Completely Bowled Over by It
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Category Archives: Gothic Grotesqueries
Enemies Within
The problem is not entirely what you have so keenly observed, my pretentiousness, my overblown supply of self-esteem; it’s not my ignorance, grand in scale yet constantly masked (I think) with all sorts of follies and falsehoods. It isn’t merely my innate streak of meanness or my cowardice or my determined inability to be truthful. All of these, I can’t deny it, appear so often as assets in unworthy hands these days that I’m drawn to them like a desert wanderer to a well of eternally cold water.
So little do I care for the consequences of any act that I never consider Whether or Not to do it, only How Much. What effects it may have on anyone else are as nothing to me, when after all, no one else exists on my plane. If this world can be a wicked place at times, full of sins and flaws that are rebranded as business acumen and charismatic charm, don’t blame me that they’re beginning to seem admirable.
What is nagging at you as the problem, really? That these iniquities have a certain appeal to you as well? That they might not be considered dangerous until there’s no civility left to compare them to, perhaps? Or that they may finally not even be considered at all?
Pessimism is Its Own Reward
—or recompense, at least!
Parked Her Carcase
Speaking as a person whose sense of direction can barely get me from my own front door to the kitchen and back without assistance, I have a certain empathy for even the fictional characters who lose their ways in the world. Not so much so that I don’t laugh up my sleeves just a little at their plight all the same, since they are, after all, make-believe…
A Full Menu of Absurdity
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Altered Pates
Mycological Mysteries & Mishaps
A mushroom-hunter in the woods
has grasped the essence of the goods:
Ingesting whilst she picks and roams,
she damages her chromosomes;
Yet, happy, hopping, fails to know
she killed those brain cells long ago,
And thus can skip through vale and copse
quite blithely, nibbling mushroom-tops—
For nothing is so esoteric
as munching on a Fly Agaric,
But she knows not she shouldn’t eat a
bit of tasty Amanita—
Thus goes the world, and with it, sense,
when fungus fans face recompense.
Why Wait?
I hope, at the least, that the ibex lives in Washington state or somewhere it’s been legalized, for it’s rotten enough that Irv’s being such a nuisance makes anyone prone to overindulge in anything at all, let alone that they should get locked up for it. Lousy lizard.
I do realize that it’s a long time yet until St. Patrick’s Day returns, and no, I am not Irish. But sometimes one just needs to emit a silly Limerick or two, and who can stand the suspense of holding off until mid-March? So I’ll just go with the urge—the itch, if you will—and let my Limericks out to play a little early. Or very late, as the case may be.
PS—Foie gras is one of those foods I never had an urge to try, if you happened by here during my Tuesday recitation this week. But it sounded funnier in the Limerick than pâté, even though the latter *looks* cooler with its accents sprinkled on top.
And let this be a reminder to all of us to avoid being pests and nuisances to others. As my young nephew once shouted at the screen during an epic animated film in which a number of insects were being exceedingly awful to a number of other insects, “Be NICE, Bugs!” Or you could get in big trouble. Nicer is definitely safer.
An Origin Story in Red & Black
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Better Put the Best Face I Can on It
Coming up empty? Never! Well, okay: sometimes. That’s closer to the truth. I’ve managed to put up three years’ worth of daily blog posts thus far without missing too many beats, but do I have the occasional day of blanking on what I think would be of interest for me to write about, draw or photograph, and post. Outright brilliance would be a stretch for me on the best of days, and on many, it’s just good old showing-up-and-working that gets the job done.
Pretty much the way life works everywhere, isn’t it.
I get up and brush my teeth and take a shower and get dressed, and there’s no guarantee I’ll look less like a goofy, sleepy person than I did a half hour earlier. Some days, it’s flat-out worse, especially if I have to be up before about 9:30 in the morning. But I’m still me. I’m still going on to have a day, to do my writing and picture-making, do my household tasks, go to events, whatever the calendar demands. I’m always planning to have a really good day, if at all possible.
So whatever the agenda, I choose to give it my best, pretend (if I have to) that all is swell in the world, and see if I can’t do something myself to make it as good a day as I’m wanting. We can’t all be pretty all of the time, so I like to let my imagination offer me some fun alternatives to perfection and prettiness, and then the day has a better chance of hitting the happy mark.
If You’re Not Growing, You’re Disintegrating
Decrepit Like Everybody Else
I ought to get my rear in gear; encroaching entropy
Challenges my mere existence, yes, the being-ness of me—
Why, I’ll be disappearing soon, with chaos on the rise—
Order is losing ground to it, and much to my surprise,
Growth falls to dissolution at a speed I comprehend
Is likely to outlast me, too, as I fade to my end—
And now I am unraveling, unwinding, getting old
And obsolete, for that’s the end of every tale that’s told.
Goodbye to all you younger things: relish your hour of youth—
You’ll all join me, and soon enough, and that’s the simple truth.
Art-Colored Glasses 