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

July 03, 2012 - 12:33 p.m.

No Brainer

So what am I going to write about today? It's only been half a day since I last updated.

I keep getting distracted and not writing. That's not good as there is a lot I want to do today including doing laundry. On the plus side I'm having success overcoming anxiety issues. In the last week called a friend I couldn't call, emailed another, paid my rent, and I just read and answered an email where rejection was a possibility and didn't want to read. I tricked myself into the last one by not looking at the inbox and just hit "next" till I got to it.

Hey My Gentle Readers I know what I'm going to write about today.

I've gotten into a routine on weekday mornings. Something or other usually wakes me up between 6 AM and 7:30. When that happens I use the laptop I keep in my bedroom as a radio and turn on WFUV and attempt to go back to sleep. Why? So it will be on when Claudia Marshall announces the Question of the Day. One she announces it she'll keep mentioning it almost every break between songs It is also posted on the WFUV blog. I then post a link to the blog on the WFUV Question of the Day Players Facebook Group and start off the discussion. . The QotD is really a them for people to suggest songs about. Once I�m really up. I go into the living room and write in my answer. I love coming up with songs on a topic. It's been a favorite past time for me since I was ten. My sister Alison and I have sing downs where we sing songs that mention a word or set of words till one of us runs out. That person loses. The song has to actually contain the word in the lyrics or title. So if the subject were birds I could use "Rooster in the Mash Pile" by Joe Crookston.

I often talk here about my playing with Carey on Turntable.fm. That is more challenging as we have to come up with a segue for the other person's songs in the time it takes the song to play. We have to think on our feet. Yes we can search databases but it still isn't easy.

When playing QotD on WFUV my goal is to play something exactly on topic that doesn't often or even ever played on the station during the week. They might get played by John Platt or Bob Sherman on the weekends but that's largely a different audience. I am a the group's curmudgeon. I object when it's songs by an artist. What's the fun of that? There is no thinking involved, no cleverness. It's, the kind of thing commercial radio does all the time. Today's question was the worst, "Now that we have your attention, we were just wondering if you can think of one song that invariably MAKES YOUR DAY." That isn't even a theme. It's just "what song do you love?" I chose Dave and Tracy's "Gentle Arms of Eden" because it is not only the best song of he millennium but it is never played outside of John Platt's show I bet the vast majority of the weekday listeners never heard it or heard of Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, and that's a shame that I want to correct. But even that doesn't make the question any better. So the thing that I can't see is why some people liked the question. What do you get out of it? Why is it fun? Someone said it was the day before the holiday and it gives the brain a day off. Why would you want that? Pretty much anything that's fun involves using my brain. To me thinking a question that involves no thinking is somehow relaxing is like adults getting together to play games saying, "Let's play candyland so we don't have to think." Thinking is a good thing. Using your brain is a good thing. I just can't imagine not wanting to do it. Yes you might not want to sit there solving difficult math problems, you may not want to parse sentences, but not wanting you use your brain at all? I wouldn't know how to do that other than being asleep or in a coma. What does not thinking feel like? Is it possible? The idea of playing a game like QotD is to think about things it is fun to think about.

It's pretty much the way I feel about believing in god. While I can see someone enjoying religion, the sense of purpose and community, the comforts of ritual, etc. I can't see how anyone actually believes in god or any particular mythology. I can understand some sort of vague deism except how do you not see that it is so vague as to be essentially meaningless.

The two things are of course related. They both involve people not thinking or not thinking along certain lines. I'll always feel like someone from another planet when I encounter that.

OK now for breakfast, laundry, shopping, a stop at my office then a meeting of the booking committee at the Christopher Street Coffee House. I have six and a half hours to get all those things done.


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 July 03, 2012
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