Safe

Feels like a rotator cuff injury. Actually painful. Like just after you've been punched. Can't think why. Associated with the triceps and deltoid atrophy. Tingling is more pronounced. Since Friday. Comes and goes. I suppose I'm going to have to go to the doctor. I haven't been to a doctor since 1997. How odd -- before then it was '87.

Sort of depressing. Maybe I'll take a few days off. Low energy right now.

You may have noticed that I've been bumping up various pieces on islamism. Celebrating Islamic Terrorist Month. It coincides with Ramadan. (Merry Ramadan, everyone.) Gets pretty intense, these essays, gathered all together like that. Not at all balanced. Anyone unfamiliar with these pages might think I'm obsessed. I am, of course, but not with islamism.

Tonight a fella got promoted to blue belt. Sweet guy. He got quite an ovation. He'd been a white belt for four or five years, and he did get a bit misty about it. You know the guy hug that guys do? -- one armed with a handshake? Well I can fake that, sort of. But being the fool that I am, I felt a great tenderness for him when I saw that he was moved, and my heart opened up, and the guy hug was real. No one knows that, of course. So I'm safe. Later someone said that when he noticed the emotion, it put him off. You see? He's much more normal than I am.

I have one more thing to say. Then I'll shut the hell up. I was thinking that people can believe anything they want. Doesn't matter to me in the slightest. The things that I hold dear can be reviled, in someone's heart or mind, and I just don't care. But they are accountable for their actions. I take an hour or so every day and churn out these posts -- first drafts mostly, spontaneous, not highly organized as real writing requires, but that's not what this is about -- and I look for themes that can sustain some emotion. Well, islamism certainly does that. And injustice. And my unhappy life experiences. You know -- my themes. But the only real emotion here is about actions, and never about what somebody thinks. America is bad? Mohammad is the bomb? Babies should be killed? Laws should be broken? No worries, mate. Just act civilized.

That's all. Just be civilized. We'll be dead soon enough. Then, if you still exist, you can look back on your life and review your regrets. You won't ever regret your feelings of tenderness. You'll wish you'd done less harm.


J