Gratitude

Stop me if you have heard this one:

A man encounters a farmer who has a pig with a wooden leg.

He asks, "why does your pig have a wooden leg?"

The farmer says, "well, once I fell in the river and was about to drown and this pig swam out, grabbed me with his teeth, and saved my life."

Impressed, the man said, "wonderful, but why does your pig have a wooden leg?"

Once again the farmer explained, "my house was on fire and I was asleep on the second floor. This pig came up and dragged me out and once again saved my life."

"Great," the man said, "but why does your pig have a wooden leg?"

"Once I fell down on the railroad track," the farmer said, "and this pig dragged me off just in time to save me from being run over by the train."

"Wow," the man said, "it certainly seems to be a wonderful pig. But why does it have a wooden leg?"

"Well," the farmer replied, "you can't eat a great pig like this all at once."

This seem to me to be a parable for Bush/Cheney's relationship to our military.


I just finished The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester. Fascinating account of his trip over the length of the Yangtze and the building of the Three Gorges Dam. I think it was published in 1996 so it is a bit out of date. Even so it does give you an insight into what will probably become the single greatest human attack on the planet earth so far. I have great respect for the Chinese and I realise they had a great civilization when we were still wearing the skins of animals (or nothing at all), but I am sad they seem to be unable to learn from our mistakes. Like, building enormously destructive dams, and adding millions of more automobiles to the terrible problems those awful machines have already created on earth? Why should we not cooperate with the Chinese to solve the problem of diminishing resources instead of starting to fight over them? This is a small planet with finite resources. Competing for them is short-sighted beyond belief. Unfettered capitalism will doom us all.

Sunday. Nothing much happens on sunday. Actually, lots of stuff probably happens. It just doesn't get reported (in spite of so-called 7/24 news). All the really bad news appears late on friday afternoons (when no one is watching), and as there is no good news anymore we get larger and larger doses of Brittany, Paris, Angelina, car chases, house fires, human interest, and so on. Who pays for hours of car chases, celebrity divorces, and such things? Could it be the very people who do not want us to hear any real news? Why would they do a thing like that?

My brand new computer has a flaw. It has been returned to the manufacturer for repairs. I am now writing this on my wife's laptop and I am having trouble getting used to the keyboard. If there are lots of typos I apologize. Given my faith in such things I am assuming I will be fortunate if my computer is returned to me sometime in the coming year.

I confess that having listened to the same Christmas carols and other Christmas music for 77 consecutive years, I am sick of it. But I have no more trouble whatsoever with saying Merry Christmas than g'day or howzit goin, or goodonya. I worry not about the problem with Happy Holidays (even though this latter does strike me as perfectly suitable). So Happy Whatever.