Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Formative Experiences #1: Human League's "Fascination"

So yeah. Formative experiences.

I remember I was a small child. I don't think I was even in school yet, or at least if I was, I hadn't learned anything yet. And I heard this song that kept playing, and going and going and going on, "KEEP FEELING FASCINATION, PASSION BURNING, LOVE SO STRONG... KEEP FEELING FASCINATION, LOOKING, LEARNING, MOVING ON"

In hindsight, I think it's impossible not to see how strongly these sentiments formed me. Pretty much my whole deal, neatly expressed - including the tinge of horror and pointlessness to it all. Fascination, looking, learning, moving on? Why, if that's all there is too it? Am I never to be at peace?

I knew even then, listening to this endless refrain that there was something wrong with it. But it was too late. My mind had been formed.

And so I walk the world in the grip of fascination, passion, and strong love, ever wondering at what I find, trying to understand but never quite able to grasp, to hold, to own. I look, I learn - what more is left that I can I do? I have been given no more options, except to move on and repeat. Repeat the process of fascination and acquisition of sensations, experiences. A kaleidoscope of ever-changing patterns, made of the same bits and shards, rotated over and over and over. I do not own myself. The search continues.

"Fascination" is copyright 1983, written by Jo Callis and Philip Oakey. Recorded and performed by Human League.



Thanks, guys.

Monday, December 28, 2015

Can "Sweet Georgia Brown" be elegiac?

Meadowlark Lemon passed away today. He was 83.

I remember when I was a kid we all got the impression that the Harlem Globetrotters were the greatest, most talented basketball team in the world. This was obvious to me. You didn't see the Celtics or the Knicks landing their own Saturday Morning cartoon shows! The Globetrotters were so talented they could win games while doing non-stop stunts and trick shots all the way. They ran roughshod over the competition with an almost scornful ease.

Later, I felt betrayed. But I blamed management and the media hush-up, not the players. I don't feel as though Meadowlark Lemon ever deceived me. He was doing his job, which was a job that was kind of like being Santa Claus, really.

In retrospect, finding out the truth about the Globetrotters probably eased the blow that fell years later, when I finally started to have my doubts about Professional Wrestling.

Requiascat in pace, Meadowlark.

Thought Of The Day: To Put

I love the "put" in shot-put. Where else can taking something, spinning around a few times to build momentum and then HEAVING it as HARD AND FAR AS YOU CAN constitute "putting" it?

If I were a track and field star I'd certainly take advantage of that verbiage. "Hey man, can you put this over on the counter?"

YOU BET I CAN

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

What Are YOUR Twenty Aspects?

Here's one that's going around that anyone can try! "What are your TWENTY ASPECTS!" It's completely up to you, although the rule is: no lying. Here's mine!

"Here are mine," I should say.

1. Real name: dogimo. Just kidding, it's Joe.

2. Male. This is probably not really salient fact #2, any more than my fucking name ought to weigh in at #1! But I'm into straight chicks, and admitting my maleness is a grade A way to set the deck for possible future, you know, maybe somebody will hit on me. Stuff like that!

3. I'm a feminist. BUT - BIG CAVEAT - only insofar as a feminist is "one who believes in and advocates for the political, legal and economic equality of a woman to a man." That's the definition by which it's hard to class myself otherwise. Not that I'd want to!

4. I'm Catholic, but you know what that seems more like an adjective to me than a noun. I'd say I'm a Christian.

5. I'd peg my philosophical position as pretty much skeptic. I've got a hell of a shredder up there, headwise, cutting stuff to ribbons and/or suspending judgment for propositions insufficiently demonstrated! It's really weird that I believe in God. My faith should be no match at all for my ungodly monstrous skepticism. I've tussled with this one over the years, and you know what I've arrived at? I'm pretty sure belief is a feeling. An emotion. The only way it could last would be if it's a process that falls outside the rational, like love generally does with me.

6. Humanist, though, is how I score on the online test. Which I embrace. I believe that we homo sapiens have within our reach so much of our fate - so many fates, would be a better way to say it!

7. I don't believe in fate. At least, not as a thing that brings things about. Luck, fate, stuff like that is a retrospective judgment. I don't believe in karma, either - not as a force that one can invoke when all other attempts at victim-blaming fall short. "Must have deserved it somehow!" Bullshit, I don't buy that. I do believe in a limited form of karma: that someone who goes through life poisoned and poisoning is probably going to get more and more bad reflected back at them from those who they've encountered - AND, they're also probably going to miss out on so much good just because they're not prepared properly to see and seize it. Or are looking in the wrong places. That, if you will, is karma.

8. I think true love means you love the other person more than you love yourself, and they reciprocate the converse. Also that you give yourself: all I am and all I have is for you. And if you give yourself the same way, then all you are and all you have is for me, and so we each get our selves back!

9. I think there can be as many versions of true love as truly work between the lovers. Only those in the relationship define its nature, its potentials, and its conditions and limits.

10. DALLAS COWBOYS

11. Boont Amber Ale has been my favorite #1 beer for nigh on 20 years, but lately I'm wondering...is it still? SACRILEGE

12. I write songs. I also co-write songs, and can teach how to write songs. I sing them, and can play some chords as well but I'd not go so far as to call myself a "musician" or "singer."

13. I have never met Allie Brosh, but I'm very proud on her behalf, of her success and of her artistic voice in general.

14. I'm not nearly as verbose in person. I'm super-interruptible and want to hear the inside of your head way more than the inside of mine!

15. I'm sweet. I'm a really sweet guy! You probably might not get that from my online demeanor. It's kind of weird how things spin out of control from tangent to tangent into nonsense, and often it's brash and arrogant nonsense indeed but - I hope people can tell there's a core of sweetness, there. Because I tell you, a lot of people tell me I'm sweet. I used to get pissed when they did that! I've given in.

16. I like the number seventeen!

17. Skip.

18. I think if you can die in the army then damn it, you're old enough to have a drink at the VFW too.

19. I lost my virginity!

20. TWENTY!! WHOO! YES! Twenty! I was about to "scrape the barrel." WHEW

I knew I'd get there!

There are a ton of other aspects that I have, of course, but are they really on the same level as some of those? Arguably, no. Is it that salient an aspect of me that I'm a fan of such-and-such a band?

Hm. At past times it would have been. Somehow right now it doesn't feel that way.

What are YOUR twenty aspects?

The great thing about living in a dystopia is, the hard choices are made for you.

A thought of the day.

Friday, December 18, 2015

THIS SELF-HACK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

AMAZING LIFE HACK CHANGE YOUR LIFE IMMEDIATELY!

1. Open your email and send all your contacts out to all your contacts!
2. In the body of that mass email, include all your bank and credit card account numbers and passwords! Also include all your social media accounts and passwords, and your Social Security Number!

THIS SELF-HACK WILL PROFOUNDLY AFFECT YOUR FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES! IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE SEE YOU FOREVER! AMAZING LIFE HACK! CHANGE YOUR LIFE IMMEDIATELY

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Stuck For What To Get To Give? Try These Can't Miss Gift Suggestions!

Here's more can't-miss gifts from the mind of Mister Gifty himself, Dogimo "The Gift Butler" Jones.

An indoor gnome. Like a garden gnome, but for indoors! Practically no one has one of these! What you do is, go get a garden gnome and then use your desktop publishing skills to customize a box with a lot of colorful pictures and testimonial information: INDOOR Gnome! Perfect for the study! For the bedroom! For the half-bath! Indispensable conversation piece! Everyone will be talking about your INDOOR GNOME! Just make the box all slick with a lot of pictures of the gnome in various rooms, surrounded by amazed generic family members clearly digging the gnome. The recipient will take one look at that box and realize this is something they're supposed to have in the house.

A Secret-Compartment Gnome! Not just any garden gnome, this garden gnome has a SECRET COMPARTMENT. It also serves as a devilish puzzle! Create a similar box to the one described above for Indoor Gnome, only touting how devilish the puzzle is and how it's all up to YOU (i.e. the recipient) to figure out how to open the SECRET COMPARTMENT! Then go get a regular garden gnome and put it in the box. Done! Best thing about this one is you can ask the recipient for updates on how it's coming, from time to time.

A more traditional style Puzzle Gnome is possible, but would be hard to do. If you could bust up a garden gnome into small smoothly interlocking pieces of relatively uniform size, the box would be very easy to design for this one. But in practice, I find a garden gnome tends to bust into rough pieces of large size, many pieces of tiny size, and way too much dust and powder to be presented as a "puzzle" you could put back together. Still, when you give them a box proclaiming it Puzzle Gnome, and they open it up and it's just this fucking demolished garden gnome - that might be a pretty fucked-up joke in itself to pull on someone! Then you can say: ah, I got ya! Here's your real present, though: Indoor Gnome.

Other gift ideas could be even more practical! Single-Use Home Defense Gnome. Ceiling Gnome...well wait, I guess that's just Indoor Gnome by another name. But who cares? It's how you present it that matters.

Once you've learned to get creative with the box, the perfect gift idea will become a snap!

Speaking of Indoor Gnome by another name, you know what, it should be called simply "Home Gnome," I think. Way better. If you're any good at customizing gnome sculpture, you could cut into the head part and make it removable and plant a phone in there and it could be Home Phone Gnome! That's getting a little fancy, though. With the box and everything else, I don't know how much effort you want to put into this.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Take Famous Stories And Set Fire To Them #1: Hansel & Gretel

Take Famous Stories And Set Fire To Them is a recurring feature wherein we take familiar, many-times-told, many-times-heard stories, and explore them and their themes from a new angle, uncovering hidden meanings or unexpected depths, by setting them on fire.

Hansel and Gretel were children. Their mom was dead, their dad was a poor woodsman who could barely support his new wife and she was like, "these kids, they'll be the ruin of us Gunter, we must lead them into the woods and leave them there." Hansel and Gretel heard the plan from the room next door, so they thwarted it twice: first with pebbles but the next time with pieces of bread, which didn't work because: birds. So they thwarted it once. The second time, they were lost in the woods. "Whatever shall we do, Hansel? We shall surely starve," said Gretel, but Hansel said pluckily, and sure enough soon enough they came upon a Gingerbread Cottage. The witch who lived there caught them both and it surely would have been the end of them, except SUDDENLY I JUMPED OUT AND SET THE WHOLE STORY ON FIRE! THE GINGERBREAD COTTAGE BURNT TO BLACKENED, GRAPE-NUTS-LIKE CRUMBS! ITS SUGAR-GLASS WINDOWS CRACKED AND BLACKED WITH SMOKE! THE WITCH, ROASTED ALIVE! HANSEL AND GRETEL, COOKED LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN! THE ENTIRE FOREST WHERE THE CHILDREN WANDERED, BURNED TO STUMPS AND ASH! EVEN THE CHILDREN'S FATHER AND STEP-MOTHER COULD NOT ESCAPE THE CONFLAGRATION AS IT ROARED, INFERNO-LIKE TO SURROUND AND TRAP THEM IN THEIR JOYLESS HOUSE!

The End.

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Birthdays: It's Time I Had a Thing or Two to Say on Birthdays.

I've noticed people talking about birthdays from time to time, well I have a thing or two to say on that score and if this is an unpopular view, "sorry." I'm sorry, but I can't apologize for what I'm about to say. It is how it is.

Dear everybody who has had a birthday between last year and this one, or is planning to have one in the coming year:

As somebody who has a birthday of his own coming up in the next 365 days, I'd like to fill you in on where I stand. Okay? And if you think of it any other way - well that's cool for you! Don't let me sway you. What's good for the goose don't make the butter boat float, as they say. Here it goes.

I kind of think the whole concept of birthdays is ummmmmmmmmm GAY.

And I for one will be PERFECTLY FINE if people therefore IGNORE my upcoming birthday, because it is going to be SO GAY. I mean as occasions go, a birthday is probably one of the gayest excuses to celebrate that ever comes around, and as far as MY OWN birthday goes - the more people make a BIG DEAL about it, the GAYER it is likely to become!

So as far as I'm concerned, if you want to just give the whole thing a pass - unless you think of yourself as the kind of person who likes to contribute to MAKING THINGS GAY, I'd say "go with what it behooves you to do."

I hope that's fair, and I hope that's clear. I want people to know where I stand, on that.

Yours gaily,

dogimo