Namo amitabha Buddhaya, y'all.
This here's a religious establishment. Act respectable.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Talk Thursday: Things That Make Me Go, "Hmmm ..."

  • Why did they name them the Texas Rangers when plainly the whole state does not root for them? I mean, there's the Houston Astros and the Fort Worth Cats and who knows how many other local teams. Course, the Arlington Rangers sounds kind of wordy and the Dallas Rangers is just plain geographically inaccurate, but still.
  • Why does the main pitcher for the Giants look like a 17-year-old surfer dude? He's gotta be at least 26 in real life. Plus it's awfully cold to go surfing off the coast of San Fran, though I imagine people do it. (Heck, I did it in San Diego and it was pretty cold there too.) Seriously, a nice haircut and maybe some facial hair and he'd look much more mature. Give it some thought, my prepubescent pitcher friend.
  • Why is it, exactly, that I've been feeding feral cats in my back yard for like six years now, and only in the last month have I managed to attract the attention of raccoons? I mean, not that there's anything wrong with raccoons, I just don't want them in my yard. Or my house. Or my attic. Or...
  • Is there some ratio of amount of annoying your annoying co-worker is to amount of time they spend with you? Ie, if they can only spend a little time with you, do they ramp up the amount of annoying to maximum, whereas if they're going to hang out in your vicinity for hours, they dial the annoying back to a moderate amount?
  • Why does calling in sick so you can sneak off on a job interview make you feel so much more guilty than calling in sick to sneak off to a ball game?
  • Observation: Both Lutheran Christianity and Buddhism teach that attaining nirvana and/or going to heaven are obtained by doing very little; in Lutheranism, by accepting God's grace, and in Buddhism, by sitting around, doing nothing, and looking at the floor for a long time. So if I was once a Lutheran, and am now a Buddhist, am I theologically consistent, or just lazy?
  • Observation: Cats are not allowed on the table at my house. Yet, I let my big boy, Caesar (@carpefelem) sit on the table behind the laptop when I'm writing. So does this make me a bad mom? And if so, can I get around it by promoting him to chief editor?
  • Observation: Everyone in the waiting room in my psychiatrist's office is, by the sheer fact of being there, a little bit crazy. Why, then, do we each slouch into chairs and hunch into little individual bundles of mild hostility and distrust and eye each other as if we might attack at any moment? I mean, it's not like it's exactly a contest. We'll all be the same amount of crazy when we come out the other side. Maybe it's to scare the normal people.
  • Do the fish in the aquarium in my psychiatrist's office gradually go insane as they're exposed to so many crazy humans, or does the aquarium glass protect them? And how can you tell one way or the other, seeing as they're, you know, fish?
  • Why, in the name of all things holy, am I incapable of going to the post office like a normal human being? Yes, I know, I'm not a normal human being. There's no need to rub it in.
  • If there really were an Antichrist, would he be tall and have horns and a tail, or would he be more subtle and crafty and look more like, I dunno, Karl Rove?
  • What is it about office parties that causes everybody to revert to their high school personas? We have the grumpy intellectual, the handsome but vapid guy who says "dude" a lot, the girl who'll do it with anybody, the quiet girl who wishes she was the girl who'd do it with anybody, the rebel, the popular kids, the losers, the band kids who sort of hover on the fringe of acceptability, and then the office manager, who somehow ends up being kind of the den mother, I guess. Me, I'm the one with the behavior so unpredictable people say "Hi" and then flinch, not sure if I'll say "Hi" back or suddenly feel some pressing need to run straight into them or, worse, the nearby wall. It's like I never left.
  • If meditation is really good for the brain, why aren't I cured yet?
Okay, I'm out of hypothetical questions for the time being. If anybody has an answer for the one about the fish, I'd like to know. Sincerely, I'm feeling bad for the clownfish and the loach.

2 comments:

Cele said...

Oh mi gosh that is all sorts of funny and real life. And most of all hmmmmmm provoking.

Jen said...

Thanks!

My friend Suzy says: "If you knew fish language, you would know that they're all muttering to themselves 'I'll show them! I'll show them all!'"