INTRODUCTION

We enter this world naked, slimy, cold, confused and wailing; from that point our fortunes go pretty much down hill. 

The author’s lot is no exception.  At an early age he took an aptitude test to determine his ideal vocation.  The results suggested a promising career as either a paperweight or an organ donor. These results disquieted the author, who had fancied himself rather better suited for a cozy career as a lottery winner.  Undaunted, he decided to let no one, nor any aptitude test, rob him of the American dream of a comfortable life utterly devoid of purpose.

One day while meditating on life’s purpose and the fact that it took 10,000 years for civilization to culminate in the advent of the electric nose hair trimmer, he spotted a trend.  The trend was that mankind’s progress seems to be marked by an ever-increasing capacity for the absurd.   The more advanced man becomes, the greater trend his follies.  For example, no cave dweller could have held a lava lamp to modern techno-man’s refined taste for things purely kitsch and outlandish, no matter how tastelessly bizarre the cave fellow’s unkempt nose hairs.  The author decided that progressively greater absurdity must be the underlying principal in this universe.  Surely, had Einstein only factored this penchant for absurdity into his grand unified theory, he would be considered a genius today. 

Later, while attempting to play the song Feelings using nothing but his hand in his armpit for a musical instrument, it struck the author that he too might look a little foolish from time to time.  In a flash of insight he realized that he walked the earth a fleshy little bag of folly, a laughable product of a frivolous world which had evolved gourmet water, canine orthodontics, cell phones the size of Tic-Tac’s, The Clapper, eyelash curlers, Chia Pets (including the author’s Chia shower curtain), and the rotating electric spaghetti fork.  He too, a product of this frivolous evolution, was unnecessary and ridiculous. 

In time the author came to see that others around him were similarly hopelessly ridiculous, but many had yet to realize it.  Others lived lives of contentment and self-esteem.  Some saintly do-gooder had to rise up and enlighten these poor, deluded people to their true, miserable natures.  That do-gooder, it turns out, would be your humble author.  He who aspired to a life without purpose, suddenly found purpose: his mission was to expose us all as pitiful losers, to shed a little good-natured mockery on this world of undeserved contentment. 

He would lead by example.  He would lead by filling a book with daft pronouncements upon everything within his feeble gaze.   By example, the world soon would learn the true meaning of the word “pitiful loser”-- okay, the three words, “pitiful loser.”

But the author’s mission failed.  People read his little book and got happy.  They did not feel like losers.  Folks were happy to glimpse the silly side of everything.  Moreover, people were overjoyed that they were not, themselves, the author. 

Then overjoyed happiness awaits you who are bold enough to read on.  You’ll find the reading a delightful experience, once you get over the dry-heaves.