And the payment isn’t just the money, it’s all the mind-stuff and mind-time you give to it.
In timeshare terms, the Lottery lives in your head in all that time you spend dreaming about what you’ll do with the money. The time you spend deciding which tickets to buy, and then buying them, scratching them, suffering the small disappointments, and the small seductive wins. Continue reading “Whoring Out Your Head – Part 4”
And it’s not just Subway, is it?
If you’re like a lot of us, you “sell” some of your mind-time to … lottery tickets. TV. Advertising jingles. Song lyrics. Politicians. Talking heads on Fox News. Preachers.
In each case, you let them into your head. And there’s a little bit less mind-stuff, mind-time, in which you can be you.
But again, just how serious is all this? Continue reading “Whoring Out Your Head – Part 3”
If you ever really want to curse someone, “May you have to move” would be a good one.
I’m moving from my little wild paradise, where I get to see things like this …
gray foxes
red foxes
whitetail deer
wild turkeys
raccoons
and even this and this and this …
all photographed right in my own back yard, not to mention this and this just a short stroll away …
… to a place in the city.
It’s a nice place, in the historic section of a historic eastern city (for instance, the bronze plaque on the front of my building dates the structure from 1824), plus there’s a statue of Larry the Christian Indian a half-block away (more about him later, I think) and a boatload of historic events and attractions, and I’m happy to be here.
But moving!
Moving everything you own, using a small pickup, with not much help, and to the third floor, up a narrow staircase!
Oh, please, never again!
_______________
BTW, that’s also why blog output has been limited lately. I’ll be back on the job soon, I promise.
— Meanwhile, do YOU have a recent moving story?
Do you know the really great thing about being a sociopath?
The really great thing is that you can knock down a 6-year-old and take his ice cream.
And then you have ice cream! Man, what could be better than that? Free ice cream! Wow!
Oh, uh … you think there’s something wrong with that? Ah, I see your problem: You’re normal. You have the disadvantage that you think it’s wrong to take some kid’s ice cream and leave him crying, just because you can. You probably get all bent when you see injustice. Cheating, lies, theft and cruelty actually bother you.
What a pussy — sociopaths love living among suckers like you. Continue reading “The Enemy”
Maybe you’ve already seen this. A young man in the military, stationed in Germany, calls his Alabama father.
Can I tell you something? Will you love me, period? Dad, I’m gay.
Kudos to his father, too: Dad, you totally rock!
Makes me kind of ashamed I occasionally conceal the fact of being an atheist.
http://youtu.be/DVAgz6iyK6A
I make up words all the time. Silly things like “farfoculation” – which I KNOW is original, because Google doesn’t have it (but then again, I guess it will now; wish I knew what it was supposed to mean) – but also useful words I continue to privately use. Continue reading “Making Language”
There’s this thing I notice so, so often in the world. I wish there was a good name for it – Murfingburben Syndrome or Dumonification, or SOMETHING – so that I could just name it and you’d know what I was talking about. But I’ve never come across a word for it, or even a good description. So I just call it “the 180-degree thing.” By which I mean “180 degrees opposite.”
It’s like this: You hear that something is a certain way, and you believe it, sometimes for years. But one day you discover that, out in the real world, the thing is exactly opposite the way you were told it was. It is 180 degrees opposite of what it should be. If it’s something that was right with the world, it is now wrong – so wrong it doesn’t just sit there being wrong, it moves at light speed in the direction of wrong, so that it becomes not just un-right, but anti-right. Continue reading “The Fate of Broken People – Part 2”
I work in a bakery, did you know? Part of my “blue collar” thing. And not a great bakery, with fresh croissants steaming as they come out of the oven, fragrant and delicious and buttery, but a corporate-owned supermarket bakery. I often see it as more a factory outlet than a shop. Frozen bread arrives in boxes, we take it out and heat it in the oven, package and put it out. And our customers, knowing no different, knowing no better, buy it. Continue reading “The Fate of Broken People – Part 1”
I see from the stats how many people are reading here, but I don’t know who and where most of you are.
And it would be cool to hear YOUR voices for a change, those of you who have yet to comment (and even those who have).
Delurk for a moment and tell me something about you.
Besides, it be Talk Like A Pirate Day! Sure and I’ll be puttin’ the black spot alongside yer names, ye scallywags, if ye don’t speak up hearty!
“A former 40 year atheist” rips the hell out of my post (and book chapter) Good Without Gods.
I was smarting under all this expert flaying until I looked at some of his other posts.
Challenge to Atheists: Prove that there is no God
In this last one, there’s a response by the author to a reader comment (emphasis mine): Continue reading “Ignorant, hateful, builder of straw men. Wait … me??”
