While waiting for the cat to come home tonight I notice that a fruit fly has met its Maker in my cabernet savignon. Ah, that I could die so happily!
A man I know who owns one of those adult tricycles also has a round slate tabletop, about three feet across. His mind is occupied with the idea of making it into a flywheel for the trike so that he can ride for hours. He would certainly get a reputation around town, but I hope all the crackpot inventers in the world keep up efforts like these. One day oil and coal won't be there for our energy needs. He also has the idea to hook up every TV to a stationary bicycle, convert the current from DC to AC, and make you work for your viewing. No more couch potatos.
The indie radio station is playing free form jazz. I like jazz, but this style grates on me after five or ten minutes. Turning to the local classical station they have opera. Sigh. I actually went to an opera last Saturday night. Being a covert Rent head, I took a friend to see La Boheme. My impression: Mimi sang awfully well for someone dying of tuberculosis. It took her a full twenty minutes to die onstage (thankfully; I was on call and got paged near the beginning of the fourth act, and got back in time to watch her demise). Oh, that everyone could die so beautifully!
It seems that the United States Congress will never effect any substantial change so long as money is considered more powerful than the ideals of the nation. The oil, pharmaceutical, and insurance lobbies are very strong; so long as they are making insane profits, and so long as politicos bow to the bottom line, we'll be stuck with The Way Things Are. Hm. Gandhi got the British out of India by making salt and spinning his own thread for making cloth.
I changed the course of how work went today. A coworker was walking through the office, processing a lot of stress in her head. I stopped her and gently said, "Smile." She gave a huge, fake smile, so I shook my head 'No' and she fell into the most beautiful genuine smile. It all took maybe five seconds. Not a bad investment of time.
Been studying Scientology online for a few days. It looks to me like a combination of ancient Eastern philosophy and modern psychotherapy (a cross between Rogerian and biofeedback) and invented its own terminology and rationalization to be called a religion. There's nothing about discipline or humility, just communication and one's own reality (a rather dangerous idea; remember Jim Jones and his ilk?) with the promise of happiness that even Buddha couldn't attain. There's not even any codified belief that the church wants adherents to take on, nor an idea of who and what God is beyond an amorphous Infinity. My critique is likely the same as many people have already voiced. Too many modern holy men have proven that the power of suggestion is alive and well.
I'd love to sell everything I own, buy a good laptop and a professional digital camera, pack the backpack, and take off across America, Europe, and anywhere that my feet and ingenuity could take me. Surely I could get a magazine to follow me. A good friend tried to shoot down the idea, saying it's been done before. Try telling that to J.K. Rowling. But the part of me that wants to be steady and dependable says that my daughter has to get through college first. I suppose I can take pictures and write without wandering away from her, outside of business hours.
Have a great weekend, my friends.
