Lives of the Philosophers, Pt. 1

Heraclitus is sometimes called The Obscure because he wrote in such a way as to make his ideas difficult to understand. That he was able to do this without the benefit of PowerPoint is evidence of his genius. He said the sun was about a foot across. He also said you can't step in the same river twice, because he never walked a dog along the Mississippi. When he got a bad case of dropsy, he slathered himself in cow dung, lay in the sun all day, and died. They also call him The Weeping Philosopher, and that's probably why.

An Immodest Proposal

I don't like grass. Not reefer, which I don't want any thanks for asking it gives me the fear but you go right ahead, I mean like grass out front of your house. It's just stupid. Before mowers, lawns were for grazing critters who produced delicious cheese and fuzzy sweaters. Totally cool. But growing a crop just to harvest and discard is so wasteful it's kind of obscene. Also, I read that about 40% of domestic water is using for flushing and another 40% for watering lawns and gardens. Really, the best thing to do is pee in the yard.

I'm shocked. Shocked.

Timothy Wilson is a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He just did a study where, basically, subjects were given the choice between spending some time alone with their thoughts or voluntarily  experiencing painful electric shocks. Most folks opted for a jolt of the juice in preference to a quiet ramble through their own heads. I can’t know what’s happened up in those noggins, but I’m figuring probably nothing good. Which might explain how come there’s so many sources selling ideas and opinions you can simply absorb and regurgitate instead of having to come up with your own.

The Grand Ole Opry's Cooter Holland

Been driving for the past two days, basically coast to coast but vertically. Friends, there is a lot of corn and soybeans and precious little else to see between the Gulf of Mexico and the shores of Lake Michigan. We did notice again that many exit signs suggest names of imaginary silent film stars (Darien Whitewater) or riot grrl singers (Victoria Luxora). Then, I was in a men’s room having done what men do in those rooms, and at the sink I saw a sign that said WASH HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK. And I thought, “Hell, I’m on vacation.”

Moebius, maybe no.

problem with stories, that they have a beginning a middle and an end which is not how memory works usually it is episodic rather than sequential so that you'll say “We used to go on picnics and my uncle would find coins in my ear” it's a cloud of impressions snapping in and out of focus making internal connections without the burden of narrative but of course book binding is a limiting factor and no paper mill can create a pandimensional interlocking infinite loop to contain rather than constrain the flow which would go a long way to solving the

Not particularly ranty

So here’s 100 words about the  peculiar and comfortable feeling of simply not having 100 words I need to say. My friends were telling me about their grandchild, who is a year old and has a vocabulary consisting mostly of "Mama," "Dada," and "Please." Which is nearly enough. By the time we’re two we find out about "No," and then we go on saying it over and over for the rest of our lives. It’s odd that it takes us only a year or so to learn how to talk, and then so many decades to learn to shut up.

Now I'm off to boil my icicle.

I need to apologize for what you are about to read, both a dumb pun and shameless spoonerism. We were talking about Stephen Hawking, who has lived with ALS for about a half century with both cerebral and reproductive apparatus fully functional. Along with his other achievements, he has inspired all those movies with that brainy geek in a wheelchair who from his basement can break into the Pentagon's top-secret files with a Commodore 64 and a 300-baud modem. But what about the poor guy who lacks this intellectual acuity and fertility? What ails this sterile dullard? Neuter Moron Disease.