I figure it's because June has 30 days, which in turn is because of that rhyme, you know the one, April showers bring May flowers, but what do May flowers bring? No, that's not the one. It's the one that goes "A, B, C, D, E,..." No, it's not that one, either.
I think it's the end of June already because I've spent the last three weeks with a hematoma, and haven't done as much hiking or otherwise moving about as I'd intended. Nor have I done as much reading and philosophizing. We've been reading together, just nothing in the philosophy genre.
I've been playing Maggie, my Seagull 12-string guitar, a great deal. Lauren continues on her home beautification quest, and is, as of present writing, organizing a closet. She has already hung a wall with drapes, and we've put up a couple shelves, one of which I regard as precariously lashed to the living room wall with anchor bolts. I don't trust those things.
In all, then, I'd characterize my state of being as in a holding pattern. This must be incredibly thrilling and insightful for the throngs who have begun now to - well, to throng, I suppose - to my blog from the Modesto Bee web site.
I don't subscribe to the Bee. I used to. I started every morning with the miserable habit of drinking my first cup of ridiculously strong coffee while reading the Bee and listening to music. The reason this was a miserable habit had a lot to do with my life in general at the time, but also had something to do with the Bee. Like many newspapers of the day, the Bee is a cut-and-paste job composed of wire service reports and press releases from various official sources. There is scarce little actual journalism going on in the US any more. Very few papers maintain a staff of reporters who go out and track down stories, content instead to let the news come to them, in the form of whatever official line someone wants the public to swallow. (By "line" here I mean, mainly, lies.)
On the few occasions something has actually happened on Stan State's campus, for instance, I've found the Bee's coverage profoundly lacking, often in facts, but always in substance. I don't blame the reporters covering the university specifically, because they've always simply done their jobs - and their jobs, like most in the newz industry, are not to investigate and report what's going on.
But the predominant reason I came to loathe the Bee so much is the editorial page, especially the letters to the editor. It's been a while, and I'm out of the habit, so I might as well tell this story, which some people have found amusing. I got so fed up with the Bee's habit of printing the worst-argued letters that I decided to send them a few gag letters. The first one I wrote under the name "Donald Anatidae." I forget what Donald was upset about - I think it was the right-wing slant of most of what gets printed in the editorial page (and that's true, by the way - the whole "liberal media bias" charge is in fact nonsense, carefully crafted and effective nonsense). They printed the letter despite the fact - or perhaps because of the fact - that it was poorly written, just one step above gibberish. Plus, anatidae is the scientific name for ducks.
So after they printed Donald Duck raving incoherently about right-wing media bias, I decided to get bolder. I wrote a letter complaining about the damage done throughout history, and in the present day, by Christians and Christianity. I signed the letter "Fred Nietzsche." This should probably have been a give-away: someone somewhere at the Bee should have noticed the name, connected the dots, and realized I was using the name of the notable anti-Christian German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
After that, I became more emboldened, but they never printed another letter from me, whether I was writing sensibly or not, under any name, even my own. And now, I'm on their list of bloggers in the area. I get the sneaking feeling they identified me without checking out what was in my blog, and now the first stuff anybody could read is all about my vasectomy, my hematoma, my guitar, my apartment, and my brief stint spoofing the Bee.
I think it's the end of June already because I've spent the last three weeks with a hematoma, and haven't done as much hiking or otherwise moving about as I'd intended. Nor have I done as much reading and philosophizing. We've been reading together, just nothing in the philosophy genre.
I've been playing Maggie, my Seagull 12-string guitar, a great deal. Lauren continues on her home beautification quest, and is, as of present writing, organizing a closet. She has already hung a wall with drapes, and we've put up a couple shelves, one of which I regard as precariously lashed to the living room wall with anchor bolts. I don't trust those things.
In all, then, I'd characterize my state of being as in a holding pattern. This must be incredibly thrilling and insightful for the throngs who have begun now to - well, to throng, I suppose - to my blog from the Modesto Bee web site.
I don't subscribe to the Bee. I used to. I started every morning with the miserable habit of drinking my first cup of ridiculously strong coffee while reading the Bee and listening to music. The reason this was a miserable habit had a lot to do with my life in general at the time, but also had something to do with the Bee. Like many newspapers of the day, the Bee is a cut-and-paste job composed of wire service reports and press releases from various official sources. There is scarce little actual journalism going on in the US any more. Very few papers maintain a staff of reporters who go out and track down stories, content instead to let the news come to them, in the form of whatever official line someone wants the public to swallow. (By "line" here I mean, mainly, lies.)
On the few occasions something has actually happened on Stan State's campus, for instance, I've found the Bee's coverage profoundly lacking, often in facts, but always in substance. I don't blame the reporters covering the university specifically, because they've always simply done their jobs - and their jobs, like most in the newz industry, are not to investigate and report what's going on.
But the predominant reason I came to loathe the Bee so much is the editorial page, especially the letters to the editor. It's been a while, and I'm out of the habit, so I might as well tell this story, which some people have found amusing. I got so fed up with the Bee's habit of printing the worst-argued letters that I decided to send them a few gag letters. The first one I wrote under the name "Donald Anatidae." I forget what Donald was upset about - I think it was the right-wing slant of most of what gets printed in the editorial page (and that's true, by the way - the whole "liberal media bias" charge is in fact nonsense, carefully crafted and effective nonsense). They printed the letter despite the fact - or perhaps because of the fact - that it was poorly written, just one step above gibberish. Plus, anatidae is the scientific name for ducks.
So after they printed Donald Duck raving incoherently about right-wing media bias, I decided to get bolder. I wrote a letter complaining about the damage done throughout history, and in the present day, by Christians and Christianity. I signed the letter "Fred Nietzsche." This should probably have been a give-away: someone somewhere at the Bee should have noticed the name, connected the dots, and realized I was using the name of the notable anti-Christian German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
After that, I became more emboldened, but they never printed another letter from me, whether I was writing sensibly or not, under any name, even my own. And now, I'm on their list of bloggers in the area. I get the sneaking feeling they identified me without checking out what was in my blog, and now the first stuff anybody could read is all about my vasectomy, my hematoma, my guitar, my apartment, and my brief stint spoofing the Bee.
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