Normal Service Resumes

"When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" 

"O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.'' 

I’m not unhappy anymore.  I had another one of those epiphathingummys. 

The generation growing up today is smarter than any that has gone before. They know more stuff. They have more stuff to know. They will have more power to remake the world and themselves than any previous generation. And they will have to – remake the world, that is – since they will have lived through the collapse of the stupid unsustainable system we have cobbled together.  So they will have to work for a living. And I am confident that they will do a good job of it.

I am proud and happy to be part of the creation of this new world at one remove: to spend my working life pointing people at shiny amazing stuff to know about and enthusing about how shiny and amazing it is, and trying to figure out new stuff for people to know. This seems to me to be the best possible way to spend my time.

I believe that what I believe is true: and I believe that the truth will out. So even if we go down a wrong turning and become more stupid and evil in a thousand ways, eventually we will be replaced by people who are not stupid and evil, because stupid and evil are not survival traits for civilisations. 

My New Plan

Alice laughed. "There's not use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."


Well, mentally renouncing all ties did not work. Being sure to refer always to the 'rebel colonies', wishing I had a spare $450 and the time for two trips to Sydney, trolling the internet rejecting the legitimacy of the American Revolutions and/or Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, telling people who asked where I was born 'Occupied Spanish North America' and going around crying 'Viva El Rey Juan Carlos!' did not sufficiently reduce my emotional involvement with events in that shitty little country.

So I have decided on a new strategy.

I have observed, in my life thus far, that most people are really good at believing mind-bogglingly stupid things contradicted by vast amounts of evidence. So I thought, why shouldn't I try it, too?

This is my new belief, which I have spent most of my free time in the last twenty-four hours developing elaborate arguments for:

The United States of America is a fictional country invented by Nabokov as a setting for his novel 'Lolita'.


Hier steh ich.