Dare You To Lick It

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If everyone jumped off a bridge…would the world be more empty? would everyone be more fun? would the bridge handle all that weight?

All I know is that jumping off a bridge sounds like fun, no matter who’s doing it.

I always want to know the specifics: how are they jumping? bungee? b.a.s.e. jump? diving into water? will I need a towel? how many people? will it be crowded? should I bring a lunch? is it a metaphorical jump? or is it for real? if it’s a metaphorical jump, will there still be real jumping involved? will there be snacks after? will there be trophies? best metaphorical bridge jumper? most stylish metaphorical bridge jumper? first place? if it’s for real, will there be motorized vehicles? motorcycles? mountain bikes? trains? is it all for charity? for a good cause? will someone there be named Pastrana? can we ask for autographs? how many practice runs will there be? if someone dies during a practice run, will the rest of the event be cancelled? will there be music? live, or recorded? will there be video? if I get wounded, can I ask for my portion of the video to be deleted? will there be medical persons nearby? if it’s a small cut, is someone sure to yell out, “dare you to lick it”? will it be that kind of crowd? if someone else gets wounded, can I yell out, “dare you to lick it”? if you lick your own blood, are you self-vampiric? if you take a dare, are you courageous because you did dare, or are you cowardly because you didn’t back down from the dare? if I figure out the answer to that last question…paint the philosopher title on the side of my bike.

The Mountain Goat

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The Mountain Goat (Another name for a mountain biker.)

There are many tricks we mountain bikers use while riding.

I have a friend, one of my fellow mountain goats, who likes to adjust his seat. He likes to ride high on the ascents. Uphill, he wants a tall seat. When the trail starts going down though, he drops his seat so he can get his center of gravity over that back wheel. Better balance means a faster, safer ride. He’s got skills.

Personally, I just leave my seat down on a low setting. I don’t have to fiddle with it, and I’m able to stand up for the climbs or hang out over the back wheel if I need to.

We both have this mutual friend who is a doctor. He can afford the latest gadgets. It seems like he has a new bike every year. (Am I jealous? Of course, but the topic of this one isn’t bike envy.) He has a seat with it’s own shock absorption, AND…all he has to do to raise or lower it is, like, clench his butt cheeks a certain way, and the seat will adjust for him. It’s the closest thing to having a robot bike.

Something I do adjust—not my seat, obviously—are my pedal settings. I discovered a long time ago that there are two sides to my pedals. I have the kind you can clip into. So on one side of my pedals I have the tightness really tight. On the other side, I like to keep them more loose. With two choices, I can stay clipped in like a set of mountain goats with horns locked in battle, or like a real mountain goat when it sees a mountain biker coming: outta there in a flash of fur and hooves.

 

Poetry

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Mostly I feel that I don’t like poetry.

But then why do I have this urge to write it?

It’s kind of like those times when you have dreams that baffle you. I dream about math sometimes. I don’t do math regularly, so why would I dream about it?

Well, despite my mixed feelings of poetry, here’s my latest:

 

I’ll be the deejay, you emcee,

I live in the west, the land of the free,

Party on the border, kick the wall into the sea.

I’m the deejay, my party’s a musical one,

Divisive politics don’t look like fun,

Potential friends become enemies you shun.

Political cowards want to hide behind a wall,

Afraid that immigrants will make their country fall,

Unaware of how many went there at the sound of freedom’s call.

The freedom you enjoy is something you can share,

Open your mind to consider,

Open your heart to care,

If you can’t give up the space, then spread libertad…over there.

Not a matter of how, it’s a matter of when,

The politically “active” will take action, and then,

Make Central America Great Again.

Would you rather talk politics or kittens?

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Could we say optimists to go through life with a permanently-amused attitude? Can you do it? The next time someone puts out the politics in the form of their belligerent opinion, could you just chuckle and interrupt their goad with some of your charm?

Instead of being sucked down in the vortex of name-calling and derision, could you take it up to a humane level? Here’s a short list of some effective interrupts:

  1. Ask the person what they had for breakfast/lunch today. Or invite them to lunch.
  2. Start talking about kittens. Kittens are magic.
  3. Describe your latest encounter with something gross. Bodily functions will turn just about anyone’s attention. Especially at lunch.
  4. Walmart; everyone has an opinion about Walmart.
  5. The latest dead celebrity. Lord knows we have no shortage of those.
  6. Tell a joke.

As for number six, here’s a joke I heard recently: Pepsi and Coke got married and tried to have children. They tried for a long time, but couldn’t seem to make it happen, so they decided to go see a doctor. The doctor invited them in to her exam room. She told them, “I know why you aren’t having children. You’re both Pops.”

Of course, there are people in this world who are so uptight, they won’t be swayed from their chosen topic. They won’t care for a joke, no matter what joke you tell them. They might think they’re being focused, even though everyone around them knows they’re just stubborn. So what do you do then?

If you have an airhorn handy…

Ha! I’m kidding. You were imagining blowing that airhorn right in their ear, weren’t you?

What else?

Duct tape? Now you’re really taking it too far. Stop thinking that way.

How about just drowning them out with loud music, taking the crowd with you by inviting the rest to lunch, or even shouting about your preferred topic at a volume louder than theirs? It may not win you any friends, but then again, if you’re shouting about kittens, that’s going to be pretty hilarious, especially if you have pictures to go with your rant.

Pictures like this:

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Photo credit: Jari Hytonen

“These KITTENS are in a BASKET!!!! ON a scale of ONE to TEN, how CUTE are they?!!!”

The Prime Dilemma

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Mental illness consumes us all. How are we supposed to understand each other if we’re all treading through miles of schizophrenic scenery?

We see things through a smoggy filter, defined mostly by our individual experiences, and refined by our desires.

Unless, unless, unless—-you dread to tread—then you just bounce around other people’s realities, none of which match each other and none of which hold true to each other.

The last thing a schizophrenic mind wants to do is get stuck in someone else’s dream state. Trapped in someone’s altered reality, there’s no garantee* that you’ll ever be released.

Can you extricate yourself? Not likely.

Can you draw your own reality on someone else’s well-defined vision? Difficult, if not impossible.

To escape then, how do you do it? If you can’t escape outward, and you can’t escape inward, how do you escape? Maybe you never will. So the best solution is prevention.

Make up your own will. Make your decisions early and stick with them. Live in your own reality.

If your reality is a progressive one, then by all means progress!

If your reality is a permissive one, will you someday run into universal laws that don’t allow what you allow yourself? And that right there is the Prime Dilemma: what happens when universal truth impedes your chosen truth?

 

* I included this word on purpose because the old spelling with the silent u is so annoying to me, and yet it is definitely part of someone’s chosen truth. Someone out there will have a difficult, if not impossible, time reading the word without the silent u in it. Guarantee or garantee? You decide. Personally, I want my reality, and my vocabulary, to allow progress.