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
May 05, 2017 - 10:55 a.m. I didn't do much yesterday, just a shopping trip to Aldi; I still managed to be an idiot. It's a fairly easy trip there, two buses. The idiot story occurred on the way home. I have two MetroCards, one has money on it for single rides and the other unlimited rides or now a week at a time. I use the weekly when I know I'm going to travel enough to make it worthwhile. I have one now. I have it marked with a $. I keep it behind my debit card so I don't use it by accident. On the ride home I used it by accident. When I paid for my groceries the MetroCard came out with the debit card. I somehow switched cards when I put it back. I hate being an idiot. The quick run to the store took 40 minutes longer than it should have. The first bus got caught in traffic on the very last block. When I got off the bus the bus I transfer to was at the stop. It pulled away as I ran to it. The buses run every 20 minutes but I had to wait twice that as the next bus never came. Something happened; I followed its progress on the bustimes website and it never moved from the terminal. The MTA ended up sending an extra bus from the terminal to get us back to City Island. The MTA does a pretty respectable job with limited resources. The state does not give them adequate funding. It can get away from that as most people don't know that it's state funded and blame the mayor not the governor when things go wrong. It's not time to panic of health care. The AHCA passed the house, barely, but it has two more hurdles to get over and the smart money says it won't. It has to pass the Senate and it will not be able to do that in its present form. If it does pass it will be with amendments. That means it gets sent back to the House. It's likely that the House Freedom Caucus will not budge and so reject it. Our hope against a conservative victory is the true believer conservatives, those that demand purity. The left has not been hurt too often by that but there are many on the left that think that demanding purity is the way to go. It's much easier to see the flaws in the logic of other people. I bought half & half for the first time in over a year and made mashed potatoes. It makes a difference. I'll have to make them more often as long as I have it. Not tonight though. It's barbecue boneless ribs night and this time I'm going put the potatoes in the slow cooker too. Is it going to call come out tasting the same? The first of the Sunset Singing Circles at Wagner Park was scheduled for tonight. I was planning on going. It's raining. It's going to continue to rain. I don't have any music on my schedule till Sunday. Will I survive? It's also totally wrong. I have to choose between three shows tomorrow. I don't want to choose. I want to divide myself into three parts. I now see I have two things on Sunday. I guess that's a slow cooker day. Yesterday as I was watching the Mets rain delay my mind started wandering. It wandered to politics; something I was considering writing here. I now can't remember it but I remember what counts. It explained why Trump did something. What I do remember is that I decided to not write it because there is no reason for you to believe me. There's no reason for me to believe me. I had no evidence. I have no special knowledge. Any hypotheses I have are pure speculation. The best I could get away with and keep my intellectual honesty is to suggest it as a possibility. I'm not going to even do that and it's not because I don't remember what it is. I don't remember what it is because it was an exercise in futility. I was doing what I always say people shouldn't do, believing something because it makes me feel good. I might believe in things like that but sharing them lowers the level of discourse; it just adds more noise to drown out the signal. If that kind of belief in what makes you feel good wasn't prevalent Trump would not even be a viable candidate, let alone the president. He lies all the time but people call him a straight shooter. They call him authentic. As if somehow not caring about social norms is a virtue and a sign of honesty. Trump is like his supporters but more so. He decides truth purely on what makes him feel good. He won by a landslide because he wanted to win by a landslide. He had the biggest inaugural crowd because he wanted to have the biggest inaugural crowd. What gets me is that I see people opposed to Trump doing the same thing. People who will mock him for talking about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War will make the same kinds of mistakes. I saw people linking to pieces that said that Trump was attacking the constitution and calling it "archaic rules." He was talking about the filibuster. That's not in the constitution. People didn't care. It felt true. I had truthiness. Colbert nailed it years ago. Don't perpetuate truthiness. I've decided I'm no longer going to check claims that people post from partisan websites. I'm going to just ignore them. They aren't worth my time and effort. OK. Now to eat and shower and get ready for therapy. I'm not looking forward to traveling in the rain. I'm not going to walk to or from the hospital. It would make me much happier if the rain stopped. If I think positively it will stop. That has the ring of truthiness to it. I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge: please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
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