Of Cars And Dogs And Sealing Wax

One of the sites that I've got linked over on the side is McSweeney's, which is a mother lode of good writing, the reading of which is considered de rigueur if you're going to hang with the pretentious literary crowd. (I don't hang with the pretentious literary crowd, by the way, I just like reading shit that's funny and well-written.) One of the regular features is "A Convergence of Convergences: A Contest"
, which is described thusly:

Submit your own convergence −an unlikely, striking pair of images, along with a paragraph or three exploring the deeper resonances. The best contributions will be posted on the site, along with responding commentary from Weschler. (For those of you who still aren't quite clear on this "convergence" concept, it's kind of like Celebrity Look-Alikes, except instead of Nick Nolte and Gary Busey, it's a cuneiform tablet and the Chicago city jail, followed by a series of brilliant, spiraling ruminations.

Nothing that I've penned or ever will pen will be published on McSweeney's, of course, since 1) I doubt I'll ever submit anything, and 2) me no write good.

Nevertheless, I have snapped a couple of pictures on my handy-dandy cellphone-cam lately that had a certain familiarity about them, and the other night, in a whisky-induced moment of clarity, I finally realized the images that they evoked.

First, the Demon Hellhound for whom I work the mines, that she may gorge herself on the flesh of infants:

Above: One of her rare docile moments.

And here is Pig, from Pearls Before Swine (also linked over on the side):

Above: The comics page's most lovable character.

The ears suggest a common ancestor no more than four generations back, according to Lehi "Butch" Jensen, Senior Researcher at the LDS Genealogical Society.

Next up: as some of you may know, the Grey Ghost finally, well, gave up the ghost, shall we say. A sad day for all, and certainly a subject of a future post, but for our present purposes, it's sufficient to know that she left a permanant mark on my life:

Above: Major driver in Iraq War.

And from Prince William Sound:

Above: Vehicle of Joe Hazelwood, not a student of the "ride a bike if you're going to be drinking" school of thought.

Unfortunately, while these images are quite striking, and certainly lovely to look at and to compare and contrast, they really offer no insight into the central question concerning my existence:

Is my life a goddamned cartoon or a fucking shipwreck?

And the introspection continues ...