Tag Archives: horror

Antique

dictionary with letter A

Antique: (n) an object such as a piece of furniture or work of art which has a high value due to its considerable age.

For a brief season in my life I had more money than I needed and therefore convinced myself that I needed more money.

It’s amazing how greed does not go away when you find yourself in the black after bills are paid, but rather, settles as a black cloud over your soul, convincing you that if you don’t lay up more treasure, you will be swallowed by some catastrophe in the future, yet unseen.

So even though most of my journey has been spent clapping my hands in glee when the electric bill has been paid and cleared the bank, during this particular odyssey of finance, I became obsessed with a new word.

Investment.

Yes. Everything needed to be an investment.

So I was told my counselors (who were many since they discovered they could siphon off my wealth via giving advice) that houses were a good purchase.

I was told that if I bought a beautiful white grand piano, it would only appreciate over the years.

And of course, it was necessary, since I was now a person of worldly ilk, to go antiquing.

I was supposed to go to little storefronts which were jammed to the gills with fishy deals, and listen to someone explain how “this table was once in the den of Johnny Appleseed,” and had “already trebled in value and would certainly continue to do so.”

Having an untrained eye, to me it looked like a beat-up piece of wood which should have been broken up to fuel a fire years ago.

When I pointed this out to one of the enthusiastic “antiquers,” he stood back in horror and said, “It’s old. So it’s worth more money.”

I explained to him that I was getting older, and no one found me more valuable. He laughed a little (after all, I was still a potential sale).

Here was my discovery:

  • I bought houses and barely broke even on the turnaround.
  • That white grand piano had to be sold for less than half of its original value.
  • And all the antiques I purchased were viewed by garage sale people as worthless clumps of nothing instead of the posterity of Mr. Appleseed.

There is a bliss to poverty.

You don’t have to wonder what you’re going to do with all your money.

Macaroni and cheese still tastes good on Day Three.

And most importantly… you don’t have to deal with antiques.

 

 

 

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Anthrax

dictionary with letter A

Anthrax: (n) a notifiable bacterial disease of sheep and cattle, which can be transmitted to humans, causing severe skin ulcerations or a form of pneumonia.

 

People often demand that sensibility requires a certain amount of fear.

Matter of fact, one of the easiest ways to portray yourself as an idiot is to suggest to a roomful of people that they stop all worrying, relax and enjoy the journey.

There are just certain words that evoke terror in the human spirit and cause us to reject all common sense in deference to abstract horror.

Anthrax is one of those.

It’s not really clear to me what happens when you have anthrax, but it is the substance of theatrical tale and myth, which leads us to believe that an outbreak of this disease could wipe out the planet, and more importantly, harm us.

I do not know what is adequate apprehension to make sure that you do not accidentally kill yourself with a condition or calamity that smacks you in the head during your season of unawareness.

But I grow weary of being warned more than enlightened, cursed more than blessed, alerted more than informed and frightened more than loved.

Is there a balance?

Is there a correct amount of information imparted to us which allows us to be knowledgeable without becoming irrational?

Here’s the approach:

1. Explain to me what the danger is.

2. Freshen my mind with ideas of how to avoid the danger.

3. Balance it by letting me know what power I have to prevent, alleviate or eliminate the pending doom.

To me, if you don’t include all three of these in your announcement of Armageddon, you will find yourself failing to really enjoy the days leading up to the end of the world.

(By the way, the most dangerous condition passed on by sheep and cattle is heart disease…)

 

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Algebra

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Algebra: (n) the part of mathematics in which letters and other general symbols are used to represent numbers and quantities in formulas and equations.

X marks the spot.

Actually, it marks the spot where I crinkled my brow and totally ceased to understand mathematics.

My high school algebra teacher was a recent immigrant from Japan who had a mastery of numbers and a limited capacity for language. He created a double whammy–I was trying to learn something that was Greek to me, with a Japanese accent.

On top of that, it was his first teaching position, having just graduated from The Ohio State University, and although he was eager to be an instructor, he was less than versed in some of the more humane possibilities.

So after he tried to explain algebra to me for the fourth time, he became frustrated and started to curse. It was in Japanese, but I will tell you that swearing has the same intensity in every langauge.

I don’t know what it was about algebra. For some reason, I was granted a B in the subject, even though I have no concept about the process whatsoever.

Imagine my glee when the next year I discovered that I would be taking Algebra II. It was very similar to the sensation of, “even though I’ve never been on a date, here is the woman I am going to marry.”

Honestly, I have never used algebra in my whole life. Perhaps I could have put it to some practical purpose, but that would have required that I understand its value, in order to know what purpose would have been practical.

Candidly, I toil under the concept of eduction. What I mean is, I do believe there are things we are taught which may not have any immediate value to our lives, but still have an esoteric importance.

Flatly, they make us seem civilized.

So I’m happy to report that I actually survived a semester of algebra, and Algebra II, and then ran out of the room in horror at the mere mention of calculus.

So for me: X=the 24th letter of the alphabet.

 

Afloat

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Afloat: (adv) floating in water, not sinking

There is one great advantage to being a fat dude (other than the joy you achieve in chomping your way to the status quo…) When I go into the deep end of a pool, I am able to stand without needing to tread water … and float.

Matter of fact, one day I was doing just that and a guy swimming nearby me paused and stared at me in a combination of wonder and horror, and finally worked up the courage to ask, “How are you doing that?”

Feeling a bit of mischief in my heart, I replied, “Sometimes I get tired of walking on top of the water and I ease down to rest.”

The humor escaped him.

The reason I stay afloat is because I have enough lard stored in my tissue  that it creates a buoyancy which lifts me up in the current. Now, I am not suggesting that this is adequate motivation for risking the perils of obesity. But there is something wonderful about finding a way to be afloat without having to constantly struggle.

Matter of fact, I’ve tried to duplicate the sensation in other areas of my life:

  • With my family. I have raised my sons, and now it’s up to them to figure out what parts of what I shared were valuable and what was crap. I should relax.
  • With the people I meet. I can’t judge them, change them or ignore them. So instead, I will play a game and find ways love them.
  • With my finance. Great ideas offer the possibility of work, which if performed excellently, normally renders financial gain.
  • And with my art. Write it, sing it, share it, live it, believe it and leave the rest to the whim of God.

The best way to “stay afloat” is to be chubby with good cheer, instead of lean and mean … with despair.

 

Aeschylus

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Aeschylus: (c. 390 – 314 BC) Greek dramatist, best known for his tragedies Agamemnon, Choephoroe and Eumenides. Considered to be the father of the Greek tragedy.

Not only the father of the Greek tragedy, but also seemingly the parent of prime-time television and the movie industry of our present day.

After all, if we don’t insert some tragedy into the stories we tell, we risk some critic dubbing our tale “saccharine, cloying,” or worse yet–“family fare.”

There is a common aversion in today’s social strata against sharing a story with ups, downs, ins and outs, which ends up with a realistic conclusion instead of a Hollywood ending. Matter of fact, I think it would be impossible for the 24-hour news cycle to report anything that isn’t either sensational or able to be sensationalized.

And let me offer a tidbit of opinion which will probably grind the teeth of some of my readers: when there is a shooting at a school or a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, and we begin to hear the phrase, “death toll” introduced into the storyline, even though our better selves hope that people will not be killed, we sometimes might be a little disappointed when this running death toll does NOT rise.

We have geared the American public to be thirsty for blood–as long as it’s not their own. If their little angel sons and daughters have a small prick on the finger, they ready to rush them to the emergency room. But we will watch with a mixture of horror and intrigue as the offspring in Haiti wallow in mud, disease and death.

We are a tragic clump of clods, who honor Aeschylus by perusing the Internet for even MORE of the bizarre.

And if anyone such as myself would dare to object to the onslaught of the macabre, we have prepared speeches decrying these idealistic fools as “sappy”–or worse yet, “religious.”

To reach a point where we can stand tall and pursue our dreams, we will need to reject the fallacy of failure as being inevitable in the human experience. Not everything has to come up roses.

But why in the hell would we plant just thorns?

 

Acedia

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acedia: (n.) a spiritual or mental sloth; apathy.

The problem with religion is that it often deadens people’s instincts to be expansive and will to excel.

The difficulty with atheism is that it launches a soul on a sea, fostering such loneliness that the end result is despair.

Yet a life without spirit is asking the emotions and the brain to peacefully co-exist in three square feet of skin, never meant to contain such revolution.

The human spirit is meant to be aflame with passion, so as to referee the continuing struggle between that which we feel, that which we think and ultimately, that which we do.

Anything that comes along to create apathy, despondency and hopelessness is an enemy of those who are adorned with such great intelligence by the Creator that it affords them the authority to walk as supreme on earth.

So how can we have enough God without becoming religious and enough questioning without being plagued by our own nagging agnosticism?

It is perhaps the greatest question that faces all humankind–and even though it may occasionally cause us to run away in horror, we must realize that the payoff for finding such a treasure of balanced expression is worth every single moment of turmoil.

Don’t give up on God, who never gave up on you–and in the process you’ll never give up on people.

Fight the tendency to go numb. Endure a little pain to welcome the pleasure … of a soaring salvation.

 

Abash

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAbash: v. cause to feel embarrassed, disconcerted or ashamed: she was not abashed at being caught.

So I was thinking this morning about what my favorite nightmares were. I guess “favorite nightmares” is the definition of an oxymoron. Maybe I change it to “recurring themes in the night-vision terrors.” Unfortunately, that phrasing smacks of too much drama.

Anyway, there are three events which inwardly terrorize my soul and if they were ever outwardly duplicated, I would be embarrassed–abashed, if you will.

First: My brain conjures visions of me being naked in a room in front of strangers. It is the personification of revealing my shortcomings. The anxiety that permeates my feelings during those apparitions often awakens me with a start–heart racing, chill running down my spine. I know there must be people who are totally confident about the prospect being naked in front of others, but truthfully, if anyone is going to see me naked, they must be willing to apply for the job, go through a drug test and survive three months of probation.

The second dream of horror is finding myself in front of an audience, and as I fastidiously and faithfully offer my gifts, the auditorium is gradually depleted by the viewers departing one by one. There you go. Apparently I am extremely embarrassed by the prospect of being abandoned on stage based upon my ideas or persona.

And the final example is driving in a car or some sort of vehicle, heading off for a destination which for some reason or another, is never achieved or even looms on the horizon–a frightening mixture of being lost and fully aware that I am in charge of the steering wheel, which has deposited me in the wilderness.

I guess the key is this: if you know what embarrasses you and you can be honest about it, you can avoid being abashed.

So I don’t like to be naked unless there is great profit and blessing to it in front of someone who is very forgiving.

And I don’t relish rejection, so I will use some wisdom in avoiding those who take pleasure in critiquing instead of doing.

And getting lost or running late obviously terrifies my soul, so an earlier departure and an excellent set of directions is my best remedy to such a fiasco.

Embarrassment is often what befalls us because we fail to acknowledge its existence.