Life is ticking along fairly regularly here. It makes for a nice existence, but, let's face it, a fairly boring blog. Because, while I'm endlessly fascinated by the details of my life, my house, my job, I know I can't expect you all to be. You have your own lives/houses/jobs to worry about.
Thankfully, there's always fiction to provide some interest.
This is an excerpt from a novel I've been kicking around for the last twenty years or so.
The crazy thing is that I really and truly expect to get it finished up and published one of these days. Which should go far to assure you that there will be more wacky real-life adventures coming down the pike any day now.
I mean, with delusions like that...
Dad really wishes I would spend my time doing that whole corporate-move- up-the-ladder-of-success thing that I just hate.
It’s done well for my Dad and all. I mean, he’s Vice President in Charge of Something at one of the hospitals here in town. Wears a suit all the time. He and Mum are always going out to functions and crap.
I’m glad he’s happy. But he can’t see that it’s not the life for me. And he keeps trying to make me try it.
He signed me up for a course awhile back. One of those “Conquer the World in Ten Easy Lessons” things, where they think you’re going to learn anything useful by standing at the front of the room shouting slogans.
First night out, the instructor, this really polished, enthusiastic guy gets up and starts going on and on and on about lions and how great and mighty and strong they are and wouldn’t the world be just peachy if every living thing could just release the lion that’s prowling around inside of them RIGHT NOW!
I told him that the world would come to a major crashing halt the day after tomorrow if that ever happened.
I mean, think about it – what do lions eat? The instructor said raw meat, but it’s better than that. They eat the bloated carcasses of old diseased worn-down gazelles. People always go on and on about how the lions keep the gazelle herds strong, weeding out the weak and the unfit. But that’s a major load of crap.
If it weren’t for the weak and supposedly unfit gazelles, the lions wouldn’t be able to catch anything and they’d starve to death. They need those poor damaged gazelles. Like they’d ever admit it.
I don’t know why anyone would want everybody to release the lion within them, when it’s the weak, the worn out and the basically stupid who have kept the world ticking along for as long as it has.
I mean, the people who have wreaked the greatest havoc on the world have been the strong, lusty “go out and get ‘em” types. Look at the Spanish Inquisition and you see a bunch of guys with only one thing on their minds: career advancement. Sucking up to the Big Boss.
The explorers and all the crap they brought to the places they “found”? Lions one and all. Adolf Hitler? There was nothing laid-back about him. He had a dream and he went for it. And look at the mess he made. The guys who brought us the atom bomb? Over-achievers, one and all.
I mean, Joe Schlepp may never reach his full potential, but at least he won’t bring about the end of life as we know it.
2 comments:
I absolutely LOVE this bit.
Awwww... thanks!
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