I'd like to thank my agent, and my director, and all the people who made this evening possible, and all you wonderful people sitting out there in the dark...

...and thank you, William James, for inventing stream-of-consciousness, and thank you, James Joyce, for employing it so well. Here's Molly in Ulysses, seeking sleep:

a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early... (p. 642)

Well, that's enough of that.

Today's post will contain a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Okay, here goes.

this

that

I don't know why I continue to bother to try to blog when I have nothing whatever of worth value interest to say.

I guess it all boils down to Bloggo, ergo sum (thank you, Descartes).

For those of you who didn't take Latin, it means "I blog, therefore I am." It is as simple as that, and as complicated.

Nevertheless, I plod on valiantly to fill the ether with blather that can be traced directly to me, so that extra-terrestrials finding these words ages and ages hence (thank you, Robert Frost) will know that while it may not necessarily be true that I came, saw, or conquered (thank you, Julius Caesar), it will be irrefutable that I did at one time, someplace, somewhere, actually exist. Looking at it from their perspective, I blogged, therefore I was, which is so much better than their having to use the past imperfect conditional (I think I just made that up), as in if he had blogged, he would have been.

Immortality. To be remembered. To be not just remembered but celebrated. To have counted. To have mattered. I think that is all any of us really want, and it is something hardly any of us will get. After only a generation or two, perhaps, of being fondly remembered by our own descendants, no one will recall the sound of our voice, how we parted our hair (if we had any hair), what toothpaste or deodorant or cereal we bought, what we believed in our heart of hearts. Like all the others except for a very precious few, we will become non-entities, as anonymous as those rows and rows of skulls found under the streets of Paris.

Speaking of perspective, I need my morning coffee. This is getting too depressing.

There, that's better.

The Psalms are always a good way to start the day. I will read a couple. Psalm 30. Psalm 118. Psalm 23.

I almost forgot. Today is Good Friday. Things may look bleak, but Easter is just around the corner. There is hope.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (thank you, Psalm 30).

Thanks, Big Dru, whoever you are

My blog has now been up for six days and I have received a total of three comments, all after my first post. Since that inital flurry, the silence has been deafening. One comment was from a friend, one was from a relative, and one was from someone called Big Dru. Since I don't know anyone called Big Dru, I googled the name and found 2,890 Big Drus in all. So his/her secret is still safe. It was a kind comment, so I'll quote it here: "Impressive! If your musings are as good as your stories published in the "Prairie Home Companion" website, we are in for a treat."

Thank you, dear sir or madam, for the kind words. So now I am forced (forced, I tell you) to be a tooter of my own horn and make the multitudinous readers of this blog (from my mouth to God's ear) aware of two stories of mine that were accepted by the kind folks in St. Paul, perhaps by the great Garrison Keillor himself. The first is Silver and the second is Florabelle Oxley.

Happy reading.

And they said it wouldn't last

This blog is now in its third day and still going strong. Will it reach its third week, its third month, its third year? Nobody knows. I will say this about myself: I am by nature a procastinator. I tend to put things off, delay the inevitable, wait until the last minute. But this work style of mine always produced superior results in my particular workplace. Of course, it drove the bosses crazy. The pressure I created for myself all by myself seemed to give me just the right incentive to excel. Oh, and work fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours (I'm kidding, sort of). I retired from the daily grind seven years ago. My work was of the mental kind, not the physical kind, but I came home each day exhausted and the long commute didn't help. When I retired, I said to my wife, "I don't want to see a sunrise or a rush hour for at least six months." And pretty much, I didn't. I tend to have high highs and low lows. I've learned to control, or at least deal with, mood swings to a certain extent, but at one time my life, internally at least, was a little like a roller coaster. Did I just describe manic-depressive, which these days people call bipolar? And some might even call me obsessive-compulsive. Like my old work buddy who used to rearrange things on my desk just to see how long it would take me to put things back in order, at just the right angle, in parallel lines. Really.

So I'm elated that the blog is in its third day. I said above that nobody knows how long it will last. That's not true. God does. Jehovah God, Yahweh, YHWH, I am that I am, and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Yeshua Ha-Mashiach), and the Holy Spirit Who indwells me, the Paraclete, the One called alongside to help, the One who Jesus said is with you and shall be in you. The Triune God is from everlasting to everlasting and knows the end from the beginning; He knows exactly how long my blog will last.

So now some of you think I am a kook and some of you are quietly praising the Lord. And some of you not so quietly. I'll try not to make the blog all about me, me, me, though. After all, He must increase, but I must decrease.

And so it begins...

Today is Friday, September 28, 2007. I have finally decided to begin my very own blog, and not a minute too soon, either. At sixty-six-and-one-half years old, I may soon be entering the second half of my life. FYI, as they say, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed today at 13885.63, the Nasdaq Composite Index closed at 2701.50, the Standard & Poor 500 closed at 1526.75, the Amex closed at 2410.19, and the Russell 2000 closed at 805.45. A passage from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland comes to mind:

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'What do you know about this business?' the King said to Alice.

'Nothing,' said Alice.

'Nothing whatever?' persisted the King.

'Nothing whatever,' said Alice.

'That's very important,' the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: 'Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course,' he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.

'Unimportant, of course, I meant,' the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, 'important--unimportant--unimportant--important--' as if he were trying which word sounded best.

Some of the jury wrote it down 'important,' and some 'unimportant.' Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; 'but it doesn't matter a bit,' she thought to herself.
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As it happens, I know nothing about either the stock market or the world of blogging. Nothing whatever. However, may it please the court, some things are very important to me, and some things are very unimportant. It is my hope that you, the jury, will enjoy the journey on which we are about to embark. I'll try my best not to bore you along the way. I rest my case.