Impure thoughts

Posted on September 21, 2016 by PMcG

Can we all agree that some things make no sense?

If not, ask yourself why mothers console disappointed children by saying everything will work out in the end. Isn’t the end just a little too late? I mean, once something has worked out, wouldn’t it be nice to have a few years to appreciate the fact?

Someone says “Bob, you’re looking so much better. Have you been lifting weights?” Bob smiles and says “Nope. It’s like my mother always said: ‘Everything will work out ten years before the end.’” As opposed to three seconds  after the doctors pull the plug on you when someone rushes in and says “Hey, everything just worked out. Bob? Bob, you look a little blue.”

Okay, now that we all agree, let’s move on to the advanced concept that most things make no sense. What’s the difference between some things and most things? Let’s download the metaphor app.

Click on the icon for “Bag full of advicey things.” Let’s say you pull one out and it’s “Never say never.”

I mean how can you say never say never without saying never say never — which is saying never twice (or four times if you’re writing this sentence). Shouldn’t it be “Never say never except when saying never say never?” Besides, when someone asks you at a job interview if you’ve ever had impure thoughts, if you say anything but NEVER!–with a raised voice, AND an exclamation point–you’ll never get the job.

Even so, it would be wrong to conclude from this one thing that “nothing makes sense.” So you reach in the bag and pull out another thing. Let’s say this one makes sense. Something like “One beer never hurt; two beers never hurt even more; three beers and nothing hurts.”

Okay. So far, the score is some things make sense, some things don’t make sense.

The next thing you pull out of the bag is the saying “You never know.” A minute ago you said never say never. Now you’re saying you never know. It makes no sense to say you never know. The odds in Vegas are 1000 to 1 that sometimes you will know.

How do I know? Now we’re getting into circular reasoning. Like a homeless beggar begging the question “Why don’t they call a non-homeless man a homemore man?” A common semantical mistake.

What the homeless man really means is homeful. Homemore is a quantum mechanics term meaning someone who has a home and a vacation home and possibly a tree home in the backyard and the home that the missus is calling right now to reserve his rubber room.

The next thing out of the bag: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Hellooo. The road to hell is full of rocks and holes and empty beer cans. No one is going to pave that. Supposing your dump truck full of hot tar breaks down?  Say hello to Satan’s One-Way towing.

Cutting to the chase, the next three things out of the metaphor bag:

• The NFL definition of pass interference. (Verdict: insanely senseless.)
• The drug company rule that tablets for arthritic hands come in a bottle only Superman can open. (Verdict: painfully senseless.)
• The advice “Respect your elders.” Careful. This may sound sensible. But what if your elders are ridiculously eld? Like, they’ve never even twerked. (Verdict: plain old senseless.)

So. The metaphorical score now stands at one thing that makes sense and many that don’t. Subtract one from many and you get most. Ergo, most things make no sense.

Just remember: without those three beers, nothing makes sense.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The lunatic fringe

Posted on September 16, 2016 by PMcG

The world is mad!

Admittedly, an extreme view. But from the haughty, extreme left? The corrosive, extreme right? Or something else altogether? Because, if liberals have a lunatic-fringe and conservatives have a lunatic-fringe, why can’t there be a lunatic-fringe of the center?

I have a theory, so please — as the nudist campers say — bare with me. (Not to be confused with “Bear with me,” which is what nudist campers scream when they wake up with a naked grizzly in their tent.)

Fringe was popularized by cowboys and mountain men who preferred fringey leather jackets and leather pants and leather horses. (In those days cowgirls and mountain women weren’t allowed to prefer anything except death.) Western men usually had fringe hanging off their sleeves, their pant legs and, in some states, their saddle bags.

The fringe look began as the aggressive fashion statement of overly heed he-men trying to mask low self-esteem. It said to the fringeless (in a New Jersey accent) “Look, fumblenuts. One more reference to a gay ranchero and your butt becomes a fringe-covered throw pillow. Kapeesh?”

Beyond style, men found numerous uses for fringe. Many’s the time out on the range they would cut off a strip of fringe to repair a broken buffalo. They might soak a strip of fringe in prairie steak sauce (dirt and horse sweat) and have it for dinner along with a three-hundred-bean salad and a quart of Johnny Walker brown. Or they just might stick some fringe up their nose for laughs at hangings and gunfights.

Today most people think of fringe as something far out on the margarines of acceptable discourse. Yet in cowboy/mountain man museums you see plenty-o-fringe across the chest and the backs of these jackets. Modern cow women even have fringe around the bottom of their skirts — although nose-packing by the gals remains an instant relationship-ender.

This hard evidence of real fringe in the center of real things supports the legality of metaphorical fringe in the middle of invisible things. C’mon, we all know people with middle fringe—and I don’t mean belly button lint.

In the crazoid center you find politically vacant geeks, goofs, nerds, talking geckos, hula hoop wholesalers, Zamboni heads, sports writers, religious nuts, mixed nuts, nutless nuts,  pine nuts, (Harlan Pepper I’m talking to you) gerbil herders and members of both houses of the American Bowling Congress — give or take your average Joes, your Johnny-come-latelys, and your Mary Queen of Scotts.

The war cries of the fringe middle differ significantly from the huzzahs, the wuzzayoulookinatamywife and qwazzyfwiggingwabbit snarls of cwackpots left and right.

Lunatics of the fringe-right see middle fringies as girly men and menly girls compromised by a philosophy that emphasizes a delicious shake at breakfast and lunch followed by a sensible dinner and, maybe later on, some semi-annual Viagra action on the memory foam.

Left-leaning cuckoos say those who choose the middle of the road to fluff their fringe are little more than walking Kung Pao chickens without the chopsticks to specify no MSG.

Let’s say you’re in a bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention. The drooling, fringe right-winger shouts “Two Buds for two studs.” The fringe leftist asks politely, though firmly, for “An impertinent yet approachable Riesling with just a twig of underbrush, two ice waters — hold the ice — and a tankard of Bud Light Lime.”

Seeing this, the middle guy gets his fringe all in a knot and screams “The world is mad!” Guess who gets arrested for disturbing the peace?

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an App*

Posted on September 9, 2016 by PMcG

I.
Sometimes it’s all a confusing jumble.
Jumble, jumble, bo bumble,
Fee fi fo fumble.
Jumble.

II.
Questions dog you.
Dogs question you.
Who, what, where, when, why?
Arf?

III.
In your pocket,
in your cargo shorts,
your eyeyiyiyi phone jiggles
wrongishly
against your trio of banjo picks–
your three amigos:
Manny, Moe and Jack–
and your clueless, dumb-ass leg.
Very wrongishly.
Jiggle begets jumble:

IV.
An electric blue glow
deep in the cargo bay.
The shameless provocateur
inside the phone
throws open her cell doors.
Eyeyiyiyi.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we are now live
and direct
from your shorts.

V.
How can I help you, Pat?
Who told you my name?
Sorry, Pat. I didn’t get that.
How do I turn you off?
But you just turned me on, big boy.

VI.
Note to self:
It’s never good
when your shorts start talking
to you.
Even worse when you talk back
to you.
With gestures.

VII.
Sudden slapping of the cargo pockets.
Grunting, face reddening,
savagely grabbing the flaps.
The stupid flaps.
Fastened with Velcro.
Stupid Velcro.
It won’t let go.
Like a dog arfing your leg.
Stupid leg.

VIII.
The people with the nets
see you
remonstrating
with your pants.
Slapping your flaps.
Abusing the Velcro.
They call for–
who ya gonna call?—
Remonstrance Busters.

IX.
Bring the really big net.
Check.
Don’t forget the tranquilizer gun.
Check.
Extra darts.
Check please.
Ten-four

X.
So.
That new count-your-steps app?
It will get you
up and walking.
And jiggling.
And jumbling.
And hearing voices.
Manny, Moe and Jack.
And it will make you healthy.
Or crazy.
Was there ever any doubt?

XI.
Another jiggle.
So wrongish.
A sudden pantaloonian
pocket symphony.
Piccolos, flutes, oboes,
bassoons, horns, trumpets,
Panta-Loonian.
Tubas, triangles,
rhombuses, parallelograms,
cannon.

XII.
Um, Cannon? In my shorts?
You’re shouting, Pat
My cargo is exploding!
It’s the “1812 Overture,” Pat.
Arf?
Pandora, Pat. Your stupid leg
punched up Tchaikovsky.

XII.
The Moscow Mule?
That’s a cocktail, Pat.
Vodka and ginger beer.
What a kick in the pants.
They didn’t call him Pistol Pyotr
for nothing, Pat.

XIII.
Note to self:
One little jiggle jumble
and the count-your-feet-healthy-life-connecto-app
summons Our Lady of the Pants.
Pray to her, Pat
to shut up.

*Not to be confused with Wallace Steven’s wonderful Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45236

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Maybe, maybe not

Posted on September 1, 2016 by PMcG

A bear and a dwarf walk into a bar. The bartender sees the bear and says “What have we here?”

The dwarf says “Who said that?”

The bartender says “Who said ‘Who said that?’”

The bear says “The dwarf.”

The bartender says “I don’t see a…wait a minute. Are you a talking bear?”

The bear says “No, the dwarf is a ventriloquist.”

The dwarf says “I’m down here.”

The bartender says “What’s a ventriloquist?”

The bear says “Somebody who can make a dummy talk.”

The dwarf says “Who are you talking to?”

The bear says “I’m talking to the barkeep.” At the same time, the bartender says “I’m talking to the dummy.”

“That was very hurtful,” says the bear.

The bartender says “Hey, your lips didn’t move.”

The dwarf says “That’s because I can’t reach the lip-stick from down here.”

The bartender says “Bears wear lipstick?”

The bear says “I’ve been kissing up to the dwarf all day long. Must have worn off.”

“You’re pulling my leg, right?”

“I think you meant to say ‘You’re eating my leg,'” says the bear.

“Say, are you one of those fortune-telling bears?”

“Every talking bear is a fortune-teller,” says the bear. “It’s been in our DNA since the fourteenth century when Ned, the Dancing bear ate Magic Fanny, the incompetent fortune-teller.”

“So tell my fortune.”

“I can only tell your fortune if you have a fortune.”

“How do you know I don’t have a fortune?”

“Do you have a fortune?”

“No.”

“I rest my case.”

“But maybe someday in the future?”

“Let me see. Um…No.”

“Gimme a beer,” says the dwarf. “And a salmon water for Grizzly Adams.”

“In a frosted bowl,” says the bear.

The bartender whispers “Really. Who is this invisible friend of yours?”

“God,” says the bear, shaking his head. “He’s a dwarf.”

The bartender says “You’re not saying God is a dwarf? Or the dwarf is God? That would upset a lot of people. It’s bad enough that he’s invisible.”

“I heard that,” says the dwarf. “I’m not deaf.”

“What about invisible?” says the barkeep.

“Wrong again,” says the dwarf. “I have 20-20 vision.”

“There are none so blind,” says the bear sadly, “as those with perfect vision.”

The bartender says “Were you talking to God just then?”

“If you weren’t so fat,” says the dwarf, “you could lean over the bar and see me.”

“Hey,” says the bear. “Where’s the men’s room?”

“Don’t have one,” says the bartender. “They’re all unisex now.”

“Your ex-wife’s name is Eunice?” says the bear.

“Um,” says the bartender. “Not that I recall.”

“He’s talking about restrooms for people on unicycles,” says the dwarf.

“At least that‘s not what I called her,” says the bartender. “Gee, maybe that’s why she left.”

“Hold that thought,” says the bear and rushes out the door.

“I remember she loved melons,” says the bartender wistfully.

“But apparently,” says the dwarf, “not melon-heads.”

The door bursts open and the bear rides in on a unicycle. “Had it double parked and was about to get a ticket.”

“I called her Melanie,” says the barkeep.

“Which way to the Unisex?” says the bear. “Though, I gotta tell you, it’s pretty challenging having sex on one of these things.”

“Maybe once too often?” asks the dwarf.

“Maybe,” says the bartender.

“Maybe not,” says the bear. “You know what they say: You fall off, you gotta climb right back on.”

“Not with Melanie,” says the bartender. “I fell off just that once and it was adios amigo.”

“Hold that thought,” says the bear, pedaling off. “Gotta scare your ex-wife.”

“Don’t worry,” says the dwarf. “He’s just eating your leg.”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Corrugated poop

Posted on August 25, 2016 by PMcG

Over at The Mental Couch, the big outlet where shrinks get their furniture and rubber-room fixtures, they also sell colorful, washable placemats that list all mental disorders. You’ll find Nuts, Half-Nuts, Nut Boy, Nut Meg, Donna, Astrid, etc. A perfect stocking stuffer in case you run out of feet.

Is it a dumb question to ask what exactly is a mental disorder? Experts used to say the only dumb question is the one that doesn’t get asked. New research, however, suggests that the only dumb question is the one asked by an actual dumb ball. And, according to the new Lost or Never Received Mind law, every dumb question now requires a dumb answer. To wit:

Let’s say you’re in line at the company cafeteria and you order the goulash. You then remember you had the goulash yesterday. You slap your forehead hard enough to forget all your cares and woe and there you go, singing low “Bye Bye Blackbird.”*

Then you say “Cindy, I had a brain fart. Could you give me the tuna-mint surprise instead?”

Cindy fixes you with her only eyeball—very hairy as it happens.

“Goddam it,” she says. “I already scooped the goddam goulash onto the goddam plate.”

“Heh, heh,” you say. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? You think goddam sorry’s gonna put this goddam goulash back in the goddam pot?”

Cindy’s supervisor, the former wrestler/narco mule Ten-Ton Herman Mangold, steps to her side.

“Goddam trouble Miss Cindy?”

“Goddam guy ordered the goddam goulash,” she explains goddamitly. “I scooped it and then he starts singing and throws a goddam disorder at me. Wants the goddam tuna goddam instead.”

Mangold’s eyes enlarge to the size of goddam macaroons. “He did what?”

“Look,” you say, “I’ll take the goddam goulash. Forget the goddam tuna.”

“That’s a goddam double-disorder,” shouts Cindy. Goddam Herman looks over your goddam head and snaps his goddam fingers. Two mounted transfers from the goddam TSA ride in on cardboard palominos and cut you out of the herd.

After roping and throwing you to the ground and heating up a battery operated branding iron, the one whose name tag reads ‘Goddam’ says “You never step into a chow line until your mind is made up.”

“What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?” asks the second horseyman, who seems high on purple sage. His name plate reads Callahan.

“Um,” you say. “Pee?”

Callahan spits tobacco juice on the branding iron which sizzles happily. “First, you make up your bed,” he says. “Then you pee. Just like at lunch: you make up your goddam mind, then you order. Then you pee.”

“Will everyone quit saying Goddam,” says Goddam. “That happens to be my name and it’s funking with my faroukle.”

As Callahan readies the branding iron you detect a napalmic bouquet of wintergreen-flavored tobacco gob impregnated with the amoebas of pre-historic buffalo halitosis.

“You think we got nothing better to do than dump your goulash?” Callahan asks.

“If everybody did that,” says Goddam as his cardboard horse dumps corrugated poop onto the branding iron “we’d have chaos. And the terrorists will have won.”

Off topic, Callahan says “I love the smell of burning cardboard-horse-shit in the morning.”

You consider mentioning that it is actually ten after twelve, but some hidden inner strength intervenes. You say instead “How ‘bout them Cowboys?”

Later, applying I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter to your still glowing ass, you try to look at the bright side. Of course you can’t see the bright side from that angle. Still, you at least consider yourself one step ahead in the game of building your personal brand. Too bad yours will forever read “Goulash Disorder.”

*Nice work, Paul

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Small boners

Posted on August 13, 2016 by PMcG

Q. I’m running for president but people say I’m crazy. How do I prove I’m not?
A. Are you the guy who says Australia doesn’t exist because you’ve never been there?

Q. Same with New Zealand. Have you ever been there? I don’t think so.
A. You’re the guy who says we should build a series of giant trampolines on the Mexican border to catch illegal immigrants.

Q. Because, who can resist jumping on a trampoline? See, you hire out-of-work nightclub bouncers—I’ve fired many of them myself—and they will grab these criminals in the act of illegal immigrant trampolining without dropping their handcuffs.
A. That sounds crazy.

Q. No, it borders on crazy. Get it? Border? Look, it’s no different than arresting people for bouncing checks.
A. It sounds as crazy as when you accused Muslims of sending kryptonite to Superman.

Q. I may have been sarcastic. I’m sarcastic a lot, although I usually don’t know it until somebody tells me that millions of people are mad at me for something I said. I go “Whoa! That was sarcastic.” But, you know, the trampoline thing — it’s not a half-bad idea.
A. You’re right. It’s a completely bad idea.

Q. Uh, I think I was being sarcastic.
A. Just curious. How would you define sarcasm?

Q. Wasn’t that the really deep ravine in the land of Sar in that movie about those little freaks with the hairy feet and small boners?
A. Is that sarcasm?

Q. Um. If I say no, does that mean I’m crazy?
A. Probably just ignorant.

Q. Ignorant it is! So I’m not crazy, right?
A. You may not be crazy, but that doesn’t mean you’re not crazy. There’s a broad spectrum of craziness. There’s crazy and then there’s cuh-razy.

Q. Did you just use italics on that last crazy?
A. I did.

Q. Am I italics crazy or just everyday messing-with-people’s-heads crazy?
A. I’m thinking underlined, italics, boldface, yellow-highlight crazy

Q. Yes, but wouldn’t you say I’m really crazy-like-a-fox?
A. No. Crazy-like-a-fox is an example of dramatic irony.

Q. Like when your woman irons your pants but complains that this isn’t in her job description and you have to fire her?
A. See, you’re not really saying the fox is crazy. You’re actually saying the fox has a very sharp mind and to make that point you exaggerate in exactly the opposite direction.

Q. Are you saying I exaggerate my point in the wrong direction? You think I’m one of those LMNOP losers? Because my point knows exactly what direction to exaggerate in.
A. I’m saying your entire campaign is one nightmarish example of dramatic irony gone terribly wrong.

Q. That’s talk that only people who read can understand. I’m for the common man who doesn’t have time to read because the words have too many syllables. I don’t have time for syllables. Just saying the word syllables makes me tired.
A. What about words like Constitution and Democracy and presidential?

Q. You know what words I like? Billion bucks.  I have a billion bucks, did I mention that? And I never even read Fireman Small.*  Guess I’m not so crazy after all.
A. Maybe we’re the ones who are crazy.

Q. Which is why you need somebody who is crazy like a fox to lead you.
A.  Foxes often have rabies, though. You’re gonna need a vaccination.

Q. Vaccination? No way. You can get communism or gored by a bull if you get vaccinated. And that’s no exaggeration.
A. Sadly, no. It’s what we call dramatic irony to go, hold the irony. I wouldn’t worry, though. You’ve probably already got rabies. Try not to bite anybody.

*Thank you Lois Lenske.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, F.A.Q., Mockery and derision, Scribe v. Pharisees | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Rearranging the donuts

Posted on August 5, 2016 by PMcG

Ever been to one of those pricey writer’s workshops held in the mountains, or the prairies or the oceans, white with some sort of foaming ick?  You’ll hear bestselling authors giving out all sorts of advice on how to write goodly, but they always end the same way. “Write what you know. Thanks for coming. My books are on sale in the back. Please don’t touch me.”

In other words (which always cost extra) if you know beets, write about the beet generation. If you know irritable bowel syndrome, write about sigmoidoscopies. If you know nothing (my own hard-earned expertise), write about politics.

The other side of the coin (the one with North Dakota on it) says never write about what you don’t know — manners, for example, or how ice cubes work or how to tell when a presidential candidate has gone into the woods to live with the squirrels.

There are exceptions. Let’s say you’ve never been to Spain but you kinda like the music. You know, the ladies are insane there and they sure know how to use it. However, they don’t abuse it and a lot of people say they’re never gonna lose it. You almost can’t refuse it.*

Some of the best writing tips begin with don’t, the most important being “Don’t write in invisible ink.” A better example: “Don’t try to write like Nabokov, especially if you’ve never heard of him.”

Speaking of the Nabster, resist giving your characters identical first and last names as Nabokov did with Humbert Humbert. But do give your characters a last name, as Nabokov didn’t do with Lolita. Um, Lolita who? Yes, good question. Why not Needleman? Or Picklehaub? Or Babalu? But certainly not Lolita, because then you’d have Humbert Humbert and Lolita Lolita.

Some writing advice is painfully blunt. A big-time author once told me “You write like the wind.”  Before I could beam or glow in the dark, he added “You know what the wind does when it writes? It blows.”

But people still ask how I keep getting to The New York Times best-seller list. My formula is foolproof. Every Sunday I fire up the Honda and drive to the local Teeny Mart. I buy a donut and The Times and check out the bestseller list. If, as usual, my name is missing, I lodge a stern complaint with the kid rearranging the donuts. I warn him I’ll be back next week to check. He licks his fingers as if to say “I hear you, dude.”

Anyway, herewith my Windless Rules of Writing.

    1. Use words, preferably those you can spell. Keep numbers to a minimum.
    2. Don’t use emoticons. Just don’t.
    3. Set a particular time each day to write and then do everything in your power to avoid writing at that time.
    4. Don’t use gassive voice.
    5. When you’ve written yourself into a corner and don’t know where the plot is going, type “The End.” Trust me on this.
    6. Never use the words indubitably, abstemious, gas-chromatograph-mass-spectrometer, or propinquity. Leave those to the poets.
    7. Use good ideas. If you have none, use bad ideas. If you have none, ask Siri. If Siri has none use the Moby Dick idea but change the whale’s name to Moby Jim DeAngelo, Jr.
    8. No matter what kind of story you’re writing, work in the line “Make mine a marmalade.”
    9. Ask a friend to read your story and give you an honest opinion. Slip him fifty bucks to lie convincingly.
    10. Tell people you’re writing a novel. Ask them for the $28.95 cover price up front. Tell them you’ll send a copy when it’s done. Trust me on this.

*If they tell you you were born in Oklahoma but you really don’t remember, what does it matter? I say again, what does it matter? Besides, it can get so cold in Oklahoma you need at least three dogs on the bed at night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm6qw_yeo6o

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments