Observation – Page 11

Whackadoodles

Charlie’s stifling influence couldn’t possibly affect me today, you can bet all your marbles and even some lesser mechanical components on that. I have half a mind to bust out my old soldering iron and go to town. I’ve been shopping around for motherboards to house in my new homemade personal computational device, for crunching numbers and the like. I’ve heard that there are some more sophisticated uses for them now, like finding a life partner and pissing away all your money on fake virtual coins, but that’s not my prerogative. Now food, that’s something I’m never tired of exploring. What a brave new world of culinary concoctions we’re in these days, I can’t even keep track of all these new fusion joints being put together by trendsetting chefs in the chic corners of the world. It’s just as well, I can’t afford to be jet-setting around just to try some cannoli wonton soup or petri dish gelatin dessert that costs $75 and you can’t even use a fork when eating it. Seriously, you have to just slurp it down like a jello shot. A $75 jello shot. Kids these days, I swear. We in the previous generation appear to be on our own now; the youths don’t seem to have the same kind of rapport with the common man as we do. I mean, I get it. There are more depressed and violent whackadoodles out there than ever before, and if you’re not an expert in sociolinguistics such as myself, you sure could feel like a quivering little leaf falling from the top of one of those monster eucalyptus trees. Everyone just seems to be craving personal time now. Gone are the days where I could just sit in a café and strike up a conversation; everyone is plugged into some whozit or whatzit. I don’t know, I always thought I wouldn’t turn out to be one of those stick-in-the-mud kind of guys, but now I understand the allure of the “ain’t what it used to be” paradigm. I’m just having trouble dealing with the old grouches to happen to share my viewpoint. Miserable old pricks. Well, we all have to get started on living our best lives at some point. Jeez, have I been talking this whole time? Sorry, kid. Can I have a club soda and some of that deconstructed fondue? I mean, I thought fondue was already decon–eh, forget about it. Just go ahead and put in my order. And don’t worry, I’ll tip!

Superficial

If bears could write,
would they choose that pastime
over climbing trees?
I’ll let you ponder that for a minute.

A can of whoop-ass overshadowed our biweekly WoundFest; there are only superficial injuries detailed in the most recent meeting minutes, no instances whatsoever of skin being broken. An average WoundFest should typically entail deep flesh wounds, mainly for the purpose of scaring away enthusiastic and misled newbies. The WFers are a tight-knit group, can’t have fair-weather harm-infliction hobbyists just jumping in and out all willy-nilly! What would say about WFers as a group? I’ll tell ya right now, it would make them look desperate! Soliciting the pain of complete outsiders and kicking them to the curb when they balk at the notion of losing a pint or two of blood… those despicable near-masochists need to stick with their own kind, so we don’t even broach this conversation in the first place, airing out our dirty laundry for the world to see.

Now, what these here WFers need to do, if they’re in the business of enlisting new members, is go out to the woods and rustle up a few bears. That would definitely take the unrequited writing ability off of their minds for a little bit, while practically guaranteeing worthwhile flesh wounds in the process (bloodlust is a hell of a drug). I can only imagine how excruciating it must be to possess the ability to manipulate something as complex and abstract as modern language with absolutely no ability to record it, aside from rudimentary scratch marks on tree bark that could never be appreciated as a contribution to the literary canon. At best, they’ll be confused with the cliché summer camp gouge marks left behind by horny pre-teens.

Kicking Around

A shrewd entrepreneur would–should–do anything in their power to corner the intuitive market of scarcity designed for the particular demographic concerned with–for example–how many hands reside on their watch face. Two is the bare minimum, three is optimal, four is impractical and irresponsible.

Along with this peculiar and pragmatic market segment, several other significant archetypes are not to be left behind (popular categories are conveniently located in your handbooks for perusal at your leisure). As their respective facets are revealed, it will invariably be identified that many of these have indeed been kicking around since the dawn of history, let alone the beginning of the free market economy.

When pressed to demonstrate our knowledge of these groups, exercising our right to dissect this polarizing slice of modernity, we must admit to ourselves that stereotyping can be dangerous if taken as truth. All of a sudden our watch-hand-obsessive type takes on a bit more humanity. Did you know that a noticeable amount of people within the watch-hand-obsessive grouping prefer their toasts unbuttered, substituting a liberal helping of sliced avocado? The algorithms never lie.

Crux

Feel free to experience the soul’s consciousness for as long as you can possibly bear it; don’t make excuses to avoid or replace it with cheap thrills designed to siphon thought into a tawdry funnel of spent emotion. You’re better than that, Deandre. I’ve known you since you were a budding young talent. Don’t get me wrong, I’m your biggest fan. I can only imagine the potential you hold in your incisors and between five to ten fingers, depending on your level of ambidextrousness. Do not fret! Fretting will get you absolutely nowhere. I’m saying no man’s land, ya dig? Many people have been in your position plenty of times in recorded history, and the issue lies in their penchant to alienate themselves until their perception of life comes from an internal gyration that’s out of tune with the common perception of just what it is that seems to make life so special in the first place. If you can answer me why it is that life is at all special (with a nod to my unflappable inner cynic, mind you), I will reward you with the knowledge that comes along with the essence that could be construed as the crux of Johnny Cash’s “A Satisfied Mind”. Just listen to good music, dear, and don’t worry about forming your own tastes and possibly offending others with your assertion of the importance of personal expression.

Are you going to eat that applesauce?

Spitballing

I may be a temperamental weirdo, but at least I don’t refuse to bathe for fear of shortening my lifespan. I don’t profess to have an alter ego, and I most certainly don’t carry a blank-loaded revolver with me to scare off adoring fans. Then again, I don’t need to worry about fanatical admirers breaking down my door to get an autograph (or even just a good look at me), so perhaps I’m taking my relative anonymity for granted here. In my heart of hearts, I suppose I’d like to achieve at least a modicum of notability for my extended creative efforts, but if that daydream actually came to fruition, I’d need to come up with a nutty character quirk to demonstrate to the masses that I’m a one-of-a-kind talent. I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here, but maybe I could carry a straw and small scraps of easily-moistenable paper with me, to ward off rabid devourers of my work. I could develop the habit of high-pitched yelping, you know, to emulate the sound of a wounded woodland mammal. Or I could carry around a “pet” with me that I talk to all the time, like a bottle cap or wooden bowl. All of those ideas are crap, I know, but if I hit on a good one, I’m pretty much guaranteed to go down in history as one of those “oddball eccentrics” that the normies can have fun chuckling about at their potluck dinners.

First Things First

Nobody will tell you that religion is simply an iteration of our innate human ability to question and ascribe meaning to the phenomena we encounter in our immediate surroundings. Being able to alter our environment with the level of skill we’ve come to develop over the past few millennia, how many of us ever stop to wonder about the first moment our species graduated from nature’s master class in manipulation? Let’s not forget, we were once as defenseless as all the other beings to inhabit this planet, but we took great measures to ensure survival at all costs, to the chagrin of the very globe that fostered our greedy development.

Now here we are, coughing up smog and trying to figure out how best to colonize our moon (Mars is still a pipe dream). Hopefully we can find a way to bring our religion to other regions of our solar system, and perhaps even to the rest of the universe. As chosen (not brainwashed) people of God (not a fictional authority figure fabricated to alleviate the guilt that forms when we commit genocide and snatch unsuspecting people’s land), it is our divine duty to carry out HIS WORD. The wool has been removed from over our eyes (with the rug soon to be pulled out from under our feet), and there’s a whole universe of sinners who need the salvation of the LORD!

Now first things first, does anybody here know how to build a rocket ship?

We Monkeys

Denominative integers willingly defy the overall forcefulness by which we enter life, that succulent foe of knowing all things on a benevolent basis–at least from our pseudointellectual standpoint here on earth. We monkeys, swept from trees to town squares in a seemingly-overnight fashion, gave nobody any time to appropriately enter our problematic pituitary case into the annals of the intergalactic community. Our brash attempt to circumvent the necessary bureaucratic process–filling out the appropriate paperwork, having it notarized, sending it to local legislators and mailing one of 13 official public access stations for broadcast–demonstrates the jury-rigging, bootstrapping mentality that may have endeared us to our own species, yet alienates everybody else. When you apply simple rules to us, we seem to be inclined toward throwing tantrums. You know as well as I that our current behavior won’t fly with the more-evolved entities out there. If conducted efficiently, the contact broadcast process would be complete within a business week. So now, the more time we waste without adhering to measured standards, the more likely we are to fall altogether as a global community. Our “home” planet will slough us off before too long, tired of the countless indignities suffered at the hands of fools.