Category Archives: Thoughts @ Large

• Anyone who begins a sentence, “He has every right to say what he wants,” not only disagrees with what was said but thinks it was irresponsible to have said it.

• The 100 Billionth Person “I’m Not Sure How to Spell It but That’s Not Going to Stop Me from Saying It” Award goes to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reader James C. Ramunno for  describing a Pirate outfielder’s demeanor as laxadazacle.  This made my morning.

• Non-believers should not be so hard on religion.  More to the point, they should not be so selective in their opposition to religion.  After all, religion is only one of many systems that humans developed over the millennia to help us rationalize our irrational behavior.

• Some people head down Asshole Road without much of a push.

• Nothing makes people cry more reliably than reminding them of their lost youth.

• The older I get, the more I accept that the world will not on its own become what I would like it to be in my lifetime.  (Diagram that.)  For example, I don’t understand why people make paramount what is unimportant in practice — to wit, this Second Amendment fetish that many U.S. citizens so passionately express.  Why guns?  These are devices that launch projectiles with the intent of felling living things (or in the movies, blasting open locked doors).  I have never needed to use a gun.  For weeds I have Roundup; for ants there is Amdro.  With people, I can use words, or silence, or locks, or the police.  Sandy Hook notwithstanding, I don’t live in a world where I need a gun.  I don’t think you do either.

• In the end, as treasures, we have our families, our friends and ourselves.

• I recently learned that I have “Cool Dad Syndrome.”  From what I read, it can’t be cured.  Sorry, kids.  (But that is just what a Cool Dad would say.  Sorry again, kids.)

• Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is shaped like a pinwheel.  It rotates once every 225 million years or so.  This means it has made about 60 revolutions in the lifetime of the universe.  Bottom line: do not buy a Milky Way pinwheel to entertain a bored child.

• Speaking of celestial bodies, I am about to complete my 60th revolution around the Sun.  This is because I have successfully avoided collisions with meteors and asteroids.

• Things I no longer do, some by choice, others by necessity or circumstance:  Play catch. Read Maureen Dowd.  Watch MSNBC.  Drink orange juice.  Make tuna-noodle casserole.  Work in a factory.  Walk on the roof.  Play the guitar.  Use semicolons.

• America seems to love its entrepreneurs, especially the hipster entrepreneurs, those who create new apps and sleek gadgets and objects of art and/or convenience out of recycled coffee stirrers and yesterday’s tomatoes.  We hand you our money if you widen our eyes.

• In my parents’ house, there were such things as a 50-year-old working refrigerator, 30-year-old dial telephones, and a 1962 aqua tabletop radio that my mother listened to until she moved away in 2007.  So when I bought my first film camera, I figured it would last 10 or 15 years.  It didn’t.  Nor did the next one.  Nor did the one after that.  Nor did the digital camera that replaced it.  Nor will the one I just bought to improve on the first.  After all this time, I still have not come to terms with the two-year lifespan (or less!) of present-day “consumer electronics.”  A raspy voice in the recesses of my brain tells me that every device I buy should be a sturdy Bell telephone — something without a version number in its name.  I can safely say that my children will never share my sense of the (possible) durability of things.

• This thought is intentionally left blank.

• My next book will be titled, “The Place of Imagination and Yearning.”  So, what do you think it should be about?

• When you hear someone has died of “natural causes,” don’t believe it.  The true cause is unblessed sneezes.  Think how many times you sneeze when no one is around to bless you.  After a while, they add up.

• The parting gesture made by a losing political candidate to his disappointed crowd should henceforth be known as “the wave of the futile.”

• The Inuits supposedly have several different words for snow, reflecting its importance in their culture.  Americans have lone gunman, deranged gunman, heavily-armed gunman, and too many other ways to describe something we shouldn’t need to.

• I have existed on this planet for almost 60 years now.  There is not enough space on this page to list all of the Arab-Israeli wars and conflicts that have taken place since I was born (but you can see the list here).  Middle East peace in my lifetime?  At this pace, doubtful.

• Same-sex marriage is legal in eight states and the District of Columbia.  Over 42 million people reside in these states and enjoy the right (if not all the privileges) to marry the person of their choice.  That is only 13.6% of the U.S. population.  Long road ahead.

• Life is too short to drink yesterday’s coffee.

• First we give our babies thrill-rides by hoisting them way up in the air.  Then we surprise them with games of peek-a-boo.  Then we fool them with stories about Santa Claus and flying reindeer.  Then we make them cry when Frosty the Snowman melts.  No wonder they don’t trust us when they grow up.

• The extent to which “you are your brother’s keeper” is humanity’s essential question.  That each person answers it his own way implies there is no universal answer.  Shall it be, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Louis Blanc, 1839, and Karl Marx, 1875) or “He who does not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)?  Is my “brother” the person related to me, the person next door, the person who lives in my city or country, or the person of another color and culture halfway around the world?  Do I seek him out or wait for him to come to me?  And how much of my time and resources do I offer?  How an individual answers these questions is largely what defines him.