One of the things I notice

 about things is that there are a lot of people that jump to conclusions or try and read something into this that isn't there.

They go through life trying to find ulterior motives in everything.  A comment "Nice day, huh?" will send their minds spinning in a concerted effort the find the hidden meaning if something like that.

Hmmm... 'Nice day, huh?'. I wonder what he really means by that. There just has to be more to that than meets the eye... Their heads will be spinning for hours after a comment like that. There just HAS to be some kind of a hidden meaning in a comment like that!

Several years ago a group of Pennsylvanians formed the Zen Shooting Club. I'm not going to get into the politics of why it was formed save to say they opened it to just about any shooter that was willing to cough up $25 for a membership and a T-shirt. I was actually given a free membership and a T-shirt for doing a sarcastic write-up they put in their newsletter.

Of course, the very name 'Zen' inspired a bunch of sayings and little things that had a mysterious appearance or sound to them. 'Be the bullet' was one of them. Of course, just about all of it was a crock designed to sound deep like it came from an ancient Chinese monk or maybe someone like the village scone crusher.

What is interesting is that they actually started doing rather well and gave the State Association a pretty good run for their money for a while. 

My contribution was 'The mind is willing but the ox is slow.' It meant nothing then and it means nothing now. It came out off the top of my brain one day. Note I said the top of my brain as opposed to the part where the deep thoughts come out of. They actually made a bunch of stickers that said that and a lot of members put them on their cars. I did.

The really funny part about it is the picture on the sticker was not of an ox, but of an American Bison, commonly known in this country as a buffalo. I guess the sticker maker thought it added to the mystique.

What was interesting is that over time a number of people would ask me what it meant. My answers were generally whatever thing I was willing to say at the time as a rule. I did, however, tell a cop that asked me the inside story that it was just something I made up that was supposed to sound like something out of the show 'Kung Fu'. Then I told him the inside story of the Zen shooting team. The cop laughed like hell. 

A lot of people I actually didn't dare tell them the truth simply because they wouldn't believe it. I would give them some sort of ancient Chinese monk story about oxen and mental conditioning and walking across fire and stuff like that because I knew they wouldn't believe the truth.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY