Best Experienced With: Elton John; Tiny Dancer
(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s celebration of our gathering for the two hundredth time up here for some quality time together. Let’s pretend we are in the bus from “Almost Famous” and we’re all singing together. Thanks for joining.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRK5vLUYLmg
This is #200
This is number two hundred in this incarnation of Mind of Mully (MoM Biz Haus Shoppe) and number four hundred three in all previous incarnations of Mind of Mully. To generate two hundred palatable and publishable missives here, generally need to write six hundred. The vast majority are utterly awful. They seem good in the first five minutes and end up relegated to the hard drive folder titled “OOPS”.
The finest William Faulkner quote is “ Read, read, read. Read everything: trash and classics, good and bad and see how they do it. Then write. If it’s good, you will know it. If it’s not, then throw it out the window.” This Faulkner quote applies to everything in business and in life.
Below you will find eleven beginnings of non published treatises. The world will never see the full body of work because when finished, they sucked. Am only sharing the beginning of each because they are eleven truly awful works of writing and sharing the entire missive would jeopardize any hope I have of ever winning a Nobel Prize for Literature or the Polk Award. Even the cats winced as I wrote the opening paragraphs below and the cats can only read Ebonics books. My cats are from Oakland.
Thanks for visiting and reading. It’s always a pleasure to visit with each of you. Here, have a sip of this an let’s have a look.
The Leo Caprio/ DD Lewis version of Gangs of New York bears little if any resemblance to the book Gangs of New York. If you are one of the Lord’s chosen people, the book is an interesting look at conscription of The Irish as they left the whiskey drenched Emerald Isle for a larger island. An island with more to eat than potatoes and rocks.
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Zoroastrianism & Katie Bar The Door
Then the Queen cried, “Catherine, keep the door,
And I to this will suffice!”
At her word I rose all dazed to my feet,
And my heart was fire and ice.
…
Like iron felt my arm, as through
The staple I made it pass:-
Alack! it was flesh and bone – no more! 570
‘Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,
But I fell back Kate Barlass.
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Although I believe in some sort of deity, I do not believe there is a heaven or a hell. Absolutes and black and white are as mythical of creatures as are yellow and pink striped unicorns because gray and plaid rule my universe. There has to be some sort of deity (or deities) because how else could you explain the singularly beautiful things that pop through the haze periodically? The moon rise this evening on a purple and pink background here in Utah, the way my niece Megan sometimes looks up at me when I’m home in The Land of Cleve, or the songs that come out of Leslie Stevens when we get to see her play with her Badgers? None of those three can be explained by simple randomness.
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The Greeks perfected poetry, using it in education, art, and music. The Greeks used poetry as a teaching tool, much as I use bunny ears as a humor tool.
He is more than a hero (Sappho)
He is more than a hero
he is a god in my eyes–
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you — he
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing
laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can’
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Time for a literal and figural memory exercise taken straight out of Highlights magazine. Please take a close look at the picture below and memorize it. Look good and hard because soon you will be asked to find three carefully differences in that same picture.
Do you have that photo memorized? Good job. Please take the Sharpie marker provided above and circle at least 3 (three) of the cleverly hidden differences in the picture below. Circle them big and bold on your screen with the Sharpie.
How did you do? Did you find at least three? Good job. Now we will take it up to the next level. The expert level. Please examine the picture below and see of you can find at least 3 (three) more changes in the picture.
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Thesis Antithesis
Little House on The Prarie COPS
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In life, we each choose our our own ceilings and we argue for them daily. We also choose the start and finish lines for memories. Most define their memory start and finish line with their children and their marital relationship. Happily lacking both of these, I choose my start and stop points using the San Diego band, The Rugburns. The first time I saw The Rugburns was with my friend Todd on a golf course in Pacific beach California. As lead singer Steve Poltz sang “The thirteenth letter of the alphabet is the letter “M”….it stand for “marijuana”….the way a letter oughta….the way a letter oughta”, I was hooked for life.
Have seen The Rugburns and other incarnations of Steve Poltz at least fifty times since that initial golf course show and each concert has as enjoyable as the first. The first song I chose to learn to play when choosing to learn guitar last year was the most perfect love song ever written, played, or listened to by lovers anywhere. The song is I Love Everything About You by Steve Poltz. The most magnificent line in the song is the true definition of love.
“I love sneaking up behind you, when you’re looking in the mirror. The way your eyes lock into mine, dear….without guilt and without fear.” That’s one hell of a great love song. Love songs make the world go round. Bravo, Steve Poltz. Bravo, love.
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Many of you know me from work, others from play. Most of you know that for the most part, my moral compass is unwavering and when it does waver, I do my best to pull it in tight. I believe in black and white and I believe in shades of gray when they are needed. I live my life through rules that are based upon what worked and what did not work in the past. It makes it easier to make decisions rapidly. I do not turn left across four lanes. I choose not to put wet towels on wooden doors and I turn off lights when I leave a room. I do not believe it is ever right to cheat on a spouse and a half truth is a lie. I swear far too much and I’ve done some incredibly stupid and illegal things in the past. I tell it like it is, even if it hurts because it is better to rip a scab off fast and it’s always better to know where you stand.
I choose not to cry in front of others. I have nice orderly mental boxes into which I put things and I pull them out when I am alone. I believe you should always be kind to animals and feed them before you eat. Thank you letters should be sent the same day. I do not screw people over in business because it’s the man in the mirror that matters at the end of the day. I am actually still surprised when people screw over others in business because bridges take so long to build and when you burn them, they are seldom rebuildable. I am often a jerk and sometimes cruel, but you’ll always know what you’re getting when I walk in the door. My compass may not point the same direction as yours and it will consistently point in the same direction. Whether this is good or bad, right or wrong is not up for debate. It simply is.
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Johnny Lydon ( aka J. Rotten of Sex Pistols fame) and Public Image Limited finished up their reunion tour this week in New York City. The final episode of Lost is next week. The anarchists are still running amok in Greece and will become even more silly when Greece declares bankruptcy in the next few weeks. Coincidence? There is no such thing as coincidence. Let’s pull all three of those sentences together, put them in a different context, and wrap them in a big Kafka, Gilligan’s Island and Sex Pistols ball. Plus, let’s start and end our time together with two of my favorite calculus comics. That’s a good Saturday evening right there.
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For years I wasted thousands of dollars on business books when all I had to do was stumble like Rocky Raccoon back to my room, gut shot by a man who called himself Dan, and open the free Gideon’s Bible provided at hotels as cheap as Motel Eight and as ritzy as………wait for it…….The Ritz. Yeppers, Tom Bodett not only leaves the light on for you, he also provides a fantastic business book in the guise of a Gideon Bible. Just as all life lessons are business lessons, all Bible lessons are business lessons. Take for example this one from Proverbs: “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit”.
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(sung to the tune of “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan)
Pistols shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out “My God they killed them all”
Here comes the story of the Mullycane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the Florida.
Three bodies lying there does Patty see
And another man named Rick Scott moving around mysteriously
“I didn’t do it” he says and he throws up his hands
“I was only robbing the register I hope you understand
I saw them leaving” he says and he stops
“One of us had better call up the cops”
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashing
In the hot La Jolla night.
Meanwhile far away in another part of town
Mully Carter and a couple of friends are driving around
Number one contender for the Florida crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Florida that’s just the way things go
If you’re Irish you might as well not shown up on the street
‘Less you wanna draw the heat.
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Interstinglyenoughmyclosestfriendsfromcollegeareallstillmarriedtotheirfirstwife.Infact,thevastmajorityofthepeopleIchoosetohangoutwithareontheirfirstmarriages.
Whileweseldomseeeachotherandtheydonotknowit,Iwatchtheirloveandlearnthroughwatchingthem.
Forthemitmovesreallyfastbecausetheyaresmackdabinthemiddleofit.Formeitmovesatregularspeed.
Becauseonthemostinterestingandchallneingofdaysloveislikethisparagraphandtheprecedingparagraph.Itrunsfastandfuriouslikearollercoatserandyouseldomhavetimetostepasideandwatchlike
Ihavebeenabletodoforalong,longtime.I adorelovestories. Regardlessoftheirendingsandmakenomistakeaboutit. Theyallendandwestilljumpin.
That was #200……and this is an Eponymousaurus. It is a carnivore and a Fostervore.
Good night, Bethany B. It’s nice to see you again.
Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe 