Category Archives: Thoughts @ Large

•  Tonight my wife asks me if I want anything besides the salad and barbecue sandwich.   I say no, just your undying love.  And world peace.

•  If wine tasted good enough in the first place (given its price), there would be no need for the proliferation of aeration and delivery devices that are supposed to make it taste better.  I say, just pour it and drink it, and if it’s not satisfying then it’s either the wine’s fault or you opened it too soon.

•  I like to hide puzzles in my writings and in my artwork, for others to ponder and solve.  But it never seems to occur to me that others may have neither the patience or inclination to solve them.  I can’t figure out why that might be — how puzzling.

•  I tire of film and television scenes in which male-female conflicts and/or arguments are resolved by the antagonists having sex.  Whose fantasies are being served here?

•  Your friends: they have seen you at your best and they have seen you at your worst and somehow they remain your friends.  I offer this as both a definition and a formation rule.

•  I was not quite eleven years old when the Beatles’ Please Please Me was a hit in the U.S.   It was a nostalgic re-listen for me the other day.  Here are its opening verses:

Last night I said these words to my girl,
I know you never even try girl.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon
Please please me, oh yeah,
Like I please you.

You don’t need me to show the way, love.
Why do I always have to say “love,”
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon
Please please me oh yeah,
Like I please you.

I must say I was surprised how sexually suggestive the lyrics now seem.  Please Please Me was released in the U.S. more than two years before the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, but on closer listen the Beatles were as every bit as plaintive as the Stones of the chronic and apparently painful hypertestosteronism suffered by post-adolescent men of that era.

•  Should I worry if my wife decides to serve me half a sweet potato for dessert?  I ask this hypothetically, mind you.  For a friend.

•  It’s tax season once again, so I went to Walgreens yesterday to ask for printouts of our 2017 prescription expenses.  The pharmacy had told me I could present my wife’s ID and pick up the printouts for both of us, but when I showed up, they had changed their minds.  They would only give me my own printout.  The tech explained that because my wife had not expressly authorized them to share her information with me, they could only give me my own printout.  I pointed out that I pick up her actual medications all the time at the Walgreens drive-in window without showing any ID.  No matter: I left half-empty-handed.

•  Potato-and-cauliflower dishes seem to be the in-thing for self-professed healthy eaters.   I can only agree — nothing like adding cauliflower to make one want to give up potatoes.

•  There are cruise people and will-never-do-a-cruise people.  I’m in the second category.  The idea of being confined to a ship for seven days with periodic disembarkments does not appeal to me in the least, no matter what amenities are offered.  But as I have learned, will-never-do-a-cruise people will never convince cruise people of our essential nature.  Cruise people say, “You don’t know what you are talking about — you have never been on a cruise!  You would love it if you tried it!”  My reply is, neither of us have climbed Everest, but that does not preclude us from dreading the ordeals of the attempt.

•  Water is often described as a tasteless, odorless liquid.  But my friend Luxa from Orak disagrees: she tells me that water tastes like cwonri and smells like futi and she hates it.  Luxa also says that, on her planet, water would have to be heated in order to liquefy it and make it drinkable.  But she doesn’t understand why anyone would want to do that.

•  One sure way to identify a racist: he or she mentions green, orange and purple people while claiming to be free of prejudices.

•  Some American citizens seem to think that the First Amendment guarantees their right to remain ignorant and uninformed.  Freedom From Information, if you will.

•  I often ask myself why I still have so much bitterness-combined-with-nostalgia about my career at Kodak.  It was like a painting I worked on for thirty years that only I appreciated and then it got thrown into a dumpster after I left.  I’ll get over it, eventually.

•  I know a woman who used to be a dietician.  But she was bothered by the fact that her occupation started with the letters die.  So she decided to call herself a nutritionist.

•  In 2018 and every year after that, I pledge to myself to do something creative every day.  I am not going to be famous.  I may or may not ever hang one of my paintings in a gallery (as if that is the hallmark of artistry) or sell one from a 10×10 tent at a craft fair.  But I do need to create.  The idea of devoting the last quarter of my life to doing something creative every day appeals to me.  And it seems to be attainable, if health circumstances allow.  So, in 2018, I intend to keep a daily record of my creative output, so that no day goes by.

•  In 2018, I will also keep a daily record of well-intentioned things I do for other people, again so that no day goes by.

•  Americans chronically overestimate the altruism and goodwill of other Americans. Asserting America’s essential decency is a national religion, with Norman Rockwell its honorary bishop.  But I am as skeptical of this religion as I am of any other.  I would say 20% to 25% of Americans from all walks of life and political persuasions are self-absorbed schmucks who don’t give two damns about the fellow Americans beyond their own circle.  Indeed, one’s very concept of fellow American dissipates rapidly upon reading the comment section of any local newspaper article.

•  People who buy their wine-drinking friends wine aerators for Christmas have no clue what to give them but do remember that they drink wine.

•  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it isn’t a duck, then it is an impostor.  That is, a quack.

•  People in deep thought scratch their heads or stroke their chins as if doing so will help something intelligent to emerge.  How did such behavior evolve?  I would encourage some aspiring psychology major to conduct a study that answers the question, “Do people who touch their faces make better or faster decisions than those who refrain from doing so?”

•  Online product reviews often reveal more about the reviewer than they do the product.  For example, one reviewer rated a set of wood drill bits two stars (out of five) because they were “not good for drilling into cement.”  Was he trying them out on his skull?

•  Open letter to editorial columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times: why not just retire and spare yourself (and the rest of us) your unending misery from having to live in the same universe as Bill and Hillary Clinton?

•  You are sitting in a church pew during a religious service, but you do not observe that faith, and then a tray is passed to you, and you just smile and hand it to the next person in the row.  If only that tray had not been handed to you, everything would have been cool!  But now you’re getting looks.  That’s just one of the prices you pay for not believing.

•  Disillusionment wasn’t invented in 1964.  I doubt there was ever a generation that did not experience disillusionment — how the establishment thwarted us, how powerless and ineffective we are, what little hope remains.  Each generation (and person) defines itself by its response to disillusionment.

•  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.

•  When Reince Priebus left, Donald Trump became the first president in over 100 years to not have a pet dog in the White House.

•  There are three kinds of books: the ones you’re glad you read, those that were a waste of time, and those you need to read.  Here is my three-column list of said books:

I invite you to share yours in the comments.