this blog is facing obsolescence

argharagaragargh-boom-doomph-prrrt.

I've been busy. Busy-wheezy-dizzy-busy.

Been reading Dante's Divine Comedy too. It's fascinating. I think it should be illustrated and made into a kids' 365-bedtime-story edition. I mean, 3.6 days per canto is pretty generous. Make it 300 days, give or take a few. It should be required reading, honestly, for people who want to live good human lives. You can take it religiously or non-religiously, but without a doubt it is one of the most enduring works of all time because it deals with the eternal and the ineffable.

I think Sarah Palin is her very own character assasin, and possibly at the top of her game. And it's awesome that she's taken herself out of politics. This is obviously political darwinism at work here. I think Michael Palin must be cursing the great-great-granduncle of his who decided to move to Alaska.

I wish I had more time to re-read Douglas Adams and read Kurt Vonnegut and find more humorists to pick up. The really good humorists put humanity on trial, and find it sadly wanting. Look at The Hitchhiker's Guide: you have 2 befuddled people (left over after the Vogons evaporate the Earth) and a whole bunch of amiable but clueless aliens, wandering around time and the universe with an irritatingly sentient spaceship, and they somehow manage to avoid dying without really knowing how. They are all social twits in different ways. The premise of H2G2 is actually surprisingly like Noah's Ark, come to think of it, except Arthur and Trillian/Tricia don't end up repopulating the Earth, there's no God, and the whole focus is the ark. H2G2 should also be read to kids, so that they develop a healthy sense of the surreal.

Most people who don't read enough become idiots. Life is a struggle against idiocy. Nirvana is what you reach when you get an uncluttered perspective, when your mind is finally free from prepackaged judgements and mental straitjackets.

I'll leave you with some quotes:

Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world. - The Buddha (apocryphal)

I should never have believed that death could have unmade so many souls. - Dante, Inferno, trans. Mandelbaum

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow... Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. - Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country.