You know you're a Baptist...

...when, as the echoes and reverb are dying in the sanctuary, the last ringing of the beautifully dissonant chord at the climax of "Go to Dark Gethsemane," just as the beautiful denouement of the good friday hymn is about to begin...

...you hear a loud AY-MAEN! from the congregation...

Any praise for lack of culture?

ugh...

It has been said...

...that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and always expecting a different result...

well...

not exactly.

I read it in a comic strip once, though...I think...it must be true, right?

Anyhow, I know now that that particular principle cannot apply to computers.  One is most definitely not insane, if they try something on a computer twice the same way, expecting a different result.  There is a definite precedent for doing that, whatever those silly comic strips might say.

Also, if one wishes all the ancient poets to be insane, one needs look no further than this idea, for if we apply the saying "if again you don't succeed, try, try again" we must, by this definition, be wholly insane.  

if we, like Ahoshta Tarkaan, intend to continue quoting "the poets," I think we must discard this evidently corrupted definition.

We might, otherwise, also have to throw out our computers... :-)

The heady feeling...

...that I actually might survive the next few years is upon me.

Don't you love the feeling?
I mean the one when you realize that life isn't so bad after all, and that nothing horrible is likely going to happen to you in the near future.
Usually, of course, it's dispelled by the next online health article you see, but hey! What do I care?
Keep up the good life, Go read some comic books or something...


(I hasten to say how much it very much disturbs me that I'm writing such godless literature as this...forgive me :-P)

On being weird...

It's been over a month...wow...
My poor lonely blog...it needs some attention.

I'm kinda weird, as You probably know, if you've spent any time reading this blog at all, or if you've even seen me, or heard me talk. That much I know is true.

However, does it make it worse that I work in a place where I am a minority just for speaking the king's English, and my regular vocabulary includes words like "peachy" and "chum" and "toodle-oo" and "salubrious"? My co-workers think so. ** For some reason, when your first language isn't English, and someone says "peachy" (meaning, of course, "cool" or "great" although I know that none of you needed to know that), you have funny ideas of what that might be.

Go ahead and imagine it for yourself... Forget all preconceptions and all knowledge about the colloquilal use of "peachy" and think about what would go through your head...

Aren't idioms hilarious? No? Well...Like I said, I'm a little different.

People give me the strangest looks when I start talking about how funny language is, but I can't stop it. It's just funny, and I can't get over it, so everyone's going to have to deal with it.

I also think the fact that my ribcage is compressible the most random thing in nature...I love it! I can entertain myself that way, just squishing it, and watching it retake its shape, and squishing it...etc, etc...ad inifinitum.

That, and when the juices in my stom....
oh wait...
I better not tell you about that, you might stop reading, if you haven't already :-)

Entertain yourself with the little things...go ahead, do it!

That, and nothing else is the secret to Hilarium ad infinitum...

** This is in no way a snub directed at my coworkers...they are amazing people, and I learn more spanish from them than from anywhere else.

Poetry in Limbo

Yes, I've been reading Dante.
No, that's not what this is about.

About a week ago, I had an interesting experience at work, quite a funny one, actually, and I thought "Why, I should post this on my blog!" Then I said to myself, "I should definitely do more than just post this on my blog...I should poetize about it, and then post it on my blog...hmmm..."

Noble sentiments, no doubt.

One of my favorite poems is Egar Allen Poe's The Raven, and so, subconsciously, the metre for it had been running through my head.
You know that feeling, when everything in your life seems to happen to a metre? When you walk, you feel it in your steps, when you find your brain entertaining itself, it's chanting it's nonsense syllables in the cadence that fits your favorite poem.
Ok, so maybe you don't always have a rythm in your head, and maybe I'm just a little weird (big surprize, no?)
Either way, I had the metre and words of this:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over a many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more.'

running around somewhere between my scalp and my half-emerging wisdom teeth. This caused the poem I was thinking about writing to come out in the exact same rythm:

Once upon a windy October, as the gusts entreat us to be sober,

They kindle sentiments, noble and nobler within the hearts of doleful men

The clouds were softly, swiftly flying, the leaves were slowly, sadly dieing,

The wind, in eddies, sweetly sighing, around the eaves, and back again.

The solemn wind, in swirling currents, came ‘round the eaves and back again.

And a moan escaped me, “never again”

Unfortunately, I liked the beginning of this too much (and it was also much too sombre) to convert into a comic piece for a blog. Now, without the motivation to write it so I can post it on my blog, and the responsiblilty that I gave myself by putting work into this first verse to do the rest in the same caliber, chances are, I will never, ever finish this, and if I do, it won't be posted on this blog.

Your loss. :-P

This isn't the only poem in such straights, though. I started another parody the other day about Fresno, the city just north of here to the "tune" of The Cremation of Sam Magee (by Robert Service), and it is likewise in Limbo:

There are strange things done in the hot, hot sun by the people who live around here;

Out great wide valley has a long death tally, and terror is built upon fear.

The dim streetlights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the corner of Maple and Horner, I was a hero of the Fresno Bee.

Now the Fresno Bee was a paper, you see, and a better there’d never been had,

For the Bee had column, right down at the bottom, that was entitled, “Who went bad”

Eevery week of the year will a story appear, each telling the story of how,

Through thick or thin, by wine or gin, a man’s character went south.

Maybe if I ever finish this one, I'll put it up on here...I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? :-)

This tickles my funny bone...

63

Created by OnePlusYou -

ok...I confess, I cheated... my original score was 21, not 63... but it's still funny, right?

The Brotherhood of the Travelling Retainers

About two years ago (almost exactly two years ago, actually), I finally had all the permanent orthodontic appliances removed from my mouth. I'd had braces for nearly two and a half years before that, and I was ready.

(if you've had braces, you'll know what I mean)
(If you haven't had braces, just imagine tying yourself by the teeth to a running ceiling fan with short string. Now try to imagine sleeping that way...for two years...)

Anyhow, when orthodontists remove your braces, they give you a retainer to keep things from immediately going back to where they came from in your mouth. I've had these retainers for two years now, and I'm used to putting them in and getting them out, and talking around them, and (thankfully) I now only have to wear them at night.
I would say I'm used to them by now, and with good reason, right?

But....
One wonders when one wakes up in the morning with no retainers in one's mouth, knowing full well that they were inside when one went to sleep.
One knows incontrovertibly, however, that he has "routine retainers" when one finds his retainers safely tucked away in their case that same morning, stacked neatly on top of one another, just as he always stacks them, and has absolutely no recollection of how in the world they got there.

Some people think sleepwalking is remarkable, but can you take your retainers out and put them away in a bathroom 40 feet from your bed in your sleep?

I just hope this uncanny ability doesn't extend itself to other things...

:-P