I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
March 28, 2016 - 12:01 p.m.
I wake up at 8:30 and my informal goal is to start writing by 9:30. Most days I haven't been starting till 11:30. So I will consider today's start at 10:30 a victory. I'm not inspired and I'm writing anyway. I don't know what I'm going to write about but I'm writing anyway. Perhaps this will be a stream of consciousness entry. But here's the thing, yesterday I said; " am filled with non-linear processes as are we all. It's a bit more obvious with me than most. Hell I could do an entire entry on this. I just had a revelation." Can I reconstruct what I was thinking? Maybe. The problem is that all that's coming back to me is about religion and that was supposed to be only a part of it.
So know what I did yesterday? I blogged. I wrote 1926 words. You didn't read that? It was one of my better efforts. You should go do that now, And on the Third Day Harpeth Rose. It was a day late but I submitted my roster freeze list for the Nashional Batnoses, my fantasy baseball list. Every year I have trouble getting myself to submit the list.
I didn't even have interesting food yesterday. That's not quite true, I tried something new on the roasted potatoes. When I originally started making them I'd make them hot, with either Cajun seasoning or cayenne pepper. Yesterday I put on everything but those two things, a mélange of garlic salt, jerk seasoning, cumin, and MSG. I love just trying things like that.
I just made a New Year's Resolution. What I's not New Years? March 25, the day the One Ring was destroyed became the first day in the New Year in Gondor and Gondor is an anagram of Gordon. So my New Year's resolution is to post fewer links on Facebook. I'm not going to post everything that I think everyone should know or that I think will get social approval. Those two things are usually contradictory. I'm not going to stop posting and I'm not using a quota. I'm just going to give posting heightened scrutiny. One thing that might accomplish is getting more people to read Wise Madness as it won't get lost in the slew of other links.
Wise Madness is having record breaking readership. Sitemeter only gives me the data from the last 12 months but I believe that August readership of 1796 was my all-time high. This month, with three and a half days to go, it sits at 1840. I'm hoping to break 2000. There is a huge element of fooling myself going on. There are so many hits coming from Google and a few other places that I'm pretty sure aren't readers but bots. Google is spidering the site, those are the hits from Mountain View California. The other places with repeated hits are Springfield Missouri and Colorado Springs. I won't tell you what state that's in but can any of you tell me what companies are there checking out my blog? Please tell me it's the NSA thinking I'm a threat to national security.
I'm not going to write yesterday's revelation as I'm still not sure I got it all. I'm going to have to think more about this. More importantly I'm going to write myself a note as soon as I figure it out or I'll forget. I can do I it by voice on my phone. My problem now is that what I have is criticizing religion but I know there's an element that made it more universal and included irrational behavior on my part. That was the impetus for the idea.
So instead I'll use the last item in my bin of diary ideas. This fits in as it's also a resolution that I can now call a New Year's resolution. I'm going to work on avoiding buzz words and urge you to do the same. What triggered it was yet another use of the "Big _________" formulation. It was something absurd like Big Pickles. It's used in more cases by the left, Big; Oil, Banks, Farm, etc. But it might be used more often in the one case that is the establishment right's boogieman, Big Government. It's making everything the Big Bad Wolf. The entire point of Buzzwords is to short circuit the thinking process. It's to set up an emotional response before reasoning can set in. Notice the religious right will talk of the Homosexual Agenda no the much shorter Gay Agenda. Same idea, I often speak of the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy." It's tongue in cheek but I am retiring it for now. Other words and phrases to avoid, conspiracy, socialist, fascist, oligarch, giveaways, natural, holistic, job killer, theocratic, and religious liberty. I'm surprised I thought of so many the right uses as I'm much less exposed to them. I have always been careful but will give even more scrutiny to ascribing bigotry as a motive to people, calling them anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, racist, etc.
This is part of my agenda, I can use the word for myself, of promoting rationality. There are two ways of arguing, with facts or manipulating emotions. Go with the former. Look how the laws against transgender rights have been attacked, by raising the fear of men lurking in bathrooms attacking women. They try, and too often succeed in planting the seeds of fear in people so they won't think things through. The arguments justifying assaults on civil liberties in the name of defending against terrorism exploit fear more than anything. If you think that's wrong, then you shouldn't do it yourself to promote your causes. That's the tough part. It's very easy to tell other people what they do wrong.
I finished this one minute before noon. I'm going to declare victory and eat.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
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Horvendile March 28, 2016
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