Tuckered Tucker

Dental Chicken Chuck

Diet-Breaking Dan

Broadway Sherm

So Close Seth

Jumpy Joshua

Grateful George

Like he did most Mondays, George spent the better part of an hour washing nearly every knife in the house. Granted, most of these knives were used by his wife to cook his lucky-ass dinner, but still, it was a lot of knives. It never used to be this many knives when George and Melinda were just living together. But now they had wedding-knives. And wedding-steak-knives. And that meant washing by hand. Every Monday. Hundreds of them.

Alcoholic Rick

Daring Don

Don had promised his wife he wouldn't eat the whole pint, but the Chocolate Fudge Brownie had almost reached that perfect consistency – no longer frozen, not quite soupy, little chunks of brownie beginning to soften. And if Don didn't know whether his cholesterol would allow him to see the bottom of another pint anyway, why shouldn't he take a stab at perfection? 

Evil Laugh Matt

Self-Help Harry

Harry understood that he was the only one getting in the way of his own happiness, but he was a big scary guy with a black belt and a temper.

Fully Baked, Medium Rare Ray

Luddite Lou

Lou was getting awfully tired of advertisers making him want more stuff he didn't need and wouldn't be able to figure out how to use.

Whiskey Pete

How

How #1

How #2

How #3

How #4

How #5

How #6

How #7

In Love Larry

Junk Food John and Lushy Lucy

John and Lucy had very healthy appetites for things that weren't healthy.

Idol Worshipping Sherman

Changing It Up Chet

Chet just had a random memory from back when Darcy was crushing his soul, when he was visiting for her graduation, all those years ago. When she was off getting it on with Toby Fucking James. 

All the while Chet searched on and off campus for her, stumbling around like a sad sap. 

As he looked, he ended up at a buddy's house. They needed a drummer. So Chet sat in. But he couldn't find the groove. 

These many years later, that’s why Chet remains just slightly bitter. Cause he couldn’t keep up with a jam. Cause he was wrecked by a woman. 

And now he was mad at himself again for letting the time slip a half step. 

Out Ten Bucks

Jason spotted him from the bottom of the hill. Well, the bottom of the hill from where he had started.

Is that the same fucking guy? Yup. Same fucking guy. Same fucking corner. Same pleading look on his face.

And no recognition of Jason.

"Hey man, you got a dollar or two for bus fare? My car broke down and I gotta get my moms to the hospital."

"You said that to me last time, Man," Jason said.

"Sorry Man, I ain't got no job."

"Neither do I, Man."

Well, not full-time. And not like he couldn't get one if he really needed it. Unlike this poor guy.

Still, Jason wasn’t going to give him another ten bucks, regardless of what kind of asshole he felt like. He stormed off towards home, the dog barking in time with Jason's rising blood pressure, neuroses, and fear.

He let him bark; he did just tell off a homeless guy losing another battle to the streets.

Jason walked his ridiculously well-fed dog back to a warm house to eat a lovingly cooked dinner.  

And he knew: he was the asshole, again. 

Guilty.

But at least he wasn’t out another ten bucks. 

Seattle Walking Can Be at Times Rainy

Since moving to Seattle, most of my transportation away from home occurs whilst walking. Two dog walks a day, usually in opposite directions, usually at least one trip to the coffee shop. Maybe the local pub if I'm "working" on my screenplay.

Everyday I see something interesting. So I'm going to try and get in the habit of posting at least one thing that caught my eye along the way.

While I may very well give up this practice tomorrow, today I saw a somewhat plump girl running in the frigid rain in just a very wet t-shirt that wasn't doing a very good job of keeping her warm and dry. Although it did a heckuva job showing off her fine form.

Her running form, People, sheesh. Perverts.

Okay, yes, her boobs were flopping in a wonderful way, but I was more focused on her face, well, perhaps equally focused during the two seconds it took her to pass by the coffee shop's panoramic view.

Boy did she look like she missed her jacket as she plodded along during the rainiest part of the day. Perhaps she was thrown off by the early rain and long stretch of afternoon sun? I too have been fooled by Seattle's mercurial nature, so I could easily recognize a girl who thought the worst was behind us.

Still, she had to run on. And run harder, for what else could she do? Walk into a coffee shop with her boobs all gloriously about?  No, into the storm she ran. In spite of it!

Anyways, the determination on her face was inspirational. And though I would've been more impressed if she were running uphill, she still takes the cake for the most interesting thing I saw along the way today. So now it's documented.

Educated Ed

Ed sent Penny two stories, neither of which he actually read, yet both he knew to be true at headline level.

Headline 1:

Are Men Idiots Who Do Stupid Things? Study Says Yes

Headline 2: 

99% of All Farts Don't Smell 

In Ed's ever-failing quest to reveal his true self to Penny, he hoped she would also accept these statements as truth. 

Then he polished off a delicious salt shake. 

Irritated Irving

that said

Not that i have anything really bothering me, other than it all. But being in a new town, getting to know Seattle for all its very good and all its kinda surprisingly bad, well, i should be writing about it. 

Though this has lately been a cartoon blog, i still feel like it's the right medium for my Seattle musings. 

Comics and musings are obviously related; the only way to look at life is comically. Especially in Seattle.

This place is a bit bonkers. And real. Like not joking around. Not like Playa del Rey seemed to be.

No. Far too serious here. The part of it I've gotten to know, anyhow. Which I just don't get. Like the kids in high school who always felt wronged and needed to pursue justice and dress weird because it was their right to.  

I'm all for justice, but can't humor still be righteous?

I'm new here. And springtime does seem to be loosening everything up. Spectacularly so, even. 

Still, there was an armed robbery in broad daylight on my corner today, from what I read online. And I still feel like going for a walk on that corner at dusk, because the glory of dusk is powerful enough to dissipate the stench of crime and need and gentrification and discord. 

Or so it is for me. Or so it is today. 

Stupid Stu

Astonished Aaron

Full-Speed Frank

Just-Married-Jim

What-Was-That Walt

“It’s not that I wasn’t listening, Honey, it’s that I forgot what I heard when I was listening.”

Death-Obsessed David

David always had an irrational fear of sharks, until one day, Brie explained that he'd have a much better chance of being killed by a falling coconut than by a man-eating shark. 

After that, David always had an irrational fear of sharks and coconuts. 

Stiffy Steve

Steve used to be embarrassed by his constant erection, but now that he was hitting strictly on cougars, it was a huge asset.

If he could just get it to go down on holidays.

Aloof AdPock

AdPock had been ignoring Missy since they first started dating. But now that they were married, she deeply resented it.

Bong Hit Bob

Bob was way into the communal concept of getting high at 4:20, but if he waited till then, he'd waste half his day.

The Dolphin's Savior

60 seconds, motherfuckers. Just hang on for 60-fucking ticks. Christ, this is dick-sandwich time.

Stop it. No bad thoughts. No bad juju, not now. Now is when the Fish need you most. It's now time. Hold the line.

"Hold it. Right here, baby! We hold them here and it's ball game! Sweet Jesus who art in heaven, please let them hold it right here, baby!"

"Does baby Jesus root for the Dolphins too, Daddy?" Asks Charlene, the yelling guy's precocious 6-year-old daughter.

"Ask your mother, Char, Daddy's focusing...”

The Dolphins don't hold.

"Fuck!"

First down Bills. Down to the Dolphins 34. But the Fins are still up by 4.

"Right now, fuckers. Just keep 'em out the endzone, Fish! Right now!"

"That's a quarter, daddy. Actually, two."

"Charlene! Not now! And there's no charges during Dolphins games, right?" Now is when they always fucking take that big fucking bite of hot dick sandwich.

Bills reverse to Sammy Watkins for 4 yards.

John Lennon's Making Me Dick Off Again

Since I can remember, I've been affected by John Lennon. I recall vaguely the day he died, 34 years ago today, and being very scared, because my parents were very sad. It was the first time I can recall seeing sadness like that.

But mostly, my memories of John recall being infatuated with his life of art. Every little thing that oozed out of him was art. And John made me want to be art too. 

These photos of doodles, which I retouched today, are taken from random notebooks I've kept through the years. I imagine each doodle came to be, because upon hearing John sing, I stopped doing whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, and became compelled to create instead.  

He continues to have that effect. So for me, John's as alive as ever.

Bored Bill

Bill couldn't help thinking that he might have had a really promising future if his parents hadn't made him go to college.

Thankfully, I'm Not Manly In That Classic Sense of the Word

A few years back, my father's associate, Barney Rickshaw, persuaded him to go down to the boondocks of Argentina to go hunt doves. That's right, doves: the birds of peace.

            At first it was hard for me to swallow. My dad—whose knowledge of shotguns was reserved for golf tournaments—was no killer. I laughed at the prospect of him doing anything so rugged. So manly. I figured it was probably just a good business move, as Rickshaw was one of Dad's best America-fleecing clients.

            Surprisingly, my dad came back from the trip a bon-a-fide killer. Apparently, Argentina for dove season is unlike hunting anywhere else in the world. As the birds fly to and from their roost, they fill up the sky, turning day into night. There are no regulations as to how many birds you can shoot or how many shells you can load. So for those two hours, it's a hunter's paradise—a veritable dove genocide.

My dad showed me a picture of him and Rickshaw, guns in hand, behind a wall of dead doves. It was appalling, from a PETA standpoint. Yet I somehow also felt a tinge of pride. Who knew one of my own could be so … so manly?

To my further surprise, a few weeks later, Dad bought a shotgun. And just like that, we were different; we were gun owners. It felt rebellious. Out of control. And completely out of character.

See, we are not the handy, able, manly, gun-toting type. We don't even know how a gun works. Or a bike. Or a wrench. We don't know how to pitch a tent or build a fire. The only knots we know are for neckties. 

Neither my grandfather nor his building's superintendent could bestow such manly secrets upon Dad. So he could never pass such vital knowledge down my way.

I think that's always upset Dad just a little bit—that other than being a fantastic provider, he hasn't been able to show his kids how to be very manly. Because of this deficiency, my dad's been trying since I was a kid to cast off our hereditary injustice.

His first attempt at defying nature was to move the family from the suburbs of Chicago to the wild mid-west of Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately, we didn't fit in.

In Colorado, men are men of the world. Men who sleep outdoors! Men who climb mountains! Who not only climb, they climb ice! Then sleep out in the snow! Real men. Men's men. Real American tough-guys. Not us.

            In Colorado, my new friends we're corn-fed and blonde. Their parents were contractors, pilots, and military. They all fished and hunted with their dads. They all knew what a carburetor did. They all whittled their own soapbox derby cars, with barely a watchful eye from their able-handed, thickly mustachioed fathers.

When my dad and I tried to make my own soapbox derby car, I had a vision of the Starskey and Hutch mobile, but the wobbly thing we "crafted" turned out lopsided, the wheels didn't spin, and the paint job bled like a scream queen. I won the Most Creative Car trophy out of pure sympathy. It's still my only trophy.

No, Colorado was just way outside of our natural environment. And so nature, the world of men, has somehow always seemed unnatural to me. Always given me this uneasy feeling that I might not survive such a rugged world.

So maybe that's why my dad jumped at the chance to be a dove killer. Not just to show himself that he could, but to show nature—and all the manly men who run it.

And maybe that's why I agreed to go with my father when he invited me to go on the next hunting trip. This time to the Willamette Valley of Oregon, to go hunt turkeys.

In spite of my own nature, or to spite it, I said yes. Why couldn't I be the tough guy for once? After all, what could be more tough-guy then bringing home Thanksgiving dinner?

Or maybe I just thought there'd be Pinot tasting involved.

***

We landed in Portland around noon. It was well past dark by the time we'd gotten our bags, our rental car, our lunch, and gotten predictably lost in an unpredictable forest. We finally got to the Kesterman Ranch around 7:30pm. The girl at the lodge told us that we had missed the hunting party. They'd all gone to bed a good hour back. "Ain't no party like a hunting party," I mumbled.

            We were shown to our sparse cabin, without a bottle of Pinot in site, or even a TV.

***

The next morning started innocently enough, with me asleep in bed, like a morning should. Thunderous knocking shocked my slumbering senses. It was a warning knock.

We were under attack! My most savage of survival instincts kicked in. I rolled lithely out of bed and immediately beneath it. A dust ball met my nose. I sneezed violently.

            A voice on the other side of the door gleefully announced, "Guess what gentleman? It's raining."

            "Fuck," I grunted audibly. I was in the Willamette Valley. With fucking Rickshaw. Fucking turkey hunting instead of Pinot tasting.

At least we weren't under attack.

After the initial shock of not just waking at 4am, but being violently shaken at that ungodly hour, I suffered the further shock of seeing myself in the mirror all dressed up in camouflage. Dad came over and checked his own camo-decked self out too. The camouflage actually made us stick out.

We made it to the lodge for breakfast with the other hunters. Manly men with boot knives rounded the table. Next to Rickshaw sat his thirteen-year-old son, Kenny, who'd already bagged six turkeys and was chomping at the bit for his next kill. There was Old Man Kesterman, who owned the lodge and property, and who looked like he may have eaten a Jew recently. Next to him sat his son-in-law, lanky Larry, who would be my father and my personal turkey-hunting guide. To Larry's left sat his 18 year-old son, Quentin, who was in his first year of employment with the ranch and training for the Lumberjack World Championships. His face was painted green. He looked how I felt.

As I was sure was often the case, Rickshaw set the tone of the conversation. "So, Mr. Kesterman, you think you're gonna call in one of them big ol' gobblers today?"

I'm not sure if Old Man Kesterman had to think about his response, or if the delay was just to intuit he was being spoken to, but after a good ten seconds Mr. Kesterman started to speak. Slowly. "Well… I… am… sure… gonna… try… you… know… those… gobblers… are… gonna… do… what… they… do… so… I'm… just… gonna… try… to… get… 'em… to… come… to… the… call… I… guess… I'm… just… going… to… have… to… romance… 'em."

Breakfast was almost done by the time Old Man Kesterman finished his sentence.

Rickshaw went back to the roundtable. "Adam, what about you?" He eyed me with a look I couldn't tell was challenging or friendly. "You excited to see some big ol' Toms?"

            "Oh, yeah. I can't be sure what I'm going to do if I do see one, but I'm excited to find out."

            "You just take a deep breath, pick your pattern just in front of his head, take another deep breath, let half of it out…" Rickshaw let out half a breath, "…and fire. BAM! Easy as that."

            Right, blow his head off. No problem.

The meal commenced. We feasted like men, for the sake of fuel, like we needed the meat to sustain us till our next kill. Every now and then one of Old Man Kesterman's skittish daughters would come in and make sure Pa had enough bacon and butter. The rain thunked hard on the roof. No sign of light fought through the windows.

***

            After breakfast, Larry crammed my dad and me into his dirty Dodge pickup and closed the cell bay doors. We drove and drove, with me cramped in the cab. Little did I know it was the most comfortable I would be for a long time. Larry didn't say a word, like his mind was elsewhere, perhaps in a clock tower somewhere.

After about an hour of cramped silence, Larry pulled over and let us in on his plan. "We're gonna line yous up in the trees and thickets and stuff… then I'm gonna set up on the side of the field and try and call 'em in… I don't know if they'll come, but I reckon they'll be there. I seen 'em there a few days back… heard 'em too."

Larry gave me my shotgun and told me to load it. Then he showed me how. Then he just loaded the thing for me.   

Larry gave me a "chair", which was really just two pieces of nylon attached by Velcro. Dad and I followed him into a field with a huge thicket that grew along a tree line. Larry told Dad to gussy up against one of them trees and look for the birds to come in behind him. Dad gave me a thinly veiled look of manly confidence, swallowed deeply, and disappeared.

Larry and I continued down the thicket. He stopped at what must have been the perfect part, though it looked exactly like the rest of the thicket to me. He gestured for me to insert myself into this wall of barbs. I sneezed at the very thought of what was in there. Larry whispered for me not to shoot my father and moved on.

Though situated smack-dab in rain-soaked Oregon, my thicket somehow remained relatively dry. At first I deemed this to be a good thing, but soon realized I could find no possible position that afforded me the least bit of comfort. I had nothing to lean against save for the "chair", which only gave the illusion of leaning. Whenever I moved a muscle to seek any sort of comfort, I may as well have been an alarm, betraying our stealthy location to any imminently arriving wild birds whose heads we were supposed to blow off.

I sat there trying desperately not to move, failing miserably. I listened to Larry attempting to call in the birds, using a variety of noisemakers that all sounded like farts. As entertaining as that sounds, and despite the pain of my current position, I drifted off, figuring the hunt's necessity of silence would be best served by going to sleep.

***

I can't be sure how long I let myself drift, but my hunting instincts proved to be quite keen, as I woke up, the rain subsiding, an eerie haze clinging to the wet ground, and five prancing birds not twenty feet in front of my nose.

Too groggy to move, I stayed in my still position, even as I realized there was a loaded gun atop my very sore knee. I may very well have been dreaming.

In my brief instruction back at the lodge, Rickshaw showed me a stuffed turkey and told me to look for the long red beard and big black spurs of a Tom, the term for a male turkey. The lodge bird had a longer beard than Billy Gibbons, sharper spurs than the Pale Rider, and was damn near bigger than me. If it came down to it, he could probably serve me for Thanksgiving dinner.

But in the mist of this cold morning, the five birds in front of me didn't look anything like that big stuffed gobbler in the lodge. The three birds leading the pack had brown heads and no beards at all. Like huge pigeons.

Then I focused on the two birds strutting behind. They weren't big, but they weren't brown. They both bore the red head of a Tom, but without the pronounced tail feathers and hanging gullet I'd seen on the beast stuffed in the lodge. Then I looked at their chests. The one closest to the huge pigeons had the makings of a miniature beard, or at least pronounced peach fuzz, no more than an inch long. But a definite beard. And the bird behind him had a beard three times that, maybe not ZZ Top quality, but he at least looked like he was a couple months into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It was all the recognition I needed.

I raised my gun, immediately alarming the birds to my presence. While the rest of his friends fled, the bearded bird sadly stalled, distracted by the prospect of some easily attainable tail. Oh, he had intentions of running, but those intentions met squarely with my reaction to fire. Without thinking, without waking really, I pointed, not aimed, at the too-slow bird, and unloaded in his general direction.

The boom instantaneously jostled my grogginess as it swept the turkey soundly from his feet, blasted to the ground.

Reacting, I ran to the felled beast as he gasped for his last labored breaths. His bare head turned from red to blue, then quickly to grim, ghoulish grey. His laboring stopped as quickly as it started. I could see his soul rise as the dead air escaped from his lungs.

"Aha!" I heard my dad scream as I hovered over the carnage. I looked over to see my camo-covered father emerging from his hiding place, gun in hand. "You did it!" He came over and patted me on the back. He looked shocked, like he didn't know I had it in me. Or like the deafening blast cutting the silence of the peaceful morning had just woke him up, as well. I looked at him like I just broke a window with another errant lacrosse ball.

"That was worth the price of admission right there!" Dad's initial shock was replaced with pride.

Larry came over to have a look. He extended his right hand and I shook it, tentatively. "Well, you did it. That's a fine Jake."

"A Jake? What's a Jake?"

"A male turkey… who's not quite a Tom."

Nobody told me about Jakes. "What do you mean not quite a Tom?"

"Not quite growsed up enough."

"Like a boy?"

"More like a teenager."

Great. Not only was I a killer, I was a baby killer.

***

It was only about seven o'clock in the morning by the time I murdered my Jake. Since I only had a license for one turkey per day (one more than I deserved), I didn't have to hang out in any more thickets. But my Dad still had some killing to do.

             As the morning became optically official, we set up in four different spots with no success. On our fifth attempt, Larry situated my dad in someone's bushes – someone who apparently was used to live firearms going off in the general vicinity.

            I was jarred from another nap by another shotgun blast filling the quiet peace of a rainy Oregon morn. I got up in time to see my dad standing over another dying Jake; this one had less of a beard and a life less-lived than my own.

When I saw the super-sized Toms the rest of the hunters brought home, I knew we'd killed in vain. Rickshaw said I couldn't be picky; it was my first hunt. He was just glad my dad and I both got a bird. Of course, Rickshaw also said that if it weren't for hunters, the globe would be overrun by wild beasts.

***

As we flew home, with a cooler full of BB-crusted turkey stowed safely below, I looked over to my father. "Well," I said, "that was about the dumbest thing we've ever done."

            "Son, you know we could have just golfed Pebble Beach for what we just spent?"

            "We didn't even drink any Pinot."

            "Well, now we know."

            "How did we get ourselves into this?" I asked.

            "I don't think I had a choice. I'm just glad you came with me."

            "At least Thanksgiving will be good."

***

Of course, Thanksgiving wasn't good. Karma wouldn't allow it. About two weeks before Turkey Day, the downstairs freezer just up and broke. Nobody was home for a couple of days, and by that time our slain Jakes had turned rotten to the core.  Like my soul.

And so, our hunt turned out to be solely for the sake of slaughter. I did not feel manly.

But my father didn't panic. We still had thanks to give, so my dad did what any good provider must: he made reservations. We went to a very nice restaurant. I had the duck. My dad had the prime rib. And the whole family gave thanks for a delicious bottle of Pinot Noir, straight from the Willamette Valley.

# # #

Life of Pi

Life of Pi: 92 Points. Definitely an escape, and a beautiful one at that. The only time I really felt out of the story were moments I’m pretty sure Ang Lee wanted me to feel out of the story – to give pause, to assess my own situation. It’s hard not to assess your life after watching Pi’s extraordinary adventure. It’s hard not to assess your faith. And if you don’t have enough, you might leave the theater a bit bereft, a bit jealous of those who can believe so fully. But if you think about it a bit more, let the lost-at-sea story sink in, you might also be able to see it as good reason to have faith in something other than a higher power: humanity.

Denial is For the Birds

I’m not very good at denying myself things; I can’t say no to any of my myriad compulsions. I’m a slave to them.

While it’s a close race, my most powerful of cravings is my need for Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. If the idea sneaks into my mind, the idea must be eaten.

Maybe because I can’t see the point. Why shouldn’t I have what I want? Why should I try to deny myself what my base instincts so desire? What’s wrong with pleasure? I believe in pleasure.

However,  thanks to my Hebrew upbringing, I also believe in guilt. And where there’s guilt, there can be no pleasure.

So, in defiance of my upbringing, and to see if I could deny myself something – anything – I decided to give up ice cream for lent.

I almost made it too.

The Wednesday before Easter Sunday, I caved. And it wasn’t like I was so craving Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie that I couldn’t live one more hour without it, it was that I couldn’t remember why I was trying to deny myself the stuff in the first place.

Denial is for the birds. What’s the point? Why not live my life as it’s meant to be? Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the arguments. Rise above your beastly nature and let your civility rule you. But that’s crap. Who’s to say our natural selves aren’t as moral as our civilized selves?

I don’t believe it for a second. But fortunately, I have guilt to keep me from doing anything really stupid.

religion

That last blog post i created was the first one i did in some time. Not since i started working, coincidentally.

To save you the click, here's all it said:

i blogthereforei'm spam

Can you tell how much effort i put into it?

Anywho, i have a tendency to over-edit myself, which has been holding me back from getting anything posted; that and the fact that all i wanna do is nothing once i come home from using my brain all day long.

So during this nothingness, i was coasting Facebook and noticed one of my "friends" posted the following: "if you want to increase your page views, tag your blog post with the keyword religion!"

i was intrigued. But in order to attempt the experiment, i would first need to post something. Anything! But it's been just so hard to post even anything. So hard to have my own thoughts after cranking out work thoughts all day. And twice as hard to edit those thoughts to the point where they actually communicate and entertain.

But for some reason, I really wanted to tag my blogpost religion. So I just did it. I threw caution to the wind. I barely even edited! I just up and posted that five-word sentence! Like Marc Zuckerberg!

The next day, I checked the stats. My Facebook friend was right: In a 24-hour period, I got my second highest page views ever. Granted, everyone who viewed it hated it, but that's not the point, is it?

Anyway, this blog has been tagged with the keyword religion.

i posted

i blog
therefore
i'm spam

The Fried Pig Belly Sandwich

My wife is trying to train me to share restaurant food with her. She wants us to start splitting everything, apparently in some sort of fairytale effort to make me eat less, save money, shed cholesterol, and learn about the widespread benefits of sharing in general.

She formally proposed the idea about three weeks back. “Honey,” she said while looking over the menu. “Let’s split a salad, an app, and an entrée?” Then she got all excited, like it was the best idea she ever had: “Yep! That’s the plan. Every time we go out!”

At first, per usual, I thought she was out of her mind, and told her so. Splitting meals? What kind of a man splits a meal? Not a proud American man like myself.

I ordered a steak. And I ate the fat.

Obviously, that wouldn’t be the last time we talked Sharing. Oh no, it’s in her head now. But she’s wizened up since that first attempt. She’s refined her strategy. She’s put those other sharing benefits on the backburner and placed all her guilt-laden emphasis on the one sharing virtue I can readily buy into: saving money.

Saving money is stellar, I’m naturally cheap. But in AdPock’s World, saving money shouldn’t come at the cost of keeping the restaurant dining experience special. No, if dining-out ceases to remain special, then I will have become spoiled. And I want very badly to remain fresh.

So when I’m out, I like to order special food. Out food. And I like to not think about anything unspecial, like cholesterol. Since my wife knows I remain steadfast on this point, and since she really wants us to Share, she’s temporarily giving up trying to get me to give up ordering rich food and has merely focused on the money saving benefits.

Or at least that’s how she pitched it last night when we went out to eat. Being an open-minded guy, I agreed to give her sharing idea a try, with one bona fide caveat. “I’ll share,” I said, “if you let me order whatever fatty dishes my saintly heart desires.”

Which she happily and readily agreed to. And as the meal went on, I realized that sharing’s great! Instead of just one dish, I get three! I get to try more savory tastes and get all the choice bites and mmm… warm spinach salad with bacon… mmm… mac n’ cheese with chorizo… mmmm… fried pig belly sandwich… mmm.

And all of it was delicious. I had shared. And it was good.

But of course, she hated it. All the food was far too rich for her dainty stomach. It ruined her meal. Which subsequently ruined mine!

Me trying to make her happy, by sharing, and her trying to make me happy, by letting me order what I wanted, made neither one of us happy. 

I'm not sure what that says about happiness, or about sharing in general, but hot damn that pig belly sandwich was good!

The Big Picture

After finally finishing a painting I’d been working on for weeks, I proudly displayed my handy-work to my wife. “Well,” I said, “Wife, what do you think?”

Wife looked over said painting for all of two seconds before she decided, unequivocally, she was unimpressed. “Eh,” she said.

I was shocked. How could she not like it? My hard work and ingenuity created it. It is me. I am it. We are one. If she didn’t like it, then she didn’t like me. And if she didn’t like me, who would? She’s supposed to be my biggest fan and all. Right?

“Maybe I don’t have to like it.” Said Wife, rationally, like it didn’t matter in the slightest. Then she went back to doing whatever it is she does and I painted over my painting with thick black paint.

Of course I disagreed with her at the time, as my instincts usually tell me to, but after six weeks of deliberating, I’ve decided that actually, against all odds, I’m wrong, and she’s right: she doesn’t have to like the painting.

Because, as shocking as this is to swallow, not everything I try is going to be great. It can’t be. There’s only so much greatness in the world, and if everything is great, then nothing can really be all that great. This is a very liberating lesson to learn, because if everything doesn’t have to be great, then I’m much more free to try everything.

No, she doesn’t have to love every little thing I do. She doesn’t have to love every meal I attempt to cook. She doesn’t have to love my Supercuts’ haircut. She doesn’t have to love the way I rearranged the furniture. And she doesn’t have to love every picture I paint. Just the big picture.