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WE’RE OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS (Some random thoughts by Roman Danylo)
By the way, what is going on in the guys’ washrooms? Seriously, Guys, we are not working as a team anymore. It is a mess in there. What, are you doing jumping jacks when you pee? We might as well not even have a toilet. Let’s just have a room where we go pee on whatever we feel like and pay some unfortunate people to clean it up after we leave. That’s what we’re doing. This one time I had to go into the ladies’ washroom because the guys’ was locked. Oh, what a wonderful world it is in there. Everything is disinfected. It smells of potpourri. Little Posted Notes on the mirror saying things like, “You’re pretty.” Blue birds holding up the corners of the toilet paper in their mouths. I think those ads above the guy’s urinals should say, “Guys, don’t look up here. Focus on what you’re doing!”
Advertising works. So, knowing that, we should be cautious about the messages we expose ourselves too.
The message I heard the most in movies and television growing up was…. “Never give up. You can be number one.” Seems positive, right? But if we look closer at this message, it’s insane! Only one person can be number one. So, if we all listen to this message, 99.999999 percent of us are guaranteed to be disappointed. And not only that, were never suppose to give up the struggle to try to change our position. What an insane, unpleasant way to live.
However, if were to change the message slightly to “just don’t be last.” Well, then only 0.0000001 percent of us are going to be disappointed. The rest of us will be quite pleased with ourselves. We could even predetermine who the last place person will be. Let’s say it’s Dave, some guy. He’ll take the bullet for all of us. Man, that’d be great. We’d all be walking around going, “Sure I’ve got no job and I smoke pot all day but at least I’m not Dave!”
With all our organizations and governing bodies it seems we put very little consideration into what will actually improve our mental condition.
For example… information. It is commonly accepted that information is good. But more information just exposes us to the myriad of possibilities and the millions of things or experiences that we are missing out on. Too many choices! And thinking about the choice has ruined our present moment. It has infected us with the inability to be all here. I think this is why there are so many divorces these days. People’s expectations are driven up by the volume of information of what’s out there. “Look at all those choices. Surely, I can do better than this loser.”
I do love seeing people in the initial stages of a relationship where they’re still happy to be staring at each other for long periods of time. That goes away after a while doesn’t it? Ten years into a relationship if your mate looks at you like that, it’s like “What the hell are you looking at! What’s wrong with you?” I think the staring comes back in old age, but it comes back for all the wrong reasons. “Hmmm Honey, I don’t know where I’ve been and my pants are wet.” HASH(A short story by Roman Danylo)
Once upon a time there was meat, and then came the cabbage. The man that brought them together into hash was a butcher from a small village in Austria. He placed his creation in the window display with a small orange price tag stabbed into the side, and then he went to sleep.
In the night as the clouds rolled across the moonlit sky, the hash began to shake. It shuddered and flexed to a strange intense crescendo of noise. Suddenly, the noise stopped and the hash breathed. Expanding and contracting gently like an exposed lung. The hash thought.
"What's this? I'm alive? Hello. Hello, Sausage, Sausage! Where are we?"
But the sausage could not answer, for the sausage had not life. The hash was the only meat that lived. Oh, what a cruel fate to be a lonely piece of corned beef hash. He caught a glimpse of himself in the display case glass, and saw his bulging grotesque form. "Who would care for me, a silly piece of hash? It is best not to think. It will bring me nothing but pain."
In the morning, an old lady with a curved spine and hairy lips purchased him for $2.49 plus tax. He rode home in her bag without thinking of the humiliation of being tossed in a sac with nothing but a squash. At her home, the lady placed the hash and the squash in a large pan and put them in the oven. They baked there together in silence, the hash trying hard not to think of the pain of his loneliness or the pain of the searing heat. Later, on her plate they sat, the squash and the hash, as the lady sharpened her cutlery at the table. She cut into the squash first and the hash heard something that sounded like a moan and then...
"I'm so lonely. Oh, what a cruel fate to be the only living squash."
The hash was amazed. "Wait!" he said. "I think as well", but in that moment the squash was eaten whole by the hairy lady. The hash would surely be next. Oh, what a cruel fate to learn at the end of your life that you were not alone.
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