Greetings and Welcome to "Humdiddy", where you can revel in uninformed opinions, half-baked epiphanies, insensitive observations, inaccurate reports, boring proclamations, and bombastic pontification on whatever is yanking my chain, getting my goat, bunching my panties, frosting my balls, getting my dander up, wrong-treeing my bark, or hummin' my diddy. Unlike my other blog, "Various and Sundry", where I tell stories both real and imagined but always in equally poor taste, the only fiction you'll find in "Hummin' the Diddy" is when my brain gets abducted by aliens in the middle of blogging (which I've always thought sounded like a dirty, perhaps even scatological activity).
So to help you decide whether "Humdiddy" is a blog you mistakenly might want to follow, let's just start bloggin'. All together now: Do a little blog, make a little blog, get blogged tonight, get blogged tonight! (See I told you this would be bad.)
Some of you may have stumbled across a little video I made with my good buddy Sock Monkey last week, where the monkster sings the praises of "crunchy roasted nibs". This was inspired by the label on a Bolivian "Alter-Eco" dark chocolate bar" Dark Chocolate Cacao with Crunchy Roasted Nibs". On that day my brain must have been seeking relief from the mind-numbing drudgery, dark seriousness, and shameless ass-kissing that comprises my corporate gig with Big Fucking Company (BFC in my 2nd novel, "American Corporate"). To counter the relentless pressure to quickly perform senseless administrivia, my brain will latch onto a phrase like "crunchy roasted nibs" and turn it into a melodic mantra, (aka "brain worm" Thanks DeeDee). Then, with desperate desire to do something at least nominally creative, and with Sock Monkey sitting not two feet from the computer where I live, we (sock monkey and I) decided to skip the next conference call and make a video for Facebook. Regardless of how shitty, stupid, and silly it came out, we were going to post this thing and see if we could get a few laughs. (Now I realize that it may have been the chemicals unlocked by crunching on those roasted nibs that inspired this manic silliness). The idea to suggest that the painting, or a painting like it, might make a good holiday gift, was entirely Sock Monkey's idea. He felt that just singing the little song, which he made up on the spot, lacked purpose. "What good is it to just sing a song about crunchy roasted nibs?" he complained.
"Yes, but if you throw a plug for the paintings in there you will lose the pure existentialism of the experience!" I countered.
"Horseshit!" shouted Sock Monkey. And that was that, because as soon as Sock Monkey starts talking about shit you run the risk of having it all over the place. He is, after all, a monkey.
I must admit I was a little disappointed by the general lack of an intelligent reaction to "Crunchy Roasted Nibs" by the audience, the media and the blogosphere in general. Here was a breathtakingly original, raw, primitive and uncontrived film promoting the benefits of fair-trade Bolivian chocolate. Indeed, there are few if any Bolivian food products out there promising to make the consumer "get down and get funky", at least not in English. My suspicion is that most Americans do not understand the significance, or the mental health benefits of crunchy roasted nibs.
So let's pause and consider the spiritual significance and possible mental health benefits of crunchy roasted nibs. Let me suggest that the secret lies not in the nibs themselves, nor in their roasted crunchiness, but rather in the rhythmic, drone-like quality of the phrase itself: "crunchy roasted nibs". It is the creation of the sonic waveform in the brain that in turn, through auto-suggestion, produces the profoundly deep meditative state. I bet that if you sat in some sort of yogic position in a temple high in the Himalayas with several hundred scarlet-robed, shaved-headed Tibetan monks chanting "crunchy roasted nibs" in their famous throbbing hum, you would experience the ecstasy of nirvana. Or you would get so hungry thinking about the chocolatey crunch of a roasted nib you might bite one of the monks (as some of them are similar in color).
So now you know why I made that stupid, irritating, silly little video, holding Sock Monkey in my left hand (he still hasn't learned how to walk on his own) and my iPhone in my right. First there was the trigger: the compelling yearning of the brain to break free of it's corporate shackles to dwell in the abstract chaos of the unfettered mind (and get down and funky in the process). And then the realization that our purpose was not simply to create a childlike, sophomoric diversion but to actually share this simple yet powerful mantra with as many suffering souls as possible in the interest of individual enlightenment and ultimately world peace.
So let's try it one more time. Repeat after me:
Crunchy roasted nibs (yay!)
Crunchy roasted nibs (yay!)
Get down and get funky with some
Crunchy roasted nibs (yaaaaaay!)
Ahhhhhhh. Ommmmmmm. See?
Just goes to show ya: it's not what you say, it's how (and how often) you say it!
Amen!
