Picture Of Dorian Gray

Things happen for a reason.  You make friends and acquaintances.  Life moves on, times change, and the cast of characters in your life constantly refreshes itself.  You lose track of people and you keep some people close to you.  This is good.  This is the way life is supposed to be. This is the natural order of things.

Facebook had turned this ages old ritual on it's ass.  The other day, I was bored.  So I let my mind wander and allowed myself to remember people I have known in my life.  People I lost track of for one reason or another.  I managed to remember quite a few people, and their full names.  So I started looking for them on facebook, and I found about three-quarters of them.

As some of you have found out, this is not necessarily a good thing.  I can think of only one word to describe the feelings I had when I saw pictures of almost all of these people.  Horror.

Sure ... ten to thirty years had gone by, but the inevitable had occurred.  They looked old, gaunt, fat, short, sick, bloated, bald, saggy, gray, wrinkled.  If they had written something on their info page, they were married, divorced, widowed, grand parents, great-grandparents, childless, mentally ill, crippled, tragic, assholes, saints.

I got a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  And a feeling of ill-being like I hadn't experienced in ages.  If these people looked like this ... and these things had happened to them ... then what it the hell am I going to seem like to them, if they look me up?

Plus, I didn't even like some of these people when they were in my life.  Way to go Rob, dredging up all of those bad feelings that you had jettisoned years ago.

I've always believed that there is a predetermined script for everyone in life.  Fate should determine when and if you lose contact with, and meet certain people again across the years.  Certainly not an overblown, world-wide social networking site.  In my short experience, it causes more problems than it solves.

I've been on facebook for about a year now, and it's time for me to seriously consider if I want to continue with it. Maybe it's time to start simplifying some things again and let life move on like it was meant to in the beginning.

Shit, I need to go take my picture down.

Abandoning My Posts

Like all serious writers, I keep a notebook to store my ideas for novels, short stories, essays and screenplays. Well, actually, I never get any ideas for the above, so I just make notes for posts that I may want to write for my blog.  Using this method, I can open my file and pull out a gem of a topic for days that I may feel particularly un-idea-y, like today.  And the rest of this week probably.

So, when I got home from work this afternoon, I went to my file and sifted through it's contents.  After several minutes of scanning the pages, I realized that all I had was a pile of shit, consisting of bits of shit that I either couldn't decipher or sounded really stupid.  Rather than delete the contents and start fresh, I thought I would just throw the the garbage out here for all of you lucky people to enjoy, or not.  Here we go ...

Neighbor Ron is usually good for a post or two during the year.  His backwoods, hillbilly trailer trash style never ceases to amaze me.  One day last summer, I was sitting here in control central when I noticed him pulling his power washer out into the backyard.  He fired the machine up and began washing ... his  trees.  I kept hoping that the family would come out, strip to their undies and he would power wash them too.  But he never did and I couldn't think of any way to build anything out of a guy blowing the leaves off of his trees with a 5 zillion psi burst of water.  So that story died on the vine, so to speak.

A while back, I wrote a post on letters I had sent to the Readers Digest.  I liked doing that one and thought I would follow up with another one, but I could only think of one idea, and then I ran out of gas.  This is the only entry I could come up with for my second installment of "Life In These United States".

After spending a few weeks chatting with a nice girl I met online, she invited me over so we could finally meet in person.  You can imagine my embarrassment, when, after showing up at her house  and making myself comfortable while she went to change, I was suddenly confronted by a camera crew and Chris Hansen, the host of "Dateline NBC".

And then there are the pictures.  One of the things I love about my iMac is it's ability to transfer almost any image I find on the interwebs to my photo gallery, almost instantly.  Unfortunately, I usually end up with a shit load of pictures that I have no idea what to do with. Observe ...

(Click to enlarge)

Okay, now that I've cleaned out my files, I can flush the remains into the universe, where their electrons will play joyfully with others of their kind, and I can start anew with ideas guaranteed to bring in readers from all over the planet.

Shit ... Who am I kidding?

Yankee Dog Comics

I bought some Oriental piece of crap from World Market a couple of weeks ago, and as I was unpacking it from it's box, I came across some Japanese newspapers used for padding and thought I'd share this interesting piece.  I had no idea that Japanese newspapers ran American comics.

The Kitakyushu Post

About Our Comics!

Nature Punchman Go!

Nature Punchman Go! is most popular Yankee comic ever in Japan!  Read and see why!  A brave man uses fist of nature power to stop dog hunters, fullbellies, and beard men.  He can summon giant talking beasts to aid his just cause!  Very exciting comic almost as good as manga!  Punchman's real name is Mack Trailer.  He never has gun, only fist and sometime SUPER MAGIC BATTLE CAMERA!  Watch for it!  He has son, dog and wife sometimes!

Baka Family In Round Picture

English language can be hard to learn!  In this school age comic Baka Family acts stupid and talk slow so it is easy for little kids to read them.  It helps them how to read and count and draw and walk sometimes.  Also the Bakas teach young USA kids how not to act.  American moms say to disobedient children, "Don't be a Baka Family member!'

Why They Not Married? Apartment


Here are three pretty ladies that not attract husbands after trying 40 years.  Why?  Because they just so crazy!  Kitakyushu Post promises you laugh and laugh with this unexpected comic!  Reminds us of famous USA comedies like Seinfeld or Sex In A City.  You ask yourself, WOAH! What these crazy ladies do next?  No wonder they not married!  Ha ha ha for hours!

Sinister Overalls Boy

Do you like to read a Stephenking about an evil Gaijin with supermagical powers?  You will be terrified by Sinister Overalls the Neighbor Boy!  He haunts a terrorified Mister Wilson.  Why can not a Mr. Wilson not escape him?  Slowly, twisted secrets are revealed over decades in this USA classic.  Drawn by large award winning American manga artist Hank Ketchup.

Boring Girl Ruriko

What?  You thought all USA girls famous and naked rich like Paris Hotels?  No chance!  Ruriko is plain looks, bad sports, bad dance, not smart, just ordinary upper second school girl!  She embraces boring life and pretends she is important! Most USA young ladies like to read this strip and think it is about them!  Ruriko also has a dressmaker boyfriend and a potato face brother that dates a fireman futanari.

Mrs. Crazyfits

Here is very popular comic in America!  It is political satire like Mr. Bill Really.  Mrs.  Crazyfits is over the top clown woman!  Why always was going crazy wasting her husband money with shopping and eating and crying for hours.  She can't even do simple house hold chores without violent fits!  Great comic relief this one, making fun of USA gals.

 Puggers

Each day a real Yankee fullbelly writes to the manga artist and describes for him a terrible aspect about the Born in the USA life they all suffer indignity from.  The manga artist draws them like big slovenly animals.  Why they animals?  What?  You have to ask?  OK to laugh at big dumb American beasts!  Hoo boy yeah!

Salary Man Scribbling

Hey chief!  Want to look at secrets inside Yankee technology company?  Read this dramatic real life story of unqualified engineering and missing team spirit.  Keen glance into sickly competitors.  Art is done in sloppiest style, symbolic of shoddy workmanship.

Mariko Worth

By now you wonder, Wow!  Are all USA comics about insanes, oafs, and fullbellies?  Nice guess, but no!  Her is a graceful historical adventure about good manners taking place in the 1950's of USA!  Mariko Worth is respected in her small country village of Chatterstone.  Good quality guys here, no need for labor!  Relaxing escape into warmbelly USA charming rustic life.  Watch them eat sushi outside their orange adobe community cottage like many happy Ronald Reagans.

Also look for world favorites like OniMan in Purple Wetsuit, Shame Platoon, Saggy Canadian and Fuzzy Catdog ... all in your Kitakyushu Post!

Still (Almost) Commercial Free

We were on a rare Friday night food gathering trip at Walmart this evening.  I was pushing the cart up and down the aisles when it slowly dawned on me that all of the Easter crap had been removed from the shelves. Gone were the super cheap wicker baskets, the grainy faux chocolate bunnies, the fake grass and the stale marshmallow Peeps.  I had to conjure up a mental calendar to reassure myself that this was, indeed, Good Friday.  Of all places ... Walmart ... had given up on the Easter trade, two days early.

Strange ... but not so much once you stop and think about it.  Easter is one of the "Big Two" religious holidays of the year.  But unlike Christmas, whose deeply religious message was lost decades ago in a sea of commercialism, Easter remains a primarily religious event seemingly impervious to hucksterism.

Both holidays focus on one individual, but the message each holiday sends is as different ... well ... as different as life and death.

The Christmas Story is so much pablum.  An attractive couple, having difficulty finding a motel room, rest in a comfy hay filled barn, where their child is born.  Animals take on cuddly human personalities and "wise guys" appear, bearing pretty expensive swag for the kid.  Easter is a brutal, in-your-face reality show, with a scary, implausible ending.

The Christmas Story goes down as easy as a 12 year old blended malt whiskey.  What's not to like?  The Easter Story is like a four hour old belt of backwoods White Lightning.  Rough, raw and choking.

Christmas allows you to glide along.  Not much thought needs to be given to accept the circumstances of the birth of Jesus.  It's a fanciful story, probably exaggerated to the nth degree, but it ellicits pleasant thoughts.

Easter forces you to make a choice.  Do you believe that a man can rise from the dead (little alone move an 800 pound boulder), or is it beyond credulity.

So, it's little wonder that a story that is still shocking in these times, resists repeated attempts at commercialization.  Social mindsets are a hard thing to alter, and somebody will have to come up with something better than a giant rabbit who lays colored eggs to turn Easter into a retailers bonanza.

Mom, Read Me A Story

I found these children's books while cruising through web-land the other night.  I was born a little early to be weaned on Dr. Seuss books, but my mom did buy a lot of those Little Golden Books, which I remember enjoying as I was learning to read.  Sometimes I wonder if I grew up to be just a little more mentally adjusted than kids these days, particularly if these are the things they're cutting their reading teeth on.  Yes, I know, I'm a grumpy old man ... "Hey you kids!  Get off my lawn!"

Geez ...