UNREMITTING FAILURE

The Song "Afternoon Delight"

Is, we're shocked to learn, about daytime sex.  Needless to say, this topic is disgusting to many, if not most, decent people.  Sex while the sun's still up?  Ignominious.  Immoral even.  The sex act should be conducted in utter darkness, darkness outside the home as well as inside the home.  The curtains should be drawn (there could be a moon) and no lights should be on, even in rooms other than the room the sex act is being conducted in.  If the sex act is conducted outside the home, which is madness but some of your lower orders (hippies, campers, teenagers) do it, say in the backyard or on a not currently in use football field or in the woods or in a flowery pasture while the birds look away in furious shame, darkness should again prevail.  There should be no moon, or a waning moon, and a very waning moon at that. 

All of this brings us, warily, to the subject of nakedness.  This is a subject that it's best to sneak up on, then throw a sheet over.  Suffice it to say that all rational people agree that nakedness is a form of madness, especially during sex.  Naked people are people who have completely lost their moral bearings, and are capable of anything, even sensual enjoyment with their shower fixtures.  If sex were about enjoyment, masturbation wouldn't cause blindness.  Sex is purely for procreation, and the mass production of future mass producers.  It's too bad that babies can't be pressed like CDs in factories under sanitary conditions; unfortunately, we have to wallow in filth to produce them, the squalling wretches. 

This brings us to the touchy subject of touching during sex.  Needless to say it's a pile of oily rags just waiting for the lubricious match of lust.  First you touch a person, and the next thing you know you're groping them with your tumescent fingers.  It's horrible.  Sex should be a noncontact sport, like dodge ball or bowling.  Except that it isn't a sport, it's a terrible responsibility that weighs heavily upon us all, and causes us to weep, and destroys entire villages down to the last chicken, and makes God frown.  All that, and having it with siblings causes retards.   

The Desk Snorer

We seem to have nothing to say today, which is a pity, because we're dying. 

Not literally, we're never going to die literally (we've made arrangements), but figuratively we feel like we're going to die if we don't write something on this blog. 

We don't know why it's such a big deal that we write something today, except that we didn't write anything yesterday and that hurt, it hurts us to go a day without writing something, and we're talking physically in the gonads it hurts. 

Of course yesterday we had an excuse, we were superbusy, the boss came flying down the stairs cracking his whip and shouting, "Work, by God, you'll work or feel the sting of my lash!"  But today he's nowhere to be seen and so we've got the "leisure time" to write except we can't think of a thing to write about.  Everything bores us.  And our life is so boring we can't even begin to tell you, to the extent that we just took a little desk nap.  We're an adept desk napper, we don't snore or anything, or if we do all our coworkers are to polite to tell us about it.  For all we know we're a trumpeting snorer, and such a sound sleeper that all our coworkers caper about our desk laughing, and pinning signs to our back that say "Desk snorer." 

The other night our friend David told us a story. It's 1971.  He's a hippie in the wilds of California, and just wandering in the woods when a Charles Mansonoid type personage waving a big sharp knive confronts him and says, "How many eyes do I have?"  David of course is scared out of his wits, and is wondering just what kind of answer this crazy person wants to hear.  Finally he ventures, "Two."  And with that the hippie, looking wise and somber, lowers his knife and says "And so you live."

It's a crazy world, Newt Gingrich walks around with a big sharp knife saying "How many eyes do I have?", but still we're bored and we wonder why.  Perhaps we need to get laid.  It's strange living with your ex-wife and having no idea how to get laid, it's been so long.  We're rusty.  And we can't even invitee the potential layee back to our apartment because our ex-wife is there, which is guaranteed to make things awkward especially seeing as there's only one bed.  We love Mrs. UF (ex) madly and we'd go crazy living without our dogs, so living where we're living makes sense, although not to most people.  But it seems like a perfectly reasonable arrangement to us.  Still it's damned inconvenient in the sex department, which is to say that it's hard to imagine trying to explain to any potential sex partner who strikes our fancy that we're still living with our ex-wife but it's okay, it's not what you think, we're not cheating on her because, see, the two of us have an agreement.  No woman is going to go for a situation like that, which means we're doomed to celibacy for as long as we continue to live with Mrs. UF (ex). 

Anyway, it looks like we've written something after all, thanks to the tons of coffee we've consumed which is why we're writing this way, with the long run-on sentences and all, thank God for caffeine which we drink by the bucket and still we manage to find it within us to take desk naps, which are very restorative and good for the soul, and God knows we need them now that we're doing yoga at night, which energizes us and keeps us awake, we keep hearing Rodney Yee saying "namaste" every time we close our eyes, and the book we're reading is just so many empty calories and the chocolate we eat in bed doesn't help, and we love our life despite the fact that we'll probably never get laid again, not even in our dreams, which mostly involve us drinking lots of alcohol, and smoking lots of pot, to the extent that if you find yourself in one of our dreams you're virtually guaranteed to be wasted, lucky you. 

Romney Wins Again

This time in New Hampshire.  We have mixed feelings about this, as on the positive side Mitt is the only Republican candidate who doesn't set off a Geiger counter.  On the negative side, he's a soulless vacuum and the only Republican candidate with a breath of a chance of defeating Obama, who we prefer despite the fact that he has consistently disappointed us as President, reaffirming our belief that voting for any American politician is a great way of making a fool of yourself.  Anyway, the great charade of participatory democracy now moves on to South Carolina and its wealth of religious nutters.  We can hardly wait to hear the gibberish and swill that comes out of the mouths of the candidates trying to mollify that mob of cretins.  What a great year for politics, that most useless of sports, 2012 promises to be!

Why We're Closeminded

We haven't always been closeminded.  When we were born we looked at the world with eyes of wonder, receptive and open to all the stimuli that came flooding in.  We were a little growing flower, and the world was our sunshine.  We were curious, that's the truth of it, and we couldn't learn enough about all the exciting things that were happening all around us.

Then came 1963, and the Great Littlestown Flood.  It took our mother and father, and our sister and brothers, and our house and our car, and even our dog, Flopsie.  We were left to wander the devastated flood plain in our underpants, shivering.  People, our mother and father, and our sister and our brothers, and even Flopsie, say it didn't happen.  But what would they know?--they all died, Flopsie included, after falling into a crevasse in Switzerland during a ski vacation in 1966, which they also claim didn't happen.  Some families are happy families and some families are sad families and some families just refuse to give up the ghost, no matter how convenient it would be in explaining our subsequent problems adjusting to life. 

The truth is that due to our family's stubborn refusal to become collectively deceased in a tragic accident or act of god, we have no idea why we are the way we are.  Their selfishness denied us a good story to hang our dysfunction on, and we have never forgiven them for it.  If they'd only all fallen into that crevasse in Switzerland, we'd have a stranglehold on the pity of our fellows and the ideal reason for being the self-pitying wreck we are.  Instead, they're all around to call us a liar whenever we try to bring up the terrible crevasse tragedy at the Thanksgiving table.  It still works with shrinks though.  We tell them both stories, to make them feel doubly sorry for us. 

Anyway, that's why we became closeminded.  Our whole family died in the Great Littlestown Fire of 1967, which was started by Flopsie, who accidentally knocked a can of propane into a pile of oily rags during that dry tinder summer when we still believed in everything and all of life seemed like an open book, say the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Eleventh Edition page 447, upon which you will find the definition of the word "fabulist".      

Yoga (Again)

Last night we tried yoga for the first time, and God help us, we liked it.  We were ready to assume the corpse pose on the sofa while Mrs. UF (ex) did her yoga when the imp of the perverse struck and we thought, Why not give it a go?  So we did.  And it was fun, like the Wii "Dancing with Abba" we tried when we were at our sister's house for the New Year. 

Now, of course, we're confounded.  We have staked our entire reputation on hating yoga and now to turn around and say we like it, well, it's cause for much moral confusion.  What if something similar happens vis a vis our relationship with Sting?  What if we suddenly find ourselves singing along with "Living in the Material World"? Should we surrender to it? Or set ourselves on fire, the way a righteous Buddhist monk would do?   

And who knows whether yoga isn't just the tip of the proverbial Titanic sinker?  What if we one day develop a yen for a neti pot?  Or develop an unsavory interest in mandalas?  We pride ourselves on holding to certain opinions, developed over the course of an ill-spent and unhappy lifetime, and we'd hate to have to abandon them just to find peace of mind.  There's such a thing as contentment, we think, and we have successfully evaded it only with constant effort, by effectively ducking anything that carries even the whiff of self-improvement.  To perversely turn our back on that principle reeks of treason.  We've built a perfectly precarious life for ourselves by assuming the posture of the self-helpless, rightfully or wrongfully assuming that people who seek to improve themselves are like ducks trying to be tigers.  You are what you are, i.e., somebody you're wise to run away from.  But you always catch up to yourself, and nothing, not even books or chocolate, can help.

But what if we were wrong all that time?  What if yoga, and everything that goes along with it, really does lead to peace of mind?  All I want is my peace of mind sang the singer from Boston who ended up gassing himself with his propane grill in his bathroom, and what horror to think that maybe it was as close as the Self-Help section of his local bookstore.  We hope to never end up a browser there.  But the way things are going, that may just be our fate.                         

corpse pose 

We Thank God We Have Good Fashion Sense

Unlike the rest of our family, who wear hats they bought at Pottery Barn, we've always had good taste in clothes.  We were a sartorial Wunderkind, the first kid in our third-grade class to sport a paisley dicky.  True, we had a dark period in the mid-seventies when we took to wearing bib overalls and a biker beard in imitation of our pig farmer friends, the Harrisons.  We loved pot and placidyl but the combination turned us into a sloven.  We no longer wore a flower in our buttonhole, so to speak.  But we repented of our ways when we met our first wife, who was from that fashion citadel of the world, New Jersey.

We say all this because lately we have been suffering a relapse into poor fashion.  Lately our idea of a happening outfit for walking the dogs is a pair of track suit pants and a sweater.  We look like a Bulgarian black marketeer in Marlboros.  Mrs. UF (ex) has commented on this decline in our usually dapper appearance, but the fact is we like looking like a Bulgarian black marketeer, it makes us feel dangerous.  We're even growing sideburns, and thinking of dying our hair jet black and then slicking it straight back with the kind of pomade that comes in a tin, and is usually purchased only by old black guys named Early. 

We know we're headed downhill, but we also know that there are bottoms beneath bottoms we hope never to reach.  For example, we ask you, loyal reader, to shoot us in the head should we ever be seen going about town in a rugby shirt.  Or a pair of fucking flip flops. 

A Bright Morning Thought

We really wish people would stop repopulating the Earth.  It's chockful of people already, certainly too many to send birthday cards to, and so far as we can tell the only reason many of them exist is to run us (the perpetual pedestrian) over with their cars. 

Everywhere we go we see couples pushing strollers, and they all have that smug look like they've done something special.  They have. They've virtually guaranteed, since there isn't enough food to go around, that somebody else's baby will go hungry.

The only way to stop the endless cycle of birth, suffering, and death is to cut out the first part.  But people don't care.  They blindly go on procreating, ruining a perfectly good sex act and virtually guaranteeing that we'll never have a quiet meal in a restaurant.  Somebody's kid is always causing a scene.

Our own personal feeling is that there shouldn't be more than six babies on the face of the Earth at any one time.  We were going to say five, but we're feeling profligate. 

Man is a failed experiment, as history shows.  We've brought nothing but misery to ourselves and to all the species around us.  All our much touted achievements are as nothing compared to our track record of war, genocide, rape, environmental depredation, and reality shows.  Every time we think of having a kid we remind ourselves that she'll most likely end up being murdered or, even worse, as a contestant on The Bachelorette.  

We realize that babies will always be born, because blind instinct always trumps rational thought. We're here to procreate, and by God we'll do it no matter who gets hurt.  We look at babies and we try to imagine their futures and all that comes to mind is that, if they live long enough, they can look forward to working until they're 80 before they'll be able to retire.  Then they'll go senile and their own children will abandon them.  Because that's human instinct too.  We were young once, and lacked the good sense to die in an automobile accident.  Now we have to go to work every day, and wonder what the point is.  Well, the point is there is no point.  We're the species whose highest achievement is to realize the point is there is no point.  We're here to watch cooking shows, if we're lucky enough to live in the First World, or to die at 3 of malnutrition, if we're even luckier and live in the Third World.   

Holiday Post-Mortem

Well, the Holidays are good and dead.  Christmas trees are piling up in the streets, tossed to the gutter by their ungrateful hosts like the bodies of plague victims in earlier times.  True, you still see the occasional tree illuminated in a window at night, plugged in by people desperate to squeeze every last Yule out of a dead log.  But nobody plays Christmas songs on the radio anymore.  And all the kids' presents are either broken or forgotten.  We haven't experienced an attack of the Christmas Spirit for ages, but it's still sad to watch the holly jolly time of year get dismantled, one decoration at a time, as if nothing ever happened.  The people we like are the ones who leave the colored Christmas lights on their house lit up until March.  Or the plastic Santa and reindeer sitting on the front lawn until July.  True, they tend to be either pathologically lazy or terminally drunk, but say what you will, they are the True Faithful. 

                                    "Hey buddy, could you spare a dime?"

Yoga's Not Really What You Think It Is

For instance, "namaste" really means assume Joyful Baby pose and take it like a man.

We Think We're Ready for "Supine Pigeon" Even!

We've decided to embrace yoga--as a spectator sport.  Last night Mrs. Ex-UF decided to "wind down" with some late night yoga, and we decided to lie on the sofa and watch.  It was very calming and soporific.  The ethereal New Age music, the soothing voice of the guy on the DVD doing the yoga--it all made us feel so serene it was almost like we were doing it ourselves.  We unglued ourselves from the sofa afterwards and we felt sore, but all loose and stretchy good at the same time.  It's as rigorous a nonworkout as we've ever had and we'd recommend it to anybody looking to enjoy the benefits of yoga without having to make a fool of themselves in the process. We hope to do it again tonight, only hopefully we''ll try something a tad bit more advanced.  Downward Dog is nice, as is Man Eating Pretzel While Flat on Back (our own original contribution to yoga choreography) but we think we're ready for some of the more difficult poses.      

Rodney Yee is Mrs. Ex-UF's favorite yogameister