…..I walked into the display room and instinctively knew that every eye in the crowded place was trained upon me, yeah, that’s right, purely on lil’ ol’ me!  All those people were thinking that I was the biggest imbecile in our whole fuckin’ Universe, and I must confess that I didn’t blame them one scintilla for their derogatory attitudes either; I would’ve been thinking the exact same thing had I been inhabiting someone else’s skin during that transcendent moment. Yet I had to remain brazenly confident or, rather, struggle to project an unmistakable air of brazen confidence that I definitely wasn’t feeling at my core. Not the easiest thing to do, mind you, but the circumstances I faced that opprobrious day left me no other option, no face-saving alternative, no viable avenue of proxy behavior. I knew that I would just have to bide my time and settle for play-acting until a more gainful option came along…..IF a more gainful option eventually did come along. Truth is, I could only pray like Hell such a thing would happen…..and happen soon.  Oh yes, oh my God, so fuckin’ fuckin’ SOON, I tell ya!!!  Otherwise…..otherwise…..do any of my readers know if there have been any documented cases of an otherwise healthy individual dying from sheer embarrassment?…..

Is it truly beneficial to know the future, even something as trivial as the weather which in our positions as feckless human beings we can do absolutely nothing to alter?  I don’t think so.  Where would the excitement be…..the anticipation…..the piquancy…..the implicit romance…..if we knew in advance events that were about to occur? The vibrancy would be weirdly absent from life and substituted in its stead would be rote routines and vapidity and insipidness.  Say what you will about the unexpected, but no one can rightfully dispute that it keeps us on the edge of our seats and adds a razor edge to future moments as they unerringly develop and unfold.  Predictability is boring, as are predictable circumstances and predictable people and predictable outcomes. Bottom line, predictability is anathema. Why then would anyone in their right mind pine for it?

He was a slave to the past.  He found it virtually impossible to let go of the past. The past held him as its permanent hostage.  The past was his de facto master. And yet this dismal situation he found himself ensnared within was entirely volitional, entirely self-fulfilling, entirely of his own making.  He could quite easily have extricated himself from the dreary dynamic he was stuck in if he so desired. He could have broken free from the unwieldy chains and readily escaped if he truly chose, but he just didn’t want to. He was opposed to doing it. Strictly speaking the truth now, this everyday guy—this “Mr. Average” guy—was immanently satisfied with his current existence and therefore rebuffed any and all changes that came his way, obliviously ignoring the fact his present life was admittedly a sorry, sordid one that held scant hope for redemption while his future offered nothing more uplifting than a daunting megadose of the same wearisome bullshit.  But here’s the critical point to remember: He was CONTENT with the life he was leading even if he wasn’t outwardly happy with it, simply because said life fit him as tidily as that trusty old pair of Red Wing work boots sitting over in the corner. Change?  No no…..Hell no!!!…..he wanted no part of THAT at this delayed stage of his life.  Why upset the applecart and busy himself with fixing something that wasn’t even broken?  Huh? HUH?!  That wouldn’t make one bit of sense now, would it?!  He would much rather keep his antennae pulled down safely right next to his side, fly well beneath the radar, and stick to the monotonous life he knew so well, notwithstanding the fact the so-called “life” in question didn’t bring him true happiness, pleasure…..or even a minute degree of satisfaction.

The general acceptance of this truism notwithstanding, things are NEVER “meant to be”.  People—typically two people—must make a conscious decision in order to manifest destiny.   Accidents “happen”; life does not.  Decisions are made by discerning individuals; they don’t just fall haphazardly out of the sky or crawl out of the woodwork like a scurrilous Asian beetle on a warm March morning.  The workings of fate?  Well, yes, of course fate exists as a huge, shape-shifting, monolithic entity, but the big bus of fate requires a driver just like any other, thus you may as well commandeer that temporal vehicle and take your rightful place behind its steering wheel purely so you can influence the direction it is headed to the utmost of your ability. A million unsavory extraneous things could happen while you’re piloting said bus, true enough, but by taking firm control of its steering wheel you will henceforth have succeeded in eliminating one potential pitfall so I guess the number now stands at 999,999.  Forget the daunting scale for a second; that represents an absolute improvement—inarguably!

…..he was searching for a wholesome girl…..an industrious girl…..a resourceful girl…..a GENUINE girl…..yet, let’s face the plain, unforgiving facts here, so few of those exist anymore.  They are an endangered species, scarcely different from the Siberian tiger or the Florida manatee or an old-time, Roy Rogersesque western cowboy.  So when he finally lucked out and found an old-school girl for himself, he felt remarkable kinship to a gemstone miner in South Africa who has just unearthed the next Hope Diamond.  He vowed that he would treat this incomparably exquisite creature with respect, with gratitude, with no small degree of adulation, with saintliness even…..and that if their bond was ever to be broken, it would be as a direct result of her actions and not his own. Said was a promise he was destined to break, of course, but—Spoiler Alert!—the surprise here lies in the astonishingly short duration before his transgression occurred and not in its virtually guaranteed immediate disavowal, this coming from someone whose not always splendid behavior was almost as predictable as the phases of the moon…..

The absolute saddest thing in life is standing helplessly on the sidelines watching pure potential go unrealized.  So many people are arrantly talentless, and therefore to watch someone who isn’t waste their God-given gifts defies logic and is serious cause for dolor.  If only drive and ambition were as commonplace as raw ability, but they undisputably aren’t and the competition between the two isn’t particularly close. Dedication is the great equalizer in life, and I would automatically take one conscientious hard worker over ten precocious but lazy prodigies any day of the week if I badly needed to get a job done in a timely manner. Pity the underachieving louts! Life doesn’t owe them anything. Contrarily, they owe life EVERYTHING, more specifically compensation for pillaging finite resources on a tiny blue planet that, for all we know, is the only one in an infinitely huge Universe that nurtures life and accepts all comers, irrespective of their level of gratitude.

Confidence breeds success.  And success breeds increased confidence…..this is a wonderful, self-perpetuating cycle, isn’t it?  But what is the key ingredient I haven’t spoken about yet?  Trying.  Effort.  Attempting.  Engaging.  In order to enjoy any measure of success, you must first have the guts to try.  You cannot succeed without first trying.  Such may sound like a moronically obvious statement, but you would be astounded to learn how many individuals sit on the sidelines—endlessly watching—and then have the audacity to complain about their lack of success and the fact they’ve never received any “breaks” in life.  What a crock of shit that is!  No one succeeds every time they attempt something, but those who have experienced failure are also the same people who will ultimately taste success. Those successes will henceforth multiply over time as the individual’s confidence initially blossoms and then continues to mushroom, oftentimes exponentially.  But first you must try.  Trying is the critical ingredient. Trying is paramount.  I hereby promise you this: Short of an incipient effort, nothing of merit will ever come your way.

…..after her horrific experience from the day before, she felt God and Satan and all the primal forces of nature must be conspiring together to bully her into submission.  Life just could not get any worse than this.  Goddamnitall, why had she even been born in the first place? Yes, why?!  It was a fair question; it was not an overreaction.. She couldn’t possibly dip any lower on the universal Scale of Happiness; she had already plummeted past the erstwhile nadir at warp speed and was now in uncharted territory and still sinking faster than a shot put dropped into a vat full of Jello.  But after a good night’s sleep to clear her head and a forthright dialogue with her inner psyche, she came to the mature realization that fortune waxes and wanes with complete randomness and that she had merely found herself at the bottom of that cyclical trough for one miserable day in her finite journey through the Valley of Consciousness. One miserable day, yes, that’s all it had been.  The temporal rotten apple in the barrel of life. The dregs at the bottom of a barrel of bourbon whiskey.  The armpit contaminating an otherwise pristine human body. Today will be a better day, for sure, she told herself.  Yes yes, it really will be!  HONEST!!!  Truth is, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than the calendar monster that had been racing around egregiously out of control, little different than an elephant at a tea party, which stunk to high heaven and answered exclusively to the moniker of “yesterday”.…..

The sagest advice EVER to anyone under forty years of age:  When ya could’ve……..YA SHOULD’VE!  Truly!!!  The physical capabilities and robustness and stamina of youth only last for a relatively short period of time, therefore do not take those priceless commodities for granted when you stand in proud possession of them.  Use ‘em often when you’re a “kid”—Use ‘em just as often as you possibly can!—and use ‘em a lot too! More than common sense and discretion and our old friend healthy moderation would ever dictate; overuse is not a factor that should even be considered.  Cuz when they’re gone, trust me……they’re gone for good!  SAYANORA, BOYS AND GIRLS!  OUT THE WINDOW!!! Fading youth is a trapdoor we all fall through from which escape is not possible. But if you’re one of those obstinate individuals who happens to have a bellicose streak running through you a mile wide and consequently don’t wanna trust my advice on this subject, I would strongly encourage you to conduct a speedy survey down at your nearest nursing home.  I‘ll bet one hundred dollars hard cash—One thousand dollars?—that you’ll discover the superannuated fossils hanging out at those long-range hospices will stand in near unanimous agreement with my frank assessment.

Are ignorance and stubbornness the same guy…..only with his hair parted just a little bit differently than before, maybe a few pounds lighter, sporting a three-day growth of beard now, and currently dressed in disparate, more-hip apparel?  Are ignorance and stubbornness actually the same person…..only answering to different aliases?  Do ignorance and stubbornness reflect the exact same genome…..only to be manifested as strikingly unique phenomes at a later date?  Are ignorance and blind stubbornness really the same entities masquerading under misleadingly different names?  I think so.  Yes yes, I definitely believe they are one and the same!  Ignorance and abject stubbornness are in fact identical entities, and the only means of differentiating them is by stealthily surveilling a situation and then watching to see whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde steps out from behind the curtain at any discrete moment in time.