I don’t usually put quizzes on this blog (since the focus is on ideas of “substance”), but this struck my fancy.
| How to make a mindful life |
| Ingredients: 1 part friendliness 1 part brilliance 5 parts joy |
| Method: Add to a cocktail shaker and mix vigorously. Serve with a slice of fitness and a pinch of salt. Yum! |
One might say you should take me with a grain of salt!
So that’s where it is! I should spend more time in mine, perhaps?
Honestly I have no idea how that slug got into my toilet and frankly I don’t care. He’s since been returned to his natural environment where he’s probably blogging about his porcelein adventure. My point is that Dad was right. All I have to do is step into the bathroom and the damn blog practically writes itself.
Read the entire post. It’s really funny.
These kinds of life stories always amuse me and inspire me to consider similar vignettes of my youth.
Suddenly my mother smiled. Without taking her eyes off my dad, she stripped down to her bra and panties, then walked past her stunned husband and opened the front door where she stood facing our neighbor’s house.
Do go read the rest of the post here.
I grew up with the proverb, “A cat is always on the wrong side of the door.” It’s often true, and in particular of one of my cats, Stella. If we could get inside her walnut-sized brain, the inner dialogue would probably sound like: FeedmeFeedmeFeedmePetmePetmeLemeeoutLemeeoutLemmout!
I came across the Shakespearian monologue below, one that has been recently discovered amid his archives. I thought you might enjoy it. I suppose some cats are capable of pondering more deep and existential issues than my Stella.
To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether ’tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock’s bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell.
To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal’s opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there’s the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household’s petty plagues,
The cook’s well-practiced kicks, the butler’s broom,
The infant’s careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor’s yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans’ faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.–Author unknown
This is brilliant!!!
How To Bathe The Cat
Sincerely,
The Dog
[via Fishbucket]
Construction codes were
egregiously overlooked
when this site was raised.
All the books tell you that if the grizzly comes for you, on no account should you run. This is the sort of advice you get from someone who is sitting at a keyboard when he gives it. Take it from me, if you are in an open space with no weapons and a grizzly comes for you, run. You may as well. If nothing else, it will give you something to do with the last seven seconds of your life. However, when the grizzly overtakes you, as it most assuredly will, you should fall to the ground and play dead. A grizzly may chew on a limp form for a minute or two but generally will lose interest and shuffle off. With black bears, however, playing dead is futile, since they will continue chewing on you until you are considerably beyond caring.
–Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Bear this in mind, get it?! *snicker* *heh heh* Ah, some days I amuse myself. (Go on, don’t tell me you don’t laugh at your own silly jokes and puns.)
An excerpt from Wendy Shanker’s book, The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life:
See, I have enough problems without Procter & Gamble implying that I’ve got some sort of big, fat, crazy vagina down there that’s going to swallow you up if you get too close. Fat Girls have worked too hard to get beautiful, sexy clothes designed to fit our beautiful, sexy bodies. When we dress stylishly, and walk proudly, and speak loudly, we affirm that we wear a bigger size. But sexually, we’re just like other women. We have the same parts, pleasures, concerns, and needs. So please, don’t sell me an extra-large spoon, because I don’t have an extra-large mouth. Don’t invent an extra-thick stick of deodorant, because my armpit acreage is perfectly average. I don’t need extra-wide Charmin to wipe my extra-fat ass. And I won’t buy an extra-wide maxipad, because I have a perfectly normal vagina. Don’t get me wrong, my vagina is fabulous. It does cool stuff. But size-wise, it’s just a regular, old, standard-issue vagina.
Amen!
[via Sue]
As one who is an older sister, I remember having to watch the words I used. Jette has a story to share, and it made me laugh and laugh and laugh:
It has been nearly 15 years since the event my family calls the Horse Piss Incident, and I would like to tell this story plainly and clearly so that it can be established once and for all that it was not my fault.
That ought to entice you to read it!
In which Jen of What’s Brewing has a random conversation…
I chuckled at the encounter, yes. But another thing that makes me smile is that this is a story about an effort to connect. I relate. Working out of my home is fairly insulating, and I’ve needed to become purposeful about interaction as I run errands. Part of being truly present involves really absorbing what my eyes and ears encounter, and that is more likely to happen when I slow down enough to converse with people.
I don’t blog much about political issues here, and any approach is likely to be oblique. As I surfed the web today, I happened across a Shel Silverstein poem that struck me as a perfect depiction of the past four years’ trend in the White House. Satire is a political act. This post is my part.
They’ve Put a Brassiere On a Camel They’ve put a brassiere on a camel,
She wasn’t dressed proper, you know.
They’ve put a brassiere on a camel,
So that her humps wouldn’t show.
And they’re making other respectable plans,
They’re even even insisting the pigs should wear pants,
They’ll dress up the ducks if we give them the chance
Since they’ve put a brassiere on a camel.They’ve put a brassiere on a camel,
They claim she’s more decent that way.
They’ve put a brassiere on a camel,
The camel had nothing to say.
They squeezed her into it, i’ll never know how,
They say that she looks more respectable now,
Lord knows what they’ve got in mind for the cow,
Since they’ve put a brassiere on a camel.©1981 Evil Eye Music Poem and drawing by: Shel Silverstein
Lately I haven’t written much, because, well, my personal life has been a bit crappy of late, and I’m distracted. Therefore, I am deeply, sincerely grateful when I read posts by people like Chip on the small joys of life.
The Waffle House is great. First off, they specialize in waffles. I mean waffles, man. How freaking cool is that?
I love everything about the place, from the food on the menu to the unpretentious atmosphere. When you go to an IHOP or Denny’s, you get a feeling that the menu was designed by a marketing agency and subject to rigorous focus group evaluation. At the Waffle House, it’s like some crazy guy sat down and thought, “What other weird shit can we mix in with them hash browns?”
The bizarrely complicated menu is a graphic designer’s slow-motion trainwreck accident. This is a restaurant that caters primarily to bleary-eyed travelers and tipsy late night partiers. You know, people with malfunctioning higher-level brain functions. The Waffle House makes them sort through a menu more complex than any I’ve seen. It’s cruel, and I like that.
The whole post made me smile. Thanks, man.
Kurt of The Coffee Sutras gave me a happy moment today when I read:
It was a sentence, I suspect, never before uttered in the annals of the Crieve Hall Youth Athletic Association. Sitting on the aluminum bleachers under the pines that screen the baseball field from the road and the houses opposite, one father, whose son was on the mound, called out, “Release your chi!”
I so enjoyed this vignette from Witt Bits:
On another note, I have this loyalty to my breakfast cereal. I find one brand, one flavor, decide I like it, and eat nothing but that cereal for breakfast for months… sometimes years. My morning choice since I joined Weight Watchers 3 years ago has been Kashi Good Friends. Last week I decided I was ready for a change. I purchased a package of Nature’s Path Organic Optimum Zen Cereal, Cranberry Ginger “for inner harmony.” I can do ZEN. After all I’m taking yoga lessons once a week so Zen would be good. This morning I was ready for the Zen experience. I opened the cardboard, flip tab. Reached in to open the inner plastic bag. Pulled, tugged and struggled for a good five minutes. No luck. This was not a Zen moment. Then I saw the inside flap with the little picture of Scissors cutting off the corner of a bag. I got my glasses out. “Airtight bags for freshness…cut bag.” Now to find the scissors. Let’s just say by the time I found the scissors it was not a Zen breakfast and my innards have not harmonized.
Thanks for the laugh, m’dear! I too have struggled with the Nature’s Path supersealed bag. Only mine is the Optimum cereal with blueberries, and it didn’t promise a transcendent experience.
I’ve been reading
the books
that perch on
my bookcase
and thus
my brain is full; I
cannot
write for you
Forgive me
I need a day off
to breathe
and to live
*With gratitude for and acknowledgement of William Carlos Williams for this poem — one of my favorites.
A friend sent this link, which is a funny little cartoon about what we do to please our cats. See it all in Lap Dance.
Also, here is a revival of one of my favorite stories: Hank’s Cat Audit.
Some of these are truly funny!
The Washington Post’s Style Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the 2003 winners:
Continue reading
Edward at lactose incompetent wrote a hilarious piece on euphemisms used in childhood.
My grandmother was practically Queen Victoria for the iron-bound rules of proper conduct and social ettiquette she enforced. No words for bodily functions were allowed, not slang, not even proper scientific or anatomical terminology. Only the most obscure, bizarre euphemisms existed, a secret code apparently known only to the family lest some outsider discover that we did, in fact, perform the same unsavory human functions as everyone else. One did not fart, suffer flatulence, pass gas, break wind or even toot in our household; the word was “boop”. It is quite disturbing to recall that as a boy I did not have a penis, a dick, a wang, a doodle, a dingle, a thing, a pee-pee; I had a teapot.
Do read the entire post. It’s classic. I thank Edward for making me smile and reminding me how glad I am to be an adult.
I have posted about the following piece elsewhere, before, but it’s a classic in my book. Besides, it makes me laugh heartily when I read it. And laughter is a tonic for well-being. So take a moment and read about Hank’s Cat Audit. Even if you aren’t a “cat person,” you’ll probably smile.