Pax Nortona - A Blog by Joel Sax

Can one be a hero while at the same time being a dick? The answer, as McCain has shown, is: yes.

Check out his article at Dickipedia.org.

Here’s a joke he told last week:

“Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’”

Get it? Being raped and beaten is fun. Not something the media will make a fuss about, but you’ll doubtlessly be hearing more about this.

Dubya says that history may yet treat his administration kindly, but a poll of historians thinks his is the worst presidency ever.

The greatest president, I dare say, is the one who can fix this mess.

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We now have a Boston Terrier, a sad-eyed gentleman with a brindle coat who very quickly learned that the cats outranked him. Fiona showed him by slapping him on the nose when he tried to lick her which cat and dog owners know to heinous. Later he snuffed up one of her cat treats which led to yet another disciplining. Boadicea took her time in approaching him, but now seeks to go nose to nose which Drake does not permit: he turns away and shakes when she stretches toward him. Overall, he’s a nice guy but more Lynn’s pet than mine. The cats have sovereignty over my lap.

Romantics often tell the story of creators who went against their parents’ wishes and undertook the life of an artist. Greatness, we are told, often comes from this sort of adversity. What the art pundits do not speak about is the origin of mediocrity. It lies in enduring the attentions of superficially supportive parents who ridicule. This may be impossible to overcome.

One hundred years ago today occurred a mystery. The sky over Tunguska, Siberia seemed to split and knocked over thousands of trees. Scientists have their theories (the best ones involve either an asteroid or a comet) but the case file remains open.

Hillary Clinton is in her exit strategy now that Obama has cinched the nomination. I’m proud of the fact that my party, the Democrats, have fielded as their frontrunners an African American and a woman. In response, the Republicans have offered us another geriatric white man who sold his soul to Bush just so he could have the nomination. For the record, I supported the African American from the beginning. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at his success. Perhaps America isn’t the racist and sexist country that I dreaded it was.

It’s OK with me if Hillary does not release her delegates until they have voted at the convention. Her supporters have worked very hard and deserve to see the fruits of their efforts be recorded as history. I just ask that they support Obama as Lynn and I have been ready to support Hillary as the nominee. We have a lot of damage to undo. Hillary could help by becoming the Secretary of Education. That “no-child-left-behind-just ruined” policy ranks as one of the Bush Administration’s principle disasters. Clinton is the best person to fix that. I don’t want her wasted as Vice President.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democrats, Democratic Party, racism, sexism, election, primaries

The hills have already changed to their autumnal yellows and browns even though it is still spring. Only a few green protestors among the wildflowers press through the canopies of the fields. Last week, a strange sight: a late season rain falling on flaxen mustard groves, dead for the year. No hope of resurrection for the local plant life so much if not all was wasted.

Bill of Human Castration Information (http://www.eunuchinfo.com) writes:

Today I’m a calmer, more rational person. I’m also fatter, and probably less healthy. All in all, I’m happier for what I’ve been through. I think I’ve become a better person than I was before all this.

Sounds like the side effects of Prozac, to name just one psychopharmaceutical.

Technorati Tags: strange, odd, eunuch, castration, depression, antidepressants, eunuchs

+ 7 days….

Brian Kane has posted P.Z. Myer’s nicely worded Atheist Creed.

Still, same old problem that troubles all thinking along the theist/atheist rift: certainty.

My agnostic creed isn’t a creed at all, but just a simple statement of fact:

I don’t have the answers to ultimate questions and I can live without them.

Technorati Tags: Agnosticism, atheism, religion, spirituality

By chance after an especially hard “support group” meeting, I came home and picked up the blue loose-leaf binder that contains the poetry that I wrote while I was manic and during the first months of my stability. It wasn’t as bad as I had dreamed it, though I can’t see how I could create the like now.

Lately, both as I wake and as I sleep, I remember a dream of driving south on the Coast Highway, looking to my right and seeing a large, rocky island of cormorants, drenched by the ocean. I want to get to that island and I do my best to will myself there, but every time I start to glide there, I am brought down, sometimes at the base of a blue police box. I take this as an emblem of my thwartedness to write fine things anymore. The island is beyond my abilities.