Apuleius Books

I Just had a weird dream. My wife, Tamiko, and I were on our way to a Walmart in N. Dakota when we discover that the store has been replaced by a coal fired but low emission power plant,. I am excited that a use has finally been found for all that ND lignite. We go there and the place is still selling stuff including a really cool paper shredder. Somehow Tamiko has gone off somewhere and I am talking to some guy about the shredder and how I am to get it without annoying Tamiko since I already have a perfectly good shredder at home. He suggests that he drive me home and that we discuss it en route. I tell him that of course that can’t work because I would then be at home and Tamiko and our car at this Walmart cum power plant. Tamiko shows up and makes the reasonable suggestion that instead of going home my friend and I go for coffee to discuss the shredder problem and celebrate ND having found a use for lignite. We both think this very funny since it makes so much sense and agree that women just don’t understand that getting something cool that we want has nothing to do with needing the item. Good thing I woke up before buying the shredder. She’d have murdered me.

Death walked the streets like a nun watching for bad little boys to discipline. Death opened a church door and drifted in. Like a storm cloud he spread his gloomy self over many. He did skip over some, mostly those whose demise would not greatly upset the others. Instead he picked out a child here, a mother there, and as many of the beautiful as he could. How different they would look in a few days; their flesh would turn gray even before they closed their terrified eyes for the last time and surrendered into his grasp. Then would come decay. The living would bury the dead of course, but beneath the new green grass their faces would drip away, leaving only rotting meat; then that too would be gone, eaten by maggots.
Stephen Foster had asked the eternal question in song: Why must the beautiful ever weep? Why must the beautiful die? Life had no answer. Life knows sunshine and butterflies and green grass but nothing of death. It is said that dying is but a part of life. Horse shit.
Oh optimists, you who will not face the end; what answer have you that is not simply a wish based upon nothing but blind hope and fear?
Ask the fat maggots. Without the beautiful children they would starve. God provides for his creatures, great and small alike.

A generation that changed America: Bond, King, Wilkins, Marshall, Randolph, Abernathy, Farmer, et al. Too many of us only know Dr King’s name but each of these did enormous good each in his own way. I firmly believe that M L King Day should be renamed Civil Rights Day to honor all who worked, were jailed, and sometimes beaten or killed for the same dream. Not a dream of racial separation as some later black power advocates wanted because they did not have faith in Dr King’s Christian ethics or in America, but one of understanding and integration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/us/julian-bond-former-naacp-chairman-and-civil-rights-leader-dies-at-75.html?emc=edit_na_20150816&nlid=3146481&ref=headline

Trump likes to rile people, and succeeds. That’s the only reason I keep writing about him. I should ignore him but somehow can’t. So why is Trump so obnoxious? Because he can’t get the nomination but can’t bear to be a loser. Ergo, be a jerk and be able to say he was pushed out by those in the media who couldn’t abide straight talk. By the way, Donald, stop confusing opposition to excess political correctness – which most of us hate – with being rude, crude, and simply ungentlemanly. Didn’t your Dad ever tell you that it is most unbecoming even in a spit and sawdust bar?

GOP August 3, 2015

The Republican hopefuls resemble nothing so much as a bunch of spoiled children. Much as I hate to say so, Jeb Bush looks like the only adult among them. Personally, I still like Ike and would vote for him in the blink of an eye if he were still alive… or for Robert kennedy, or even Ronald Reagan… all of them men of honor (mensch) who cared about something more than belly aching on a big stage.

Ice Cream Trump August 3, 2015

I just made myself an ice cream soda. Bryers vanilla and chocolate in coffee soda. Tasted like heaven. If the Donald wants to do some good with his billions he could provide this to kids in boiling hot Sudanese refugee camps. It would do more for America’s image and to undercut the propaganda of our enemies than any number of government programs providing the necessities of life. Like the candy bomber did for America’s image in the wreckage of post war Germany. We are so spoiled.

Trump the wastrel July 18, 2015

The worst thing about Donald Trump is not that he is playing a clown, though he is. Nor even that he is making a mockery of the electoral system. We don’t need him for that. But that he is wasting his millions. I expect that he contributes to charity. Every rich person does if only for the tax breaks and to avoid being labeled a scrooge. But he will be giving millions in this silly campaign to other rich people at advertising agencies, etc. I am not a bleeding heart but there are hundreds of causes both foreign and domestic in which he could invest the bulk of his wealth for the betterment of mankind instead of just moving it from one rich man’s pocket to another’s.. That is a moral obligation for men like him. After all, while he may have once actually earned money himself now it is only money generating money without any actual labor involved. There is no fear factor of losing a job. He is simply playing with investments like a game that he can afford to lose some rounds of. To think of it as anything he has actually earned is wrong and immoral. My wish is to someday get him alone for a couple of minutes to remind him that after he dies or otherwise drops off the stage that he so much loves, within months no one except those with business interests with his companies will think of him at all. Within two years he will be irrelevant even to these and forgotten or unknown to young execs. Finally he will not merit even a footnote in American history except, perhaps, as one of the many sillies in this election year. He so craves constantly being in the highlight that he says anything to get attention and loves to tell us how many people are listening to him. Hey Donald, there are children starving through no fault of theirs. In a way it’s like ignoring the Holocaust while you play your self important game for the crowds.

IRAN, PUBLICITY, AND THE BOMB July 15, 2015

Iran wants to be important. An atom bomb is a marker of having arrived internationally. All the talk about Iran and the bomb is more important than actually having it. It gets Iran a lot of attention in the press and on TV. Otherwise who’d care what the ayatollahs think about anything? The only way to stop countries from getting the bomb for attention is for everyone to not have them. Ike offered to put A-weapons under UN control; a good idea then and a good idea now.

Constantinople falls – May 29, 2015

On May 29, 1453 Constantinople, the jewel of the Christian world, fell to Islam because the East and the West hated each other. Love does not “make the world go round” as the song says, greed and hate do. Haters being the poor dumb foot soldiers of the greedy.

I’ve long thought that our courts have misinterpreted the restriction against cruel and unusual punishment. The constitution does not say cruel “or” unusual. To me the obvious meaning is that punishment not be arbitrary, the whim of some judge or governor intent upon making the punishment fit the crime. In fact the restriction is in keeping with the tradition in Britain that everyone is equal before the law. Thus a rich man and an ordinary citizen should be fined a similar percentage of their worth. Likewise, everyone, rich or poor, is entitled to bail if there is little risk therein. If he cannot afford anything bail should be set at $ 0.00. But the founders hardly meant that punishment should be no more than rehabilitation any more than they meant that the restriction applied only to capital cases. By definition a society exists to protect its members from the common foe. Why should punishment not be both cruel and usual for those who have decided to prey upon it: defrauders, con men, muggers, computer hackers, and mortgage bankers? By definition such persons cannot be members of the society. Why is it that we reserve the death penalty for murderers who offend against only one family while letting those outsiders who prey on the whole society live. Though I doubt that in practice I could refuse a plea for mercy if I were a governor, in principle I do feel that these are the people who deserve the most cruel punishments, just so long as they knew what was coming their way when they set upon a life of crime – that cruel would be the usual outcome. Likewise, a spell in prison should not be a rite of passage as it can be when incarceration is short. It should be obvious that the way to break the chain of daddy to son criminality is to keep these two separated for many years. Does this punish families? Yes. Life is tough but the responsibility of government is first to the society it represents, not to individuals be they criminals, their families, or even the victims.