I just happened to be thinking about happiness the other day.  Specifically, what makes me happy.  It’s  harder to figure out than you think.  It’s not if you give the normal B.S. answers.  You know, the non-specific “better life, happy kids, and the simple things B.S.  I  mean the stuff that really makes you happy.  More money makes everybody happy to an extent.  Too much money makes people crazy so it’s kind of a trade off.  Bigger, better toys can make you happy but what really is the point.  If you like what you  have what’s the point in bigger better?  It doesn’t necessarily mean bigger better fun.  In fact it may mean smaller crappier fun in some instances.  Say you want a bigger better boat.  OK you get a bigger better boat only to discover it’s too big to get into your favorite fishing spot.  Smaller crappier fun is what just happened.  I boiled my specific happiness list down to two things, music and laughter.  Music seems to be a necessary function of being a human being.  I don’t know if I could live without playing or listening to music.  I need it.  On  the other hand, laughter is in some respects happiness or it can be the outward manifestation of it.  It’s not laughter in that sense that I’m talking about.  It’s making  people laugh that brings me happiness.  I think this is true for all humans, but since I am only one partly human, ahem excuse me, I mean one fully human being, then I can only speak for myself.  Nonetheless,  I believe it is true  for everyone else and I don’t care what other humans say.  Humans lie. 

       For me music isn’t an art.  It’s too interwoven in our psyche.  We think in music.  That’s why music is so important in T.V. shows and movies.  You can’t have a fully human experience watching a movie unless there is music to set the mood.  There’s ominous music for the scary parts.  There’s uplifting classical music for the happy parts and hillbilly music for the chase scenes.  Music connects us with the events on the screen.  Our lives are the same way.  If I get mad at work I find myself singing “take this job and shove it.”  I can’t help it.  It just happens.  If I’m fixing to do something dangerous I might start humming the theme song to mission impossible.  I’ve even heard that Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavs hums David Hasselhoff songs while he shoots free throws.  Music makes us happy.  We get married to it and we get buried to it.  We even ride elevators to it.  Ever wonder why elevator music is so bad?  It takes your mind off of the chance that the elevator might malfunction and drop you to your death.  Music makes you happy.  Just admit it.  My argument is sound.  I bet you’re humming “we will rock you” right now.  My logic has rocked your world.

        Making someone laugh is the ultimate happiness.  It must be.  We all try so hard to  do it.  I’ve heard people say the most terrible, embarrassing, and perverted things trying to get a laugh.  If it weren’t so important to our happiness, why would we risk telling the bosses wife a lesbian joke only to discover her daughter is a lesbian.  We need it.  It’s validation.  It’s happiness.  I think we should allow unfunny people to carry a boom box loaded with laugh tracks.  They could say their terrible unfunny stuff and just push play.  The laughter would envelope them and they would be  happy.  We wouldn’t have to do that nervous half-assed forced laugh that is so hard to conjure sometimes.  We could just let the laugh track do the work and go about our bussiness.  I know I have personally offended basically everyone I have ever met trying to get a laugh.  Damn, maybe I need a one of those boom boxs loaded with laugh tracks.  I could give my friends a break (playing laugh track).  Thank you.  Thank you.  I’ll be here all  week (playing laugh track again).  I could get used to it.

     The world has always moved mysteriously to me.  I think it’s our conception of time that bothers me most.  My  brother-in-law explained to me once that there is no past nor future.  There’s only now.  An ever continuous now.  We only  live in the now.  I don’t like this.  I mean, on the surface it’s reasoning seems sound.  Yes I can only live in this ever present, ever continuous stitch of time which is right now.  I mean right now.  I mean now.  You can go crazy trying to keep up with now.  It doesn’t take a break for anything or anyone.  But I did live before now.  I have memories of happenings long before this particular now.  They don’t seem as real as this particular now but I know I was  there.  I remember one  particular now when I was around eight or so years old.  I kept hearing this hissing sound under my radio flyer wagon.  I thought a tire was going flat.  I looked under it and saw a huge bull snake curled up underneath.  He was hissing and looking right at me.  I’d never been eye to eye with a big snake before.  That particular now scared the hell out of me.  That’s probably why that now lingers in my memory.  Of course I had a better now with another snake.  This particular now was about five years ago.  It’s one of the last now memories I have of my Dad before he went into the hospital that last time.  That’s a different now moment.  One I hope I never forget, and yet one I would like to forget.  Sometimes now can suck.  Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent.  This second now moment involving a snake happened when I opened the screen door to my house.  A huge bull snake had been creeping along the top of the screen door in order to inspect a Barn Swallow’s next right above the door.  The six feet long snake fell directly on top of me.  I screamed, jumped, and ran.  Dad and one of his hunting buddies happened to be walking toward the shop when this happened.  They thought something had happened to my wife judging from the high pitched scream I made.  They laughed at me.  I’m not ashamed of it.  You see what sound you make when a huge snake falls on your head.  It’s not a sound you have to think about making.  It just makes itself.  So go ahead and laugh.  Your time is coming.

       Those are good examples of things that happened in the ever-present now.  It makes it hard to stay in the now when so much stuff has happened in previous nows.  It’s a curse.  I would like to be able to go back and live some of those past nows.  Even if I did scream like a girl when the snake fell on me.  Even if I didn’t know I was actually living a re-run now and was totally unaware of what was fixing to  happen.  It would make that now much more fresh in my memory.  Those nows and this now are connected.  I know  this.  It’s still the same now.  The only thing that’s different is me.  The now is the same.  I’m different.  The more now wears on you the more you change.  Now doesn’t change.  That’s it’s power over us.  It never stops throwing a continuous stream of now at us.  You can fight it.  It will win.  The guy I  remember in some of those nows isn’t the same as this one.  I’m more careful in this particular now and yet I’m more desperate.  I’m much more aware of this continuous now than I ever was before this particular now.  Contrary to what you might think, you don’t get more used to it.  You get more aware of it.  Now drags continuously on.  It drags you with it.  The best you can hope for is to try and remember most of the good nows and some of the bad ones.  As soon as this particular now is gone another immediately begins and you’ve changed a little.  You don’t see it yet.  You will.

         The small town I live near is in need of a festival.  I can’t think for the life of me what makes us special.  You really need some special component to build a festival around.  I’ve seen where a lot of towns have an Octocberfest.  That’s a German thing.  My small town likes beer but I don’t think many of them have ever drunk German beer.  I don’t  think there’s a lot of Germans around here for that matter.  I know some people who fought them in WWII.  I don’t think they’d want a German festival.  They did serve us a lot of sauerkraught at school though.  I must research this a bit more.  Still, I don’t think an Octoberfest would work.  We wouldn’t get through the parade before a town-wide drunken fist fight erupted.  You really can’t get too many hillbillies drinking at the same time in the same place.  A car race or a fist fight will break out.  Usually both.  Let’s scrap Octoberfest.  I think Semptember is a better month anyways. 

        So what do we do, or what do we eat that makes us special?  Most of us work hard and don’t get paid much.  I guess it could be called The disgruntled employee festival.  That doesn’t sound terribly appealing or fun.  What would we eat, bolagna sandwiches?  How about a bolagna festival?  I would bet anything there is already a bologna festival.  Bologna is too versatile and too  good not to already have festival.  Wait, people  love welfare cheese around here.  How about a welfare cheese festival?  Man that sounds really politically incorrect.  I really don’t know why, it just does.  Scrap that idea.  Oh but I have more.  The ideas are flying  like sparks off a dragging exhaust pipe on an old rusty truck.  How about we have the first ever Car in your Yard Festival.  We could have a car in your yard judging contest.  The only rule will be the car must have been sitting continuously unmoved in the same place in the yard for at least two years.  We’ll have a car in your yard queen.  She’ll make out with you for a dollar in the car that wins the contest.  We’ll have a beauty contest for the little girls.  That’s the only time they’re sweet.   The older ones around here are mean in general.  There are degrees, of course, but a little mean is still mean.  We’ll crown a junior Miss car in your yard.  Her family will recieve a genuine car to place in their yard for future entry.   We’ll have a mullet contest for the boys and a best comb-over for the guys.  This car in your yard festival could be big.  The special food will be fried bologna and welfare cheese sandwiches with a side order of chemically cheese flavored corn waste turned into snack food puff.  It makes my mouth water just thinking about those tasty cheese chemicals.  We will have a stray dog show.  If you can catch one you can enter it.  My mind is racing with ideas.  Once the stray dogs have been shown we could have a tick picking contest for the kids.  There will be a prize for the winner of course.  Possibly a new dog. 

         Every festival has to have music.  The music has to have some cultural significance to the community.  This is probably the easiest thing to decide in the car in your yard festival.  You start early in the day with the gospel.  Put the gospel singers on the stage while the sun is shining.  Noboby wants to dance when everyone can see them.  We are a modest bunch until you put a camera on  us.  A  camera immediately causes us to shed clothing and fight each other.  I don’t why.  Jerry Springer does, but I don’t.  So the gospel music is going while the sun is out.  The older folks will enjoy this and they’ll be in bed by seven in the evening anyways.  You can’t stay up late when you get up at four a.m.  As the sun starts to go down the country music begins.  Most people will start to get a beer about this  time.  It’s getting dark enough to drink undetected.  The country music will go nicely with the first beer or three.  We haven’t drank enough yet to hinder our motor skills so we can still dance.  Here is where it gets tricky.  If  you allow the country music to continue people are going to start getting depressed.  The natural depressing effect of alcohol combined with the inherent sadness of a good country song will dampen the spirit of the festival.  When it gets good and dark and the people are just starting to yell out “play free bird” it is time to liven things up.  We will bring out the eighties hair band.  Middle aged guys in tight spandex and bandanas will whip the crowd into a fantastic frenzy.  People will spontaneously burst into robot dances amid screams of “hell yes, I freakin love this song.  Word up.”  This will be a successful festival.  The car in your yard festival.  I can’t wait.  I’m winning that comb over contest.

      When every day is over a 100 degrees you start to get used to it.  Well, not really get used to it exactly, more like you start to adjust your behaviour.  You push doing things into a cooler future.  You know it will get cooler some day, so you stay in the house and procrastinate.  This makes perfect sense and I think it’s perfectly reasonable.  There is a problem however.  A moral problem.  Procrastinating leads to more  procrastinating.  It’s a negative cycle.  You’ve gotten used to not doing things that need to be done.  The couch feels good.  The T.V.  eminates a warm fuzzy glow that sucks you into some exciting drama.  Those things that needed to be done are not dramatic nor exciting.  They are just plain work.  It takes someone with strong moral fiber to stop the procrastinating and get back to work. 

       I woke one morning this week to a nice brisk north breeze.  The air was cool, actually cool.  Unlike the furnace air that’s been blasting temperatures above 100 degrees for months.  It was like being in a dream world.  It was pleasant to be outside for a change.  I noticed a little frolic in my step.  I frolic-walked out into the pasture and was just standing around looking at cows and calves.  I didn’t have sweat running down  my pant legs.  I wasn’t plotting my immediate return to the indoors.  The calves must have felt the same.  They ran up to have a look and jump-bucked away just as quickly.  I was glad to see this.  I was sick of watching the glum down-trodden drag-step from shade tree to shade tree.  I knew they were sick of the heat too.  Now we’re all bouncing around and smiling.  Things are better.  We’re cool.   I guess my eyes started working better in the cooler weather.  I started seeing all the stuff I’d been neglecting.  There is no such thing as Utopia. 

       It wasn’t easy, but I did get started on things.  I didn’t like it either.  Yeah it’s cool and the work is getting done, but there’s also fishing right?  What about all the fun stuff I neglected to do during my procrastination period?  Doesn’t it count on the things to do list?  Yes it’s true.  You can see the four foot tall weeds growing in the yard fence.  I mowed the yard.  At least the grass looks good.  Can’t I trade one must-do thing for one want-to-do thing?  This is another moral dilema.  If you start procastinating,  you run the risk of pushing the must-do list into the too-cold-to-do procastination period.  You must do the things that must be done before any want-to-do things can be accomplished.  It’s the only moral way.  Yes you are cutting time from the want to do list but it’s a good trade off.  You’ll feel better about spending the day fishing when there aren’t pressing things to do.  You have to remember, the cold procrastination  period is just as dangerous.  Maybe even more so.  I mean there’s football.  Lot’s of football.  Almost every night on weeknights and then all day and night on weekends.  You can’t be expected to do much of anyting during the cold procrastination period when there is football to be watched in a warm house.  To avoid total moral decay and societal break down you must resume with haste normal to-do list things when it becomes cool and you must resume with haste when  it gets warm.  It’s easy to tell who has weak moral fiber.  Just look for weeds.