Postcards from the Funny Farm

A close friend who will remain unnamed is to be thanked for the idea here.  Folks, thanks for tuning in today to PFTFF (AKA Postcards from the Funny Farm).  In celebration of Damien Riley’s 1,000th post on Postcards he has agreed to sit with me and talk about his blog(s) and what he thinks after 1,000 posts have been submitted to the interweb.  Let’s jump right in:

How are you today?

Damien: Doing well.  Just watching Letterman here naked.  I’m a little worried about the laptop though, it feels a bit hot on top the lap.  Ha!  Just kidding, I’m never naked when I blog.

Ha ha. That is very funny.  Hey, thanks for talking to us today.  So how the hell did you write 1,000 posts in 21 months.  Is your melon warped?

Damien: Quite.  Recently I have started bic-ing my head.  The gray and receding hairline was really starting to bug me.  I found out my melon is a bit malshaped, but nothing that bothers my wife.  No, seriously though … I enjoy making posts.  They are therapeutic to me.  Many of those months my wife was not happy with all the time I spent blogging.  In the past few months though as you guys know, I have started making crazy money with this stuff.  I added two other blogs and now I am blogging for money all the time.  I take my wife out for cocktails and a movie once or twice a week on blogging money now.  Thank you to my advertisers and for Google for recognizing me at a solid 4/10 rating.  To summarize: My melon is warped, my psyche is not :)  I am well aware I work on my laptop and am happy with the pay (in all forms).

LOL.  Once again the joker.  So dude, I have to ask: why so many typos?

Damien: I am a search and plunk typist.  That means I look at the keys not the screen when I type.  I learned it wrong in high school and have never fixed it.  I am very embarassed I have so many typos.  I don’t know what to do.  Hopefully you guys will forgive me and try to fill in the blanks.

What are you going to focus on the next 1,000 posts?

Damien: Before I am 90, because I hope to live to 90, I hope to wear out 5 or 6 laptops.  Blogging makes my thoughts clearer.  I hope to learn more about writing and strengthen my mond while wearing out laptops.  I just got a fresh Acer.  My wife rocks.  She bought it for me because I had broken my last one.  I want to know what the people out of the web are saying and doing and of course, put me where the easy money is.  That is always nice (though now that I think of it, it’s not all that easy is it kids?  Do I get an amen?)

I see.  Well, this is a special day and we appreciate you answering these questions.  What word do you have for people reading this:

Damien: Don’t take yourself seriously, take yourself very seriously.  Care about other people and their brains and try to find something to love in everyone in your circle.  Mostly though, try to laugh and have fun, we’ll all be dead before you know it.  Seriously, the 1,000 posts thing is no big deal.

1,000 posts for this guy and counting!  I encourage you to give him some comments in this post.  It’s a landmark moment that will vanish like the wind in a day or so.  Thanks for reading!  Follow your vision.

I was thinking this afternoon about that story “The Gift of the Magi.” I think it’s a work of pure genius. If you don’t recall, it’s the story where the poor couple sells something they value to buy the other something special. The man sells his pocketwatch to buy her combs for her long flowing brown hair. She cuts her hair to sell it and buy her husband a chain for his pocketwatch. Ultimately neither can use their gifts and all their money is spent.

Everyone I’ve been talking to lately, it seems, is in a similar situation. I talked to a woman the other day I work with who needed her brakes done. She paid someone to come over and do them and he skipped town. Sad. She’s a single mom living off an hourly wage. I know people biting their nails because the recession threatens to put them out of work. I look at the gas pump prices every day and get more and more amazed. They are showing nearly $4 a gallon. And that brings to mind Iraq. I found a blog in my travels yesterday that had a spinning ticker showing the cost in Iraq. I think it was in the trillions, it was a LOT of numbers.

So how do we stay sane and happy in this kind of situation? Well, it isn’t easy. Maybe the answer is to accept our insanity instead of denying it. Maybe being insane is a part of being human. Most famous people I look up to were at one time seen as “out there.” Einstein said that being crazy was a normal part of life. At any rate, we can’t assume all this stuff is normal and we can’t assume that it is going to ever change. At the end of my rope, I think about the couple in the Gift of the Magi. What did they do after they discovered their misgivings? The story stops short of telling us. I think that is on purpose. It reveals your character to imagine something next. As for me? I say they cried tears of laughter, hugged each other, made peanut butter and jelly (since that is all they had) and then made love. Hey, why not? Like Guns and Roses said in the late 80’s “Use your illusion.” That’s my story and I am stickin’ to it. Now I am off to laugh, even despite the gas pumps and everything else going down.