Sunday Squibbonanza

Dear readers, I'm cleaning out the Squiborium to make room for the '24 inventory.

First a few squibs on resolutions:  Let us begin carrying out our New Year’s resolutions on January 2, indulging our bad habits one last day, like the prisoner enjoying a final meal before the chair.

I've resolved not to ask people how their resolutions are going.

I'm going to notice what annoys my friends and Just not Do It.

Enough. On to the squibs

For the beginner, carpentry is the art of fixing mistakes. 

His symbol is the wooden shim.

Buddhism says to focus on the current moment. That's good advice. 

But the moment moves, focus shifts, and I leave my gloves behind.

Retirement is a time for life review. Something more than watching reruns of Happy Days.

In a digitalized world, young people don't learn to tell time on an analog clock. When you tell them go clockwise, they go "huh"?

Our ego expands like a puffer fish. If that doesn’t impress our peers, we’re vulnerable to a well placed barb. 

Improvements through history are inspired by women wanting comforts that men eventually come to expect, starting with pooping outside the cave.

Most improvements come from women. She asks a man to do something. He says it's stupid but does it anyway and it is stupid, but it gives her a clue how to make it a bit less stupid, and on and on it goes, ad infinitum or ad nauseum, depending on your viewpoint.

Who is this "they" always putting "scare" quotes around "everything"

When all the world seems sad and gray and everything feels frickin'

I sit right down and have myself a bowl of soup de chicken

The strength of youth is for taking hits from the other team or blows from the enemy. The strength of age is in dissipating conflict before it come to blows.

The delight in reading Jane Austen is realizing her early 19th century characters are us in modern clothes. And with improved facilities.

I tell people they can catch more flies with honey, but they just swat me away.

If a person in the wrong is convinced they are right, it's fruitless to argue. But if they show the least doubt, that's your opening to slip in your version of the truth.

When learning a new language, imagine it’s already complete in your head. All you have to do is bring order to the chaos. It won't help though to tell yourself the new language is a broken version of English.

The mark on my tea kettle says two cups. I check it with my measuring cup and find the mark is off. By what if my cup is wrong?

And so science progresses. 

It's good to be a hermit. Forty days at the most.

Most of us can't stand forty seconds.

When the heart speaks, we interrupt with words.

If we're honest we'll admit that our partner, with some kicking and screaming on our part, has made us a better person.

Even laws that seem silly have a serious jail behind them when we get caught flouting them. 

The candidate you fear and loathe may lose the election, but that's just kicking the can down the road another four years. 

As I read of unspeakable crimes, Should not carries me through Would not, while realizing that I Could.

Because he can't see through the theater wall, the atheist says there's nothing inside. The agnostic believes there is something inside, but doesn't know what or when it starts. The believer hands in his ticket and stumbles about inside till his eyes adjust.

Many arrive at death realizing they have not completed their shake down cruise or even started it. 

Many arrive at death realizing they haven’t gotten all the bugs out or else that they’ve learned to live with them. 

All in all, it's a good thing to have two hands, though it does double your chances of losing a glove. Sometimes a third hand is helpful even if it comes with a second head.