1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”

4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.

6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10. You will forget all this.

….

Shout out to Cherie Carter-Scott, who wrote this and is doing an excellent job of being human.

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In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead
and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people’s home
feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go
collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold
watch and a party on your first day.

You work for 40 years until you’re
young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and
are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then
go to primary school, you become a kid, you play.

You have no
responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you
spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa like conditions with
central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and
then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm! I rest…

Written By Woody Allen

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Okay, this idea isn’t entirely my own, but expanded upon with my unmatched genius. You may or may not have heard of Blake Fall-Conroy’s “Minimum Wage Machine”, which is a penny-dispensing Rube Goldberg machine that “allows anybody to work for minimum wage.” See Picture.

“The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage, by turning a crank on the side of the machine. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine’s mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.”

Basically anyone can work. No need for an interview or a nice button-down anymore or even that crappy resume you’ve been working on for years. But what if instead of turning a crank, those looking to make money pedaled a bike. And what if that bike’s kinetic energy was turned into a form of electricity. You’d have the unemployed literally working out to produce clean energy. Nice, right? So you ask, who is supplying all those pennies? Well, I don’t mean to get all “Nancy Pelosi” on you, but what if everyone was taxed 5 pennies a month on their income to pay for it? Not a big deal right? I’d give up 5 cents a month instead of bookoo-dollars in unemployment tax. Well, there are now 304,059,724 people in the US. If everyone gave 5cents a month that means $1,520,298,620 in pennies to pay those folks spinning those wheels. That means our current unemployment rate would be transformed into the rate of healthy, electricity producing fools who work on their own time and no one has to look after or manage them.
Yep.
Problem solved.
You’re welcome.

C

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“I define health as a positive state of wholeness and balance in which an organism functions efficiently and interacts smoothly with its environment. Good health comes from an innate resilience that allows you to move through life without suffering harm from toxins, germs, allergens and changing environmental and dietary conditions.

By no stretch of the imagination does mainstream American “health care” move us closer to this vision of robust, resilient health. It is a fiscally unsustainable, technology-centric, symptom-focused disease-management system. Consider that two-thirds of all Americans die from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, which are all strongly associated with lifestyle choices. Maintaining and paying for our current system will serve only to continue – if not exacerbate – this trend, and bankrupt the nation in the process.”

Frankly, I grew up without healthcare and currently live without healthcare. Thanks to my parent’s spectacular genes and a relatively healthy lifestyle, I don’t have a need to go to the doctor much. But, God forbid, a tragedy strikes and I break an arm or, in my many attempts at superman-like flight, crack a vertebrae; what am I supposed to do? What little life savings I have would be obliterated and I would be another individual catching disdainful glances because I need government assistance.

“Nearly every other advanced country has a largely nonprofit national health system that guarantees universal care. Even countries with private insurers, like Switzerland and the Netherlands, require uniform prices and benefits and limit profits. Not only are expenditures much lower in other advanced countries, but health outcomes are generally better. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, they offer on average more basic services, not fewer — more doctor visits and longer hospital stays, and they have more doctors and nurses and hospital beds. But they don’t do nearly as many tests and procedures, because there is little financial incentive to do so.”

America needs healthcare reform and, for the record, screw all the SOCIALISM talk. Educated people know that American Democracy is a hybrid system that does include…dun dun dunnn….socialism. What do you think social security is based upon?

To all you people who rant at these forums, please take a walk down the block to the nearest project housing and ask those people if they want public healthcare. The rant you will receive in response will make yours feel puny by comparison.

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Gallery Above, a haven for Panama City artists and possibly the most awesome art gallery East of the Mississippi will be closing down this month and I couldn’t be more bummed. This sudden closing sucks so badly that my sadness can only be reconciled through blame. Who do I blame for Panama City losing such a cool place?…

Natural Light.

Natural Light, you disgusting inciter of midnight drunk dials, you evil lord of the regretful one-night-stand, you anti-refreshing destroyer of relationships–I blame you for the loss of PC’s one place for real artists. It is you who consistently encourage people to trade creativity for beer long championships, you who aid in the de-evolution of mankind by making perfectly good people become window screaming, butt grabbing, nipple-slipping Neanderthals. You make people dumber, thus not allowing them to enjoy real, true art. Because of you we are losing a place of poetry, passion and personal expression of which cannot be easily replicated. I will never forgive your cheap silver can for this.

Heather Clements it will always mean the world to me that you opened the Gallery and it hurts my heart to see it go. To express my sadness, from this day forth I will poison every can of Natty-Light I see with hopes that it will eliminate the drunkards who couldn’t appreciate the one of few places in Panama City worth keeping.

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When my daughter plays peek-a-boo

Fall

My wife’s hair…it’s hot

Tweetie on my iPhone

Watching consecutive reruns of Scrubs

Finding poetry carved into piers

McDonald’s french fries

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind on rainy days

My wife’s butt…it’s hot too

Art Museums

People who love what they do

Company of Thieves

Reading pages from any Jeffrey Eugenides book

Used book stores

Randomly hearing, “I Love It When Ya Call Me Big Poppa”

The 90’s

Making French Toast for my family

Football season

The smell of just-cut grass

The word “Verisimilitude”

Remembering that I stashed money in my center console

Dinner and a movie

Doing absolutely nothing for a whole day

People who use colloquialisms

Martin Lawrence’s “You So Crazy”

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Everyone knows I love Kobe Bryant. The kid is amazing, the best in pro ball and the closest to MJ. As I am watching the game, cheering and spilling beer after every shot I came to a conclusion. Kobe has been known as the black mamba but after several dagger-shots I’ve decided to give him a new name. The Silencer. Every time he shoots, the 80,000 in the Denver attendance shut up. The only other person who has the ability to make that many people go completely silent is Obama…and maybe Mary Thomas.

That’s my mom. Go Lakers.

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I can no longer hate on Lebron James. That’s right, the man gets nothing but love from me. For quite some time I avoided the Lebron James debate. Those who know me know I’m a huge sports fan, so much so that in the hierarchy of sports I liken Michael Jordan to jesus with a lowercase j. For me as a kid, MJ was everything, I mean, how many people outside of maybe Elvis goes beyond idolatry and into analogy i.e “Reese Puffs are the Michael Jordan of cereal.” (man I love the puffs). So I’ve found it difficult, as do many, to just go ahead and annoint Lebron as MJizzle’s second coming. But after he dropped the game-winning three pointer against the Magic, I have to say I can no longer condone the hate. An MJ he is not but the kid might go down as an all-timer. He’s good–really good, perfectly in between Kobe and D-Wade. Maybe if you put all three of them together you’d get MJ…but you’d still have to soak the concoction in a vat of lemon-lime Gatorade and Craig Ehlo’s shame.

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I attended the Absolute Condo Auction and watched gorgeous condos sell for as little as 65k. It’s was amazing. If I had any money whatsoever I would’ve been taking advantage of the current economic woes right along with everyone else. Too bad I’m a member of the economically derelict.

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Just completed an article for gulf world at seepcb.com. That place is crazy fun. I really did feel like a kid all over again. But I guess dolphins’ll do that to you. I mean, I was a huge Flipper fan, had him up there with He-man and Mr. T.

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