Tag Archives: Coliseum

Crowd

Crowd: (n) a large number of people

Buying a pair of shoes.

What is necessary for this task? Me, shoes and a good fit.

Like every human child born on the Earth, I have bought shoes because they looked good, hoping that I would be able to tolerate how they felt on my feet. It was always a huge mistake. No—shoes are about the fit.

Food.

It needs to taste good—and it needs to taste good to me. I always take into consideration whether it’s healthy or not—but only in determining how much of it to eat.

Car.

I want every car I own to do three things for me:

  1. Drive
  2. Be able to be maintained without developing terminal problems in its crankcase or transmission
  3. And finally, it should look decent enough that it’s at least ignored.

What do I look for in a friend?

Someone I can trust. Because I don’t know about you—I use my friends to help me learn how to become friendlier. So they’re going to find all my dumb spots, and I would rather they wouldn’t post these flaws on social media.

My passion? Maybe it’s my mission?

That thing that rings my bell.

I want to be able to do my thing without having people wonder why I’m not getting rich from it or haven’t received an award.

When I used to travel on the road, performing, the first question people asked after the show was how many people attended.

“How big was the crowd?”

When I told the truth, they would quietly back off—thinking it must not be that good, or more people would have been there.

We can’t judge our efforts by the crowd we draw.

If you think about the most important things you do in your life—parenting, being generous, lovemaking, praying, education, exercising—do any of those draw crowds? I don’t think so.

There will always be crowds.

There were crowds in the Coliseum to watch the animals rip apart the flesh of the early Christians.

There were huge crowds in Germany in 1935 to cheer for Chancellor Hitler.

Massive crowds of soldiers gathered on the battlefields in the Civil War, fighting to keep black people in slavery.

There have been crowds associated with every disaster.

Crowds for every tyrant.

Crowds for every fad that came along, and within a short period of time, found themselves embarrassed because they got so worked up over such a stupid idea.

Don’t look for the crowd. Look for the good cheer in your heart.

Don’t look for the crowd. Look for the benefit to humanity.

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Bond

Bond: (v) to be joined securely to something else

Putting my shoes on.Dictionary B

It’s a confirmation that I’m heading somewhere–usually out the door.

So footwear has a special significance to me. It tells me I’m ready. It tells me I’m going to be moving from my place of personal sanctuary into the coliseum of fellow-gladiators.

At that point, I need to understand one immutable reality: I must bond.

  • I must find a reason to get along with others.
  • I must be looking for commonality.
  • I must carry a pocketful of logic to pay the toll on a highway of misunderstanding.
  • I must realize that even though the humans around me may put on ugly masks or disguise themselves behind clown noses, beneath all that fakery is another soul not so different from me.
  • I must penetrate color.
  • I must be able to incorporate another gender.

I must find the bond … or stop being surprised that the whole damn world seems unglued.

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Adjudicate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adjudicate: (v) make a formal judgment or decision about a dispute

Courts freak me out.

I suppose there are very few people, except lawyers who make $750 an hour, who find them appealing. I guess a judge might enjoy the atmosphere, since he or she gets to wear the robes. But if you’re not making the bucks or not getting to judge, that particular arena can seem like the Coliseum in Rome on a lions-chomping-Christians mid-afternoon.

I sometimes think about the fact that even though I am a law-abiding citizen, toeing the line and trying to be faithful to my responsibilities and as honest as I can possibly be, I do realize that if someone had a vendetta against me, they could probably dig up something which could be misconstrued as criminal.

Isn’t that weird?

Sometimes in life, it’s not the piss in the pot that gets you in trouble, but rather, who you piss off.

About seventeen years ago, I took three children into my home. They were going through a rough time with their father, who certainly had some difficulties and struggles, and was not treating them up to par. I thought I was being generous. Damn–I thought I was being Christian. I thought I was helping a lady out, who was being abused, and her children, who were being somewhat neglected.

But this fellow took the legal system and used it against me, making up stories and twisting situations to get those in authority to adjudicate against me, forcing me into a courtroom to explain my actions.

As his lawyer sat in that room accusing me of everything except the Kennedy assassination, I realized how fragile we all are, and how we should never become so arrogant as to believe that our actions could not possibly be viewed as questionable.

So even though this gentleman was proven to be a charlatan, I still had to go through a grilling process which made me empathetic to a two-inch sirloin steak.

So what is my point?

None, really.

It’s just that legalities are filled with so much legalism that no one could ever escape if the law was determined to get them.

That’s why I tip my hat to policemen, stay away from downtown areas where there are lions sitting next to lots of steps in front of courtrooms, and I try to keep all of my disagreements simple, discussed and resolved.

Because if I ever started being adjudicated … I don’t know how well I’d hold up.

 

AC

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

AC: (abbr):

 

You see, here’s how I heard the story;

This guy was on his way to do AC 360–that’s with Anderson Cooper–and they called him and canceled because the AC (air conditioning) was out in the studio. The guy asked them what they thought was causing the problem and the producer replied, “It has something to do with the AC.”

The guy said, “I know that. It’s the air conditioner.”

The producer said, “No, it’s the AC. The alternating current.”

The guy was so upset about not being able to do the show that he went down to the local AC (athletic club) and started lifting some weights. In doing so, he pulled a muscle in his AC (I think that’s somewhere in the knee.)

He went to the hospital and the doctor was a bit baffled by the injury, saying that the calamity did not usually befall anyone unless they were a gladiator in the Roman coliseum, AC (before the birth of Christ).

The fellow wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, puffed up to have a gladiatorial injury, but on the other hand, he felt that it was AC (all so common).

While sitting in the Emergency Room waiting to be discharged, lo and behold, AC came through the door–Anderson Cooper. Actually he was wheeled in on a gurney and appeared to be in some pain. Rushing up to the gurney, the gentleman asked what was wrong, and AC explained that he was working on the AC in the studio when the AC started working again and sent a shock through his whole body and threw him across the room. So he had to call an AC (ambulance carrier) to get him to the hospital to check out his AC–(all corners).

In a strange sort of way, the man felt justified about being canceled from the AC show because of faulty AC when he discovered that if he had gone TO the AC Show the AC might have shocked him.

So he went home, called his girlfriend, and told her that he had a gladiator’s injury that hadn’t been seen in the hospital since AC–before Christ.

She was confused. Actually she was AC (always confused).