Small Wonders: Sick-day musings gleaned from computer
As a tight knit family in a tight-fit house — four people, three ladies, two bedrooms, one bath, no space — we share everything. Besides my T-shirts, the most intimate thing we share is germs.
So when Thing 1 and Thing 2 came home with a bug last week, I knew my time was short. It hit full force Monday at work. Otherwise courteous and friendly co-workers became plague-fearing villagers, fleeing the vicinity of my cubicle, screaming through hands they prayed stopped bacteria.
I know when I’m not wanted.
So home I sat on Tuesday, viewing the world from my windows; one showing leafless tree branches swaying in the breeze outside my living room, the other a stream of guileless and inane information on my computer monitor.
With my web-surfer’s truncated attention span now clouded by fever and cold meds, I had these random insights on the state of our illusion:
Does anyone else think it’s ironic, yet sadly fitting, that Robin Leach is the spokesperson for GoldMax, one of the cash-for-gold services? Champagne wishes have turned to anchovy dreams.
Random news headline: “Boy dies after shooting himself with tiny cannon.” Size really doesn’t matter. Thanks, MSNBC.
When you come to a fork in the road, use it to eat some cake.
That is an example of a paraprosdokian; a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence is surprising or unexpected in an often humorous way, causing the reader to reframe or reinterpret the first part. Kind of how I want my life remembered someday.
Though Costco gas is cheaper, that’s not why I go there. I get my gas at Costco because lining up and waiting 30 minutes to fill my tank makes me nostalgic for simpler times: the 70’s, when women wore nylons they bought in an egg, men reeked of Hai Karate and kids only needed one pair of sneakers.
Why am I still having that dream where I can’t remember my junior high locker combination?
Are they still called sneakers?
Another random headline: “Rick Santorum glitter-bombed again.” The offender was immediately taken to a de-glittering clinic run by Michele Bachmann’s husband. Thanks, Huffington Post.
When someone tells you, “It’s all good,” it most likely isn’t.
My favorite quote: “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” C.S. Lewis
The more I watch the news, read commentaries, watch debates and weigh all the information available to us, the more I realize that we are screwed — politically speaking, of course. I don’t know that it matters who is in the White House. With the toxic anger and venomous, self-righteous rhetoric of all our representative leaders today, it’s only going to get worse.
But I’m still going to vote.
My new favorite quote: “Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” Winnie the Pooh
This just in: Final tallies from the Iowa caucuses have just been certified. And the winner is Bob Dole by one vote. (News from 1980 being stifled by the liberal media.)
Since the statute of limitations on presidential candidates being unethical, arrogant, tax-cheating adulterers has apparently expired … Schwarzenegger in 2012!
If knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruits, wisdom is knowing not to put them in fruit salad.
Facebook is the greatest time suck of our generation. Never in humankind’s history has there been such a vacuous, meaningless collection of … wait a second. Katie just posted a video of a tiny dog that looks like a dust mop. Gotta check this out.
New conspiracy theory for all you fear-mongers: my Microsoft Word program automatically checks for typos and improper grammar and suggests alternate words. In the above paragraph, I typed “mankind.” MS Word recommended I switch that to “humankind.” Clearly Bill Gates is gender-neutralizing the world.
Last headline: “New reports claim Khloe Kardashian’s father is Kris Jenner’s hairdresser.” I did her nails, never her hair. Thanks, Fox News!
And finally: If a staunch, card-carrying, conservative evangelical Christian thinks that Mormons are heretical followers of a fairy tale that destroys the biblical view of God and his salvation, why would he hold his nose to vote for one to be president of the United States?
Apparently it is acceptable to abandon one’s deepest held religious convictions so long as one does so in the name of political ideology.
Humble men have much to be humble about.
Humble columnists have deadlines.
PATRICK CANEDAY is author of the book, “Crooked Little Birdhouse,” now available on Kindle. Contact him at patrickcaneday@gmail.com. Read more at www.patrickcaneday.com.