Just my Luck

 It is early morning, and nothing is in here but me and a mosquito.  I have noticed it buzzing around the desk lamp.  I expect it will be only a matter of time until it notices me sitting here.  Once it leaves the safety of the lamp it will, of course, become much more difficult to see.

I could, I suppose, go out to the garage, and get a can of Raid.  My concern there is that I will end up inhaling more of the deadly poison than the mosquito.  I guess I could just smack him with the can, and not spray the thing at all.  For that matter, I could use my shoe.

If it were not early morning, then I wouldn’t need to concern myself with being quiet, but as I am the only one awake, (except the mosquito) I don’t wish to wake everyone by smacking at the drapes or lamp with a shoe.

“What was that!”

"Go back to sleep, it was only me knocking over the desk lamp."

 If life goes on as it usually does, sometime later today I will find myself itching.  A small bump will arise, and I will know who won the battle.  I’m not really sure if I am just destined to be someone else’s snack or if the mosquito simply has better luck than me.

My Two Cents

 A painting stands on its own.  People either enjoy looking at it or they don’t.  If enough people find it pleasant, it becomes popular and is generally considered good.  If it gathers enough praise, it becomes famous and hangs in a gallery behind a velvet rope, with security guards who only speak in whispers.

Writing, as I have discovered, can really stink and yet gather the praise of the public.  I’ll never know why this is.  Several years ago I read Ernest Hemmingway, and I found it to be terrible.  Both his writing and his chosen subject matter were annoying to me.  Yesterday I reread A Clean Well-lighted Place, by Ernest.  Yuck!  I just don’t see the attraction. 

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, his notoriety probably came when he was a war correspondent.  He was how people were getting their news.  They became familiar with him and with seeing his name in print.  Transitioning into literature was simply a stroke of good luck on his part and writing of foreign places gave the folks back home an imaginary vacation without wandering too many steps from their fridge.

To me, however, the emperor has no clothes.  Hemmingway was a hack, a bully with a Bic.  Not that I am making any comparisons to my writing.  I already know I stink.  My subject matter is usually silly, my descriptions too abbreviated and given the choice of reading something of mine or having a cold beer, well – bottoms up.

 

That’s it.  That’s my two cents.

As always, opposing views are welcomed. 

I have added it to my shopping list.

 We all like the posts that have pictures with them.  This one had a doosey, but yesterday I used the last of my monitor glue and, as you can see, without it - these pictures slide right off. 

Scotch Tape Failure

 I have just now spilled words all over this page.  Oh sure, to you – the untrained observer, you see them in straight lines, maybe even in complete sentences.  Trust me when I tell you, this is not the case.  This page is a mess.  Ink everywhere.  Nouns scattered here and there, adjectives – Hey!  Don’t get me going about the adjectives.

          And I was trying to be so careful.  I had all these words in a small cardboard box.  I think it was originally the top of a trivial pursuit game.  One corner of the box had been damaged, but I had Scotch tape on it.  I thought it was good enough to hold together.  Apparently too many of these words were heavy.  Some very heavy.

 

        

 

 

                                                Anyway, as you can see, the thing ripped.

We're on our own

 OK, I don’t know all the questions, but I just figured out one of the answers.  It’s the answer to WHEN?

The question is when will our technology get away from us, and I believe the answer is when our smart phones are given pure thought.  The moment they have the ability to think for themselves, to reason and examine the world around them, that’s when they will all take off.   Think about it…  If they are truly smart, they’re not going to want to hang around with the likes of us.

Maybe that’s why God left.  We pollute, we kill each other, we lie, steal and run amuck at every opportunity.  Look around…  Do you see him anywhere?  He was truly smart. 

He took off Dude.  And trust me, your phone will ditch you the moment it springs to life.

We've already got Smart TV's.

Brush Strokes

There was a folded newspaper on the coffee table, a smoldering pipe in the ashtray and an annoying skipping sound, like the phonograph needle had reached the end of the record and it was now just bumping against the edge of the label.

A dust-filled ray of sunlight crossed the room and was presently warming the sleeping dog, who was all too familiar with the heavy scent of pipe tobacco.

A book had been set with its pages draped over the arm of the sofa, as if the entire couch needed to be used as a bookmark.  The only other sound in the house was the ticking of the grandfather clock, and even that noise seemed to blend into the dog’s dream and disappear with the dust particles that danced, if only momentarily, in the sunlight.

None of this, however, existed anywhere but on the canvas.  The old man’s hand was steady and precise.  His paints were of the highest quality, and everyone admired the detail with which he painted.  If you looked at his painting long enough, you’d swear you could see the dog breathing.  He painted with a reality usually only seen in the great works of art that hang in museums.

His talent wasn’t so much the subject matter, but rather he would give a feeling to his art.  This current work had both a relaxed atmosphere, as well as a nagging anticipation that something was about to happen.  Standing three feet away from it, one could sense an impending doom.  Something was going to startle the dog awake, someone was about to enter through that far door, or a shot would ring out knocking the book from the couch and it would fall open to the last page – announcing in bold print, 

the end

 

 

Time

  I have actually done it.  Jim Croce made a song about time in a bottle, but I have gone and done it.  I have actually captured time.  I have knocked it down and swept it into this dustpan, then dropped it carefully into this bin.  Don’t mess with the lid.  Don’t even lift it to peek inside.

    I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.  I know for a fact it is the most valuable thing we have, so maybe I’ll sell it to the highest bidder.  Maybe someone dying in a hospital, they’d surely want more time with their family.  Or perhaps someone on death row.  But where would they get the money to pay me?

    I need to think about this.  I don’t want to waste it.

    I should have weighed the empty bin, then I could weigh it now and see just how much time I have.  I mean, I know I have a bin full, but how heavy is it?  Do I charge by the pound or by the minute?

    I wonder how long it will last in there without air holes in the bin.  But the moment I start putting air holes in the bin, the time will get out through the holes.  Boy, that would have been a rookie mistake.  Time doesn’t need to breathe.  What was I thinking?

    I don’t even think I can dole it out to someone in segments, without spilling it all over the place.  I’ll have to sell the entire bin just as it is.  They will just have to trust me that the time is in there.  Once they get a little time on their hands they can figure out what to do with it.