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
September 11, 2015 - 1:20 p.m. My goal is to start writing by 9 and finish by 10. I never meet that goal. My realistic goal is to finish by noon. I am starting to write this at 12:02. Well it won't do me any good to get down on myself so I'll just write. I was about to go out and take a walk yesterday when the skies opened and it started to pour, so much for that plan. When it stopped I went to the store and bought butter. I went to the C-Town a block from my house. I never do that because they are more expensive than Pathmark but I didn't feel like dedicating an hour to buy butter to save 50¢. When I got to the checkout I put the butter right next to the cashier and reached into my wallet to get singles to pay for it. A few stuck together and I was busy separating them. Then I realized that the cashier was ringing up many items. The woman behind me had put down her stuff. I don’t know how it got mixed with mine. Either the woman behind me put her stuff right next to mine or the cashier turned on the belt and moved the stuff next to mine. What I do now is that the cashier got angry and me. Yes at me, for not telling her sooner. She wouldn't stop either. The woman behind me said nothing. Why didn't she say "hey you're ringing up my stuff with his? It was not pleasant. A manager came over and asked what happened and I just said that someone else's stuff got mixed up with mine The cashier then added that I was making a big deal of it! She's the one that did. I just asked to not have to pay for the other woman's stuff. So now I have more reason to go to Trader Joe's or Pathmark. At Pathmark I use self-checkout and I usually enjoy my interactions with the cashiers at Trader Joe's. And what did I have for dinner? Mac and Cheese. You use enough garlic salt and ham and it's good. Garlic salt might be the single greatest invention of mankind. I just looked at my notes and see that I'm supposed to be writing about school funding. I'm not. I'm going to write about me. I spent far too much time online yesterday and not enough reading. I only read 60 pages of The Shepherd's Crown, I'm now on page 178 of 276. I should be finished by tomorrow. That's sad; it's the last Terry Pratchett book. There are still books of his I haven't read, I'll have to find them all and read them. I have a new character to love. Gregory is a young man, maybe 15, that wants to be a witch. So what that he's a boy. There was a woman that became a wizard. One of the things I love about Pratchett is he knows the difference between the truth and what everybody knows. I went on a rant on the WFUV group on Facebook. Someone posted "I want my WFUV back." I of course feel the same way. That wasn't my rant. What upset me was that there are posts criticizing people for feeling that way. People saying that feeling that way is invalid. Yesterday someone said, "Change is good." On the group I was polite. I said: Change is good? For changes sake? So you are for global warming? That's change. How about they switch to sports talk, that's change. How about all farm reports; that would be change. People are allowed to not like the changes. For those people they are bad. I'm one of those people. When WFUV switched to City Folk back in the day people were upset they lost their opera show and their polka show; of course they were upset. They lost something they loved. Now it's our turn to be upset.Now to not pull punches. Saying "Change is good" is just stupid. It's so clearly not true. Hey the sun going nova would be change, so that's good? It's setting up a straw man. Nobody is saying that all change is bad. Some changes are great. Hey WFUV changed their media player and now I can randomly access shows on the archive. That was great change. And you know what? I wrote the station and told them that. Changes can be for the better or for the worse. It isn't inherently either. I wasn’t that much harsher, I just said the one thing that I wanted to but held back from. "Saying 'Change is good' is just stupid." Because it is. That comment got 10 likes. I like that. There are some things that make me realize that my mind doesn't work the many other people's do. There were prominent rainbows in New York yesterday morning. I was sleeping but I saw other people post them. That's not it, my mind works that way, I would have taken a picture of it and posted it too. But someone posted a picture from a local TV station or something like that of the rainbow seeming to touch down at the World Trade Center and as it was the day before 9/11 people took it to have some mystical significance. It was a picture from helicopter. My reaction was "Did they deliberately fly the helicopter to the place where it would align like that?" I said something along those lines and people thought I was raining on their parade. I just don't see that? You want to see significance in things where there isn't any? Isn't it cooler to know that you can actually make things like that happen? That you can control where the rainbow ends by moving? Rainbows aren't a sign from god that he won't destroy the world by flood again and they aren't the bridge to Asgard. They are caused by the refraction and internal reflection of sunlight in raindrops. Isn't that just as wonderful? Isn't it more wonderful? Knowing how it works means I know where to turn to see if there might be a rainbow every time there's a sun shower. It lets me know where the secondary bow which is caused by one extra internal reflection, will be. If it's faint I'll still see it because I'll look for it. It's not mystical or magical but it is still wonderful. This is what Terry Pratchett knew. People will fool themselves all the time. So much of what a witch does is not fooling themselves and taking putting other people's self-deceptions to good use. OK now it's 1:16, not too bad. I can post this then make bacon and eggs. I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge: please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
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