The Bright Side

smile :-)

Always look on the bright side of life! Humor, encouraging news, survival, and love

I recommend Monty Python's Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, and The Holy Grail. My dad likes Laurel and Hardy and Fauwlty Towers. Airplane and Ferris Buehler's day off are pretty funny. Just for starters. I used to really like Beavis n' Butthead and Ren n' Stimpy. There's a lotta good stuff out there.

Video stores have tons, and u-tube is a blast, and tv shows (I recommend a tivo and a tv guide), and computers (I've recently discovered BUTTONS), and movies (pick an actor, pick a genre, pick a winner), and music (I recommend listening to something you would never hear on the radio, or come across in your usual routine)... Hiking and good meals and working up a sweat and fun conversation... I'm definitely not as depressed as I used to be. Frankly, life is pretty good. I love documentaries, and I haven't watched the Planet Earth series yet (I got it for X-mas). So that should be fun.

One major good part of my life is the dogs. Winnie, Theresa's bulldog, follows me around everywhere I go. I let her follow me outside the house the other day. She's adorable, looks kind of like a gremlin. Oliver and Marcel stand and lick me (and my face) every time I return from somewhere, like a walk. I don't need to take them on walks, because they have a huge yard to run around in (which they do). It was so fun this morning to see them go full throttle chasing each other around the yard, and then Oliver sitting like a human in the sun while Marcel flopped down and regained his breath sprawled out on the grass in the shade. My wife tells me their behavior is very unusual for dogs, because they lay on top of each other, as brothers and companions. That's the dogs. The beasts. We call Marcel the bugbear, a word we found next to bete noir in a thesaurus.

I'm reading Short Cuts, selected stories by Raymond Carver, made into a Robert Altman film, which we haven't seen yet. I'm enjoying the stories, so far. I think I'm going to keep reading his stuff. I love libraries. Pablo Neruda or somebody said, "heaven is a kind of library." I also have a few Economist magazines to catch up on, and my selection of preferred websites to surf, and of course Sara's personal gallery collection of art books. The Economist isn't as dismal as it sounds (for me).

I had a professor who said economists were the modern day priests. The origin of calling Economics "the dismal science" is usually said to be from the 19th century author Thomas Carlyle, who used the phrase to describe the pessimistic theories of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, since they predicted decline and fall. Actually, the true origin is from Carlyle using the term, in opposition to the "gay science" of poetry, as describing the quite abject and distressing support by economists for the sacred cause of Black Emancipation, due to their belief in letting people alone. So, you see, economics is only dismal if slavery is fun. J/k.

I've got this trippy JW (Jehovah's Witnesses) book. I went to a JW meeting yesterday, for fun. They were talking about Revelation and frogs and beasts and stuff. We have frogs croaking it up here right now. I love the frogs. I told them 'frog' was a derogatory term for a french man. They gave me a red book entitled 'Revelation, Its Grand Climax at Hand.' I hope I don't offend anyone when I say that title sounds like a description of masturbation, to me. They say the bible is The Good News. I guess it can be. It's got slavery in it. I'm not about to start slaying people with the jawbone of an ass, though, lol.

Sara's friend gave me an Ozomatli album, which is off the chain. Jess says Good stuff, mr. Tuna Fish. I listened to Ty Cobb by Pearl Jam online, set to the movie about him. Also, pretty cool. Sara has a lot of cd's I haven't listened to, yet, which I look forward to doing.

My wife is watching South Park, and I've got two humor books, Dave Barry's greatest hits, and Terry Pratchett's The tRUtH. I've got a full plate of goodness. We had barbecued lemon-chile chicken wings last night, and frozen cheese-stuffed pasta shells tonight. Tortilla chips with pico de gallo were good yesterday, too. Good eatin'

We got new tires on our car, which is good news. The weather is nice today. Of course, I've always liked rain, too. But it's nice walking weather, with birds and dogs and blue skies and gravel underfoot. And frogs, even during the day. I feel good and I'm losing weight, someone said I had a nice smile, and a JW guessed my age at only 25. The scenery here in the forest is, of course, beautiful. A real jungle far outshines a concrete one, in my book. I know, it's only a forest. There's a lake at the base of our mountain, with ducks and swans. There's a water hole I've been to, I'd like to return to again, in sunshine like today's.

CNN did a series a few months ago online about "heroes", which was a welcome relief from all the negativity and Hollywood crap that spews from the tv, usually. I wanted to mention that. Good people deserve to be in the news as much as the murderers. I'm disappointed that you can't access their 2007 profiles, as they're now into the 2008 version. There's also a website, myheroes.com, which tries to do the same thing. I had a roommate with a cat named Hero in Sacramento.

Good food is definitely key, for me, and everyone should have a few good cookbooks, and practice cooking. Secondly, people should exercise and get those endorphins going. Thirdly, I find writing keeps me sane, but that's just me. Good friends, keeping family ties, and having a healthy relationship really seal the deal. I'm kind of driven, but I believe the old adage of "if you're bored, you're boring." There's too much to do in this world. Stay curious, stay engaged, keep busy, have fun, and you'll love life. And remember, kiddies, just say no.

On the most serious note possible, I read that marijuana use may cause schizophrenia... Self-medicating with alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana for depression can also lead to (psychological) dependency, misuse and abuse, and addiction. Don't forget the weed can make you crazy. Crazy is not a clinical term. Insanity, isn't either, actually. It's a legal term. It's when you don't know the difference between right and wrong, I believe. Are there legal definitions? So, if you're mentally ill, on the bright side, I guess, is the fact that we're all insane, because we all disagree with at least one law, I would imagine. Maybe that's not quite such happy news. On the other hand, if the entire world was under one set of laws, I imagine a lot of us would be unhappy. Perhaps to be happy is to be insane.