Category Archives: Thoughts @ Large

• They say dogs can smell fear. So if you come across a strange dog, you need to act like you are not afraid of it and hope that dogs do not smell pretense.

• Here is what I imagine Heaven to be like: I won’t have to remember the gender of your dog or cat, and you won’t chide me for using the wrong pronoun to refer to it.

• One more dog-related thought.  As a boy, I was a big fan of Charles Schulz.  I copied his drawing style and was greatly influenced by his sense of humor and timing.  I didn’t pay much attention to Peanuts as I grew older, which is sad because I missed gems like this:

This strip, from December 17, 1999, is one of the last ones Schulz drew before he died from colon cancer on February 12, 2000 — when dogs still used typewriters.

• If Charles Schulz is too intellectual for you, here is some You Tube dog humor that you may enjoy more.  Long live net neutrality.

• For years, daytime talk shows and evening newscasts have made it a point to feature victory stories — ordinary people overcoming overwhelming odds to achieve amazing things.  These stories are apparently meant to inspire us or, more cynically, end the program on a hopeful note so that we are more likely to tune in next time.  The universal appeal of victory stories makes me wonder: has evolution led our bodies to produce not only endorphins but also empathins, chemicals that stimulate our brains’ reward and action centers when we see others in trouble?  Research is warranted.

• Sponges have no nervous system and no feelings.  As if this weren’t misfortune enough, every day around the globe, we subject these poor creatures to even greater humiliation — we make them wipe the crumbs off our dishes and wash the scum off our floors with their own limp and soggy bodies.  Stop the torture now!  (Empathins indeed.)

• In his novel Boy’s Life (1991), mystery-horror author Robert McCammon wrote:

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us.  We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good.  Things happen to us.  Loved ones die.  People get in wrecks and get crippled.  People lose their way, for one reason or another.

I used to subscribe to this notion, that the wondrous naïvety of one’s brightly-colored,  irresponsible youth is more essential than that gray cynicism that settles in after years of hacking one’s way through the thickets of life.  But McCammon is wrong asserting that what is born within us is our essence — a blank slate is not more essential than the wisdom and experience inscribed on it.  Experiences, good and bad, do not cause us to lose our way but help prepare us for the ways ahead:

When we are young,
  we have barely begun
    to grasp our essence.

Who we become 
  is what we learn from
    our hardest lessons.

• I went out for lunch by myself the other day.  When I was finished, I decided to be a smart-ass and asked the server for separate checks.  She returned to the table and, with a smile, handed me one check, then placed a second check at the seat across from me.  I was curious to see how she played the game, so I reached across the table and flipped over the second check — it was blank.  Then I looked at mine and found a $5 shared-plate charge.

• Some stories — like the one you just read — seem too good to be true.  If they’re not true, they’re usually not too good.  But I don’t let that stop me.

• Some people have hot-sauce bravado.  They make a big deal about the amount of heat they can take.  But I do them one better.  I put hot sauce on dry ice.  I abuse myself at both ends of the temperature scale.

• For a long time, I told people that I didn’t start growing up until I was in my 30s.  These days, I’m thinking I didn’t start growing up until I was in my 50s.  I figure I will approach my 80s with the thought that I stalled out somewhere around 60.

• Dogs are smart, man.  If I had a dog, I would name it Sandpaper.  That way, if it said “Ruff,” I know it would be talking about itself.

• Last Christmas, my daughter gave me a gift called Brix — a chocolate for wine.  Well, this evening, I was having some wine (I was having it, and I still am) and I decided to open up the Brix.  It is, as the name implies, a brick: an imposing one-inch by two-inch by four-inch block of dark chocolate.  It even comes with instructions: “Holding the Brix bar in place with one hand, insert the tip of a sharp utility knife to fracture Brix into bite size morsels.”  This is exactly what I want to do, hold onto a block of hard chocolate, grab a sharp utility knife and stab at it with the hand that just put down a wine glass.

• The first concussion one sustains playing football doesn’t make the rest more bearable.  So why do some people insist that every punishment of life makes you stronger?

• I have invented a new smartphone app.  It’s called Panhandler.  The free version displays a nagging ad that asks you to send me money.  You can turn off the ad by paying me $2.99 for the premium version.

• I am going to produce a new award show. The awards will go to the most useless things you can imagine.  Nominees for the first award include shaving, raking leaves, mosquitoes, network news anchors, and reading comments on the internet.  I call them The Britneys.

• Until now, I had an unwritten rule that Thoughts at Large should include nine thoughts.  Now that I’ve written down the rule, I’m going to stop at eight just for spite.  Nobody tells me what to do.

• I once had a one-man band, but I split up due to creative differences.

• In theory, it is the center of the electorate who should sway the outcome of elections, just as Anthony Kennedy often has the final say on Supreme Court decisions.  But it is not that way in practice.  Of the 435 races for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014, only 10 were decided by a margin of 2% or less.  The winner had 80% or more of the vote in 35 of the races, and the seat was uncontested in 32 others.  You would think voters in the center would be outraged at such imbalances — but if they were, they would no longer be in the center, would they?

• It stands to reason and it sits down to argue.

• Some may recall the post on regrets I wrote a while ago.  It dealt with my inability to let go of mistakes I made and stupid things I did in the past.  I have recently come to terms with at least part of my regret.  Because I entered grade school early, I was almost a year younger than my junior high and high school classmates.  So, many of the things I did to embarass myself in front of them had to do with the fact that I was younger and more immature than they were.  And I still am.

• The U.S. Postal Service recently honored NBA basketball star Wilt Chamberlain on a postage stamp.  The late Mr. Chamberlain was best known for being the only man to score 100 points in a basketball game and for claiming to have had sex with 20,000 women.  He endorsed Richard Nixon for President.  He had an 18-karat gold-lined triangular bathtub.  I have never been a big basketball fan.

• The evolutionary purpose of the round cheeks on our faces is to prolong the time that our tears carry their emotional signals to our lovers and friends.

• Dear CIA.  I know you’re reading this, so just to let you know: if you ever want me to confess, you don’t need to waterboard me.  Just make me watch Fox News, Dr. Phil and Good Morning America over and over until I can’t stand it anymore.  It should only take a few hours.  But I should warn you: John McCain is right — I will be so empty-headed after such torture that whatever I tell you will be worthless.

• I have always wanted to write a post that reveals a lot of the words I crossed-out, so my readers can see what I was really thinking before I edited it.

• If there’s one good thing about getting a cold, it’s being able to reach those low registers and say “Hello Baby” to your woman in your best Barry White imitation.  Guys, you gotta try it sometime.  You might want to catch a cold more often.

• One-third of the earth’s population identifies as Christian.  Almost one-quarter are Muslim, one-fifth are Hindu or Buddhist, one-sixth are unaffiliated   All of us believe that what we believe is true.  We all can’t be right of course, yet we irrationally conclude that the rest of the world — the vast majority — is wrong.  The plain truth is, to avoid cognitive dissonance, we humans harden our beliefs, then we seek to live among those who think as we do, and then we finally and relentlessly stamp out dissent among our ranks.  This is why Rush Limbaugh, The Man Who Made America Hate, is the fine example of humanity that he is.