Misplaced & Misspent

Last Tuesday, over near that other place, I heard a fellow say that trying to be truly intelligent under ordinary conditions was like having a forty acre farm on thirty-five acres.

This week’s Come-On-And-Let’s-Stick-It-To Words gambit, to wit:

Is anything truly “misplaced” until you realize it is?

Okay, Brandenburg Variation, Opus One:

Is anything actually “misspent” until such later time as you might come up a penny short?

Under the local conditions of this planet, “true love” would seem to be a passion A has for B that drives B nuts…(or did I miss something?)

Questions rococo, answers terse.  Oh, okay, we can execute a 3-D expansion of this and admit to the validity of its vicey versey:

First voice:       “Remember, you get what you pay for.”
Second voice:  “Don’t threaten me!”

J.

Just A Hobby

After a few rounds, and rhomboids, one tavern philosopher would ofttimes verbally ruminate on his most favored subject, “The Abominable Splendor of Guilt.”

Keep reminding yourself,
“It’s just a hobby.”

Rituals arise from someone who was once on the way to somewhere getting lost, then getting frightened, then making up a desperate ceremony to ward off the shadows of confusion and fear.

If it’ll make you famous, it’ll make you sick.

A certain city poet announced, “The lie that flatters, I abhor the most…I mean, adore the most…I mean…ah, check with me tomorrow.”

J.

News Not Known

In the City, no matter where you look, it’s always somewhere else.

News not known
is news no more.

No matter what they’re called, all awards given in the City are for stupidity, uncertainty, or outright failure.

Question of the Day:
Why be afraid in a supra world?

Keep in mind: The Real Revolutionist might find his loophole in the contract with Life.

J.

A Glimpse By Any Other Name

The possibility that you may actually MEET famous dead people may be the only rational basis for fearing death.

A glimpse by any other name
is still a glimpse.

Has anyone ever asked, “What’s going on here?” who really wanted to know?

There is this one ole hanger-around out near the high side of the Bushes who insists that time is feminine.

Don’t bother to live-and-learn if you’re not gonna bother to live.

J.

Acts

From the Book of Nevers:
Never believe anyone who denies it.

While brooding over his oatmeal,
a man mused aloud, “Cheap ideas are just like cheap gin.” 
And his wife said, “No they’re not,”
and he said, “Oh.”

There’s this spin-dried med-school dropout who still contends that the Elementary Canal is where simple foods are digested.

I suppose that if it did come to it, a Revolutionist COULD “eat ‘em alive.”

All acts are just that.
All acts are just what they seem.
All acts are better than they look,
and a really GOOD act
won’t come back to haunt anybody.

J.

Palendromic Bullets

There is an ancient martial motto that says, “No one provokes me with impunity.”  And can you glean how devilishly clever it is for Man’s intellect to be so insulated as to speak of other Men, whom they CAN attack, as the provocateur, and not Life?

Words are like palindromic bullets;
that is, with slugs on both ends.

Life doesn’t discriminate against anyone for any known reason.  Then again, it does so to EVERY body for EVERY known reason.

Men who can tell you “how they got to be what they are today,” can’t tell you shit.

P.S.:  Be ye not dumber than your sovereign.

J.

It's All Second-Hand

No matter what the advertising says, no matter how much you pay, it’s all second-hand.

A Revolutionist who depends on another person has put back on a suit and tie.

All human catastrophes
begin on someone’s tongue.
(Same is true for minor irritants.)

There IS no way to correctly use the language.  In the City, proper speech is just another illusion.

There is this certain City philosopher who periodically falls over into some kind of daze.  He lies still for a bit, and then begins to shake, kick and blink his eyes rapidly, while loudly proclaiming, “The key word is overnight!”

J.

For the First Time Again

One guy asks, “If education is as all-mighty important as they keep saying, how come they don't recommend random drug tests for college professors?”

Everything a Revolutionist discovers
is for the first time again.

One ole sore head said he was now beginning to believe he’d be reincarnated, and upon hearing this all the dead people said, “Hey—don’t look at ME.”

Believe it or don't, but I met yet another guy, and this one (as guys are wont to do) said that he would explain to strangers his terrible mistakes and blunders as simply his support for the continuing power of Habit.

Once the king had fully grasped the meaning of “hypocrisy,” he said, “There is no need for you to speak this word disparagingly, for to rule, it is as necessary as is an army.”

After one City father told his off-spring, “God wants you to do better,” the brat replied, “I will if he will.”   The elder paused, looked off and pondered, then snapped back thinking, “I gotta quit listening to kids.”

J.

Secrets

In what is, by some, perceived to be a desert of philosophical, if not penetrating, pleasant pronouncements, this one gentleman loudly proclaimed, “If I was any happier I’d wear my socks backwards."

Secrets
cannot be systematized.

Almost every morning, this guy could be seen scurrying around his backyard, his hands a-fluttering, and him making a kind of “shooshing” sound—His mate explained that he’s trying to “shoo away time and space.”

One father, just before he died…(ah, he wasn’t really dying, he just told me to tell you that), whispered to his son, in a shout, this final, exit advice:  “Don’t pose.”

Remember our oh-so-secret motto:

If it ain’t fun, it ain’t This.

After a life spent in these affairs revolutionaire, one person griningly admitted, “I now seem to ‘have-life-down’ to having just one aim…and the best part is, I’ve got NO idea what it is!”  (And that, my friends, is a revolution well spent.)

J.

Credulity Fully-Wrinkled

Contraire the street-level truism, man does not continually “reinvent himself.” What he does is endlessly reinvent that which Life has invented through him.

The sure fire sign of the truly rich is that they can pay someone else to make mistakes for them. (And it goes without saying that the same should be true for the extremely courteous.)

While passing the City landfill, one of the more recent local “thinkers” approached me with this bit of wit:  (he wiped his hands clean and said), “To be young is to be incredulous; to be mature is to possess credulity fully wrinkled.”

One kid scared the parboiled hell out of his ole man on one weekend morning when he announced, “I have made a momentous decision!”   (And of course it goes without saying…)

Their mother's voice drifted throughout the house, “All right, all you children who want to laugh and have that kind of good time, you're gonna have to come out of the basement, and do your playing upstairs.”

J.

Thirty-four Laughs to the Gallon

Then there was this guy, who was no particular kind of guy at all—no, just funnin’ you. There was this guy who would get ready for stuff so far in advance that he’d ultimately forget what it was he’d prepared for in the first place. (He told me privately that he found all this gave him thirty-four laughs to the gallon.)

When you're ugly, you can afford to be patient.

Amidst the dizzying expansion of modern life, we find one man who now has trouble telling the difference between being-out-of-town, and being out of mayo.  (No surprise visits here.)

Into the attorney's office came a man with a cheap portfolio and nose who wanted to know if he could “sue his parents” on the basis that he wanted to be a famous author, and one of the salient stumbling blocks on the path to this success, he said, was that as a child “they did not mistreat him properly.”

THE one positive benefit of being able to speak is in being able to say you were misquoted.

Once the king had fully grasped the meaning of “hypocrisy,” he said, “There is no need for you to speak this word disparagingly, for to rule, it is as necessary as is an army.”

J.

Don't Let Yourself Know

A gentleman from somewhere else writes to say that someone told him that I once said that “Only sissies cry,” and he wants to note that he's not at all sure I'm being completely fair since he says that, “Only sissies have anything to cry about.”  (So – “THERE”...I guess...)

The great Human Drama is played out in an infinite number of Acts; the view from the Revolutionist seats, however, reveals a certain redundancy.

You shouldn't even let yourself, (you know what I mean – “your SELF”), don't even let yourself know the extent of your knowledge.

Although by the very structure of things, the Neural Revolution can never be the majority power, you might care to note that anyone who has ever tried to independently “think” was at least once a “rebel-in-civilian-clothing.”

Once you understand that in many areas and on many occasions, “talking about things,” is a bigger hobby than even sex; then you have one less major annoyance.

J.

Who Issued These Brains?

One son announced, “When I grow up I wanna be a smart ass!” 
And his father’s voice replied, “Why wait until the last minute?”

Don’t personalize your life in the re-telling.  (Don’t use the “I” of your own existence as an example of ANY thing.)

In response, one guy says, “I’m sorry I don’t have time to be sad.” 
And another guy thought, “My gawd, that’s dangerously close to something, for indeed, if a person ‘had no time,’ it is true—they couldn’t be sad.”

Overheard, from that densely packed area just over there by the park: “Hey, who issued these brains anyway?”

One lad, taught to say his prayers of thanks just before going to bed, once he was grown, moved them to the morning, immediately upon awakening, because, as he put it, “After I’ve seen if I actually made it through the night.”

J.

Early Warning System

Science Update, Quantum 90:

The predicted lifetime
of the average pronoun
 is now pegged at
two thousand years.

In systems of transitory dimensions, no “Early Warning System” is ever early enough.

In his backyard, near the edge of the world, this one father looks out and says, “Son, what we’re experiencing here is a ‘glut of reality.’”

While having a few cold ones over in the lateral zone, the guy standing next to me told his partner that he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he found a religion that used as their main hymn of supplication to god, the song: “Don’t Be Cruel.”

One fine morning, a chap sharply sat up in bed and exclaimed, “Ah, what I like best about being at home instead of in a hotel is that you don’t have to clean up your room!”

J.

Reflections

One dude in the City said that whenever he let his mind “run down the list of possibilities,”
he ran into trouble.

If you can't do it, begin to talk about it, and thus start grading for the eventual road.

Intelligence is one of your reflections.

A timely, well placed “because,” lets EVERY one off the hook.

On this one nearly forgotten world, in their adolescent, if not oblique, attempt to “encourage creativity,” they would, whenever executing thinkers, blindfold the firing squad.

J.

Please Don't Ask Me to Sing

There’s this one galaxy where EVERY thing is a fake.

When a lieutenant reported that a recent battle was a “milepost” in the war, a deaf general exploded, “Fuck a mild post—what I want is a hot post!”

One afternoon, while discussing things uncommon and tenuous, the old man used the word “mythology” and stopped to ask if they knew what it meant.  One son said, “Sure, a myth is something that’s not true.  And his brother corrected him, “No, you’re thinking of facts.”  (And the ole man was sorely pleased.)

There’s this group of creatures on that other planet over there, who may be on to something of transitory use, if not inverted, ephemeral fun.  They present the idea that you should first think up a slogan, and then figure out a business to go along with it.

One guy always would say, “No, please don’t ask me to sing—please don’t,” and they didn’t.

J.

From the Strictest New View

On this one world, culture is available by the carload, and intelligence is sold by the pound; the stupidity mines are having to work double shifts.

In this one City with a pretty routine religious infrastructure, there appeared a guy who said the gods had sent him to tell 'em all to “Lighten up, enjoy what you can of this life.”  (He went on to note that this was a “Limited Time Offer” that would expire with his death, after which things would go back to normal.)

Part of the unseen—but felt—brilliant justice is that even those who don't eat still must pay.

Fragment of Coversation Overheard (or Over Invented) —Opus Sixteen:

“Isn't anyone who calls someone else ‘stupid’ stupid themselves?”
“Certainly.”
“Then what is the solution to this impassable conundrum?”
“There is none.”
“Oh, well certainly...I knew that.”

From the strictest new view,
the past got no more right to exist.

Say, look here, as long as you're gonna have to pay anyway, why not go ahead and chow down.

J.

The Decoy

A self-proclaimed fan, who says he's been reading the Daily News with at least one good eye, has concluded that, “Adults want to keep telling kids ‘What kinda guys they are’ just to decoy ‘em into their own condition.”

“Little things mean a lot to little minds,” announced the first voice. 
“Yeah,” added his neighbor, “But so do stupid things.” 
And the initial noise processed this for a moment, and said, “Okay, we can live with that."”  (And their wallpaper had a sudden urge to look up the definition of “little.”)

A man who tells you that things obviously different are actually the same, is probably a better potential ally than one who tells you that the sale price was only good through Thursday.

More “Historical Facts You Can Depend On–Up ‘Til Now”:

There have been more odes written to kings than to beggars; why do you suppose that is? (Only the obviously undependable would respond to such an obviousness.)

(So as to doing my share to keep the gears of the Secondary economy whirling and expanding, I offer this advice):   Never borrow money from someone who won't pay you back.  (Those in the City who repeat the bromide, “What goes around, comes around,” seem to assume it's a threat rather than sound fiscal insight.)

One ole guy with a head not unlike a pine cone pulled the kid up closer and confided, “Most all of what man has ever writ, was just to cheer himself up, or else to justify something he’d done or thought.”  And little Sir Nipper axed, “What's the diff, Pop?”  And the oldster was struck speechless as some of the straw fell silently from his limbs.

J.

Monstrous Maps of Subversive Direction

I keep meeting this guy who seems like he's gonna “do all right”–then he gets too serious.

A certain historically invisible warrior king's opening gambit for every new war was to ride up to the edge of his front lines, look across to the enemy, glance off to his right, stare off to the left, then loudly intone, “Hey, I ain't got time for this penny ante shit!”

If you know what you're doing
you don't care what you're called.

Here's one for you:

Over in this one place there’s a guy whose claim to fame is based on the fact that I once used him in a news item–but wait, it gets more symmetrically toothsome: unbeknownst to him, a distant cousin in another locale has staked his reputation on the fact that I’ve NEVER used him. (Kinda makes you wanna “go figure”–eh what?)

More Paradigms of Justice and Symmetry (if not Monstrous Maps of Subversive Direction):
Life boats are up high on tall ships,
while escape on submarines is in the other direction.

(Commentator's Note:  Do not let your upper neural circuits think this refers to anything other than maritime matters, and above all don't let your lower ones know you even thought about it at all–know what I mean?)

Believe it or Not:
There are these beings over in another area who are described in that unknown, “Galaxy Guide,” as being, “Verbally uncomfortable.”

J.

More Untethered Tidings

If you ALWAYS put the punch line at the end,
people tend to get uncomfortable.

It is reported that the very last words of one Revolutionist who had not spoken for ten years were, “I will not be a batman for the past.”

More Untethered Tidings:

It's not so much a matter if you've thought this or that, but whether you continue to house break such a cat.  (When all doors are closed, the difference between a “meow,” and a “roar” is in the spelling.)

In one of those universes besides yours, everyone rides on the backs of everyone else, except for those who fall–they get worshiped.

At odd times during otherwise even conversations, this one professional person would inject, “Of course, what you see here now is but an abridgement of the complete me.”

J.