my jaundiced eye

remembering names?

I just read my daily email from Luminosity, a “brain training” outfit that promises to get your mind to do what it hasn’t done in years: think. They apparently are of the opinion that I am one blank stare from the alzheimer’s wing or they wouldn’t hound me every morning. Alternately it could be that they already know that I can’t remember doodlysquat from yesterday so every email is like my very first. One of their recent tips was on how to remember names. I frankly couldn’t identify my children in an airport, nor would I want to, but that’s a tale for another time. So Luminosity said that when you meet new people you should fixate on some characteristic and link that to their name, e.g. Leroy Pantyhose: really bad teeth. Vulgaria Otherwise: lousiest face lift ever!, Stanley Mattressthrasher: freakishly large nostrils. I got it. From now on I will be able to confidently extend my hand to any vaguely familiar acquaintance, match it up in my mind’s eye with my handy mnemonic of ‘aggressively unattractive.’ and cheerily chirp, “So great to see you again, “Lusitania” it’s been way too long!” you old crone.

all politics is local

Please indulge me, readers from across the globe who may not be familiar with Louisiana state politics, and allow me to say that the best news I have heard in years (ten to be exact, the length of a federal racketeering sentence), vis a vis the future of this country and perhaps of all mankind, can be summed up in two words: Edwin Edwards. I’m talking the silver fox baby. He’s back and badder than ever. Unbowed and unbroken. “I never took a dime of tax payer money,” true unless gambling casino owners were LA residents, and actually paid taxes. A new daddy at 86 (or is it 87, whatever, he’s a walking, talking Viagra ad for sure) by his third wife, who was his prison pen pal. Seriously, Kurt Vonnegut couldn’t make this stuff up. As soon as I heard about his candidacy I shot him $50. I have no idea who he’s running against, but even if I loved his opponent’s politics 1000% I would just have to say, sorry Charlie, I left my heart in Avoyelles parish. I have no idea what EE’s ideas are for the future of Louisiana or the country, or if he even has any. I just want him to go to Washington and knock those chinless weasels and self-aggrandizing phonies off the talk shows. In a world full of ISIS (or is it ISIL? Could you please make up your 2nd Century A.D. minds), Whitehouse gate jumpers (who, FYI, wouldn’t have gotten into my house because I have an ADT security system) and Ebola (don’t get it in Dallas) I personally would feel a whole lot better knowing there was one honest crook in Washington who is not afraid to have a “for sale” sign stamped on his congressional letterhead.

step by step

It occurred to me that about 70% of the exercise I get in a day involves starting at point A, traveling to point B where I then am not able to remember why I needed to be at point B in the first place, so return to point A. I then retrace this path a couple of times before I recollect why I went anywhere at all and realize that where I really needed to go was point C. That, my friend, is called triangulation. While on the subject of exercise, you know those little rubber naval-gazer bracelets that track how many steps you take in a day and give you a virtual gold star when you reach the bracelet’s goal for you? Why stop there? What the world needs is a model that will monitor your every belch, fart, sneeze, hiccup, cough, and excretion and warn you when your performance is not optimal: “Warning! !That was the last fart for you today. Tighten up that sphincter, you foul smelling swine.” or “Alert! You are at only 63% of your recommended bowel movements for the week, Fiber up! Show some effort. Push harder, you unproductive anal retentive toad.”

Company motto: “We make you way better than you really are.”

clean living

What exactly is so great about clean living? I don’t get it. I know a number of people who watch their diets, never touch liquor, exercise regularly and are front row and center at every Sunday sermon. Sounds like hell to me. They all “act” so very happy, like the people in commercials who have just discovered a new toilet bowl cleaner and can’t believe their good fortune. It’s not the kind of true happiness that’s a result of a long boozy lunch with a bunch of reprobate friends or eating a whole bag of cheese doodles watching Dr. Strangelove. Sure they’re all going to live to be 100, still running marathons when they’re 80, then spend the rest of their overly long lives in a nursing home, surrounded by droolers, due to the hip they broke at the finish line. I want to drop dead at a cocktail party.

i’m #1

Do you ever wonder where your life has gone? What have you accomplished in your short time on earth, done for your fellow man or given back to society? I don’t. Really, that’s heartbreak on a hot plate. And if you have devoted your life to the service of others, that’s great, but in all honesty, keep it to yourself. The rest of us just don’t want to hear it. I am willfully ignorant of as much of the bible as possible, but I do like the bit about “God helps them that helps themselves.” or something like that, If it’s good enough for Jesus or Abraham or whoever penned that bon mot, high five on that. Think about it, do you seriously believe anyone else on this planet cares as much about you as you do? Let’s cut this thought experiment short, the answer is no. So just like in the airplane safety lecture “Put your own oxygen mask on first…” and extrapolate that to everything else.

the first dog

Years ago the old ball and chain (OB&C) decided we should get a dog. I was adamantly against it, pulled the nuclear option and said “Absolutely not, it’s either me or the d….” I never even got to the “og” part before he was out of the house and backing down the driveway. The dog was a complete pain in the ass, high strung, opinionated, ill tempered, picky eater, afraid of thunder and lightening and a racist. One stormy night he jumped the fence and ran off. OB&C sprang into action, had hundreds of flyers printed with the dog’s picture and nailed them on every telephone pole within a five mile radius. He offered a reward for any information on the dog’s whereabouts and spent weeks scouring the neighborhood. I think I can state without fear of contradiction that if I had jumped a fence in a thunderstorm and run off he would not have expended a fraction of that effort. Someone finally called about the dog and we tracked him down to the hood where he was living like the canine equivalent of Hugh Hefner. We had to drag him back, literally. True to form he lived forever and at the end required more care than my mother-in-law with Alzheimers.

welcome to my madhouse

Just to clarify from the outset, this is really all about me. I suppose that is pretty evident when your blog platform is @narcicissm.com. However, I do plan to cover a broader range of topics other than myself, but do remember, I am the overarching theme.

Just to start, perhaps a bit of biographical background might be helpful. However, that’s sort of a problem, even if I change the names to protect the innocent. That said, as far as I am concerned there aren’t too damned many innocents lying around.

I was born in New Orleans into a household whose cast of characters even Tennessee Williams couldn’t conjure up. Six mismatched siblings under one roof ostensibly under the care of their parents whose interests, for the most part, did not involve child rearing. Cliché alert! The household retainers did the heavy lifting.

I am going to stop before I launch into a re-write of the Help, which frankly I couldn’t even read and gave it to my daughter in law for Christmas. It now has a place of pride along side their other two books, “What a Dog” a biography of UGA, the University of Georgia mascot, and a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus.

But I digress. Things were smooth for a while in our little lunatic asylum, relatively speaking. There was the time my father’s collection of snakes escaped from the cage in the backyard, which caused a stir, and when the neighbors’ gibbon brachiated onto a power line and knocked out the lights for almost a whole day. And of course, my older brothers’ proclivity for public drunkedness and subsequent incarceration was an ongoing irritant. But don’t these things happen in every family if you look closely enough.

Now I inhabit my on madhouse, come on in.