Southpaw Jones

Archive for January 25th, 2007

Thursday almost always makes me high.

January 25, 2007 By: Southpaw Jones Category: Interesting? 2 Comments →

Southpaw Jones presents
Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

Good morning. We had a great night at Café Mundi last night, thanks to everyone who came out. Even with the expanded interior, we’re still having to pull in extra chairs, and that makes me happy. “One happy squaw in wigmam…happy as mongoose.”

It felt good to come out of the slow-to-read closet yesterday. Thanks to Molly and Bill for some excellent recommendations. I love me some comments! In the real world, though, I got a whiff of the old-fashioned bias that exists against under-achieving bookworms. The truth is, I’m turning thirty in 2.5 months, and I’ve got nothing to prove to anyone. The richness of my grey matter is a major source of pride for me, and reading entire tomes is merely ONE of the THOUSANDS of ways to take in information in this life. ‘Nuff said? No, not quite.

More thoughts on books/reading:

Since the age of 14, I’ve been working hard to become the Ultimate Songwriting Machine, and that’s one of the reasons that elaboration, length, and minutia turn me off like an asymmetric blouse over a Hanna-Barbera tattoo.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.” Thank you, Willie Shakes! But brevity is so much more than that. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy says of the proverb, “Intelligent speech and writing should aim at using few words.”

“My world is empty without you, babe.”
Unh! Who among you can better explain heartbreak? Feel the real and reel.

“Jesus wept.”
It’s the shortest verse in the Bible, and it sums up the whole thing!

“I wanna hold your hand.”
It’s an intimate act, hand-holding, and these Liverpudlians want it plus so much more. [It is a well-know historical tidbit that Brits did not start touching each other until 1963.]

I do have three bookshelves in my apartment with quite a wide variety of verbose material. Biographies of Andy Kaufman, Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen. Way too many books on the music business by people who never had success in the music business. Word play. Marketing. Hypothetical Questions. Pranks. Employer sabotage. Philosophy. I love them, and I hope someday I’ll be struck with an injury or illness so severe that I’ll be forced to read them fully in a softly lit hospital with no TVs or board games. It’s a bit of a goal for me. Fair readers, please come clean my bed sores. But try to keep it down. I’ll be reading.

Before I proceed with the Gazette, which is decidedly not very “Fun Time” so far, I’ll clue you in on a way to score about a dozen crisp, clean, FREE books with ease. Are you ready? Drum roll? Cymbal crash! Tell your Christian and Atheist friends that you’re questioning your faith. Ooo, chile! I tell you what. The commentaries will start pouring in, as the disparate sides try to win you over. It’s the religious equivalent of “take two of these and call me in the morning.” Give it a shot!

Southpaw Jones presents
And Another Thing…
More verbosity with velocity and viscosity:

This guy over at Defective Yeti is challenging folks to replace current cliches with fresh ones. He calls it the Cliche Rotation Project, and I submitted the following suggestions:

Opposites attract : Haters love
Still waters run deep : The calm breeze traverses many lands
Every man has his price : The green makes ‘em lean
Sleep with the fishes : Flirt with the dirt
Right up your alley : Just the what not for your gut knot

Southpaw Jones presents
Online Museum of the Week
The World’s Stupidest Tattoos:

Bill Passalacqua presents
I am not a smoker…
One man’s reasons for not lighting up in ‘07:

…because my dad says so (and he’s standing over my shoulder).

So far I have saved $108.

Jan. 24, 2007

Michael Laser presents
dont B a h8r
A list of quick text messages for the not-so-young generation:

Excerpts from an latimes.com article, December 25, 2006. MICHAEL LASER is the author of the novel “Dark & Light: A Love Story.”

BELATEDLY, I’VE LEARNED that LOL means Laughing Out Loud, and POS means Parent Over Shoulder (i.e., change the subject, fast). Young people invented this shorthand for e-mail and instant messaging, and you can hear their attitudes and concerns in it — for example, DYHABF (Do You Have A Boyfriend?), W/E (Whatever) and UW (You Wish).

I haven’t been 20 for a long time now, and my thoughts don’t always lend themselves to electronic communication; but they’re common enough to deserve concise acronyms of their own. So feel free to use any of these abbreviations as needed:

SHBASH: Should Have Bought a Smaller House

SHSLY ({circ}M): Should Have Sold Last Year (at Top of the Market)

NNRB: Need New Roof, Boiler

MIRPAA: Must I Really Paint Again, Already?