Bill's Notes

I need to be funnier on this Web site. My sense of humor will return.

Okay, this exchange just happened and it's funny.

Friend: So who is the person you've been in the contact with the longest, but not a relative?

Other friend: Does stalking count?

A little child throws a temper tantrum. People understand. But an adult throws one, even in private, and what do you think God says?

Probably what we said to the young 'un: We'll wait.

I'm just saying.

An ongoing joke here at IndustrialBlog, usually delivered without much in the way of hint, concerns my love of big, obscure words. What some people call pretentious I think is funny. Big words, after all, have a purpose. They often mean very precise things, things we all know about but had no idea there was an exact word for. They condense language, often allowing us to say in one word a concept that would take five, 10 or even 20 words otherwise. Thus, they allow us to think more densely.

Plus, there's something immensely amusing about using a 50-cent word to polish a concept that's a bit low-rent. Is it better to say "coprophagous" or "shit-eating"? Is there a better word for a no-work job than "sinecure"? Is it better to say "nice ass" or "callipygian"? Is there better word than "anomie" to describe Kurt Cobain's lyrics, "Here we are now, entertain us!"

Anyway, that said, these days it's rare that I read a sentence that contains two of these gems, neither of which I had ever seen before, much less know. Francis P. of Eternity Road writes:

Your Curmudgeon will concede that his customary lucubrations are noteworthy principally for their anfractuosity.

This is not a man to be trifled with in an argument. BTW, I have no comment on the substance of his post. But lucubrations? Anfractuosity? Two Gold Stars and go to the head of the class!

A lot of times that's what I'm doing. It was pre-blog days, but in conversations, I stuck up for Clinton when he was attacked and was horrified at many of the actions taken against him, particularly the fishing expedition into his womanizing. "Let the man do his job," is usually how I think about things. And I tend to support the person who is actually trying to accomplish something. The exception is of course sports because IT'S ENTERTAINMENT AND THAT'S PART OF THE FUN. I would never criticize a basketball coach for a serious matter, but the basketball game, yeah. But politics is not entertainment, although many people use it as such.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Which is why you haven't seen any criticisms of the LA governor or NO mayor here. Shit happens. When it does, we clean it up the best we can. We suspend judgment until all the info is in, and then we interpret the facts as charitably as possible, giving the benefit of the doubt. We can't be prepared for every possibility, everywhere, always. So we have to respond to the unexpected, and first efforts usually encounter problems.

There are exceptions, of course. Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich was unpardonable, for example. But for the most part, lay off.

Of course, William F. Buckley would remind me that the duty of the loyal opposition is ... to oppose.

Francis P. takes on the Raving Atheist:

Time was, persons of faith were disturbed by the existence of persons without it. Today it's the other way around -- and so is the militancy.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Up from 1:30 to 4 this morning. I moved onto the living room couch and that seemed to help. Had a restful sleep after that.

I know in the past six months this blog's personal entries have developed less of a memoir feel and more of a confessional one. The change was not what I wanted. I'd rather only publish personal stuff in which the emotional content has been properly digested. Confessional entries usually are too raw, and have to be edited and re-written, or pulled down. I'll be pulling some down now.

I probably could use an editor for this thing ... :)

Promised in the below post. Sorry. Nothing funny happened.

Me: When I get the editorial department fully staffed, I want to have cheerleaders.

Friend: Oh, I get it. They can cheer:

Get off your ass
Get off the Net
Have you written
Your story yet?