If It Rains, The Street Is Wet ........Unequivocably.....I Think

Before I utter another word I must explain that my ruin and my salvation have always been inexorably tied up with Logic.  I worship logic with a fervor usually reserved for things like Beatlemania.  Bad and faulty logic drives me crazy and since faulty logic can never be conquered by logic you can see why there are so many holes in the plastered walls  of my house from my incessantly hitting of my head against same in total frustration.  All of these words are intended to help you discern my bent (*I love that expression....I hope it fits in here properly) and may help you to understand my recent rants during the political season.

Still shakily recovering from all the wildly illogical, overblown and often untrue rhetoric cast about, lathered all over us and which we had to try to digest during the recent campaign, I was spitting out the final inedible morsel with a resounding "Ptoooey" and it reminded me of one of the the funniest and yet most gruesome  mistakes I ever made. during my very young life.

In my last year of college I found that in order to graduate, I had a requirement to take one more 3 unit course in a subject outside of and not remotely conected to my majors of Art and   English.  I had already had to force down the indigestible so that I might become  somehow, a smidgeon  educated in History, Sociology, Languages and a number of other subjects too irrelevant to my interests to mention.  Therefore, I found myself forced to choose from a dreadful and loathesome series of yucky items such as Economica, Geography, Mathematics, (anything beyond Solid Geometry and the basic High School Algebra was out of the question) Chemistry (feh.....smelly and in high school I got the Award as Grand Destructor for blowing up more test tubes and flasks than anyone else in school history )  and Physics,  (aw..... c;mon,  man)  none of which would I think of touching with a 10 foot pole.  It was not that I felt too stupid to conquer any of these.......rather I felt I had already wasted enough time and energy learning useless things that would not enhance my life..........(this was arrogant of me at the time but has proven to be oh so true).   There was one possibility.........Botany.......but I feared it would require me to spend hours peering at cross sections of plants under a microscope (does anyone remember the hilarious James Thurber story about this experience?)  and hence I rejected that one too.  How fervently I wish I had chosen Botany with which I at least had a slight kinship (since I could indeed recognized plants as plants and I loved plants.)    Instead I delved deeper ito the catalog and came upon the category of Philosophy, and, scanning down the list of stuff that did not require any prerequisites, I came,, to my wild delight, upon a subject entitled Deductive Logic.  I had to look at the printed words 2  or 3 times to be sure I was not dreaming.  No, there it was big as life and under it was another subject of possible interest......Inductive Logic.  (I had never know there were two kinds, did you?)    That should have given me pause, but sadly it did not.


Now, it is important that you know that, next to food, drink  and boys, my greatest passion was thst form of somewhat trashy  literature known as the Detective Story and, to me, Deductive Logic meant unearthing and following a series of clues with a gimlet eye and a razor sharp intellect, and deducing the perpetrator of a crime.  

Sigh.  To quote a thousand detective stories......"Had I but known...."

And so it was that I signed up for a semester of the most unrelenting torture that a university ever inflicted  on a guileless student.  Mercifully, most of the details of those five months have been erased from my memory, but there is still an occasional night when I wake from a nightmare drenched in sweat  screaming, "Tautology" ***   and needing to rub my eyes hard to disperse the strange Greek-like characters from beneath my eyelids.........an endless progression of mathematical like formulae, encapsulated in parentheses. running off the bottom of a fantasy page without ever arriving at the final point of Proven or Disproved.  (or should that be disproven).........(you can see I am not quite myself even yet.)
                   
On the very first day of class (presided over by a stern and very frightening Germanic professor.......one of the foremost experts on the subject......Dr. Hans Reichenbach.........I was always sure he would, at any moment, whip out a steel ruler and beat me across the knuckles for making some trivial error).   I discovered, to my horror, that Deductive Logic had nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes or detective stories or even logic as I understood it..  Using a set of mathematical like symbols (I think it was actually  referred to as Provisional Calculus), it was a system of analyzing sentences, clauses and words to determine if they were, indeed True.  The first example we were given as illustrative material was the fascinating sentence:    (Get this)

                        "  If it rains, the street is wet. "

I also wake up screaming that line occasionally.  Do not ask me to diagram that sentence.  I am no longer able to do so.  (That seems strange since at once time the diagram  was burned into my brain with a white hot branding iron and endless mumbo jumbo of Provisional Calculus symbols.)  Mercifully, the scar tissue has obscured all but that very sentence which these days makes me break out into uncontrollable giggles and just the slightest tinge of perspiration on my upper lip.  It is amazing what 65 years of healing and purposeful forgetting can do.

Incidentally, as I recall, the opposite arrangement of the two clauses does NOT come out to be True when put through the meatgrindcer of the symbols.  i.e.  If the street is wet, it does not necessarily follow unconditionally that it has rained.

And also incidentally, I did not flunk the course but managed a very creditable "C".....not my favorite grade, but, under the circumstances an amazing achieverment since it seemed that at no time during those five months did I have the slightest idea what the hell I was doing.

And, fercrissakes, please do not ask me how Inductive Logic differs from the Deductive one.    For all I know, it may have to do with unearthing clues,  analyzing evidence and allowing it to lead you to the perpetrator of a crime.  I was always just too damned chicken to ever investigate.  And who, I would like to know, wouldn't be?


***As I remember a Tautology was a method of establishing the absolute truth of a statement,,,,or NOT........or some such thing.

A Post Script to My Blog on Secession

 This is a weird post.  

My post of yesterday elicited such passionate comments on all sides that I felt it necessary to comment on the comments.  In my usual loquacious fashion I blurted, blabbed and blubbered a  bit over the limit for a simple comment.  It came out more like a full rant.  And then I realized that the folks I was responding to probably would not see my comment anyway (having already read that blog and moved on)  so I decided to legitimize it and post it as a blog of its own.  It follows below.  Now I will definitely sit down and shut up......for a while anyway.

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Wow. What passions I have evoked. I guess if a blogger wants comments they need only write about politics. Tomorrow I will have to write about religion........(NOT).

I usually resist commenting on comments, but this time I feel I must. I hate to be misunderstood or misinterpreted and I dislike being the victim of what I call crooked thinking.

It is sheer foolishness to take my remarks as attacks on or support of either political party. (I am really an Independent anyway.)   I was talking about ideas which lead to progress. The Republican party of Lincoln obviously had the right idea and the Dems of that time the wrong one. I don't give a damn what name a party carries.....the name is meaningless. What matters is the ideas they support.

One very important point which I failed to make clear was that, as I understand it, the rotten losers who want to secede from the USA are scattered among both the red and the blue states. As I recall, I think even California was mentioned as one of the states with the Secessionist petitioners.

My position (a delicious fantasy) is clear. Anyone who wants to secede should be granted their wish. Of course, they would relinquish their citizenship and become illegal aliens. They do not have to pay higher taxes....probably no taxes at all. They will escape having the dastardly Universal Health Care forced upon them...they will be free to figure out a way to obtain health care on their own as non-citizens. I do not know how that would work out.

Of course, they will no longer be eligible for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps or any sort of government subsidies but that shouldn't bother them because they seem to despise anyone who happens to need such crutches.

The difference between them and the other illegal aliens in this country would be dramatic. The current illegal aliens who generate so much furor and hatred come here hoping for a better life. The new breed of illegal aliens already enjoy that better life but apparently are quite willing to give it all up because I guess they want an even better one. I am not at all sure that seceding is the right way to get that, but I would wish them good luck and godspeed. And maybe good riddance. I am too old and tired for this crap.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Women's Suffrage Revoked; Slavery Reinstated....

You who follow me know that I have often mumbled, confessed and ranted about the fact that I was sure I was losing my mind, but,hell,   you all know I was mostly kidding.   Today I am not at all sure about that, or about anything.  I may very well have gone mad, but apparently this country, the good old U.S,. of A  has beaten me to it.

In my last blog I remember saying something flippant about the election like...."We don't need another Civil War".  Then today I bleariily logged onto my email and saw the headline of a news story....."31 States File Petitions for Secession".   WHAT THE FUCK?  Talk about infantile behavior and poor losers.  I am speechless.

Well, of course, not quite.  That is an obvious lie.

Why oh why is it that for every inch of progress we manage to eke out as partially civilized beings there are those who fight like demons (0r the demented )  determined to drag us backward into the slime?

I have read that once upon a time some people arrived at the idea that owning and exploiting Slaves was not a very fair or nice thing to do.  Naturally, the people whose comfortable way of life depended on Slavery did not see that to be true.......hell, they had bought and paid for them there Slaves fair and square and damned if they were going to be deprived of their lifestyle and slave property by a bunch of heads- in- the- clouds Socialists out to ruin the Country.  This meant WAR!.  And war it was.

After much bloodshed and devastating destruction,  Slavery was finally legally abolished, but, I suspect, the idea was never really accepted in certain parts of the country as the right and proper thing for civilized people to do.  Not to mention the fact that the ex-Slaves found that the Freedom they had been granted had a number of huge drawbacks and impediments .......their treatment might even  be considered less than humane..but that is another story.  We will get to that later.

Moving onward there came a time that women (and perhaps one or even two enlightened men)  had the notion that,  since women were doing at least half of the work at maintaining a civilized society and could not be treated as or considered slaves since that had sort of been declared illegal, that perhaps they should be given the opportunity to vote since what the government did affected them too.  An outrageous premise, but since an awful lot of women seemed to like the idea and made a helluva lot of noise in favor of it, somehow the crazy notion became law and,. voila, women were allowed to cast ballots and have some say in the government.  Since I am not quite old enough to remember those heady days, I cannot be sure whether efforts to repeal that law were attempted.  I am pretty damned sure efforts were definitely considered.  And, for that matter, to this very day I see horrific attempts to get women back into their proper place, in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant........

Oh, yes, and then there was the time when some crazy ladies (who may have been sick of their husbands coming home drunk and beating up on them and the kids) decided that Liquor was an evil of the Devil and should be outlawed and I'll be damned if I know how they managed it (I am almost positive that most men were not too hot about the idea) but they actually achieved the passage of a law that prohibited Booze....none, nada, zilch. And, of course,  a bunch of guys who saw a fortune being offered to them via providing that illegal substance that everyone really wanted, formed an organized group or several of them and so was born Prohibition, the Speakeasy, contraband hooch, bathtub Gin and The Mob.  Of course, this No Booze thing  was such a ditzy idea that it had no staying power and was soon repealed, all of which shows that prohibiting liquor had nothing at all to do with progress.......just goes to show how dangerous bible-thumping Church Ladies can be if they get together.   However, the era did give birth to bobbed hair, short skirts, the greatest Jazz ever and the Charleston...... all of which I consider hugely progressive.

As I muse further on what I consider progress I come next to that period in the  mid-20th Century when someone admitted to themselves that simply freeing the Slaves had really not accomplished everything that it should have in regard to respecting human dignity regardless of skin color. Marches were organized, speeches were made, and in spite of meddling wretches like Governor Wallace, schools were integrated.  A process of Desegregation was actually begun.  I am sad to say I do not expect to see that struggle completely won in my lifetime, but I feel that some progress has been made and I pray it will continue.

And that  brings us to today when people around the world are cheering our wisdom, courage and good intentions for the world by reelecting President Barack Obama, the first elected leader of a predominately white country who is not 100% white, and I am forced, before breakfast even, to read that poor sports and misguided fools in 31 states have filed petitions for Secession. from the United States of America. 

Sigh.  You know what I think?   Dammit.....let them do it!

No Gloating - Just Relief

To my beloved followers, especially those who are Republicans:

I want to apologize for bad-mouthing Mitt Romney as I did in my moments of fear and loathing last night........I was too overcome with fear to be rational or objective.  My terror and harsh words should not have been directed at Romney but at the extremists in the party who have taken charge of what used to be a conservative but respectable political position. 

I believe that The Romney who was Governor of Massachusetts was a decent man and would have made a plausible and even a productive Presidential candidate.  It is sad that he let the fanatics turn him into their robot in a desperate and ill-conceived effort to win at all costs.


I am happy about the Obama victory but mostly hugely relieved that we did not validate and empower the fanatics who have vandalized the Republican party.

I do not foolishly anticipate an easy nor totally successful term for Obama or his supporters.  If the same fanatics who designed the misguided Republican election campaign continue to obstruct any positive action in Congress, we will have a frustrating and disappointing 4 years, but I can only hope that the more rational members of the party will somehow prevail and enable some progress to be made.  

I love this Country...........have done so for more years than most of you.  We are facing so may daunting problems that I feel we may need some kind of miracle to enable us to cure them.  What we don't need is another  Civil War.  

I send hugs to all of you..........especially to anyone I may have offended.  I consistently go out of my way to prove that Nobody's Perfect. 

Too Terrified To Blog 11/6/12 10 AM

I have been existing in a state of fear for months.....or is it an eternity?  No matter how much I tried to convinced myself that I could be resigned to a Romney win, I obviously was fooling myself.  I arose this morning quaking in my boots at the thought of those insane Republican wretches triumphing and putting that evil,rotten egg into the Oval Office and knowing that, having mailed my ballot  for Obama weeks ago, I had done all I could do, but I am still in an agony of apprehension.  

I am going back to bed, pulling the covers up over my head and curling up in a fetal position uttering my mantra/prayer, "Obama, Obama, Obama" until late tonight or tomorrow.  Sorry to reveal myself as such a coward, folks but I am more than passionately against hate, bigotry, ignorance and stupidity. 

I will say "more later" hoping that I do not either drown in my own tears or end up with concussion from hitting my head on the ceiling repeatedly via my ecstatic leaps.   

I sincerely hope you are all doing better today than I am.

Aaaarrrrrrggggghhh! 

My First Date ? -Ugh, Yes, I Remember It Well......

The wonderful, brilliant guy named  Joe at "Cranky Old Man"  has posted a lovely blog describing his first date and it conjured up memories of my own first date .....to call them bittersweet  would be a lie....there was nothing sweet about them and unfortunately I recall it all too vividly.  On the other hand, it wasn't really horrible....it was just not what you would call a success.  You will see why below as I expound on the subject.   By the way, I offer up my sincere thanks to Joe for inspiring me to emerge from my fetal position under the blankets and take to blogging again.

Well, first, I think I must have been about 10 or 11 years old which is pretty young to begin dating I admit.  And it is not that I was some hot to trot 11 year old who had boys lining up at the door. Quite the opposite, in fact.  I was fat, unlovely, shy to a ridiculous degree.  Not date material at all.  When confronted, one on one, with a boy, my mind would go blank, my tongue would freeze to the roof of my mouth and my muscles, too, would cease to function.  You could not differentiate me from a statue or a department store dummy except that my expression would not be as lively as either of those objects......think wide staring panic stricken eyes punctuating a complete expressionless face sort of like a snowman with coal eyes and no mouth or nose applied yet.  The only time this condition did not apply would be when I was engaging in some kind of sports activity and then I would perform like a nearly normal person.  Consequently, it came to pass that one day while roller skating with Arthur Silver, a boy who lived around the corner on Carpenter Street, I happened to mention that on Saturdays I generally went to a Roller Rink in Upper Darby, whereupon he suggested that he might like to join me at this activity on the next Saturday.....would that be OK.  (uttered very offhand and casual like because none of us had acquired any social skills as yet.)  I agreed, equally casually, and we made a pact to carry out this racy plan ......well I like to think of it as a date.  Wow!  The week passed in a blur and I alternated between exhilaration and terror, both states causing me to wet my bloomers frequently and then, before I was quite ready, it was Saturday.

Since discussing the details had been beyond either of our abilities, I assumed that Arthur would show up at my door around noon and we would then take the street car and the subway and arrive at the rink at about 12:30 or 1.  Hours were from noon to 4 or 5 as I recall.  Noon came and went.  So did 1 o'clock.  Oy!  I was being stood up.  Overwhelming waves of both indignation and relief swept over me.  I stopped wetting my bloomers. I was pondering whether to go off on my own when suddenly, from around the corner a red-faced, perspiring Arthur came trotting and arrived, gaspingon my doorstep.  It seems he had failed to tell me that he had a violin lesson every Saturday and could not be available before 2 at the earliest.  By this time it was after 2 but there were still a few hours left and I decided I would forgive him and we would make the trip.  Not very much meaningful conversation ensued because He was ashamed and too shy to talk much and I was both indignant and terrified and too shy to talk much, but I figured that when we got to the rink and started skating, what with the blaring organ music and the whirring of wheels on the beautiful hardwood floor not much conversation would be required.

Finally, we arrived, gasping and perspiring, and were greeted by the keeper of the door with a horrible pronouncement.  Admission denied!  Dress code was skirts for females (that was OK......slacks had not yet been invented) and jackets and ties for males.  Jackets?  Ties??  What was this, a Prom?  I doubt if Arthur owned either because he hadn't even had his Bar Mitzvah yet.  The rules were sure different back then, weren't they?  To say we were devastated would be the understatement of the year.  We slunk away like two petty criminals and rode home in silence......parted with nothing more than a feeble wave of the hand and, sadly,  never tried that again. 

I wish I could say that my next real date came out better, but if anything, it was worse.  The guy I used to beat regularly at Ping Pong asked me to a party  later the same year, and in a moment of madness I accepted.  If there were anyone in West Philadelphia who was more tongue-tied, insecure and awkward around the opposite sex than me, it was Nicky.  What could either of us have been thinking?  Obviously NOT thinking.  Anyway, I can barely stand to recall THAT wretched occasion, but I do remember that neither of us were able to utter more than 4 or 5 words the entire evening, except for the worst moment of the night when Nick managed to stutter, "Would you like to dance?"  and I groaningly replied, "I'm sorry I don't know how."  Thunk!

Sob.

Is there anyone out there brave or foolish enough to ask me out?  Please think very carefully before replying.

Score = Blogger 235,975 - Lo 0 (that's Zero)

I have just located a stash of my photos in Windows Photo Gallery, a place I did not know to look for them.  I am hoping that I can convince Blogger to download them onto the page.  Here I go.....wish me luck.

Ho boy!  Well,  I did not exactly find the file, but I did find the photo I just added to it today so I am somewhat encouraged.  I will never understand why one program can find a certain file and another program cannot.  This computer must file things away as badly as I do.....sigh.

This pic is of a kitten named Leo Lynxie #2517, a precious critter rescued  by the wonderful rescue place called The Cat House On the Kings......that is on Kings Highway in Parlieu CA near Fresno.  I was recently perusing their newsletter and saw a column of orphans they were hoping to find sponsors for and when I saw this photo I melted and totally self-destructed.  I am now the proud long distance foster mom of Leo.......he taps my bank account quarterly for his upkeep.  I begged this photo today and am weakening rapidly.   I am dying to get my hands on him and cuddle him.   I am wondering if perhaps I could borrow him for a while if Gussie would permit.  (I somehow doubt that last part).  But oh, how tempting.  Maybe I could appeal to her more generous nature, wherever that might be located in that furry, selfish, demanding, beloved beast......

Perhaps I will simply have to go up there and visit him.  They say they have an accommodation they can rent me if I want to drown myself in cats (about 700 I think) for a day and nite.  Ah, heaven.  I have said I cannot travel anymore, but I may make an exception in this case.  I have been wanting to check the place out anyway because I am planning to include them in my bequests list as well as subsidize them to adopt my crazy feral kitty, Baskin, when I am gone.

Hmmmm.....as usual I seem to have been carried away by trivia.......though in all honesty, I can never call Leo Lynxie 2517 trivia.

Actually, I had not planned to blog tonite....I was simply conducting an experiment to see if I could access those photos, and as of now, the jury is still out on that.  More tests and scrabbling at the edges of things to try to pry open that which remains sealed against me are in order, but I don't feel like scrabbling right now so I will just meander around in the corners of my brain a bit.

And now for something completely different,  (Oh, how I miss Monty Python ....and for that matter, Benny Hill).  (Did I ever reveal that I am an Anglophile?.....well, now you know.  But nevermind that now)

I have steadfastly refused to sully my robes by being dragged into the nasty mess that are all things political.  However, I just stumbled upon the MOST fascinating article and feel strangely impelled to pass it on, since it appears to me to have a total ring of truth about it......not that truth, forgodssake,  has any place in politics, of course.  Anyway, as I was saying, apparently there have  been dozens of studies done trying to figure out the differences between Democrats and Republicans aside from so called ideologies..  Recently a number of studies have tried to analyze the differences in the brains of members of both parties and I am going to fling some excerpts at you.t

Horrors.....no I am not......I can't.  I was just trying to transfer some notes I made in a draft to this page via the highlight and copy method and find that I sure as hell can highlight, but damned if I can  copy.  I am now faced with two dreadful choices, both unacceptable.  I can delete the above 2 paragraphs and lose them because I do not know how to copy them, or I can leave you poor souls hanging till I  get help in correcting my ignorance and ineptness.  Eeeny meeny I don't know.  I guess I am just going to have to sacrifice you guys........probably one or more of you can instruct me as to how to solve my problem.  I think Florence, my caregiver, knows, but she is off til Monday.  Sob.

I do promise to dish up the rest it as soon as I can so please do not hate me too much.
Gawd, I feel stupid!