about the subject and hated the humans that much, Papa.  I just never knew……”

And his voice trailed off then like the contrail dissipating in the wake of a jet airplane passing high overhead as he paused to contemplate his next thought.

“But I worry about you, Papa, I really do!!!  Every time you fly off on one of your harassment missions against the humans I keep thinking that you’ll never come back.  Just like Uncle Ish last week.  He said the same things that you did right now—The exact same things, mind you!!–and look what happened to him!  He thought he was invincible too, and then…..and then he got squashed into a pile of mush and guts on the humans’ big kitchen table.  I just don’t want to see the same thing happen to you, Papa!  I don’t, I tell you!!!  I don’t think I could handle such a thing!!!!!”

Tears formed at the edges of the Baby Fly’s eyes.

The elder fly was touched by this seldom seen display of emotion, but not to the point of vacillating on the ironclad commitment to his species.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing, Son!  Not a thing, I tell you!!  Trust me, I’ m exceptionally careful every time I fly off on a patrol mission.  Understand, I’m not as reckless as dear Uncle Ish was; that guy, as much as I loved my older brother, was too overconfident and full of bravado; he really, truly was and obviously it ended up costing the poor schmuck in the end!  No, I have the humans all figured out by now.  I’ve been studying their habits for years and I can read them like a children’s book.  They can’t hurt me; they’ll never be able to lay a hand on me, Young One.  I promise you that!”

The Baby Fly remained unconvinced.

“But that’s precisely the same thing Uncle Ish used to say too!  He would constantly parrot those same words over and over as well:  ‘The humans can never touch me!  The humans can never touch me!!  The humans can never touch me, Junior!  I’m much smarter than all of them put together!!!’  But look where that got him, Papa!  Look where that got poor Uncle Ish!!!  Crushed to death!!!  I think we’d be a lot better off just leaving the humans alone, Papa!  Just leave them be and not pester them anymore!  It’s simply gotten too dangerous!!   Please, Papa!!!  Will you promise me today that you won’t go flying off on any more guerilla missions against the humans??  Will you promise me that one little thing??  It’s just too dangerous, Papa; it’s way too dangerous!!!  It isn’t worth it in the end, I tell you!!!”

The elder fly looked down softly upon his weeping progeny.

“I’m sorry, Junior.  I really, truly am sorry you feel that way.  But, no, there is nothing you can say or do that’ll stop me from heading out on my search-and-destroy missions against the diabolical humans.  Ultimately, they have it coming.  Oh, yes, do those sons-of-bitches ever have it coming; they are fully deserving of whatever torment I can visit upon them plus some!!  And if I don’t step forward amongst us flies and do my fair part in combating those huge genocidal monsters, then how can I expect any of my brethren to do theirs??  It’s all about honor, Junior:  The honor of defending our species against the cruel, domineering humans.  You see, it’s always been that way and it always will be.  The humans want to control everything around them—And I mean EVERYTHING, okay?!?!–and we houseflies cannot just roll over and timidly allow them to do so.  Such is the way of the world, Young One, and there’s nothing either one of us can do that will ever alter that sad fact.”

The elder fly stopped talking at this juncture and gently stretched both of his wings in preparation for flight.

“I’ve gotta go now, Young One.  Tell Mom that I’m off on another mission against the humans and that I’ll be home in time for supper.  Luv ya, Little Fella!”

And with that the elder fly launched his body into the air and flew off in the general direction of the humans’ kitchen.  He left behind in his wake a sobbing, inconsolable young disciple.

Unbeknownst to the elder housefly, the beleaguered owner of the residence had just hung a sticky new fly-trap above his kitchen sink–an area he knew from experience was a favorite hang-out for any flies that happened to find their way into his house.  He was curious about its efficacy and was naturally somewhat dissatisfied with the old-fashioned method of manually swatting any flies that became too much of a nuisance around his household.

And back in the darkened recess in the family room wherest the elder housefly seemingly had materialized from nowhere, a hulking, hideous-looking wolf spider with absurdly bulging eyes had been carefully watching the heartfelt conversation between the two houseflies from his secret lair not too distant.  When he saw the older of the pair levitate and fly away–leaving the youthful housefly by himself and wholly unguarded–he sensed a rare opportunity and hurried to take advantage of it by slowly inching his black furry body toward the disconsolate, unsuspecting young insect, silently grinding his dagger-sharp teeth the entire time as he stealthily closed the gap with increasing speed.

If you wait to partake in your enjoyable pursuits until after you are caught up with all of your work…..then you’ll never get to them. No exaggeration here either.  Absolutely true.  You never honestly get “caught up” with the various work you have sitting in front of you, real or perceived, therefore you just have to marshal the self-discipline to break away from the tedium of it once in a while and go off to raise hell and have some fun.  MAKE time; don’t wait for it to somehow cryptically appear out of the Great Ether cuz we both know that’ll never happen! There is no substitute for proactive separation from your daily drudgery, and no better recipe for cherishing life either.

“Double down” on your youth, people!!! Believe me, old age is nothing worth saving up for!  If the wherewithal for pleasure (aka happiness) exists now, then pursue it now, for Chrissakes!  That last statement bears repeating, if only for its jarring truthfulness:  Pursue pleasure NOW in those immediate environs where you may happen to see it flourishing; do NOT assume greater pleasure is lurking somewhere out there way yonder, patiently waiting for your imminent arrival in the unseen future.  THESE are the best days of your life, unquestionably, not some romantic notions of a golden retirement when you are in your seventies and impotent and semi-demented and infirm, and vulturine inheritors come skulking around your life’s perimeter akin to a pack of jackals in anticipation of a financial windfall the moment you stop breathing.

…..they were young and clever and in their physical prime and were sure they knew a lot, but “a lot” in this instance amounted to what they would be doing years from now–their plans were all laid out neatly before them in straight rows like they were baking loaves of bread–and not in the next moment, a period of time which they actually exercised some minute level of control over. But isn’t that the bare-bones definition of wisdom:  Soldiering through life with your eyes and ears vigilantly open at all times…..and then be sufficiently fortunate to emerge unscathed, infinitely “wiser”, on the other end of that figurative tightrope…..??

And then the Sun Moved in the Sky…..

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

And then the sun moved in the sky…..

Barely, almost imperceptibly…..

But it did so over a period of months, not days…..

Like a burglar inching stealthily along a darkened hallway in the dead of night…..

Until, one day, it was hanging so low in the firmament that the air around me was stagnant and frozen…..

And my hands and ears cried out for protection against these newly aggressive, demonic temperatures…..

I glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall of our kitchen…..

And, to my surprise, November had come…..

Yes, November is here already, if you can believe that!!!

But I should have known this fact without having to consult a calendar…..

Because the sun in the sky now lies limp and disinterested only a stone’s throw above the southern horizon.

 

And then the sun moved in the sky…..

Barely, hardly at all…..

And November is here now…..

Carrying all the unsavory detritus that sorry month annually brings…..

Depressing, I know…..

Depressing as hell, yes yes, it truly is…..

But then I ask of you now:

With November currently thrust unwillingly upon us, can Old Man Winter—that mean, cruel, cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch–be stalking far behind???