Uninspirational words in perhaps uninspirational times

I got an inspirational message email today. And this got me thinking of days gone by.

I am not much into inspirational messages. Yet, years ago my dog Jamoka wrote an inspirational book called, “Who moved my poop?”, which became an imaginary instant best-seller and “The [Book] Signing” was then immortalized by Hilary Price in a comic strip. You can actually buy this strip as a postcard at The Cup and Top Cafe in Florence. Those dogs are real dogs from the Arts & Industry building, including his girlfriend Prima.

"Who Moved My Poop?" by Jamoka, pictured at the book signing

Ages ago I had a job at a place that had inspirational messages sprinkled about all the walls. Every time a bunch of us walked past one of those signs in particular, at the timeclock, we’d stop, circle around, and reverently act it out chanting, “Working together… (dramatic pause) means WINNING together” and at the “winning” part we’d raise our fists in salute to something. Maybe it was poop, I can’t remember. I do recall that it had people rafting on it. And then we’d winningly, and with new found solidarity, march back to work, soldier style. It was a shitty job (ahem, timeclock?), but I treasured those inspirational moments.

Mistakes - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

I went white water rafting once in Colorado and we capsized and it got pretty hairy for a while as we collected various people out of the water, off of rocks, and from the opposite bank where one poor bloody guy had been flung.

One of the women on the boat was not “working together”, hence our losing battle with the elements. Every time we’d ride a rapid and water would splash she’d shriek and use her oar to cover her face so the blue eyeshadow, mascara, foundation and lip gloss would not get mussed. The extra weight of it all might have been why we capsized. Or maybe one of the guides was checking out her decolletage, which was spilling out of her very jauntily unzipped, undersized, wetsuit.

Problems - No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them.

Or maybe they were blinded by her hair, and the contrast of it with her roots. Maybe her nails poked a leak in the boat.

Risks - If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of life's great disappointments.

The people we pulled from the water all banged up and bloodied were freaked out and angry and kept saying, “why isn’t everyone on the raft helping?” and then they moved to a different raft. I wanted to join them. Makeup girl was scaring me, as were the rapids.

Fear - Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea

We’d signed up for intermediate level but there had been heavy melting and run-off so we were really in over our heads. I mostly remember being really scared that day, in a near-drowning way – not so much in a Deliverance way. I figured if scary inbreds came along they’d go for the girl who’d picked the smallest wetsuit and not much used the zipper part of it.

Irresponsibility - No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.

Anyway, this made me think of one my favorite sites called Despair, which sells Demotivational Posters. Despair.com