Attention skeptics! While there was thought to be no scientific proof that humans and dinosaurs ever existed on this planet at the same time, this post should set the record straight once and for all.
For finally, here is visual evidence that Man and said prehistoric beasts presently coexist in the land of “all things strange,” Southern California. In fact, the ones shown here are permanent residents at the home of one Prattling Paisano, and compliment the “retro” style of decorating for which he has become infamous.
Made from liquid starch, paper towels, and tempera paint, these prehistoric replicas were crafted by five of his 2nd Grade classes over the years. As Science enrichment projects, the kids transformed Paisano’s basic chicken-wire armatures into finished dinosaur models which were displayed around the school for all to enjoy. Then, when Paisano retired, they came home to live with him, at least until he becomes extinct.
There are many beautiful things in nature, but one of my favorites is wood from the oak tree. With distinctive grain pattern and rugged durability, it’s long been one of my first choices of material from which to create things.
Years ago I ran across an article that described how to make keepsake baby rattles. All you needed, it seemed, was a wood lathe and lots of patience. Possessing at least the first of these, I gave the project a try. And to my artistic satisfaction, I was able to learn to craft these unique infant noise-makers.
The rattles, pictured, are just under six inches long and turned from solid pieces of oak. The rings that make the noise when shaken, were undercut and freed from the basic stock. As such, they cannot be removed. Aside from the basic turning method, only the craftsman’s creativity determines the finished design of each rattle. It can end up being as singularly unique as the piece of wood from which it was fashioned.
If you ask any Italian what they were fed as kids when their stomachs were upset or they weren't feeling well, their answer would be, “pastina.” Literally translated as “little pasta,” it came in a multitude of small sizes and shapes, and was mixed mostly into chicken broth to add something solid, yet light enough to not make a kid want to throw up. (For those of you who need visuals, please consult the technical chart I’ve included at the left.)
Now, while I’ve never been actually told that the length of my posts has made readers sick or nauseous, it has been subtly suggested that perhaps posting shorter stuff now and then, might increase the readership of this Blog. Being a former teacher, I am familiar with the statistics regarding people with A.D.H.D. But it never entered my mind when I started sharing my thoughts, that I needed to show sensitivity to the percentage among you with either shorter attention spans, or daily schedules which allow only two minute blocks of reading time and nothing more.
So, beginning today I am determined to become an equal access blogger. That means I will soon begin including short, one paragraph posts which should take no longer than thirty seconds or so to read, a cinch for even the most easily distracted souls who might stop by during their meanderings through Blogdom.
Furthermore, as with all things new and unprecedented, I shall give these diminutive writings a formal name. They shall be forever known as “Postinas”… tiny posts which when added to your literary soup, are short and light enough to keep you from feeling the need to barf, either literally or figuratively.
Now, be forewarned. I have seldom, if ever, written anything that short since I first began putting down my thoughts on paper back in Elementary School. And it’s not gotten much better through the years. Even things such as notes I wrote explaining my own kids’ absences from school, always seemed to evolve into mini dissertations. And, as one college professor candidly critiqued in the margin of one of my assignments, “Good, sincere writing, however the one weakness is your liking for big, inappropriate words in simple places.” That red ink comment was penned in January, 1967, so do the math.
Everything said, then, I’ll give this “Postina” thing my best shot, and obviously only time will tell. I mean, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Maybe an old dog can learn new tricks. Then, if all goes well, my next goal will be to eliminate clichés.
When marriage goes bad, sometimes it REALLY goes bad. Take the recent case of a Southern California woman who in the midst of a rancorous divorce, gave new meaning to the phrase, “Cut and run.” In her case, she “cut” off her husband’s penis, so she could “run” it down the garbage disposal.
Yes, this scorned female spiked her husband’s dinner, and after he went to bed feeling sick, tied him to the bed and filleted his tube steak with a ten inch butcher knife. Then, to make sure it would be difficult to reassemble, (or perhaps to save space in the local landfill), she tossed it in the garbage disposal and flipped the switch.
The reason she did the latter, remains unexplained. Certainly, if her disposal was as old as mine, she should have known that anything beyond the consistency of soggy bread had little chance of being ground up and eliminated as evidence. Perhaps in her agitated state, her only purpose for doing so was to further humiliate the little nublet, or at least mutilate the shape of its cleanly severed end so it would never fit back as a matching puzzle piece.
Now, domestic violence upon small and defenseless members of society, is nothing new. For those old enough to remember, almost twenty years ago the infamous Lorena Bobbitt performed the same kind of amputation on her husband. In that case, however, she tossed the snippet out her car window into a field next to the road, thinking perhaps the critters who lived there would snack away the evidence. To her dismay, however, a searcher (who was heard to call out, “Uh, is this it?) recovered the pruned penis from the weeds, and rushed it to the “Lost and Found” desk at the hospital where it was cleaned up and reattached to its original owner.
All this said, what, if anything, can women learn from this story? First of all, if you going to cut off your husbands penis, calling 911 to report it as a medical emergency will NOT be interpreted as the act of a Good Samaritan.
And saying the whole thing happened because “he deserved it,” won’t keep you from getting cuffed and hauled away. After all, most likely the responding officers will be male. And as your husband is wheeled by moaning on the gurney, most of them will instinctively cross their hands in front of their groins, and sympathetically conclude they “feel his pain.”
Men can learn a lot from this story, as well. First of all, if your marriage is in trouble, remove all sharp knives from the home and start using plastic. At least a knife made of that would required a sawing action to cut through human tissue, which should give you enough time to wake up and try to escape.
In addition to a more prudent selection of cutting utensils, refrain from having your soon to be ex-wife make dinner for you. Be suspicious if she suggests any menu that includes hotdog segments, such as beans and franks. Also, be at least leery if she brews soup from scratch using various unmarked cans and bottles with the labels removed, or stirs what’s in the pot with a butcher knife instead of using a wooden spoon.
And, REALLY pay attention if she starts humming Connie Francis’s version of the song, “You Always Hurt the One You Love” to herself while she's cooking, or runs the garbage disposal over and over, but neither turns on the water or puts anything in it. Perhaps, if she’s just standing there humming and listening to it whir, a good possibility exists that she’s fantasizing about something quite unrelated to cleaning up after meal preparation.
Finally, if you’re filing for divorce, be careful the grounds upon which you base the dissolution. How ironic would it be to hear your raving spouse yell back at you as she’s being taken away…, “Hey, Jerk, you want irreconcilable differences? Look in the mirror after they take off the bandages.”
Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog. To celebrate, I poured a cup of coffee, then scrolled back and reread my first ever post, the one that offered a thumbnail sketch of who I was the day it all began.
When I got to the end, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Thankfully, I still recognized the rather quirky old guy that was described in that initial post. A year later he’s pretty much that same predictable, recalcitrant codger. He still doesn’t answer his phone if he’s not in the mood, or twitter or socially network with others in an attempt to feel relevant. He continues to live life below the radar, and is still comfortable assuming the persona of a retired and reclusive, Invisible Man. He continues to loathe the selective hypocrisy of political correctness, and values the work ethic of prostitutes over that of politicians, in as much as they both provide the same public service. And to date, not here or anywhere, has he said anything so profound that it’s either changed the personal lives of others, or altered the suicidal trajectory of the society in which we live.
So what, if anything, has blogging accomplished in this writer‘s life during the past year? From the previous description, it sounds like absolutely nothing. But… perhaps that’s not quite accurate. For one thing, by lasting 365 days this blog is at least a moral victory for a person who routinely flits from one creative challenge to another, guiltlessly moving on to something new whenever the intellectual “shininess” of the latter begins to fade.
For someone who dislikes writing as much as he, it also shows a measure of resolve to have sat down thirty-five times and tried to put into words what was bouncing around in his tangential thoughts. Not only that, considering the fact he only has about five regular readers, he’s been surprisingly able to overcome the daily urge to stop blogging, and simply begin sharing his nonsense with them via conference call.
And even when one of that “band of five” innocently inquired whether he ever wrote anything “shorter,” he silently pulled the poisoned dagger from his creative heart, and smiled as he explained he was just a “long-winded” kind of guy.
Finally, while he understands the cliché, “If you don’t use it, you lose it” as it refers to things that either work (or don’t) as a gentleman gets older, he’s shown dedication to forestalling such a fate when it comes to the skills necessary to think clearly, and write creatively. After all, from way back in his teaching days, he’s believed that the phrase, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” was more a personal daily reminder, than merely a T.V. fundraising hook for some Black University.
So, everything considered, “Happy Birthday” to the Prattling Paisano. At least you made it one year… or at least a full three hundred-sixty days longer than some of your previous creative impulses. Who knows, maybe you’re finally maturing in your old age? Or, maybe it was just a lucky fluke.
Talking to oneself has always been a highly suspicious activity, at least for the observer. I mean, why would someone do such a thing unless he was suffering from something ominous like senility, dementia, or outright phobia, correct? Well personally, I’m not qualified to make that sort of psychological evaluation. I’d like to think that someone does it because there’s no one else around to talk to who’s as bright or interesting as himself.
Now if talking to oneself gets such negative reviews, what must people think about someone who not only does that, but talks to inanimate objects, as well? I mean, that’s got to be another level of insanity altogether, right? Well, maybe not. I’d like to think it’s just an eccentric way of safely complaining about stuff, and getting things off one’s chest without having to actually talk to another human being and face the possibility of destroying his or her psyche in person. (Hmmm, sounds a lot like social networking, doesn't it?)
Anyway, I’ve become comfortable talking to just about anything, including water leaks, user‘s manuals, weeds, and even termite droppings I find scattered around my property. I talk to traffic lights, tight belts, price tags, hair found in brushes, blood test results, and especially annoying people on television who can neither hear nor respond to my comments. And I’ve gotten pretty good at it, too... so much so that I really can’t wait to hear what I’m going to say next. Yes, my creative verbalization with inanimate objects knows no limits, and if you were a dust ball lurking in some dark corner of my house, I might even talk to you next.
Of course, I wouldn’t want to destroy my impeccable reputation for being the patient, mild-mannered, rational, non-impulsive, articulate, clean-spoken person most people think me to be. But if this post is going have any value, I do need to clarify what I mean by the term “talking,” at least when used as a tool for improving mental health. In this case talking means, “emotional outbursts of sarcastic vitriol that cleanse one's disgruntled soul through unsolicited attacks of aggressive and condemnational verbiage.”
Now, for all of you who are visual thinkers, consider it the difference between listening to the charming rhetoric of a "Dr. Jekyll," as he schmoozes at a cocktail party, and the evil rantings of a “Mr. Hyde” as he dementedly mumbles to his straight razor while fantasizing about his next act of mayhem. Got it?
Anyway, the reason I brought it up in the first place, is that in the last few years I’ve found that talking to… alright, “cussing out” inanimate objects IN PRIVATE is a fantastic way to dissipate anxiety and prevent yourself from having a perpetually bad attitude about life. Oh, I know in this era of twittering, tweeting, twanging, and “twying” to sound relevant, people have become accustomed to being brutally candid when commenting about things. Such blatant blabbing, shrouded by the anonymity of hiding behind a cell phone or computer keyboard, makes it not only easy but almost “cool” to unload one’s negative feelings about something or someone else. Of course, that’s because you don’t have to look them in the eyes to do it.
But it boggles my mind as to why today’s social communicators can’t see the major flaw inherent in blowing off steam this way. First of all, the stress relief you experience is only temporary since you NEVER EVER get the last word. Because what you’ve said is floating in cyberspace, your comment will most likely be commented upon many more times by others who disagree and think you‘re a jerk. And what they opine back, never fails to piss you off to a greater degree than you were before you shot off your electronic “mouth“ in the first place.
Nah, there’s a better way to get things off your chest. Here’s a free summary, then, of Paisano’s Plan for Profound Mental Peace:
When you’re alone, away from the presence of all other living creatures, take a moment to thoroughly cuss out whatever makes you mad using any form of expression which matches or exceeds the level of frustration and/or anger you feel. Then, once you’ve drained every ounce of verbal bile from your mind and body, go back and replay the entire tirade in your head. Listen to how profoundly stupid and unhinged you sounded just moments ago, and feel how grateful you are that no one you value heard a single word. Then smile sheepishly, and move on with no regrets. Resume your role in the world as that wonderful, understanding, gentle, empathetic soul that others wish they could be… but always appreciating this fact: It’s SO much easier being that person, once you’ve emptied every emotional cache by privately “addressing” the irritating stuff around you that can’t talk back.
Attention skeptics! While there was thought to be no scientific proof that humans and dinosaurs ever existed on this planet at the same time, this post should set the record straight once and for all.
