Welcome to our second flight of Priceless Ads. As in the first flight, every Priceless ad in this series delivers a familiar massage. In your priceless comment(s) about the massage that you receive, again and again, please don’t hold back your true feelings. 

“Contempt is a terrible thing to waste.” –Max Im*

*Max Im is the pun name of a pen name with a case of aphorism, which causes one to shoot its mouth off. The rest of the Max Im quotes in this post go without citation, lest familiarity with a pun name breed groans beneath contempt.

“Lonely is a stranger to the companionship of absent voices. No soloist is lonely in a choir.”

“Priceless alone time is meeting a perfect stranger worth writing home about.“

“Dogged curiosity retrieves every scrap of knowledge a cat needs to come, see and conquer the world of gods, emperors and slaves, before its 9th birthday on the ides.”

“It is better to idle well than to work like a dog just to bury your bones in a hole in the ground. Feeding bones to worms that prefer manure is a stupid waste of energy and bones that you have to roll over and beg for. Have a nice day.”

“An epic tale that runs on happily ever after, like the one about the Olympian goddess of youth, Hebe, first ‘Cupbearer’ of ambrosia and nectar, and her immortal human half-brother Heracles–role models for a marriage made in heaven (different rules than in a House of Lords)–is a priceless shaggy dog story. But your tale could be short as a Shih Tzu named Hai Ku, and still have long legs. And shag. That’s epic, too.”

“As in the sacred river Alpf, below Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome, so in the sunless reaches of the vaulted organ we sometimes think with. There lurk our primal survival functions—be still or race my beating heart; is she hot or is it just me; high-tail it or lunge—all controlled by a chameleon’s wet suit. It goes with ‘gater waders or croc’ flip-flops. You don’t even have to think about it. It’s autonomic. Wherever you lurk, you’re primal survival functions are dressed for success.”

*

The following Priceless Ads are public service announcements. They are not for sensation seekers of true conspiracy theories in fake news media, but for cultured patrons of the priceless art of op-ed cartoons, such as those which foment hope for egregiously hilarious human nature.

“Except for the opportunity to exact spitting-hot vengeance, revolting trespassers and disturbers of the peace don’t lend their ears to critics. So, friends, comrades, humans, don’t bother chewing them out. Chew them off and hang them on polls.”

“Hair-trigger tinhorns that become their own absolutely right or absolutely left self-image on Reality TV News, make you want to cock a hammer. But ease your thumb off yours, Cool Hand, and use it to press Zap on a zapper at Miss Kitty’s Sports TV Saloon and Voting Booth. Down your free shot, and blow holy smoke off your thumb.” “The world’s most wanted sneakers with electronic ankle bracelets, stink up a festive Samba worse than a grieving Tango with a squeaky violin. So stuff the stinkers with their redolent gym socks in secure basement lockers, and Begin the Beguine.”

“If you invest your trust in an AI ride with hyperbolic drive to the last resort that fell to rust by converting its oxygen to iron oxide, don’t leave the blue marble without a copy of Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, to read on the ride, a tulip in the bud vase, and a rust-free portfolio by your side.”

“A cool tool makes a point about hammering swords into plowshares, by erasing the s in the s word, and in the care word, if not the swear word. Crank the harpener to peel the s off tupid and off hit, and use the point to place an s on age and on aint.”

“Hand writing signs you can feel, like lip reading love letters, is the art of human correspondence. And not only among dyslexics, either.”

“Poetic vision reveals beauty’s truth as the epitome of human knowledge in an ode on an urn. Ordinary vision reveals an urn. But once you’ve seen truth’s beauty, it’s hard to see only an urn. Rose-colored spectacles might help.”

“The father of modern Western philosophy thought, I think, therefore I am. The father of modern evolution theory thought, The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts. Do all great minds think alike? You be the judge.”

“You only have to take a shower to revive the liberating joy in singing your heart out on a bus. Even if you were a groupie, you could wash your hair in the idol’s shower.”

“Just because they’ve been around, doesn’t mean they’ve lost the way. As a cheerleader for human resources might say: Cheerful old boys are more useful than toy boys that wind up in a box in the attic, like Buzz Lightyear.“

 “Flesh and blood have always been staples at the top of the food chain, and not only symbolically in holy rites. And not only missionaries on the Cannibal Islands, which are rare these days, if not overdone. But where Homo sapiens have dined, at least since the Bronze Age, the species has been eating itself to the foot of the mountain. To rise above, jump to recipe.”

“The buzz among serious scholars, scientists, and chefs seeking the secret ingredients of the immortal Olympians’ divine sustenance, hones in on bee products, honey and fermented honey, as well beetle products, a fungus they farm in tree bark, and a wild red-capped fungus with white spots, like the toadstool in Wonderland. With honeyed shrooms and brew–long live serious scholarship, science and the culinary arts.”

“Doubt is curiosity’s surprise. Doubt is also disappointment’s shield, which can block out all but the disguises in which miracles come true. If you doubt that you can create a miracle in your mind, watch a CGI movie. But to make it so, you have to be careful about the disguise of the miracle you wish for. For example, if it’s a surprise party, you might wish for all the candles on a cake that you can eat before blowing them out. If it’s a jackpot of joy to the world, the disguise might be a priceless coin to flip.”

“To dazzle the darkness with a dream adventure you create at night and in which you wake up at dawn’s early light, don’t go to bed without a penlight. A torch is a metaphor of a flashlight that can’t write, or an old flame dripping hot wax down the neck of a rosé bottle, or a beacon of freedom in the hand of a statue. Only a martyr on a mission might take a literal torch to bed. And what’s literal in a bed, might be completely different in a pen-lit dream and the dawn’s early light.“

Thank you for your admiration of the rarity of AI-inserted ads that pay for the space of our Priceless Ads. Thank you in advance for the priceless contempt of familiarity in your comment(s), and for your continued observation of this priceless space.

Until and unless observed, Priceless Ads are in superposition, like the cat’s meow in the cat’s pajamas. When observed, the superposition collapses in laughter.

Laughter is a priceless gift of all apprentice, journeymen and -women, and master miracle workers in the guild of gifted immortals in progress, all of which are artists, from one-man bands to absent choirs.

This post is dedicated to the creative genius of an old boy from the old ad network, who’s only a toy boy in his old lady’s dreams. Olé Pepe!