Before much recorded history, there was “fun fiction” called Greek mythology.
One of the most read and famous stories was the one of Narcissus.
He was the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Leiriope, was an extremely good-looking Greek youth. His beauty ultimately led to his death…if I remember my Greek mythology studies in college I believe he was staring at his reflection in a pond fell in and drowned.
I only mention that because, to me, today’s new narcissism is the blog. Not as intense, but let’s face it. We humans have a little bit if not a lot of vanity. We buy products that make us appear younger, unless we are under eighteen and trying to buy beer. But those fake mustaches look rather silly, and really not worth the trouble.
We also now blog. When I started on the Internet, we all shared our thought’s and opinions on forums and in chat rooms owned and managed by others. But it gave us our “vanity fix”. We got the word out, at least our humble opinions right into mainstream media. Ok maybe right into Yahoo! Chat but it sure seemed big time.
Now I’m like Narcissus staring into an empty page that tells me its a humor blog called “RickLondonSyndication”. Now tell me that’s not impressive 🙂
I used to blog a lot and then got busy designing products and writing cartoons and could never seem to find the time. The other truth is I could never seem to find anything interesting enough to share publicly. Though it may seem to others that what my very talented nature photography wife Lee Hiller-London and I do is quite glamorous, we are much more often running errands and spraying Deep Woods Off Spray on us before hiking because we tend to get bit a lot.
But she told me I should blog about some of my cartoons and/or products (cartoon watches in this case) and I like that idea, even though I don’t know that I will always be accurate as the impetus/motivation of a lot of them come from a series of events, and some from just sitting there, or even meditating in the bathtub.
Last week she told me one of our main manufacturer/dropshippers “Zazzle” had added a number of new products and one of them was beautiful humorous unisex watches. Lee and I had just experimented with stopping wearing our watches last month, and I was beginning to miss mine.
Several events led to the end of my wearing a watch. I like to buy cheapies because I tend to break or lose watches whether they are Timex or Piaget. So WalMart watches it was. For awhile anyway, until I went “wrist-naked”.
Then I saw what I could do with the vintage mens/womens watches provided by Zazzle. I can add my cartoons on some, my love quote graphics and quotes on some, and even add some to my famous wisdom quote shop. This could be hot. So I was off to the races last week, creating at least 10-15 watches per day (I digitally design them on my pc and Zazzle provides the software).
So here I am hyping myself, my watches and my talent as if it is something I just take for granted. Please note that I believe God has been very very good to me. I live in a town that is paradise. I have a wonderful wife. My businesses make a living. I’m fifty nine, but I’m not in bed all day. I work, I hike in the mountains, I admire the beauty of nature and commune and actually talk to the animals in the forest. But yesterday we were in the forest on a mountain far, far away, and I realized, “Hey Rick, no watch”. Then I thought, “Rick, you could buy one of your own”.
“Whoaaa, I thought to myself. My watches admittedly look good (sticks toe in reflecting pond)….but would WalMart ever let me forget that I bought one of mine and not theirs?
Does it really matter? Am I the only person on the planet who feels guilt that long ago I told Walmart I loved their watches and would always buy them there. Do I think they will now go under because Rick didn’t buy his next watch there?
I hope you like my new Rick London watch I will be buying next week. I will post a photo of it, but shhhhh….please don’t tell WalMart.
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Rick London is an author, musician, designer and cartoonist. He is best known for launching Londons Times Cartoons in 1997 in an abandoned Ms. tin shed/warehouse. LTCartoons.com has since become Google and Bing’s #1 ranked offbeat cartoons and funny gifts
Rick London Syndication 