Monday, August 22, 2011

Spirit of Gratitude, and no, I am not dead....


There are few things in life better than getting an email that reads, "Hey, I would really like it if you posted more, but if you are dead, I completely understand" - that is what I get for posting a blog, random folks (I have no idea who this person was, is, or why they would find a blog as obscurely named as Kitchenfloorsandbonemarrowsandwiches.blogspot.com) but none the the less, I can assure you that I am:

1. Not dead. If I am dead, I am surviving in an alternate reality that seems terribly similar to the reality I was living in earlier this year.

2. Have not been interested in posting - well, I have been interested, by my motivation has been about as intense as an 83 year old man's testosterone level, and therefore, I have spent large amounts of my free time eating doritos, watching middle eastern dictatorships collapse, and gaining weight.

3. Am really trying to make myself do the healthy things that I think keep me from being Baker Acted into a padded room in Chattahoochee (Google it). Writing is one of those things, so feel free to shame me into writing by asking me if I am dead whenever I don't throw a post out there for three or four months (I think it has been since June or so)...

Let us continue - when I say things like that I imagine a Finance professor standing in front of the room gleefully explaining the Black and Schoales Pricing Model (pardon my spelling, I can remember the lecture, just not how to spell the model name) and looking out on the masses of the post pubescent college students wondering when this hell when end so they can go and purge the prior night's nickel beer extravaganza and get a few hours of sleep before repeating said behavior. As usual, I digress, but we shall continue...

Gratitude is a hard thing to define. Right now, I am sitting in the Delta Sky Club drinking a diet coke and eating some of those nifty Wasabi peanuts that are mixed in with those really good sesame honey sticks, and off to my left is a way to boisterous southern attorney reaffirming the person on the other end of his cell phone that what they are discussing is strictly confidential and that no one will no about what they are planning - except of course all of the folks sitting in the crown room. Anyway, he keeps repeating how grateful the company that they are apparently suing should be, because the offer they are giving them is one of "christian gratitude" - now I am not real sure what the fuck that means - but I am pretty sure most folks getting sued very rarely end of grateful as their pucker factor hits about twelve, and they need a doctor to squeeze out a fart. The delivery of the speech, I have to admit, was enlightening, and I imagine he could have been selling the folks on the other end a truckload of used dildos and they would have chomped on the opportunity, but the christian gratitude and the grateful thing are what spurred me to sit down and write. For this, you sly bowtie wearing legal beagle, I am grateful. Please stay away from my family, we are full up on snake oil -

What is gratitude - I mean really, we can look it up in the dictionary, and we say we are grateful that the hurricane hit someone else's State, but I often wonder if you are too grateful or not grateful enough, or if there are guidelines that specifically state how grateful you are supposed to be. According to my memory, my ex-mother-in-law had several rules of levels of gratefulness, and I am sure that somewhere in Philadelphia society or on the tennis courts of Florida or the slopes of Vail, there are unspoken rules that you can only learn if you are in that secret bloodline club that gets all of the Presidents elected - but most of that shit gets lost on me, I think they may have tried to let me in as a member of the hired help, but I am pretty sure they gave up after I told them to fuck themselves if they could not take a joke. Think about the things we have. I watch the folks on the news in these countries where wealthy is owning a goat and sharing a shithole shack with just two families, and having a meal a day - and you have to work sixteen hours to get that - and dip into your savings that you established by selling your children into forced labor - and then I think about how grateful we really are. I am no saint, and certainly not 100% sinner, but I do have need to pause, and think about the things I am really grateful for....

There, that was a relaxing pause - now for some simple George Rules on things to do to be more grateful - once again, follow this advice at your own risk, I do not recommend it, and if you want case studies on what not to do - shoot me an email...

1. Always be grateful to your Doctor. My doctor is still trying to get his money from the last procedure (at least the co-pay portion), so I like to think that by me saying,"Doctor, I really appreciate the trouble you are about to go through to take care of me", tempers the 16 months it will take to get the remaining 10% of the bill.

2. Always be grateful to the traffic officer who pulls you over. Remember, there are very few jobs out there that require you to graduate from high school, take eight weeks of training, and then be issued a firearm, a high speed souped up vehicle, and an ego the size of a porn star's cock. Really, just thank them for reminding you how to read a speedometer, thank them for reassuring you that the streets are safer now that one more law abiding citizen is paying another tax for doing eleven miles over the hour, and then thank them for hanging out behind trees and signs in the vicinity lest any bad guys want to hang out behind those same trees and signs. (Seriously, I am appreciative of law enforcement, I just find that the folks giving out speeding tickets are not the ones you find on too many task forces reeling in rapists, murderers, and heroin dealers).

3. Call your local top forty station or Conservative Talk Radio, and thank them for perpetuating shitty music. There are times when there is nothing to do - and the only radio station that is powerful enough for you to recieve plays "Fifty Eminem Songs in Row!" or "All the Boy Bands and Commercial Free Music fit for Radio!" or "America's People Listen to Real Americans Talking about Not Real AMericans" - thank them for stomping over Public Radio and washing out their signal. Thank them for convincing you that being a Republican really does not mean much more than making sure you keep your taxes regressive, your health care expensive, and your military bombing the hell out of some third world oil pumping country. (Folks, I am so conservative that I am LIBERAL - I don't want you in my backyard, I don't want you to have my money, and I don't want you to tell me how to worship - so I pay taxes to keep those folks away from me - even the tax free megachurches...)

4. Call your Student Loan lenders - and thank them for 9% unemployment and the commercialization of state run education. Call them and thank them for flooding schools with students who, because of the wonderful "No Child Left Behind" act, are taught to take standardized tests, and when confronted with a problem without a number 2 pencil and bubble things start to shit themselves. I guess the good news is though that they do work cheap!

5. Be grateful that there are pricks like me in the world. Could you imagine life as we know it without a few haphazard reckless pricks in it? I mean what would a trip be to the local bar if not for the intelligent loafer in the corner espousing beatitudes of life, or if you did not have this distraction for your written by a self-absorbed middle aged fat guy? Albeit, I am not the biggest prick in the world, therefore, I am thankful that I can rest assured that although folks don't always like me, they choose to tolerate me because I am not the biggest swinging dick sucking up the airspace in the room.

I could go on, but you should be grateful that my plane awaits at gate C44 - and I am compelled with Christian Compassion to end my satiric rant on things to be grateful for - in all reality, I am grateful for just about everything that I have and the people that I am surrounded by - they are what makes life as I know it, and without a few good people, and a few challenges, I am afraid that I would probably just spend more of my time drinking generic vodka and surfing internet porn/gambling sites. I have a job, I have a family, I have a house, I have a car, I have a significant other - and most of all, the ticker still works no matter how many times the collections folks call - so for all of that and to all them - thanks, I sincerely cannot imagine my life without each of you, and for your compassion, I am grateful.

Until next time -

George

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