Advice for Animists and the Superstitious

Never taunt an egg, just because it didn’t make it.

Don’t trust lizards–they’re much too talkative (Carlos Castaneda).

If you see a squirrel spitting out a nut, you better look behind you really quick.

Never use the same noose twice.

Whenever a bird shits on you, immediately buy a lottery ticket–don’t even pause to clean the mess off your shoulder and hair or you’ll ruin the magic.

Just as learning braille will cause you to go blind, and learning sign language will make you go deaf, and using a wheelchair when you don’t have to will cripple you, so too oral sex causes impotence.

A peach that talks back is usually not a blessing.

Pomegranates are the most reliable of the talking fruits.

Apples are the least, but they’re still much more reliable than lizards.

If a cloud starts to take the shape of an animal, you need to stop whatever you’re doing and stare at it. You’ve got to.

Don’t let the blue-jays steal your soul–why do you think bird shit is such good luck?

If you fall in love with Nature don’t let the god of Mammon and money find out about it–keep it on the down low.

If you really loved Nature you wouldn’t talk about her age all the time.

Don’t disrespect the other planets and never fart in the ocean when the tide is going out.

Sex during lightening on an exposed hilltop can put a new charge in your love life.

Masturbation during lightening on an exposed hilltop, however, is just asking for an ignominious death. Thor’s hammer is for lovers not loners.

If you scoff at a superstition hard enough, it will come true for you, even if it was never really true before. That’s how these things get started–not by believers but by the hyper-skeptics who get zonked.

Never taunt an egg but don’t over-empathize with them either just because you were one once–you need a good breakfast.

Conflicting Imperatives from the Ethos of the Age

The Ethos says:

Get your self centered without getting self-centered.

Be open to complexity and exceptions without being overly nuanced.

Live for the moment without improvidence.

Be your own man as a team player.

Find out who you are by transcending yourself.

Avoid sophistry and certitude.

Live for today and don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

Know your limits and other people’s limits without ever testing or pushing them.

Be a good Samaritan not a sucker.

Be neither paralyzed by skepticism nor blinded by faith.

The future belongs to realistic dreamers.

Be busy like the bee–busy smelling flowers. And hive work. Lots of hive work.

For the religious: Put away the things of childhood¹ for they are of the Kingdom of Heaven.²  Now go seek ye the Kingdom of Heaven.³

Be neither promiscuous nor chaste. Just stay on the right side of the bell-curve of vice, wherever that may be.

Stand up and be counted then sit down and shut up. Know exactly when either is appropriate–there are no firm rules but you still have to know them.

Be pragmatic in your idealism, and principled in your pragmatism. Generally.

Only marry someone if you’re seriously willing to spend the next eight years with them. It’s a big commitment.

Change the system without threatening anyone. Politely modify the status quo. Venerate that which you obsolesce and replace.

Be classy by accident. (4)

Always be the one who always looked the way current fashion dictates long before it was fashionable.(5) Or just give up and wait 20 years.

Joke Notes

1.  1 Corinthians 13:11
2.  Matthew 18:3 and 4; Matthew 19:14
3.  Matthew 6:33
4. The accident of birth into a higher class being the fundamental accident that is at the root of classiness.
5. Can’t be done? When you’re young or wealthy many things are possible–just change your friends every time you change your fashions.

What You Need to Know About Aliens

The most advanced aliens are desperately trying to figure out how to keep the universe from shredding itself to death due to Dark Energy–you think they give a fuck that their drill probes hurt your eyeballs?

You wouldn’t either. So have some empathy for their total lack of empathy.

Unlike the gods, if you pray to the aliens they will show up. Moral of the story: never pray to the aliens.

But mere imprecations and incantations don’t work so well as a broken heart, a contrite spirit, and a spaced-out mind. Moral of the story: don’t go fishing at night after a recent break-up. That’s just asking for alien abduction. No one will believe you.

Crop circles are alien gang tags. Hence their increasing fractal complexity over time as each gang out-does the other. (Obviously these are not the “most advanced aliens” mentioned above–these are their youths.)

Aliens are racist. They plan to exterminate Northeast Asians last. Gangnam Style now has them reconsidering.

Alien babysitters are notoriously unreliable but the good ones are out of this world.

Aliens are attracted to cheaper perfumes. So I’m afraid everyone’s going to have pay more.

If you find yourself aboard the DNA-donor Orgy Ship try to act studly and fit the part. Otherwise they’ll kill you.

Again, have some empathy–even the most primitive aliens are working on some big issues up there–asteroids, supernova, space-time wrinkles, gamma ray bursts, time-travel glitches, black holes, and rogue aliens (their kids).

Earthlings struggle with their pollution of space. Aliens struggle with their pollution of time. Ecology is humanity’s greatest cause. Historical conservation is the aliens’.

Just imagine trying to clean up Time after it gets all polluted by (among other things) drunken teenage gangs burning crop circles in people’s fields hundreds of years in advance of the first official Earth-Alien public contact ceremony.

So when people show up at your door looking like robot-clones of 1950s FBI guys and threaten to kill you and your entire family if you talk, have some empathy–they’re working on big issues and have a million headaches. Don’t be a million and one.

Besides, it’s just historical preservation from the future. So stay unpolluted. Fake it, even.