Just Kidding

My wife insists that I point out that in my last post I was being faceitious when I included "thrift" and "cleanliness" as virtues for which I strive. I thought it was obviously a joke, but for the sake of complete clarity "thrifty" and "clean" are not attributes which I can count in my skill set. I don't refer to personal hygiene. I think I am as well scrubbed and freshly powdered as the next guy (as long as the next guy isn't a raving metrosexual). But if clean is understood to mean tidy or neat then in the interest of full disclosure let me state for the record that I am a slob who is in serious need of someone to pick-up after me.

The fact that I have about five times as many books as I have bookshelf space would be a major contributing factor toward my inability to put everything away in its proper place. Unless you would consider a proper place to be a wobbly towering stacks of books on the floor or dining room table or a wobbly stack of boxes filled with books . As anyone with the bibliomaniac gene twisted into their double helix can attest storage space is usually the first casualty of biblioholism. Domestic bliss will be the next thing placed on the disabled list.

As for thrift. The less said the better. If by thrift you mean having two nickels to rub together.
Penny saved is a penny earned. Saving for a rainy day.

Recall the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. I have always identified with the grasshopper, and thought the ant was a bit of a prig and a killjoy. What can I say except that at least the grasshopper would have something to read while the ant was living off the hoard he had stored up for the winter. I assume the ant was left with a full belly just staring vacantly into space waiting for spring, until he could go back to work saving up for next winter. The ant was the personification of all work and no play. A very dull boy as anyone who has ever spent any time with ants is painfully aware. What a bunch of a-holes.

As I was saying...

Ahem. Well It seems like it's time to crawl back into my shell, ignore the world at large, and escape into a bookish cocoon. I mean metaphorically. I won't be masticating any book paper and extruding an actual cocoon, although if you saw my library you might wonder.

What have I been reading lately? I had taken a detour into the world of non-fiction. I read a passel of the lefty political books (Molly Ivins, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Joe Conason, Greg Palast, etc.), but now that Bush is back in for another four years I think I'll go back to reading Horror fiction, since it is less scary.

The only thought I have on the election is that it only confirms for me (for the zillionth time) what I have known in my heart at least since elementary school: There is something wrong with me. For some reason, if normal is what the majority of people enjoy, do, or believe, then I am not like the majority of people, not normal. Every interest, every belief, every enthusiasm I have just seems to put me further and further out of the mainstream of, well, I don't know, the stream I guess.

So if you are looking for me for the next four years or so I'll be over here at Not Crazy..Just Enthusiastic huddled against the shore (or is it the bank) of the stream, out of the swift moving current of the mainstream where I could be swept over the falls or dashed against the rocks. I'll just be clinging to the knobby little roots and branches of what I hold most precious: Traditional values like tolerance, intelligence, fairness, reading, compassion, beauty, wit, reading, open-mindedness, courtesy, kindness, and reading. We will strive to remain cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.