Cult 102

           I saw my friend Skip the guy who wants to be a cult leader. He was wearing a pair shorts and black tennis shoes. It was night and it wasn't even warm and there he was Mr. Casual. I didn't say anything about his attire, although I wanted to. It's hard to follow a guy who wears shorts in any situation.
           At one point I mentioned to Skip that he should start a cult based on the two common elements of all forms of life, breathing and reproduction, but my comment fell upon deaf ears. Skip was busy watching a video of a squirrel attacking a snake on his cell phone. I didn't know squirrels had the upper hand when it came to snakes, but apparently they do. A squirrel can get the better of a snake in most situations. Skip was riveted.
           "Hey, Skip I think you should grow your eyebrows out," I said.
           "I can't," he said. He was still looking down at his phone. He had moved on to videos of meerkats fighting scorpions.
            "Remember Brezhnev? He had a set of eyebrows, people are captivated by eyebrows," I said.
            Nothing. 
            I'm losing faith in Skip as a cult leader. I'm not sure he has it. Earlier in the evening he was trying to convince the hippies to replace their fire pit with kerosene lamps. It seemed like a bad idea to me. The hippies weren't drinking the Kool-Aid either.
         
            

The Optimist

            I was talking to my friend Willie and I felt like my contribution to the conversation was overly cynical. Or was it? Maybe Willie was being overly optimistic. His optimism was making me feel bad. I thought it would be funny to lecture him on his optimistic outlook on life.
            "Hey, Willie, can you tone down the optimism some? I'm having one of those how do I fit in days."
            I try not to be negative, but sometimes it's difficult to flip the polarity switch and put on a happy face. I feel like people just want to wave a magic wand to make everything happy, ignoring the casualties in life. Sometimes the casualties are loved ones, and that's enough to bring anyone down.