another joke from daddy, with which I concur

I recently turned 65 and had to choose a new primary care physician for my Medicare program.
After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, he said I was doing "fairly well" for my age.
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, "Do you think I will live to be 80?"
He asked: "Do you smoke tobacco or drink alcoholic beverages?"
"Oh no," I replied. "I don't do drugs, either."
"Do you have many friends and entertain frequently?"
"I said, "No, I usually stay home and keep to myself".
"Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?"
I said, "No, my other doctor said that all red meat is unhealthy!"
"Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?"
"No, I don't," I said.
"Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?"
"No," I said. "I don't do any of those things."
He looked at me and said, "Then why do you give a shit?"

the truth is bald and cold

The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden.
-"The White Room," Charles Simic, new Poet Laureate of the U.S.
as announced in NYT article

what I've been saying all along

With democracy comes television.
-Saad Mohseni, Tolo TV, Afghanistan; quoted in NYT

Why fight, when we can just install cable? Is there an Iraqi Big Brother house yet?

p.t. barnum would agree

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-Groucho Marx

they gave away all the sticky

"People can be abstinent, and it’s not weird."
-Jami Waite, a teenager in Hallsville, Texas
Abstinence Education Faces an Uncertain Future, NYT

Yuh-huh.

acting and scientology

"The purpose of the acting art is not to bring about therapy... One taps their own experience of love or violence and tries to pull from it whatever is possible in terms of an association or understanding, but there is also the imagination and the character and the writing. The personal thing is always very strong and can be created, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you go into the traumas of your life in order to get it."
-Milton Katselas, quoted in "The Actualizer," Mark Oppenheimer, NYT

Sounds pretty sensible to me; this style of acting has nothing of "be the bacon." Mr. Katselas is associated with the Church of Scientology; apparently the religion has tenets based on observation and clarity, which can be helpful to acting technique. Some performers that I especially admire (including John Travolta, Jason Lee, and Beck) are also believers in this religion that has infiltrated Hollywood. When discussing these performers my friends tend to say "oh, too bad he's a scientologist, I don't like him so much anymore." Which bothers me -- judging someone by what religion they espouse, as opposed to how they behave, is prejudice. Though I am non-religious myself (and in fact I believe that L. Ron Hubbard was one of the worst sci-fi writers I ever read), I don't see why the religion of performers should affect my enjoyment of their work. If a friend tried to proselytize me, it would bother me and affect the relationship; that would be true no matter what the religion was. But I don't know these people; I can only judge them by what they do in the public eye. And if scientology makes them better actors and happier people, I say go to.

marie

My step-grandmother Marie's funeral is this morning in Elizabeth City, NC. She passed away last Sunday after a battle with colon cancer. She was a kind and wonderful lady and was always so sweet to me and to anybody I brought home with me, especially David. Her grown kids are also great people and my thoughts are with them today; I wish I could be there.

http://www.funeralplan.com/twifordfh/obits?id=101992

Marie was my grandfather Roy's second wife; they had been sweethearts as teenagers before he met my grandmother, and after Grandmama died, Roy and Marie met again and married. Their happiness late in life was an inspiration to me -- maybe you have to wait until you're in your sixties or seventies, but you can still find true love.