Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say, and instead it’s open mike night. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
4/20/2025
Anything goes #24
24 responses to “Anything goes #24”
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Billions of shitty numbers, all trending shitty. Whyever do we allow it?
Love the guillotine fan site, and that the webmaster specifically says he’s opposed to the death penalty. I’d volunteer to keep the blade sharp.
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Okay folks, now is the time to print off the following dialog (hope I didn’t already share this one) and play theatre with your friends and family…or not:
Fantasies
He: I can’t believe what I told my girlfriend!
Friend: What this time? I swear you’re always getting in trouble with your mouth.
He: I told her that I usually have a fantasy when getting a blowjob.
Friend: Oops! Great move. So now…?
He: Yup, I’ll probably never get another.
Friend: Why did you tell her that? Its not smart to tell a lover about other fantasies.
He: She begged me. I was reading her my journal and I tried to skip over a page but she noticed. She wanted to know everything.
Friend: So why do you always have fantasies?
He: Maybe because I was a hermit for years. I became an expert with fantasies. Doesn’t everyone have them?
Friend: Yes, but not to talk about.
(Later)
She: So you usually have a fantasy? Why is that? It seems very odd to me.
He: Well it does help put the orgasm over the top. I think its a sexual dysfunction.
She: Oh? My husband will be glad to hear that.
He: Yeah. Actually it can be more work to get a blowjob. I have to concentrate on the fantasy. Of course the orgasm can be very electric.
She : So who were you fantasizing about last night?
He: Umm…That waitress down at The Ola Rica restaurant.
She: You bastard!
He: Well you asked.
(Later, she is giving him a blowjob)
She: So who are you fantasizing about now ?
He: No one! I don’t have a fantasy!
She: Well, get one!
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Nothing brilliant to say in reply, but I laughed for seven seconds.
Laughter is sort of a junior orgasm, I think. So’s sneezing.
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That last line may be my best, dialog dept, of course every word true…
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Really and truly, every word true? I get tired of people asking me that question, so cripes I don’t want to be asking you. For me, though, the answer is of course not, but mostly.
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Yes, motherfucker, all true. My philosophy is: My writing ain’t that good but at least I’m honest. My poor mama always encouraged me to clean it up and try to get wider exposure, but I told her all I’ve got is my authenticity…I’m like you, I just write about what happened, takes real creativity to write fiction, which I play around with sometimes. Of course Sex Solutions For Old Timers in Nursing Homes was made up, and when I do make shit up I get this really cool feeling and probably take it too far, here’s an example below:
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This is where y’all sometimes talk about music, so …
My brother really likes “Die with a Smile,” by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars. It’s “the return of good music,” he says, and I … completely don’t get it. The lyrics read like ordinary poetry, not awful but nothing special, but I made the mistake of watching the video and Bruno Mars is an unpopped pimple, and is there a tune in there? To me it’s generic pop music. What am I missing?
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I think your brother is right. This fine song seems just about right for him (doesn’t really matter which brother). Of course, I can’t watch either Bruno or Gaga with the sound on, but they were lip synching real nice, just like in the original, and Gaga had those special cigarettes that alternatively get longer and shorter as the song progresses.
It looked like one of his E strings was tuned high and the other a little low, balancing things out. Why not just randomly tune them up and down like his voice to add intrigue? I shudder to think when your bro thinks good music stopped. I suppose as long as Cyndi Lauper is playing somewhere in the world, good music is finding an audience. Your brother clearly isn’t in that audience. Cyndi is 71 and leaves Bruno (and Gaga) in the dust, which might explain their singing voices.
jtb
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Well, that about does it for the music. Now back to the professional wrestling.
jtb
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Call me nuts or just curious, but I considered attending a wrestling event a month or so ago. It was put on by some outfit not the WWF, and the ad made it look like ridiculousness that might be fun. The tickets started at $36, though, which vacuumed any possibility of fun right out of it.
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Think of yourself in whatever adjectival descriptors get you through the night, but this week you wrote again about introversion vs extraversion and labeled yourself again an introvert. I suppose there are several kinds of labels: functional, emotional, behavioral, social — many more — but I’m guessing the object is to describe in general terms how we see ourselves and how others see us. I am shy and socially uncomfortable and have never made friends easily. I got diagnosed sometime under age 10 with generalized anxiety disorder and have hauled that label through the most recent 65 years of my life: but sometimes the label some well-meaning pediatrician slaps on one’s butt can become self-fulfilling: well, I guess that’s who I am and I’ll always be like that.
That’s fine, but sometimes a little self-fulfilling. Sometimes descriptive labels can get all tangled up with prescriptive labels, and we carry the labels on our backs (or butts) long past the time it’s entirely accurate. In my mid-20s, I decided to join Toastmasters, the very conception of which is to communicate with other people in a public setting. I not only survived, I sort of thrived. I acquired techniques for not freaking out (or passing out) when I was introduced and called to the lectern. It never stopped scaring the living shit out of me, but I learned that I could survive talking to fairly large groups of people. As it turned out, when I was last in the workplace a decade ago, I was more comfortable talking to fifty people than I was talking to two or three people.
Life is peculiar, and if you’re opportunistic you can occasionally surprise yourself. I didn’t achieve anything grand, but give me a topic and an audience, and I’ll sometimes do OK. Give me two or three people and no topic and I’ll fumble, sure as shootin’.
John
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I agree with your wise perspectives, as often happens. Labels, schmabels, indeed. We are what we are, and sometimes labels don’t help or might be counterproductive.
You’ve got me staring at the wall, though… pondering. Public speaking in a formal setting, like giving a speech, is not one of my known phobias, but maybe that’s because it’s been 50 years since anyone called me to a lectern. I was pretty dang nervous, as I recall.
So I internet searched, to find out what Toastmasters costs, and found this page from 2023, saying that the monthly dues had gone up to… $10, with a $20 sign-up fee.
That’s surprisingly affordable.
Bread is the only thing I toast, so I’ve never considered joining Toastmasters, but at 8:32 on a Saturday night, you have me considering it. I’ve been trying to figure out how to meet and connect with other humans, and a meeting once monthly might align with that.
Give me a few days to talk myself out of it, but, maybe.
Thanks, John. A toast, to you.
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It’s been pretty close to 50 years, and I stuck with it off and on for a decade or so, and I don’t think I ever met a Toastmaster who didn’t think they would improve as a speaker and as a person if they worked with me at making me a better public speaker. It’s an odd system that seems to actually work: the process of helping others improve their public speaking skills and having a little fun doing it makes me a better public speaker and a better person. When I was active, the average meeting had 12-20 attendees, so I wasn’t prepping for a speech at the UN General Assembly. And I remember a fair amount of communal laughter as we all improved. It wasn’t a perfect system for everyone, but the percentage of people who chose to come back and come back again to do something that scared the shit out of them was surprisingly high. Doug, you’ve given me hours of pleasure reading your old and new entries in the Doug Holland autobiography story. It would be a kick in the pants to turn you onto a fun way to be a more public person. If it didn’t work out, you’d learn something by trying; it it did, you’d meet some very nice people and I’d feel like I partially repaid all your keyboard braindumping. I don’t know any of these Seattle Toastmasters, and they’d be of a generation with which I’m unacquainted in any case. If you want to ask about it and not make it too public, please send me an email, and I’ll tell you what I know, which is surprisingly little.
jtb
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Thanks, my man. Might do that, but right now it’s surprising how not-nervous I am at thinking of going to the meeting.
From the name, Toastmasters, and the concept of public speaking, I’d assumed it was a business and maybe it is, but at $10 a month it feels more cooperative. Their website lists about a hundred active groups in the Seattle area, and it says the one I picked (because it’s on my bus route) was chartered in 1950. I’ll be their 75th anniversary fat guy.
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Interesting, thanks — I hadn’t looked past the lip-syncing to spot the fakeness of other elements. Nothing’s inherently wrong with faking it for the camera if you’ve already done the work, but whatever work they’ve done seems slipshod and half-assed too.
Grownups sneered at the music of my time, and they were foolish and wrong to do so … but our music had heart and soul and tunes and lyrics and a beat and you could dance to it. This stuff, I dunno. It’s like they’re pretending to make rock’n’roll but it’s only about the pretending. Even their names are pretended affectations, Bruno Mars and Lady GaGa.
I’m withholding judgment on LGG, but BM started out as an Elvis impersonator, so maybe fakery is his talent.
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Sexy Business
The Erotic Poetry Scone Company paid the rent but not much else. The proprietor, a one-woman show, insisted on quality or she would just go back to unprofitable saucy limericks and hamburgers.
The initial design of the divine pastries was tricky: it was easy to make a penis-shaped scone but the vaginas took more planning. As the cook/poet had been a scientist in another life she finally got it down.
She had to have sweet inspiration and insisted her lover/manager penetrate her at least every other day, a plan which agreed with his carnal desires as well. When he was tired or lazy he said, “Why don’t you just use one of the super-glazed scones instead today?”
That pissed her off and she said, “I like to keep my hands free to touch you.”
She just wasn’t all that interested in poems or baking unless she had a cock in her or one on the way. Then her verses glittered on the packages and the sour dough scones within were magical.
Sometimes the baking went askew and the penises looked like yams and the vaginas like okra and then the whole batch would be given away, usually to the nearby homeless.
One day a couple of them were reading the poems as they unwrapped the sweet rejects in their secret camp down by the river.
“I got ‘The Burrito’ again,” one said.
“Yeah, I got ‘The Blanket.’ Good poem, great scone,” the other said.
“Yeah,” said the first one, “these poems are pretty hot! Maybe we should jerk each other off or something. I mean I’m not gay or anything but…”
“No, me neither.”
“Yeah, I’m really not homo…”
“Me fucking either!”
“Well, since we’re not gay at all we may as well suck each other off too.”
“Sure, why not? I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Me neither but those poems are so fucking hot!”
“And the scones are so tasty, umm, are they an aphrodisiac or something?”
“Might be CBD or something.”
“Well here we go! Finish your scone first. Um, do you hear someone coming?”
“Yeah I think it’s Suzy.”
“’Hand-job’ Suzy?”
“Yup. Whew, that was a close one!”
“Those scones and poems!”-
> “Yeah,” said the first one, “these poems are pretty hot! Maybe we should jerk each other off or something. I mean I’m not gay or anything but…”
> “No, me neither.”
> “Yeah, I’m really not homo…”
> “Me fucking either!”
> “Well, since we’re not gay at all we may as well suck each other off too.”
> “Sure, why not? I’ve never done anything like that before.”
> “Me neither but those poems are so fucking hot!”That’s where I laughed bestest.
Words to live by, you slippery eel.
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Whatever happened to Robert W. Howington?
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Now, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
But I know nothing beyond the basics.
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How many pathetic life’s did you do, in hard copy?
how many pages were they? (a page is 81/2 by 11)
I ask because I’m collating my ’90’s zine Gulch Mulch,
making ten complete chapbooks…
the first was two pages,
most were four pages
one was eight
and a couple other variations,
total was 43 issues from 1987 to 2002
about a hundred pages i suppose,
anyway, just curious…-
Well, there were 25 issues. Grabbing one at random, it’s 60 pages, double-sided, folded, and stapled — that’s 15 sheets of paper. Early issues were shorter, later issues more long-winded. I would wild-guess it’s 330 pages total.
A good editor could whittle it down to half that with nothing much lost, but I never had a good editor.
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wow, 60 pages…
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It’s not the size that matters, I’ve been told.
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