A FEW SUPERSTITIOUS QUESTIONS

If you nail a horseshoe 

To your head

Will you soon be dead?

Is it bad luck to live next door to an earthquake?

Why would breaking a mirror bother an ugly person?

Can a blind guy give you the evil eye?

Do black cats have good luck?

Is it unlucky to be murdered on Friday the 13th?

What's wrong with opening an umbrella inside your house if your roof is leaking?

 

Is it good luck to have a black cat that lays golden eggs?

  

Is it a bad omen to hear a tree barking during a full moon?

Is it true that carrying an atomic bomb will bring you good luck?

Are you lucky when you reach The End?

DEAR DIARY . . .

This morning, when I woke up, I was breathing.  I took this as a good sign to get out of bed.  One day I will wake up, and I won't be breathing.  It will be harder to get out of bed when that happens, but I won't let it hold me back.

Except for the earthquake, the bus ride to work was uneventful.  The ride took a little longer because the bus driver had to detour around the cracked roads.  I had left in lots of time and was not late for work.

 

Earthquakes have no consideration.  They show up without calling first, and cause people to suddenly change their plans.  How rude!  When will earthquakes be more mindful of people's feelings?

I thought that I was going to have to work overtime.  Three workers in my department committed suicide.  They jumped out of the twenty-fourth floor window. They were defrauding the company, and made a suicide pact if they got caught.

The police showed up after lunch, but were not investigating the fraud.  The police came to serve a subpoena on a co-worker who had witnessed an accident.  The police knew nothing about the fraud.  Neither did we until we read the suicide note.  The final line of the note read, "You'll never charge us now."

I was glad that my boss didn't make me stay to complete the work the fraudsters left unfinished.  Maybe another earthquake will visit my workplace tonight, and I'll be able to take tomorrow off as an Earthquake Day.  Then I'll worry about working overtime later when things get back to abnormal.

That's it for now, Diary.  I'm sorry I did not have a more exciting day to report.

IN THE BEGINNING . . .

In the beginning there was me.  I was all there was.  I was all there ever would be.  My wonderful, self-centered existence would have continued forever if God had not ruined it.

For unknown reasons, God created the Heavens and the Earth and the rest of the damn Universe.  I was no longer the center of things.  I was not even close to the center, and nothing revolved around me.

God has a habit of hampering things.  You make plans, and everything is going along fine.  Then God creates a universe, or sends something like a flood or an earthquake, and there's a crimp in your plans.

I have been calling God for eons, but God's secretary says that God is always off somewhere creating other universes.  

Other universes?  God creating other universes?  How comforting to know that I am not the only one who is no longer self-centered.

WAITING FOR MY VOICES

I am waiting for the voices in my head to tell me something to write.  They are resting from being stressed out.  They get stressed whenever I bang my head.  They think it's an earthquake.  Good thing for me I have a hard head because I bang it frequently.  

Doctors want to give me drugs to stop the voices, but I would miss my voices if they left me.  They are with me all the time except when I go to the bathroom.  That's when they temporarily leave me because they have a keen sense of smell.

My voices have been with me since I was in my mother's womb.  (Why did I use mother's womb?  Could I have just used womb?  Whose womb would I have been in?  My father's?)  I remember that it was dark and wet, and wet and dark.  My voices first words to me were, "Kick!  Kick!  Give your parents a thrill and kick!"

My voices were right because I would hear my mother shouting to my father, "Quick!  Come here quick!  He's kicking!"  Then my father would come and put his hand on my mother's belly and say, "Yeah!  Wow!  I can feel him kicking!"  It did not take much to amuse my parents. 

(Photo from National Geographic's In The Womb)

I remember the day I was born.  It just happened to work out as the same day as my  birthday.  I was sleeping when the voices shouted, 

"Wake up!  Wake up!  It's time to go."

"Go where?" I asked.

"Out into the world."

"The world?"

"You'll understand once you're out."

"How do I get out?"

"Over there."

"There?  I'll never fit through there."

"Yes you will."

Suddenly I was moving.  I could not control it.  Sometimes I moved fast.  Sometimes I moved slow.  The voices were right.  I did fit through the hole . . .

"We're back!"

"Oh!  You startled me."

"Startled?  That's part of what we feel when you bang your head."

RELATIVELY SPEAKING . . .

MEDIA COVERAGE

Would the media implode if Michael Jackson had died at the same time as the earthquake in Haiti on the same day that Tiger Woods is caught in bed with Barack Obama?