Chunk o' Cheez

My brother once remarked that he'd like to have a small, failing business someplace, and as his sibling(or in whatever other capacity I'd be writing this)I've had a couple such ideas. 

One of them, from awhile back, was The Ottoman Empire, a store devoted(principally but not exclusively)to footstools. A virtual empire of ottomans, for your seating comfort. This new idea could possibly be a small eatery right outside The Ottoman Empire.

Chunk o' Cheez.  From a variety of cheeses(Colby, American, Swiss, Cheddar--both mild and sharp, Roquefort, etc), an actual hand-picked chunk of cheese. (Of course, gloves are worn while preparing your personal chunk). Since they're hand-crafted, no two chunks are exactly alike. 

Large and small chunks are available, and so far two meal options(pictured above): Basic chunk o' cheese. Just the simple experience of your chunk o' cheese(available in 10 different types)and a knife and fork. The Deluxe Meal.  Your chunk o' cheese plus chips and a soft drink(also available without the drink, as just the Chunk o' Cheeze & Chips.)

Chunk o' Cheez. A tasty treat that won't cost you a chunk of change! Coming soon to a location near you. 

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 Okay, I also had an idea(and about as harebrained)for a Coffee Shop called The Coffee Center.  The advertising would include a picture of the globe with a place mapped out in the very middle called- the Coffee Center. It would be staffed by coffee specialists, not called Baristas but rather Java Developers. Another corner of the Ottoman Empire perhaps. 

  So these are a few ideas of mine, which I might be fool enough to try and implement if I had that kind of money to piss away...

My Worlds and Welcome to Them

After a recent viewing of The Truman Show, a movie I like to re-visit on occasion, I was catching the credits on the way out, something I've seen a million times. (For some reason, this viewing caught my attention). As far as the actor credits, they're broken up into how you function in the show: Cristof's World(the show's creator and technical staff); Truman's World(all the actors and extras, and Truman himself); and the 'real' world of viewers around the globe. Three separate but interdependent realities. 

Sometimes I feel that's how my own life operates. Not in the deterministic sense that Truman's does(well, until he finally realizes what's going on), but in the sense of having different strata, different orbits going on at the same time.Yes, also unbeknownst to Truman, until the very end of the movie.

 I basically have three- excuse me, four such worlds: separate but interdependent, each completely self-contained, and with an entirely different cast of characters. Depending on how many associations you have in life, you may inhabit more of these worlds than I, but mine add up to 3(excuse me, 4). 

 World number one. My job of over 21 years carries with it of course all the folks I currently rub elbows with in the place where I work, plus folks with the same agency at other points all over the state, plus related businesses we work with--plus all the clients we take care of. Add to this all the folks I used to work with who're still around and in touch, plus a few from the place I worked at before. That's as far back as this world goes, but it's still inhabited by a lot of people! It's the most stressful of my worlds, the one I most need to get away from. 

World number two is the people I play music with, both current and past, musicians I've studied with, those I've just heard and met,  those who take and have taken guitar lessons, club owners and the like who've hired my groups and those I've played in, musicians I've met via the internet, and the many people I've met in conjunction with playing or writing music. Also a lot of folks, maybe even more populous than my working world. It's less stressful than world number one, but can become a bit too inbred on the local level and thus something one(this one anyway)has to get away from now and again.

My home life would be world number three. It's the least populous and the least stressful of my worlds. Basically it consists of my two cats(the only other residents here), neighbors, my brother and nephew, a few friends, and a few folks I check in with for financial/insurance/healthcare needs. There is the occasional domestic problem, but for the most part, I keep things as stress-free as possible here. After all, this is home!

   Last but certainly not least is my own private world. The world between my ears. In my own mind.  The world of the imagination. Sometimes you can get things in this world that you can't in the others. That's one of the things that makes it so nice. But I keep trying to get them in those other worlds too. Thank goodness I can always come back here though. Not an escape for all time(nor should it be)but still a refuge. In Truman's case, this was the world that saved him.  

From my worlds to yours.    

 

Harshmallow 216

On vanity plates, the number accompanying your bon mot(s) is, along with you,  how many other folks already thought of this--before your date of purchase, in RST(Retail Standard Time). So the 216 in this post is me plus how many others probably thought of harshmallow before I did. I mean, it was Googleable, for Christ's sake..

But it did originate in my head as an "original" idea. I was thinking earlier today about a deliberately vague post on my FB page(but with just a hint of foreboding, so as to plant a seed of discomfort). Nothing sinister, no nefarious agenda, just playfully harshing my mellow a bit. And I began to think of it in quantifiable terms, as to how you'd measure how much mellow was harshed, or how much  it would take to harsh someone's mellow. In this case a mild amount, somewhat analogous to dropping a marshmallow into someone's Cocoa(only in this case a malevolent marshmallow). 

  And there you have it. I'd forgotten that it was actually Marshmallow instead of marshmellow(just like Elephantitis is really Elephantiasis), but it still holds. Those efforts on the part of others to discomfit us are harshmellows.  In a mild, playful sense(let's hope)like the FB post I got, they just tried to drop a harshmellow into my drink. You could, in a more extreme case, where one's efforts to cause you psychic ill carry more vitriol, they could be said to be baking you a Harshmellow Pie.

  Thankfully, most of the time, it's just a question of having something dropped into your drink. Been going on since the Big Bang. I remember a friend in High School who used to love to say to people, "gee, no wonder you don't have any friends", in a playful but quasi-serious tone, so as to make them secretly wonder if they didn't actually have any. This is not only dropping a harshmellow into their drink, but(for best results)giving it time to dissolve..

Well, waddyagonna do? When life gives you harshmallows, just soak 'em in your hot chocolate. Or roast the fuckers the way you would their 'benevolent' cousins. Either way they're zapped out of existence. This being the estimated 216th discovery of "harshmellow", I'm wondering if the other 215(or even this one!)are entertaining reading. Just how many different things can we say about marshmallows?  

Probably 3 or 4.