text: 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
  January 27, 2016 - 12:47 p.m. Yesterday I knew what I planned to write today, now I don't. What did I do yesterday? I was back in isolation. I went food shopping. I need a new skillet and got a ceramic one at Stop & Shop. I had heard such good things about ceramic. I just cooked hot dogs and had to scrub to get it clean. Ugh, doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of no stick? Can it be called no stick? Is it because I bought crap? Are others better? Please let me know. I will try it on an omelet today. Or should I say I'll try an omelet on it? I also bought Dunkin' Donuts coffee because it was on sale. I used to buy that all the time. It never seems to be on sale at the DD shops anymore, that's why I stopped. They used to often have two for one sales. I wonder if I'll still love it. That was a demonstration of the looking around the room technique for blogging. It works surprisingly well. Last night I watched Stargate Atlantis on Amazon Prime. I have seen quite a few episodes of it but never saw the first and didn't watch it regularly. So now I started from the beginning. Will I continue through the end? SG1 was always a guilty pleasure, I knew it was stupid and the science just used words from science with no idea what they meant. I could enjoy the dialog but still want to throw things at the writers. That's even more true on Atlantis. It's not even science, it's common sense. A quick synopsis of the premise. People from contemporary earth take a possible one-way trip to another galaxy to explore the City of the Ancients, a super advanced race for antiquity. A tiny fraction of humans has a gene that allows them to operate Ancient telepathically controlled technology. And that’s where we get to the central common sense idiocy. They discover by accident that this one air force major has far more ability to control this technology than anyone so they send him. He is clearly the one indispensable person on the team. So what do they do? Make him the point man when they arrive, the one that has to face any danger first. Then later they are on a rescue mission in a space ship only he can pilot. He gives himself the most dangerous job even though if he dies they will all then die as they can't pilot the ship. They rather the character be brave and a total idiot that endangers others than rational. How does this make sense to anybody? Of course Star Trek:TOS used to send the captain, first officer, and chief medical office into danger all the time. Don't they know that's what red shirts are for? I'm guessing that if I were not nine when it came out I wouldn't love Star Trek as much. People get annoyed that those things annoy me. Very meta. Being meta pleases me. I often write about how much I appreciate things, I do, and that was one of the things I thinking of writing about today. But I'm going the other way and talking about how easily annoyed I am. People think of me as easy going. And I am, I'm not Donald Trump, I don't rage. But I do get annoyed pretty easily. You can see it on Facebook when I talk about the annoying people blocking subway doors and escalators. I complain about bad scripting, as I just did with Star Gate Atlantis and Star Trek. But I get annoyed far more than I let on. I write about all the music I love but I just gloss over and talk around the music I find lacking. One-on-one you might hear about it from me but not in my writing. I only get fulling honest when not naming names, so I have "The Act." I speak of the "dreadful songwriter." Most often what I'm thinking is, "absolutely nothing special" That doesn't annoy me till others speak highly of it. This is different from people I see have talent but simply don't connect with me. There are people, perfectly nice people, that annoy me. I feel guilty about that. I also think that's how people think about me, "he's a nice guy but he annoys the hell out of me." But I'm being honest now. There are people I just find annoying, not evil, not mean, just annoying. Most often it' people that do the same things the writers of Star Gate Atlantis do. They don't think things out. My Gentle Readers know that whenever I criticize others I look inside myself to see if I do the same things. Sometimes that can be a good thing. Someone living in the house now drives me nuts. He leaves dirty dishes and cookware in the sink. He will leave it for more than a day. If I need it, I end up washing it myself. This has led to a new sin by me. When it's something I never use I don't really wash it. I just rinse it and put it in the drying rack and then back in the cabinets when it's try. It's in my way so I have to do something with it. But it also led to me being more virtuous. I would sometimes leave my things, my personal things that are not shared, in the sink. Now I don't. I clean them after I finish eating. Grrr. I just looked around and see I left my French Press in the drying rack. I hope nobody else has used it. I hope nobody has broken it. But that's off the topic. Trying to not be like someone annoying made me less annoying. On a related note. I was talking to one of the great musicians I know. I am lucky enough to know enough great musicians that her identity is not obvious, especially when I remind you that my pronouns of choice for people of indeterminate gender are female. This musician said that she could be better. I liked my response; "Everyone can be better but wanting to be better is why you are as good as you are." Or as Robert Browning said, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" That reminds me that I should give you one of my old poems. When I repost the poems I'm editing them. I want to be better too. Eliminating one word improved this one. I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge: please hold me accountable.
  Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
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