The Secret of My Secession

I was watching CNN the other day, and there was an interview with a group of people who would like the south to secede from the U.S. once again. Of course these idiots cited their differences with our government, saying that they are conservatives whose interests aren't represented by congress with the likes of Ted Kennedy liberals making laws.
Well you know, I thought about it, and you know what? You can have it! Every one of you idiots has my blessing to move to your own little place and start your own little country. Heck, you can even have where I live. I'll gladly move, knowing that I'll be going somewhere where there will be no confederate flags on bumpers, and no one shouting at my kids school because they think we should be taught that the world is only 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs were on the ark. What a peaceful world that would be.
But what would life be like if conservatives and liberals actually separated into two countries? Well, maybe not so peaceful. I suspect the conservative economy would be in trouble rather quickly. Here's what I think would happen:

-The conservative blue collar workforce would virtually disappear. Union labor would all be on the liberal side, and since the conservatives wouldn't allow immigrants from Mexico, there'd be no one to build their buildings! Isn't it funny that conservatives say they don't want immigrants from Mexico, but whenever they come into power, they make labor laws that undermine unions, and that's when car loads of Mexicans start showing up on the job?

-Next? Since there would be no watchdog groups over businesses, resources would be used up at a rapid pace, and pollution would be rampant. This would leave the conservative economy in terrible shape, and the people in terrible health. And that's when it gets scary. I suspect that eyes would begin to focus on the other side of the Mason Dixon line.

-So then what would happen? Conservatives would begin to preach fear to the confederate public. They would claim to have intelligence proving that the liberal north has plans to launch an attack on the south. They would draw up some liberal conspiracy about the development of an RU 486 bomb that would force abortions on all the pregnant southerners. They would even release a propaganda film titled, "The Morning After" about some abortion holocaust. This would give them the public support to launch a preemptive strike on the north.

-And then what? I don't know. War I guess. I'm tired of typing.

yours truly,
Sid

NBT

Nervous breakdowns tickle.

Things I've Realized Since Becoming a Father #9

Being a single parent must be really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hard.

And People Think I'M Weird

You know, there are less than 600 members of congress. That's by far smaller than my high school. How the hell did so many idiots get elected to run this country? This week it's Senator Craig who's been outed for illegal activities. These guys are soliciting other men for sex in airport restrooms and still getting elected. I couldn't even get picked for teams in gym class!
And the funny thing is how much the media has quoted Senator Craig as saying, "I am not gay. I never have been gay." Hey buddy, I don't care if your gay. I care that you're a United States senator who got arrested for soliciting sex in a public restroom!

A Knife in the Back Is Like an Itchy Massage

Every now and then I get to know someone who is one of those "tell you like it is" people. They piss you off with their confrontation and criticism, and then proudly say, "Hey, I just tell it like it is. I'm not some rat who goes around behind your back."
Well guess what. Since when is that actually helpful? I have low self-esteem, and to be honest, if there's something you don't like about me I'd rather not hear about it. I'm too old to change, and I welcome you to politely go behind my back and tell everyone around me what a schmuck you think I am. And I'll do you the service of doing the same.

Things I've Realized Since Becoming a Father #8

Stores that don't have a changing station in the women's bathroom don't deserve my business.
And stores that DO have a changing station in the women's bathroom, but not the men's, ALSO don't deserve my business. Welcome to the 80's!!!

Keeping It Real

You know, throughout my life I always felt out of place among my social circles. There always seemed to be some veil over everyone, like there was some part of them that I couldn't see. Then there was the day I met Trag. I was at a party one day, sitting in the corner like a true wallflower, and Trag walks up and introduces himself. "You know what the problem is with these people?" he said, "They don't keep it real."
And that's when it hit me. That's why I was out of place! These people didn't know how to keep it real! They were soaked in self-consciousness! Drenched in "keep up with the Jones" mentality. This wasn't for me. I was for real. I needed to hang with people who keep it real just like me.
Trag and I left the party and headed to this house where his friends liked to hang. Trag wore lots of black and listened to punk music. I knew a guy like this would have lots of friends who kept it real just like we did.
Once we got to the house, things seemed so much better than before, but it didn't take long before that wore off. For guys who claimed they kept it real, they sure put on a lot of show. It turns out they ALL wore black just like Trag! The music didn't seem too real. Every song sounded disgruntled. Wouldn't "keeping it real" involve a smile every now and then? Or some powder blue? Hell, half the house was wearing the same Misfits T-shirt! The most disappointing thing about the whole experience was when Trag's wallet fell out of his pocket and revealed an Abercrombie credit card. And on the credit card, I noticed that his real name was Jason.
This place wasn't keeping it real at all. I knew I had to find a place that was more real just like me. I did notice this one girl at the house that also seemed out of place. She was the only one who wasn't in black. She was in a sensible army green, and she didn't wear a bra. I figured a girl who wouldn't confine her bosom to the shackles of authority must really know how to keep it real. So I introduced myself.
Her name was Donna (so much more real than "Trag"). And I was right. She was disgusted by the "cookie cutter" format of the house just like me. She said she knew of a coffee shop down the road where people REALLY knew how to keep it real. "Let's go" I said, and we left Trag (Jason) and all the rest of his fakie friends: Rust (Bob), Cuff (Willy), Kayla (Jenny), and Zip (Josh).
A few minutes later, we were walking into the place I had been searching for all along. The Jaded Philanthropist coffeehouse. Inside was a plethora of individuality. Each table was a haven for discussion about politics, poetry, Norwegian folklore and even the history of MI6's involvement with the middle east in the 1970's. But wait a minute. What the hell was I supposed to talk about? This kind of stuff wasn't anything I cared to discuss right then. I JUST GOT THERE! Plus, no one seemed to want to listen to anything I wanted to say. Actually, no one was really listening to anybody else! Each table was one person who was just talking and talking about whatever. This couldn't be real! No matter how educated! And for as many communists that were there, it sure was hard to get a fair chance to talk! I knew I had to find a better place where people REALLY kept it real.
There was only one place left where I could try. I'm not allowed to tell you where it was, or how I got there. It was SO real, that I wasn't even allowed to disclose any names of the people who were there! But I will tell you that there was a lot of stuff that made me uncomfortable there. People picked their noses, drank too much, snorted heroin, ran around naked, had circle jerks, watched "Weekend at Bernie's", and I think that one of the guys had a girlfriend there that was only 13!!! I don't know for sure because she only spoke Chinese. Was this what keeping it REAL came down to? Do people really fart that much? Or had I finally gone too far? I don't know if this was real or not, but if it was, I didn't really want to share it with these guys. So I knew I had to move on.
There was only one place left where I knew I could keep it real. I came home and started typing on my computer. Is that real? It is to me. At least in my head, but that's about as far as reality goes for anyone. Any further, and the elements of the material world twist it into something that isn't you anymore. If we're lucky, we can manage to get one positive thing from our brains to someone else and touch them in some way that makes the world a better place. And if we're really lucky, we can get it across without disclosing that we've seen the movie "Weekend at Bernie's".

yours truly,

Siddhartha Vader (yes, that's my real name)

Interstate Stream of Consciousness

The other morning I was driving down the interstate on my way to work. I came up over a hill, and there it was; the rising sun in all its majesty. It was just above the horizon which made it look huge, and there was a haze in the air which made it easy to look at. I was overwhelmed by its beauty and shook my fist shouting, "Oooh yeah!!!"

Then I thought, "God must think I'm pretty cool to be praising the beauty of the sunrise like that."

But then I thought, "Maybe God's angry with me now for being so prideful and pleased with myself over a sunrise that EVERYONE should be cheering for." This made me uncomfortable and I worried that the smite might come down.

Then, up ahead on the side of the road, I saw a dead deer. That's when I realized that life is too short to be so concerned with every little worry like that, and maybe God was trying to show me this by sending me past this dead deer.

As I passed the deer, I realized that it was actually just a piece of furniture that must have fallen off a truck. I watched it in my rear view mirror with a grin, thinking how silly it was to keep letting my mind race like that.

Then, as I took my eyes back to the road, I had just enough time to see a deer running out in front of my car. It came through the windshield and punctured my left lung.

The hospital stay was a little long, but well needed. The frustrating thing about it was that my patient bed was positioned in relation to the window, so that the sunrise was JUST out of view. This wouldn't have been so annoying if the other patient in my room would have stopped cheering every damn morning; prideful bastard.

Fake Zen Meditation #6

Look into a mirror and you will see yourself looking back.
Look into yourself and you will see the great emptiness that looks back at nothing.
Look into nothingness and you will see the great emptiness looking at yourself looking at nothing.
Look into the three mirrors in the JC Penney dressing room and you will see yourself looking at yourself looking at the side of yourself forever into the abyss of the great empty nothing.

oh paper bag

sometimes we are blue
and that's when we go tan
sometimes we are orange
and that's when we sin

under a window lands a breeze
it hits my skin with crisping leaves
to shiver is to surrender
and surrender is ultimate beauty

I have a bag of insecurities
I asked for paper and they gave me plastic
I hoped the rain would weaken the lining
but now they're just taking on water

soon it will tear and you'll be soaking with it all
those drops that should have healed the landscape of my wandering
it will erode your skin
and I will make you cry

replace me with a vegetable
they're in your grocer's freezer
and you will find the broccoli looks much like little trees

He Ain't Heavy

Nothing in history has ever truly been heavy, just awkward. Carry a refrigerator down three flights of stairs and it's not heavy, just awkward. There were 10,000 slaves in ancient Egypt pulling a rock tied to a rope to cap some punk-ass Pharaoh's pyramid. Undoubtedly, one said to the other, "Man, this giant pyramid rock is heavy," and undoubtedly another said, "It's not so much heavy as it is awkward."

August

August is like a month of Sundays. The impending arrival of winter/school weighs on you like no other. In another week I should begin to see Christmas decorations at Kmart. Way to keep it special.

Things I've Realized Since Becoming A Father #7

As my 3 year old bites into a crisp corn on the cob, if I listen closely to the sound, I can hear the universe turning.

A Ten Commandments for the Modern Era

1. I am the Lord your God. Thou shalt not have other gods before me. But feel free to watch all the television you want.
2. Thou shalt not make for thyself a false American idol (like Clay Aiken).
3. Thou shalt not take my name in vain unless having trouble fixing the lawn mower.
4. Thou shalt remember the sabbath and keep it holy by not missing the Green Bay Packers game.
5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother by keeping the house quiet during the Packers game.
6. Thou shalt not kill unless it's someone in another country that practices another religion.
7. Thou shalt not steal unless it's from some large faceless corporation that probably has that sort of thing covered in their overhead.
8. Thou shalt not lie unless it's not going to directly hurt anybody.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's life partner.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods. Just go out and buy a slightly nicer version of what they have.

Things I've Realized Since Becoming A Father #6

Sometimes I can be a more amazing person than I ever thought I could be.

Conversely, sometimes I can be a bigger asshole than I ever thought I could be.

You Will Be Forgotten

We carve our names in trees, we put our hands in wet concrete, we strive for fame and fortune, all because we have a primal desire to be remembered. Sadly, these efforts are in vain. Trees grow, concrete cracks to rubble, and fame only lasts for fifteen minutes.

Yes. You will be forgotten.

How many names really last throughout history? Shakespeare, Caesar, Napoleon. And how long will it be before these names, too fade away? Deal with it friends. Your existence is brief, and after you're gone, the world's memory of you will quickly follow.

So how do we live on?

By our deeds and our deeds alone. Good deeds echo eternally, but bad deeds are snuffed. There's a good chance that you couldn't tell me your great great grandfather's name, what he did, or where he came from. But the choices he made have had an insurmountable effect on who you are and what you value. You will carry his good deeds forth because you can see how they are in harmony with the universe. Meanwhile, you will spend a lifetime trying to snuff out all of the bad pieces of yourself that you got handed. You will never get them all, but the one's you overlook, or are too weak to overcome will eventually be destroyed for you by others; chances are by your own descendants. These are the pieces of you that will disappear.

Evil takes many forms, but in the end always loses because its effects are not cohesive with the function of the universe. Put forth hate into the world, and your footprints will wash away quickly.

Put forth Love, and your thumbprint will remain here eternally. Put forth Love and have your deeds carried out by your children and those whose lives you have touched.

PUT FORTH LOVE, AND LIVE FOREVER.

Cubs For Christmas

A storm rolls in over the ballpark

But only the catcher has it in view above center field

The queen of the Del Vista Rona steals second

But there's no play at the bag

She leaves oil behind
with each planting of her foot in the clay

The outfield backs up for Jesus on deck

But he bunts down the first base line to sacrifice himself for the queen to third

The ball rolls foul, but the cheers of a visiting crowd breathe heavy to push it back to the fair side of the line

The umpire doesn't notice, as he stares at the coming storm

It's so hot

Black clouds roll in

Will God peer through that tiny patch of blue so quickly closing?

Perhaps not. He must be crying, for it's raining in the bleacher seats.

A tired old commentator swings his microphone from the press box shouting "Holy sacred cow!"

He's clearly lost his mind, but no one can help.
It's illegal to commit Harry Carey

I've seen it all from behind the dugout.

God's tears make muck of the clay

The left fielder builds an ark from Louisville sluggers, complete with dinosaurs bound for Petersburg, Kentucky

There's no room for two by two

When it comes to giant reptiles, there can be only one of each, so they will fade at the seventh inning stretch

Throw a baseball into the stands, if it returns, there is no land-- or we're just playing at Wrigley

Somehow I made it to bat in the bottom of the ninth, but the game ends when a wild pitch allows the queen of the Del Vista Rona to steal home and break the tie

Somewhere, Jimmy Leyland is crying again

It's getting so hot, and he's out of smokes

They say we won, but I don't feel it

It's getting hotter and I never even swung the bat

The mighty Casey may sweat it out, but I won't.

It Ain't Easy

Last night I played bridge with Kermit the frog

I always let him win because it's not easy being green

Poor little fella never knew what hit him

Global warming, steals one of his legs

The breeze of a local chicken shack exhales its odor into a hot room

I've got a two of hearts, but it's no matter anymore

Back to Basics

Yesterday, the power went out around 2, and stayed out for several hours. What was this family of 3 to do without our television? No lights, no phone (digital), no internet. All of the comforts of the modern world gone with one stroke of lightning.
I knew we had to get back to basics. So what did we do? We watched DVD's on our battery powered portable player, and when the battery died, we beat the pulp out of each other until only one of us was left conscious.

8-Track Fallout

Dear Mom,
One time, you and I were riding in uncle Jeff's car, and he had a new kick butt stereo in there with an 8-track (not to mention a miniature equalizer--neat). Well, I said I wanted to listen to a "Cat Scratch Fever" by Ted Nugent. Uncle Jeff said he shouldn't play it for my young ears because it had a naughty word/reference in it. Then you said, "Oh, just play it. He'll never catch it and he won't remember."
Well guess what Mom. YOU WERE WRONG!!! WROOOONNNGGG!!!
I did remember it. And to this day my life has been an utter wreck. Oh, the tragedies that occurred in Jeff's silver Phoenix. How could you?

Things I've Realized Since Becoming a Father #5

I am going to spend so much time trying to avoid the mistakes my parents made with me, that I am going to make glaring mistakes in other areas.

Things I've Realized Since Becoming A Father #4

If you don't have kids, you have a LOT more free time than you think you do.

Fake Zen Meditation #5

Lu Chen asked his teacher, "Master, which way do I go to begin the path?" Teacher pointed to the east and replied, "Walk that way until you have found the path."

Lu Chen was never seen again.

Exclamation Point Update

Well the last few weeks have been both frightening and enlightening. Remember the exclamation point that I thought was following me? Turns out that it really was.

I'm leaving the Kwik E Mart the other night; it's late and I'm alone. Just as I get to my car, I am confronted by the exclamation point and several of its friends. Some of them were American, and some were those upside down foreigners. Needless to say, I was terrified and fully expected the worse.

So what happens? They all just stand there and stare. Then I realized that alone they were harmless to me. It was all the awful words I was casting between them that was making the situation so volatile. All this time, If I had been sending positive words like, "Great!", "Beautiful!", and "I Love You!", there would have never been a problem. I knew right then that I had been wrong about them.

What's more, I realized that there was a reason they were all standing before me. The pattern of right side up and upside down was their way of speaking to me in binary code. Each right side up representing a 0, and each upside down representing a 1. I'll leave the pattern for you in case you'd like to decode it for yourself.

01110010 01100001 01100011 01101001 01110011 01101101 00100000

01100010 01110010 01100101 01100101 01100100 01110011 00100000

01100100 01100101 01110011 01110100 01110010 01110101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110

yours truly,

01110011 01101001 01100100

The Ultimate Right Wing Conspiracy

Lefties of America, take heed. Have you been spending all of your extra time working on this abortion issue? Well wake up and smell the elephant dung. The right wing actually WANTS you to have abortions! It's been a smokescreen from the start!

We all know that neoconservatives were born without souls right? So what's the smartest thing the devil ever did? Convince people that he didn't exist. They fight women's rights on every other part of the playing field, so they battle against abortion to rally the Christian right, and at the same time make the feminist movement think that they're losing rights. The reality of the situation is that liberals are being coaxed into aborting their own pregnancies, out of fear that the privilege will be taken. The right wing has tricked the world into forgetting that the most powerful thing a woman can do is HAVE a child.

Now they get everything they want. They get votes from fundamentalists who really DO want abortion outlawed, and they get liberals aborting their pregnancies, thus making for a smaller pool of left wingers who exist to vote against them down the road. What a dirty trick!

Do I actually buy this theory? No, not really.... except for the part about neoconservatives not having souls. But I just thought you might like to chew on it.

Yours Truly,

Sid

Good to be Back

So sorry I've been gone for a while. I assure you it was through no fault of my own. I was driving to work early in the morning on saturday. It was still dark outside. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the full moon hovering low in the sky. "How beautiful a gift this is this morning," I thought to myself.

I then looked over to realize that it wasn't the moon at all. It was a glowing hotel sign. "What a fool I am," I thought, "to mistake a hotel sign for the moon." Then I thought, "This is what moths must feel like all the time. A constant victim of human commercial trickery."

Then I saw my face in the rear view mirror and realized that some time over the course of the drive, I had actually BECOME a moth man! My eyes were huge, and my wings were sputtering wildly, and throwing that weird dust everywhere. Then I realized I wasn't pulling up to work at all. Somehow, I was pulling up to my house. I went inside to find my family, but they were gone, and so was all our stuff as if we'd never lived there at all. It was at that point, I realized I'd become one of those mothmen like in that movie, "The Pelican Brief". Or maybe it was some other movie, I can't remember.

So there I was, a mothman dashing through reality free of the burdens of space and time. What the hell was I going to do without some sort of construct to my universe? I had to do something to help our world out.

So I dashed about time. I killed baby Hitler. I told Jesus to watch his back around Judas. I distracted Lee Harvey Oswald away from Dallas promising a weekend at Disneyland. I told Democrats in Florida to vote like hell in the 2000 election. I watched "The Pelican Brief" (I just like that movie). I went back and found where I put that other glove. And last but not least, I played skiffle with The Quarrymen.

Some time later I awoke to find my life back. And you know, all that work was for nothing! It turns out there were TWO babies named Adolph Hitler. Who else would give their kid the name of a tyrant? Jesus still didn't listen. There must have been someone else on the grassy noel (is that how you spell noel? I don't know, because other than the Kennedy thing, no one ever uses that word) in Dallas. Democrats in Florida must be really lazy, or more likely, W. and Jeb really did steal the 2000 election. "The Pelican Brief" wasn't as good as I remembered. Now I can't find the OTHER glove. And John Lennon and Paul McCartney must've realized that I stink, because I wasn't mentioned in any of their biographies. In fact, they even blurred my face out of the pictures in The Beatles Anthology.

So to make a long story short, I'm back after a few weeks and not much has changed. I go to work. I come home. I hang with my family and watch T.V. My wife rented some movie with Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, but for the life of me, I can't remember the title.

cheers,

Sid

Things I've Realized Since Becoming a Father #3

Sleep is a luxury and a gift. It is not to be taken for granted.

Fake Zen Meditation #4

Enlightenment can be found in the setting sun, but if you look for it, it will not be there. For it is in the moon.

Look for it in the moon and you will not see it, for you will have gone blind from staring at the sun.

-Tzu Doku

Science vs. Religion

Can't you two get along? People from both of these camps spend so much time fighting that they no longer hear the wind in the trees, or see the stars in the sky. Come out of your claustrophobic labs and stale churches for five minutes, look up, listen, smell the air, feel the breeze on your skin, taste the rain.

Certainly you can find bits and pieces of your purpose and existence by tinkering with theories or studying ancient texts, but you will never know the greatness and depth of the universe if you don't let go and feel it for yourself.

I have found truth and beauty in both science and religion, and the funny thing is that they both seem to be hindered by the same flaws:
They are both incredibly arrogant, and both incredibly short sighted.

Wanted...Genius Psychopaths

-Are you a genius psychopath?

-Does everyday conversation with passing morons make you want to eat them? Or perhaps just vomit on them?

-When you are in social situations, do you feel anxious and think of ways to trap people at the gathering so that they have to kill each other to escape?

-Is your music preference limited to only classical with the exception of The Rolling Stones?

Everlasting Sunrise Clinic is looking for persons between the ages of 18 and 65 to take part in a clinical research study for the new drug Redrumin. Prior research has shown that Redrumin has been successful in curbing the urges to plot against the human race in remote mansions or dungeon-like lairs.

Subjects will be paid for time and travel!

Come back into the light, with Redrumin.

Call 555-6876 between 9 and 5 to schedule an appointment.

Fake Zen Meditation #3

The great tall tree cracks and breaks in the smallest breeze.

The humble small tree bends and sways through the strongest storms.

This is the path.

The humble small tree is arrested for taking a minor across state lines in a primer gray 1985 Monte Carlo.

This is not the path.

Exclamation Point Update

If you've been following my posts from the beginning, you know of the exclamation point that I believe has been following me. Well my friends, I'm afraid that the situation has gotten worse.

As it turns out, a family of exclamation points has moved into my neighborhood. Let me reiterate that I don't think ALL exclamation points are a bad form of punctuation, but I can tell that this group is trouble. At all hours of the night I'm hearing people scream "Yea!" and "Woohoo!" The noise and partying is out of control.

Two days ago, I'm out for a walk and I pass by their place. On the porch sits a big loud group of exclamation points, and with them now is a big group of those upside down exclamation points; fresh over from whatever the hell country they're from. You know, I try to be cool with everyone, but if these things are gonna swim over here and take jobs away from question marks, commas, and good God fearing periods then the least they could do is turn themselves right side up. This is America. And you know, at least American exclamation points know that their place is at the back of a sentence. These foreign upside down exclamation points are trying to come in at the front! My grandfather is probably rolling over in his grave.

One more thing. That shady exclamation point that I mentioned on March 27th still seems to be following me. Please keep an eye on me until things settle down here.

yours truly,

Sid

Things I've Realized Since Becoming a Father #2

Getting pee and poop on my hands isn't THAT big of a deal. If it was, I'd be dead by now.

Things I've Realized Since Becoming a Father #1

No matter how hard I try, I'm going to make a lot of mistakes.

The Temple of Perfection

Sid spent most of his life searching for the place of perfection. He always felt that perfection would come after he had achieved certain goals: graduating school, paying off debts, tending to poisonous relationships and so on. But every time he came close to what he was looking for, the end of the rainbow seemed to be just out of reach. It was like a dream, where the secrets of the universe are so close that one can smell their stardust, but the answers are always obscured by something or tucked away around a corner.

After a lifetime of spaces and voids drifted by, Sid sat in his car one morning at the break of dawn. The sun appeared in cloaks of pink and purple, and for a moment before him was humble, silent perfection. It was at that moment he realized that perfection could only be defined by the existence of imperfection. Perfection was the space between, be it light or dark. The sun would quickly rise to disappear amid the din of highways, airplanes and river loading docks. But Sid had witnessed it and seized it before it passed. "This moment is perfect," he whispered to himself.

There would be many more moments he would whisper this to himself; moments at dawn, moments in thunderstorms, moments enjoying the company of his wife and daughter. These moments were the building blocks of Sid's temple of perfection that was built in nonlinear time.

Fake Zen Meditation #2

Hu Chi: Master, how will I know the Buddha?

Zen Master: Unenlightened says what.

Hu Chi: What?

Zen Master: You know not the Buddha.

Maybe I'm Just Paranoid But...

I think that someone is tapping my phone. It hasn't been ringing quite the same lately. Plus, the other night I found a condom wrapper and some used long distance cards in the trash. My phone and I haven't used long distance cards in years!

I just can't win. You struggle for years to find what you think is a good clean line and then something like this happens. This is worse than the time I caught my cell phone vibrating.

Fake Zen Meditation #1

The delicate flower that cares not for the frost on its petals, this is the Buddha!

-Zen Wa

To Make a Point

I didn't know what to write for my first post, but then something happened to me that you might find of interest. I was running some errands and I noticed an exclamation point shopping in the same aisle at the grocery. There aren't a lot of exclamation points that live in my part of town so I took notice.
I didn't think much of it until later at Target when I swear I saw the same exclamation point. By this time I thought it strange, but maybe I was just over thinking things, right? I don't see a lot of exclamation points, I rarely use them, and to be painfully honest, they all kind of look the same to me.
But what sealed the deal was that evening. I'm at the Olive Garden slurping down a bowl of minestrone soup, and in walks the very same exclamation point. I know it was the same one because we exchanged awkward glances as it was being seated.
So why am I sharing? Because I'm a little freaked out that I'm being followed. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but if you wouldn't mind keeping an eye on this blog to be sure I'm okay, I'd appreciate it. I know not ALL exclamation points cause trouble, but in my experience, whenever they show up, things get a little too excited and wild. I mean, come on. We all know that whenever something crazy happens, sure enough there's an exclamation point right up in the middle of things... or... at the end. So keep a watchful eye out for me, will ya?!

yours truly,

Sid