"A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it." -- Frank A. Clark

My sentiments exactly. Speaking of "my sentiments exactly," I just picked up "The End of Faith," by Sam Harris. WOW. Granted, he's preaching to the choir with me, but I have never seen my unformed thoughts and feelings about religion articulated so well and intelligently with such evidence.

A brief and pointed excerpt: "Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

And: "To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world -- to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish -- is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance."

Fuck, I could quote the whole book, but I'm sure I'd be stepping on some kind of copyright infringements if I did so. The better option is for you to just go out and buy it, read it yourself, and then we'll talk.

Okay, just one more for now: "Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."

I'm going to start telling people I believe in Zeus. When they question my intelligence, I will point out that there is as much evidence supporting the existence of Greek gods as there is supporting the existence of our modern idea of God. I wonder, though, if being a devout atheist makes me any more tolerant than one who follows a specific doctrine. I can't imagine so, seeing as I am intolerant of all ignorance, even my own, and it drives me crazy to think that people so blindly accept, believe, and follow what they've been told, without stopping to consider how improbable what they've been told actually is.

But enough of my half-baked philosophy. Yesterday I was a wreck for the first half of the day. Cranky, depressed, miserable, in tears. No good reason, we all have our down days. M.s. was patient with me, as always. By the late afternoon I'd snapped out of it, and I'm actually in a very good mood today after my little attitude adjustment and release of bad feelings through tears and whining.

I'm looking forward to the next handful of days, another reason to be on the up-and-up (in addition to the other hundreds of reasons). Tomorrow I'm getting my hair done. That's right! COLOR! Bright and vibrant color, who knows how many of them. Friday night is M.s.'s show, which is turning into quite the event, with hundreds of people and a volunteer caterer. Saturday night, a quiet, intimate dinner with a few friends at a nice restaurant.

So now, while my love is driving up to L.A. and back to collect some newly framed prints for his show on Friday, I'm going to get some work done so that when he returns home, we can... uh, relax.

-Barbarella

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