Mental Illness on Parade

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."
-- Thoreau

Few lives of modern fiction are more desperate than that of Jon Arbuckle, feline caretaker, perpetual bachelor and bon vivant of plaid sportcoats, disco moves and anything else long since consigned to the cultural dustbin.

Were he the focus of Jim Davis' comic strip-turned-cash machine, the cartoonist would have been instutionalized at least once for every million dollars he ended up making by turning Garfield into that blandest of worldwide enterprises.

But even through the mediocre morass of the daily strip, Davis' subversive, dark streak shone through in Jon's terminal dweebism. What this needed was an intrepid element to bring this to light -- which is the blessing of Garfield Minus Garfield.

The premise is exactly what its name suggests -- take the eponymous, overfed cat out of the strip and leave Jon alone with his thoughts.

The result? Desolate, psychotic majesty that not only provides an illumination upon a mild bout of mental illness, but occasionally offers an eerie reflection of some of my darkest moments since being laid off on March 19.

In my previous existence, I'm sure it would have elicited a chuckle or two. In my current life -- one which revolves around waiting for phone calls and coming to grips with the notion that the most fascinating, engrossing days of my working life just might be in the past -- Jon's delusional, schizophrenic existence hits home, eliciting guffaws that confused my girlfriend, who couldn't believe that her encouragement couldn't bring a smile to my face, but a wicked mutation of a bland comic strip could.

Karloff? Sidekick?

Hazel Court was Boris Karloff's sidekick, in a manner of speaking, which is all the incentive I need to provide this link:

A Recurring Theme ...

Why is it that whenever my life hits a crisis or unwanted change, I end up putting this song on repeat play, whether it's on a CD player nine springs ago or an iPod today?



It's got to be something more than the "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" garbage.

Because It Isn't All That Common....

One day shy of one month has passed since I was laid off, and I've dawdled enough ... time to actually start a blog and stick to it.

The only question is ... what does one use as the subhead?

I opted for a JavaScript-based rotation of quotes, which you see above. Before I settled upon this safe solution -- which I cobbled together two years ago, during another attempt at a blog -- I tossed a few other possibilities about my increasingly addled brain.

On my former blog, I opted for simplistic snark: "Blogging since 2006." Here on the Web domain I own, I tossed about a few possibilities:

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"Because I can only nap so much."

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"I told myself I would write daily, but writing my e-mail address and phone number in on-line job applications doesn't count."

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"It's either this or watching TV, and there's nothing on."

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"Because I only feel like searching for the meaning of life in the confines of my basement."

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Not great, I know. But it's 3:54 a.m. and I just spent the last two hours making the code for this blog fit come reasonably close to fitting in the template of this Web site.

Good morning, and vaya con Dios.