Success

Success Is:
At age 4, success is....... not peeing your pants.
At age 12, success is...... having friends.
At age 20, success is...... having sex.
At age 35, success is...... making money.
At age 60, success is...... having sex.
At age 70, success is...... having friends.
At age 80, success is...... not peeing your pants.

Laughing just to keep from crying

Sometimes...

I stub my toe and face the "nanosecond of reckoning." The one where you know this is gonna hurt like a sonofabitch as soon as the neuroblast of pain hits the brain stem.

I bite the inside of my lip really hard while chewing gum, causing my mouth to bleed thereby leaving me with bloody gum. Ew.

I find myself speeding along listening to a great driving song only to catch a glimpse of a cop in my rear view. At said moment, my phantom balls slowly creep up into my stomach. Good thing my phantom balls never itch.

I enjoy listening to Journey.

I get angry at my shoes if they don't tie right the first time. I curse at them violently. This only occurs in the morning.

I put deoderant on mosquito bites to relieve the itching. A lady at work suggested I do this. I fear it may have been a horrible farce to get me to coat myself in deoderant.

I fear that Bush will win. I hear Mexico is lovely this time of year.

I feel like I miss something, but I haven't a clue what it is.

Okay, my sucklings.

Perch upon this withered teat and enjoy what momma's got for supper this evenin'.

As I listen to the soundtrack for The Big Lebowski, I shall regail you with the tale of the origins of this blog's name, "pony rides and monkey pictures."

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, Third and Jefferson to be exact, a loathsome 2-day plague did scourge the Kentucky International Convention Center. This abomination was of the travelling c-rate circus variety, and thanks to my stepson's public normalizing station Crescent Hill branch, lo and behold, I had a ticket.

Now the sneaky bastards at the public normalizing station, being in cahoots with anyone who offers a handout, willingly gave all the children FREE ADMISSION to the aforementioned shit on a stick event which was otherwise not readily advertised, nor was a website to be found. This means that the kids hit the streets in a full-tilt frenzy to go to this FREE EVENT, and beseiged under-informed parents relented and did go. We were among those parents who, upon arriving at the FREE EVENT, were wrenched of the very air in their lungs from the sticker shock of adult admission prices. This feces parade came at a whopping $25.00 a ticket. This means that we would have had to shell out $50.00 to see a tiny c-rate poop-a-palooza set up in one of the smaller arenas in what is already a small convention center. Screw that, my peoples.

As tears began welling in many a small childs' eyes, along comes someone handing out BUY ONE GET ONE FREE coupons to the crap trap hullabaloo on a stick. This is a figure we can handle, so we fork up the clams and make our way to the circus.

As we neared the arena, we tried to prepare the boy for just how shitty a travelling c-rate circus can be, so as to firmly squelch any wild visions of dancing unicorns and tight rope walking lions and shit he may have billowing in his little skull cap. We enter the arena to find that half of it was curtained off, which means that they didn't have enough crap to fill up this unimpressive space.

Of course, they had every imaginable plastic and inflatable piece of crap Taiwan ever produced and many a varied fried and sugar-coated processed food products for sale at exorbitant prices. Successfully wrangling our child past such glorified crapola, we made it to one of the three sets of bleachers facing the three small rings of the circus schmircus.

Clowns and acrobats were shovelling up goat and horse poo, the costumed ringmaster was peddling rides on the most oppressed looking mini-equines I have ever seen, and the lion tamer was taking photos of kids standing next to a monkey on a chain. The whole affair was a sad shadow of what the circus engenders in the hearts and minds of young and old. It was like watching a heroin addicted clown with bone cancer make three legged balloon animals.

Above this melange of grim and grotesque, an announcer compulsively hocked their pre-show wares, "Children, be sure to come on down and get your pony rides and monkey pictures!"

That's all life really is, I guess. Pony rides and monkey pictures indeed.

I Hate Ziggy

I hate him. I cannot even elaborate on how much I hate him for fear of pulling a David Banner right here at work.

Also, screw Frampton. He didn't do music any favors. Grrrrrr.

My mouth is turning Japanese.

Ginger Altoids. They exist, my bretheren, and they are good. So sayeth the Lawd. Amen.

How ABBA destroyed modern American music.

There are certain music critics who are so bad that I have learned to take the opposite of what they say as true. There are others who think they are holier than thou whenever they get the chance to poo poo on something innovative and different. And then there are those critics who lambast all the others on free blogs, and they, my friends, are the unsung heroes of modern journalism. ;)

Yes, ABBA ruined music for us all. "Why be so hard on ABBA? They're a lot of fun," you say. I agree. ABBA is some fun stuff, just like the occasional bag of Pop Rocks, but does that make it good music? Hell no, my peoples. In fact, ABBA's sugary pop tsunami gave America a sweet tooth so powerful, that true American music and musicianship as an art have fallen by the way side in favor of pre-packaged, candy-coated poop on a stick.

Lemme 'splain.

Think about your average consumer today. Especially the younger set. They'll shove any pre-fab, sugar-laden, cellophane wrapped, piece of crap in their mouth without thinking twice, but eschew Grandma's homemade peach cobbler because "it looks weird." Millions of Zingers are sold each year, just like Britney Spears albums, but does that mean Zingers are a superior dessert? Hell no again, my peoples. There are young folks out there who won't touch homemade banana pudding (the kind with the vanilla wafers), cherry pie, or Lord Have Mercy on their Souls, warm cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Why? In the pursuit of the quick and easy and comfortable, Americans, by in large, have lost the taste for American originals. Things that don't come in recognizable packaging or easy fit categories or that appear on TRL.

Turn away from the poop on a stick.

Pop Rocks are okay once in a while, but we must not lose sight of the better things available out there. The real things, made from scratch and with passion, but obscured by the flourescent glo' of the crapola dispensers. My fellow Americans, it is time we all hold our breath and plunge ourselves shoulder deep into the carrot cake that is American music, and taste, for once, the truth and beauty that is REAL ART.

Well, Hell. I have arrived!

Look at me, Ma! I'm bloggin' and no, I am not gonna go blind. Yay!