So Hilary Clinton was talking about how she's had all this experience making change for people, and the news is talking about how all the candidates are emphasizing their ability to make change, and all I can think of is Hilary standing behind a cash register.
I mean, we all know the Services industry is big, and we all know what "Services" all too often means, but do we really want a President who specializes in counter-work at McDonald's?
I'm still standin'
better than I ever did,
Contemplatin' suicide,
actin' like a little kid.
These days I'm only contemplating suicide in the abstract. I was never contemplating it very concretely, although back in the day one of the reasons for my interesting week in One South was that I mentioned to the nice RN that I'd been standing on a balcony contemplating what would happen if I were to leap off head-first. I think even then it was pretty abstract contemplation, but Dr. H-I says that since it's such a lethal means (compared to, say, planning to smother oneself by holding a pillow over one's face, or eating so many M&Ms that one explodes), it's the sort of thing that Mental Health Professionals take very seriously. They really don't like patients making early exits.
Some famous philosopher whose name doesn't spring to mind once said that the question of suicide is really the only question. Which is an overstatement, but gets to something fundamental: if you can answer "Why keep going?", you can answer a whole lot of other things. (And if you can't answer it, your answers to lots of other things will be incomplete.)
The explanation for why we keep going is that the gene for not keeping going doesn't do very well. But the justification for keeping going is rather a different thing. Nowadays it's obvious to me that keeping going is fun, and not keeping going would (most likely; you never know) be boring. Among other things.
So here I am. *8)
A very dear friend pointed out that it would be relatively easy to read our remarks the other day about Imaginary Friends in the Sky as being derogatory toward all sorts of really rather nice people who believe in gods or Gods or a God of one kind or another.
I didn't really mean it to be that.
When I make fun of people who have Imaginary Friends in the Sky, I really mean those people who think of an all-powerful being with a white beard sitting in a throne somewhere in the sky more or less over Omaha, Nebraska, looking down all squinty-eyed and getting mad when people of the wrong set of genders go to bed together an' all.
Do I really think that there are lots of people who believe in this obvious straw man? Unfortunately, yes.
But if you believe in a less risable and saner deity, please take my locutions as gentle teasing at the very worst. I myself worship the universe (broadly construed) through the image of a gently-smiling (if slightly bitchy) woman associated with an ancient Greek myth, so I got nothin' to point at you about.
Stuff!
- Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. Isn't that cool? I should do that.
- Kiva has gotten so much good publicity and so many people coming wanting to give helpful money directly to deserving other people that they've been having a hard time keeping up the stream of deserving people! A nice problem to have.
- Thing I'd like the federal government to stop wasting my money on o' the week: steroid use in baseball. I don't care if those guys use steroids, okay? Where in the Constitution does it talk about the role of the federal government in regulating the blood-chemistry of entertainers?
- Miranda is in Second Life! (With the cutest lil AV.) Dale met up with her and we wandered around Suffugium together a little and stuff before realizing simultaneously that technically speaking we both should have been at work being gainful. Great fun!
- What's that first "r" doing in "February", anyway?
- On the speakers: Weasel Radio again!
And I think that's about it. I really need to stop rushing madly about having fun quite so much, and sleep more, and sit in the stillness and let wordss flow through me like moonlight, and listen to my breath, and feel the shape of the universe more.
/me writes note to self.
