…..feeding the dinosaurs.  I call it “feeding the dinosaurs”.  Funny expression, I know, but I’ve really grown to like it and gleefully embrace these three simple words.  To wit, such behavior entails bowing to and being overly deferential to the gods of the past.  Saluting the past.  Looking to the past for every correct answer.  Kowtowing to the past.  Worshipping the past even.  Triaging the past over the present and, more sinisterly, over  that treasure chest of hopes and dreams for the future which, naturally, means selfish, highly immature people who behave this way and think in this fashion effectively prioritize their wishes and lives over those of their children and grandchildren.  Now let me ask you this:  How onerous is this type of egotistical behavior?!?!  How self-centered and self-indulgent can people get where they actually believe their personal welfare and continued existence supersedes that of their progeny?!?!  HOW REPUGNANT AND REVOLTING AND DETESTABLE AND DOWNRIGHT LOATHSOME……….?!?!?!  And yet countless doddering relics defy common decency and seem to believe their continued presence on Earth’s surface is the most pressing problem facing humanity…..

Is intrinsic, unalloyed ignorance justifiable and a forgivable offense?  If someone has not been blessed with a naturally open, inquisitive, expansive mind, is that somehow the ignoramus’s fault?  Can one be blamed for the way they were born or, more precisely, for being granted a Lilliputian intellectual arsenal with which to view and pursuantly attack daily life?  Who knows the correct answers to these questions, chiefly because it is so difficult to discern between authentic natural deficiencies as opposed to cultural adaptations.  Yet I suppose the affirmative is true.  One shouldn’t blame a white man who is only 5’6” in height and jumps like a bloated hippopotamus for underperforming and embarrassing himself in the NBA; you shouldn’t blame a man who has been color-blind since birth for fucking up the wiring in your new house and causing it to burn to the ground; you shouldn’t blame someone who is totally deaf for being a piss-poor musician who can never adequately immerse himself in a classic piece’s rhythm; you shouldn’t blame a man who was born ghastly ugly for not being a woman magnet; you shouldn’t blame a leopard for being born with spots all over its body; and likewise you should never hold a stupid individual entirely responsible for his/her uninformed, reactionary opinions, particularly as those opinions might relate to the political arena.  I’m obviously referring here to those staggeringly fatuous dipshits who vehemently deny global warming even as temperature records continue to tumble on a yearly basis while wildfires consume ever more land throughout the world, refuse to get vaccinated against a deadly virus in the name of some goofy, undefined individual “right” and as a result needlessly exacerbate a once-in-a-century pandemic, support common criminal Donald Trump even as ever more incriminating information comes to light indicting the unscrupulous louse , insist the January 6^th riot was not an insurrection intended to overturn a legally contested election, promulgate the idea of unlimited firearm “rights” so mentally disturbed individuals can run around massacring innocent people, etc., etc., etc.  Yes, THOSE unimaginably dumb bastards!  It ain’t entirely their fault, remember.  For better or worse, these disadvantaged creatures were simply predestined to be born in this manner and that fact will never change, just as the sun will come up tomorrow morning in the east and rivers will continue running to the sea and the Loch Ness Monster will continue to go unsubstantiated.  After all, the more things change…..

…..I called her name and she didn’t answer.  I called again…..still no response.  And of course that’s when I started getting nervous, started getting antsier than a dropped potato chip at a summer picnic.  This wasn’t like her, wasn’t characteristic of her normal behavior.  Something must be wrong…..  So I went to investigate the mystery, and what I found stopped me dead in my tracks.  She was there alright, there right where she was supposed to be…..but not as a living, breathing organism anymore; rigor mortis had already set it, and her eyes—although still hauntingly open—were glazed over and drying up rapidly.  What the…..?!?!?! The bizarre scenario didn’t afford me time to answer this hypothetical question, however, because I suddenly turned pale and got sick then and narrowly missed hitting her stiff body with a blistering stream of vomitus.  Shiiiiitttt!!!  Goddamnitall!!!  HOLY SHIT ALREADY!!!!!  “Great!” I thought to myself.  Now you have more than a dead body lying in your bedroom under suspicious circumstances to contend with; you also have this smelly, unseemly mess to clean off your carpet before the gross stuff settles into the fabric and subsequently reeks for half an eternity whenever the indoor humidity spikes.…..

If you believe in something badly enough or want something to happen badly enough, that wish will probably come true!  The five senses with which every human body naturally comes endowed subliminally shape themselves to accommodate what we are expecting or longing for.  A strongly held belief is akin to a detailed road map which will religiously lead us to the destination of our choosing.  Ergo, a strongly held belief is equivalent to probably ninety five percent of the so-called “knowledge” we carry around with us in our brains.  When you know precisely what you are looking for—be it a gold keepsake locket in a dresser drawer, the freshest watermelon in a bin overflowing with them at the local supermarket, the proverbial needle in a haystack, or—And here’s the crux of today’s lesson, children!—“factual” and/or sensory data points to support a powerfully held belief, finding that desired item pursuantly becomes immeasurably easier.  We inveterately see only that which we are looking for, and in the process generally ignore or disregard any observations and information that might obfuscate our Holy Grail of thought.  We know what we believe, and everything else is heresy.

…..I don’t ever wanna go back to that innately beguiling place.  Yeah, yeah, I know that it is alluring as all get out and beckons with the magnetism of a ravishing seductress, but the past is a fraud, a liar, a destroyer of youthful dreams.  It can never be trusted.  The circumstances surrounding me today are hopelessly fucked up and a complete unadulterated mess and maybe (likely) beyond redemption, but the past is not the answer for any of that; it is no tonic or remedy or secret sauce.  Rather, the past grossly misrepresents—lies even—with regard to its true underlying character.  Things were never so good back then as they appear nowadays.  Not all roses and no thorns.  Not all laughter and no pain.  Not all days blessed with radiant sunshine and a pronounced absence of stormy nights showcasing howling winds and pelting hail as house lights flickered on and off signifying mischievous electrical gremlins were in the process of deciding whether they wanted to pull the plug on the grid completely to inflict even more havoc into one’s personal life.  The past would have you believe that every day was a stroll through a redolent lilac garden and that Nirvana had at long last been found and that no ill was ever visited upon anyone, but that is all a big lie.  A huge, disgusting lie!!!  Bad things did happen to you back then—Lots and lots of them!—but for some unknown reason a mammoth filter has since been erected between the past and the present which screens out evil and drudgery and every unpleasantry and leaves in its wake nothing but rosy memories and sweet reminiscences.  Forget that deceitful shit already!  It’s all a charade, a big fib, a house constructed of flimsy Dollar Store cards.  The past is quite simply a mirror reflection of the present, only it features a younger version of your present day self—and you are inarguably a substantially wiser, more enlightened, less naive individual now than you were back then—yet with that aforementioned ginormous filter separating the two timeframes.  Nothing more and nothing less.  You are exactly the same person now as you were back in “the good old days”.  Same person, only undeniably smarter now as you struggle to navigate through a totally different era.  So don’t hyperventilate over the past and believe that it is some sort of panacea for the present and a benign refuge from today’s nagging, intractable problems.  It isn’t and never will be.  Those problems were just as nagging and intractable back then as they are today; “callow you” were just too credulous to realize it.  The past will always look highly attractive and superior to the present—That’s purely the nature of the flirtatious beast!—but don’t believe such nonsense for even a nanosecond.  The past makes a habit of lying indiscriminately and today is no different.  These problems you are currently facing and bemoaning are uncommonly challenging, no doubt, but looking backward in time is not a solution for any of them.  Work on solving your problems predicated upon today’s terms and circumstances exclusively.  The present can be brutal and bleak and unforgiving, but at least it’s inherently honest.  The same cannot be said of that dishonest scoundrel masquerading under the alias of “the past”; that deceitful asshole lies and distorts the truth all the time and, what’s worse, it takes great pleasure in doing so.  As a result, the shape-changing past inflicts a lot of needless pain upon undiscerning individuals who insist on looking backward rather than forward…..

“pride, principle, poise, and purpose”     When all is said and done and your final life script has been written and submitted for review, these are the only human character entities that authentically matter.  Nothing else.  Nothing more nuanced or multi-layered or esoteric. Nothing hiding in the attic or in a secret crawl-space or somewhere unobvious—lost between cracks and covert niches and camouflaged nearly to death.  Pride, principle, poise, and purpose.  If you live your life constantly tethered to these four foundational paragons—using them and them alone as the buoys to guide your one-time odyssey across a vast, pitch black, uncharted temporal body of water—you will never have anything to be ashamed of.  In the big, BIG scheme of things—the only scheme which ultimately matters, in other words—pride, principle, poise, and purpose rule the day and define you as a person and noble denizen of Earth; nothing else even comes close, nor should it.

They’re only words……..   Yes, they’re “only” words…..   But…..the underlying beauty of words is that—no matter how few or however many of them you use—they wield mind-blowing power and a redoubtable stature that don’t cost you ANYTHING!  That’s right—they don’t cost a thing!  For all of their connatural power, words cost absolutely NOTHING and will not decimate or even so much as minorly dent any of your bank accounts!!!  The most basic foundational truth in the discipline of economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, yet I would submit the written word comes closest to violating this fundamental theorem.  Words may not be technically free, but they give you distinctly more bang for the buck than any other form of currency—literally or figuratively.

Forty

By Frederick J. Blahnik

When I was just ten years old…….

I saw this geezer down by the lake one day.

The old fart was gray around the temples, had the beginnings of a beer belly—I heard through the grapevine that the superannuated son-of-a-bitch had even fought in World War II (where they probably used spears and catapults for weapons)!

This man was ancient, I tell you, a relic from the past…..a fuckin’ living fossil…..a true brontosaur!

I bet he was at least forty years old!!!

When I was twenty years old…….

I saw this middle-aged guy at college one day.

He was tooling around campus in a red convertible, chasing after young coeds—y’know, I was actually embarrassed for the immature, detestable creep.

The old coot was old enough to be their dad–perhaps even a granddad if he had his eyes trained on one of the freshmen babes.

Hell, he could easily have been forty years old!!!

When I was thirty years old……..

And driving to work one day, I saw this overweight fellow jogging down a bike path sans a shirt.

He was sweating profusely, his oversized tits sagged just like a woman’s and, what’s more, those grotesque flabby appendages bounced crazily to and fro every time his feet smacked the ground.

This ugly freak of nature presented a tawdry spectacle to my ambushed, unaccustomed eyes; I wouldn’t have traded places with the poor slob for a million dollars.

He epitomized one of those conceited forty-year-olds you see all the time–hopelessly trapped in a youthful time warp–struggling in vain to defy his genetic destiny!!!

Last week I stopped at the supermarket after work for a few groceries.

I ran into an old high school classmate I hadn’t seen in years.

We talked about old times–“the glory days”–about how quickly the years and decades and succession of presidents had flown by.

This guy looked great, quite youthful actually, not much different than I remembered him as an All-Conference running back on the varsity football team our senior year.

As we said our good-byes, he mentioned that he would be turning forty years old next week.

Forty years old?

FORTY YEARS OLD?!?!?!

Are you absolutely positive?!?!?!?!

HE’S turning forty?!?!

HIM?!?!?!?!?!?!

My high school classmate…..a good friend of mine back when we were wild teenagers growing up together…..a kid with whom I walked down our gymnasium aisle not that many years ago, we listened semi-attentively as a monotonous speaker struggled to explain why the occasion in question was in fact a “commencement” rather than an ending despite every voice inside me screaming otherwise, and then my buddy and I together with every other member of our graduating class paraded triumphantly back down that same aisle out into the exhilaratingly fresh spring air to conquer the world which was waiting expectantly for our grandiose debut.

IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!! 

Utterly fuckin’ impossible, I tell you!!!!!

THIS………CANNOT.………BE!!!!!!!!!!

Why, the fellow standing in front of me now at a Fred Meyer supermarket still looks sprightly and virile and a trifle pugnacious……exactly the same as he did back in high school!!!

I guess forty can’t be that old anymore……

I must’ve been wrong all those other times in the past.

Yesterday I attended a business seminar down at the convention center.

One of the guys there was bitching and complaining about everything under the sun.

He had a three-vessel heart bypass operation last spring, he’ll probably need to have his right knee replaced sometime soon, his prostate is grossly inflamed and going straight to hell and now he has an irresistible urge to piss all the time.

The poor bastard! 

His whole body is falling to pieces all around him even as he continues inhabiting that pitiful, decrepit thing.                                                

Staring at this feeble guy for a few seconds, it was easy to appreciate the sad dilemma he’s facing…….

Why, I’d bet all of my next paycheck plus some that the whiny old graybeard isn’t a day under sixty!!

…..the light went out in his life—not A light, THE light—the day she left unexpectedly, sans explanation or remorse, and it was forever extinguished after that.  He kept on living, of course, the functional aspects of living at least—eating, breathing, pumping blood, producing hormones, excreting bodily wastes, commanding five disparate senses—but the purpose he once enthusiastically subscribed to for occupying a cherished spot on Earth’s lush surface no longer existed.  He lived on only because it seemed too much of an effort for him to take his own life in collaboration with the embarrassment he knew it would cause his family if he followed through with such a selfish, cowardly act.  You see, it wasn’t that living without her was that awfully BAD in any strict sense, it was just……it was just…..it was just……just…..just…..just a bunch of day-after-day nothingness…..a yawning wasteland—a temporal vacuum devoid of all passion and pleasure which suggested infinity to no insignificant extent and  gave every impression of lasting forever…..

The best way to finish a challenging project is to start it.  And, no, I am not being flip and facetious by saying this either.  Procrastination is the chief enemy of productivity and will unremittingly stand in its way if given the chance. Never allow this to happen!  Don’t just start that difficult project you’ve been putting off since roughly the same time intermittent raindrops started falling on Noah’s head and the thought of building a massive ark crept into the back of his mind, but proceed briskly into it until you surpass the threshold of no return.  Only then, after you are too deep into an endeavor to sensibly turn back, can you temporarily let your guard down and allow yourself the luxury of relaxation, albeit not for too long.  Rest at that juncture—but not indefinitely.  Remember—you don’t have any laurels to rest upon yet; those will come at a later date!