Michael: Every time he comes up, he’s got no knife, he’s got no jacket, he’s got no pants, he’s got no boots. All he’s got is that stupid gun he carries around like John Wayne. That ain’t gonna help ya’. Axel: Oh, what the hell, Mike. Give him the boots. Michael: No way. I…
It is snowing outside, a gentle snow, the advance scout of approaching winter. It’s no longer possible to assume that winter will fall within the range of past norms. Will it be a siege of ice, an assault by serial snow storms? Or will the next few months bring warmth, and little precipitation? Either…
Last night was delightfully strange. On Thursday evenings a few of us, using philosophy as an excuse, meet at Taste of Paris Cafe in Mundelein. The purpose is to reflect upon a topical discussion of earlier in the week, while we drink wine or coffee. I never know who will show up or if anyone…
I am reading a book by Ernst Jünger, the WWI era German writer and survivor of trench warfare. Jünger’s claim to fame is his book based upon his daily journals written while fighting in the trenches entitled Storm of Steel. His book On Pain was written and published in 1934. Jünger is an excellent…
Monday was a rainy today. We didn’t care. The gentle rain gave the woods the patina of an oil painting. The ground was intense yellow with leaves, soon to be covered with the first snow of the season. The gentle rain, and gusty wind that did not impede our enjoyment of movement throughout the…
Jesus really was a no-body, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly any repercussions the lynchers thought. Then, just before the nobody died, the…
Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? Well here we are trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why. –Excerpt Slaughterhouse 5 p 97 by Kurt Vonnegut
I received email messages from two friends this morning. They registered a complaint to a statement which I made yesterday. I criticized Capitalism as practiced by Big Pharma as being predatory, pitiless. I am an insulin dependent diabetic. Not only is the cost of insulin very expensive, the pricing of many prescription medications has…
To stop thinking about the Second World War and Auschwitz is to forget the reality of the horror of war and the violence of extermination. –John Armitage 2002 Introduction to Art and Fear by Paul Virilio To bow in silence seems appropriate in response to the eleven who were killed in the Tree of…
Rampage Kills Eleven PITTSBURGH — Armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and at least three handguns, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning, killing at least 11 congregants and wounding four police officers and two others, the authorities said. In a rampage described as among the deadliest against…
