July 4, 2016

2016.07.04
I just reread Tom Robbins' "Still Life with Woodpecker". I admit for a book I often put in my "Top 5 All Time Best" list, it didn't hold up as quite as well as I'd hoped, and as a treatise on our clear and often unthimking bias towards the animate over the inanimate, of things that can move and think over things that can just be, it's a bit sparse (maybe "The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker does a better job of that, somehow) but still, some it had some great thoughts and quotes:

In hot climates, A provides a shady arch, O is a siphon through which to suck liquids, U a cool cave or tub to slide into; A stands like a surfer with its legs apart, O hangs like a citrus from a bough, U rolls its hula hips-- and I and E mimic the cries of monkeys and jungle birds from which they were derived. Consonants, like fair-skinned men, do not thrive in torrid zones. Vowels are built for southern comfort, consonants for northern speed. But O how the natives do bOOgIE-wOOgIE while the planters WaLTZ.
Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.
"Dynamite didn't come here to teach. It came to awaken."
"Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death."
Briefly, they discussed seeking professional help for the Princess, but King Max was one of those who believed that psychology was at that point in its development that surgery was at when it was practiced by barbers, so the idea was abandoned.
Morality depends on culture. Culture depends on climate. Climate depends on geography.

How and Why Donald Trump is Putin's favorite candidate.
I really liked Sunday's Sally Forth, from the Memento-like chronology to the middle three panels especially "JUST RUN TO YOUR BUNKER, TOM! EVERYONE RUN TO THE BUNKERS THEY PERHAPS SHOULD HAVE BUILT!"