Do you ever just get tired of yourself?  I do.  I wake up sometimes and really want to make some radical changes in my life.  I want to be a better person. I want to start exercising, maybe even join a gym.  I hate gyms though, everyone there looks so fit and healthy.  When I exercise my hair looks like I just walked out of a tornado, the waistband on my sweatpants are all twisted and drooping revealing my boxer shorts.  My shirt is drenched in patches of sweat and I smell like an old wet dog.  The gym’s are narasitially plastered with wall to wall mirrors——Who’s that old guy stumbling about on the treadmill? Is that me? ——-Couldn’t be! ———Really? ———Pathetic!

And then I flirt with the idea of becoming a vegetarian.  It’ll be better for my over all health and I’d be reducing my carbon footprint by not eating flatulent cows.   There’s only one catch, I don’t care for most vegetables.  Whoever came up with the names for vegetables doesn’t understand the value of good packaging and marketing.  Who wants to eat something called a cumquat or a squash, or for that matter——-an eggplant? Eggplant is a misleading name, as there are no eggs to speak of in an eggplant.  I won’t even go into the name “arugula”.  It sounds like the name of a country in the middle east. At least put the product in a nice colorful box with a photo of the perfect veggie on the cover. Units that are not uniform in color, shape and size are to be summarily relegated to the dumpster. Stress the terms such as “natural”, “mother nature” and “pure”. Refrain from mentioning anything regarding pesticide residue, GMO’s, salmonella or chemicals used to create that shiny sheen on each unit.

Rebrand vegetables with new presentations and names.  How about renaming the “crooked neck squash” as the “Careening Yellow Swan”.  On the packaging include recipes such as “The Carmel Dipped Swan Of Paradise”.  I’d eat something like that.  But of course, I’d like to pair it with a glass of exotic red wine with a french name I can’t pronounce. 

Maybe it’s the change of season that’s got me in a funk.  The days are getting shorter and it’s rainy and gloomy out.  I wish I had a holy book to turn to when I’m feeling lost and alone.  Something like the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon or even the goofy Scientology book.  None of them have brought me any solace or provided meaning to my life.  I’ve yet to find an owners manual or user’s guide to help me get my shit together.  I’m as lost and confused as I was at sixteen. At least then I had more time to figure things out. I still have no idea “What’s it all about?”.  I’ve pretty much given up on organized religion, political systems and the morning weatherman——-they’re all overrated propaganda.  I guess I’ll just have to get use to accepting the absurdity of life, death and all the B.S. that comes in-between the two.  

You probably have no idea what I’m ranting about, but that’s not your fault, I’m the confused crazed one.  You’re my surrogate friend with whom I share my secret fears and dark dreams. Hopefully I haven’t scared you off too.  Sometimes I feel like I’ve changed and grown a lot over the last fifty years, and then at other times I feel like I’m the same kid of sixteen waiting for my life to fall into place——it’s been a long wait and things tend to be spiraling towards entropy.  I’m somewhere between middle age and old and decrepit. I’m not sure what to do with the time I have left.  I do want to become a better person———compared to what or whom I’m not sure.  I suppose it’s the little things that help us all become more evolved human beings. Things like kindness, compassion and the capacity to laugh at oneself. Humor is nutrition for the soul. 

Here’s to carrots, treadmills and wall to wall mirrors.