Tag Archives: crazy

DBA

DBA: (adj) Doing Business As

Over-prepared.

I have been guilty of this.

I have what I consider to be a healthy sense of gloom. (I’ve never bought into doom, but gloom catches my fancy.)

So if I’m going to a meeting, I always take too much information.

If I’m being interviewed, I have been known to over-answer the question.

And in the process of doing this, I cast a suspicious light on myself, because folks wonder why I’m yammering so much without being probed.

For instance, I recall the first time I went to a bank to start an account with my music group. I was unnerved. Well, maybe not unnerved, but kind of a mingling of overly careful and defiant.

I had read what the bank required in order to open an account called DBA—”Doing Business As.”

In other words, it was me doing business as the name of my music group.

It was really quite simple.

Matter of fact, we were halfway through the process of signing up with the bank officer when I started jabbering.

I offered that we were just getting started.

I detailed examples of how much money we made—or how little money we made.

The process, which was really rather uncomplicated, became bizarre because of my off-putting approach. Then the bank officer, feeling a bit uncertain due to my jittery profile—which now included some sweat at my brow—called over his superior to handle the matter.

I was screwing this thing up.

When the senior officer arrived, he sat down and realized that I had just painted myself into a corner of flummox. He turned to me and said kindly, “Calm down. People get DBA accounts all the time—and most of them aren’t criminals.”

I laughed.

It felt good to laugh.

Matter of fact, laughing may be the only remedy when we have allowed ourselves to go bonkers over nothing.

Crazy

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crazy: (adj) mentally deranged; demented, insane.

Demented? Insane?

Well, I suppose so.

But I would venture to say that if we think “crazy” is about being diagnosed with a mental illness, we are going to miss many situations which need to be corrected long before someone is running down the street naked, singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

I’ll give you a different definition for crazy:

Crazy is anyone who continues to be amped up and overly excited by the latest craze.

Crazy is when you run your life by following what’s most popular in the moment.

Crazy is when you read polls and statistics to determine what’s right and wrong.

Crazy is listening to the opinions of pundits about what candidate is offering the best political jambalaya.

Crazy is thinking that because something is fashionable, it “certainly should look good on you.”

Crazy is listening to people who are barely out of puberty who have written a book on child-rearing, when deep in your heart you know everything they’re saying needs to be hauled away on the poo-poo pickup.

Crazy is when you think your husband or wife is suddenly going to don a whole new persona to reactivate your sexual interest.

Crazy is when you think belief in God needs to be stimulated by bigotry, prejudice, lies and exaggerated faith.

Crazy is when people line up and take sides over gender, sexual preference, political parties, church denominations, colas or flavors of chicken wings.

Crazy is when you become crazed because you’re pursuing what is the craze.

God wants us to be faithful to our own selves above all else.

If you don’t believe there’s a God, being faithful to yourself above all else should be the god you follow.

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Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan: (adj) free from provincial ideas or attachments; at home all over the world

As he sat down, he stared at me.

It was a very small waiting room in a dentist’s office, so what I was doing was noticeable. It was also quite obvious that he found my activityfunny wisdom on words that begin with a C
 humorous.

I was reading Cosmopolitan Magazine.

There were three choices: Popular Mechanics, Highlights for Kids, and Cosmopolitan.

I suppose if I were trying to confirm my masculinity, I should have thumbed through Popular Mechanics, though mechanical things have never been particularly popular with me.

I decided to comment since he continued to stare at my magazine. “I’m reading Cosmopolitan because it was here—and I was curious.”

He nodded his head in disdain.

I ventured one more sentence of explanation. “Don’t you ever wonder what women are thinking about us?”

He didn’t even look up for this question—just shook his head.

While I was waiting my turn to be drilled, I learned three things about women of this day and age, from perusing Cosmopolitan.

  1. Women are much more concerned about what men think and feel than men seem to be about women.
  2. For some reason, a woman thinks it is her fault in some way when she ends up with a man who is unable to communicate or seems to have “lost interest.”
  3. Women feel they can pursue a five-point plan to transform their hopeless situations to better, more romantic results.

I simultaneously was filled with admiration and sadness.

I found the pursuit placed in this magazine to be far from cosmopolitan, since “cosmopolitan” is the ability to function and be successful in any culture or environment at any time.

This magazine more or less was a handbook to explain to women why they are not crazy, insecure or extreme in their misgivings.

What the magazine was trying to impress upon its readership—mainly female—is that men are waiting for the right signals to become objective, interesting and involved.

When it came my time to head for the dentist’s chair, I closed the magazine and thought, I could probably make a million dollars by printing a magazine that encouraged women to be themselves and realize that men will eventually come in their direction since the alternatives are limited…and they do get horny and hungry.


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Clueless

Clueless: (adj) having no knowledge, understanding, or ability.

Three categories.

No knowledge: Hardly seems likely. In this information age, a decision to go without knowledge has to be a purposeful dodge to avoid it. It’s feasible, but even if we’re trying to escape, some of the volume still pierces our defenses. Therefore it’s difficult to use “no knowledge” as an excuse for avoiding responsibility.

No understanding: The ability to interpret the circumstances around us and come up with a suitable solution does require engaging our souls. If we’re just looking into a pool of self-interest or trying to ignore becoming connected with the people around us, we can certainly pretend we did not understand the severity of the situation.

Yet if you’re around someone who’s crazy and they threaten to do something drastic, it is unlikely that you can claim ignorance of the crime.

No ability: We might lack expertise. Expertise is achieved when we take the ability we have and teach it to be useful.

The concept of “natural talent” is humorous. The idea that our ability arrives intact and ready to go is mind-boggling.

Ability demands an obstacle course before it can be classified as capable of overcoming obstacles.

Clueless is a choice.

Attempting to remove oneself from knowledge, understanding and ability might temporarily give us the free pass of grace, but ultimately exposes us as charlatans who run away from the heat of the battle.

 

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Birdbrain

Birdbrain: (n) an annoyingly stupid and shallow person

Dictionary BIn the sneaky cult of male chauvinism, the term “birdbrain” has been given the general definition of referring to a person who is flighty–while we secretly know that in the realm of those who possess penises, we are always referring to women.

Matter of fact, I cannot think of an occasion of hearing a man called a birdbrain.

It is an insult that lacks the intelligence of true data.

Let us look at birds:

1. They can fly.

If they did nothing else but that, they would literally rise above our abilities.

2. Many of them have the sense to fly south for the winter, which does not occur to most humans until they hit their sixties.

3. They can build a home out of twigs and belly button lint, when we must go to a bank and pay exorbitant interest rates to achieve brick and mortar.

4. They can convince their children to eat worms, when we are incapable of getting our offspring to swallow one sliver of broccoli.

These are just a few things that immediately come to mind which tell me that negatively discussing those who freely fly above our heads exhibits our ignorance and jealousy, all at the same time.

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Bipolar

Bipolar: (adj) a psychiatric illness characterized by both manic and depressive episodes

Dictionary B

 Brandon was caught between two opinions.

One of his psychiatrists thought he was schizophrenic and the other felt it was more likely that he was bipolar.

But when Brandon was on the rampage, his mind torn apart by his disease, to the average person he was just crazy.

Insightful, but out of his mind.

Matter of fact, the only times Brandon was interesting were those occasions when he was on the verge of flipping out, going through the streets of town performing actions which were unacceptable for public review.

Yet when Brandon was on his medications, he was calm, docile, but nearly incoherent and incapable of grasping a thought.

Certainly, if one psychiatrist was right and he was bipolar, his manic episodes were filled with colorful visions of exciting ideas from a fellow that seemed to have the energy to solve the problems of the whole world.

But his depression was frightening, making you wonder if you should leave him for fear that he might do harm to himself.

The last time I saw Brandon he was in a mental hospital and seemed to have found a place where he could dominate the weaker inmates, while still maintaining the appearance of submitting to the hospital staff.

He didn’t even recognize me.

He had forgotten who I was.

It reminded me of that common phrase, “He was in his own world.”

He truly was.

It was not a planet that intersected with any of the common attributes of earthlings.

Yet it was a world … and he was King.

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Bicker

Bicker: (v) to argue about petty and trivial matters.

Dictionary B

Perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions of our time is the idea that we, as human beings, are actually able to agree to disagree.

We’ve all heard it.

Some impasse will be reached between two individuals and one of them will suggest they cease the discussion, admitting that resolution is impossible, and pretend to accept the opinion of the other person as viable.

We don’t do that.

We might set out to portray ourselves as open-minded citizens, able to tolerate variance of opinion without any retribution, but actually, we eventually fall back on bickering with those who disagree with us, while still, amazingly, insisting that there is no real problem.

  • We pick.
  • We fuss.
  • We cast aspersion on the character of another.
  • We raise our eyebrows when they walk out of the room to connote how crazy they truly seem to be.
  • We giggle to ourselves.

We are dishonest. We pretend the situation is calm, but actually, it’s a fomenting sea.

It is why husbands and wives are well-known for taking cheap shots at each other–bickering–even in the presence of others, under the guise that this is “just what married people do.”

Actually, it is what humans do when they have unresolved conflict they have swept under the rug … leaving a bumpy pathway for future walking.

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Banshee

Banshee: (n) in Irish legend, a female spirit whose wailing warns of an impending death in a house.Dictionary B

Although I am often surprised by Webster’s true definition of a word, this particular rendition really took my breath away.

It’s because when I was a child, I had an aunt who screamed at the children running in a room, telling us to settle down and stop acting like a “bunch of wild banshees.”

I did not know what a banshee was, nor did I care to ask her to explain. I just assumed that banshees were children who were having fun, which for some reason or another, drove this old lady crazy.

  • I knew “banshee” was not good.
  • I knew it was an insult.
  • Just like I privately knew, in my young spirit, that when my aunt used the words hillbilly, worthless slut, wetback and nigger, that she probably wasn’t being complimentary.

So in a sense, banshee became associated to me with the word nigger. In other words, I knew it was bad and I knew I didn’t want to be one, since it made my aunt so pissed off.

Oh, yes, did I fail to mention? She thought that the black people in America–the niggers–were just as uncontrolled as we banshees.

So I grew up a confused young man who was offered a lexicon of terms, which if I accidentally used in public, my parents–and aunt–would quickly silence me, expressing their displeasure over my timing.

I was a child of Middle America, instructed in “public talk” and “private talk” … cautioned to never mix the two.

 

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Bag Lady

Bag lady: (n) a homeless woman who carries her possessions in shopping bags.Dictionary B

Our society has become obsessed with converse thinking.

In other words, if you have the boldness to make a statement or take a stand on an issue which you feel is particularly important, there is always some cynical, perhaps even jaded, passerby, who will pull an obscure point of reference to disprove your contention and try to show it to be ridiculous or foolish idealism.

I mean, you can walk in a room and say to the gathered that we all should learn to love one another, and at the end of half an hour, the denouncing voices will explain that this kind of general affection among humans is impossible because of the dangers of crime and even terrorism.

Never is this more true than on the subject of the homeless.

I have often presented the theory to those around me that it doesn’t hurt one little bit to pull a dollar out to help folks on the street, without feeling the need to inquire of their intentions or plans on using your 100 pennies.

I am frequently argued to the mat by those who present a contrary view, insisting that I am emboldening these individuals to remain without solvency.

Sometimes I am informed how crazy they are.

A certain handful of detractors cite statistics concerning the criminal records of those without a place to sleep.

They will also point out that the homeless and the bag ladies are a blight on the community and needn’t be so because there are agencies to assist them in finding their place in society.

Yes, I will tell you, we live in a converse world.

Those who have decided to become our leaders feel it is essential to present the darker side of every issue as a precautionary tale, lest we become too open to one another and end up with messy conflicts through our generosity.

I am weary of it.

I don’t want to know what the bag lady is going to do with my dollar. If she needs a cheap bottle of wine to get her through the day, then God bless her.

And God damn me if I forbid it out of my self-righteous, superior attitude.

If we don’t get out of our converse thinking, we’re going to begin to believe that there are no absolutes which lead us to goodness.

Instead, in trying to find the potholes… we will cease to build roads. 

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Anti-intellectual

dictionary with letter A

Anti-intellectual (n): a person who scorns intellectuals and their views and methods.

I ain’t sure, but I just may be one. Darn tootin’.

Can there be anything more annoying than someone who claims to be an intellectual, or on the other hand, some other varmint who insists “they’re just country.”

It all revolves around this nasty-dastardly deed of feeling the need to be right.

I would never call myself an intellectual, but I would never make fun of progress or science just to prove that I’m “one of the people.”

I often wonder, as I view my society, if we have all just gone crazy–and the process was so subtle that no one picked up on the nuance.

After all, the things we now accept as common sense tend to avoid any reasonable commonality and reject the need to be sensible.

I will tell you this–you will never get anywhere with anyone by insisting that you’re an intellectual. The goal of the whole room at that point will be to find the chinks in your armor and insert a spear deep into your self-righteous breast.

Likewise, you don’t gain the appeal of anyone who has an IQ above 75 by insisting that you eschew new discoveries, revelations which contradict the fables and lifestyle choices that you promote as old-fashioned, apple-pie American thinking.

Of the profiles afforded in the human experience–those being rock, cement and sponge–I choose to be a sponge.

I do not want to stand on the rock of mere intellectual pursuit, portraying myself as an agnostic, self-involved pursuer of education.

On the other hand, I don’t want to have a brain that’s cemented with superstition, fear, religion and political nonsense, and pass around another bucket of chicken with my equally stubborn brethren.

I am a sponge.

  • I do not fear science because God made it.
  • I am not afraid of the turmoil of nature because they are in the chemistry of our world to protect us and simultaneously teach us how things work.
  • And I do not deny the existence of God because I’m perfectly unwilling to believe that the whole system of the Universe is run on chance and chaos.

I do not care if I’m in the minority. I happen to know that minorities fare very well in the historical account.

As it turns out, I am not anti-intellectual nor pro-homespun. I want to absorb what’s true because I need to be free.

And rumor has it that truth is the only mechanism that delivers freedom. 

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