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.
February 14, 2008 - 1:31 a.m.
I'm back to writing this on Word. Diaryland had just as much trouble dealing with special symbols on Open Office as it does Word so I might as well use the program that I have all my macros written in.
I actually did school work today. I fixed up my grade book and attendance sheets to reflect the final roster, I graded the quiz that I gave last week and forgot all about, and entered the grades. They were disappointing. The averages on the first two quizzes in my finite math class were 74 and 75. The students know the questions on the quizzes before they take the quiz. They just have to memorize formulae. This is a bad sign as the students almost always do better on the quizzes than on the tests.
Tonight I went out to eat with Aubrey and Alan to celebrate Aubrey's fiftieth birthday. We are his two oldest friends. I was his best man and Alan an usher at his wedding.
We went to Charlie Brown's a place I know well and Aubrey doesn't so I picked him up and drove. It was just the three of us as Aubrey's wife celebrated with him last night on his actual birthday and was at the birthday party of a friend of hers tonight. It was nice to have a night out with the boys.
We ended up spending three hours at the restaurant. We only left when I noticed that nobody was left there but us, it was 10:30, a bit late for a restaurant in suburbia. We talked about what was going on in our lives and about the past. I met Aubrey when he was 12, and Alan met him in high school. As is my wont when talking to men my age we ended up talking a lot about the TV shows we watched as kids in particular Abbot and Costello. Good thing I don't feel old as that is such the kind of thing old men do when they get together.
I liked the card I made for Aubrey and so did he and Alan. I addressed it to "The Semicentigenarian" On the front it said,
This is a psychic birthday card
Hold the card up to your forehead for 20 seconds then open it. Inside you'll find your personalized birthday message and a photo of you.
Then on the inside he saw this. 
Aubrey is six months younger than I am and I always call him old on his birthday. Tonight I asked how he got older than me as he used to be younger.
Yesterday I saw a documentary on the Dukha, the Reindeer People of Mongolia. In the first few minutes I learned all these things I never knew. I never knew Reindeer lived in Mongolia. I never knew that people actually ride reindeer the same way the ride horses. I didn't know that there were Turkish-speaking people in Mongolia. The film was really fascinating. I didn't get to see the whole thing, as I had to leave for school.
Today I saw A Hard Day's Night. I think this is the first time I've seen most of it. I missed the first 15 minutes but saw the rest. It really is a remarkable film. It so clearly foreshadows not just music videos but also Monty Python and the slice of life films of Robert Altman. At the same time in harkens back to the Marx Brothers and even further back to the silent film comedies. One scene was pure Keystone Kops. That is so typical of the Beatles. Their music was revolutionary without ever rejecting the past.
I love the films pure silliness and that the Beatles were willing to show themselves in that light. They were serious musicians with serious outside passions that yet they never suffered from being overly earnest. John could take strong positions on politics yet would never stop telling jokes and never give up on the joys of Rock 'n' Roll. George might be the "Spiritual Beatle" but that didn't stop him from doing projects with the Pythons. They took things seriously but they never took themselves seriously.
It is 1:30 AM. I have to get to bed now. I have to work on remembering to not come straight home from school tomorrow night. I have to rush up a few blocks to see Four Shillings Short tomorrow night.
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 February 14, 2008
