Transdermal

As Jackie Boy would say, you never really quit, do you?

I am no longer smoking. I am not presently, nor have I recently been, engaged in smoking. I do not wish to smoke; breathing, as foreign as it once became, is preferable, cheaper, and more enduring a pastime. I have quit before (for years, in fact), and I have resumed smoking before (idiocy /self-destructive nature?). I do not wish to resume smoking ever again. Not at parties. Not at the bar. Not once a year on my birthday. That is the Devil's talk: "Just one little puff...you can handle that", he claims (lying little horned fuck).

I have a new secret weapon this time. I am delivering my poison transdermally in the hopes that breaking the "habit" portion first will help me maintain my commitment to stave off the addiction that I am nursing along for a few weeks with my new pal The Patch.

Uncommon Quotations and other Contrivances

Someday I shall publish a counter proposal to Bartlett's and their ilk: a tome of Uncommon Quotations, filled with obscure, highly situational, or wildly inappropriate fare. The whole point of the more pedestrian versions of these collections has always seemed to me to be a mixture of self-propaganda / self-aggrandizement ("Look, everyone! I'm being poignant again...here it comes...") and the insincere attempt of public speakers to resonate with strangers. We tell anecdotes to familiarize ourselves, to break the ice, and to illustrate our own literacy to an audience that in all likelihood doesn't know the difference between a person who is well read as a whole, and a person who has a collection of quotation books and Cliff Notes. I would like to present the exact opposite; I'd like to author a book of quotations and anecdotes designed to baffle, alienate, or offend the audience...split the collection into non-sequitur Zen, discomfiting personal revelations from complete unknowns, and the vilest jokes available.

(a):

"Sometimes, when you're not looking, I'm someone else."

This is one of those things you say when people are inebriated or somehow have a tenuous grip on the moment (at a peak of stress, perhaps).

(b):

"My neighbor Carl once told me that he could only prepare for the banality of these conferences by masturbating furiously in the bathroom while choking himself with his tie."

Personally revealing, attributed to someone nobody else knows, and the kind of thing that visualizes easily.

(c):

"Do you know why the douche was invented? Ever try to teach a fotze to gargle and spit?"

As related to me by a 54 year old German immigrant who was quite possibly the funniest woman I have ever met; it even has a certain old-world charm when uttered by a bespectacled hausfrau from Stuttgart.

Cryptic Message from an Old Fool to a New Fool

The world was simpler then, or so the liars claim
Kids today, their elders say, don't understand the cause
Your predecessors all fell victim to the world
While you slept peacefully well, cradled in its claws
And all the sellouts, at the memory of their flaws
Wait for epiphany, absolution, or applause

And the whole world is as fucked up as a hippie with a gun
A mom who killed her kids for love, or a hooker who's a nun
The girl next door, the man upstairs, and rest are on the run
And someday you can pass all of this on again, my son

You'll want to change the world; there's nothing wrong with that
Except the arrogance invariably involved
You'll think you have the whole mess fixed in no time flat
Until you realize some problems just can't be be solved
So rest your laurels on to what you have evolved
It still wasn't you around which everything revolved

And the whole world is as fucked up as a hippie with a gun
A mom who killed her kids for love, or a hooker who's a nun
The girl next door, the man upstairs, and rest are on the run
And someday you can pass all of this on again, my son

Don't listen to or trust a soul, not even me
I'm only rational or lucid now and again
I've spent a lifetime and only lived a moment
Seconds of enlightenment punctuate years of pain
You'll find yourself one day unable to explain
Beyond echoing your father's desperate refrain

That the whole world is as fucked up as a hippie with a gun
A mom who killed her kids for love, or a hooker who's a nun
The girl next door, the man upstairs, and rest are on the run
And someday you can pass all of this on again, my son