Category Archives: Life

The Return of the Weather Underground

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Most of us don’t need to know the temperature outside to the nearest 10th of a degree. Nevertheless, the site below is a boon to those of us who want accurate, local information about the weather. Whether or not we can do anything about it.

“Weather Underground has developed the world’s largest network of personal weather stations (almost 23,000 stations in the US and over 13,000 across the rest of the world) providing our site’s users with the most localized weather conditions available.”

They have a weather station less than a mile from our house. The current temperature is 74.1. That’s local coverage.

http://www.wunderground.com

Illness Part 2

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Three days in the hospital turned into five. But I’m mending now.

Speaking of illness, a judge in Lubbock, Texas, has supposedly justified a small tax increase in order to strengthen the local sheriff’s department. He wants to be ready if Obama gives up our sovereignty to the United Nations and the UN troops try to take control of Lubbock.

http://www.myfoxlubbock.com/news/local/story/Lubbock-tom-head-tax-rates-president-obama/PeO4Q8GeGEiy_FpxheUnmA.cspx

Illness

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After what doctors call a “complication” from a medical procedure, I’ve just spent three days in the hospital. I haven’t been this sick since having pneumonia many years ago.

One thing I was reminded of is how difficult it can be to sleep in a hospital bed, while connected to various tubes, with inflatable straps around your legs to prevent blood clots, the bed undulating to prevent bedsores, high-tech machinery beeping, chugging and whooshing, and periodic visits from the nurses and technicians. They should call it a “patient platform” instead of a “bed”.

The more significant thing I’ve been reminded of is how illness can change your perception of the world. Having an abnormal perspective makes the world seem very different. What is normally interesting, enjoyable or possible isn’t anymore.

I’m very glad that I’ll recover soon. I wouldn’t want this unpleasant state to start feeling typical, the way being healthy becomes a memory for people with chronic illness. Being ill for a long time doesn’t mean that it’s normal to be ill — you can still compare your state to a healthy one. But maybe you can adjust after a while, your abnormal perspective becoming “normal for you”. The world might seem interesting and enjoyable again.

I don’t want to find out if I could get used to this particular perspective. Apparently all I need is some more hemoglobin and the world will again seem normal.

Gore Vidal 1925-2012

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On monotheism:

“I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single… well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system that has worked pretty well for twenty-five hundred years. So you see I am ecumenical in my dislike for the Book. But like it or not, the Book is there; and because of it people die; and the world is in danger.”  (1988)

“The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose.”  (1992)

On himself:

“I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”  (1956)

“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”  (1992)