With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
2001-11-11 - 11:33 p.m.
When I woke up this morning I knew I had to have brunch with my family so I better take care of anything I wanted to do for myself early. This wasn't as easy as it seems because I didn't sleep much last night. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. I ended up watching The Life of Emile Zola, a classic movie that I had thought I'd seen but hadn't. I was glad to see it but it would have been more enjoyable if I weren't so tired. I noticed something somewhat disturbing about the movie. Not once did it mention the role of anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus affair. This was in 1937, Hitler was in power, a message against anti-Semitism was needed and they went out of their way to avoid it. This despite the fact that the star, Paul Muni, was Jewish (am I making that up?) and it was a Warner Brothers movie and they were Jewish.
Now back to me. I finally got back to sleep a bit after 8 AM and then I get a phone call at 8:45. You don't call people that early on a Sunday unless you know they will be up or it is an emergency. It was Mio, someone who worked for Chez. She said she called me because I hadn't returned her call. She hadn't left me her number so I couldn't return it. I was also doubly upset with her as she never returns her calls. I used to have to chase her down for weeks when I worked for Chez. She is totally irresponsible, she would never show up when she said she would either. Sometimes she'd be hours late, sometimes days, and a few times weeks. She must be cursed, she always has a story about someone dying or going into the hospital just as she was about to come over. I wouldn't talk to her. I told her that I was too tired and didn't want to be bothered.
I couldn't fall asleep after that so I went online and took care of email and reading diaries. I wanted to call Carey before I left for brunch, I needed to talk to an Us before going to the Themfest. Ironically I woke her up. It was 10:30 so I don't feel I was being ridiculous like Mio was. Next time I'll know to wait to later to call her.
Then came the brunch. I drove my father and my sister, Alison drove my mother. The trip there was not routine. There was a fatal accident on the Southern State Parkway and all lanes were closed. I had to find an alternate route. I didn't really know what I was doing but I felt my way to the Sunrise Highway which runs parallel to the Southern State and got to my Aunt's just on time. Both my sisters were late. Sue made it without too much trouble. I was more worried about Alison with my mother. My mother knows the route she usually takes there well but doesn't really know her way around the area. They made it there 23 minutes late by asking directions and driving around till they found someplace my mother recognized.
The Brunch wasn't really that bad. My aunt was just diagnosed with uterine cancer. She is handling it very well. We discussed oncologist for a while. Our medical travails are always a topic of conversation in my family. There were 9 people there and I think 6 of us have major medical problems. One of my cousins has sever Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and had to retire. She is two years younger than I am. My sister used to have it but somehow recovered. I was able to leave early because Alison had to get back to New Paltz to meet people and I caught a ride with her. I said that I had to work on my test. Actually I wrote the test in the morning. I am going to hell in case you hadn't heard.
I put my usual amusing questions on the test. This time I might even amuse the students, not just me. Here are the word problems:
1. Malcolm is 5 years older than Dewey. Three years ago Malcolm was twice Dewey's age. How old are they now?
2. Harry walked part of the way to Hogwarts and flew his broom the rest of the way. He walks at 4 mph and his broom flies 20 mph. It is 80 miles to Hogwarts and the trip took 8 hours. How far did he walk and how far did he fly?
I'm expecting to get some answers from my readers. You can post them on my analyzer or my guestbook.
The rest of the day I just spent at home. I read another hilarious chapter of the Batnose Novel, watched the premieres of The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle, and talked to Leah; all fun things.
I had one bad experience. All of a sudden I couldn't send email. I got some online tech support from Earthlink. They have a plug-in that lets the tech take control of my computer. He worked on it for 40 minutes, changed all these settings, and uninstalled AOL, all things I didn't want him to do. He then said, "restart the computer and it will work." Guess what it didn't. When I called up on the phone for tech support the guy figured out what was wrong in two seconds. When I put in the username I used a capital G, it must be all lower case. It took 5 seconds to fix. The first guy should have known that. I'm not ready to say "I hate Earthlink" every day but I was not a happy camper.
That's it for my day. Here is my poem of the day:
Traffic Jam
I'm sitting here in traffic.
My car is standing still.
There is nothing to do but wait
And listen to the radio.
I'm not in an automobile.
I'm in an autosessile.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile 2001-11-11
