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 ...
November 25, 2011 - 11:45 a.m.
The chronoklepts have been at me all morning. It's time to start writing. Most days I'm finishing up by now.
Since my mother died I have not spent two Thanksgivings in the same place. Oddly though they have been good Thanksgivings, even the one I spent by myself. I got to cook what I want, none of this turkey nonsense. I'm not thankful for turkey. When I was just cooking for myself it was steak all the way.
Yesterday was something of a repeat as I spent the holiday with Diana and Larry. What made it different was that the last time, five years ago, it was in Bayside, Now they live in shallow light New Jersey aka Englewood. Did I get that right? Are you in Englewood? I don't know because I didn't drive and haven't driven there in a long time. I had to take public transportation. This was a new experience. I took three subway trains to the George Washington Bridge bus depot that I had never been to or even seen. When I went to get a ticket I found out that wasn't how it worked. When you are just taking a bus across the bridge you hop on a shuttle that you pay as you board. It pretty much just goes from one side of the bridge to the other. I finished my book, Paul Krugrman's The Age of Diminished Expectations just before I got off the subway. I didn't expect it to be such a fast read. I wonder if the library is open today. If not I'll scrounge around the house for something to read.
Diana picked me up at the Jersey side and drove me back to their house. They also invited their friend Julian and Diana's friend Ady from England. Ady was visiting last time I spent Thanksgiving at their how too.
Thanksgiving with them means engaging in two of Larry's passions, cooking and games. Well OK we didn't cook; we just ate and gave Larry an excuse for cooking. I did game when I wasn't eating, and sometimes while I was.
We started off with Rock Band. I called dibs on the keyboard because that's the instrument I can actually play and my fingers do the motions naturally. Too bad it has pretty much nothing to do with playing an instrument. In fact you could play exactly the same game with no music involved whatsoever. It's really more of a shooting game, sort of like Space Invaders except that the gun can't move freely and had five fixed positions. I was OK once I got the idea of it. The only part that has anything to do with music is the vocals. That was Diana's part, she's was a voice major. Am I right about that? There you have to actually sing on pitch. Pete Kennedy told me he found how to beat the system without actually singing and did better than Maura Kennedy who simply sang great. Rock band isn't my cup of tea but playing it with friends made it loads of fun. I actually restrained myself from singing along to Bob Marley, Queen, and Janis Joplin. I needed a ride home and wanted to be fed.
Then we played a couple of games of Wii Jeopardy. The challenge there was getting the voice recognition to work. Usually we just used the controller. I suggested that we decide who wins by who gets the voice to work the most often. Just like the real game the deciding factor is how well you time the buzzer. I got exactly the same frustrated feeling as when I was on the show when I got off the rhythm. Oh and when it doubt guess Rudyard Kipling. He came up twice. To make it stranger the night before I reserved The Jungle Book from the library.
Oh yes there were pigs in a blankets! Not on the game, on a plate, then my hands, then my mouth. Little frankfurters wrapped in dough make life good.
Dinner was turkey that Larry made to perfection. I had mashed or was that whipped potatoes with it and stuffing. You knew you were going to get a food report. Oh I almost forgot the biscuits. I can't forget the biscuits.
The napkins were not folded into fancy shapes like in the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving cartoon we watched before dinner. I was very disappointed and threatened to go home. Instead I folded my own. I didn't get a picture of it but it looked exactly like this. Don't believe me? Ask anyone that was there. You said you'd say that, right?
After dinner out came the board games. I may not get the order right but I think I might actually remember all the games.
Now Larry insists he did not get them game specifically for me but My Gentle Readers will find that hard to believe.
This is a good one for me. It's a trivia plus bluffing game. There is a deck of cards with questions on them. The players take turns reading the questions. The reader gets a choice of four questions on each card. The other players right down the answers. That is not the fun part. Each player is also given a card from a deck of 48. Twelve of the cards are idiot cards. If you get an idiot you have to get the question wrong. After everyone writes down their answers the questioner gives the answers and everyone says their answer. The everyone else gets to wager if one person that got it wrong had an idiot card and so deliberately got it wrong. If they guess right they gain two points. If they get it wrong they lose a point. If someone bets you are an idiot and you aren't you gain a point. If you are an idiot and people don't bet on you, you gain three points. I think I got that right. If not I�m close. One strategy is to deliberately get a question wrong and hope that people bet that you are an idiot. That's a tough call though as you only gain if three people bet on you, otherwise you don't gain on the two points you'd get for getting it right. I should only be done rarely. I did it once, the question is "what number does the Roman Numeral does L represent. If figured everyone would know I knew that and labored a bit then wrote 500. Three people said I was an idiot, and I gained on the exchange. Yes I know all My Gentle Readers would have bet on me being an idiot as you know that's the truth.
My big disappointment was that I never got the idiot card. We played once through the deck or till all the idiot cards were gone which amounts to almost the same thing. My challenge was figuring out the odds of that. At first I thought it was difficult then realized it wasn't Each round four cards are dealt. So there are 12 rounds. I dealt twice so I received 10 cards. So the probability of me getting no idiot cards is simply all the ways of choosing 10 cards out of the 36 non-idiot cards over all the ways of choosing 10 cards out of 48 total cards, in math lingo 36C10/48C10. That comes out to 0.039 or 1 out of 26; unlikely but not ridiculously so. Oh yes, I won.
We played Revolution an interesting strategy game. 
Diana won that, I came in second.
The Bottle Imp is an interesting trick taking card game based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic short story of the same name, one of my favorites. I read that back in fifth or sixth grade in my RLS collection of short stories. It would have made a great Twilight Zone. The game was a lot of fun and a bit complex to figure out at first. I started off disastrously but ended up bunched with everyone else, perhaps even in second. Julian won big time. Yes I remember who won the games. What is more amazing is that I remember everyone's name. I have to admit I needed a mnemonic for Julian. I think of the Julian calendar. I guess I'm lucky that I'm not calling him Gregorian. Or is he the lucky one? Or you?
Oh and there were desserts. There were chocolate desserts. There were not just desserts. I had chocolate mousse pie and the babka that I brought. As I've pointed out my Jewish bakery Mendy's makes the best chocolate babka I ever had. To make it more decadent there was whipped cream.
At the end of the evening Larry went above and beyond his duty as host and drove Julian back to Ridgefield NJ then me all the way back to Queens. Some people are just so amazingly nice.
I am an idiot and proved it by forgetting to bring my pills. I am taking 40 mg of prednisone a day and only took my morning 10 mg. I am suppose to take it four times a day. Instead when I got home at around 11:00 I took 15 mg and then another 15 mg before I went to bed.
Now I'm off to make breakfast and enjoy this beautiful first day of Festivus. I'll write my annual Festivus entry tomorrow, or maybe latter today if I have time.
Whee Festivus!
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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Horvendile November 25, 2011
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