It’s not a stretch to equate the dot.commie doodle LOL, meaning Laugh Out Loud, with the same symbol for Law of Lazy because laughing out loud and universal laziness are related. Canned laughter offers a perfect example: allowing others to laugh for you signifies a laziness to laugh on your own, as well as the […]

☞ The wandering way to becoming a post-modern prospector is paved with what is referred to in corporate speak as “off-ramp careers.” The way started as a farm and cannery worker in order to fund a scholar fantasy at what was then San Francisco State College (now officially restyled as a university terrorist training camp). […]

☞  Observing current English usage, with all the cant and can’t be said, foreboding words and forbidden words… So much blather to uncover and so little time. Yet, with that incessant barrage of new gobbledy gook hitting at us from all sides, the task of launching yet another term goes begging. ☞  The particular neologism […]

It’s been eternally puzzling why, in this Manichean world, efforts of great worth go unnoticed while slugs receive honors. The vision of Laurence Peter offers a view of hope to ease this lapse. Dr. Peter conceived of a world-view nearly rivaling that of Newton and Einstein. Like those great seers who surmised universal magnetic force […]

☞ So many different and opposing— let alone ridiculous— takes on the current pandemonium call out for comment. First off, “pandemonium” is the better label than “pandemic,” which only refers to a mass infection. Pandemonium translates literally as “all demon action,” and that’s the scale of the many who’re busy causing an infection of mass […]

  The book store in Kona, Hawaii, is like a literary burial ground. Maybe people come to Hawaii with a book from their past library and probably don’t want to pack it back home. There I found that kind of relic, a copy of a paperback circulating in the late 60s (might still be). Even […]

☞ This is the time of year when the roses become a terror. I didn’t plant the durn things; they came with the house. And when they bloom in spring, they pop out in such profusion it’s almost a full-time job in trimming and collecting. I try to ignore them, but they have such a […]

It should be easy enough even for a jarghead to grasp that diseases are named according to regions of outbreak origin. That reveals its vector of progress, or how it spreads. So some folks really should get the spring rolls out of their butts which seem to keep them stuck in the low bowing kow […]

  Heeding journal tradition— mixed with a dash of ornery curmudgeon behavior— The Trying Times offers its political endorsement regarding the ongoing electoral travesty. Moreover, our endorsement is delivered in contrast to the mountains of horse manure presently circulating ad infinitum, and it will be cast rather in bumper sticker brevity. It goes as follows: […]

“The only striking effect of having taught everyone to read and write is that the human beings of lowest intelligence are now vocal instead of being dumb, as they were in the past.” Aldous Huxley, “Outlook For American Culture” Notes Toward A Definition: JARGON LINGO, JARGHEAD STAPLES, OR JINGO JANGLES Jargheads are making so much […]