I was sick as a dog yesterday.  I woke up several times in the early morning hours, feeling a bit queer---achey, groggy, and a bit queasy in the stomach, but always managed to fall back to sleep.  Finally, I fell into a deep sleep, complete with violent dreams, the details of which escape me at the moment.  I awoke again, painfully, at a little ( Read more... )

Those luck few of you who have been on the receiving end of e-mail from me will recognize the following quote, as it is appended to 95% of my outgoing mail:

"My political opinions lean more and more to anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).... [T]he most improper job of any man, even saints ( Read more... )

The Ulster Volunteer Force, the second largest Loyalist paramilitary group in Ulster, has renounced violence.

Ulster Volunteer Force pledges to renounce violence

Farewell to arms as UVF vows an end to terrorism

Loyalist veteran's path to peace

All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect
on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those
who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the
accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their
force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist ( Read more... )

The oldest was Troy, an eighteen year old boy
Shot dead in March in a robbery
His brother started out to hell and to ruin
Troy's killer was never caught, they say
Young Nick, he just went bad that day
Now he'll have to find his own way home, boys
He'll have to find his own way home

-Tom Waits, The Fall Of Troy

A little while ago, I was sitting with ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

O Wise Men, riddle me this: What if my dream
Come true? And millions unborn shall dwell
In the house I have shaped in my heart---
The noble house of my thought?

-Padraig Pearse, "The Fool"

Alas, Padraig, they still do not dwell in that noble house of your thoughts. Not yet, anyway...

This quote has been on my mind all day today after various and sundry conversations about the first Democratic candidates debate last night, which debate, and the long-winded postmortem which followed, left me wholly uninspired.

Baron Munchausen: "Your reality, sir, is nothing but lies and balderdash, and I am delighted to say that I have no grasp ( Read more... )

"She sings, we are mute: when is my spring coming?
when shall I be as the swallow, that I may cease to be voiceless?"
-from Pervigilium Veneris

I said Dostoevsky is not a poet, or he is only a poet in a secondary sense. I called him a prophet. It is difficult to say exactly what a prophet means. It seems to me something like this. A prophet is a ( Read more... )

from LRC:

The state is the embodiment of organized aggression. It is, after all, the legal institution that monopolizes the right to commit theft (taxation), kidnapping (mandatory attendance laws), slavery (conscription), and mass murder (war). It imprisons millions, loots trillions and slaughters civilians as a matter of course. Its powers cannot ( Read more... )