Yeah, Big City Strippers

 The Big City

Part 5 of 28

I’ve finally got something nice to say about the Big City. They do strippers like nobody’s business, whereas the last strippers I ever heard of in the small town came through when I was underage. A little more on that later.

Concerning the Big City, of course I'm shocked by nearly everything about it. The amount of land it consumes to house it. The great resources pumped into its daily life, seemingly commensurate with the immensity of its population. The nameless, faceless society it’s established for itself, which proves the adage that the more people there are, the harder it is -- even impossible -- to know everyone’s name. Although in some social settings even in the Big City I’ve noticed a few people do call me by name. Get deep enough into the flora and fauna of the Big City and you’ll notice a few debt collectors in every dark alley. Once you get an invitation to check in with them, they receive you graciously, call you by name and seem to know your history, Social Security numbers, etc. The downside about them is it always turns nasty.

So let’s hear it for the small town in this regard. Even the debt collectors back home sleep at night, and they’re happy enough if you give them an occasional fruit pie -- and this goes double if it’s one of Grandma’s recipes you’re exploiting -- to show you a few more days of grace.

The Big City has it over the small town in one regard, as I mentioned, strippers. The last time strippers came through the small town was the centennial, and they were shut down after the wrestling team (minors) held down the entire front row, and finally rushed the stage. But the downfall came when the wrestling coach’s picture was on page one of the newspaper, with lots of kiss marks all over his big stupid face. A friend of mine had a single small red hair that he kept in a jar by the door, a little token of lost love, or love gone astray, or promised love where it just fizzled out. We think it was from one of the dancers, or maybe a hair fell out of a guy's nose. Whichever, it certainly helps recall a night of passion and craziness.

So that's how it is, I’m in the Big City. And whenever I can afford admission, even if it’s a pie I baked for the nice ticket man, I’m picking up a few eyefuls of stripper magic. Ummm, I can see it now in my nicely erect mind’s eye, two of the loveliest (but wildest) performers to ever hit the big stage, Flora and Fauna, one left-handed and one right, but however you shake 'em out, they look the same on both sides. Each side a mirror image of the other. Bodies perfectly proportioned, the top looking as good as the bottom. And the right side equal to the left. Very nasty, perky, responsive, absolutely no shame.

It’s a great thing, and I urge you, if you’re ever in the Big City, this is the best thing we’ve got going --- purrrrrr --- by farrrrrr, all the way! Live a little.

I Buy Tires With Home Cookin'

The Big City

Part 4 of 28

Now that I’ve seen both sides of the equation in this deal -- how it is in the small town and The Big City -- I can finally say with pretty good authority that the Big City, for all its bragging, hasn’t got anything over the small town. I'm able to see what’s good and what’s bad, and I’m telling everyone who’ll listen. And there's a lot of stubborn idiots out there. But no one can talk me out of it once I’ve made up my mind. Consider this a one-man stampede over the Big City!

Immediately when I start thinking of the baker, the butcher, and the new tire pusher back in the small town, I first think of the values I learned there. I think through all this stuff and you know how tears well up in your eyes? That’s what it is for me, except they're gushers. I get sentimental, then my whole life sweetens, then reality hits me squarely in the face -- the Big City I foolishly moved to -- and I go whole hog ballistic, with the terrible consequences of punishing myself. Crying and complaining that things aren’t what they used to be, to the point of denying myself supper and going to bed hungry.

I let my mind drift. The small town, gotta love it. It’s incredible now when I think back on it how much money I owe to so many people. And today I have the new tire guy in mind for some reason. Mostly for the many ways I deprived him of a good living by never having the exact change in paying for a tire. And he’d always shave a little off the price, giving me the comfort of riding on tires not bald or knobby while I only put out a few shekels.

I still have to think he was always glad to see me coming. Him with that small town grin you can't help but love in small town merchants. It conveys a lot, that he and I are friends, with there being no doubt that we go together -- merchant and customer -- and if anything threatens the fragile balance of that relationship everything could go to hell and we’d both be in a pickle, and not just us but the rest of the population that depends so much on keeping the system in place. Because, really, we might not survive through the day if we veered from it so much as a silly millimeter!

In the Big City, however, just to offer one stark contrast, it’s dog eat dog till the last dog’s dead, which is any minute now! How do they avoid the fragile balance of the small town? There’s always new population they've never heard of washing up on the Big City’s shores. Rubes like me from the small town as well as immigration from other Big Cities, mostly lowlife cheapskates who don’t pay their bills showing up to take advantage of the Big City largesse, more fraudulent in the long run but manageable in the short. Because everything they do depends on volume. If the tire dealer loses half his inventory to vandals, he makes it up on volume. But in the small town, a vandal takes one tire it takes the dealer a full nine years to make up the loss.

I needed a couple new tires just a few weeks ago. And, yes, I went to the Big City sharks, who wouldn’t look the other way and give me the tires as loaners for a six-month test drive. These despicable sharks wanted cash, or worse, credit. It knocked me for a loop and that night I fell asleep longing for the glories of the small town, where I might ride on free tires till they popped. Because in the small town a few promises and an occasional apple pie goes a long way. Gets me from place to place.

I Reign A Small Town King

The Big City

Part 3 of 28

Even as a small town king myself, so often I find myself rejecting the prejudice small town morons have about the Big City, essentially that it’s evil. That goes against my competing small town values of prejudging any case. I had the impartial justice bug even as a kid, anytime I was accused of something. “Take your hands off me, you filthy devil,” I remember saying as a kid to one of my accusers, the school principal. That's what I should've said.

Another way to look at it is, Hey, we’re supposedly small town kings! If that’s what they call us, shouldn’t we embrace our royal identity and live out the truth how we have it over everyone else. It’s an injustice, it cries for legal help, to believe anything else. Although a lot of this language about us being small town kings was likely just a cheap shot by the main proponents of the small town vibe against the Big City. Meaning, yeah, sure, you’re a “small town king,” but apart from the debate with the Big City the message was always, “Don't embrace it as a thing,” or “When push comes to shove, we make the rules, we can change them.” A terrible thing as a kid to recognize. “You set up the parameters of my supposed royalty and you can knock ‘em down. 'We’re the ones calling you kings, We giveth, We taketh away.'"

Obviously in a situation like that, where the propaganda is widely touted even as you see how shabby it is -- like finding that all your birthday presents were just cardboard cutouts of the real thing, or your surroundings a Hollywood set when the director yells “Cut,” are things no kid wants to face. “But, but, you said!” “Yeah, kid,” the cynical adult says, “We know what we said. Stick around, clean your ears, there’s no telling how much more you’re going to hear about your so-called promise. You’re promise equals exactly this: The principal bares his ass and everyone lines up on their knees in lockstep to symbolically kiss it.  These are the insights the typical kid doesn’t know what to do with. Maybe just grow up to parade his own backside around the town, with one of two motives, to expose the apparently false teaching that every small town kid’s a king, or to keep embracing it, with the fear that to reject its truthfulness is to make even the promise vanish. Then what are you left with? Shambles, a small town vibe little better than the hated Big City.

I’d love to find the documentation on this stuff. It could be, given their low opinion of us, they were very careful to collate together all the documents, distributing them at meetings and then storing it all somewhere secure. But it could actually be easier to find than we think. A man serves as mayor or principal or even flunky only so long. I’ve seen how these meetings go, in unrelated fields. “We’re going to collect all the papers, etc.,” and the reality's often different. A guy’s talking and accidentally packs his papers home, they’re misplaced, they’re forgotten. Only to be discovered years later in an estate sale. “What have we here? A Nazi plan to make us think we’re all royalty, when, in fact, we’re peons from the word GO? This is what the exalted small town thinks of us, so desperate to keep us from the possibly true Big City propaganda that the Big City turns out the best kids, the true royalty!"

At the very least, friends, it’s disappointing to grow up and suspect your entire youth was a carefully nurtured lie, and now you're left to counsel a bunch of widowed children in their old age. But I simply got out, and here I sit, now a resident of the Big City. And I've seen one big difference here, they don’t even tell you you’re a king. The subject never comes up! Which explains a lot.

My Hillbilly Hat

 

The Big City

Part 2 of 28

You have to know I hate the old attitude cosmopolitans have of making fun of a guy’s hillbilly hat and laying it on thick. In my world, that’s just plain rude. And if it weren’t me on the receiving end of their “fun,” but some other put-upon innocent guy, I’d be first in line to take them on and put them in their place.

First, there’s nothing wrong with a hillbilly hat. On simple practical grounds, it fits loosely, it covers a lot, and it’s quite comfortable. So I don’t know exactly what their point was. It might be that one of the idiots decided hats like that are behind the times and started the pointing and laughing. Then the others, who honestly didn’t see anything wrong with it thought they needed to jump in on the festivities so they wouldn't be teased. So none of them except the first guy really knew what they were laughing at but did it anyway out of some crazy immature group-think.

That conclusion completely minimizes their fun and puts me in the driver's seat. Although it's equally possible that all of them knew exactly what they were doing and knew it was wrong. So it's likely they did respect me but were unsure of the opinion they should show, which should have been just common sense good judgment, but they couldn't do the right thing because they weren't sure the others would go along with it. So that's it, these dweebs knew better, but with a roughhouse group dynamic like that it always seems good to jump on someone. Let’s say there’s just one or two of them who started the fun. The others have a problem to resolve: “How can the rest of us stand back and not get the joke?”

Or it could've been the joke was obvious and they were just looking for a little validation -- anything would do -- before erupting in one boisterous mass. It’s a clash of civilizations, and naturally they think their civilization -- the Big City -- is not just the dominant but the only valid one. Anything varying from their mode of dress and head covering, allowing for slowly shifting fashions over the years, is too quaint, too Hicksville to tolerate in this more enlightened present. So ... “Dog-pile on the Hillbilly!”

It’s really despicable, but unfortunately a thing I’ve seen over the years in various social settings. One year I showed up at the family Christmas celebration in gold psychedelic button bib overalls, and you’d’ve thought Liberace had come to town. With my own family! Who had one hell of a time razzing me, getting up in my grill, fingering my bibs, wondering where the candelabra was (!) and if that brand of newfangled overalls came with tails! That was the Christmas I ruined. Grandma gave one of my cousins some deodorant for Chrstmas, which I promptly took outside on that frigid night and pushed the button. It stuck open and fizzed and spun in the snow, giving him another year of smelling bad to endure.

As for my hillbilly hat, they had to think I was a sight, a regular troll under the bridge, with a fashion sense pretty stale for the Big City scene. I reject their mean-spirited attitude (in these understanding times!) and hope someday they get theirs. Curses on them, actual curses! May their homes burn to the ground, and may all their dates lead to various diseases for themselves and their partners. And may their stumbling parents fall and not be able to get up.

My Move To The Big City

 

The Big City

Part 1 of 28

The day I moved to the Big City was a busy one. I'm not sure how I did it, whether it was timed according to my personal fate or if there really is a big hand in the sky guiding everyone’s ant-like destinies lockstep, but the day I showed up a bunch of others did too. We didn’t exchange names and addresses. I barely knew my own address and had it written on a slip of paper so I could recite it.

Now everyone in the world wants to know where I live, the specifics of which I don’t want to get into anymore, being a public person somewhat in demand on the speaking circuit. I just tell everyone it’s somewhere east of Shanghai and also west, depending which way you go. I was drunk one night and they needed to help me home and on that particular night east of Shanghai was closest, only a few blocks. West was prohibitively far.

There were others that day, all of us getting driver’s licenses and worrying about transfers of insurance policies, etc. There’s always more to it than you hope for. But once here they don’t want you easily shrinking back and leaving the Big City, because the whole place runs on people power, the more the better. Which is also true of my small town, and they feel the pinch greater there because taxes are what keeps the place afloat. So it was tough saying goodbye. On the other hand, you might recall, Grandma’s house (where I lived) had become a hell hole, leaking, molding, then there was a fire which made it even less habitable. The rules on rotting domiciles, especially after they've been on fire are strict. They came with bulldozers and trucks and hauled the house in pieces to the dump. So whatever they're losing on taxes is partly their fault.

I even tried camping on the site in a tent, but that’s also against the rules. Stupid place, very picky. They're just very strict, whereas in The Big City you could camp anywhere you want, if you find some trees with nobody around (good luck), and it'd take quite a while for them to evict you. The only things on the property back home that lets me know it was once my home are the big maple tree and the water pump Grandpa installed sometime in the 1920s. I stopped by my grandparents' cemetery a few months ago and felt some relief in the thought, "Everything goes to crap sooner or later, it’s not my fault." We parted friends.

Still, me a Big City guy? It’s hard to believe, but indeed I took the plunge, plighted my troth to the place and I've still got a ton of fears to prove it. Especially when I have to range so many miles from my current place to get anywhere. The traffic is terrible, the only familiar faces I ever see are the neighbors and employees at the grocery store. I had sort of a semi-close friend very briefly, then his cat got pregnant, pissing off the landlord, and he vanished one night. It was me and another neighbor, "Black Steve," conferring at his door, both of us deciding, “He’s gone!” But I have not vanished. And if I do, not even Steve will notice, because we literally haven’t spoken since that day.

Bring In The Angels

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 30 of 30

Throughout these inspirational talks, we’ve looked at the full extent of Destiny’s dealings. There’s a lot of good "goin' on." But whenever we look at either the micro level or macro level we see more turmoil, a more unfortunate picture than we’re comfortable with. And, like most things, we judge all this by its impact on us as the human race, how it might do us some good (as we judge) or harm (objective truth).

You know what my way is, to lull everyone into a state of acceptance, with a strong push toward the positive and optimistic, knowing that that’s what we want to hear. Yes, we recognize that fate and destiny are somehow tied in together -- as I saw earlier just today with another funeral procession on the interstate, always a jarring sight. The whole thing makes me wonder what happened to the old gravel roads and the dignity of the funerals of old. Surely the undertaker could take the side streets just to maintain some last shred of decency. Could it be we're in that big a rush to get to the grave? Food for thought, at least for the worms that presumably have a long-enough attention-span.

I myself don’t want anyone’s destiny to be bad, always in the gutter, or as rotten as they come. But it’s not up to me to judge. As varied as the things are that happen at the individual level, it’s still my optimistic expectation that the ultimate destiny out there for all of us is fundamentally good. Let’s say it’s a matter of a huge dark planet encroaching on the earth, moving in like the new kid on the block, who is also the cosmos' worst juvenile delinquent, we could be snuffed out in a second. That would be bad.

But what if it is -- at least in a psychological sense -- much as you hear it in religion, that there’s a macro level in our nature, however it may have evolved -- it’d have to be transpersonal -- whereby when we’re about to be wiped out we are engaged in at least one last trance, similar to the moment we personally fall asleep, and it is good? None of us are destined to wake up, let’s throw that in for the natural argument of the situation, but if we don’t know any difference, if the world becomes infested with aliens, with gigantic fangs and a persistent insatiable appetite, what are they going to do when they run out of food? They would have to eat themselves (or go vegan) and any aliens as badass as I've been imagining them, they won't be patient enough to make such a radical switch.

Just before this, then, angels or visions of angels within, will have delivered us, the greatest Destiny reserved like a fire extinguisher behind a pane of glass that somehow vandals didn’t dick with. The system worked! So the rest of us are gone, delivered, happy to flit endlessly in the great beyond! Can you hear my wings? “Flit, flit, flit.” With the angels.

Now here’s the secret destiny that no one expected. Somewhere there’s a number of people, newborns overlooked in a tiny village in Africa. Apes have nurtured them, they come of age, they start the new language, etc. And they’re very holistically oriented, environmentalism is their nature, with the foresight to build space shields against an unperceived alien enemy. And they guard and nurture their destiny. Finally, a little kid is born, basically the correlate of me, also with a destiny-counseling gig, but this kid is able to make greater inroads than I could ever manage, since the whole population is now just that little cluster. And so forth, and so on, you'd have to agree a very happy ending to an otherwise tragic set of circumstances.

Final note: One of the things people like about me is I'll move heaven and earth for a happy ending.

Destiny 'Round The Clock

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 29 of 30

I hear people sometimes say how much they love to read biographies. Which to me, of all the things you can read, are the worst. “Like everyone else, I was born at a very early age. My parents were so and so. I went to school at the usual place. The pizza parlor in my hometown was known for one thing, always being out of sausage. How hard is it to stock the basic ingredients for pizza? If pizza's the one thing you do, either do it right or forget it. We might’ve been looking at a passive/aggressive thing from an on-and-off vegan wanna-be manager. Which if that’s your thing, do it proudly, with aplomb, but instead of making pizzas how about the salad business?"
There’s no room for surprises in biographies. To be true to their word, they have to drone on and on about the nitpicky daily grind, the boring ins and out of their family system, their various surmises about the neighbors’ affairs and who their (the neighbors’ friends) were, since they seemed to think of themselves as better than us even though obviously we're all in the same boat. And speaking of boats, my dad ran a bait shop for the fishermen who populated the nearby lake, well stocked, full of everything, hard to find lunkers as well as the common crappies just off the shore, barely in the water.

So when we start sketching out lives -- unless you were a rodeo cowboy and have a lot of dirt to dish -- it’s all the same verbiage, a waste of paper, ink, glue, time, and shelf-space. The whole thing tries my patience, probably the worst sin there is, about as bad as waiting for spaghetti to soften in boiling water. I mean, look, it’s a millimeter thick, how can boiling water scald you in a half a second but it still takes forever to soften even the tiniest pasta? This is the biography I want, sadistic pasta makers cackling with evil delight over the quandary: “Just let ‘em try and cook this. They’ll drop dead from old age and famine before they ever get their money’s worth!”

OK, where are we? Destiny is simultaneously everywhere. But to every person, Destiny is there “as if” its presence were for you alone. Day in, day out. Sometimes responding to your biography as it's in progress, and sometimes screwing it up royally because its presence is also with everyone else. Some things have to collide. You’re at the theater, it burns down. Or Lincoln's shot by someone in the projectionist’s booth. You’re at the malt-shop, at a restaurant, or you’re a farmer milking the cow because the malt-shop’s running low, or the restaurant. The situations are endless, but Destiny’s there in the whole mix, mixing it up, yes, but also keeping it straight.

Be careful what you do then. It might be exactly what you should do and that’s good. But it might be just the opposite, something that will mark or scar you for life, and that’s bad. Each of us has the same 24-hours-a-day. If I were you, I would stay close to home, because, say you’re out in society, anything can happen and always does.

The Saving Tibetan Tableau

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 28 of 30

Nothing says "Destiny" like the time humanity's destiny was so far askew that they said there was a rip in the fabric of existence. I remember hearing about it and thinking, "Whoa!" My entire family was taken aback and changed. Mom refused to cook and Dad refused to eat. We kids didn't know what to think. The neighbors came over to cannibalize us and we turned the tables and cannibalized them. It was a wild time. Despite our good upbringing, we ran roughshod over the town, pillaging and burning, Destiny askew as our excuse.

Later I came to understand and regret what had happened. Leading scientists said there indeed was a rip in the fabric, and left it at that, not sure what to do. But one thing became crystal clear to me, that cannibalism should be strictly curtailed, and that we wanted neighbors with good taste, not neighbors that taste good, which they didn't.

It’s times like these -- thankfully few and far between -- that you're most grateful for people who know what they’re doing. And there were some deeply wise souls. They went into a kind of soothing anthem that made us drift off and sleep for 10 years. We woke up as adults with a whole new perspective on things. All this was done with a  purpose, forces acting to keep existence on the right track. A kind of murmuring call went out from the heart of nature and we congregated in twos and threes all over the globe. It was thought up by Tibetan monks, who are quite modest, but, believe me, when we’re together they don’t want anyone to forget it was them that conjured up the saving hocus pocus.

They descended on our little town thanks in part to my family. One of my grandpas, going back a mere 50 generations, was himself 1/20th the illegitimate son of a Tibetan monk, the original offender having been translated into heaven before we caught his name. Grandpa’s powers mostly involved fishing, which was completely supernatural, but when the chips were really down, and mankind was cornered against a barrier no man could cross, Grandpa went out to the outhouse and blew off enough steam that the various portals of time were mystically adjusted, etc. Sounds impressive but it stunk.

That’s the old generation, and now we’re up to the new. And with Destiny going askew, that brought forth the monks and those with monk-blood chanting and quizzing one another days on end. This work ongoing, a kind of rough sludge gathered at their feet. The chanting continued, the sludge was everywhere. I had a pair of Hush Puppies ruined by it.

A week later, then, they realized all the pipes were backed up. The head master said it didn’t smell right, and he called them to buckle down on the chanting, faster, louder, in various languages known and unknown -- looking for every force in the universe that was good. Thankfully it all fell into place, rays of light from above blessed a particular artist, who came up with this mathematically perfect artwork. Unleashing it on the sludge, the sludge found its limits and retreated. Rays of light sped around the world in a cleansing work.

Of course then, the artwork being widely promoted, it was released on T-shirts, that, even though a capitalistic thing that seemed cynical at the time, was precisely what the monks hoped for. Because a  mystical haze descended on us from the symbol widely distributed. The sludge went away and now it’s so far gone I can’t even remember what it looked like, just mushy. Destiny was fully restored, back on track, and everything since has continued apace as desired. Even wars that were interrupted by the sludge resumed -- as they should have -- since life is more than cotton candy and party favors.

As for myself, I completely lack all temptation toward cannibalism and cheating on homework.

My Destiny Consultations

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 27 of 30

One of these days, if I ever get my life organized and can really bear down on pursuits, I’m hoping to monetize some stuff. Just people talking to me in incidental little meetings, like running into someone at Walmart and they ask me where the toy department is ought to be worth at least a quarter. Then there’s the meatier stuff, like consulting with me on anything I’m an expert at. Anything I blog about, of course I couldn’t blog about it unless I were qualified to do so. It's in the Constitution.

But my education is extremely impressive -- going by the classes I actually passed -- which you probably already know by my scholarly lingo. Full sentences, very little slang, willing to tackle any subject head-on, and bold to put my opinions out there head-to-head against the best of deceased scholars. Politics, religion, opinions on yard work, tips for an efficient life (don’t wait till the end of the month to balance your checkbook), and so many other topics I can’t even list without a fee.

Probably the biggest reason I haven't done it yet is I’m too lazy to put all the pieces into place. I always try to do things by the book. That means I need a tax attorney and others. I'd have to dispose of my present identity and take on something that suggests a more scholarly, disciplined character. Then I'd launch into a consultant role. Visiting you everyday with my briefcase. And being just up-the-wazoo helpful, with relatively low fees, undercutting everyone.

Of course one of the big consultancy jobs that’d keep me perpetually in the green would have to do with Destiny. The generic fortune tellers of old kept it somewhat mystic and a lot more mysterious than I like. I’ll be a consulting friend on the subject, giving you the green light or nixing it when it comes to your destiny. I have a kind of electric arm-hair system on a lot of things. If it’s positive it tingles in one way, pleasantly. Or negative, it tingles in an unpleasant way, one of the evolutionary cues most of us have forgotten, hackles, bearing my fangs, growling. My arm tingled endlessly and very unpleasantly when my dad died. I almost had it removed.

Then there’s the topper to the whole thing, that there will be an accompanying Certificate of Excellence. I’ve actually found this is the only way to go. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth a Certificate of Excellence. With limited rights for you to claim it merited my Certificate of Excellence, but certainly the higher the fee, the more you can brag, boast, and/or tout it that by paying your precious money you earned these unequaled Certificates of Excellence. They're printed on 30 lb. paper so they're quite a lift.

I can see myself helping to determine your destiny everyday. Which could be done in a snap. Very easy. My guesswork has been noted for quality in scholarly articles I've written. Then there's the ongoing fee, which you will love paying because of the positive strokes I give you. You'll be the toast of the town, everyone knowing your destiny has to be a particular grade of excellent or you wouldn’t have warranted the opportunity to brag about what I've told you, that your destiny is certified "Excellent."

Our Shared Destiny

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 26 of 30

I graciously reach out my hand that we may join together, recognizing and honoring our shared destiny. If such is what you also choose. Being such a kindhearted soul -- that’s what people say about me, agree or not -- I’m always thinking, scheming, dreaming, imagining, plotting what we could do in this world if we were on the same page. The way it goes in my daydreams, brotherhood and sisterhood break forth like a beacon, with a clarion call to mutuality and camaraderie, love for one another, free grass, public bathing, nudity run rampant (but nice), and goodness. Like Woodstock, but listening to our own music on earbuds.

It seems like I had this drive several years ago, but my memory’s been fuzzy/crazy. Anything that’s out of mind for any real length of time (10-12 seconds) seems to go “poof” and disappear. The disadvantage of that is I’m always starting things that don’t go anywhere, but the biggest advantage is that when I later think of the same thing it’s totally new and fresh. When old people tell you they have memory problems, believe them. Or, as I always say, when old people tell you they have memory problems, believe them.

But it doesn’t matter to me if you’re old, young, or any of the other species of age. As part of my push to celebrate our shared destiny, anyone will do, warm bodies, I don’t care who. If you’re the smartest guy in town, great, sit over there. Or dumb as a post with relatives no one would want, you’re still good enough to be part of this magnificent push. I don’t know how we’re going to handle it, and I don’t know that I need to know. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, that’s life.

At that point, say it’s a massive failure, we’ll doubtlessly fight it out for turf, then divide the spoils in our own little circles, and celebrate (apart, alas, not together) that whereas we tried and failed, it’s still better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. At least that’ll be my argument, hoping to save face, and, believe me, I’ll stick to it. One thing I hate is being wrong with all the guilt that goes with it.

Still, the future isn’t set. We could make it this time. We could try. I’m going to try, and I want you to try too. I don’t want any of us to fail and I never go into anything expecting to fail. All it takes is other people believing in it too, and believing in themselves, because that’s how destiny works. Apart, maybe nothing happens, that’s not surprising. But together, wow, the potential’s there, with hearts joined together, coming together in common cause with optimism, people knowing that yesterday may have been a mess but tomorrow’s not even here, it could be anything.

Look at how friendship works out. We fit together, we've come together, we've joined together. And now that we have, that’s a start. Destiny has to start somewhere, am I right? Friendship’s a great place to start! Then -- what a wild thought! -- like links of a chain, are you with me? Link joins to link, they snap together, they’re strong when they’re together and not easily broken. With you and me and the other guy and the other guy over there, and all those other guys, and those women, and that little group at the library, a study group, and groups everywhere, sports fans, the city orchestra, the oldest man in the Big City (who was profiled on the local news the other night, 103 and expected to die any minute), etc., etc., and people everywhere. Then -- yes, then -- we shall celebrate this great coming together, a destiny like none other!

This is our chance to do it. So let’s quit blowing it, OK? Could someone tell me what I just agreed to?

Cogs In A Machine

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 25 of 30

We’ve all had it explained to us from time to time -- at least once by a boss, which is unforgettable -- that you're nothing more than a cog in a machine, and that you have one function in life, to be all that that cog needs to be. The other cogs are depending on you. And the boss, the guy telling you the philosophy, is the judge and regulator of the cogs, that each shall do his or her indispensable part until it’s time to be replaced. Which can happen at any point if you ask for more than he can give, like a day off, when there's always work to be done.

So whatever your choice, you’re basically screwed. Think about cogs. They never ask for a day off. But for you, if you fail to show up, you have the short-term value of a day off, but naturally a different cog will be in your place if you’re dumb enough to show up again. If you do show up, though, it’s almost as embarrassing. You’ve accepted that your life is nothing but a cog in this guy’s machine, and he’ll be there to push you around with threats and devious laughter until they swat you with the Silver Paddle on your last day before retirement.

The best course of action would be this: Secretly arrange a new job somewhere else, get it in writing, if possible in blood, but keep the starting date secret for a while. You want it to be a time when you are entirely indispensable to the cog boss. Then you hit him up for a day off. His legs start twitching like they do, knowing that he’s giddy to give you the whole spiel again -- having you over the barrel -- so you let him go point by point over the recitation, occasionally asking him to amplify on particular points.

The big difference this time is you’re yawning, stretching your arms, practically dozing off with indifference. He’s starting to get nervous because you aren't sweating blood like usual. To make this story shorter, you tell him you have this other job where absences are endless, expectations are low. And that you’re unruffled by anything to the point that you’re capable even now of whipping it out and drenching the place. “It’ll be something to remember me by.”

Mother Pig carries something of that message for her chillens. “Get bigger so you can be pork chops for people to eat.” Even Grandma’s aghast at this fate, while we actually endorse it every time mealtime rolls around. A pack of bacon or what have you. The glad acceptance of destiny for pigs comes from their ignorance that anything bad’s going to happen to them. And what if they somehow knew, they wouldn’t be here in the first place, since without pork chops nobody’d be breeding them. Mother and Father Pig would sit in separate pens till their lives were ended for some other reason.

So I guess there’s one destiny for us and one for pigs. Pigs get what they get. We think it through and try to keep ourselves free and clear so that we can be happy, whether we’re absent a lot or whether we’re willing to die at a job that's willing to kill us for a buck.

Mothers & Destiny

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 24 of 30

Probably all of us have wished from time to time that we’d never been born at all. The problem with that, naturally, is that we wasted our opportunity to make our wishes known, way back when they could’ve done something about it. You need to be bold, speak up, instead of complaining about it long after you're already here. Do I wish I'd never been born? Well, I think of all the money I could've saved.

One question that's entangled in this quagmire of knots is, Is our presence here a thing of Destiny, planned and plotted by Destiny? Or just the luck of the draw? A man and a woman are together with enough thrust for a moon-launch and nine months later we land on earth. If it’s a matter of Destiny, like every resentful kid says from time to time, “I didn’t ask to be born!” True, true, but you like I always counter, You didn't ask not to be born either.

I still remember how surprised I was to grow up and realize that Earth had been here 5 to 15 billion years and doing very well without me, then here I was. When we learned about Genesis we thought it was only a few thousand years. But we had to revise our whole way of thought in terms of new information, the vastness, 15 billion birthdays without a card. The great thing for me in those billions of years is I never had one worry I can recall. Then suddenly I’m thrust against some woman’s breast and learn that that’s what we eat till they phrase us into good old cheap spaghetti. I’ve actually been saving lots of money eating spaghetti everyday, now that Mom’s gone.

But it’s the odds of all this that interest me today, the chances of Mom and Dad being where they were, meeting, etc., supplying the ways and means for the world’s huge plot against me to come to realization. Obviously someone up there either had it in for me, or perhaps I misunderstand the nature and meaning of existence. Is it really to do this, that, and the other thing? Or is there an intermediary phase that I’m leaving out? Maybe it’s a way-station on the way to a different station in life.

It would've been nicer to be born on a planet that didn't have such an orderly society with taxes.

As it's turned out, though, I guess I can have some pride. No matter how terrible criminal thugs have all turned out to be, at least I’ve never been in prison, never on death-row, and I've kept my politics soundly in the progressive track. And as far as I know, I can think with the best of any group of average citizens, so I shouldn’t complain. I hit the sweet spot in every category!

What was my mother like? She was very nice, a cool lady, and in ways kind of quirky. Which was something to love about her. And as destinies go, Mom had one as much as anyone.

Eaten By A Tiger...Destiny?

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 23 of 30

Among the basic rules of life -- and you could make lists everyday day -- are: Be vulnerable, but also wary. If you're too vulnerable your destiny could be to end. Wariness counters that. But too much wariness and you're overly skeptical of what you hear, making it hard to go forward. In short, lean on your innate self-knowledge but don't forget common sense. It goes a long way toward keeping your place, your freedom, even your dignity.

Dignity's at stake when a tiger's eating you. If you had a tiger swallow you, think how embarrassing that’d be, not to mention painful. Check out Glen’s shoes, and wonder how he could've let down his guard to such a foolhardy extent. He's been in trouble before. So I ask, How many times does this poor dude need rescued? Glen, if the sidewalk looks slick, show down. If the tiger looks hungry, offer him a TV dinner. And in the meantime lock the door, hide in the basement, do anything except allow yourself to get swallowed.

But it happened, and of course they had to call the ambulance guys, who worked gingerly with two endangered species, Glen and the tiger. And probably the tiger’s less endangered, since he's able to swallow you whole and pass you whole. The best Glen could hope for would be its peristalsis is slow, and whatever laxative they're able to give it (without messing up its metabolism) would speed his reappearance. Time is of the essence. Glen had to hope they could bypass the animal’s natural digestive juices.

My message today, brothers and sisters -- is that you must not become a victim of destiny. Are you with me? Destiny exists, this is true, but it leans more toward being an agent of good, not something meant to detract from your dignity as a human being, which is definitely what comes to pass when you are physically eaten and digested. Where’s the dignity in that? There's none!

What is so critical is the middle path. Yes, you want to be all-in. But you must be all-in in a way that is wise, not foolish. Something that gives health to your members, not destruction. Something that fulfills your destiny, not ends it. Yes, my beloved, every pursuit in life has stops along the way. You eat your own food, bite by bite. When people see you eat, for example, they don’t see the literal shape of a T-bone steak working its way past your throat. It's not clearly delineated as it goes down the gullet.

When it is in the stomach and then later the intestinal system, where digestion receives its crowning glory, no external observer is there to witness the T-bone steak in its original incarnation, non-chewed, unmarred, or whole. The thing is bitten into numerous pieces, awaiting the transformation, the alchemical change as it gives up its form and nature and is in part -- the nutrients -- absorbed into your system, while that which becomes eternal waste is expelled, finally cast out into the draught, the drain, the sewer, the cesspool.

Please, Glen, get a grip, before something worse happens.

He Regretted His Destiny

 

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 22 of 30

There’s been plenty of times that I've not been completely happy with my destiny. Then I tell myself like I’ve told others so many times, “Suck it up!," along with all the other scolding I’m prone to in the face of denial.

To me it’s more of a problem when people are so stuck on their eventual death to the point that they neglect a decent destiny between hither and thither. I myself think of my eventual passing everyday, which since I can’t help it makes me think of it as normal. What else have I really got to go on? The inferior opinions of others? No, thanks! Especially when that number includes those stuck on it, which doesn’t seem to jibe with simultaneously denying it.

Denial of death, though, while obviously wrong, is the best thing some people have for coping. And I guess to a certain extent you have to honor it, at least while they're in the room. But everyone’s a little different, and when they’re “off” what can you do about it anyway? As long as they’re paid up on their consults, it’s all the same, believe what you want to believe. The deeper you dig into denial, in a sense the better for me. Although it’s not my preference everyday to reinvent the wheel, if you’re locked in that kind of infantile mindset, eventually -- whether you say yes or no -- it's your funeral.

But if you want your destiny to be more satisfying, let’s skip the talk of final things at least long enough to steer you into a happier place. Like what you’re going to do in the next year that'll be satisfying and maybe of some use to someone else, if that’s your thing. There’s lots of people who think, “What can I do for my family?” That’s a good aspiration. But if you’re thinking of your death all the time, that’s probably what they’re thinking too. You’ll drop off and whatever money you leave, they’re thinking about it. Which is probably why they’re always telling you, “Life’s more than accumulating things. Live as simply as possible, material things can never satisfy you. More, more, more is the world of the past. We live in a more enlightened time, life is what happens from the inside out.”

It’s all true, of course, but what chisellers. They with their new cars every year, remodeling the house, planning their next expensive vacation, even the baby in an expensive Versace bathrobe. You know they’re behind on a few things, but so materialistic and lusting for more, so they need a new source of income from somewhere. Yes, they made a ton of money, but they’ve spent a ton of money. And what does that leave them? Outright theft, underhanded dealings, or nurturing you along (telling old Grandpa Moneybags to “Go see Grandma.") And it's easy to close your eyes and picture her there, much of the sagging fixed in the heavenly salons.


Take it for what it's worth, my opinion. (Choking noise.)