An Auspicious Beginning?

It’s 2013 – a brand new year, offering the promise of endless new possibilities, a chance to start fresh, to learn and grow, and to make tomorrow different from yesterday!
As if.
I actually went ahead and set the tone for the year very early on.
At around 1 AM on my way upstairs I decided to pause to check my phone to see if I’d gotten any texts (No), and after I set the phone back down on its wireless charger, I turned to head up the stairs, and in the process – as I’ve done so many times – I caught my pant leg on the corner of one of the metal dividers separating the vinyl flooring from the carpet by the front door.  Despite my best efforts, the dividers will not stay put, as whoever installed them didn’t really take adequate steps to secure them to the concrete underneath and the – bent – nails holding them in place keep popping loose.
This time was worse than any of the others, however, as I got quite a bit further than usual before realizing that my pant leg was caught, and so the divider got yanked almost completely loose, and ended up even more bent than it already was.  I’d heard one of the nails get sent skittering across the vinyl, so, after getting my pant leg loose, I reached over to turn on the light switch, at which point the bulb in the lamp flared brilliantly for the briefest of moments, then burned out with a loud pop.
I stood there in the dark, not wanting to take a step because I knew that if I did my foot would, unerringly and without fail, find the missing nail, and I thought, “Yep, a brand new year, full of endless possibilities.”

Inevitability

(The Scene: An imaginary conversation with a hypothetical person. The Time: One week ago. The Place: Let's say...Malaysia?)

Hypothetical Person: Hey Jon, do you suppose you could ever get tired of looking at a beautiful woman with huge boobs?
Jon: No. No, I do not.

Boring!

(The Scene:  An imaginary conversation with a hypothetical person.  The Time:  Shortly after finishing the above picture of Denise Milani.  The Place:  The Belgian Congo.)

Hypothetical Person:  How about now?
Jon:  Shut up.

I mean, okay, it's a good picture, the woman is beautiful, and, indeed, the boobs are huge, but I spent a lot more time looking at the source image than really should have been necessary, given that it's a pretty straightforward image with nothing terribly complex, and that led me, ultimately, to get...well, a little bored.
It was kind of distressing.  It reminded me of the first time I went to a strip club after I quit drinking and finding that while yes, it was nice to see attractive women taking their clothes off, without the booze it wasn't nearly so much fun as I'd remembered.
 Beyond the boredom, though, was the inevitability of it all.
As I posted on Facebook earlier today, they say that a definition of insanity is "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Well, what do you call it when you do different things and get the same result over and over again?
It seems to me that the word for that is inevitability.
See, part of the reason the picture above took a sufficient amount of time to finish to result in me becoming bored was that my entire approach to drawing it was different from the way I normally draw.  Entirely new techniques that were supposed to lead to entirely new results.
And yet, while it is, by my own admission, a good picture, it's not new.  It looks just like any other picture I've done using my standard approach and technique.
It's inevitable.
And inevitability is kind of boring, even when it has huge boobs.

****

 Speaking of inevitability, despite my earlier post railing at the Universe for its unwillingness to allow me to hold onto my VA refund for more than a few hours, I did plan to, inevitably, buy the Samsung Series 7 Slate.
So it's hardly a big deal that I bought it today, given that there's plenty more money coming in over the next month or two, and I have no plans - despite whatever notions Stacy may have about a Russian mail-order bride - to purchase anything else that's terribly expensive.
It's just that it would have been nice to hold onto that money for a little while, and to fend off the forces of inevitability for more than a few hours...

****

Earlier today I texted Scott a link to info about the slate and a message telling him that I bought it, and explaining what a good deal (it really was a hell of a deal) I got on it.

Scott:  Stacy wants to know what your mail-order bride thinks of it.
Me:  Who cares what she thinks?  I mean, she's just a whore.
Me:  I mean...what mail-order bride?

****

Boss:  (To Co-Worker)  We need to drag Jon out on the links with us.  (By which she means playing golf, for those of you fortunate enough to not have to hear about fucking golf every fucking day.)
Me:  I would kill us all before I'd let that happen.

****

Boss:  (Talking about our SVP)  He wants you to talk more.  He told me, "He seems really intelligent."  I told him, "He's probably the smartest person on this floor."  So he said, "Well, why doesn't he ever say much?"   I said, "Do you think Einstein had long conversations with most people?"