26.9.02

Untitled

Today's Track: Monday, Monday--The Mamas and The Papas

After the other day, I almost feel like pouring myself a Guinness or three and singing "Feelings" to a coat-rack. The poor thing would probably skitter away in fear.
Somewhere along the way, this thing has undergone some sort of spontaneous format shift, becoming less a lighthearted poke at humanity and more a sort of ongoing digitized mawkish rambling. Needless to say, this is not at all what I had in mind. For what it's worth, I hope that it doesn't turn out to be permanent. But then what's the use of maintaining this exercise in typographical futility if I can't occasionally indulge in a little maudlin gibberish? And really, I doubt that the earth will suffer a significant decrease in angular momentum for want of a few cynical sociological mini-treatises, nor will mankind seize up and jump the evolutionary rails due to a lack of flippant pseudo-philosophy or another Pat Robertson/Al Gore jokes (I forget the precise wording, but the punch line involved a monkey, a vacuum cleaner, and a roll of duct tape). All the same, I don't think I have it in me to be overly deep at this particular moment. I think instead that I will aim somewhere near the middle ground, and talk about my day.
It rained.
Not much, but I assure you that's the most entertaining bit.
Ok, new tack. My week:
Hmm, not much there, either. Which is not really all that surprising, considering there have been only two days of it thus far. Despite the fact that some would have you believe that today is Thursday, it is, in fact, only just Monday. Thus, Sunday being the first day... You get the idea. Returning readers--I assume there are a couple of you--are now, more than ever, unshakably assured in your conviction that I am a Pat Buchanan-caliber lunatic. But I can provide an explanation which is, if not thoroughly satisfying, at least satisfyingly confusing. You see, I've listened for years to people endlessly complaining about having committed acts of which they are ashamed, or of making terrible and/or simply stupid mistakes, or having spotted, at a later time, some simple thing which should have been done but wasn't. The upshot of all this is that these people fervently wish for the ability to retrace their chronological steps and relive their past days, purportedly for the purpose of righting things. After many, many of these rants, and having explained the concept of causality until the concept sickened me, something finally occurred to me: I need to find some less irritating friends.
No, while that also might be true, what I realized as a result of these numerous holdings forth was that, like so many other things, the obvious solution to this problem--that of being unable to correct an unsatisfactory past--was stupefying in its simplicity. You can’t travel back in time to fix things to your liking. There are simply too many paradoxes, many of which might conceivably involve you being shot by your grandfather. So the obvious thing to do would be simply not to submit a day as having been completed until you are completely satisfied with its disposition. In other words, don’t move on to a new day until you’re happy with the last one.
Well, the last few days, beginning late Sunday, have been somewhat...unpleasant. I don’t yet have a firm grasp on exactly what I might do to rectify this, but I refuse to undergo another day until these are sorted out. Accordingly, I’ve been diligently struggling with Monday for a while now, and fully plan to be ready to tackle Tuesday by the beginning of next week. As to why this is, well, maybe I’ll attempt that at another time. For the moment, I have something else that I wish to talk about.
Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten what that is.
So I’ll just take this opportunity to ramble on about a few random things that I do recall presently.
I have yet to extricate my beloved--and rather blackened--lawnmower from the hands of the helpful citizens who insist that it absolutely will not be completely repaired until the day after I am forced to declare bankruptcy. Yes, apparently that "minor fire" I wrote about earlier this month is only going to cost a few hundred dollars to repair. And I narrowly avoided getting a new dog out of the deal, too. As it is, I have yet to see the first trace of dog or strange man again. Of course, it's been quite a while since I last saw my mower, too. I'm not entirely sure I miss either of the three of them. Meanwhile, the lawn is doing nicely sans mower, and I've finally established peaceful relations with the members of the small proto-civilization that has sprung up in one of the more heavily vegetated regions of the property.
I've recently decided to curtail my pretty much nonexistent campaign against public education. As I've often pointed out, the only thing the modern school system has managed, after years of experimentation, to get right is the practice of suspending children who break the rules. Not only does this get the troublemakers out of the classroom--allowing the dedicated students to concentrate on such crucial scholastic matters as discerning the effects of chalk dust on the human digestive system or testing the physiological responses of frogs with pushpins--but it also assures that said disobedient youngsters are sequestered for a few days at a time with their parents, which guarantees that the parents learn the value of raising children who are not intolerable hellions. But I digress. To recount, this practice is the only aspect of public education which is not, at best, an ironic joke. I used to worry about this a great deal. Not so any longer. I've just realized that modern videogame technology is now more than sufficient to counter any of the negative effects--such as actual education--that the public school system might be having on America's children. Plus, videogame consoles don't drink coffee, thus limiting their potential exposure to surreptitiously introduced chalk dust.
And lastly, I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out that the comment-posting gadget on this page need not necessarily be restricted to registering comments about the actual blog. I'd be afraid to comment on most of this stuff. So if you happen to be reading and think of something you think the Masked Logician, or his other three readers, should hear, leave a note behind. It doesn't matter if it doesn't seem important, or even rational. I don't hold myself to such unreasonable standards, so why should I expect it of you?
Think on.

P.S.: Chickens can't vote, why can idiots?

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