Thursunday Contemplations

 What to blog about?  What to discuss?  A Conversation with _?_.

 

What don't you just admit you have nothing to say?

 

No, I am just experiencing some writer's block.  I can work my way out of it.

 

What did you do yesterday, or even this morning, that is out of the ordinary, that isn't boring navel-gazing dribble?

 

Good question.  But, I think I have an answer.  I got a wife.  I got Tony.  These are things that are radically different from four years ago for me.  Taking a step back, I can state whodathunkit?  Even the most ordinary or routine of moments are not so ordinary, mundane, or routine as one would think.  And it isn't navel-gazing, if you are thankful.  Gratitude is the source of all happiness.  So, being thankful means you have someone to be thankful to other than your navel.  And as for being boring, I can say I feel real excited now.  I think anything talked about in the proper spirit, a spirit of wonder, can never be boring.

 

Anyway, I have to take a shower.  Can you wait a bit?  We will continue this conversation.  I can feel the wellsprings (which are always there) reappearing to my myopic eyes.

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How was your shower?  What were you thinking?

 

My shower was wonderful.  I am clean all over in every nook and cranny.  And I was thinking about  a whole lot of things while I had this shower.  However, looking at the time, I see I have to get ready for work, so it looks like I will have to continue this conversation at school.  Then I will tell you what I thought about in the shower and on the bus (Ask me if I had a seat.).

 

Okay.

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Did you get a seat?

Yes.  Thanks for asking.  I the took the #610 bus.  I do have to walk for ten minutes to get to school, but it beats standing on the #25, which I most certainly would have done.

What were you thinking about on the bus?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  I said I would talk about what I was thinking about in the shower.  I thought about two things. 

First, I thought about my interaction with Tony.  He defies me like you wouldn't believe.  He seems impervious to my spanking of him.  Last night, I wanted him to stop playing with the blinds at the window in our small bedroom (really, our study).  About six times, I pulled him out of the bedroom and placed him on his little living room seat.  The little bugger kept going back into the bedroom.  So I tried spanking him.  He cried for a bit and then returned to the bedroom.  Now in the bedroom, we have this  combination bed, deck, closet, piece which has stairs to get to the bed.  These stairs are by the window.  After I thought I had given him a good spanking, Tony returned to the bedroom, ascended the stairs, and then turned himself around to sit on them.  I looked at him fiercely.  He, in return, looked at me, put his hands on his lap, and gave me a mischievous smile.  I was just taken aback.  There doesn't have to be war between us, but it is going to be something of a game.  So be it.  As long as this mischievousness is a sort of laughing at the uber-seriousness of the world, I will be disarmed, but otherwise.....

I should add that I was peeved at Tony because he was distracting me.  I feel guilty now, for I should never be distracted by my son.  He is the center of my world, now.  My previous concerns should really be the distractions.

Secondly,in the shower, I was thinking about this podcast, I was listening to last night.  The podcast is called Common Sense by Dan Carlin, who also does a podcast called Hardcore History.  Hardcore History is a good show.  Carlin takes his time and researches these shows very well, putting all sorts of interesting details in them.  That history podcast I recommend.  You may be taken by Carlin's shock-jock manner of speaking, but it works when he talks history.  However, when he talks current events and editorializes as he does on Common Sense, he becomes very grating.  He talks about matters then of which he has no knowledge.  And he reveals himself to be a squishy Liberal, try as he might to label himself an "Independent".  When it comes to Obama, for instance, Carlin has drunken the Kool-Aid.  The best that can be said for Obama is that he has political skills, but say that Obama is potentially great, shows an inability to step back from the situation -- Carlin is supposed to an historian!!  But then, maybe, I am  just being knee-jerk at the slightest hint of praise for O. 

But there was another idea that Carlin advanced in his show that really was stupid.  Talking about the American Health care debate, Carlin put forth the idea that there should be a Manhattan Project for Health care in America.  That is, to paraphrase Carlin, you get a bunch of smart guys in the room and build a health care system from scratch.  The original Manhattan Project where a group of scientists created the Atomic bomb, was based on experiment.  They had to try and try and try till they got it right.  A Manhattan Health care Project couldn't do that.  A medical system is so complex that it has to build itself, as do the most prosperous economies.  To centrally plan it is to defy experience.  A socialized medical system ultimately stifles experimentation.  If you want to have experiments, with smart scientist types doing what they are best at, adopt a more free-market system than the Americans currently have. Carlin, who likes to think he is practical, should advocate small reforms in America like letting Insurance Companies compete across state lines.  

Carlin also bemoaned the seemingly partisan nature of American politics saying it was stifling necessary reform of the American system.  To that I can say that democracy and politics are always partisan and that if you want people to get along, you will have to get a lot of them to shut up while the powers that be do what they want, unfettered by true opposition.  No dice!  What bemoan what should be glorified!

Can I ask another question?

Yes.

What is my purpose?  You can easily monologue without me.

Your purpose will be to ask hard questions, a devil's advocate, as it were.  I will give you a name and, more importantly, I will give you free rein to criticize and ask the hard questions that I need to be asked.  Your presence works for a blog because ultimately it is a rambling form of writing.  I wouldn't need you for essays.  I have read that the Internet is not the place for people with intense lives.  Tony does make my life intense, but really he doesn't give me the time to write nice essays.  I prefer to rant and argue, and so that is your purpose.  I am sorry if I haven't give you more time to speak, but I promise you that I will.  

I will have to see about that. Now, what did you think about the bus?

I didn't so much think as listen a podcast and try to read Chinese signs.  The latter I did do so well, but I am improving.  The podcast I was listening to, was about the history of the Catholic Church.  A very interesting podcast and now, I have another thing to want to read about.

Care to elaborate?

Not today.  I got some work to do.  Thank you for appearing.  You are someone I need on my life.

You are welcome.