Tuesday

I had intended to write about how Sammy's wound looks wonderfully healed, but that I was afraid the wound would never truly go away, that the scab would dry up and fall off one of these days, and the wound underneath would be as fresh as ever. Then, before I could even fire up the laptop to write, I look down and see that the wound on his head is fresh, wet, and brightly red. I guess Ash must have licked off the scab. However, maybe this isn't the worst case. Maybe Sammy can live out his natural life like this: with that wound forevermore scabbing over, reopening, and scabbing over again and again. While that certainly wouldn't be ideal (you wouldn't want to live with it!), at least it's livable, and he apparently can live normally as if nothing were wrong. Yet, one supposes that he also would be living with a heightened risk of catching a dangerous infection sometime. ... ... The sun is out bright this morning. It will be nice to dry out. Maybe I can let the cats out tomorrow afternoon. ... ... Lucretius: "In what gloom of existence, in what great perils, this life is spent as long as it endures." [The World as Will and Representation, tr. Payne] ... ... Damn, Sugar posted some pics of herself from 2006, and she was really bringing out the sex. I guess it wasn't long after she defriended me. If I had seen those pics then, it probably would have driven me crazy. Hell, it drives me crazy now - all legs and tits and ass, with gaudily red hair - like a street prostitute really working it. And her arms aren't painted over yet. That is some serious 'woman' there. It's difficult to imagine that she wasn't actually going through men like changes of underwear. Damn. She could've saved my life. Pi says, "Oh, please, sex, even great sex, cannot save anyone's life - not even with a white girl!" Well, maybe not in the most literal sense. But it could have made my life seem more worth living, like my life wasn't all garbage, a total waste. "But what could you have given her in return, Monk?" My undying gratitude? "Wonderful! I'd rather have the hundred dollars and hope never to see you again, but never mind. Tell me this, Monk, what about today? Do you believe it could save you today?" What, Sugar? She's a bit old herself now. "Oh, god! I wasn't really thinking of Sugar. Just someone, a girl, okay? Do you still dream of having a 22 year-old hottie coming in to your life and saving you." Not really. It's too late now, I think. When I was 40, I was probably at my limit, as being someone salvageable. At 51? No, I understand that it would be weird, especially not having money, real money. Of course, that's not to say I wouldn't take it and try to make a go of it, but ... it would be weird even to me, not really natural. I don't think I can receive it now as being something that is truly mine, a part of me. It would just be a wild accident that fell my way, and which came a bit too late to do me a lot of good. I think it would feel more like life is mocking me rather than making my dreams come true. "Okay, if I can steer you away now from this bog of self-pity, how about a woman your own age - a real companion and partner in life rather than an adolescent fantasy?" LOL Kind of a loaded question there. But, seriously, I don't think so. At this point, I think I'd prefer to break out a deck of cards and play another round of Solitaire. ... ... Schopenhauer: "The life of the great majority is only a constant struggle ... What enables them to endure this wearisome battle is not so much the love of life as the fear of death." [The World] ... ... Ann Coulter apparently drops a couple of biting quotes on political correctness. Someone is quoting her, but there is no source given. I'm keeping the quotes, because it sounds like something she would say, and they are sharp quotes. First: "Political correctness gives dour, boring people a sense of nobility." Second: "Political correctness was designed to make idiots without original thoughts feel valued and important." ... ... What the hell! Ash and Sammy were wrestling and perhaps going at it a bit seriously, and then I saw her waving her paw of claws over Sammy head, as though she were purposely aiming for his wound. Cripes! Now I wonder if she was the one who inflicted the injury in the first place. ... ... Oh, they are putting up Christmas lights. I heard the next-door neighbors close by, making workman-like noise. I was naturally suspicious, thinking the worse. ... ... Fuck, I forgot to shower. Although my hair is longer now, thus giving me that icky mop feeling, it is colder now, which takes away a good bit of the sense of that ickiness. ... ... Oooh, Schopie cuts me to the quick on card-playing, which he says "is in the truest sense an expression of the wretched side of humanity." It stands in contrast to enjoying art and partaking of pure knowledge. Playing cards, such as Solitaire, I guess, is like the lowest form of itch-scratching, perhaps worse than masturbation, which is at least the satisfaction of a real biological need. And he tells me this just as the Spider shoots out another layer of card-webbing at me. [The World]

Alt-Right

The Times has a piece trying to unpack what is meant by the 'alt-right'.

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The alt-right is not a large movement, but the prominence that it is enjoying in the early days of the Trump era may tell us something about the way the country is changing. At least since the end of the Cold War, and certainly since the election of a black president in 2008, America’s shifting identity — political, cultural and racial — has given rise to many questions about who we are as a nation. But one kind of answer was off the table: the suggestion that America’s multicultural present might, in any way, be a comedown from its past had become a taboo. This year a candidate broke it. He promised to “make America great again.” And he won the presidency.

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“I don’t think that Trump is a rabid white nationalist,” the alt-right blogger Millennial Woes said at a speech in Seattle days after the election. “I think that he just wants to restore America to what he knew as a young man, as a child. And I think he probably does know at some level that the way to do it is to get more white people here and fewer brown people.”

-- Christopher Caldwell at The New York Times

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