Shelby Foote

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People say, My God, I can’t believe that you really worked that hard for twenty years. How in God’s name did you do it? Well, obviously I did it because I enjoyed it. I don’t deserve any credit for working hard. I was doing what I wanted to do. Shakespeare said it best: “The labor we delight in physics pain.” There’s no better feeling in the world than to lay your head on the pillow at night looking forward to getting up in the morning and returning to that desk. That’s real happiness.

-- Shelby Foote at The Paris Review

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Pop

Pop says, "Let me show you what your cat did." I can guess. I bring the trash can and paper towels. There is cat barf on Pop's office chair. It is "your cat" instead of "my baby". There is no irony in his remarks. I cannot help thinking that it must feel a little claustrophobic in such a small mind.

Camus and Sartre

As Sartre continues to follow the path of radical politics, Camus holds to the center.

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Camus resisted any notion that the peaceable kingdom is “coming true,” insisting that perfection is only a dream. He stressed that morality must remain at the center of politics, and was unremitting in his advocacy of free speech, democratic institutions, and civil rights in any movement for social justice.

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He tolerated the use of violence, but only in order to create “institutions that limit violence, not … those which codify it.”

-- Ronald Aronson, “Camus and Sartre”

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The notion that the ends can justify the means must fail when we realize that there are no real ends in politics, but only means.

Porn

Wow, a two-hour wank session! It had been a long time since the last time I did that, over a year, I am pretty sure, maybe. To think that I was considering giving up porn for my fiftieth birthday! I was going to delete my porn blog and throw away all those video tapes in my closet. I was thinking it might be time to drop a bad habit, and I wouldn't mind having that closet space. But I guess I was kidding myself. Till death do we part, I suspect. The sex instinct probably lives as long as we do, or at least very close to that. There is no end to that embarrassment of having to fuck yourself.

Celebrities and Stuff

"Boz Scaggs - Heart Of Mine" (Watch on YouTube)

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