They arrive by email stolen or borrowed under a communal imperative to tickle the tribe.

A river of images - family, friend, or fickle fate itself - captive in the stream of electronic imagery now sustaining us.

From the well-worn email circuit we daily find the most astounding images.

When graphics gurus garrulously grapple garrisons of God we get images the equivalent of SheepOverboard’s news articles - fascinating yet faked affairs fabulously fabricated but falteringly fraudulent.

A quick laugh, flick to a friend, forget.

Many are breathtakingly beautiful, pure works of nature exquisite, patiently sculpted on fragile fascia for eons. Others, imperceptibly improbable juxtapositions of coordinated complexity stunningly staged in a split scintillating second.

Or perhaps you just wish to view our album.

To Live is to Suffer

Life is inevitably pain, sickness, death and decay.

Everything is touched by the shadow of dissatisfaction, imperfection, disillusion.

No one escapes.

Sound familiar? Not just my pathetic publisher on a good day, nor just any of us on our 50th birthday.

Simply the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, philosophy 101, lesson numero oono for every child when a parent dies -

You grow old. You die. Life Sucks

If you’re lucky, you don’t grow old.

SheepOverboard is obsessed with life, the universe, and everything. Especially (and increasingly with age) the moment our bodies fail, launching a dismembering of mind, spirit and matter.

Left alive in this flickering moment we ponder dying or rotting flesh, shell of a person who was, such corpora delicti of life’s offence against itself that draws our bewildered incomprehension toward that dimly perceived and feared Transition, the doorway where time stops, where life’s experience is said to replay, where light claims the pure and burning darkness the fallen, where big bang merges with Omega - where ‘we’ step beyond the paradox of eternity.

Images of Death

Images of death circulate freely now on the net.

We who don’t work with recently and violently deceased, nor have experienced the vileness of war, tend to be morbidly curious - if somewhat nauseous - at first sight of stark destroyed bodies.

Belief - suspended for carnage in horror flicks - returns with vengeance when the victim is real, playing a tortuous kaleidoscope of emotions on an area of mind normally tightly shut.

The Jumper ~ Transformed in the blink of an eye from a human being to its component parts, decelerating from 120 miles per hour to zero - instantly.

Bear’s Meal ~ A sixteen-hundred pounds-weight, 14 foot-high bear ate this unhappy camper’s leg, amongst other tidbits. The creature, later killed, had acquired four 38 caliber and twelve 7mm bullets.

Croc’s Meal ~ (alligator?) Hand of fate. Stomach contents of man-eating reptile, a coffin none of us would wish, at least the way of getting into it.

Snake’s Meal ~ Per the crocodile, above.

Foetus ~ somewhat taboo, but this haunting iconic image can only provoke wonder.

Worse than Death

Most sickening, however, our impunity to a vast community of less fortunate fellow beings who live close to death, in abject misery.

I feel guilty sitting here publishing the image below.

As if it’s going to help anyone and my duty is done.

You feel strongly too, but don’t know what to do, right?

Well, that at least is the first step. Let the feeling grow inside and an opportunity to effectively help will present itself. The saint-like are out there helping, so don’t panic. The more you learn and think, the more effective your help will be when the moment arrives, and how you might help becomes suddenly obvious.

Reflect a little more here with this essay on our Gluttony.

I woke up one morning and all of my stuff had been stolen … and replaced by exact duplicates”

If you’re not familiar with the work of Steven Wright, he’s the guy who once said:  …

So the email goes - as do many websites passing this off as content. Like us.

Steven Wright’s dry wit, reminiscent of a 21st-century Mark Twain, is the most popular, most circulated, text humor doing the email rounds.

His every shrewd message invokes jealous wishing: “If I could devise just ONE smart remark like that in my entire, pathetic life…” 

It springs from where? A deep well, a strong, centered will to stand aside from the consensus beguiling us lesser, compliant, fickle souls.

It’s just … it’s like everyone is caught up in a raging river, in rapids … the call-waiting and the faxes. And I try to get out of the river sometimes, try to grab a branch on the shore … but I can only do it sometimes. I think it’s too fast.”

.. the speed causes more commotion. It’s removing the moment…”

Honestly, I feel like I’m from Vermont in the 1870s … and for some reason they let me drive.”
Time Out New York June - Greg Emmanuel

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
Borrow money from pessimists - they don’t expect it back.
Half the people you know are below average.
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.
I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have film.

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