Tag Archives: hamburger

Decategorize

Decatagorize: (v) to free or remove from categories

 Although we all may insist that we are free spirits, out to try new things and break the mold, we still have a tendency to go to a Chinese restaurant and look for something that resembles hamburger.

Yes, we are much more verbally adventurous than we are in our eventual choices and positions.

The human race is not conservative, nor is it liberal—but rather, cautious.

Whatever category “caution” welcomes, the human race will be found there, touting its valiant efforts while shuddering a bit in fear.

I have always found that if you discover the truth of a matter, you can cease being critical and begin to find the worth that naturally lives inside.

For I will tell you bluntly, if the human race were as volatile and unpredictable as we present ourselves to be, we would all be dead within ten days.

So it is time to decategorize our species.

What saves us is the fact that we talk a good game, and then most of the time, choose to play Candy Land.

 

Decade

Decade: (n) a period of ten years

I guess if we’re working with averages, most of us get to live in seven decades.

The first ten years are so out of our control that it would be difficult to know if the time period and the circumstances really mean that much to us. I do remember things from my first decade, but it’s more like a motion picture being played in the background or a series of fast trains speeding by.

My second decade was mostly about sex.

It was the discovery of it, the curiosity about it, the pursuit of it, masturbation and finally ending up in the arms of a woman, completely hapless.

My third decade was based around having children and figuring out how to pay bills, while still honoring my occupational dream. As you can tell by the conglomeration, I didn’t end up doing any of them particularly well.

Now, in my fourth decade, I started gaining some solvency.

What that meant to me was, when the electric bill showed up, I paid it instead of negotiating it. It was a pleasant step. Unfortunately, simultaneously I was dealing with children—some of whom were watching life whizz by and others, completely occupied with their groins.

The next decade I did a lot of traveling, performing and writing, at a time in my life when I was not in as good shape as ten years earlier. But contrary to popular opinion, life gives you a hamburger but really does not ask you what you want on it.

Now that I’m in my sixth decade, I don’t really care if people agree with me. I’m not out to impress anyone, I have enough money to get by and still buy a treat or two, and I have fun acting much more mentally spry than people believe I should be.

I have no idea how much further I will go in the decade pursuit.

Maybe some—maybe not.

But I will tell you, as long as you can go to bed at night, laugh at your mistakes, and get up the next morning believing you can do better, you will survive the war.

Cuisine

Cuisine: (n) a style or quality of cooking

The things that tickle me might make one believe that I’m a cynic (if you didn’t know how adorable I am).

I can barely contain myself from laughing out loud when people pronounce the word “cuisine,” putting as much French pastry in their accent as possible.

“Cuisine” is all part of this notion that people on Earth are different from one another because of their preferences. Actually, it seems we are still trying to divide one another up like a box of Crayolas, by color. Oh, people throw a fit when they hear me say that. We all want to believe we’re enlightened and free of prejudice.

But let me tell you something very simple about cuisine:

All the people of the Earth, in their diet, have a bread, a potato-like substance, and a meat.

How they make their bread or what their potato looks like or what meat they may choose depends on what’s available.

I could travel all over the world and have no problem at all.

I would just ask, “So what is your bread, what is your potato and what is your meat?”

I think cuisine becomes interesting due to the fact that we can appreciate how each human being (who is so much like us) chooses his or her way to fill their plate.

Honestly, there are a few exceptions, but most cultures are not that fond of green, leafy vegetables, and even eat fruit only on special occasions.

Certainly if they eat more of these fruits and vegetables, they’re healthier, but that doesn’t stop the Arab, the Israeli or the Russian from favoring their particular cholesterol-filled animal flesh.

In addition, every cuisine has its version of a sweet sauce, a barbecue sauce, a catsup and a mustard.

Check it out. You’ll find it hilarious.

So if you ever find yourself going to a restaurant where they’re serving the cuisine of Africa, just take a moment and taste some things.

Pretty soon you will find on your plate their interpretation of French fries, a roll with butter and a hamburger.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis: (n) A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba;

I was two months from my eleventh birthday when I was informed that the world was about to blow up. I didn’t know much about what was happening on the planet.

My life was simple.

I was climbing in the bathtub every night, looking down at my pubic area for any signs of hair, since a rumor had spread that one of the guys in our class had some.

This was the most important thing to me.

But all of a sudden, my attention was temporarily nabbed by the news that those bad people over there on the other side of the world were trying to kill us good people over here—by blowing us up with bombs which seemed to be a lot more explosive than I could even imagine.

I was very angry.

Matter of fact, over dinner I expressed my rage by explaining that it was completely unfair for a bunch of old people to destroy my life just because they couldn’t get along with each other

The problem was that there were now missiles in Cuba.

I didn’t know anything about Cuba. When I heard the word “Cuba” the first thing that popped into my mind were cube steaks, which were some hybrid of hamburger and sirloin. So the way I remembered the word was to think of “Cuba Steaks.”

Therefore, people in “Cuba Steaks” were planning to fire bombs at us that turned our bodies into dust through fire.

I was not going to get to live long enough to kiss a girl or do any more hair-raising.

That’s what it meant to me.

And honestly, as I think back on it, having studied it, heard renditions of the story and considered the insanity of the times, my ten, nearly eleven-year-old objections seem quite suitable.

It would be wonderful to tell you that the Cuban Missile Crisis is a thing of the past. But now we have a whole new generation of leaders who apparently cannot remember what it was like to be terrified, living in a world of “duck and cover.”

Now they are trying to reintroduce these weapons into everyday thought.

If I had a poison in my cupboard and I knew it would kill someone if they drank it, the only sane solution would be to remove the poison from my cupboard, not expect everybody to remember that it’s lethal.

Perhaps we should all pray that logic will win the day and we will grow so weary of thinking about being destroyed that we’ll finally put the poison away for good—those weapons that snuff out all life.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

 

Cow

Cow: (n) the mature female of a bovine animal

Cow is a word. Cow is a concept. Cow is a picture.

Cow is an animal. Cow is a creature. Cows live on farms.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

A farm is a concept. It is also a word.

Cows hang out in barns. Barns have hay. It piles up in lofts.

Cows give milk. Milk makes cheese.

Cheese gives us something on our burger so the bacon sticks and doesn’t slide off.

Cows sometimes have a cottage where they make cheese. Cows have udders. These are ‘udderly’ large nipples.

We are not allowed to say ‘nipples,’ at least, not without giggling.

But you see, all of these are antiseptic visions of a cow. They are representations. They are promotable units which can be pandered off to the masses.

If you were actually to go to a farm which has a barn wherein dwells a cow, you would learn very quickly that they smell bad. (Either the barn or the cow—maybe even the farm.) It’s not the cow’s fault. Hygiene is not a primary concern. Crevices are difficult to reach.

Cows also chew their cud, which once again, sounds reasonably harmless unless you’re watching them swish it around in their mouths like some sort of gooey, slimy hockey puck.

Watching cows being milked may cure you of your desire for dairy.

Trying to communicate with a cow will certainly give you a parallel to parenting.

And note—a cow’s constant friends are hundreds of flies, which blow them continually, and not in a pleasant way.

We also acknowledge that cows make beef products like steak and hamburger. But sometimes it’s best to show up to the party a little bit late so you don’t have to view what goes into arranging the decorations.

I can continue to eat hamburger as long as I don’t have to think about cows. Matter of fact, I have thought about cows just about as much as I wish or would ever want to think about again.

If you want to contemplate cows more, you should probably Google them, or risk going out into the countryside and carefully walking through the pasture to interview one.

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Counterproposal

Counterproposal: (n) a proposal offered to offset a preceding one.

I would never want to return to the sheer horror, ambiguity, dance of confusion and frustration that was involved in being seventeen years old.

Yet I do fondly remember the wrangling that went on in a car on a Saturday night with a girlfriend you had been with for at least three months.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

The first three months of dating consisted solely of terrorizing one another with the awkwardness of conversation and trying to discover where you fit in with her and she could find common ground with your less-than-diverse tastes.

But after three months—and some sort of little ring, chain or token being offered to confirm that you were committing to one another—then the entire project shifted from “getting to know you” to “getting to know all about you.”

On that Saturday night, after the movie was over, the hamburger was consumed, the French fries were shared (because she was on a diet) and the milk shake melted enough to be sipped to its bottom, it was time for the two of you to nervously head out to an isolated park, backroad or private location, where you could begin the negotiations.

She, being a good, small-town girl, who knew the next morning would have to sit down with her friends in church with a picture of Jesus staring down at her, had already taken inventory and considered what was available for the taking.

On the other hand, you felt it was time to expand the project—open up new horizons and generate some excitement.

So you would make a proposal and she would counter your idea with a suggestion of her own, which was rarely sufficient to your teenage, ravenous lust.

Of course, adding to the craziness was a budding horniness, leaving you (and I believe, her) dizzy from trying to resist. After an hour-and-a-half of proposal and counterproposal, procedures were agreed upon—and pursued in such a vigorous way that the whole deal accelerated so quickly that it was nearly blown.

This process, which we shall call “The Saturday Night Feverless” only worked for a few weeks. For the curiosity to find out what sex was really like was overwhelming. Or maybe it was just a need to discover once and for all if “us” were really going to be any good at it, or become permanent outcasts from the world of pleasure,

Counterproposals are a part of life, but rarely do they give the satisfaction of the original ingenious idea.


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Contact

Contact: (v) to communicate with someone

Despair often follows the conclusion that something is either complicated or perhaps impossible.

Matter of fact, if you want to discourage another human being, just spend too much time explaining the difficulty of a simple task. They will funny wisdom on words that begin with a Cnot only avoid pursuing it, but will be grateful to you for helping them to avoid the bee hive.

To a major degree, that is what has happened over the past fifty years, as our sociologists have turned racial relations into trigonometry.

Forsaking the notion of the commonality of all mankind and the idea that additional contact would soon eliminate our predilection for looking on the outward appearance, these learned fellows and ladies have concluded that our species prefers to clump into heaps of mutual culture.

Once we establish that somebody is from a different culture than us, our job is to respect them–which we think means to avoid them.

A lack of contact forbids having a “contact high” when we get around a person who looks different, speaks uniquely and dresses to taste.

You suddenly realize that all cultures have families.

Every culture has a potato derivative.

Every culture has their own hamburger.

And indeed, every culture, when contacted, can offer the same warmth and gentleness of love.

 

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Cheap

Cheap: (adv) at or for a low price.

It is time, once and for all, to resolve the conflict between what is being cheap and what is being thrifty.

Since there were no smart people available, I have decided to take on the task.

You know you’re cheap when you really want it done for free.

You know you’re thrifty when you know it should cost money, but you’re just looking for the best deal among several pricings.

The problem with our nation is that we’re a bunch of cheap bastards. We’re not really happy unless somebody gives us something. If we have to open our wallet at all, we’re prepared to complain, no matter how reasonable the price may be.

Capitalism is a system that works on the basis of a free market, with businesses competing with one another to gain customers. If you insert cheap people in there–who want something for free–then you’ll get fakes, shams, hooligans, grifters and thieves who come in to hoodwink the selfish masses.

If somebody does something for me, they deserve something back.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but we do live in a time when the anticipation of “free stuff” has driven us to the point that the poor in our country are just as greedy as the rich.

If I go to a restaurant and a server brings me food and drink and asks me if I like the way my hamburger was prepared, that person deserves money from me. Not just from the boss. From me. He or she is serving me.

We need to stop saying, “They’re just doing their job.”

And if the server ends up not being very likable or helpful, he or she should get nothing from me.

Everybody knows that money talks. It’s what we communicate with.

So when you walk around hoping something will be free, then be prepared to be cheated.

Because even though the bar offers free snacks, they just charge more for the watered-down beer.

 

 

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Charcoal

Charcoal: (v) to cook over charcoal.

My dad tried hard.

I didn’t know it at the time–I was a teenager and I thought he was an old man. He was pretty old–older than most of the dads.

Sometimes he would imitate joy over having me as a son. I was usually watching television at the time, and unaffected by his attempts at
conversation. Then, when I needed five dollars to take a girl on a date, he distanced himself from me–protecting his pocketbook.

We never connected. But to his credit, he never stopped trying.

He even decided to go out and buy a really cheap grill from Buckeye Mart, complete with charcoal briquettes and lighting fluid. He was determined to grill hamburgers in our back yard.

He had no experience.

The first half hour was spent trying to figure out how to ignite the charcoal. Then he ended up wasting about two pounds of hamburger because he didn’t know you were supposed to wait until the fire went down. I faithfully stood by his side watching as he told me I would be taking over the grill in just a few moments.

I never did take over the grill.

The charcoal he bought was so cheap it wouldn’t stay lit and the lighter fluid was bargain brand and not very effective.

So at the end of the excursion, my father presented a platter of hamburgers that looked like charcoal briquettes, and some that were still raw.

It was a fiasco.

It would have been fine if he had laughed at himself or admitted his lack of foreknowledge. But he didn’t. He blamed Buckeye Mart for having inferior products and me for not being adequately motivated.

It is not a good memory.

But it does remind me that a sad man–who happened to be my dad–kept trying to please a very bratty son.

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Buzzards

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Buzzard: (n) a large hawklike bird of prey

Sometimes I find myself discontent with my status and very fussy about my being.

Even though the more religious souls around me would disagree, I believe the Creator was much better intentioned than adept at design.

You know what I’m saying? Every once in a while, each one of us gets in a mood to buy some watercolors and try to paint a picture. Even though the experience may be pleasant, the results of the painting adventure need to buried in the back yard.

Yet what often causes me to recover from my spiritual swoon is considering how fortunate that I am not another type of creature.

I would despise being a cockroach.

Being a rat living in the sewers of New York City seems uncomfortable.

And I wouldn’t want to be a buzzard. Job description: flying around the sky all day long looking for dead things. Sometimes really, really dead things–so I can eat.

Now, I know that hamburger is just the remaining flesh of a cow, but when you add some ketchup, pickles and onions, it can be quite good.

Buzzards have to land and pick the bones of the dead.

I don’t want to be a buzzard. And I especially don’t want to be an emotional buzzard–flying around looking for the disasters in the lives of others so I can chew the fat with the old birds about their demise.

I don’t like buzzards–but they are part of creation.

So may I say, “Carion, my wayward son.”

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