If you somehow miss out on your lifelong dream, then by all means create a new one as soon as possible!  Don’t just sit around moping and losing sleep over what might have been.  That ship has already sailed.  That egg has already been fried.  That raindrop is now part of the raging river.  That chicken has flown the coop.  That pot-roast is cooked. The aforementioned ship ain’t ever gonna return irrespective of your most fervent desires, ergo begin making preparations to climb aboard the next vessel that happens along, oftentimes unannounced and serendipitously.  Because if you don’t—If you continue gazing longingly backward into that unchangeable abyss which is the past—you’ll most definitely wind up missing out on the next craft that adventitiously passes through your life as well and, what’s more, you’ll have no one to blame for this “terrible misfortune” but yourself.

January 26^th, 2026

Heroes

By Frederick J. Blahnik

Martyrs

Slumped over lifeless with glazed eyes

Riddled full of Icemen bullet holes

Their only sin was standing up for disadvantaged brothers and sisters

And possessing healthy, hardworking consciences

Now they’ll never stand up for anyone or anything again

Their futures stolen from them by masked, barbarous criminals

Martyrs for a noble cause—Yes!

But were they bona fide heroes?

Were they the best of the best that mankind has to offer?

Probably not

Yet they did come painfully close; they were Pretti Good

Yes, those two blessed, altruistic souls were Pretti Good, for sure!

Martyrs

Got up in the morning believing a long future lay ahead of them

But that can change in the blink of an eye and the panicked tug of a trigger

Now slumped over lifeless with blood pouring out of Icemen bullet holes

Both meant well, but good intentions weren’t nearly enough to save them

Strong convictions grounded in kindness, but two horrible, felonious outcomes nonetheless

Fought the good fight, but dreams always die last

Martyrs for a noble cause—Yes!

But were they bona fide heroes?

Were they the best of the best that mankind has to offer?

Probably not

Yet they did come painfully close; they were Pretti Good

Yes, those two blessed, altruistic souls were Pretti Good, for sure!

Martyrs

Fighting a fight they didn’t have to

They could’ve just shrugged their shoulders and accepted government tyranny

But their consciences wouldn’t allow them to do that

No, they were virtuous people who stood for so much more than stasis

Now their bodies lie lifeless, punctured all over with murderous Icemen bullets

With their characters being assassinated too before their blood even stops flowing

Martyrs for a noble cause—Yes!

But were they bona fide heroes?

Were they the best of the best that mankind has to offer?

Probably not

Yet they did come painfully close; they were Pretti Good

Yes, those two blessed, altruistic souls were Pretti Good, for sure!

Victims of brutally tragic circumstances, Alex Pretti and Renee Good will live on in the annals of virtue forever even if they weren’t conventional, Wild West heroes.

May their souls rest in peace!

You cannot be the problem and the solution at the same time.  You cannot be the question and the answer all rolled together into one convenient ball of clay.  You cannot claim to be on the outside if you’ve lived all your life on the inside.  You cannot be the predator and its prey in the same instant.  You cannot claim empathy if you’ve never walked a mile in the other person’s shoes.  You cannot be truth and duplicity simultaneously. You cannot be tactful and tactless in the same breath. You just cannot BE any of these things and still be honest with yourself. To insist otherwise brands you a fake, a fraud…..an immanently mendacious charlatan.  Hence surveil your behavior at all times and don’t then!!!

She stopped praying one day simply because her prayers were seldom answered, and the random ones that were answered could just as credibly be ascribed to chance as divine intervention.  Who can reliably ascertain whether a prayer has truly been answered by a benign deity as opposed to the vagaries of fate “determining” what a certain outcome might be?  No one.  Modern science cannot answer such a transcendent question, nor can modern medicine nor a corps of the most learned philosophers ensconced within the lofty ivory towers of academia.  People have preconceived beliefs, usually strongly held, and they’ll believe only those parts of a narrative that align with their convictions.  In the same vein, positive outcomes will be ascribed to the God they pray to, while negative outcomes will be willfully ignored and “their” God will not be blamed for them nor vilified as an unreliable, backstabbing slacker. God has a pretty sweet life in the minds of these sycophantic disciples: He/She receives all the credit when something turns out peachy, but shoulders no blame when a situation ultimately heads south into the cesspool.

Human life is not for everyone. Let’s face it, some people are not well suited for an earthly existence.  They struggle to adjust to life’s many peaks and valleys and continue struggling just as hard at eighty years of age (if they happen to make it that far) as they did at eight months and eight years and eighteen blue moons. Just because you were born doesn’t mean the road ahead is perpetually straight, perpetually flat, perpetually sunny, paved with newly poured, pothole-free asphalt throughout its duration, and overhung with apple and citrus trees boasting epicurean fruit ripe for the plucking every step of the way.  For some people that scenario may be and is the case, but for others—for an unfortunately copious number, in fact—the aforementioned road is a godawfully curvy, hilly, overcast, pothole-infested nightmare with poisonous snakes periodically lunging at them unexpectedly from those suddenly barren apple and citrus trees. And these challenged people have no choice but to adapt quickly and learn to survive as opposed to thrive, to count their limited blessings instead of whimpering loudly about the frequent hurdles that spring up in their way, to settle for small pleasures in contrast to being the recipients of major, oftentimes undeserved, largesse, and—climactically…..to be satisfied with mediocrity in the end.  Yes, that’s right, to settle for much-derided mediocrity and, furthermore, to then feign ersatz happiness with same. Act like you’re a pig joyously gulping down slop compared to its erstwhile friend stuffed inside a livestock trailer that is being backed up to the intake door to a bustling slaughterhouse. Act like you’re the life of the party garnering flirtatious glances from every voluptuous, bodacious harlot in the joint rather than perpetually embodying the habitual wallflower. Act like you’re the hammer for a change instead of always manifesting the nail. Yes, I know these are awfully big asks, but what other recourse is there? Huh?! Bawling over your dinner each night while chronically decrying the unfairness and terribleness of life? Life is not fair by any stretch of the imagination, and these faux heroic people stand as Case Example #1 to support this assertion. Remember: They did not choose life; the metaphysical arbiters of life arbitrarily chose them and pursuantly threw myriad significant obstacles in their pathways as the Arrow of Time unalterably inched its way rightward. That said, these lost souls are nonetheless left to deal with the mess they were handed in the best manner they know how.  Nothing is fair also means that EVERYTHING is fair…..in love, in war, and in life itself. GET USED TO IT!!!

Some people live big lives while others live teensy lives.  Why is this so?  Why do certain people have such a disproportionately greater impact on humanity than their lesser compatriots, yet seemingly without expending any more effort and energy than their struggling counterparts?  The answer is fear or, rather, lack thereof.  Individuals who are not afraid to try new things, go new places, and meet new people live noteworthily larger lives than individuals who cling to their hometowns, cling to their small clique of friends, cling to their old traditions, and cling to the past analogous to an infant staunchly clutching onto its filthy security blanket. People like these—And there are a whole shitload of them probably comprising a sizable majority; let’s not fool ourselves here!—are akin to bloated cucumbers that, left unattended out in the garden, eventually turn a pukey shade of yellow and rot on the vine.  Change is nearly always synonymous with personal growth; stasis is nearly always synonymous with stagnation leading to an ultimate unnoticed demise.

Once in a while in life—not often, mind you, but every now and then—you just have to take a deep breath, close your eyes…..and dive into the deep end of the pool off the high board!  Throw caution to the wind.  Defy rationality.  Veer off the safe, beaten path.  Follow your gut instincts.  Trust in your inner self.  Cast aside your strict, oppressive budget.  Close your eyes and plunge into the darkness. Above all else: BELIEVE in yourself with all your heart and all your soul!  If all you ever do is chase after convention, then you are no better off and no more refined than any of the multitude of Holstein-Friesians that obsequiously follow the bell cow in from pasture every evening to be drained of their milk.  But, trust me, you are better than those mindless, docile beasts!  You’ve been blessed with a strong sense of free will; do not squander this empyreal gift by being afraid to take chances.  Life is all about making choices, but if you allow society and others to blindly make all those choices for you, then you slavishly deserve the boring, pedestrian fate that invariably awaits.

…..an opportunity was there for the taking, but like all stupid ignoramuses I mistook it for a problem instead and instinctively fled the scene in a panic without acting or even thinking clearly.  And akin to virtually every opportunity that manifests, this chance was present for only an instant before it disappeared with all the grandiosity of a ghost, and I was then left to live with eternal regrets of what might have been had I only possessed the courage and intuition to recognize the lopsided rewards I could reasonably expect to harvest in a nonpunitive period of time and thereupon marshalled the courage needed to confront this highly fluid situation forcefully and head-on.  But that didn’t happen.  No, nothing remotely close to that happened.  Rather, I failed to act decisively during that pivotal moment so I’m now left holding an empty bag as I trudge away from the scene of the “crime” pushing a wheelbarrow loaded chockfull of regrets, remorse, and ruefulness, even as some other lucky fool (Luck?!  Hell no, luck had nothing to do with the outcome!) runs off grinning fiendishly with his jumbo-sized sack overflowing with lucre…..

…..when the moment of truth arrived unannounced and of a sudden, he didn’t know whether he could trust his employer after all his years of professional servitude.  Honestly, he really didn’t know for sure!  And that left him with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and a horrible, horrible aftertaste…..easily the most horrible aftertaste he had ever experienced in his lifetime.  Because when “the shit hits the fan” and “the rubber hits the road” and “the egg hits the skillet”, you must know instantly who you can trust and who you cannot trust; there simply isn’t sufficient time to conduct sophisticated, comprehensive surveys at such a critical juncture. Time is never your ally, of course, but especially at crucial moments such as these.  And if you don’t instinctively know the answer—if you have to waste unsalvageable time weighing possibilities against probabilities and then factor in potential consequences to boot—that is equivalent to a negative response, and the uncertainty that engulfs your ostensibly loyal employer at such a transcendent moment tells you everything you really need to know regarding your happiness and long-term prospects with the company in question. Implicit trust should never have to be earned more than once; it is always on them and not on you…..

…..I called her name and she didn’t answer. I called again…..still no reply.  Called her a third time…..same (non)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…..something drastic maybe?  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 obviously already set in, and her eyes—although still hauntingly open—were glazed over and drying up rapidly not unlike fresh grapes into raisins.  What the…..?! The bizarre spectacle didn’t afford any time to answer my 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 FUCK 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 indoor humidity winds up spiking over the summer months. Why, of all life’s niggling problems, and solely because of HER!!!.…..