I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

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.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

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 ...
-James Branch Cabell

March 31, 2016 - 3:02 p.m.

99% of People Can't Get Both of These Questions Right

I'm listening to Christmas music as I listen to this. Why? It's Bach's Christmas Oratorio which doesn't sound like Christmas, it just sounds like genius. I too often hear people condemning humanity. Bach was a human; any species that produces Bach is aces in my book. In 100 years Trump will be a footnote in history, Bach part of the basic canon.

I actually left the house yesterday. Yeah I've been having issues. I went to Trader Joe's in Cobble Hill. It's 4.13 miles away. I don't trust that last digit. I didn't even start the counter till I was a house or two down the block. I used Map My Walk. It's nice seeing it written out. I should try and do that at least every other day. If I can get myself moving I'll walk from Columbus Circle to the East Village today. No I won't. I have gotten such a late start that I see I don't have time for that.

I have a question for you that 95% of Trader Joe's patrons get wrong. Are you in the 5%?

When getting coffee at the demo counter where is the place to slowly mix in the sugar and drink the coffee?

a) In front of the coffee pot blocking everyone else from using it.
b) In front of the milk container blocking everyone else from using it
c) Floating in mid-air well above people's heads
d) Someplace else
The correct answer is c but if you can't levitate I'll accept d.

Here's one that 90% of subway riders can't answer.

When someone in a subway car has a bicycle pointing at the door at the end of a car so people are forced to move to one side or the other where on the car should you stand?

a) Move to the center of the car like you are always directed to do
b) On the lap of someone who has a seat
c) On the side of the bike towards the end where you will only block a few people
d) On the side of the bike blocking access to most of the car and read your newspaper while you are at it to make the blocking more complete
The answer to that one is a. The guy on the train last night chose d.

How did you do? You know if you got them both right you are in the 99th percentile. I bet all My Gentle Readers are.

I finished season 8 of Doctor Who and the Christmas Special, which is a separate package, on Amazon Prime. Not going out is conducive to binge watching. There was one line in "The Last Christmas" which was classic Doctor Who. The fourth doctor, the best, might well have said it. "What makes fantasy so difficult to distinguish from reality is that they are both so ridiculous." That makes up for a host of sins. Good thing as the show commits a host of sins. There are two that I can't get out of my head despite trying to. The moon gets more and more massive, six times as massive, because it's really an egg with an embryo growing in it. From a physics standpoint do they not know that energy and mass don't come out of nowhere? That's one of the most fundamental laws there is. On a common sense common knowledge sense. Do they really think a chicken egg gets heavier as the chicken grows? Do they not know that the chicken grows by consuming the yolk and white? Doesn't everyone learn that in grade school? I'm sitting there figuring out what kind of doorway to another dimension is there where the mass is coming from. That's honest science fiction. This is just stupid. Oh and at one point, at only one place on the moon gravity turns off. No explanation why. It didn't even serve the plot. They could have written the story without those things.

The other was in the Christmas episode. When Cybermen convert a person the person loses their personality. The Borg are an almost exact copy of the Cybermen. This has been shown on the show for 50 years. Apparently there's an exception, if you truly love someone then that will survive the transformation and by pure coincidence the only two people of the millions that have been converted that truly love someone are to recurring characters on the show. There was a sociopath power mad woman that kept her personality in a previous episode of the new series and I object to that too. You didn't see Picard saying staying loyal to the Federation did you when he was assimilated. Or did you? I never saw that episode, just know about it.

A theme of the new Doctor Who is an anathema to me, that things are true because you want them to be true.

So I'm not going to watch the show anymore right? As soon as I finished I wrote Laura who works for AMC the BBC parent company and asked her, "When is Season 9 going to be available on Amazon Prime?!" Yes, I can't wait. It infuriates me but it's Doctor Who the legacy of the greatest TV show ever. Don't pin me down, there are a lot of greatest TV shows ever.

Wow I better finish this up; Even taking the subway I don't have a lot of time to get ready if I want to meet Jordana for dinner at 5 PM and pick up my mail.


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 31, 2016
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