Day: July 28, 2017

Two-Thirds

Fandango27 Comments

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Do you want to hear something cool? Two-thirds of the visitors to my blog today liked my posts. Well, these visitors clicked on the “Like” button, anyway. Perhaps some of them did so without even reading my posts.

But what’s with the one-third who visited my blog today, presumably read one or both of my posts and didn’t click “Like”?

Did they accidentally stumble upon my blog and leave without reading it? Did my post pop up in their Reader and they opened it, read the first sentence or two, and then moved on?

Or did they read a post and deliberately decide that it it was not like-worthy? If that’s the case, that sucks.

Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit melodramatic and whiny. After all, as John Lydgate said, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time.” And as Sly Stone pointed out, “Different stokes for different folks.”

Besides, I don’t blog simply to generate a bunch of likes. I blog to express myself and to creatively exercise my mind.

So from this day forward I’m going to focus solely on writing entertaining, informative, engaging, and witty posts. And if not everyone likes my posts, well, so what? It’s no big deal, right?

Bullshit! I want everyone to like every post. Tell me you don’t too!

Deeply Shallow

Fandango9 Comments

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“How did that make you feel?” Sue asked as they left the theater.

“I liked it,” Hal responded.

“I asked you how it made you feel,” she said, “not if you liked it.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “It was good, entertaining, informative. I liked it.”

Exasperated, Sue pressed. “Did it make you feel sad? Happy? Good? Bad? Angry?”

“Sheesh,” Hal responded. “I liked it. I enjoyed it. The acting was good. The storyline was entertaining. It was two hours well spent.”

“Do you even have feelings? Emotions? Do you know what it means to feel anything?”

“Of course I have feeling and emotions,” Hal said. “I feel that I liked the goddam movie. Okay?”

“You are totally devoid of emotions,” Sue blurted out.”

“That’s not true,” Hal said defensively. “I feel very deeply. It’s just that deep down, I’m a very shallow person.”

Written for today’s one-word daily prompt, “shallow.”

Dang Hangnails

Fandango6 Comments

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For some unfathomable reason, I have recently been plagued by a hangnail epidemic. And I can’t figure out what’s causing it.

Up until recently, hangnails were extremely rare occurrences for me. And yet just this past week I’ve had three of them, two on the fingers of one hand and one on a finger on the other.

What’s up with that? My nail clipping technique hasn’t changed in decades and I diligently keep my fingernails neatly trimmed because I hate when they get long enough to clack against the keys on my laptop’s keyboard or when they get frayed as I pull up my zipper after taking a leak. (Sorry. Is that TMI?)

Pesky little tears

What the hell is a hangnail anyway? Why do these nail strands separate themselves from the main nail bed? Are they akin to rebellious teenagers who break all the behavioral norms just to spite their parents?  Didn’t I do a good job raising my fingernails?

I Googled “hangnail” to learn that hangnails are not even nails. Nope. One site described them “as pesky little skin tears.” They manifest themselves when a sliver of skin splits away from the nail bed. And they can be very annoying and often quite painful when they snag on something. Pesky indeed.

The worst thing you can do, according to hangnail experts, is to pull them off with your teeth, which is exactly how I decided to deal with two of mine. It hurt like hell and blood was involved. I couldn’t grab the third with my teeth so I borrowed a pair of my wife’s tweezers and yanked it out that way. More pain and more blood.

Most experts agree that the best way to get rid of hangnails is to soak them in warm water for five minutes and then use cuticle scissors to cut them as close to the base of the hangnail as possible.

Well fuck that. That’s way too much work. And what the hell are “cuticle scissors”? I think I’ll continue to use my teeth to chew the damn hangnail off, despite the pain and blood.

After all, why did God give us teeth if not to chew off our goddam hangnails?