Hic et hoc

Johan Huizinga's 1938 classic, Homo ludens, Man Playing, investigates the element of play in culture. His five characteristics of play:

1. Play is free, is in fact freedom.
2. Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life.
3. Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration.
4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.

B has been the best of playmates. Explains a lot.


I have put off reading the news on the net first thing in the morning. It was making me crazy even before I finished my coffee. Cordoba House, reaction to the Arizona law, and every word that cometh forth from the mouth of Obama.

Wish I had an iPad so I could download books.

What makes me happiest and makes me saddest is the same...

One benefit of being alive as long as I have is that I remember past experiences as a way of helping me deal with current challenges. One thing I've learned is that seasons of happiness and of sadness are just that, seasons. Neither one lasts forever.

It's a great pleasure to me that my metabolism has apparently adapted to my years of regular exercise, so that I can eat pretty well what I want and have little change in my weight. One of the changes in my eating, though, is that I eat less, even if enjoyably. I'm just not as hungry. Nice.

Not everybody can win. Can't be done. Wrong planet for that.

Now that we have to include everybody, a three member group on a TV show, for example, would have a white man, a white woman and a black man. If you look at shows and ads, this is the trend. What this turns out to mean is that the white male becomes a minority in representation. Accustoming him to his demise. And usually at his own hands. Liberalism, the ideology of Western suicide.

Does anyone complain that blacks are overrepresented in basketball, far out of proportion to their percent of the population? Isn't that a disparate impact? So racist.

Prometheus had it easy; Tantalus was the real sufferer.

As long as women are assumed to be victims, feminism will remain a lie.

Hospitality is a great virtue. My brother and sister-in-law have it in abundance.

If parents are not the alphas, the kids will be, and no one will benefit. It amazes me what some parents put up with from their kids. If I talked to my father the way they do, I'd have been in the hospital. And rightly so.

I really love being out in the woods, the wilderness. A late life pleasure. Looking forward to my next hike.

Funny convo with an old friend of mine who's celebrating twenty years of marriage this year. I remember telling her before her wedding that she was making a mistake. Her husband, whom I knew out of his element, was a real jerk out of his element. Once he got back home, he became a decent guy. Ex Cathedra is not infallible always, I guess. Her quote, "Have I thought of divorce? No. Murder, yes, and often, but not divorce." That's love.

Why do people so often become focussed on wanting from people they love the one thing that those folks are untalented at giving?

I hate leather queens. One goes to my gym. Leather and denim, boots, chains, shaved head, the whole deal...but he opens his mouth and out comes Oprah's costume designer. Why the fuck go to all the trouble of putting on the trappings of masculinity and then act like a queen? Does anyone find this attractive?

If Islam were not a 1400 year old nonwhite religion, but a recent white-based political movement, who would put up with it for five minutes?


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