Friday Morning

I'm going to take a little chance and leave the cats outside today. It promises to be another one of those overcast days, with the high temperature sticking at 90. There's a chance of rain, but it's a chance I'm taking.

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1320

I lost my bet. It's raining. But it looks like it may be just another one of those drizzly-spillzily affairs. I'd like to have the cats inside, and I have brought the plate of food inside, but I am not worrying much. I will just have to see whether this builds up or just goes away.

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1600

I wish I blinked. I got a little excited over nothing. That light drizzle did not last an entire minute.

Home Life

Pop left early today. Maybe he has a doctor's appointment. I took my shower early, and I will take the opportunity to make my baked barbecue chicken for lunch.

The Natural World

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Pop

Pop just called, asking what do I want for this weekend's dessert. Molletes, I say. It's pretty late. He was gone all day. I just hope we're not having any guests this weekend.

Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Philipp Mainlander, a 19th century German poet and philosopher, proposed the striking notion that our world represents the suicide of God. God could no longer take the agony of existence and sort of blew himself out in a sort of big bang. And Mainlander argued that we ought to follow God’s example.

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Rather than resist our end, as Mainlander concludes, we will come to see that “the knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all human wisdom.” Elsewhere the philosopher states, “Life is hell, and the sweet still night of absolute death is the annihilation of hell.”

-- Thomas Ligotti, “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race”

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According to Wikipedia, Mr. Mainlander’s own suicide was carried off with a certain panache. His magnum opus was titled “The Philosophy of Redemption”, and when this was freshly published, “in the night on April 1, 1875, Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach. A pile of voucher copies of The Philosophy of Redemption, which had arrived the previous day, had served as a pedestal. He was thirty-four years old.”

Pop

When pop comes in this evening, he is alone, but he is also downbeat. He says another friend died. Just yesterday he came home with the same report but of another old work buddy. This has become common news for him in the last year. There is a sad quaver in his voice. It is as though the hard reality of his mortality has only now fully sunk in. Yet, he is still running so strong that it seems only reasonably to say that he probably has a few decent years left.