My Trip to the Gynecologist

I was sixteen, and it was in the year of our Lord, 1987. My family and I were wrapping up a nice trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where we had a great time amongst the incredible mountain vistas of the area. On the last day there, I developed kidney stones. The pain was excruciating, and being a little tuffy wuffy as I am, I never said anything until later on, when the pain finally began to wear me down. I finally broke and informed my family that I needed to go to a hospital. Quickly. It felt as if an alien symbiont was about to come bursting out of my urinary tract and shoot up the room with explosive bullets.

There was only one catch, in the area where we were (on the way back home), there wasn't a hospital or a clinic open, but there was a gynecology clinic. I refused at first, but continued to be relentless. Imagine everyone's surprise when I showed up, signed-in, and sat in the waiting room, grabbed a magazine and acted as if nothing unusual existed about this scene...

They took me reluctantly down a dark passageway back to a torture room filled with bizarre and unusual looking equipment. The lighting added to my mounting fear with its chiaroscuro patterns canvasing this medical dungeon and resembling something right out of a Vincent Price film. They moved me toward  a ghastly table with two leg extensions that opened wide. Unsightly and horrific looking instruments lay nearby. I knew instantly that this was hell, or at least some screening room prior to a departure to hell at any rate. Nothing about this room looked like a medical office designed to heal and comfort. No, this classified itself as purgatory. And to add to the mounting uneasiness within me, I had none of the natural immunities women inherently have. For instance, none of these painful looking tools or instruments were designed for my anatomy. I had major strikes against me just walking into this assortment of horrors.

"I don't know what to do with you," the lady (presumably a gynecologist, whatever that is) proclaimed abruptly. I asked her to kindly stop the pain, no matter how it's done. 

"Give me some of that stuff you give birthers," I pleaded. "Just render me unconscious and quickly!"

She looked around uneasily and then she shot me up with morphine, and the next thing I remember is waking up 15 hours later glad that I am not a woman.

God bless you.

The Question is the Question

I just had an absurd thought. If I can endure this life until it's natural end, will there be a bonus given at the end of it? Will they feed me steak and recount all my good deeds in a splendidly nice, ceremonial way? Or will they just issue me a room number, hand me a key and tell me to check myself into eternity without bothering anyone?

I told you this was absurd, but with all great absurdities of the human era, some great things have spawned from them. One only has to look at the monumental pyramids of the world to tell that man's quest for the irrational often leads him to sanity. I just referenced the great pyramids. They were built because someone was insane, but the greatest structures in all of human history resulted. Another case in point, the Space Program. Someone was absurd enough to look up, notice the moon shining above in a ridiculous fashion and then dreamed how nice it would be to go visit there and bring back some rocks. Now we have the iPhone as a result.

Here is my new theory of human evolution and achievement juxtaposed with his mental state. Depression leads to wild imaginings which leads to absurd thoughts which lead to massive undertakings which lead to unlikely achievement. Did Ben Franklin fly a kite in a thunderstorm because he was sane? Did the Wright Brothers build a massive paper airplane and then risk death due to logic? Did Columbus hop aboard a wooden Spanish boat due to reasoning?

What is my point? If you made it this far down through this micro essay, you are searching for answers. Answers aren't the point. The question is the question. That is the answer.

Change is for Morons

I fail to understand the concept of change. I like stones. They rarely change, and they are none the worse for wear because of it. Unfortunately, the universe is not up to me. No one bothered to run the plans by me when physics of the universe was foolishly agreed upon. Change occurs regardless of whether I like it or not, but I refuse to walk my dog at that party. I will remain a stone until the winds of time grind me up into bits of sand. Then I will just sit on the beach and watch everything else change. I will watch each day bring about new silliness to wash away the old silliness.

My Cat and Monday Mornings

Mondays always remind me of why my cat is luckier than I am. He gets to spend his day laying around napping and staring out the window while I am at work earning money for his food pellets and cheese mice. He seems to understand this, for on payday, he intuitively sits in front of the food bowl as if knowing that I have acquired monetary earnings, and that means a treat and fresh litter. If reincarnation is true, and I highly doubt it, then I want to come back as my cat. Let him come back as me. We'll see who enjoys whose profession more.


Knowing my luck, when he is me, he'll win the damn lottery as I always haven't, and he'll skip off to a lavish Hawaiian  resort while I have to clean out my own litter, the same way he always didn't.

Sometimes, failure is an option.

Sometimes failure is an option. We all fail. Failure is square one of human ingenuity. Most of the things we learn in life happen because of, or as a result of failure. There is no shame in failure if the next step is to try again, to try harder, to try a different approach. Giving up is permanent failure. Trying again is permanent success.

A Captured Moment of Illusional Reality

Looking back on life can be a bit daunting without the aid of photographs. Memories bend, fade and distort with the passage of time, but photographs never lie. Although, to be fair, they do not tell the whole story, nor do they tell part of it. They represent a partial moment of reality, seen through a circular lens and a rectangular opening, caught frozen by an electronic sensor or chemical emulsion.

Photos are open to interpretation. Three people may see three different things from within the same image. Scanning, printing or copying them leads to decay of originality, and nothing remains but the eye's ability to see the image and the brain's ability to interpret it.

So, a moment is enjoyed only as it occurs, and it is a nebulous thing since it is gone once you realize it even occurred. Memories are not to be relied upon, and photographs only record a fraction of what was.

So, in conclusion. Screw it. You will not live to remember it forever anyway, and this whole post is depressing enough as it is.

We

We, as a species on planet Earth, are indeed strange. It is hard to classify us due to the roaming inconsistencies, ethnic, religious and/or political differences. No other species on Earth exists like us. Our heights have led us to military conquests, great and horrid art, vastly inconsistent culture, moon walking (both the popular dance and the literal practice) and financial investiture. Think about it for a moment. Our social norms are all across the board. We fit into no category easily defined.  God created us. We then went on to create the Volkswagen Rabbit, the Mona Lisa, the boiled egg. In order to pacify our cravings for metronomic noise, we invented music of all types (both loud and soft, hard and passive). A scan across the radio knob proves this. We cannot even agree on music. Try driving across the country with a country lover, a rap connoisseur and a classical junkie. It just doesn’t end well.

It is often said we are a confused race with ethical and moral conflicts always brewing just beneath the dermis. We’re always bickering over petty things such as where to dine, what to order, who is going to be stuck with the bill, and if the meal is not up to expectations, who is going to murder the cook.

I will close by adding this: If we are so superior, why has no moose died from a parachute malfunction? Why has no dog ever created a thermonuclear explosion? How is it no monkey has ever fallen from a great height as a result of a slip-up during a high wire escapade at Niagara Falls? And lastly, who among the animal kingdom other than human beings has ever met the Maker as a result of a late night party binge followed by a careless drive home?

We think we are so mighty. No one knows what Jesus scribbled in the sand on the day the woman was to be stoned, but many assume it was hypocrite.

To Ponder the Universe is Futile but Fun

There is one seed in every field that questions the existence of all the other seeds. Does this seed jeopardize the harvest? No. Will this seed change the outcome of weather or in any way impact the fertility of the soil? No. The lesson here is not to diminish the seed in question rather to praise it. Praise it for being bold and sprouting forth its knowledge and wisdom both into the soil beneath it and also toward the sky above it. A seed sprouts and grows both ways, you know. Nothing in nature is simple, yet the whole underlying structure of the universe is one of simplicity. The arrow of time runs one way, but the legacy it creates extends backwards. 

That is called a paradox. An absurd paradox.

Time itself is a merciless inflammation of existence. We are its offspring, translucent things of no consequence at the end of it all. Yet even after a moment has vanished into the memories of the past, its trajectory moves ever forward, ever closer to a new harvest.

Frail intentions and dour outcomes change nothing. Existence is absolute, unending and eternal. We, however, are mere prospects of what could be, what was and what shall forever remain silent after the brief growth and evolutionary harvest of mankind. 

How many times has this happen before? When our sun swells into its own absolute destruction, will the gasses and particles it ejects out into the galaxy have any remnant of us woven into its fabric? Will anyone who comes next even remember us? Do we remember those who came and went long before us?

Yeah right…

Me, The Imperfect

What can I say? I am not perfect nor do I wish to be. I love to have time to myself, but I really don't enjoy being single. I like to be fussed at for leaving dirty socks all over the place and for cutting a huge hole out of the middle of the brownies and eating the middle piece. I am very fond of the dirty looks I used to get whenever I raised an objection or decided to defend myself against an unworldly accusation. I really do miss all those things. I especially miss the monthly moody spells where I get into trouble for no damn reason whatsoever, often just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, meaning my own house. Although most of these things sound bitter, I assure you they are not. They are hilarious. I love them. I have termed marriage to be the most unpredictable predictability and yet at the same time the most predictable unpredictability. Anyone who has been married and thus divorced understands EXACTLY what this means.

I am not much of a cook. First off, let’s define cooking. I don’t feel that the robotic process of “open can, pour goo into pot, turn up heat and stir occasionally” to be cooking. Cooking is quite different, and to any man lucky enough to receive actual food, there is a fundamentally huge distinction between simply heating and actually cooking that defies expectation each and every time. Cat food is overrated anyway, although the chicken flavor is quite good.

I am what I am, and I do what I do. There can be no introspection without finding an open mousetrap in me somewhere. I look at this way, and I never convinced my former wife of it despite my greatest and most daring verbal attempts: The clothes I take off at night and pile beside me on the floor as I get into bed is the emergency pile. If the house is burning down at two in the morning, I am not the one standing embarrassed in my underwear on the street corner watching burning embers get hosed down by the firefighters.

You see, there is method to my sloppiness. Only a man as lazy as myself could probably truly understand this.

If you are looking for a committed friend who will be true, never take advantage of you and always tell you truth, you have come to the right place. If you are looking for a man of a thousand “yeses,” you have stopped at the wrong shop. Just don’t ask me if that dress makes you look fat. Of course I am going to lie on that one.