Apocalyptic

Would you want me on your team for the zombie apocalypse?

I can’t fight; I won’t kill; and I don’t really like the sight of blood, especially my own.

I’m not very strong, nor particularly handy, and my farming skills are pretty limited.

I could cook, I guess, but how much of an appetite will there be for soufflés and gratins when the zombies are on the prowl? Like 90% of the population, I sort of learned to bake sourdough bread during the pandemic, but my starter is long dead, so I don’t think I’d be much help there, either.

I suppose I could assist in maintaining the fleet of bicycles, but unless my local bike shop was still open, I’d be hard up for parts and the necessary guidance on unfamiliar tasks.  Don’t expect me to be much use with automobiles, apart from adding windshield wiper fluid when that tank is empty.

Moreover, I’ve never really understood the strong desire to carry on after society completely collapses; if I have to hole up in a bunker and poop in a bucket while the world outside burns, count me out, honestly.  So, clearly, I won’t be much help in the morale department, either.

Perhaps I could teach philosophy or lead yoga classes.  (Oh, I got mixed up there; that’s not the zombie apocalypse, that’s for our Adult Summer camp.)

Maybe I could apply my experience as a Union president if it came to negotiating with the zombies; my sense, though, is that they would be resistant to the collaborative “Interest-Based Bargaining” model with which I am most familiar.

I am a fast reader and have a solid track record as someone who takes afternoon naps.  So, it will help the effort for me to sit in a chair and doze over Victorian fiction, sign me up.

And, of course, if all else fails—and it surely will—I can write 327-word essays about our inevitable collective demise.

Odd, Ya See?

After a trying day of fighting grading, I was trying to leave school and get home, where my wife was overwhelmed with providing snacks to our daughter’s soccer team, but my Dean roped me into an Accreditation meeting that just went on and on.  She promised that if I stayed later and worked on Outcomes Assessment with her that I’d never have to do another post-tenure review, but finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and appealed to the college president to convince her to let me leave.  

He did so but on the bike ride home, it started to storm so powerfully that I had to take refuge in a local bar where I ended up telling my tale of woe to the friendly bartender.  I recounted how, after class the day before, I had gotten so stoned on the ride home that I forget all about getting back quickly and at one point, I had to stop for a BLT with extra bacon at a local eatery.  Getting back on my bike, I came across an outdoor concert where the band was playing such enticing music that I needed to put in my own earbuds and listen to an audiobook to tear myself away.

After that, the bike path narrowed and I was barely able to squeeze past an SUV and a monster truck to continue on my way.

At this, the bartender took pity on me and loaded up my bicycle and me in her cargo van and drove us to my house.  I was pretty dirty and ragged upon my arrival so no one recognized me until my dog started barking and jumping with joy at my arrival.

I sent the soccer players packing and my wife emerged from the kitchen and asked if I could help her move our bed to a new spot in the bedroom.  I complained that it was too heavy; "it's you!" she cried, and she embraced me warmly. 

Home, at last!

Prospectus

Here’s your opportunity get in on the ground floor—over even lower, the sub-basement!—of this unique investment opportunity in the Yoga, Cycling, and Pot Weblog.

Our mission is to synergize frictionless, value-added, future-proofed assets that deliver human-centered content with hyper-personalized end-user experiences employing a freemium model that overdelivers on customer expectations and maximizes cost-per-click efficiencies.

We believe that our platform operationalizes delight and makes manifest the unmanifested joy that consumers don’t even know they are seeking.  The model combines viral enthusiasm with optimized happiness that funnels a scalable ecosystem of joy into the hearts and minds of audiences far and wide (and near and slim, as well.)

Our growth strategy innovates, accelerates, and expands upon existing modalities and frameworks to drive new customer engagement across multiple platforms in a virtual cycle of positive experiences that empower people to deploy and manage their life experiences using mega-AI (Authentic Intelligence) that is easy to use and low in calories, too!

Our competitive strengths include being the undisputed leader in the perpendicular niche market of 327-word weblogs; having a virtual monopoly in this specialized area positions us perfectly for digging deeper into this abyss; we’re sure to strike oil soon!

All investments have risks, of course, and investors should be aware that any and all funds invested in this venture have the potential to disappear in clouds of cannabis smoke or an offshore casino, but it will be worth it, we promise you!

Our management team has hours of experience dreaming of what it would be like to run a major multi-national corporation and with your support, you can make that dream come true!

The principal use of proceeds from this IPO will be to increase our financial flexibility, ensuring the continuation of our “N+1” strategy when it comes to new bicycle acquisitions.  And some Dom Perignon to celebrate!  

So, open your wallets, friends, the sooner, the better.

And now, back to work, and back to creating unbridled joy.

Love

We are creatures born of love (or, at least, lust), and so it is odd, isn’t it, that there is so much hate in the world.  

You’d think that the residue of what made us would hang around longer and result in lots more kindness, compassion, and caring, but I guess it evaporates quickly, leaving people with a hole in their hearts that all too often fills up with cruelty, indifference, and malice.  Nature abhors a vacuum, which is strange because everything often sucks.

Somehow, it’s possible for teenaged boys to acquire handguns and bring them to a city-wide food festival.  Back in the day, to complain about someone cutting the line, you had to throw your falafel in their face; nowadays, you pop a cap in them and continue dining.

No nation is going to kill their way to peace; has that ever really worked?  For every head you cut off, two new ones grow; for every parent bombed to death, dozens of children rise to avenge.   The only way to stop the violence is to stop the violence; why isn’t that obvious?

Someone is profiting off the carnage, and I suppose, anyone who has mutual funds in their 401K is complicit in some way, as well.  But does being able to afford to travel during retirement justify the murder of innocent civilians with state-of-the-art AI drones?  Apparently, says the stock market, “yes.”

If only we all could remember that everyone, everywhere, is someone’s child, even that terrible, awful guy clipping his toenails in his seat on public transport.  It’s hard not to hate him, for sure, but what if that were you?  How would you feel about yourself?  Disgusted, dismayed, grossed out, (one would hope), but maybe, just maybe, if we could put ourselves in his shoes, then thankfully, we wouldn’t be able to reach our toes and would stop, just stop, even in the absence of hate.

And thus, there’d be more room for love.