<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />11:08:00 am 06.03.o5 fri  2 Wind tzol 2

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

Squirrels, a fable

   So you think you’re so smart. I think I’m so smart. One does – it makes the day go more merrily. But I gotta break it to ya, it’s really the squirrels.

   Let me tell you how it works. You & me, we (secretly) strut around all full up with vintage hubris, a fine wine of self-appreciation, a bordeaux perhaps of ego, richly rewarding with caramelly undertones. We be suave.

    Well, it’s really the squirrels. I have sleuthed this with a lifetime of vigilant detection. Ask yourself: where is the next word you’re about to say or think coming from?! Be honest, cowboy, cowgirl – you have no clue.

    There are squirrels who scurry around your brain & grab the index card with the next word on it & toss it on the conveyor belt & out your mouth, ventriloquist’s dummy, it comes. Thoughts, sentences, it’s the same thing, it’s the squirrels.

   Piffle, you say. Well, triple piffle, I say back. Check it out, Sherlock. Do the sleuthing. Get quiet. Listen. Shhh. Slow it down. What are you going to say next? What are you going to think next? You have no clue. You don’t know. No more than you know what or why your spleen is loyally oozing at this very moment. It’s weird. It’s a blow to all that Image of God folderol.

   You & I are so fine, and, hey, look, I’ll agree to like you well enough if you’ll like me well enough, but we both serve at the pleasure of our squirrels.

   Listen very carefully and you can hear the little click-clack of the tiny claws as they race through the shoeboxes of index cards to find the words for you, the pictures for you. Think of your first bicycle or first-bicycle-equivalent. Poof-presto, there’s a picture of it, maybe a home movie, and some probably maudlin voice-over. Aww, your first bike. Oh frabjous joy. The squirrels throw all this [fill in your name]-media onto the conveyor belt for you to wallow pig-in-muddily in. Where’d they find the ‘first bike’ footage? Do you know where it is? No. So don' be piffling me. The squirrels rule.

   As an upshot of my sleuthing, I can make some recommendations and offer some erudite observations. First, if you’re not happy, fire your current gloom-saying, tediously melancholy squirrel staff and hire new cheerfuller, funnier ones. It’s that easy. If you’re a bleeding heart liberal, you can say to your present squirrel team, “Look, squirrels, either you lighten it up, brighten it up, or I’m gonna fire you all and hire a whole feast of frabjous squirrels who gallivant, cavort, and amuse me til I laugh 96.66% of the time.” It’s that easy.

    There is no need to  huff & puff, to freud or jung this til icicles of tedium drip off your inner eaves. Y’got lousy squirrels? Get better ones. Y’got frumpy squirrels? Grumpy ones? Get cooler ones. I prefer squirrels who fetch little fortune cookies for me that say things like “Instead of duty, let’s do tea.”

  Think about it, friend. You spend most of your life with your squirrels. Not with the wife; the husband; the pals; the gals. The squirrels. It’s you and the squirrels. Don’t let the damned squirrels bully you.

   The dagblasted squirrels should be making fondue for you in there – lovely melting dark chocolate to dip pieces of your life into.  

    “Nonsense!” you cry, the gigantic macys-thanksgiving-day-parade balloon of your self esteem aquiver with offendedness, “Squirrels indeed.”

    Shhhh. When you can tell me what your pancreas is up to. Or tell me how the rods and cones in those tiny eyeball-shaped projectors you carry around in your skull provide on-demand 3D blazing technicolor movies 24/7/365? You got a better theory than the squirrels? (Well, I admit that the theofascist wing of the republican party [It’s more like being in a perpetual Sunday school than a party.] uses rabid piranha-reptile-rodent hybrids for their search engine, but that’s another story.)

   Remember you don’t have to mollify your damn squirrels; they have to mollify you. You don’t have to coddle your damn squirrels, they have to coddle you. When you get better squirrels, poof-presto, let me know how it goes.