Modern

When I open my electronic mailbox I am usually greeted with the usual signs of the pointlessness and emptiness of typical modern existence: offers, in poor English, of cheaper drugs that might help me to remain aroused when I am otherwise lacking arousal or too unfit to get it up; shares in some far eastern business that are about to go "big"; quality fake watches at a good price. It's very underwhelming.

You know my take on virtual things (making a clear distinction between flights of the imagination and sheer pay-as-you-go preconceived-by-someone-else virtual reality).

This morning I've started to read a new book. It's philosophy from the thirteenth century. The prefatory note comes by way of an apology by the editor in which he attempts to say that there is something worthwhile in investigating a set of works that are based upon thought that is acknowledged by everyone who does not wonder at the shape of the clouds (my italics and quote) as being substantially wrong.

I speak of the dichotomy between metaphysics and empiricism; religion and science; feelings and facts; emotion and reason; care and competition. You dig my drift, I hope.

I have never had a problem squaring the circle and accommodating both belief sets into my world picture. I like to think that perhaps I am a bit of a freak in that way, but probably it is just vanity on my part.

But the thought is that perhaps I am going to find something rather lovely in the cobwebby outmoded thoughts of this man who lived in the middle-ages.

In the meantime, on my way to work, I derived great pleasure from imagining my hands around the neck of the driver who behaved so aggressively and unreasonably in trying to get one car space in front of me. Hands around neck, until their face turns blue, and all the naughtiness pops out of their skull along with their phallus-pumped popping eye-balls.