Category Archives: goofy thoughts

Penguin Proverbs

Penguins

You know how creepy penguins in cartoons can be, right?  The Penguins of Madagascar are like a Mission-Impossible Team gone horribly wrong and transformed into penguins.  The penguin in Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers disguised himself as a chicken to perform acts of pure evil.  Cartoonists all know that penguins are inherently creepy and evil.

I recently learned a hard lesson about penguins.  You know the joke, “What’s black and white and red all over?  A penguin with a sunburn.”  I told that joke one too many times.  Who knew the Dallas metroplex had so many loose penguins lurking around?  They are literally everywhere.  One of them overheard me.  And apparently they have vowed a sacred penguin vow that no penguin joke goes unpunished.

As I walked the dog this morning, I spotted creepy penguin eyes, about three pairs, looking at me from behind the bank of the creek bed in the park.  When I went to retrieve the empty recycle bins from the driveway, there they were again, looking at me over the top of the neighbor’s privacy fence.

“Penguins see the world in black and white,” said one of the Penguins.

“Except for purple ones,” added the purple one.

“Penguins can talk?” I tried unsuccessfully to ask.

“Penguins only talk in proverbs,” said one of the penguins.

“But the purple one gives the counterpoint,” said the purple one.

“The wisdom of penguins is always cold and harsh,” said one of the penguins.

“Except on days like this when it’s hot,” said the purple one.

“You should always listen to penguins,” said one of the penguins.

“Of course, people will think you are crazy if you do,” said the purple one.

“People who talk to penguins are headed for a nervous breakdown,” said one of the penguins.

“Unless you are a cartoonist.  Then it is probably normal behavior,” said the purple one.

“Is this all real?” I tried unsuccessfully to ask.

“Everyone knows that penguins are real,” said one of the penguins.

“But there are no purple penguins in nature,” said the purple one.

So, I sat down to write this post about penguins and their proverbs with a very disturbing thought in my little cartoonist’s head…  Why am I really writing about penguins today?  I really have nothing profound to say about penguin proverbs.  Especially profound penguin proverbs with a counterpoint by a purple penguin.  Maybe it is all merely a load of goofy silliness and a waste of my time.

“Writing about penguins is never a waste of time,” said one of the penguins.

“And if you believe that, I have some choice real estate in the Okefenokee Swamp I need to talk to you about,” added the purple one.

 

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Filed under artwork, birds, cartoons, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, philosophy, surrealism

How an All-Nude Middle School Could Help the Different Species of Middle School Monkeys

I have often described the typical middle school with the name “The Monkey House” due to the resemblance in the behavior of sixth graders to little monkeys like squirrel monkeys, capuchins, and rhesus monkeys, and the behavior of seventh graders to chattering chimpanzees, and the behavior of eighth graders to poop-throwing gorillas. All of these simian varieties in nature do not wear any clothes. So, it follows that in nature, middle school students would naturally be at least metaphorically naked. They do swing with their tails out of their seats at any excuse, chatter about personal things without realizing others might be listening, and fling metaphorical poop at everyone… literal poop in certain regrettable situations. But every human species of middle-school monkeys in the Monkey House could benefit from being as naked in school as actual monkeys are in the jungle. In this post, I will try to cover how that works in an imaginary all-nude school for each of as many monkey species as I can.

The Nude Nerds in the Science Class Lab, Milton Steinbum and Nancy Jane Smithers.

I am starting with the nude nerds because, had I been put in an all-nude experimental middle school myself, I would have been a member of this middle-school monkey species. I would have been like Milton, always carrying nearly every book from my locker so I would have something to hold in front of me, hiding my little weiner as well as I could. Nerds know a lot more about everything than the other monkeys. And as a result, they are more aware of everything. Especially aware of how genitals react to the sight of nude bodies of either or both sexes. They are subject to death by embarrassment loSnarkng after the other monkeys have become desensitized.

The shrinking violets, mostly of the female persuasion, would benefit a lot from being nudists in a school full of naked people. Shrinking violets are kids who would turn invisible if they could. But as the nudist experience goes on, they would soon discover you blend in more by just being comfortably naked than you would by folding yourself into basketball shapes and trying to get smaller. The last shrinking violets to remove their hands from in front of their private places would be laughed at the hardest by the first shrinking violets to realize they are less seen as a part of the crowd than they are as part of the strange little people tying themselves in knots to become invisible.

Snarks are equally distributed between the male and female varieties. They have mostly grown into their snarkiness, not being snarks as the littlest monkeys, but blossoming with total snarkification as they grow into the chimpanzee and then gorilla stages. A snark becomes snarky in the presence of the bullies or the criminals. It begins as a survival method, saying something witty but mean to redirect the bully or criminal’s attention to nude nerds, shrinking violets, Boy Scouts, or the plain normals when the bully or criminal turns their attention to them. Sometimes they turn from snark into bully, but only if they are not clever enough to achieve the title of Class Clown. A Class Clown is a snark who is actually funny and even makes the teacher laugh. That’s why they sometimes become standup comedians later in life. A naked snark must sharpen comedic skills in an all-nude school. Naked you lose the opportunity to joke about bulges in boy’s pants, peed-your-pants jokes, poop jokes, and funny-clothing jokes. Plus, your personal privacy is no longer in need of defense. Everyone can see if you are circumcised or have hair down there.

You can’t tell a snark until he or she talks. Then they’re easy to recognize.

Plain normals should be the majority of the students in any school, but the truth is, none of them are actually even remotely normal. They all have their own weird quirks, talents, phobias, and terrible secrets. But this category serves to prevent having to break things down into as many categories as you have students. Cheerleaders are either a group or an affliction. Girls who suffer from cheerleaderpepitis are easily turned into snarks, puppy mothers, or even bullies and criminals. Too much energy, sex appeal, and ambition are dangerous things to put in the hands (and bodies) of people who are not that far advanced from becoming fully potty-trained. Being fully nude brings noses down out of the air a little bit. Jocks are still jocks at a nudist school since the thing that names them is a vital form of protection in sports. Brainless bums, ugos, angels, and future supermodels could be a part of any group I have named so far. So, the thing that helps them all in a nudist middle school is the fact that nudity as a school uniform makes them all equal in one very visible way.

Boy Scouts, once known as future Republicans, and still known to be the first to volunteer, hall monitoring, teachers’ helpers, and honor students, are the group least affected by a change to an all-nude dress code. Theirs is a behavioral distinction. They are the students who crave first place in everything. And, of course, girls make excellent Boy Scouts, being cleaner than actual boys. You can’t just call them Girl Scouts because that is a uniform, not a behavior. Boy Scouts are also more adaptable than the other students and will be the first ones to embrace nudity on the first day of school.

Female athletes are a part of the jocks subgroup even though they don’t… you know.

The last monkeys I will discuss here are potentially gorillas in all ways that matter. The bullies and criminals inhabit the same corners of every school, and rare is the criminal who hasn’t been a bully first. They are either much bigger and stronger than the other kids or much smarter. Their morals are mostly skewed by things outside the school. So the main benefit of having them in school naked is that they can’t hide knives, guns, drugs, or other evil contraband on their own person. Nothing stops a bully from verbally intimidating others or using fists. But bruises on victims are more visible and it is harder for a naked kid to look dangerous when they are limited to their birthday suits.

As I pointed out previously, there are other definable types of monkeys in the monkey house, but how being in an experimental all-nude middle school would benefit and affect them is basically covered now as far as I can figure out. I am a rather old and stupid orangutan myself, now that I am retired from teaching for a decade. And I am now senile enough to write about stuff like doing middle-school education naked. So, there’s that.

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Filed under education, goofy thoughts, humor, insight, kids, Liberal ideas, nudes, satire, strange and wonderful ideas about life, teaching, Uncategorized

Reading Twain for a Lifetime

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I wish to leave no doubt unturned like a stone that might have treasure hidden under it.  I love the works of Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.

I have read and studied his writing for a lifetime, starting with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which I read for myself in the seventh grade, after seeing the musical movie Tom Sawyer starring Johnny Whittaker as Tom.  I caught a severe passion, more serious than a head-cold, for the wit and wisdom with which Twain crafted a story.  It took me a while to acquire and read more… but I most definitely did.  I took an American Literature course in college that featured Twain, and I read and analyzed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  I also bought a copy of Pudd’nhead Wilson which I would later devour in the same thoroughly literate and pretentious manner as I had Huck Finn.  Copies of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Mysterious Stranger were purchased at the same time, though I didn’t read them cover to cover until later during my years as a middle school English teacher.  I should point out, however, that I read and re-read both of those, Connecticut Yankee winning out by being read three times.  As a teacher, I taught Tom Sawyer as an in-class novel assignment in the time when other teachers thought I was more-or-less crazy for trying to teach a 100-year-old book to mostly Hispanic non-readers.  While the lunatic-inspired experiment was not a total success, it was not a total failure either.  Some kids actually liked having me read parts of it aloud to them, and some borrowed copies of the book to reread it for themselves after we finished as a class.

marktwaindvd2006During my middle-school teaching years I also bought and read copies of The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi.  I would later use a selection from Roughing It as part of a thematic unit on Mark Twain where I used Will Vinton’s glorious claymation movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain as a way to painlessly introduce my kids to the notion that Mark Twain was funny and complex and wise.

I have also read and used some of Twain’s most famous short fictions.  “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg” are both masterpieces of Twain’s keen insight into the human psyche and the goofy and comic corruptions he finds there.

And now, retired old me has most recently read Tom Sawyer Abroad.  And, though it is not one of his finest works, I still love it and am enthralled.  I reviewed it and shared it with you a few days ago.  But I will never be through with Mark Twain.  Not only is there more of him to read, but he has truly been a lifelong friend.

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Wrapped in Sunshine

Wrapped in sunshine, things are always better.

Artificial light simply does not compare.

Nudists like me are happiest when the only clothing we are wearing is sunshine.

Kids are prone to love being naked outdoors,

But they do tend to think what their parents teach them to think.

And their parents usually think nudists are dangerous…

Or just plain crazy.

But Sunshine can be an idea. What we former English teachers call a metaphor.

Today’s Lesson on the first day of Kindergarten… because Mickey is in his second childhood.

Having sunshine in your mind is a way of thinking that can benefit you better than you know.

Sunshine in your mind can simply be happy thoughts. And, remember, happy thoughts could make Peter Pan fly!

So, wrap yourself in Sunshine… And light up the world!

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Filed under battling depression, foolishness, goofy thoughts, healing, health, philosophy, poetry

Re-Minders

Lately I have been having memory troubles. You know what I mean, when you walk through a doorway with a definite purpose in mind.and then, on reaching the other room, you have no earthly idea what that purpose was. It happens to me regularly. In fact, I can even start writing a sentences, and then I… What was I talking about? Oh, yes. I need to practice writing some more spectacularly bad poetry, before I forget how to do it.

Why did I use this picture? I don’t know. I have forgotten.

Re-minders

Sometimes…

My mind slips out of my left ear…

And I can’t remember things.

So, I have to search under the table…

To find my mind…

And then I remember that that’s not how a mind works.

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Forgetfulness

Tell me now, before I forget…

What was I supposed to remember?

Was it something religious, important, and good…

That comes towards the end of December?

Was I supposed to buy something for somebody then?

I wrote a note to myself in September…

Oh, gosh! How could I ever forget that?

Now the fire is nothing but embers.

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Finding Fairies in my Hair

Why do I have elflocks all snarled up in my hair?

Surely some fairies have been twisting it up there.’

But if I can catch one and make him confess,

He claims I don’t comb it, and that’s why it’s a mess.

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Doofy Me

If I forget everything I ever knew,

Would it be possible that I am still smarter than you?

Old Socrates said he knew nothing at all.

And so he asked questions from Winter through Fall.

I hope I retain enough brain to remember

That everyone needs to wear clothes in December.

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Yep, I still obviously remember how to write spectacularly bad poetry. It is my contribution to literature. Virtually all poets will be able to say, “At the very least, I am a better poet than Beyer.”

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Filed under autobiography, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, poem, poetry

K.I.S.S.

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When learning to write, you have to learn the rules.  And then you start writing, and you learn that you have to break all the rules to do it well.  But what do I know?  You have to be pretty desperate to get your writing advice from a Mickey.  After all, it’s not like Mickey was a writing teacher for over thirty years… oh, wait a minute… yes, he was.

Okay, so I decided to write today about the K.I.S.S. rule of writing.  That’s right, Keep It Simple, Stupid.  Other writing teachers tell me it should be, Keep It Simple, Sweetie, because you can’t say “stupid” to a kid.  Okay, that’s mostly true.  But I use “stupid” when I use the rule myself.  I’m talking to Mickey after all.

So, I better stop “bird-walking” in the middle of this essay, because “bird-walking”, drifting off topic for no purpose, is the opposite of keeping it simple.

I try to write posts of no more than 500 words.  I write an introduction that says something stupid or inane that speaks to the theme I want to talk about.  Then I pile in a few sentences that talk more about the theme and do a good job of irritating the reader to the point that they can’t wait to get to the conclusion.  Finally I finish up with a really pithy and wonderful bit of wisdom to tie a knot in the bow of my essay.  I save that bit for the end as a sort of revenge for all the readers who don’t read all the way to the end, even on a short post like this one.  Of course, I could be wrong about how wonderful and pithy it is.  What does “pithy” even mean?  It can be like the soup in the bottom of the chili pot, thicker and spicier than what came before… or possibly overcooked with burned beans.

That was another bit of “bird-walking”, wasn’t it?  See, you have to break the rules to make it work better.

So, in order to keep it simple, I guess I need to end here for today.  Simple can be the same thing as short, but more often you are trying to achieve “simple and elegant” and pack a lot of meaning and resonance into a few lines.  And I, of course, am totally incapable of doing that with my purple paisley prose.  And there’s the knot in that bow.

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Made-Up People

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I often get criticized for talking to people who are basically invisible, probably imaginary, and definitely not real people, no matter what else they may be.

The unfinished cover picture is from the novel The Bicycle-Wheel Genius which I just finished the final rewrite and edit for.  All of the characters in that book are fictional.    Even though some of them strongly resemble the real people who inspired me to create them, they are fictional people doing fictional and sometimes impossible things.  And yet, they are all people who I have lived with as walking, talking, fictional people for many years.  Most of those people have been talking to me since the 1970’s.  I know some of them far better than any of the real people who are a part of my life.

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These, of course, are only a few of my imaginary friends.  Some I spend time with a lot.  Some I haven’t seen or heard from in quite a while.  And I do know they are not real people.  Mandy is a cartoon panda bear, and Anneliese is a living gingerbread cookie.  I do understand I made these people up in my stupid little head.

But it seems to me that the people in the world around us are really no less imaginary, ephemeral, and unreal.  Look at the current Presidentumb of the Disunited States.  He is an evil cartoon James Bond villain if there ever was one.

Animated cast of OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT. Photo: Courtesy of SHOWTIME

Animated cast of OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT. Photo: Courtesy of SHOWTIME

People in the real world create an imaginary person in their own stupid little heads, and pretend real hard that that imaginary person is really them in real life.  And of course, nobody sees anybody else in the same way that they see themselves.  Everybody thinks they are a somebody who is different from anybody else who thinks they are a somebody too, and really they are telling themselves, and each other, lies about who somebody really is, and it is all very confusing, and if you can follow this sentence, you must be a far better reader than I am a writer, because none of it really makes sense to me.  I think everybody is imaginary in some sense of the word.

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So, if you happen to see me talking to a big white rabbit-man who used to be a pet white rabbit, but got changed into a rabbit-man through futuristic genetic science and metal carrots, don’t panic and call the police.  I am just talking to another fictional character from a book I just finished writing.  And why are you looking inside my head, anyway?  There’s an awful lot of personal stuff going on in there.  Of course, you only see that because I wrote about it in this essay.  So it is not an invasion of privacy.  It is just me writing down stuff I probably should keep in my own stupid little head.  My bad.

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Filed under characters, colored pencil, commentary, goofy thoughts, humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, rabbit people, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Aunt Minnie’s Love Seat

This is a story about an innocuous piece of furniture in Great Aunt Minnie Efram’s house.  It was a little brown loveseat with carved wooden monster feet.

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As the story begins, the little loveseat was sitting in the parlor in front of the small black and white television.  During the monthly Efram family card party, the love seat was the only place for the two of them to spend the evening.  But he was ten and he hated girls.  He had a reputation with the guys at school as a girl hater, and he couldn’t have it known that he was sitting on a loveseat with Uncle Henry’s stepdaughter, the one the guys all said they had seen eating her own boogers.

She was also ten, and in his class at school.  She liked to watch him more than any of the other boys.  But she didn’t know why.  She liked unicorns and the color pink, but she also kinda liked the way boys looked at her when she wore shorts.  And she liked seeing him in PE class at school, wearing shorts.  He was athletic and often won games in PE.

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After two years of monthly card parties happening during at least three different months every year at Aunt Minnie’s place, he had discovered that girls didn’t actually smell bad, and this one actually listened when he talked about playing football, and how it made him feel when he scored the seventy-five-yard touchdown.  In fact, the more he talked about football, and the closer they sat to each other, the better she seemed to smell.  He liked that smell.

She liked that he didn’t only pay attention to her at the card parties anymore.  He actually said, “Hi” in public.  And she liked his smile, even when he got braces.  He let her pick the shows they watched on the old black and white television while seated on the loveseat.  She actually worked up the nerve to tell him that she had told Jane at school to ask him if he liked her, and stupid Jane had completely forgotten to ask him, or maybe Jane was just too chicken to ask him and used the excuse that she forgot.

He said that if she liked him, he liked her.  But if she didn’t, he didn’t either.  “Like” her, he meant.  Which he did because she did.

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After two more years and six more card parties worth of scootching behinds closer together on the old loveseat, something different had happened.  And it was about time too.  Aunt Minnie had bought a puppy, and that not only was a bad thing for the seven cats that lived with old Minnie, but it was hard on the loveseat too.  One of the little couch’s monster feet was lost, and the numerous instances of terrified cat claws digging in were beginning to have an effect on the upholstery.  And that danged dog wizzled everywhere.  The loveseat had one purpose in life, and it didn’t want to give in to wear and tear before achieving that purpose.

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But the very next year brought disaster.  He apparently told the members of the freshman football team that something had happened on that old love seat that really hadn’t happened.  The football team was impressed because they all thought she was pretty hot stuff, and he was generally thought of as a lame-o dweeb.  She heard about it from Jane who heard about it from Nanette’s boyfriend who was on the team.  And she got mad.  How dare he say something like that when it wasn’t true?

In January of that year, Aunt Minnie passed away in her sleep.  The loveseat was sold at auction to a farmer who liked to do re-upholstery as a hobby.  It got re-done in red velvet and leather with wheels replacing the wooden monster feet and sold to a car dealer in Des Moines who placed it in the lobby show-room for customers to sit on.

But the story has a happy ending.  She would later make his locker room lie into the truth on Prom Night (fortunately with protection) and then went on to marry him when they both were sophomores in college.   Of course, it wasn’t always, “They lived happily ever after,” because they didn’t.  They got divorced once and got re-married shortly after… to each other.  They had three kids.  And the loveseat didn’t ever learn any of that.  Because it was a loveseat.  You didn’t really think loveseats could know anything, did you?

 

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Filed under finding love, goofy thoughts, humor, nostalgia, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Dvorák’s Scherzo in the Nude

Another opportunity to visit the nudist park has passed without me being able to seize the day and do what I really wanted to do this weekend.  It was, however, a different set of reasons than last time.  Last time I was determined to go on a Saturday when more nudists would actually be present.  I got sick and it rained that Saturday.  So I set my sights on Labor Day weekend.

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This weekend the hurricane that ravaged Houston changed my plans.  You see, the storm also ravaged Port Arthur and the distribution points that local gas stations rely on for new shipments on a weekly basis.  I did not see the gas shortage coming in time.  The lines at gas stations and two hour waits for gas mostly all happened before I was ready to cope with it.  So I was not prepared to make the trip when the time came.  Gas stations are limited to selling chewing gum and promising that more gas would be available by the middle of next week.

If you haven’t realized it yet from these details that could only have happened in the past (2017,) this is a repost of one of my more popular posts from the past.  But it is still relevant in that I cannot go to the nudist park again this summer for health reasons and the fact that my car is taking longer than normal to be repaired.

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Yes, the boy in the picture is me naked as I might’ve been in a more sylvan youth than the one I actually had.

So I am left to sit here in my bedroom studio in the nude writing this and listening to Dvorák’s Scherzo Capriccioso on YouTube.

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A scherzo is, perhaps, the perfect metaphor for an essay like this one.  Most of what I write are really scherziplay (or scherzi if I hadn’t goofed on that typo in the definition) if you analyze them closely.  Sprightly and humorous idea flows (at least, they make me laugh) that wax thoughtful and slightly serious at certain points.  This one, the capriccioso, the capricious and mercurial idea that I have somehow turned into a nudist, is my attempt to make sense of the nonsensical, the whims and flimsy that led me to be a naked old man.

You may have noticed in my artwork a tendency to associate nudity with childlike innocence.  (At least, you should have noticed if I have any ability at all as a writer and artist to guide your perceptions.)   There is no sense at the nudist park that it is about sexuality and impending orgies.  Those things are completely against the rules and have no place among actual nudists.  You go to a nudist park and it is just you and your towel for sitting on talking to a bunch of naked people who are just as fat and old and saggy and baggy as you are, each with their own towels for sitting on.  Nobody uses more than their first names and more than that is not necessary.  Nudists are more open and honest than most people you meet in social situations.  They literally are not hiding anything.  And I have discovered that I fit right in there.  It seems like the most natural thing in the world.  I really enjoyed my brief time nude amongst the nudists.

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Once I got past the initial embarrassment that anyone would feel in that new-nudist situation, I came to the conclusion that I have always been a nudist.  Having been born a nudist, my parents and grandparents trained me not to be one, and being sexually assaulted at ten gave added horror to being naked around others that it took a lifetime to overcome.  But naked is how we were created.  There is a reason that Adam and Eve didn’t wear clothes in Eden.

I didn’t get to go back to the nudist park this holiday weekend.  I will never convince my wife and kids to go with me either.  In fact, I myself may never have another opportunity to go back there.  But listening to Dvorak’s Scherzo has confirmed in me that I am a nudist and always have been.  Sorry if I have frightened you with my naked ideas, but maybe you should listen to a scherzo naked and test whether you are one too.

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When the Old Mind Wanders…

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When the old mind wanders…

They tell you you’re just too slow.

But thoughts like mine drift everywhere,

And the edges of the universe… are a place to go.

Maybe I should write in red.

And argue with the voices

That rhyme inside my head.

And break the rhyme scheme 

Here and there

Because of what they said.

Eden

Or maybe I should write in blue

Because I’ve been thinking in the nude

And laying all my secrets bare

Which really might be rude.

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But the old mind wanders…

In the form of a poem,

And breaks and squanders

Tallest waves in mere foam. 

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