Tag Archives: Internet

Amass

dictionary with letter A

Amass: (v.) to gather together or accumulate a large amount or number

Oh, cautious soul that I truly am, I am always suspicious of the majority.

When human beings amass in large quantities, stuffing themselves into arenas, large sanctuaries or convention halls, I become a bit disconcerted.

Because to gain applause you have to get the approval of many people at the same time. Already that connotes a great degree of compromise. It also encourages demagogues, who espouse the present popular stumping, screaming from the podium until the listeners become frenzied.

Every time I become concerned about my level of popularity or fame I go on the Internet and watch a news reel of Adolph Hitler circa 1932 in Germany. No one could have had more charisma. If you read his speeches in English, they are filled with nationalism, pride and a great sense of “Yay us.” So of course, people amassed behind such encouraging themes.

But here is the startling fact: human beings are just better when we’re not kissing our own ass (or nearby asses).

Certainly we require a certain amount of appreciation, but mingled in with that should be adequate doses of challenges, questioning and even the occasional on-the-spot review.

Although I realize that I am in the minority in my lack of acceptance for the majority, I will tell you that the best decisions I have made in my life, the most amazing transitions and the most valuable conclusions arrived at in my soul, were accomplished in moments of reflection, and punctuated by seasons of repentance.

  • So those who amass wealth are prodded in their spirits to give it away. If they aren’t, we call them “stingy butt-holes.”
  • Those who amass friends are in need of sharing that friendship with the entire world instead of swallowing it whole. Otherwise we think of them as glory-hounds, flitting from one party to another.
  • And those who amass respect are obligated to share it with “the least of the brethren” around them, so as not to convince the gathered horde that superiority has been achieved, and therefore the inferior ones should be trekked to the gas chamber.

I don’t believe in a lonely life. But I do believe that the “road less traveled” is not only quieter, but gives you a chance to look deep inside and discover the need for improvement.

 

Ajar

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Ajar: (adj and adv) a door or other opening left slightly open

“Keep the door ajar.”

We all know what that means.

It’s our way of communicating that what is happening, beyond that which is inside the enclosure, is not private, segregated or secret.

It is also what we were told to do as teenagers when we were in a room with our girlfriend or boyfriend. It was a reminder that at any time, our seclusion could be interrupted by the inclusion of others.

I made a decision a long time ago to keep my life ajar. To think that any of us can get by with hiding our mistakes or foibles is a ridiculous notion. In an age of super-information available at super-speed, it is doubtful that privacy can be attained, so the only thing open to us is to select speed of revelation.

I’ve been silly about it in the past.

  • At one time I was embarrassed that I didn’t go to college, but began a family immediately due to my rising hormones, which preceded declining grades.
  • I used to be afraid to admit to others how unknown my efforts were and attempted to name-drop to procure respect, which only, in the long run, drew further attention to those mightier than me, whose names I was invoking.
  • I used to avoid questions by changing the subject or offering answers I thought were cleverly ambiguous, but actually just sounded evasive and stupid.

You can feel free to attempt to delude the public, keeping your door tightly shut, in hopes of avoiding interference from strangers. But as the Good Book says, there is nothing “whispered in the ear which is not eventually shouted from the housetops.” (By the way, a statement spoken by a fellow who didn’t even have to deal with the Internet—or the NSA.)

So I can sum up my philosophy about “keeping my life ajar” in three quick statements:

  1. If I’m ashamed of it, change it enough to where the shame is gone.
  2. If I’m the first one to bring it up, nobody can act like they “got me.”
  3. Honesty is the best way to keep people off your back, because they relax and then you can actually be more like yourself.

Keep the door ajar. Pretty good philosophy.

Keep your life ajar. Genius.

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?

 

Ache

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Ache: 1.(n.) a continuous or prolonged dull pain in a part of one’s body 2. (v.) to feel an intense desire for: e.g. she ached for his touch.

What IS a dull pain?

Isn’t that an oxymoron?

I guess they call it “dull” to differentiate it from the concept of a sharp pain. But see, a sharp pain is something that comes quickly and then disappears for a while. A dull pain, by its very nature, hangs around, convincing you with each passing moment that it isn’t quite as uneducated and without influence as one might first believe.

You know what I’ve learned about pain? The closer it is to headquarters, the more it hurts. The headquarters, in this case, is the brain.

Since the brain REGISTERS all this crap, telling us exactly how miserable we are, if you only have to travel a few inches to get there, the level of misery is more intense. After all, isn’t a headache or toothache much more intolerable than a “big toe ache?” Any message from the big toe almost has to be telegraphed to the brain. After all, no big toe would have the Internet… By the time the telegraph gets all the way up to the brain, it kind of responds, “What’s the big deal? It’s a big TOE.” But when it’s a tooth or the head itself, special interest is given. The brain views it as a home invasion.

So even though we refer to “aching” as a dull pain, the intensity of the affliction is actually determined by how close it is to the gray matter. I guess the exception to that would be a heart attack. I suppose that’s because the heart and brain have a special friendship that we are not completely privy to.

So I think anybody who refers to an “ache” as a dull pain is someone who is presently not so afflicted. Aching, whether it be from love-sickness, a toothache or an irritated little toe on the left foot, is a fussy matter which does not want to go away, and only intensifies … the more we think about it.

Abstain

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abstain: (v.) to restrain oneself from doing or enjoying something 2. to formally decline to vote either for or against a proposal or motion

l have discovered the quickest way to make sure that I eat a chocolate candy bar in the next twenty-four hours. All I have to do is promise to abstain from them.

This works with almost anything else, too. It’s like the decision to abstain is really similar to purchasing a billboard in your brain to advertise the product. Once I’m convinced that I’m deprived, it’s is an easy journey to convince myself that the deprivation is … terminal.

This is why I have to giggle when people talk to me about encouraging teenagers to take the “vow of abstinence.”

When I was sixteen years old, I only thought about two things: food and sex. And most of the time, in some bizarre way, I mingled them.

So to turn to an adolescent and suggest that he or she should make a vow of celibacy when they are sitting on a raging reservoir of tempestuous hormones is to create the tiny cracks in the dam of their resistance, which will certainly lead to a flood of error.

I raised a whole bunch of boys. Here’s what I found out about their appetites: unless they were totally exhausted, ready to fall into bed, to enter a coma of sleep, they were constantly pursuing, through their curiosity, the entire panorama of feminine mystique. To eliminate the power of exhaustion from a teenager is to grant them license to explore their lusts to an inevitable result. (After all, the Catholic church has learned that asking its clergy to abstain from the “pleasures of the flesh” does NOT mean that they will not find divergent methods.)

Abstain is a funny word–and by funny, I mean strange, unusual and not particularly helpful.

I taught my sons to be busy, active and to burn off a lot of their physical energy instead of sitting around studying all the time, having temptation lure them into porn sites on the Internet. I also instructed them in the intelligence of masturbation as an alternative to becoming a daddy with pimples. It was quite successful.

And when I sensed that they were still bursting and bubbling with sexuality, I sat down with them to talk and giggle about it until they were saturated and once again ready for a good night’s sleep.

Abstain. It’s a word old people impose on the younger of our flock–once the elder rams have lost interest in what now preoccupies the young bucks.

Like I said … it’s a funny word.

 

Abecedarian

by J. R. Practixdictionary with letter A

Abecedarian:  adj. (1) arranged alphabetically (2) rudimentary, elementary: abecedarian technology (3) n. a person who is just learning, a novice

I never end up looking dumb unless I insist that I’m not dumb when I really am dumb and therefore, in conclusion, am proclaimed to be … well, dumb.

I wish I could learn this for all time. I still have this great desire to embellish, puff up my credentials and overstate my qualities. I guess I’m afraid that if I don’t toot my own horn, nothing horny will ever occur, so to speak.

When I was younger and flirting, I sometimes made the mistake of postulating on my prowess and then later found out, when someone took me up on my offer, that all of my claims were easily disproven in reality. Very embarrassing.

Yes, it is very important to be an abecedarian in the realm of sexuality. In no other category of life do false promises come to light quite as quickly as with that particular maneuver–followed in a close second by education.

I assume we are all occasionally tempted to make our menial qualifications of learning appear to be more “Ivy League.” But with the availability of the Internet, Google search and the suspicion of the general populace, one’s academic history can be acquired with too much ease to ever graduate yourself to a false state.

And then there’s abilities. I can always tell when someone has no talent. They talk to you about how much talent they have. Actually, that’s the beauty of talent–you don’t have to talk, advertise, promote or print a brochure. You can just punch a button inside your soul–and do it.

So I’m glad there’s a name for the profile of appearing to be a novice in life as a protection against the dangers of exaggeration. Let me just simplify things and say I am an abecedarian. And then maybe human beings–and God, in His infinite mercy–will grant me some much-needed slack.