"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- Benjamin Franklin

In the vitamin aisle of our local co-op is a supplement made from blue-green algae called BrainON, which purports to enhance one's mental acuity and function.

A few aisles over is a much more popular supplement made from plant matter and fungi which ought to be called BrainOFF, and which is scientifically proven to do just the opposite.

Child Labor Laws Have Ruined this Country

I let the neighbor girls wash my car today. They came to my door with their little business proposal, and I said yes.

They didn't do a very good job, but it was only 5 bucks* and it's rare that one gets to enjoy both supporting child labor and paying someone less than minimum wage.


*I gave them $6, actually, so they could easily split it evenly between the three of them. So perhaps I did pay them minimum wage after all, if they worked for 15 minutes or less. I wasn't really keeping track.

Not Just Moving the Stickers Around

My husband, who can solve the Rubik's Cube, noted that you can tell by the Cube sitting on the shelf whether there's someone in the house who can solve it or not. If there isn't, the Cube will sit in perpetual chaos. In contrast, if there is someone in the household who can solve the Cube, they invariably find that disarray unbearable and thus the Cube in such a house will always be found with its sides six uninterrupted solids.

The results of my repeated experiments, albeit on a very small sample of solvers, have shown this to be true; the unsolved Cube is something the solver can tolerate for no more than a few hours.

Gifted Actors

We are, most of us, acting all the time. Socially, so much of what we say and do and how we say and do it is false and contrived. This is by no means a bad thing. This is what allows most social transactions to go smoothly and uneventfully.

Some are better at this acting than others.

What does it mean to be a good actor?

It means that one's will dictates the emotions one shows. Feelings do not have to actually be felt to be expressed; they can be chosen. Actions, expressions, inflections that are considered to be unintentional are, for the natural actor, all quite intentional. And the actor can be left wondering what of what they say and do is genuine and what isn't.

Thought

Nothing makes your thoughts seem important like writing them down.

A Fitting Chaser

Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.
- Doris Egan

"Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized." - Margaret Atwood

I love this quote. I love the idea that little girls, or big girls, or anyone, for that matter, are more than just their beauty or cuteness or charm. They are not what we make them out to be by the way we relate to them. People are not the roles they play. They are individuals who happen to be in a certain role.

People are not pets. Even pets are not pets. Pets are animals. They are only pets insofar as we treat them like pets. The word "pet" refers not to a person or animal, but to the way a person or animal is related to by a human being. In other words, "pet" refers to the role a being plays, not the being itself.

I am not a nurse or a daughter or a wife. I am a packet of existence enclosed in a human body who plays the role of nurse, wife, daughter, or even woman.

Or am I?

Is it in fact the other way around and I am created by my body, female, and my roles of woman, wife, daughter, nurse? And do these then generate the sensation of raw awareness and existence?

Which is the real I?

I think there are two schools of thought here, the spiritualist, which believes the former, and the materialist, which believes the latter.

Does the truth lie in a middle way? A sort of cooperative, symbiotic creation wherein the spiritual creates the material, which in turns generates the spiritual? A sort of positive feedback loop?

I rather like that idea.


PS: Pass the doobie.