Category Archives: pessimism

March 1, 2018 · 4:41 pm

Rain Is Supposed To Make Flowers Grow…

I am a pessimist by choice. I always expect and prepare for the worst. It is possible that this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as I seem to be the butt of a series of never-ending cosmic jokes and misfortunes. Last night the rain came down hard in Texas. We got over 4 inches of rain in a little over two hours. It came in the house as the river of runoff found enough cracks and crevices in the south wall of the house to soak the carpets in the family room and the Princess’s bedroom.

We had to get electronics off the floor. My son had to rescue computer equipment and game machines. The wooden feet of furniture got soaked, and the carpet became spotted and squishy. I was feeling ill already, and a wet carpet will swiftly become a mold farm… mold I am highly allergic to. I have some carpet cleaning to do today. In fact, the carpet will have to be removed before too long.

But even though we got way too much rain in too short a time, and it did damage, rain does make the flowers grow. I will end up doing the carpet removal myself, as I have done twice before. The exercise will be good for my heart, my diabetes, and my arthritis. Exercise, though hard and painful, is a flower of goodness. I will also be able to control how we reshape and restore the floors. Tile is better for allergies than carpet anyway.

I have no money and I’m in poor health. Misfortune continues to rain down upon me relentlessly like raindrops in a thunderstorm. But I am prepared. I have know-how and a will to respond to misfortune. I needed another challenge about now. Eleventy-eleven bad things happening yearly is more or less the way it goes now. And rain does eventually result in flowers.

Fools and Their Money

I spent yesterday with the court appointed trustee, under oath, successfully declaring bankruptcy without losing the house or any other protected assets. I have sworn to pay off the amount owed to banks without further interest. I will be aided by the court, protected from predators so that they don’t eat the corpse of my economic life.

Fools like me are soon parted from their money. After all, this country’s government and this country’s economy are run by con men. Cheats, criminals, grifters, thieves… they control the entire government now, and make the rules serve them and punish us.

And I suppose that’s the way it should be. If money is your only source of happiness, you are going to become one of them. A credit-manipulating predator and carrion-eater. I had to go through this bankruptcy proceeding because I lost Bank of America’s lawsuit against me. And if it weren’t for my bankruptcy case protecting me, they could come into my house and take whatever they wanted, including everything they wanted. They could garnish my wages up to 100% for however many months it took for my pension check to pay off my debt. Meanwhile my children would starve. I would have nothing to live on. It is within their rights to do it because they own the government and make the rules. Charles Dickens didn’t even have it so bad. At least in the debtor’s prison in Victorian London they fed you and kept you alive… mostly.

But I did learn some important lessons for the future. Let me share that hard-won wisdom with you now.

Never buy anything on credit. Save the money first, and then buy what you need once you have the total price. Only fools agree to never-ending cycles of interest upon interest, compounding and confounding your pocketbook for perpetuity. (Say that one three times fast!)
Only buy what you need. If you really need that shiny blue doohickimus to keep from going insane, then buy it… but save up the cash to pay for it in full. And if owning that doodadimus preposterosous isn’t going to provide you with the key to real happiness, then forget about it, and glory in your new-found self-control.
Banks are run by pirates. They are in the business of stealing your money. They charge fees for holding on to your money, while at the same time spending your money, and fees for counting your money, even when it’s not really there, and fees for looking at your money, though your money is only blips on a computer screen, and even fees for eventually… very gradually so you will not notice… stealing your money. You have to give them your money at some point, because you will die or be killed if you don’t. But taking your money by force, leaving you with no other choice but death, makes them pirates.
Save money wherever you can. Bury some in the back yard (but only metal money… gold bars being the least likely to turn into worthless soil filler). You are probably going to need it in the future. So don’t forget where you buried it. And making maps only helps groups of nerdy kids find it in the future after an unlikely series of fantastic adventures that all occur after you have become a one-eyed skeleton.
And don’t get sick, whatever you do. It costs too much to get health care. After you’ve paid an arm and a leg for health care services more than once, you are not going to be dancing any jigs. Maybe rolling around like a watermelon with a head, but that’s about it.

So, that’s the wisdom I gained from going bankrupt, for what it’s worth (and it isn’t worth much, or they would’ve confiscated it at the creditor’s meeting yesterday).

Ice Cream in Winter with Propaganda Sprinkles

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The Cheeto-in-Chief has now given us something we needed as much as anyone could possibly need an ice cream cone in the middle of a blizzard. He has shut down the government. And, I mean, we need a break from this Republican Clown-Horror Show in the worst way. But the government shutdown is positively the worst way.

The government is actively undermining everything of value to the common man in America. It is deconstructing American school systems from the top down, the EPA is now encouraging polluters and removing all regulations and barriers, taxes are reduced for everybody… who has immense wealth, and we are assigning debt to our children that will take centuries to pay off.

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And the problem isn’t that the government is run by profiteering criminals, which it most certainly is, but that no matter what they say and do, no consequences are suffered for it. They can literally do anything to anybody and get away with it because Republicans now hold all the winning cards. Pundits say they are facing a blue wave of change in the 2018 midterms, but then again, probably not. They control the mechanisms of government. They can cheat to win and get away with it. If we disagree, we are looking at a Revolution in which the armed forces are all on the other side.

The government is shut down now because the President hates immigrants, even the legal ones. He unilaterally brought an end to the DACA Dreamers program, shutting the door on immigrant children who have only known life as an American. Everybody in both parties want the issue settled with heart, in favor of the Dreamers. They deserve to be here. But when the issue was almost settled with a compromise that would’ve allowed the government to move forward, suddenly the CHIPS, Children’s Health Program is subject to negotiation and being held hostage to the Republican desire to punish Americans just for needing the government to stay open and functioning.

My conservative friends in Iowa, Texas, and elsewhere continue to back Trump and his policies even when they themselves are hurt by them. They do this because he has appealed to their fears and hatreds. He promises to punish those they are afraid of, and he hates the same groups that they hate. One of the groups they hate are liberal Democrats like me, though none of them say they hate me personally. Fox News has taught them to think of the labels and the people who wear those labels as different things. Killing Muslims in Afghanistan doesn’t bother them because they are taught not to remember that the Mother of All Bombs was dropped on Muslim women and Muslim children too. I try to remember they are friends and family, and I still love and care about them, even though they support things I find unconscionable.

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So, this weekend, Trump gave us an ice cream cone laced with propaganda sprinkles, some of which are made of pure horse poop. And he shoved it in an orifice where you least want to receive a cold ice cream cone… in mid winter. And I am willing to admit, maybe we need a little ice cream right now, a cold-but-loving treat of looking honestly at the current situation that has to be dealt with. But couldn’t we have ice cream without the poop sprinkles, the hate sprinkles, and mind-blowing sprinkles? Let’s take the radioactivity out of our confections for a change.

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Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, grumpiness, humor, metaphor, pessimism, politics

January 18, 2018 · 4:32 pm

The Doctor’s Bill Comes Due

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I am in the middle of a family health meltdown. In this time when the yearly flu epidemic is turning deadly, my two kids living at home and still in high school are both home sick. And I am finding it difficult to pay for illnesses. My recent trip to the hospital for a faux heart attack has left me staring down an incoming tidal wave of doctor and hospital bills. I have been paying more for health insurance than ever before. The lovely caring government has been mucking about with health care issues to the point that, even though I am paying thousands of dollars more per year for health insurance than I did ten years ago, I have huge medical bills that, due to higher deductables, leave more for me to pay as my portion than ever before. I am paying twice as much for a three day stay in the hospital than I did five years ago when I had pneumonia, and was hospitalized for five days. The Princess’s doctor visit yesterday cost me $77 dollars. Number two son goes to the doctor this afternoon, and I have to hope it won’t cost more than that, because I am running out of Uber money for the month.

Gone are the days when I could afford to be sick. Now, bankrupt and with no credit left to my name, I am going further into the dark lake of debt, hoping for the mercy of lawyers and credit collection agencies. They may as well grind my bones to make their bread. I have little else to give them.

If this sounds like a complaint rather than the humor I usually shoot for, well, that’s because that’s what it is. I am sick and tired of always being sick and tired. But I have to do my part to help the American economy. It is really booming right now. Probably because people like me are investing so much in health care, right before we die because we can’t afford to pay for the medicine the doctor prescribes.

My thanks go out to the ghost of Norman Rockwell for providing the illustrations for this post. The pictures make me long for the good old days when doctors actually cared, and weren’t just making lots of money. Of course, it isn’t the doctors who are making most of the money off piratical health-insurance schemes. Whoever those people are, we never actually see their faces, and the voices we argue with over the insurance help lines are just their employees. Anyway, I am not myself sick yet. That probably comes later. So I will hunker down and burrow my way through a potentially terrible week.

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Filed under angry rant, art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, artwork, feeling sorry for myself, health, humor, illness, pessimism

Tagged as doctors, Norman Rockwell

December 7, 2017 · 3:55 pm

The Price We Pay

It is becoming obvious that the American experiment with democracy is now over… In fact, it has been over for quite a while. We can no longer even claim that this is actually a Republic in the sense that the Roman government began as a Republic. The current emperor, Emperor Bumpkin Pumpkinhead, has no clothes. The oligarchs own the government, and we are headed down serious paths of fascism and chaos and potential civil war. We have the Devil to pay for our economic sins, and many of us will be swallowed whole before the end of it.

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I have known since the 1980’s that Reagan’s supply-side theory of trickle-down economics, more aptly titled Voodoo Economics, was a monumentally bad idea. If you let the rich folks get richer and capable of buying absolutely anything, they will sooner or later buy the government and rewrite the rules to allow them to do anything they want. That is the system we have right now. Anything the idle rich want… That’s the reason we are saddled with Trump right now, the fattest jockey that ever broke a horse’s back. And some of the rich folks who want anything and everything they can afford are truly demented and psychotic, backed up by years of getting their way even in putrid, evil ways.

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The reason that the Republican government is so hot to cut taxes for the wealthy is to continue the wealth-redistribution program of the Reagan years. Apparently the anointed few deserve all the rewards the economy has to give even though they do little besides horde their money and buy politicians who will continue to help them rake more in. Meanwhile the rest of us continue to slave for them doing all the work under oppressive debt burdens that keep us under control.

24294271_844430295763808_6294495221275275142_n Of course, “Why should anyone believe me of all people?” is definitely the question. I am only a retired school teacher who spent a career finding and verifying information, followed by a simple and clearly-defined presentation of the information to be learned. I have revealed myself in this blog to have the letter “L” on my forehead for “liberal” which translate into Republicanese as “loser”. And that’s where we will stay if we don’t fight back.

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So, how do we fight back? For one thing, we have to vote. Current policies and beliefs of the administration do not reflect the will of the people. The general consensus about health care and taxes is not even considered by the Bozos in charge of the circus. And we probably won’t win in the coming elections, because, through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and outright cheating the Republican right always gets its own way. But that should stir us to further action… doing things like I am doing here, using my innate ability to use hyperbole and doofy jokery to spread the word and stir up outrage. Better than angry fascist propaganda, right?

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Haven’t we, by now, had enough of what Ronnie Raygun wanted? Isn’t it time we considered what we want? …What we need?

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Filed under angry rant, cartoons, feeling sorry for myself, grumpiness, humor, insight, pessimism, politics, rants

Tagged as Republican tax cuts

November 6, 2017 · 4:31 pm

Making America Evil Again

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If you are a budding talent and future Batman villain, there are some simple and easy steps to take that will turn this country completely evil. We are, at present, at the threshold of an evil empire envisioned by Sith Lord Darth Cheney, implemented a little bit by the rodeo clown Junior Bush until he crashed the economy so badly he actually made a black man president, and now seriously enabled by the total takeover of government by the GOP (Greedy Old Pigs). So how do we turn everything to the Dark Side of the Force and Make America Evil Again? There are several simple steps to the process.

Make America Hate Again

Surely as a super villain you have somebody you utterly hate and pathologically need to get even with. For Twitler it began with Mexicans and continued with any and all Muslims. “They are rapists and criminals and terrorists, and some, I assume, are good people… but wait, those would be the white supremacists and neo-Nazis… so never mind the good ones. Kill their families and build a wall. Sad!” And it was easily expanded to include people of color… any color… except white and orange. You get your rabid-dog followers to beat up anybody with a “Black Lives Matter” sort of message. Even the churches will help you do the work of it. Fundamentalist Christians are fertile ground for the seeds of hate trees. They stopped quite a while ago noticing in the Bible where Jesus said to help the poor and the defenseless, and basically talked bad about the rich. They only pay attention when the Bible talks, in obscure parts of Leviticus, about the kinds of people you should hate. And American gun laws are bearing the fruit of the violence against ordinary and non-rich people. Look at how many were murdered in Las Vegas for the crime of listening to a Country Music concert. And we shall call that a mental health problem, not a gun problem… and then later forget to do anything about mental health problems. Stirring up hate is easy. And sooner or later the guys with all the guns will decide that the people they hate need to die.

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2. Make ‘Em Afraid

There is no motivator like fear. Fear of terrorists, fear of economic collapse like the one in 2008, fear of Mexicans coming across the border to take our jobs… You already have the country hating those bad people, like people of color, people of different religions, and people who are not like us. If it is not easy to see why we should be afraid of those people, stir up some hot poop and fling it at people you know are unstable. Surely there’s a dictator with bad hair and nuclear missiles somewhere (one that is not you) that you can call names and play games of chicken with through military exercises and shows of strength (but not actual penis size… some things need to remain a secret). Promise fire and fury. 3. Remember, the Enemy of My Enemy is My Best Friend

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You can really stir up a good batch of evil hot poop if you make friends with former enemies of the country. Who better than Vladie? No, not Vladimir Dracula, the other Vlad… you know, Putin, the KGB guy. You can make money for each other and keep filthy American regulators from preventing that next sweetheart Exxon deal just because the KGB guy poisons people and makes them disappear. What, you think we are so good that we don’t kill people? It’s really the American way. Go into somebody else’s country. Kill them. Take all their valuable stuff.

Where there’s a will, there is a way. These are three easy steps towards the dictatorship of your evil villain-dreams. And remember, lie about everything. Lie so much they start accepting the lies as truth. Stupid people especially will bow down before you and beg you to hurt them, and hurt the people they hate even more.

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Filed under angry rant, humor, irony, pessimism, satire

September 20, 2017 · 1:48 am

Liars Run the Animal Farm

Napoleon the PIG.

Napoleon the Pig makes himself ruler of the Animal Farm in Orwell’s 1945 book by lying about Snowball, his rival Pig, and blaming the destructive acts of the former human Farmer Jones on poor Snowball. He is driven away from the farm by the farm dogs whom Napoleon has taught to think since they were puppies. This, even though Snowball was actually the hero of the animal rebellion that drove the humans away. Collusion? Perhaps. But definitely a lie. And the PIG Napoleon, once in power begins to keep all improvements to living conditions for the PIGs. Other animals, he says, are happier with a simpler, hard-working life. The PIGs begin to dress like men and walk upright and wear long red ties.

Keith Olbermann in the video is very much like Benjamin the Donkey, who is cynical and skeptical about Napoleon’s methods. He also reads as well as any Pig. When Boxer the workhorse is wounded defending the farm against neighboring farmers who attack and destroy the windmill, he shrugs off the the wound and works at rebuilding the windmill until he collapses. Then Napoleon declares Boxer will only get better if he’s taken to the vet’s animal hospital. But he calls the Knacker (the man who renders dead horses into glue) to take Boxer away. Benjamin calls him out. He points out that it says “Knacker” on the van that takes Boxer away, not “veterinarian”. He points out that Russian Facebook trolls used targeted troll-posts to help get Napoleon his position of power. But Napoleon gets away with his lies. Boxer apparently dies in the so-called animal hospital.

Now, I am not sure which tiny animal on the farm Robert Reich is like, but he is pointing out in this video that once the PIGS got themselves into power on the animal farm, they lie in order to get their agenda operating, enriching all PIGs (or is that GOPs?) and their political donors. They are doing it all by LYING. Pigs lie. We should have learned that lesson by now. They don’t care who dies and gets rendered into glue.

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In 1945 Orwell intended Napoleon to be a satire of Joseph Stalin in communist Russia. But I truly believe, as we are living on the Animal Farm now as the hard-working farm animals, that he has a bad wig on his head with whippy straw-yellow hair, and a distinctly orange face, with the same little piggy eyes he always had. And he is in power because he tells lies. And what’s worse, he gets away with the lies. As long as the PIGs are in power, controlling both houses of congress and the Supreme Court, he will not lose his lying grip on the farm. We are all doomed to continue being hard-working animals who eventually get rendered into glue.

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Filed under angry rant, book reports, commentary, farming, foolishness, humor, metaphor, Paffooney, pessimism, satire, sharing from YouTube, surrealism

Tagged as Animal Farm, George Orwell, GOP, lying, Napoleon, PIGs, Trump

September 6, 2017 · 3:02 pm

Tumbling the Trumpinator

It has gone beyond the realm of credibility. How can a pumpkin-headed orangutan with a belly full of racial hatred and Islamophobia still be nominally running this country? Has he not committed enough irredeemable sins to be sent to Hell, directly to Hell, do not pass GO and do not collect $200!? I think he stole all the “Get out of jail free” cards before the game ever started.

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I have never called this Twitter twit-wit my president. I never voted for him. He did not win the popular vote. He would not have won the electoral college without Republican cheating at voter suppression and Russian influence through email chicanery. But the terrible things he has done so far have not gotten him removed from office. Republicans still treat him as if he were a rational adult. And Fox News is not only putting lipstick on the pig, they are covering him in red, white, and blue frosting and molding him into the shape of an American Eagle. Why do we put up with these tactics?

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Perhaps other cartoonists and I are the only ones who see him for what he really is. He’s an ignorant con man put into a position of power by billionaires so they can foist their evil agenda on us and have him rubber-stamp it with faux legitimacy.

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The betrayal of the DACA Dreamers was fifteen straws beyond the last straw for me. Who is planning to remove him from office immediately? I want to help. I don’t believe in solving problems with guns, but I can throw a mean banana cream pie of satire and sarcasm. I’m actually Hell at pie-whacking faces. I can attempt to hurt him with rotten tomatoes of jokery and the silly string of mockery too. But even the image of this buffoon in cheap clothing with long red ties is immune to the assaults of mere humor. He never gets the joke, and it is never on him. It is on us instead.

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He hurts too many good people by taking away things that they need. He may have damaged the way sick people access health care to the point that many, including me, will die for lack of funds. He de-values human life by pardoning racist criminals like Arpaio and praising malevolent dictators like Putin. He puts human life at risk by taunting another irrational man-baby who also has nukes to play chicken with.

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And no effort to remove him from office for crimes which he obviously committed and shows no signs of anything but guilt about will be made by the party now in power.

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So what will you do to bring back our country and our supposed sanity? Tell me. I want to hear a plan. I stand ready with foam rubber whack bats to take the best shots I am capable of to help. And I am not the only one. (Truly, I drew none of the cartoons in this post myself. Good cartoonists are legion in this day and age.)

Being Bankrupt

I am swiftly turning into a detestable human being. I have admitted already on this blog that I have not only known nudists in my lifetime, but I have recently visited a nudist park and become one… for a few hours. Today I am admitting to being a bankrupt individual. I am taking steps to declare a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.

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As with nudism, bankruptcy is really probably not what you think it is. It is embarrassing and stressful to be bankrupt, at least if you are not Donald Trump and able to gleefully rob workers and creditors and investors by manipulating bankruptcy laws. But it is not immoral. In fact, with my Chapter 13 bankruptcy, I will end up paying back everything I owe to credit card companies and especially Bank of America whose lawsuit caused this bankruptcy. It will just be a managed pay-off with no further interest charges, managed by a court-appointed executor over the next five years. It will drop the bottom out of my credit rating initially, but may actually bounce it back up better than it was because my debt-to-income ratio will be dramatically improved. I will not lose my house or my car. I simply will have no more credit cards. That can’t be all bad, can it?

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So, filing for a bankruptcy of this type has done a good job of teaching me where I fit in modern society and how the idea that you need to pay back what you owe to those you owe it to applies more to me than it does to rich folks. I will let you in on a big secret. I am not now, nor have I ever been, even remotely defined as rich. I haven’t really been poor before now, either. But I am sinking into that swamp quickly, and the crocodiles smell blood in the water. It is expensive to become poor. You have to pay a lawyer to help you get rid of all your money. You have to plead with them to allow you to continue to buy food and, with luck, necessary medication. But as long as you continue to hemorrhage money into their money-sucking vampire fangs of profit-making, the rich ones who own everything and control everything and make all the laws will allow you to continue to live… unless it becomes more profitable for them in the short term to let you die.

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Now that I have driven over the bankruptcy cliff, I will probably try to enjoy the view and the exhilarating rush of air on the way down. Maybe I will do it naked. I could go back to the nudist park for the Labor Day weekend. I would save on clothing budgets. And when I get to the bottom of the cliff, there is a possibility that I will bounce back up. After all, if I don’t the bankers and the lawyers won’t be able to get any more of my money.

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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, commentary, conspiracy theory, feeling sorry for myself, humor, pessimism, Pirates

Tagged as angry rants, bank of america, bankruptcy, humor, lawyers

July 17, 2017 · 2:02 pm

Well, I Still Ain’t Dead

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Yesterday I posted a long, sappy golly-yabber about things I had to tell you before I die. I had experienced chest pains in the night and was rather planning on dropping dead somewhere during the day yesterday.

But it didn’t happen. It was the same arthritis pain in the left side of my rib-cage that sent me to the cardiologist twice before. So this time I got by planning to be dead today, and then, happily, it turned out that this morning I am still here. See, pessimism works! You only get pleasant surprises that way.

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But I really do believe that it is the trouble we have in life that makes life worth living. I have value as a human being because I can use my creativity, determination, and relatively unstable mental condition to take on any problem. And if I should happen to be defeated, like I was in my quest to save the swimming pool, then my barely sane and somewhat loopy work ethic simply moves me on to the next crappy Mickey trap to figure out how to get the cheese out of it without getting killed.

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So I ain’t dead. In fact, I am still following my own personal yellow brick road. And while tomorrow is not guaranteed, I can still sing and dance like Ray Bolger and Judy Garland as I am off to see the wizard. And no, I don’t think I’m Judy Garland in that metaphor. At least… not most of the time.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, healing, health, humor, Paffooney, pessimism, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Category Archives: pessimism

Rain Is Supposed To Make Flowers Grow…

Fools and Their Money

Ice Cream in Winter with Propaganda Sprinkles

The Doctor’s Bill Comes Due

The Price We Pay

Making America Evil Again

Tumbling the Trumpinator

Being Bankrupt

Well, I Still Ain’t Dead

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