Lives of the Philosophers, Pt. 8

Pangloss sounds like a dishwashing liquid, but it’s the name of a guy in a book. His entire purpose is to say foolish things with which Voltaire disagrees. Kind of a cheap shot; it’s easy to win a debate when you write your opponent’s lines. "But wait," I hear you say, "You do that yourself." To which I reply, "No. No I don’t." The most famous Pangloss statement defines ours as the "best of all possible worlds," which is horrifying if true because it would mean not that we haven’t reached our full potential but that we already have.

October is National Diversity Awareness Month

It’s Columbus Day! I don’t know what plans you’ve made, but in my family we like to mark the occasion by traveling uninvited to a stranger’s house to exchange smallpox for syphilis. Plus, it’s also Indigenous Peoples’ Day – same day. To celebrate that, I’d dearly love to travel to Alberta for a visit to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site Interpretive Centre. But what I’ll probably actually do is cook up a nice tomato sauce and serve it over polenta, a meal that syncretizes Cristoforo Colombo’s Genoese roots with Native American crops. Then I’ll play “Apache” on Spanish guitar.

This is not a toy

Open other end. No user serviceable parts inside. Close cover before striking. Insert flap here. Dry clean only. Keep out of reach of children. Keep hands clear of rollers. Keep frozen. Shake well before using. Watch overhead lines. Do not touch. Do not dispose of in fire. Do not use bleach. Do not insert in ear canal. Do not stand on or above. Do not eat silica gel. Do not drink contents. Do not breath vapors. Do not ingest. Do not stare into beam. Do not hold in hand – light fuse and get away. We are slaves to our stuff.
 

When your heart's on fire

I was absent-mindedly whistling “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” which is a pleasant melody, but if you listen to the words it becomes deeply troubling. The storyline is that the singer is in love but their friends think the affair will end badly and when it does, our protagonist is subjected to cruel torrents of jocular derision –  the lyric goes, “Now, laughing friends deride tears I cannot hide.” So the takeaway here is that the singer is the world’s worst judge of character. On an unrelated topic, I’m disappointed to learn that “bedridden” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.

But maybe not Neil Diamond

Sometimes you have an idea or perspective or  just get a vibe and you don’t know why but you’re pretty sure you’re right. For instance, for no good reason I’m predisposed to think that people from Michigan or Pennsylvania will be good-natured. It’s my impression that spending some time in Guam would be pleasant but I’m leery of Samoa. I’m more prepared to like electricians and violists than plumbers and oboists. Also, based on zero data I’m fairly sure that if you got the chance to meet him, you’d come away thinking, “That Neil Sedaka is a darn nice guy.”

The kind of guy I am.

Let me tell you the kind of guy I am. I have an eight hour drive ahead of me, and I haven’t even started packing. Plus, there was a cookout and the kids were feeding my dog all sorts of crap and he got the Dire Rear and I had to glove up and clip vile clumps from around his fundament. Some guys would say, screw it, who cares about the readers, I’ll just skip writing my 100 word rant this week. Not me. I care too much about every one of you. That’s the kind of guy I am.

Wallowing in bitter regret here

We’ve been traveling a bit recently, including one night in a motel on the outskirts of Wytheville, Virginia. As you are doubtless aware, that municipality is home to a notable Very Big Pencil, a yellow number two suspended over the entrance to an office supply store. But we were in kind of a hurry, and there were the dogs to worry about, and we just skipped it. Come to find out, we could have also seen the birthplace of the wife of Woodrow Wilson and eaten at Skeeter's World Famous Hotdogs. Once again, I’ve let Life’s Bright Promise slip away.