The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!: An Undisciplined Mind

An Undisciplined Mind

To anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis, it is abundantly clear that I don't possess a disciplined mind. My posts are way too long and never end up at the place I imagined when I started out. I am a poor candidate for academia, or mathematics, politics, or most any other career that requires concentration, discipline, or an attention span longer than a middle aged gnat's. If it weren't for the fact that I've developed an uncanny ability to fake it, I'd be living in my car.

Most of the time, particularly times when I should be doing something else, I just think about useless crap. I puzzle over minutiae. I remember bits of flotsam that serve no discernible purpose other than to clutter up a mind that is already like the apartment of one of those crazy old ladies who saved every piece of yarn they ever touched and have 600 cats. With the amount of amazingly arcane information in my head, one would think I'd be the Sultan of Small Talk. Truth is, I'm painfully shy behind this mask of omnipotence and am so uncomfortable around those whom I don't know well, that I rarely speak. At parties, people either have no remembrance of my attendance or remember me as aloof in an indescribable say. Oddly, I actually like to speak to crowds, so go figure.

My thinking is of the multi-tasking variety. I have a well-developed ability to seemingly make sense when my mind is actually a million virtual miles away. For example, these are some of the things I've been thinking as I wrote those first two paragraphs:

I once read that a modern 12-year old is exposed to more information in a single day that a fully grown adult living in the Middle Ages was exposed to in a lifetime. The fact that most of the information the 12-year old was exposed to came in the form of video game images doesn't seem all that important.
John McCain sometimes requires help to comb his hair because of the wounds he suffered as a POW. I assume that Bob Dole, doesn't use his withered pen-holding hand to help him.
A friend of mine used to attend wet T-shirt contests armed with the liquid form of Freon. He did this for obvious reasons.
I find sex blogs interesting. Not because of the sometimes lurid details, but because they provide such a good window into how other people think. I just thought how sad it is that I really do, "read them for the articles".
The only kid, other than my deranged sister, that was my playmate until the age of five was a kid named Roscoe. He lived in a low-income housing development behind my house and we played through a very high fence. My therapist has a field day with that one.
I named one of my dogs Roscoe. The therapist had no comment on that.
I played with my imaginary friend on rainy days when I couldn't go out to the fence. My imaginary friend was named Hurricane...for obvious reasons.
As a child, I thought the fire department came to set fires instead of putting them out. Our neighbor used to raise (and I'm not making this up) hamsters for the space program. His hamster house caught fire and I finally learned the fire department came to extinguish the flames. After that, I could never be trusted with matches.
I once traveled to Uruguay and felt more foreign there than in any of the 23 other countries I've visited. There seemed to be some sort of weird time warp there. I felt like I was in one of the "funny" time travel episodes of Star Trek.
As a child, I visited a Lipton Tea factory and went to watch the tea taster. I was fascinated by how anyone could do that all day long without throwing up.
It is amazing how many times foreign objects (microphones, elbows, tops of the set, etc.) appear in television shows and movies. I once had a film criticism professor who said all of these errors were there on purpose. As he spoke, I noticed the tops of his underwear peeking out of his pants. So much for that theory.
I read the novel The Strawberry Statement many times as a teen. There are two thoughts it contained that fascinate me to this day: "Isn't it truly lucky that fires can be extinguished by water. Suppose we had to use diamonds." And, "Save this. One day it will be old."
There are newspaper reruns of the comic strip Peanuts - they call them Peanuts Classics. Why are there no reruns of Lil' Abner, Pogo, or Prince Valiant. It makes me fear the day when Family Circus retires. I don't think I could stand reruns of that grotesque thing. That would be scarier than clowns.
I think there is a real call in this modern-day world to combine all the best traits of the Dadaists and Luddites. Perhaps we could start with broken, fur-lined computers.
I always wonder about the appeal of Cher. Or Meryl Streep. Or Charo. The fact that they are all breathing is almost more than I can bear.
What insane person invented curling?
What possessed the first person to try a durian?
Why does the combination of ice-cold chocolate milk and sharp cheddar cheese taste so good on a hot day?
Why do we have laws? Do we really need a rule that says you can't kill other people? Shouldn't that be readily apparent?
What does the world look like to a schizophrenic? I think it must look a lot like mine.

And that was just what I thought about during the first two paragraphs. I've thought of ten more things in the time it took you to read this sentence.

And six more just then.

I'm going to bed before I think of anything else.