What a person most fears

What a person most fears
has already happened to her
in a different form.

A Tergerburger in Pratt Falls

There is so much that I regret. I look at all that was once my potential - REAL potential, not just idealism or naive ambition - and whatever I HAVE seemed to accomplish seems pretty petty in comparison. It's hard not to feel ashamed about it. There is so much I should have done differently. Just about everything, really.

Does anybody out there know some healthy ways to deal with regret. Please, no shallow religious stuff or positive thinking cliches. I'm not repressed enough for those to work.

Aphorism #186

Everything is analogous to everything.

But it was so cute in "Jungle Book." 

A Joke to Test the Level of Sophistication of Your Sense of Humor

A pirate, a priest, a minister, a rabbi, a horse, a monkey, an indian, and a beautiful woman walk into a bar together. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"

Aphorism #272

The worst evil in man
Thinks itself to be the greatest good.


[from Aphorisms, Etc., by D. L. McIntyre]

Pink Bunny Gulf Wars and Woolly Mammoth Slippers

For most of my life, and certainly since my teenage years, I have been compulsively bothered by one nagging fact that seems to get little if any attention from other people, namely, how disorganized everything is. Please tell me you have noticed. Please tell me that the only reason you have never spoken about it is because you would have been embarrassed if no one seemed to know what you were talking about, sort of like being the one who was on guard when the amphibious attack vehicle came up out of the water and surprised the whole unit and you got blamed even though you didn't even know they could do something like that.

When I say how disorganized everything is, I am not talking about clothes on the floor or cereal boxes on the shelf or thinking about dengue fever just because you see some mosquitoes - the kind of thing that supposedly bothers those who were supposedly potty trained too early - no, I'm talking about something considerably more serious - I am talking about how disorganized everything is, as in everything.

You wake up in the morning, and right away there are too many things to do, too many reasons to do them, too many procedures for doing them, and too many objects to do them with. Do you stay in bed for a while? What will be the consequences? Do you get up right away? Why? Is somebody laying there next to you? Who is it? Why is he or she there? Do you want him or her there? And what in all the world is he or she gonna want you do? What if you don't want to do it? Does he or she have some right to make you do it?

But just then, you finally admit to yourself that you're you're married or unmarried bladder is about to burst. Damn! A long time ago, when people slept on leaves and branches on the ground like they were meant to, all a guy had to do was turn over on his side, relieve himself, and go back to sleep. Hell, he could go back to sleep at the same time he was relieving himself - if he didn't mind sleeping on that side, some people are picky that way.

But today is today, and unless I want to severely complicate my future, I'm going to have to get up to, as we say, go to the bathroom. For crying out loud, there are at least a dozen reasons why somebody would want to make their way into a bathroom. Why does the phrase go to the bathroom only mean that one thing? If I wanted to wash my hands, simply out of compassionate cleanliness, it would be perfectly rational for me to say, "I'm going to the bathroom," but in fact, in our culture, I would be lying. And later, if someone found out that all I did was wash my hands, they'd have a right to be pissed, so to speak.

Do you see what I mean? About how everything is so disorganized? I haven't even gotten out of bed yet and already my head is filled with more things than I can keep track of, and most of them seem completely disconnected from each other, even though - by some wacky logic - I managed to connect them.

But how in the world did waking up in the morning become connected to whether or not someone who may or may not be in the room has the right to tell me what to do? How in the world - in any sane world - did I get into a situation where someone is going to be mad if they find out all I did was wash my hands?

No, no. You cannot accuse me of being the one who made these connections. You know for a fact and I'm not the only one. You can't be a human being walking around on this earth without seeing the same kinds of connections yourself. Why did my sister wear pink bunny slippers in the ‘60s? Why would she probably not wear them now, even if she was given a brand new pair? "They are out of style now," you say, or, "She is older and more mature now," or, "Pink bunny slippers?!" Or, "Didn't your sister die in the Gulf War?"

You say such things as if they are perfectly sane and reasonable. As if these are real explanations, or perfectly acceptable comments. But don't you see? Pink bunny slippers got connected to the Gulf War. We're talking here about death! Death, and style, and maturity. And no one even asked the obvious question: how did bunnies become slippers in the first place?

We are all walking around in this world together, bumping into each other, throwing out all kinds of words, and the only reason we do not become terrified at how lost we are is that everyone else is just as lost and just as clueless about the fact that they are lost as we are, plus we've never known any other kind of experience. And surely there is a God or a government or a movie star somewhere that understands it all.

And all the time, housefires are being put out by water squirting out of an object that reminds some people of male genitalia, and lots of buildings of different heights sitting securely on the ground somehow get labeled as, are you ready?, a sky - line. And the Hindus and the Jehovah's Witnesses agree on what happens to people after they die, but Hindus think of it as heaven and Jehovah's witnesses think of it as hell.

Who exactly was the first person in history who had so much lazy leisure time that he or she was able to worry about what was going to happen to him or her after he or she died? Didn't he or she have a woolly mammoth to kill or a cave to wipe down?

Copyright © 2005 Donald L. McIntyre All Rights Reserved, except as stated below

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