Haiku, yuku, wi all kuku

Posted on September 9, 2014 by PMcG

A poem dashed off
in pajamas will not wait
for a coat and tie.

News breaks the promise
that the beast of tomorrow
won’t growl before dawn.

Immortality
begins with such simple words:
‘Once upon a time.’

The mind, not the ear
carries music to the heart.
The ear does not mind.

Reading a story
unchains gray cells, frees color
from dusty rainbows.

Who is buried in
Grant’s tomb, but as for the bones
of What, I Don’t Know.

When bad wolf huffs, puffs
blows house down, tweet local cops,
buy time with card tricks.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Balenciaga’s pizza

Posted on September 5, 2014 by PMcG

I have a question. Two actually. I’m allowed two because, in self-actualizing my full potential as master of my organism’s motive, I am saying what the hell, I get to ask two questions and you don’t.

My first question, quite logical, is “What in the plaid poop am I talking about?” The second question is seemingly ridiculous: Who the farouk is Balenciaga? (Remember, the first is logical, the second seemingly ridiculous, emphasis on seemingly. An easy way to remember is to memorize 1L2SR. Note the italics on the letter S for seemingly.)

So, in answer to 1L, I’m cruising through Wikipedia yesterday, enjoying the colorful sights of blue hyperlinks and boldface fonts, when I come across the term “organismic theory.” There are many theories in this little fox trot I like to call life, for example the ever popular theory that the earth is round. Familiar as I am with most theories, organismic theory had slipped under my radar. Not, I hasten to add, because I am stupid but because I only actualized my self (not to be confused with my self) yesterday.

In a way, self-actualizing is like signing in to the Glue Horses of North Dakota website. You can browse all you want (actualizing zip) but if you want to buy Jimbo or LuLu or Pretty Boy Zeke before they become model airplane cement you have to type in your secret code name.

At this point the site recognizes you (Ta da! Your silly self is “actualized”) and you may then buy any horse you want. It will be let out of the paddock that same day and furnished with a small bag of sugar cubes, extra-large condoms and a Google map with directions to your house. Expect arrival in approximately sixteen months (Not exactly the Pony Express, but then, what is anymore?)

The answer to my 2SR question is a little more complicated. I was stumbling through Wikipedia in the first place because I saw a reference in a New York Times article to something called the House of Balenciaga.

In my wiki search I found that in the high-end fashion designing world they refer to their job sites as houses. That would never work in the big-ass construction world. The House of Rocky. The House of Torque Wrench Jones. The House of Fud. As they say in Toronto, “Eh?”

Of course, high fallutin’ artists have gone by just the one name before. I think of Capablanca, the chess master, Mozart the composer, Harpo, the Marxist. But at least we’ve heard of those people. You think at the dinner table in the House of Fud they talk about what they’re going to wear to the cookout next week at the House of Balenciaga?

Or, say a guy walks into a pizza place.

“Large sausage and pepperoni to go.”

“Name?”

“Balenciaga.”

“Who?”

“Balenciaga.”

“Lemme get a pencil. Okay, let’s see. That’s V-i-n-c-e…”

“No no no. B as in Bee.”

“Look, Vince, I’m just a pizza guy. But how in the plaid farouk do you get B out of Vince Seaga? Oh, wait, I get it. Doh! It’s Bince. Twenty minutes B-man. Nice cravat, by the way.”

I’d like to know this: What did Bince’s mother call him? When he gave her a bubble skirt for her birthday did she say “Oh, Balenciaga, didn’t we do bubbles last year?”

You know what I think? I think Balenciaga didn’t use a first name because he was not master of his organism’s motive. Motive, you ask? The infallible Wikipedia says “In Goldstein’s view, it is the organism’s master motive… ‘The tendency to actualize itself as fully as possible is the basic drive… the drive of self-actualization.’”*

So who is Goldstein? I knew a guy named Goldstein once and he was no Balenciaga. At the very least, Goldy might want to take another stab at what he thinks is the basic drive among the birds and the bees getting down on this funky little planet I like to call Screwball.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

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

FAQ: Mental Health

Posted on September 2, 2014 by PMcG

Q. I have a friend who has been diagnosed with mental health. Is it contagious?
A. You tell me. Recently, scientists put laboratory mice with mental health into a cage with mice who were crazy about bluegrass. After an hour, the mice with mental health were singing that high, lonesome harmony on “Wreck of the Old ’97,” and asking about banjo lessons.

Q. I’m worried about going crazy. What can I do to prevent that?
A. One of the key misunderstandings about mental health is that people who get it are crazy. The important thing to remember: if you don’t have the one, you don’t necessarily not have the other. Give or take. But be wary. When you talk openly to the trees, the net people will find you.

Q. I’ve heard people at work say “we just need to put our heads together and we’ll figure this out.” Isn’t that how mental health spreads?
A. Correct-a-mundo.

Q. What about bodily fluids?
A. Always wash your hair after thinking.

Q. If you’re doing mental gymnastics, should you wear sweat pants on your head?
A. Does a giraffe stand in the front row for the annual group shot at the zoo?

Q. Um…
A. Go ahead. Wear them.

Q. What is the difference between being crazy and being a knucklehead?
A. People may refer to you sometimes as a “crazy knucklehead.” This is a misnomer — not to be confused with a mrsnomer or a misternomer. Crazy and knucklehead are very distinct terms, as different, for example, as clowns named Bozo and Cracko. Fact is, if you are a crazoid, people seldom call you a knucklehead — unless it’s in the context of “Oh you crazy knucklehead, now I’m going to have to spank you.”

Q. How do you know if you’ve come down with mental health?
A. Start every day by asking yourself: am I crazy? If you answer yes, then you’re fine. If you say no, then you’re fine. If a voice says “Who wants to know?” and it sounds like your mother but your mother is in Kansas visiting the wheat, then go immediately into the bathroom and brush your teeth.

Q. Why?
A. Look, if you’ve got mental health you’ll certainly need dental health, because dentists don’t want nut jobs with bleeding gums dripping any nut juice on them.

Q. My father says Uncle Ed is “crazy as a bedbug,” but Aunt Martha is “an out-and-out lunatic.” Which is worse?
A. As long as Aunt Martha stays out and out, you’re okay and okay. Might want to change the locks. As for Uncle Ed, it’s bad enough to be like a bed bug, because they bite. To be a crazy bedbug, well, let’s just say Uncle Ed might want to start flossing.

Q. My father says he has a mind like a steel trap. Is that good or bad?
A. The problem with keeping your mind in a steel trap is that after a while it turns feral. The next time you open the steel trap, say, to find out where you left your keys, that mind could bite you. Getting rabies from your own mind is no picnic (although barbecuing hamburgers and hotdogs is). Your father’s steel trap may be a ploy to keep from admitting he has lost his mind (probably left in a Sears dressing room when he was trying on sweat pants.)

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, F.A.Q., News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Frequently Asked Questions: The schneid

Posted on August 28, 2014 by PMcG

Editor’s note: In the previous post “Those who are on the schneid,” I grievously presumed the term “schneid” was commonly understood among those who commonly understand things. For those who commonly misunderstand the commonly understood I offer this F.A.Q. Memorize it, please; there may be a quiz. It may help if you put it to music and sing it like an opera. But not in Italian because then you’d have to have subtitles and you’d have to sing them too — a fact that is commonly understood and/or misunderstood, whichever makes the most sense.

Q. I keep hearing about people being on the schneid. Like “Oh, he’s been on the schneid now for about three weeks.” And then, suddenly, they get off the schneid. Like, “Well there’s no doubt about it. He is officially off the schneid now.”
A. Is that a question or an inaugural address?

Q. Wiseguy. So what’s a schneid?
A. The proper question would be what is the Schneid.

Q. Is that an answer or a cry for help?
A. There was this guy. Name of Schneider

Q. Is this going to take long?
A. He was a good boy. Always wore nice shoes. Very white teeth.

Q. Schneider.
A. Excuse me, but can I tell the story?

Q. So tell.
A. I’m saying. You wanted to know. So I’m trying to tell.

Q. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
A. So. Schneider. Kid worked very hard. He sold dryer lint to put his parents through college.

Q. A kid put his parents through college?
A. They were driving him crazy. It was the only way to get them out of the house.

Q. They must not have been very smart.
A. Did I not just say they were going to college? You go to college to get smart. Look, are you going to keep interrupting? Because I’ve got a very busy life. I’ve got a horse that needs painting.

Q. Is that why you have blue paint on your hands?
A. That’s a horse of a different color.

Q. Why did he want his parents out of the house?
A. Schneider.

Q. Kid who put his parents through college.
A. You knew him, then?

Q. Word gets around.
A. He was hooked on gin.

Q. A boozer.
A. Rummy.

Q. A boozer and a rummy. I thought you said he was a good boy.
A. Gin rummy. The card game. You know cards? 52 in a deck? Hearts, clubs and what else they got. Shovels. Spatulas…

Q. Diamonds and spades.
A. Right. Spade. What they do to dogs who get a little too frisky.

Q. So Schneider played cards?
A. Every day. Had friends over. They played on his mother’s nice dining room table. Didn’t use the little coasters she bought at Woolworth’s. Left rings on the table. No amount of scrubbing could get them out. Broke his mother’s heart. It also popped a rod in her crankcase, so to speak. She was never the same.

Q. All because of table rings?
A. She’d brought that table over from the old country. Carried it on her back. Ship sank, she took it in the lifeboat. Made her husband swim. One Thanksgiving she tried to light the candles on the table with a railroad flare. Table burned to the ground. The apartment building with it. “And that,” she told her son “is how you get rid of rings.”

Q. Did Schneider play rummy for money?
A. Is a shark’s ass shark? Course they played for money. But he had one problem.

Q. Besides breaking his mother’s heart?
A. Okay, two problems. But you’re beginning to get on my nerves.

Q. I’ll just listen.
A. He was a loser.

Q. Schneider was a loser?
A. Did I say he was a winner?

Q. I’ll just listen.
A. He always lost. Always. Lost his shirt. Went around half-naked. When he lost his pants you didn’t see him as much.

Q. Is this story going anywhere?
A. It got so bad that when one of his friends lost a game, the others would say he’d pulled a Schneider. After a while they shortened it. When a guy was running a streak of bad luck his friends would tell him he was on the Schneid. When he finally won, he was off the Schneid.

Q. Whatever happened to Schneider?
A. He joined a flea circus. Fleas took to him right away. Started a high wire act. Rode a bicycle across a tightrope with eight hundred fleas balanced on his shoulders.

Q. How long did he do that?
A. About 10 seconds. First time out he started scratching. Killed half the act.

Q. What about the others?
A. They jumped. Landed on some clown. Even fleas know you do what you gotta do to get off the Schneid.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, F.A.Q., News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Those who are on the schneid

Posted on August 26, 2014 by PMcG

It has been my experience that there are two kinds of people in this world:
• Those who use their turn signal and those who don’t have to because their mother said so.
• Those who believe in God and those who believe they are God but don’t even know how to work the clouds.
• Those who say “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and those who say “What about grizzly bears and wiggly tofu and people who believe they are God?”
• Those who don’t take crap from anybody and those who carry a little plastic bag and a scooper and offer it all up for the souls in Purgatory who, ironically, are in Purgatory for unloading crap on anybody who will take it.
• Those who hate everybody and those who hate nobody.
• Those who say “Hold my big butt, everybody hates somebody,” and somebody who hates anybody who depends on others to hold his big butt while whining about something or anything or even nothing.
• Those who hate nobodies and those nobodies who aren’t aware they are nobodies and who, if they were pressed, would say “Stop pressing me, do I look like a suit?”
• Somebody who keeps vacillating about whether to hate everybody or anybody, and anybody who hates Vaseline because, if you were blindfolded and somebody put some on your hands you might think it was caviar (assuming you had a head cold and couldn’t smell) and you’d eat it and then you’d say this doesn’t taste like caviar and you’d take off the blindfold and go AIEEEEEEE! and run around in circles spitting and going BLECHHHHHHHHHHHH!
• Somebody who hates anybody who hates everybody, and anybody who hates nobodies who think they are somebodys.
• Somebody who is quite moved at how very damn hard my life is, and nobody who knows the trouble I seen.
• Those who clean up after their dogs and those who clean up before their dogs because dogs tend to use up all the hot water.
• Those who put mustard on hot dogs and those who put ketchup on those who put mustard on hot dogs.
• Those who can fix a plugged toilet and those who can plug a fixed one
• Those who are on the schneid and those who are standing in the schneid line.
• Those who are happy to be alive and those who are pretty much pissed off about it, among other things.
• Those who heed the law and those who were in the head when the word heed came up in vocabulary and so they never heard the correct definition and have always thought heed was the past tense of hide—although, oddly enough, just buffalo hide, since buffalo are pretty much extinct (but not the heed in hiding) except for those going under the stupid assumed names of Dr. and Mrs. Bison. Prisons are full of these people.
• Those who need professional help and those who need professional help, if you get my meaning. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink*.)
• Those who gossip and those who talk about people behind their backs.
• Those who like cats and those who prefer something in a lower I.Q.
• Those who drink like a fish and those who drink like a fisherman.
• Those who long for a return to the Dark Ages because they hate government and anyway, they got a sword for Christmas, and those who long for a government dental plan that covers root canals and has dentists who never bug you about flossing (the one nice thing about the Dark Ages).
• Those who believe aliens walk among us and those who believe they use public transportation and, every now and then, a stretch limo so all of their wings and tentacles can fit in without someone stepping on them or tripping over them and then filing a lawsuit which means finding an attorney who knows anything at all about wing and tentacle law. Bonne chance avec ça.

*Borrowed with reverence from Dr. and Mrs. Monty Python

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

The giant in the green hat

Posted on August 19, 2014 by PMcG

I’m standing on a corner, wondering why I’m not inside where the rain isn’t so bad. A half-drenched guy comes up to me and says “You heard about this Hadron Collider thing they got going over there in France?”

If you stand on a corner long enough, stray people without collars will ask you just about anything, from “Who are you, who who?” to “Isn’t it disrespectful for toilet paper companies to call their customers end-users?”

The first time I heard about the Hadron Collider I thought it referred to a  cocky guy named Hadron who drove the demolition derby circuit in something like a 1972 Big Merc station wagon that he styled “The Collider.”

When I told a guy that, he threw me such a baleful look of disappointment that I felt like a man who refused to give his dog half of his ham sandwich. After he’d already wolfed the first half. So I did what most fakers do, I went home and looked up Hadron on Wikipedia.

There actually was a guy named Hadron with a Big Merc named “The Collider.” He wasn’t a demo driver, but  worked the demolition derby circuit selling collision insurance. His brother Sid ran a body shop and they figured that between the insurance premiums and the insurance checks for fender unbending they would make a bundle. Four days later when they went broke they became disillusioned. They’d always been told to follow their dreams.

But many a promising dream fails when the person dreaming it has to get up in the middle of the night to return a beer to nature — just when the dream is getting to the disclaimer. Back in bed a new dream clicks on and the old dream melts into the ether, never having reached the point where an announcer says “Look, this is just a ridiculous dream. Do not try to sell collision insurance to the collision-prone and stop dragging Sid into your gerbil-brained schemes.”

Seriously, the Hadron Collider is a high school science project that got way out of hand over in Europe — where science, like soccer, is very popular for no apparent reason.
The HC is a circular underground race track with a 17 mile circumference. There are no grandstands or beer vendors. Thirty men’s rooms (PhDs only), one ladies room out back. Parking is a nightmare.

While your above ground race tracks feature horses, cars, or monkeys riding dogs, the HC races protons, which are members of the futon family–apparently a very dysfunctional family. Sometimes they race lead nuclei. I can see nuclei (well, not technically) but lead nuclei? Do. I. Look. Stew. Pid?

Anyway, these things are said to be so small they cannot be seen with the naked scientist’s eye. And they don’t race these little ding dongs against each other, but into each other. When they collide, their impact is measured in something called micro joules (I hate that kind of talk) whose laps are tracked as Petabytes. Which just brings me back to my ham sandwich analogy.

At some point you have to wonder who is fooling who. This all reminds me of the guy who claimed to have the world’s smallest giant that he kept in a shoe box. Somebody (not me) foolishly gave him $1,000 for a look. Somebody (not me) looked inside and saw only an empty box.

The guy with the box said “Wait. He’s in the bathroom. Look, he just came out. See? He’s the one with the green hat. Look at the guy standing next to him. You can tell one is a giant and one is a midget.”

With micro joules, no doubt.

One of the missions of the HC is to confirm or deny the existence of what Wikipedia calls the “theorized Higgs-boson particle,” which sounds like something you’d get for theorized dinner on the dead caveman diet.

The other purpose of forcing invisible pieces of high-speed lint to run into each other underground is to help us better understand physical laws. I hope nobody asks me what those physical laws are, because other than not being an end-user in public, I’m at a loss.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

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

The sky above, the zombies below

Posted on August 15, 2014 by PMcG

Last night our man dreamed he could fly. He’s walking down the street and just like in real life, it occurs to him he should act like a bee and buzz off.

He clenches his fists and grits his teeth really hard — like the guy in the Monty Python beard growing contest — and he just gives it all he’s got. Suddenly he lifts off the ground and he’s flying over the city like a blimp without the gas and it is so cool.

He doesn’t like to admit it, but in his waking life — aka, reality — he has tried once or twice to fly just like in the dream. Not only does it not work, it scares people who see him standing there as tight as a juicy knot, calling up his inner Hulk and ready to dead-lift a dumb bell if some dumb bell happens by.

In the dream, he feels that the clenching of fists, the tightening up, the gritting of teeth is the most logical way to get flying. That it doesn’t work in the un-dream state is puzzling, because if the logical isn’t the way to get airborne, then the only way we can ever hope to fly is to do something along the illogical spectrum.

Like building a 175-ton steel contraption that has wings but also bathrooms and TV screens and tiny, impossible-to-open bags of peanuts and mean looking guards who make you take off your shoes to make sure you’re not hiding feets in them, and naturally, a bin to store your banjo. And it all comes with the ridiculous expectation of lifting off the ground and getting you to Minneapolis before lunch.

If people really could fly, our man is thinking, we’d see them zipping here and there above us. And while it would all seem perfectly normal, he’s pretty sure he’d still have a little anxiety about whether or not all of those people up there paid a visit to the little room where you wash your hands and admire the plumage before taking off. He knows the type of person who wouldn’t have thought of that until airborne. At least pigeons have an excuse for the aerial unburdening of their inner selves: they have the brains of a pigeon.

So we’d certainly need some new laws, and probably flying cops who will pull you over and say “Do you know how fast you were going? Man, you were flying back there.”

Having self-analyzed his flying dreams, our man sees them as a kind of memo-to-self: rise above the festering blarbosity around you, escape the shuffling, moaning zombieness of being, get creative and undo that juicy knot.

Like our man, many of us tighten up before flying. Someone once told him that “flying is all about letting go.” Or maybe it was “letting go is like flying without a parachute or a steel contraption.” Maybe both.

The way he sees it, personal flying is about believing in a kid he used to know, the one with his father’s slick pompadour and all those green army men set up under the dining room table. That kid knows how to fly. Did it all during kidhood.

Sometimes it’s raining hard and the steel-wooly skies are doing their self-cleaning oven thing. Those are the times in waking life when everything is grounded – and yet blarbosity festers on in any weather. Which is why the onset of darkness may be the best time for the dreamy flight of a humble-bee.

But don’t discount the daytime. The onset of lightness fills the brain with helium, as long as you raise the shades and throw back the curtains. When you do, in the words of songwriter Jimmy Webb, you will go “up, up and away in your beautiful balloon.”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments