A Straight Shot of Politics

A blog from a gentleman of the Liberal political persuasion dedicated to right reason, clear thinking, cogent argument, and the public good.

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Location: Columbus, Ohio, United States

I have returned from darkness and quiet. I used to style myself as "Joe Claus", Santa Claus’ younger brother because that is what I still look like. I wrote my heart out about liberal politics until June of 2006, when all that could be said had been said. I wrote until I could write no more and I wrote what I best liked to read when I was young and hopeful: the short familiar essays in Engish and American periodicals of 50 to 100 years ago. The archetype of them were those of G.K. Chesterton, written in newspapers and gathered into numerous small books. I am ready to write them again. I am ready to write about life as seen by the impoverished, by the mentally ill, by the thirty years and more of American Buddhist converts, and by the sharp eyed people [so few now in number] with the watcher's disease, the people who watch and watch and watch. I am all of these.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

The Big Questions of Life

1. What is your favorite word?

Zopa, my Buddhist name, it means "patience". The full name is Karma Zopa Khunkyab, and it means "pervasive patient activity".

2. What is your least favorite word?

I'm not sure I have a least favorite word, though I like some less than others, mostly when they seem to violate the beauties of language or substitute an empty label for a complete thought. Blog and meme are two that currently trouble me in that regard.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Practicing the Dharma. All other things, reading, music, gardening, and so on, have lost their savor as the years have passed.

4. What turns you off?

Folly and nonsense among people who could avoid it if they consulted their head more closely or their heart more frequently.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

Gunsel, because Dashiell Hammett dragged it singlehandely into printable discouse when his editor was ignorant of what it really meant, and didn't censor it. I'll let you find out what it meant on your own.

That same editor, by the way, blue-penciled "the gooseberry lay" in the same copy, because he didn't know that it meant "stealing washing off the line" in genuine thieves' slang. Hammett was an ex-Pinkerton man and knew real thieves' cant quite well. Results of censorship are, always and everywhere, more ignorance.

6. What sound or noise do you love?

Many which are musical. My favorite flavors among them are the slow trumpet of Miles Davis and the Sakuachi, or Japanese long flute.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Any sound, when my brain chemistry is out of whack. None when it isn't. That's why I take the medications I do.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I've had a great many trades, most of which I've wanted and enjoyed. I still would like to make jewelery and carve wood sculpture. I've been thinking lately of getting serious about the last.

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Public executioner.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Welcome aboard.

From Michele Catlano, via Methuselah's Daughter, and the Anchoress.

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