Schopenhauer

I have gotten into Schopenhauer’s book, and I am afraid that it is not the fount of pessimism that I hoped to find. Moreover, it is as drily didactic as one can fear. Regardless, there are some tasty morsels to be found among its pages, and I am skimming and ransacking the text for our delectation.

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In these pages I shall speak of The Wisdom of Life in the common meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure and success [...] Such an existence might perhaps be defined as one which, looked at from a purely objective point of view, or, rather, after cool and mature reflection - for the question necessarily involves subjective considerations - would be decidedly preferable to non-existence; implying that we should cling to it for its own sake, and not merely from the fear of death; and further, that we should never like it to end.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, “The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims”

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The book might better be titled “The Life of Wisdom” since the main thrust seems to be that the intellectual life is the happiest, at least if you are genuinely intelligent. No one else really has much of a point in living, at least not in terms of happiness; maybe this is where the pessimism comes from. Regardless, since we are all highly intelligent intellectuals, the book is still worth going over.

supposed to be our first summer-like night

This was supposed to be our first summer-like night, and I left the cat plate outside, so that the cats could eat freely and I could sleep freely. It was sixty degrees when I went to bed. It's sixty degrees now. Everything should have been fine.

True, the forecast called for strong winds and a cold front, but I was figuring that wouldn't blow in until noon or around then. But, no, the weather kinked on me at four in the morning. And that became a five o'clock morning for me. My anxiousness for the cats just won't let me sleep. So far, Ash is inside with me, but that is all.

I'm thinking, "If the cats never came into our lives, I would be soundly sleeping now." The cats don't even really like us that much.

Whose Drones?

Funny story. Funny in a sad, dark, tragic way.

There were a couple of drone strikes in Pakistan, reported to have killed about nine people. So what? you might say. Just another day of the week. But here’s the thing: our officials say, “They were not ours. We haven’t had any kinetic activity since January.”

It is suspected that this is Pakistan’s own drone attacks, and that they are blaming us. As the Times put it:

If the American version is true, it is a striking irony: In the early years of the drone campaign, the Pakistani Army falsely claimed responsibility for American drone strikes in an attempt to mask C.I.A. activities on its soil. Now, the Americans suggest, the Pakistani military may be using the same program to disguise its own operations.

What a fucked up world, huh? I didn’t even know that other countries were able to use drones yet, but I guess the technology isn’t that hard or costly. You just have to have a real hard-on to kill people, which is bound to become a pastime that gets more popular all the time. There are so many of us, after all. Maybe they can load up a drone with a camera and film the action. It could make for a welcome installment in our world of reality-TV. A real ratings-buster. It's bound to beat the "Big Brother" shows.

(Declan Walsh at The New York Times)

San Antonio's Billionaires

Here's some stunning news that I gathered in picking up the morning papers. Forbes magazine has come out with its list of billionaires. The stunner: San Antonio has seven of them. San Antonio is a poor city.

Billionaires must be rather commonplace. I didn't know there were that many of them. I guess they are today what millionaires were in the 1970s - a select but sizeable club. Pretty depressing. So much wealth in so few hands. The one-percent club. I'm sure I'll never understand it. I will die feeling the injustice of it.

Cats

"Come on, come on, behave!" I say.

Right.

That barely works with dogs.

Like it's really going to work with cats!

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Something is broken with my Internets

Something is broken with my Internets. I'm sure I have legions of readers and admirers, but nothing is happening in my inbox and the comments aren't registering on my blog. For those of you who have been trying to get through to share your appreciation for my smarts and wits, as well as the occasional two pennies, be patient! I'm sure the Internet engineers will get this sorted out.

Chimp Haven

A touching story. Chimps who have been held captive in biomedical research programs for decades are retired and allowed to finish their lives at Chimp Haven, which is close to being their natural habitat.

(Source: Sully's Dish)

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The “Daily Notes” idea isn’t working. I started to get excited about the idea when I saw it as another opportunity to play ‘writer’. Of course, my Three Journal was supposed to provide that outlet for my writerly pretensions, but as with all my blogging efforts, the enterprise became yet another archival exercise, with more copying and pasting than actual writing.

The problem with using “Daily Notes” as a writing exercise is the subject-matter: my life. Maybe a genius would be able to make something interesting out of such material, but it seems pointless to try to dress up the mundane details of my shut-in existence.

Maybe I need to accept that I am just a reader. A reader and an archivist of what I read, collecting the gems of rhetoric and wit that I come across, along with the colorful details of the lives of the people I read about, you know, the people with real lives, the rich and the famous and the beautiful.

In so far as I really do enjoy a little thrill when I turn a deft phrase or craft a smart and sharp sentence, well, maybe I just need to pick my moments when I comment on the goods that I find and collect.

Daily Fun

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