popper wrote:I forget who said it but one of my favorites quotes is "life is comedy to those who think and tragedy to those who feel".
I can't help but laugh at the comedy which is the human condition. Ignorance, stupidity, greed and cruelty rule the day and the millennium. The U.S. will end up just like every other failed civilization throughout history. Broke and devoid of any commitment to objective truth. At least the Spartans went down with a fight.
Popper, it's best for your equilibrium to both think and feel.
I'm somewhat lucky in that my mother's second marriage gave me a stepfather that taught me to use tools, fix things (cars and such), and understand physical and mechanical principles (he was an engineer and also taught math and science). He even taught me about guns and taught me to drive when I was twelve. I'm further lucky to have a wife that, growing up in a sexist world, was basically forced to teach herself all those things, because what man would teach her. She owned an auto repair shop for years, does plumbing, electrical, can pour concrete, work wood, and pretty much figure out how to make, repair, refinish, or destroy anything, as the case calls for. I worked with an organic farming collective for many years, and we had our own urban garden for many years as well, so maybe between us we have more skills and experience to enable us to adjust to drastic changes. And we have a lot of plastic and duct tape. Lots of duct tape. We even have a little gold.
I really don't want to have to rely on any of that stuff. I don't want to be standing in the forest as the sun goes down, reading a worn copy of Stalking the Wild Asparagus to see if those berries are OK to eat.
PS: My wife made a coffin for a friend of ours. He died on Monday night and we delivered a coffin to the funeral home Friday morning. We had no need to economize on his funeral, but it was my impression that we could have gotten it for much cheaper. Here's a start:
http://www.dfsmemorials.com Our ethos is to de-mystify the costs and services surrounding funeral services. Our network consists of local independent family-owned funeral providers throughout the US and Canada. We aim to offer complete visibility in the service's offered and in the price. A Simple Cremation is just that – the price quoted by each funeral provider in each area is exactly what you can expect to pay. Our providers have been carefully selected for the DFS network because they can fulfill our service promise.
At least on its face, this network seems to be calling out the funeral industry and trying to capture the business of people that truly want a simple, inexpensive funeral. There must be others out there. A prudent consumer and an honest merchant are a perfect match.
I'd have given his family some of the produce, but they don't eat many veggies over there. Not unless you count cheese.
