Gizmo is back by popular request.
Not much to report. Early Spring is here (as if there was serious winter), a drive to the mountains (photos coming here soon — maybe), eating and drinking with friends.
The low must be contagious, now Jod's got the blues, too.
Here is a text message I received from A+ on 19 October. I am transferring it here to free up space on my mobile:
I am outside the Athena building. Next to me, a truck full of live sheep. What kind of place do we live in?
I went to the 'alumni, applicants & friends' reception of my Alma Mater tonight (well, alma mater, not quite: I only spent one amazing year there, during a Master's, and I there learned all I ever needed to learn). The familiar politeness and good-natured spirit of the English, soothing and refreshing.
Primarily: young kids, 18, starting their first degree at Alma Mater next September. My name tag was colour coded for 'alumnus', so they came to me asking for advice and guidance. Yes, it was amazing, yes, it will be the greatest time of your life, yes, this is an exciting topic, yes, yes. Yes. Yes: the answer to every eternal question. I partly envied them; I partly wished I was like them all over again, starting in the quadrants, halls and cloisters of Alma Mater; I partly felt proud to have been there and to have studied there.
Walking home, I felt lighter and stronger: a good thing in this bout of depressive low I am going through.
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I'll be brief in my whining over a boring matter:
This morning I received a mass email from someone I don't know replying to a job-related mass email by a colleague. I sympathised with the reply's content (a naughty comparison between the Principality's politicians and donkeys), but I thought that mass mailing can be annoying to others. So I wrote to him that I agree with what he wrote (although, I noticed, we should not demonise donkeys), but that he should not have clicked on 'Reply All' unless he meant all 50 of us to read his comment. I did so politely. He sourly replied he did not mean to hurt anyone's sensitivities (but I hadn't said anything like that), he just thought my colleague's "friends would appreciate the joke".
Outposters are trained since their school years to look for conspiracies and sinister projects directed against them. That is why they first read between the lines and then they read the lines themselves. Which means they get it all wrong.
Still musing over the pictures and the nature of war.
Otherwise, I today took a long trek in the one local park with W Boson. Interesting and refreshing discussion. Then coffee and cakes in our balcony (the day was sunny and warm).
I am itching to discuss Outpost politics (NewYorker calls it 'The Way of the Ostrich'*) here, but I have a talent in getting myself misunderstood when discussing this topic. Actually, I anonymously commented on it in someone else's blog, and an Outposter appeared from nowhere, chiding me passive-aggressively to the effect that I am not familiar with Outpost realities. Haha! If only he knew. The comforts of anonymity.
Beauty: I discovered Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30, with Pollini. Lord, it is enchanting.
What else? Ah, someone got Jod on the phone, wrong number. He actually apologised. Twice. The first wrong number in three years not to immediately slam the receiver down on us. Jod texted him to acknowledge his courtesy and he kindly rang back to express his appreciation. Stupendous.
* Ostriches are occasionally violent, cumbersome, flightless birds. When in distress or needing to hide, they bury their head in a hole in the ground, believing nobody can see them (or what they have to hide).
While I am wittily discussing detergent samples and the godlessness of Buddhism, pure evil is taking over. Histologion pointed us to some pictures American soldiers shot in Iraq. The pictures themselves are frightful and horrendous, and please do not open the links below unless you are prepared to see something that transcends even the daily TV horror show from Iraq. What is (maybe) even more horrifying, is the callous smartarse comments the soldiers who shot the pictures accompany them with.
A selection of these photos is found here; whereas this is the full collection (how much longer will it be online for?) — do read the intro page disclaimer, too.
A last point: before you rush to curse, castigate and cast anathema to American murderers and before slipping into the cosiness and soothing distance of antiamericanism, consider that this is war: the atrocity you have just witnessed, including variously defiling enemy corpses, is part of ‘annihilating the enemy’ and ‘keeping morale high’ — albeit slightly unelegantly (ah, ‘those Americans: no manners’; right?). Also consider how many times similar scenes have been played out throughout human history, before digital cameras, before the Internet, by your own favourite armed forces: the only place where angels fought a war was in heaven, or so they say.
The 'number one lifestyle magazine' in the Outpost is giving out detergent samples with its latest issue.
At the same time, the listings magazine that wanted me so bad gave out a condom for February.
I saw an announcement for a talk next Monday titled:
"The great monotheistic religions of the world: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam."
It is part of a series of educational talks aimed at the general public.
Sissoula earlier implied that Gizmo the Cat needs be invited to use blankets, such as our our penguins-and-polar-bears one.
The photo below shows no invitation is necessary:
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