“Religious Tentacle”

Muslims in our state are being harassed by a guy who is fine with them practicing a “religious tentacle.”

It’s beyond parody, really.

Three Political Thoughts

1. I think the death penalty is wrong and immoral, but I have no qualms, none at all, about Shawna Forde’s death by state. She’s my exception.

2. The fact that there’s even a “I read some conspiracy-theory stuff about your religion and then made up my own stuff about your religion and am now going to outlaw the stuff I and the other conspiracy theorists made up” law being proposed is so embarrassing.

3. Until today, I didn’t really have an opinion of Karl Dean. He seems like a fine mayor with a couple of notable exceptions. But this? “‘Maybe the crit­ics don’t share my pas­sion about the poverty pro­gram,’ he said.” Really? Is our mayor in junior high? So, people who have questions about how it is he’s deciding to hire people without opening up the positions to see if there are other qualified candidates or who have questions about how putting a person in a part time job knowing full well they’ll work full time so that they can collect benefits just don’t share his passion about poverty?

Nice. Real nice.

My new opinion of the mayor is that he’s smarmy.

Reading and Rereading

I think I told y’all that my brothers aren’t big readers. In fact, I don’t think the Butcher had ever read a book before he moved in with me. But then he got a copy of The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test and he started into it. And one day, after a month or two, I noticed that his bookmark was earlier in the book than it had been. And then, one day, I caught him as he was coming to the end of the book. He got to the last page, finished, and then–and I am not even exaggerating–turned right to the first page and began reading again.

“What are you doing?!”

“Reading my book.”

“Yeah, but you finished it.”

“For like the fourth time.”

“You’ve read it four times in a loop?!”

“I’m still enjoying it.”

I have loved some books in my day, and I have known a lot of people who love books, but I have never ever other than my brother, met anyone who just kept reading and reading the same book as long as it remained pleasurable to him.

For years, I thought it was weird.

But what a crucial skill this is for writing a book! To be able to go over and over and over the same material and tease out all pleasure from it.

I don’t know. Lately it strikes me that I’m having to learn what was intuitive to him.