Tag Archives: opinion

I ask myself…

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…as I look forward to a week of personal technology-based project developments and dance practice, I ask myself, “If my happiness is dependent on my financial relationships with other people, what happens when my financial well runs dry?”

Translation: how many friends have I bought with money?  I can’t think of a single person who has called me up just to get together for pure fun.  Am I deluding myself into missing those who HAVE tried to contact me?  Yes, now that I think about it, there are a few friends, maybe one or two, who have called me once in the past year to get together for lunch.

I asked for the life of a hermit who has assertiveness problems in the presence of other people, afraid to ask people for help because I’ll then feel obligated to help them in their time of need when I’m not that helpful of a person, and I got it!

Guess that’s why I see nursing homes and assisted living facilities as fraudulent places to steal your money, huh?

Looking at my personality traits in the funhouse mirror is enlightening, downright depressing today…all because I didn’t have the nerve to ask a stranger to dance last night!

Time to stop beating myself up and, if I can, motivate my wife to eat lunch with me so we can practice dancing this afternoon.

Trading my imaginary kingdom for a paycheck

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How long can a person take verbal abuse, over and over again, hearing the blame game, the excuses that everything is his/her fault, and finally say, “I’ve had enough!  I’m making a change in my life, no matter how much it contradicts the teachings of my youth.”?

What if the images/visions of a positive, radiant future in one’s thoughts were manifested in more than neural reality?

There’s a lot I have to consider of the past 26-30 years of my life and see if I have the energy to make significant changes for my health.

Am I really as unimportant as I try to convince myself I am?

Is it, instead, the result of years of accumulated personality bashing?

I will tell you a story…

When a man first got married, his wife would get sick (regular cold/flu type conditions), insisting that the man stay home from work to care for her.

They both had good-paying jobs.

One day, the man was called into his boss’ office and told to see the Head of Payroll.

The Head of Payroll, a “tough broad” and a “Number One Bitch,” she called herself with pride, sat the man down.

“I hear you got married a few months ago.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And since then, you’ve taken four days off, which exceeds our expected rate of sick pay per quarter per employee.  Let me ask you a straightforward question.  You don’t appear to be sick.  Are you and your wife trying to have a baby?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Is there any chance she has gotten pregnant?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, in my 35 years of working in payroll, I can tell you what I’m seeing here.  Your wife is trying to manipulate and control you at the start of your marriage.  If you don’t put a stop to this, she’ll walk all over you for the rest of your years together.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking.  ‘What’s an old maid like me giving advice to a married man?’  Son, it doesn’t take a genius to know what another woman is thinking.  Half of us are man-haters by default and the other half is lying to itself.  If you don’t put your foot down now, you might as well hand your balls on a plate to your wife and have ’em locked away for good.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What are you, some kind of Boy Scout?”

“Yes, ma’am.  I am an Eagle Scout.”

“You ever been to a girlie show?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, I just went to a male stripper show and I can tell you that the women in there were happily married women in public but hiding their sexual frustrations a’plenty.  They hooted and hollered at the strippers like they’d never seen a naked man in their life before.  Your wife ever been to one?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Once.  But she was turned off by the blatant display of male sexual aggression.”

“She was, was she?  Hmm…  Son, your problems are worse than I thought.  I’ve got to get payroll processed by this afternoon but I want to talk more to you about this.  If I can save you, I can save this office from becoming a bunch of henpecked men.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And quit being so kind to me.  You should have argued with me at least once or twice by now, defending your honour rather than letting an ol’ hag like me badger you.  We’ve got a lot of work to do!  Now, go on out of here before I get in trouble for not getting complacent employees like you your paychecks on time!  You aren’t one of those guys whose wives take their paychecks from them before they can spend a cent?!”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, there’s hope.  Go on.  Scoot!”

Emails in threes – a mathematical coincidence?

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July18, 2012

Dear Friends,
Periodically I go through all the piles of notes I have been making on scraps of paper, and present you with whatever thoughts and ideas seem most worth sharing.

It’s a bigger job this time than usual, because I’ve let the piles accumulate for too long (nearly two years). Anyway, here are the first ten items. Just for the fun of it, I’ll ask you which ONE of these ten (if any) you yourself like best.

ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT: MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

1. I can’t do much about tomorrow, but it’s more than I can do about yesterday.

2. There’s no point quarreling with necessity.

3. The deepest echoes in the world: What chasm has’em?

4. People with determination will find a way -­ or make a way.

5. Why must the whole body suffer for the sake of one small sick area?

6. The obscure and the notorious ­ the unsung, and the unhung.

7. What keeps many people moving is just that they don’t want to die where they are.

8. In future, the places to congregate will be wherever computers are most welcome.

9. What happens when you find your niche, but then fall out of it?

10. Chastisement in your bathrobe: a dressing-down in your dressing-gown.

All the best,
Ashleigh Brilliant

P.S. P.S. Your responses to my “Higgs Boson’s Mate” witticism fell neatly into three categories: (1) Very good! (2) Very bad! (3) I don’t get it.
For those (happily a minority) who didn’t get it, I’m sorry, but I assumed you were familiar with the nautical rankings (derived from “Boatswain”) which are usually spelled and pronounced “Bos’n” and “Bos’n’s Mate.”
So it was a pun — and (I have to admit) not a terribly apt one, since the story had no nautical connection.
7/19/2012
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Dear Friends,

Thanks for all your responses to my first 10 “selected thoughts.” Your votes were overwhelmingly (61%) for #1, which said “I can’t do much about tomorrow, but it’s more than I can do about yesterday.” You can, if you wish, vote again for your favorite (only one, please!) of the following list. But I’m also interested in your comments and reactions to any of the items.

11. What are the four most important words in the world today? I would nominate COPY, PASTE, SAVE and SEND.

12. Question: Is the proverb true, that “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb”? Or do many shorn lambs actually die of cold?

13. My soul is not available for sale until all other assets are disposed of.

14. Good quiz question: “The Lady with the Lamp” can apply to two famous figures of the Nineteenth Century. One was Florence Nightingale. Identify the other.

15. Not only can’t we communicate with the dead ­– we also can’t communicate with anyone who’s asleep.

16. One of the world’s very short books: “Conversations in the Dental Chair.”

17. A fact is something we can all agree on — ­ that’s why there are far fewer facts than there used to be.

18. I wouldn’t so much mind coming in second, except that there were only two in the race.

19. In a dictatorship, there are always more answers than there are questions.

20. After the end of the world, there will be a long moment of silence, in memory of everybody.

All the best,
Ashleigh Brilliant

P.S. Many of you have kindly asked about my health, after the accident of 18 months ago. In general, thanks, I’ve more or less recovered .
7/29/2012

Dear Friends,

Thanks to all of you who have encouraged me to keep these coming. I still have more to send.

There was a much wider spread of your choices for #11-20 than for the first batch. The winner was #13, “My soul is not available for sale until all other assets are disposed of.”

But very closely behind were #17, “A fact is something we can all agree on — that’s why there are far fewer facts than there used to be” — and #20, “At the end of the world, there will be a long moment of silence, in memory of everybody.”

Re #14: The other famous “Lady with the Lamp” (i.e. besides Florence Nightingale), as most of you who answered got right, was the Statue of Liberty.

Just a reminder: What I am sending you are not necessarily ideas for Pot-Shots (although many could be) but simply miscellaneous notes culled from a 2-year stockpile. I make no particular claim for them, except that they are original — meaning not only not consciously copied, but also (as far as I can determine) never said before, in quite the same way, by anyone.

21. Nothing is more upright than a ninety degree angle.

22. It was not Destiny that brought us together -­ Destiny would have had more sense.

23. Certain types of skin irritation can create a secondary problem, known as “a son of an itch.”

24. MAKE TODAY COUNT — if only as one more wasted day.

25. The meaning of “everything” is: totality. Now you know the meaning of everything.

26. There ought to be a general depository for worthy projects that were never finished.

27. The topic of the sermon was “Eternity” — and we thought it would never end.

28. Can a leg ever heal so well that you forget which one you broke?.

29. Numerically my life is a fairly even match — one person against one universe.

30 Why do we keep reappearing in later versions of ourselves, when the earlier versions were sometimes much better?

All the best,
Ashleigh Brilliant

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ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT, 117 W. Valerio St. Santa Barbara CA 93101 USA. Phone (805) 682-0531 Orders:(800) 952-3879, Code #77. Creator of POT-SHOTS, syndicated author of I MAY NOT BE TOTALLY PERFECT, BUT PARTS OF ME ARE EXCELLENT. 10,000 copyrighted BRILLIANT THOUGHTS available as cards, books etc.World’s highest-paid writer (per word). Most-quoted author (per Reader’s Digest.) Free daily Pot-Shot cartoon: www.ashleighbrilliant.com CATALOGS:[h&m included]. Starter $2. Complete Printed Text version: $75. Electronic Text-Only (emailed $25, on CD $30). Electronic Illustrated Catalog/Database (CD only) $105 (includes shipping anywhere). Details: www.ashleighbrilliant.com/IllustratedCatalog.html