For Your Monday: The Wright Stuff

With all the incredibly depressing news around the world as well as at home, along with the winter blues and today being a Monday, I figured we could all use a few chuckles. May I present to you, if you don't already know him...

Steven Wright
comedian

Born in 1955...inspired by Johnny Carson's show...was swept away by George Carlin's "Class Clown" album... self-admitted introvert and odd-man-out, though he listened to endless hours of comedy played late on weekend nights on a Boston radio station...

Whereas Robin Williams bounces off walls more erratically than photons in an entropy chamber in his stage deliveries, Steven's humor comes in the form of dead-pan delivery...not necessarily everybody's cup of tea, but he makes me laugh.

Here are just some of his sage deliveries:

"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."

"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time."

"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard."

"Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish."

"It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature."

"What's another word for Thesaurus?"

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"

"If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?"

"I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it."

"Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect."

"If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?"

"I have the worlds largest seashell collection. You may have seen it, I keep it spread out on beaches all over the world."

"If Dracula can't see his reflection in the mirror, how come his hair is always so neatly combed?"

'I can remember the first time I had to go to sleep. Mom said, "Steven, time to go to sleep." I said, "But I don't know how." She said, "It's real easy. Just go down to the end of tired and hang a left." So I went down to the end of tired, and just out of curiosity I hung a right. My mother was there, and she said "I thought I told you to go to sleep."'

"I bought some powdered water yesterday. I don't know what to add."

"Every now and then I like to lean out my window, look up and smile for a satellite picture."

click on photo for video link

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No super-cold wintry weather this week, but we do have some rain chances, which is a good thing. Looks like I'll have some time to catch up on other things the recent cold kept me from doing - except for when it's raining!

Carpe diem, y'all!

"My Fair Weather Lady"

That's what George Bernard Shaw could have penned had he dabbled in meteorology along with his award-winning plays (could NOT come up with something cute-sie for 'Pygmalion'...!). More on Mr. Shaw in a moment.

Looks like we've got a freight train of cold heading our way by next weekend, not unlike the hit we took two weeks ago...and a Gulf system poised to run up the coast and be here in the Carolinas Thursday ahead of the cold.

It's not a classic set-up for a wintry scenario...for that you'd prefer to have a 'low' kick out of the southern Rockies into TX and have it make a slow track near the Gulf coast and gentle curve NE in GA. This week's puppy will start further south and run straight up the Atlantic coast fairly quickly.

There looks to be a pretty strong area of high pressure that will be over NY then, which would feed cold air in from the NE and build a nice cold wedge in the Piedmont...with the charging Arctic air poised in the northern Plains states to rush in.

Ah, but there is the timing of it all...most most models (as well as the 'official' forecast) say only cold rain for us, with snow and snow-mix for the mountains (mainly from upslope flow from the northwest). But this morning, as I finish off my coffee at home, my one little favored model has snow in the northern Piedmont Thursday, or at least a rain-snow mix. Could make things a bit interesting for what is an otherwise quiet but cooler forecast.

(We now return to our regularly scheduled non-weather blog, that has nothing to do with the above weather scenario except that I started with a 'play' on words from "My Fair Lady"...)

I've always remembered and held dear a quote of Shaw's that rings of great truth:

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

In general, people don't like to have their beliefs and world visions rocked, and they like to let it be known and heard. Just read the Charlotte Observer's editorial page on almost any given day and you'll see how widespread chest-thumping is even down to simple, trite levels. And then some.

And so I got poking around for more of his quotes, which I found of interest and worthy of mulling...I'll call 'em mulling 'spices'. Enjoy.

Quotes from George Bernard Shaw:

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."

"Hell is full of musical amateurs."

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."

"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."

"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."

"When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him it's called ferocity."

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and , if they can't find them, make them."

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege - my *privilege* to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

"No News Is Good News...?"

At least that's how the old saying goes...and some would have it apply to the business of news as opposed to waiting to hear from someone...today's post had me re-reading some quotes I rather like, and mentally reviewing daily 'life' and how it can get in a rut if you're not paying attention.

All too often we are bombarded with stories and situations that breed negativity and fear; in fact, many people and business use those very things to make money off of other people, preying on their insecurities. The recent Virginia Tech massacre was an attrocity, yet it happens daily in Iraq...and Africa...and how many of us turn our heads and hearts the other way when it happens to 'somebody else' far away? We do it daily. We all must start realizing that what happens to our Brothers and Sisters around the world is happening to a part of ourselves. We are One.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
- Elie Wiesel

And if indifference and complacency hasn't entwined us, some degree of fear and unease probably has. I well imagine another type of "9/11"will happen again on US soil...seems folly to think of ourselves as insular and untouchable, no matter what efforts we put forth. That doesn't mean don't put forth the effort. That also doesn't mean shutting down and living life always afraid of what might happen. As Neale Donald Walsch so appropriately writes, fear is really an acronym for "False Evidence Appearing Real".

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller

Security is when everything is settled.
When nothing can happen to you.
Security is the denial of life.
- Germaine Greer

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.
- James F. Bymes

Things that make you go 'hmmmmm...'

I always get asked about the name of my flutes, "Ugly Boys". I suppose I should show a picture of that first flute, one that I never intended for anyone to see as it is so crude...or shall I say primitive and aboriginal, that it is a flute (actually 'whistle') only because of the way it produces a sound. It's terribly crude, disproportioned...and it plays loud, strong, and fun. I called it "Ugly Boy" that first day, and found the name amusing...as time quickly passed, I realized there was a greater lesson to be given to others by keeping the name...

After any concert or lecture/performance, after all have seen and heard the variety of flutes and voices I create, I pull out Ugly Boy. I expect the laughter and chuckles. I proudly show the string used to hold the block on, the way-oversized fingerholes that I always say spawning salmon could swim through...and last but not least the square of duct tape near the mouthpiece where I accidentally cut into the slow-air chamber. And then I play it. There is not another sound to be heard. Jaws drop. Folks are usually speechless. Here's why the name stuck...

In the silence after I play Ugly Boy...I speak to the rapt attention and remind people to 1) NEVER judge anyone or any thing by what it looks like on the outside, and 2) like that original 24" piece of knotty yellow pine, it had a music inside of it that was released...each of us has a huge box of 'music' inside that screams to be let out into the world. Our responsibility is to go Within and find that inner 'music', what it is that stirs our soul so much we can't wait to wake up and get to it...and let it out wildly and often.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
-Issac Asimov

By the way, I don't write all of this for just your benefit - I write it to myself, as well.