Why We Fail

We were playing in our backyard when we were eight when we were struck by a flaming fireball of failure.   It came from space we think.  Scorched by ineffectuality, from that moment on our every gesture was futile, and our every attempt to succeed at whatever task it was we were assigned was met by abject defeat.  Our salt map of Lake Titicaca ended up looking like an elephant.  We accidentally left our homework at home, and our forays into kickball always ended with us kicking ourselves in the balls.  We weren't born to lose, we were christened to do so by intergalactic fire.  We have never told anyone about this before, because people are unlikely to believe it.  In other words, our attempt to tell the truth is bound to end in failure.  We suspect that people are randomly struck by all kinds of interstellar fireballs--fireballs of destiny.  Some portend success, others fame.  We just happened to be hit by a fireball of failure.   Then again, perhaps we were already surrounded by an aura of futility, which is what attracted the fireball of failure in the first place.  In which case we were born to lose, and the drop from our mother's womb wasn't a birth, but the beginning of a very lengthy execution.   

Comments

[Jeffers]

Aren't they all.

I was hit by the esoteric fireball of jazz hoop-de-doo & now I'm cursed to wander the halls of the world shouting to no one in particular, "No! you fools, not The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady, but it's Live at Antibes that is the high water mark of Charles Mingus, especialy Folk Forms I, Prayer for Passive Resistance, Better Git Hit in Your Soul, & Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting! Are you daft? It was a band of perfect foils!" Sheesh.

I should have a flaming skull for a head.

[UF MIKE]

I think I saw that flaming ball of jazz hit you. I was looking out the upstairs bedroom window, when whoosh! A flaming fireball hit you and ignited you. I heard John Coltrane emanating from nowhere, from the spheres. You ran into the house, still on fire, screaming "I must hear Out to Lunch!"

[Martijn]

"Live at Antibes" I love so much! I even loved it so much that I, in a fit of blind optimism, thought that the whole world must hear that album and brought it to the place where I work. Needless to say...

Mike, you were hit by a flaming ball of penmantality and some whacks of the humor stick. Amen!

[UF MIKE]

Those whacks of the humor stick hurt!

[Jeffers]

I hear you Martijn, hot jazz pearls before swine. Ervin & Dolphy are great together, the preacher & the flat out Freak-Out talking in tongues, & Ted Curson is super under-rated. Mingus & Dannie Richmond: you don't need to say anything else.

Jazzbo out.

[Martijn]

The trumpet was making everybody nervous. They said so. And then they said the unspeakable... 'I don't mind jazz, but none of that nervous busy stuff, only soft jazz.' I never brought another cd since. Soft jazz! It's like disco Dylan, Lennon & McCartney Tiguana Style. Hey!