The head of the monastery told the applicant: “If you don’t enjoy hearing
other people gossiped about, you can forget about ever achieving enlightenment”  --
waited a second, then punched him on the shoulder and laughed:
“Ah, I was just joshing with you, but seriously: the most important thing on this
great journey is to always have a radio or tv playing, or be talking on the phone.
Remember: the circuits of the mind can never be TOO busy,
(and, oh yeah: we validate parking when your friends come to visit”),
and the apparent aspirant mused:
“If I had any friends I wouldn’t be trying to get into a herky-jerky place like this.” --
“All right  --  who said that?..."
“Heads up team, someone answer this: when is the pressure greatest:
when it’s the bottom of the ninth; three on and nobody out  --  or:  when it’s just
you by yourself, and you can’t come up with a single new and original thought?”
 

A man who knows what is going on, knows great secrets;
a man who knows what is going on, makes up great secrets;
those who don’t know are forced to accept the bland secrets
that life furnishes the masses.
 

To himself, one man said:
“Self effacement is but the vanity of those unsure of what they have to be vain about,” and immediately thought: “But isn’t that true of all forms of self-reference?”
and then exclaimed: “Well I’ll be strutiled!
Who’d’ave expected a dunce like me to be capable of a deep realization like that.”
Moral: everyone can pleasantly surprise themselves mentally --
if they have no intellectual morals.
 

Meaningful Conversation: Number 66.
“Being overwhelmed by emotions is nothing you have to be ashamed of.”
    “But you can be, right?!   --  I mean, its permissible if you wanna be?!”
One man frequently follows up the telling of his more improbable plans
by winking and saying that he has: “a secret deal with McNeal”
(privately he admits he doesn’t, but says he just loves the sound of him saying it.)
 

One writer chap explains: “The reason I became a historian rather than a reporter
is that, although in both fields are you relieved of the necessity of coming up with anything original on your own, there is more in history about which you don’t have to.”
 

The Power Of Words: Part 87.
One man says the amount of his veteran’s pension checks has increased
since he changed his name to: World War II.
 

Combined Crematory & Commodity Exchange News.
A man who feels better & appears more confident after having quoted someone else,
has no future.

Looking up from his book, a lad asked his pater:
“Will studying history save you from repeating men’s previous mistakes?”
    “By damn!  I knew all that readin’ would finally rot your brain!”
 

Those who say that such-&-such a matter does not “bode well for the future”
also have no future (not intellectually).
 

A man well read in all the world’s religions offers this observation:
“You can tell a lot about a god by the kind of people he gets to write for him.”
 

One kid likes to kid the adults around him by asking: “What is the difference between
a psychologist and a man trying to get to the bottom of things?   --
     A psychologist is interested in other people.”
 

One man keeps a scrapbook  --  with nothing in it  --  he says, as an inspiration to
that area of his brain set up to store memories of feelings he experienced
collateral to things that happened to him in the normal course of being alive.
 

One man will sometimes go for weeks without speaking to himself  --
which always drives him to eventually say: “Okay  --  is this some sort of test?”
 

The speaker in the park barked: “Men who enjoy fiction will tolerate living same  --  without ever facing up to the fact --  Hey! --  wait a minute!  --
                                                            that’s WHY they enjoy it!”
 

One guy says: “The physics involved in producing thoughts that will break up their subject into extraordinary understanding is the same as that embodied in billiards  --  except that here, spin has the opposite effect on the object ball
than it does on the felt table.
 

When one man saw an ad for some fancy-antsy gym equipment with copy that said: “When exercise is fun  --  fitness comes easy” he thought: “Ah, but if only the
same weren’t true regarding the pursuit of the great mystical whiz-bang.”
 

Despite men’s claims of commonly identifying same, the world’s only true, “no-brainer” is one that ordinary men do not have brains capable of conceiving.
(Admit it: if the justice-of-things was any neater --  you couldn’t stand it!   Admit it!)
 

One old sorehead opines: “Just because everyone can claim to be, ‘a-work-in-progress’ doesn’t necessarily mean it is a work worth finishing.”
 

Everything said about man’s intangible life is ad hoc, but hardly anyone is aware of it.  (“And a damn good thing!” quips one observer.)
 

The difference between sports and being intelligent is that:
people will pay to see other men move.
Note further: the differences between all things is the same as that between none. “You’re talking about OFF the physical playing field, right?!”
                                                (Give that man a free chili dog.)
 

Revision of the old idea that says:
“Men believe they are awake, but live actually in a dream” (new version):
“Men think they are mentally free, but live inside an automated thought factory”
(to wit): the, “living-in-a-dream” is but being of ordinary consciousness,
which is exemplified by a man never saying anything that he did hear
someone else previously say.
 

The most significant metaphysical question in the life of the common man is:
“Bobby, what kind of race can the fans expect to see today?”
The worse thing about a spin-out is that it tends to make you lose your concentration, and mental momentum.
Question: what is worse than a neural spin-out? --
Never taking your car onto the track in the first place.
 

One chap enjoys saying that he is a “submarine”   --   and he is the water.
 

Those in non technical activities who are all too willing to expound on:
the-greater-purpose-of-what-they-do --  do so in dense recognition that it has none.
When the thing men pursue has no discernable reason for being,
they must assign it one quick!   --  and with passion!
The collective cartesian mantra governing their mental world could be:

The valid response (if one ever happened to be in order) to men’s common comment: “You know what I mean?” would be:
“I know what you would SAY that you mean if you were asked  directly.”
 

At unexpected moments one man revels in suddenly pointing an accusatory finger
at his reflection in a mirror and shouting: “IMPOSTER!  --  IMPOSTER!”
 

One guy starts every day by confessing that he fears he will die that day
of an, “unknown illness”  --   (it MUST be an unknown one).
 

How slick & neat does life have men’s minds working! (for example): one guy
owes another man a debt, and by way of explaining why he is not paying it says:
“Hey! --  I’m completely broke --  I don’t have a cent  --  what do you expect me to do!”  thereby shifting onto the one owed the mental onus of the debt,
(assuming he is dumb enough to be of ordinary consciousness & will thus accept it.    [What design firm will ever turn out a model so sleek and breathtakingly functional]).
 

“Hey Pop, tell me another of the funniest things you’ve ever heard.”
     “A betrothed couple, after having an argument saying:
     ‘Sure, we may have problems, but we have a whole lifetime to work them out’.”
“Ha ha!  --  and it would still be funny even if gender and marriage weren’t involved, right?”
     “Bingo!”
“And even if it wasn’t two people doing it, huh?!"
      “Bullseye!”
 

The most important thing about life for ordinary people is  -- NOTHING!
(that is why they have to concoct stuff that seems to be  --
.......to them only, that is........of course.......obviously.........no?!)
 

And another man delights in imagining that he tells people who ask to talk to him that he can’t because he is:  “too tied up”  --
in thinking about how nice it is not to talk to people.
 

One man’s motto for all occasions, questions and uncertainties: