Random Thoughts

*The mass of men not only lead lives of quiet desperation, they also become very frumpy around middle age. Men and women. I walk through the loop in Chicago on my way to work and see everywhere overweight bodies, ill-fitting khakis, unhappy faces and the kind of anonymously cut suits favored by rotarians everywhere. Style is missing. And I truly believe a sense of style is more important for capturing the attention of the opposite sex than are "conventional" good lucks. Study Jackie Onassis' face if you don't believe me.

*I just read about a Nigerian convert to Islam living in Saudi Arabia. He was checking up on his elderly upstairs neighbor, a woman, and seeing that she was ill he drove her to the hospital. His reward was to be arrested by the mutaween for being alone with a woman to whom he was not related. He remains in a Saudi prison. I'm sorry, this is where I get off the "relativity" bandwagon. Any society that gives so much power to the kind of sexually repressed, sub-intelligent freaks who make up the ranks of the mutaween, or that forces women to cover their bodies and forbids them free and unfettered travel and employment opportunities, or that executes homosexuals, is the last dying remnant of a barbaric civilization.

*It's good for a man to have some interests besides sports. Sports fills an important role in male discourse: it may be the one topic of conversation which cuts across lines of race, class and age. However, when the dust settles, it's really a bunch of adults playing a game designed for children. Bill Walsh, former coach of the San Francisco 49ers, and Ingrid Bergman died within a day of each other. Someone in my office said something along the lines of, "who cares about Bergman." I told him that 100 years from now, nobody will know who Bill Walsh is but people will still watch the films of Ingmar Bergman.

*I really need to watch more television. I just finished a fascinating article in The Atlantic Monthly on the aesthetics of quirk. It was filled with references to TV shows I've never seen. Except for a few shows here and there, MST3K and The Simpsons, for instance, I really tuned out in college. However, being well-rounded and maintaining a familiarity with American culture means having a knowledge of certain TV shows. Otherwise, you can turn into a disconnected weirdo like Senator Robert Byrd. Look up one of his speeches sometime---the bombast and classical references serve to obscure a paucity of true intelligence. At least that's my read on the man.

*I'm agnostic, but the popularity of anti-religious books on the market today troubles me. I think Christopher Hitchens is an excellent writer, but he too glibly dismisses the importance of religion in holding communities and peoples together. I'm sorry to see religious discourse hijacked by the religious right and if the democrats are going to reclaim the white house, they'll have to reach out to religious voters in the manner that Barack Obama has been doing. In the final analysis, man makes a very poor god.

*In the word of Kurt Vonnegut, make love when you can. It's good for you.