This morning, I stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry off. As I raised the towel to my face, I caught a whiff of a long-ago towel and was transported.
You see, back in the commune days, we only had a very few towels for all of us. Somehow, procuring towels never seened too important to us as we fought the system by promoting an alternative system of values and living.
So there was usually only one bath towel at hand in the shared bathroom, usually damp and gray, and always extremely aromatic. Each of us had our own unique scents, just like cats or something. Rumble Al left the smell of the garage, axle grease and oil, on the towel, while Melody deposited a vague odor of baby powder, which was as close as any one of us ever wanted to get to an infant.
The Photos Kissinger Doesn’t Want You to See
(may be not safe for those with weak stomachs; link courtesy of kottke.)
Huh.
Take the What Should Your New Year’s Resolution Be? Quiz
(courtesy Jules, who might have sent it to me by accident)
Saw The Twin Towers Xmas eve (after dropping by the office to take care of a small fire). It was three-and-a-half hous long, they tell me, but I didn’t notice, vieing in rapt attention. I haven’t read the books, so that makes me an oddball for liking the movies, I guess.
Pointing to someone following up on the guy who got arrested for protesting the poor treatment of his wife at a security checkpoint is BoingBoing.
Interesting. I post a link to that article, then find a thread on MeFi, talking about it, where Jessamyn has posted a comment that’s not entirely the firebrand liberal/libertarian response you (me, I suppose) might expect.
I pretty much agree with her points, but I think the point in the original article about lying becoming the norm in America is what really hit home with me (although I admit that the part about protecting the pregnant wife struck home hard as well).
The fact is that everybody – from the most liberal voices in that thread (who allude to Reverend Martin Niemoller’s quote) to Trent Lott, who stepped down amidst his own hinting that people had it in for him and seemed to believe that most of the outraged voices raised against him were outraged simply because of something foolish he said at a birthday party – we’re all no longer addressing the truth of any matter. Instead, we’re circling around it like hungry street dogs warily eyeing each other over a discarded T-bone. We’re tossing out kneejerk platitudes like they’re a substitute for real discourse.
I’m not a big guy on New Year’s resolutions. but it seems to me like I should try hard to make this world a better place in the coming year, starting with my immediate sphere and onward and outward.
How? I dunno, but I figure trying to strip these layers from the arguments at hand is as good a place as any to start.
Attached to this letter was the report the officer had filled out. I’d like to say I couldn’t believe it, but in a way, I could. It’s seemingly becoming the norm in America – lies and deliberate distortions on the part of those in power, no matter how much or how little power they actually wield.
Ah, good…I got past that momentary happy feeling, and I’m cranky all over again!
This post by Jessamyn and Greg’s comments on it and and the fact that there’s any outrage against Jessamyn’s signs and the fact that I’m prepping for a Christmas Day dinner with my argumentative father and my equally argumentative in-laws (not that any of them aren’t nice or anything, just that they’re all fond of arguing) and the fact that I have a friend who’s experiencing a long, dark tea-time of the soul right now, which makes him difficult to be around and the fact that Trent Lott believes that he was only hounded from office because of one instance of poorly chosen words (and not a lifetime of actions) and Joe Strummer dying and, well, never mind.
It just all doesn’t exactly put me in a holiday frame of mind, you know.