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 ...
December 10, 2004 - 10:32 a.m.
The key theme of this entry was going to be rage but the passion is gone now. Well I'll still write about what made me angry and see if that rekindles it.
The first object of my ire was my calculus class. I don't carry my book to class, it weighs a ton, I make copies of the pages with the homework and use those. When I went to go over the first page of homework I saw that the left edge of the page didn't come out so I couldn,t read part of the questions. I said, I'm sorry, will somebody read the question for me? Nobody did, I looked around and didn't see anyone notebook open to their homework. I asked, did anyone do their homework? Not one person did. I blew my top. Remember this is the class that had an average of less than 50 on the second test. That I gave two extra chances to. I was tempted to use profanity even but decided against it. I kept my language biblical, hell and damn were my strongest words. None of them could look me in the eye as I was talking. They all had that looking at the ground trying to disappear look.
They need a wakeup call and I don't know how to give it. I think part of the problem is that they have other courses with projects and papers and they think that they have to get that done but they can get away without studying or doing homework. They know they'll get in trouble for not handing things in but I usually won't know if they do their work for my class. My sister says I should collect the homework and just check off if they do it. I have two issues with that. One is that if I do that some people will do it and others will copy off them. The others is more philosophical, one of the most important things they should be learning in college is how to be self motivated. They are adults and shouldn't need outside coercion to do the do things for their own benefit.
The other thing I was angry about happened at the post office. I mailed a package to Abby in Iraq. It is Army Post Office and was told I had to fill out a customs slip. I didn't last time I sent her something, I think the clerk got that wrong. That isn't what made me angry though, anyone can make a mistake and it might have been the person who told me that I didn't need one last time. No what made me angry is that when she looked at the filled out custom slip and saw I as sending a CD she asked me, does it have any profanity on it??She almost heard profanity out of my mouth in response. I told her no but I can't believe you have to ask that. She told me that if it were a DVD she'd have to ask if it contained nudity. I don't know what she'd have done if I had said it did contain profanity but no matter what it is just asking the question clearly has a chilling effect on free expression. It is none of the governments business what I send to someone as long as it isn't physically dangerous. I have plenty of CDs that have profanity on them, can I not send them in the mail? Many great films have nudity, it shouldn't be a problem mailing them. I'm guessing that if the CD did contain profanity they would have mailed it but marked it as such. The questioning wasn't because it was APO mail either. I was also sending a CD by domestic mail too and she asked about that too. She just wouldn't have known it was a CD if she hadn't seen me send an identical package with a customs slip.
That got me mad enough to want to do something about it. Write to the postmaster general, the president, my congressman, my senators. Maybe I should write to the ACLU and see what they have to say about it. When I come up with the most effective course of action I'll let you know. You should take it too. Asking about the content of my private mail is a far worse obscenity than anything that I could have been mailing.
One of the ironies is that I virtually never use obscenities myself and I am often taken aback when I read it in your journals. I really think they should be saved for special occasion so that the use of them has impact. So I guess in conclusion:
I'm not going to take that shit lying down. Fuck the postal regulation.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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Horvendile December 10, 2004
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