DRAWING DRUMPF: I’M THAT BORED!

Yes, I’m reduced now to drawing Drumpf – I’m that bored.  However, devoting 15 minutes to draw Drumpf does not necessarily mean I’m squandering my time.  At least when I post this portrait on this this blog, everybody knows the character.  Marked with his signature tan and cirrus pelt, Drumpf was an easy draw.

I must admit I do spend other minutes (“other” than these 15 drawing minutes) following Drumpf’s daily tornadoes of destruction.  I used to watch his antics on both CNN and FOX until I realized the CNN coverage of Drumpf, not-so-strangely, made me feel vindicated knowing that others hate him too; whereas when I watched FOX for the conservative spin, after a short time I acquired a sickness for sycophancy.  I mean, really, this is couch-and-snack time television.  Why should I spend any of my recreational time making myself to feel nauseated by the sound bytes of Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, Devin Nunes, and Mitch McConnell, never mind Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, and Laura Ingraham?

And it’s not the case that my days are filled with quality recreational time.  Factoid:  I still have to make a living.  Abiding by the municipal and common-sense guidelines for social distancing, at least in my Young Offender professional contracts, I have been working from home.  With my hypnotherapy clients, with whom I conduct sessions in my office, I am attempting to deliver sessions via Face Time.  These Face Time sessions are great because I’m forced to adapt, but whether they are valuable in a therapeutic sense, I’m not sure.  In a profitable sense they are a steal for my clients, yet offer no monetary value for me.  In a professional sense, what I am learning is invaluable, even though I am charging zeroth for the service.

In this world of designed recreational solitude my guitar skills are improving.  I’ve decided to focus my attention practising my guitar percussion skills.  I am tapping my guitar lots on both the pick-guard and waist. Here is what I know.  It takes practice, practice, practice to become an adequate percussionist on guitar.  (Hmmm, forgive my inductive reasoning here.  I should state that it takes practice, practice, practice for ME to become an adequate percussionist on MY guitar.  “It don’t come easy” adding booms and taps betwixt strums for this added Ringo Starr power.)

Besides some daily drawing and strumming I’m also embarking on Walden Pond walks.  Being quite used to a regimen of early morning runs before work, I am now getting quite addicted to my Thoreau high-noon strolls.

All this phatic chat above important.  This blurb that I am writing right now, atypically, is not about busking.  (My buskapades are on hold until general hobnobbing is determined to be healthy.)  Actually I thought this blog entry might metamorphose into an essay on loneliness but it’s not.  Rather, it is an essay on laziness.  It is about my laziness in my Lotus-land.  (I am forced to be home and am being paid for this restriction.  Under other circumstances, not having to go to work and yet receive a pay-cheque would be considered a Lotus-land opportunity.  I am very aware that most others, who are not so privileged as I, are struggling in this dystopian work domain.)     

Over these past couple weeks, I have become a slug.  Before this force majeure I would awake and rise between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m.  Now I roll out around 8:00 a.m.  Before this force majeure I would go on a half hour run around Wascana Lake.  Now I go for a stroll around noon.  Before this force majeure I was excited about going to work.  Now I get excited when I get up the gumption to change from jammies to jeans.  Before this force majeure I used to kick box every day for 30 minutes.  Now I’ve yet to throw even just one punch, which would take only a millisecond.  You get the picture?  I have become a slug.

Starting to climb over the hump of my slump I drew Drumpf.

Yikes.  I’ve been awakened by a disingenuous demagogue.   

Never did I imagine such a sardonic clown to be such a stimulating catharsis!

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week: 

RE-VISITING MY OUTLAW WAYS

DAN PATRICK: THE TEXAS DOOFUS WHO IS WILLING TO DIE FOR THE DOW AND THE DRUMPF

TEXAS DOOFUS

I was going to write about my alterity as a busker, a real busker, because being a real busker brings lots of adventure.  I was going to write about my adventures busking abroad, and scribe a bit about some busking adventures that have unrolled in my home city, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

I was also going to note that alterity is not to be confused with alter ego.  Not that the difference in definition makes any difference to many (or any) of my readers, for it is sort of similar to the academic difference between self-concept (how you see yourself) and self-esteem (how you feel about yourself).  To psychology and philosophy and phenomenology die-hards (pun intended), the difference between alterity and alter ego is significant.  Alterity is the adoption of otherness, a different persona altogether; whereas, alter ego is adopting the nature of someone whose differences are unrecognizable. In the extreme, both conditions could certainly be dissociative identity disorders.

But I digress.  I was going to write about all of this or some of this but now I’m not.  My mind is too filled with the political doofus from Texas.

TUCKER AND THE DOOFUS ON THE EVER BLURRY FOX NEWS

Just the other day, 70-year-old TEXAS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, DAN PATRICK, told Tucker Carlson on FOX NEWS that “No one reached out to me and said ‘as a senior citizen are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

His words were in reference to the medico suggestions that all Americans should be prepared to isolate themselves to prevent a Corona-virus pandemic.  Not in agreement with the medical guidelines, but rather in agreement with the sociopath Donald Trump gutlines, Dan also stated that there were lots of grandparents in the country who think this way, that there was certainly no need to sacrifice the American economy because seniors, especially, can take care of themselves.

In summary, 
Dan Patrick believes that the economic well-being of the United States of America is more important than the lives of older people!

Not surprisingly, this is the same Dan Patrick, who in 2017, pushed for the vomitous and shameless “BATHROOM BILL,” a measure that would have restricted transgender Texans from using public facilities.  Reassuring a faith in humanity and comforting to everyone, Dan’s BATHROOM BILL did not pass into law.

Most certainly, Dan Patrick could have been candidate for a Darwinian Award, an award designed to recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or self-designed sterilization.  I would certainly not object to Dan sacrificing himself by subjecting himself to Corona-virus injections and allowing several other experimental vaccines, too, to be injected into his wrinkled body, but alas it’s too late.  Darwinian Dan has six grandchildren, and therefore has already procreated to continue our species.  Hmmm … keeping my fingers crossed for his offspring.

There!  I’ve vented my REPUGNANCE of REPUBLICAN, DAN PATRICK.  (Is my message subliminal enough?)  My blog is entitled PSYCHOLOGY BUSKING A LA WORDSWORDS for a reason.  Better that I had a pen and not a sword in my hand, for had I a sword and not just a word sword, my warrior alterity might have smitten him.

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week is NOT that DRUMPF SYCOPHANT (DRUMPF is the original German surname for the Trump family), and NOT that DOOFUS who is willing to DIE for the DOW (the DOW is the economic index that tracks the New York Stock Exchange). 

Deservedly marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE are some sensible and compassionate people with whom I was fortunate to have shared some magical musical moments.

 

A SURPRISE VISITOR, JP, A FORMER BAND STUDENT (WHILE I WAS BUSKING)

BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB GIGMATES, CECIL AND CORI

BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB GIGMATES, CORI AND WILLIAM

BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB GIGMATES, ALBERT, TRENT, AND SELF

TO LIVE IS TO SUFFER (THE SKINNY OF ZEN): A LIFETIME OF RESOLVE AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Though it’s unseasonably warm today with the outdoor temperatures rising to a minus five degrees my body, 'neath my heaviest winter parka, is still chilled to the bone.  A fellow busker has described the weather today as a Montreal kind of day.

Boot-leather guitar busking in such weather conditions, for me, is challenging but possible.  Sketch and pencil portrait busking in such conditions is out of the question, definitely outside the margins of common sense.  What to do, what to do, what to do.  To burn off some energy angst and winter fat, I’ve decided to lace my skates and shoot the puck around on Wascana Lake.  This, after I write this blog entry, of course.

• RESOLVE

It’s coming up January end and I’ve not yet broken any of my New Year’s resolutions.  You know, the same ol’ same ol’ get-skinny-get-writing phrases sworn to myself in silence, but certainly never aloud and never through the looking glass. 

People do not seem so surprised when I tell them this, certainly not as surprised when I used to brag that I did all my graduate studies maintaining an A+ average, while still working as a counsellor, coaching men’s premier league soccer, and keeping up with my personal fitness regimen.  Yikes!  How was all that possible wonder.   

Factoid:  Anything is possible when you’re lying.  (I stole and re-worked this gem off a poster I found when googling the meaning of self-deprecating.)

Another factoid:  I did not make any New Year’s resolutions because I never made any resolutions.

And yet another factoid:  Had I made any such resolutions I’d still be okay.  I can’t get much skinnier (I need to drop an impossible three pounds); I am always on the move (I run, I skate, I lift weights, I kick box).

Just mentioning this will not make my dreams of being skinny come true.  I do need to drop that impossible ten pounds and yet … I had two muffins with my morning raspberry cream pie flavor (DAVIDsTEA), and two scoops of jambalaya, compliments of Campus Regina Public, for lunch.  The rooibos tea was healthy – the jambalaya maybe not so much.

A couple of paragraphs ago I proudly proclaimed that I’ve not yet broken any of my New Year’s resolutions.  I did not mention my two lifetime resolutions.  I omitted my long-time fancies of first being a famous writer and, second, striving for quantum fitness.  (True confession:  For me, quantum fitness is synonymous with six-pack abs.  Whatever I write or whenever I speak about fitness is always predicated on my vanity, my obsession for wanting six-pack abs.)

• DISAPPOINTMENT

FACTOID:  I AM DISAPPOINTED IN MYSELF.

Hmmm … famous writer.  My first foray into real writing was when I had a graduate Psychology paper published as a book.  Until that time, I’d had scads of editorials published, and was paid little bucks for big book reviews as a freelancer.  As a writer who is not famous I am disappointed in myself.  As a creative writer I do have scintillas of success.  I am proud that I pen original folk songs for my minstrel alterity, and I am proud that I pen this blog, having a readership in 150 countries to date.

Hmmm … quantum fitness.  My first foray into real fitness was when I earned my double certification as a life guard and swimming instructor. After that I became a long-distance runner (completing three marathons and dozens of half marathons); after which I became a weight lifter (earning certification in free weights and machine weight training); after which I became a student in Muay Thai (a continuing interests in martial arts, having been a student of Karate in high school and again as a young adulthood).  After a lifetime of playing hockey in the indoor rinks, from wee-wee to senior to adult rec, I still love lacing my skates.  Nowadays I prefer to do so in the winter winds blowing across the outdoor ice surfaces.  Nowadays I finally realize that life need not be a race, or rather, should not be a race.  There is no Zen in racing.  There is plenty of Zen in outdoor skating.

Factoid:  Being not a dull-wit I do know that to achieve quantum fitness I must jettison my gluttonous habits.  When I eat chips I eat lots of chips, and when I eat red licorice, I eat lots of red licorice.  Although food addiction is not a classified disorder, in my urge to munch junk I’ve statistically joined the 20% of the population who also want to salt and sugar their faces. I’m a binge-eater, and binge-eating really is a classified disorder.  Though affecting more women than men, and also being linked to depression, I am an outlier fitting neither category.  I know all this and yet I feel powerless.  In this, and this alone, I am accursed.  I am disappointed in myself.  (The aliment to my salvation, I know, will be the Mediterranean diet.)

Here’s the skinny on being skinny as expressed by guitar god, Brian May (when he was introducing the band, Def Leppard, into the Rock Hall of Fame): “If you want stay being a rock star, keep your hair, and stay skinny.” When Brian expressed this, he received a roaring chorus of laughter in return.

Okay, Brian.  Whether or not I keep my hair will be determined by my genetics.  

Whether or not I stay skinny (or become a famous writer) is totally a decision for the fountainhead, ME, just as the fountainhead of all your decisions, along with all your vanities and obsessions, is YOU.

Skating in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week is my best friend, COLBY WILLIAMS – PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY PLAYER WITH THE HERSHEY BEARS, who turns 25 years or 9,131 days old today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COLBY!

(My blog entry today is finis and so it is time to lace up my skates and head to the outdoor ice at Wascana Park.  And by the way, those NHL Tacks pictured above, were given to me by my best friend, COLBY WILLIAMS, right after his first main NHL camp with the Washington Capitals.  I've written about Colby before, more than a few times in this blog.  Three examples: COLBY SAVES CHRISTMAS: THE SILVER SKATES -- DECEMBER 21, 2014; DAYDREAM BELIEVER: WILLY GOES TO WASHINGTON -- JUNE 28, 2015; BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS: NOT WORTHY OR NOTEWORTHY -- JULY 22, 2017.)