Humor

What could you do less of?

Daily writing prompt
What could you do less of?
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What could you do less of?
I shall deliberately misinterpret that prompt / question and answer it my way. I could do less of listening to stupid adverts, repeated ad nauseam, sometimes with gimmicky tunes – one to two lines maximum – again and again, all day, every day. Surf the channels to escape an ad, and what do you get? A synchronized set up where almost every channel is blasting out the same, or similar, ads at the same time. Have you noticed that when you leave the TV room, and retreat to the kitchen to get some limited peace, the ads follow you because the volume is turned up at ad time so you just can’t escape.

I remember my grandfather, back in the sixties, with the advent of ITV in Wales – the Independent TV channel that used ads – sitting before the TV set, his foot up before the screen and his fingers in his ears so he would not be able to see or hear those ads. Alas, once heard, seldom forgotten, and I can still sing most of those meaningless jingles heard back in my childhood. How it I hate when I go shopping in the supermarket and shoppers tunelessly whistle a TV ad as they shuffle along behind their carts. Alas, ad free programming, all too often, is either expensive or non-existent.

And what about those telephone calls when they put you on hold until the next agent is free to attend to you? I won’t mention names, because I don’t want to get sued, but I guess we have all had the same experience. I had a ninety minute online wait one day, with horrible music, an exhortation to stay on the line so I wouldn’t lose my place in the queue aka line-up, and a 90 second ad that glorified the joys of the company’s product, repeated once every five minutes. I suffered through that ad 18 times on that one call alone. Another local firm gave me the similar treatment, except that it was a one minute ad, repeated once every ninety seconds. I suffered through 10 repetitions in a wait of 15 minutes, got fed up, and hung up the phone.

Look at the peaceful scene above. That’s the view from my bedroom window in Island View. Even the crows are absent, and the early morning silence, like the sun, is golden. Two birds with one stone – a morning person or an evening person? A morning person with dawns like this, but an evening person when a sunset like this one miraculously occurs.

My Knapsack

My Knapsack

Throughout my childhood,
I carried a knapsack on my back.
Into it I stuffed my darkest secrets.
Along with all my dirty washing
they filled every cranny and nook.

Words of hate, carved into my life-slate,
shuffled and cut, but unchanged,
unchangeable, remained engraved
on the tombstone I took from above
 the hole I dug to bury the casket
in which I hid the shards of my heart.

On a rainy day, when push came
to shove, I left my childhood home
to wander the world, alone, on my own.

I walked to the station, boarded a train
and never went back home again.

At journey’s end, I left my knapsack
and its contents in the luggage rack.
I never want to see them again.

Comment:
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.” My maternal grandfather used to sing me this song from WWI. “While you’ve a Lucifer to light you fag, smile, boys, that’s the style.” I wonder how many people now remember what a Lucifer is, let alone a ‘fag’, in that sense of the word. It has, of course, morphed into many other meanings, some of them not necessarily pleasant. I remember my grandfather, standing in the kitchen, before the coal fire, and saying “I remember when Wills’ Woodbines were a penny a packet.” Wills’ is still with us, but may not be for much longer. I can’t remember when I last saw a Woodbine. I certainly never smoked one, in fact, I never ever smoked at all. But as for that kit bag aka knapsack aka backpack aka rucksack, well, put all your troubles in it, tie them up tight, and take it somewhere safe where you can leave it and forget about it, and then start life again. “Good-bye old friend, I am on the mend. And that’s the end.”

As for the painting, by my good friend Moo, that shows The Fall – Pre-Lapsarian / Post-Lapsarian – when all the devils, demons, and black angels were tumbled out of Paradise and abandoned to the depths below, where, alas, they still roam. So, if you meet any of them along the way, shove them in that old kit bag and get rid of them too. You’ll feel much better afterwards.

The Banks of the Seine

Banks of the Seine

Gnawing at the carcass of an old song,
my mind, a mindless dog, chasing its tail,
turning in circles, snapping at the fragment
of its own flesh, flag-flourished before it,
tournons, tournons, tournons toujours,
as Apollinaire phrased it, on a day
when I went dogless, walking on a mind-leash
before the Parisian bouquinistes who sold,
along the banks of the Seine, such tempting
merchandise, and me, hands in pockets,
penniless, tempted beyond measure,
by words, set out on pages, wondrous,
pages that, hands free, I turned, and turned,
plucking words, here and there, like a sparrow,
or a pigeon, picks at the crumbs thrown away
by pitying tramps, kings, fallen from chariots,
as Eluard wrote, and me, a pauper among riches,
an Oliver Twist, rising from my trance, hands out,
pleading, “Please, sir, can I have some more?”

Comment:
This is a fusion / confusion, if you like, of The Kingston Trio’s song – The Seine – with a quote each from Guillaume Apollinaire – Alcools – and Paul Eluard – Il ne m’est Paris que d’Elsa, and Francisco de Quevedo’s – El Buscon – and a tip of the old chapeau nouveau to R. S. Thomas and Charles Dickens. Fools rush in, I am afraid, where angels fear to tread. Go on. Rush right in. Sort it all out. I double-dog dare you – and thank you for that one, Jude.

What is one thing you would change about yourself?

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What is one thing you would change about yourself?
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What is the one thing you would change about yourself?

Only one thing? I remember a story about a boy who boarded in a monastery school, and there, like the monks, they all changed their dirty habits once a week. So, is a dirty habit a thing? Probably is, if its a brown, sackcloth habit, tightened around the waist with a white cord by a man wearing open-toed sandals and no socks. So, there we go, once a week, on Wednesdays, like those monks, I also change my dirty habits. I also change my shoes, my socks, my shirts, my sweaters, my jeans.

More important, as I grow older, I have permitted myself to change my mind as often as I like. So, yes, I also change my mind, and not just on Wednesdays. And I really do change it when, like my habits, it gets dirty. “Oooh, you’ve got a dirty mind, you have.” “Well, so I do. Never mind, I’ll just go and change it.”

“What did Big Ben say to the Leaning Tower of Pizza?” – I’ve got the time, if you’ve got the inclination.
“How many ears did Davy Crocket have?” – Three – a left ear, a right ear, and a wild front ear.
“What’s yellow and deadly?” – Shark infested custard.
“What’s black and deadly?” – A crow in a tree with an AK47.
“When is a door not a door?” – When it’s a jar.
“What time is it Eccles?” – “It’s eight o’clock.” “Here, how do you know it’s eight o’clock?” “I’ve got it written down on a piece of paper.” “What do you do if it’s not eight o’clock?” “I don’t look at the paper.”
“Ding-a-ling” – That’s my ear ringing. I’ll just pick it up and answer it.
“What’s the first sign of madness?” – Hairs in the palm of your hand. “What’s the second sign of madness?” – Looking for them.

So what is one thing I would change about myself? Possibly the absolute necessity to tell awfully bad jokes. Easy to say – I’ll probably keep adding to these as I remember more of them. Take care – you have been warned.

“How many – men – does it take to change a light bulb?” – Five. One to hold the bulb and four to turn the ladder. Jokes like these can be good or bad. Good because they are occasionally funny. Bad, because it so easy to insert an adjective before – men – and to turn the joke into something more devious and not necessarily very pleasant.

“And that is the end of the gnus,” said the lion on BBC television, as he licked his paws. “Enough, no more. It is not as sweet now, nor as sour, as it was before. Pass the chow mean, please.”

What are your two favorite things to wear?

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What are your two favorite things to wear?
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What are your two favorite things to wear?

What a strange question. I suppose it merits a strange answer. And the answer is – it depends. You see – I live in Atlantic Canada. Here we have several sayings. One from the Bay of Fundy is – “You don’t like this weather? Hang around five minutes. It will change.”

I had the snow blower prepped for winter a week or so ago. So, what are my two favorite things to wear when snow blowing? Only two? Hat, scarf, water-proof / wind-proof coat, thick gloves, scarf, warm socks, boots that keep out the water and the cold and that have soles that grip into the snow. You mean I have to choose two things from that lot? I just checked the calendar – it’s not April the First, you know.

In summer, when the Fundy Fog rolls in from the sea and wraps scarves of salty mist around the trees, and it becomes so cold, so damp, and so chilly so quickly – what are my two favorite things to wear? I guess you can double-check the list above and eliminate an item or two. But I wouldn’t chuck out too many.

And what about cross-country skiing? As the weather changes, and as you warm up, you need several layers of removable clothing that can be taken off, when you warm up, and placed back on when you hit the shade between the trees and you start to cool down. But only two items? What are you doing to me? And what about the wind-chill factor?

Once, when I walked the picket-line at -35C, we had all been pre-emptively locked out from my former place of employment, we were visited by Flying Pickets from the Northern Part of Canada. They had a saying: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” You notice they didn’t say anything about two items of clothing. I wonder why not?

So there you have it. Be prepared, I say. It always depends. And remember: “Never mind the weather / As long as we’re together.” Perhaps those two items might just be you and me! But then, we’re not clothing, are we? Not unless we are just rag dolls.

Doubts

Doubts

At midnight,
when that dark owl calls,
I sip a bitter wine.

The thoughts I think
are not my thoughts,
how could they ever
be mine?

And yet they are
the thoughts I think,
and round and round
they twine.

They wrap me in
a thousand threads
and none of them
are mine.

Whose are they then,
these thoughts I think?
They do not come from me.

And yet they make me
double think
this person that is me,
and who I am,
and what I am,
and where I’m going to be.

Comment:
I guess that’s what happens when you finish your bottled sunshine (sol embotellado) before going to bed. The painting and the poem match up nicely though, ribbons of dark thought streaming through an empty head. Guessing and double-guessing, thinking and double-thinking, doubting and finding yourself inside that great cloud of unknowing in which you rarely know where you are going. Still, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. Pen-y-Bont, anyone? Or Abertawe, Cas Newydd, Llandeilo, Caerfili, Rhiwbina, Treorci, Trebanog …

What is good about having a pet?

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What is good about having a pet?
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What is good about having a pet?

Good heavens – what a strange question. Here in New Brunswick – Nouveau Brunswick, Canada’s only bilingual province, I guess it depends on whether you are Anglophone or Francophone. Nothing like a nice, healthy ‘pet’, if you are a Francophone, though you have to be wary, very wary, of them at my advancing age. And nothing like some ‘pets de ma soeur‘ for breakfast, with a nice cafe au lait, unless you would rather ‘un bon bin de beans‘.

On the other hand, if you are Anglophone, then the term takes on a different series of meanings, doesn’t it, my pet, I ask my wife. Happily, she neither woofs, nor woofs her cookies in reply. And if this is all double-Dutch to you, don’t worry. It’s all tied up with discourse analysis and the meaning of meaning. Don’t be so mean! What do you mean by that?

I suppose we are all talking about cats and dogs, and budgerigars – not budgie smugglers – and other two and four-legged friends, along with sliding ones, like baby boa-constrictors, that can – like pythons in Florida, grow to an enormous size. Such an enormous size, in fact, that you end up being the pet when the monster rules, and your flush your once-a-baby, now a problem, alligator down the New York toilet to grow even bigger and become a danger to the men and women who patrol the subterranean sewage systems.

And don’t forget Julius Caesar, the pet parrot who told the burglar, in an Irish accent, that “Jaysuss” was watching him” as the burglar tried to burgle the house. Alas, Julius Caesar failed to warn the house-breaker that Jaysuss was in fact a huge, pet Rottweiler that was standing – we stand on guard for thee – right behind the unfortunate man. Who needs a burglar alarm and an AI system, when you have two or three pet, and not petits, Rotties patrolling the house 24/7? Mind you, I wouldn’t call them pets, those Rotten Rotties, though they may cause them in certain people, and very generous ones at that.

What was your favorite subject in school?

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What was your favorite subject in school?
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What was your favorite subject in school?

I never had one. I hated every school I attended with a passion. I hardly passed an examination during my school days and I remember, in Mathematics, dropping from Level I, to Level II, to Level III. I failed the first exam in Level III and earned this comment on my school report “Now I know why he descended to Level III.” I still have those school reports, incidentally, complete with the signatures of the Masters of my – limited, very limited – universe. How I appreciated Pink Floyd’s The Wall, when I first heard it. “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom, hey, teacher, leave those kids alone. You’re just another brick in the wall.” And yes, I built walls around me, many of them. But I survived.

Another comment from that report: “He has read widely and indiscriminately – I do hope it has done him some good.” That reading included the complete works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, lots of Andre Gide, the theatre of Jean Anouilh – some of which I saw live in Paris -, an immersion in the Existentialist philosophical movement, the complete plays of Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Beaumarchais, a variety of French Poets, including Apollinaire and Jacques Prevert, a selection of Spanish poets, novelists, and playwrights, and a series of modern-(ish) British poets, including John Manley Hopkins, Wilfred Owen, Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins, and ‘indiscriminate others’! I wrote a great deal of poetry at that time, some of it in imitation of Francois Villon and Gilbert Chesterton (of whom I read many works as well).

Alas, my enthusiasm was not appreciated, especially as I scorned many of the texts that I was forced to read for my examinations. I should add I also scorned the limited, authoritarian interpretations of them that were forced upon us. The slavish imitation of ‘teacher’s remarks’ gained an A+. Any attempt to think outside the authoritarian boxes built oh so carefully for us, earned an F-.

But, if I had to choose one subject, it would be Myself. Protecting that self, developing that sense of self, growing into myself, understanding myself, and finally, having left those schools, those ideas, and that country far, far behind me, becoming the self that I am – and have always wanted to be. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “I just want to be me.” And I am, thank heavens. And it’s a good job too, for, as Oscar Wilde once said “Everyone else is taken.”

What historical event fascinates you the most?

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What historical event fascinates you the most?
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What historical event fascinates you the most?

First, let us define ‘historical’. Here’s what I found – (1) of or concerning history. (2) concerning past events. (3) The historical background to such studies. (4) Belonging to the past, not the present. (5) Famous historical figures.

Now let us think of the number of times we hear on the TV sports shows that such and such an event is making history “right before our eyes”. Wow! In a boxing match, almost ever punch thrown is “an historical event”. Ditto rugby – with every try scored, every penalty missed, and every tackle made. Ditto soccer, basketball, baseball, athletics. So, from the battery of past events that adorn my life, I am being asked to choose “which historical event fascinates me most”. Double wow.

My answer – the day of my birth, about which I know absolutely nothing. Or, to be more specific, the actual action of being born, about which I know even less. So, how do I study the historical background, when no eye witnesses are left alive to assist me? More important, nobody in my family wanted to talk about such an important – for me at any rate – event.

I do have some factual memories – tales told to me later. I was born at exactly 8:00 pm. I know this because my parents’ dog had been left at a neighbor’s house while my home-birth was taking place. As the clock struck eight, Paddy, the dog, jumped straight through their window, and ran up the road towards the house that was now to be our house, barking. “Ah,” said our wise neighbor, “there goes the dog. That means the baby’s been born.”

That is one version of the tale. My own version is the squawking of the stork who carried me, a sudden screech as he dropped me, a slow descent from a bright blue sky, a tumble down the chimney into the fireplace. And there I was. All covered in soot and ashes. I needed washing, of course. But baby, just look at me now. [See self-portrait above – Face in a Mirror].

My maternal grandfather swore that I had not been born at all, but found under a gooseberry bush. That would account for the green tinges in the painting. Apparently, all babies in South Wales were found under gooseberry bushes at that time. Unless they were delivered by the milkman.

And there’s many a tale about merry milkmen for, as they say in Wales, “It’s a wise man who knows his own father.” And I guess that is also a hysterical historical event about which I know nothing. But perhaps that’s why when the milkman who delivered the morning milk used to say “Good morning, son” when I met him at the the doorstep.

Come to think of it, the mailman also used to call me “Son” when he delivered the mail. Hmmmm – so did the butcher, the baker, and the candle-stick maker. Oh dear, so many historical events to choose from.

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

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How much would you pay to go to the moon?
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How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Exactly the same amount that I would pay to visit the Titanic in a Titan – zilch, nada, rien, nothing. Too risky. Not worth it. Too much carbon emission to damage the world around me. It’s only a thin envelope of air up there – pointless damaging it further. We have problems enough anyway.

And how much would it cost to fund a rescue mission if something went wrong? How much did it cost to search for the Titan for five days? I haven’t forgotten Apollo XIII, even if other people have.

No way, my friends, no way. No common or garden human being in his or her right mind would ever get into something like that. I notice you say ‘to go to the moon’. Is it a two way, return ticket, then? Does the lucky traveler also get to come back? Or is it a one way only trip and a journey of no return?

Don’t bother answering those questions. I am quite happy viewing the moon through my bedroom window. I wouldn’t go, even if you offered me a free ticket. Thanks, but no thanks. Not on my watch! I am not moonstruck!