He was a Lover of Books and Women, and in the shrine on South Calhoun, later forced out of business by religious prigs, he found a juxtaposition that was divine and inspired. He never told anyone else he was a lover of books and women, because it sounded dorky, and he knew of nobody else who qualified as both, so he kept his mouth shut in order to avoid being made jest of. At the same time, he told himself that all the more often to make up for the deficiency, as if repeating the definition would make it all the more true.

He knew, for instance, that James Bond, agent 007, was not "licensed to kill". Instead, Her Majesty's Secret Service assigned him to the double-ought section because on one occasion, he had found it necessary to kill on behalf of his queen. There weren't too many others. There were currently three of them, the newest being 0011. It seems like agents who found it necessary to kill were often, in turn, necessary for the enemy to kill as well, and they were often ruthlessly efficient about it, which made it a wonder that James Bond had survived as well.

As Em's Lupus got worse and worse, they kept playing with her cortisone dosage. Sometimes, they'd give her prenisone, sometimes prednisilone, which really didn't matter, because prednisone is artificial cortisone and prednisilone is simply a different chemical form which has exactly the same effect.

Cortisone is a hormone, one of the chemicals that control your body. They're all made by your body from cholesterol, an essential nutrient. It's a fatty chemical, which is why skinny women aren't sexy. One of the genius elements of the hormone system is that The Manufacturer can locate a hormone factory anywhere in the body, and it works the same, because it releases the chemicals into the blood stream, and blood goes everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. There's this thing called the blood/brain barrier, and I'm not exactly sure how it works, because the blood obviously needs to get to the brain.

Insulin is Another Hormone

Dunk youe head under water. You'll comp up gasping for breath. Survival of the individual is a pretty strong instinct, or our species would not have survived.

A little kid wanders into traffic. You don't know whose kid it is. You just know it's a kid. You;ll be strongly tempted to run out into traffic and rescue that kid. If not you, someone else will.

When you run out into traffic to rescue that kid, you're risking our own life. That establishes a pretty strong hierarchy. As a soeicety, we value preservation of the species over preservation of the individual.

The Sin Of Sex

Now, you;ll you;ll hear lot of complaints about the prevalence of sex in television and movie programming espesially from from the religious right, especially from direction of Lititz and Ephrata. Fuck you, Mrs. Grundy, Your values are misplaced. God told us that survival of of the sociey takes precedence of virtually every other motivation we ever experience.

If we consider Mexicans in Arizona to be illegal aliens...

What do we call Israelis in the mideast?

What do we call Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq?

I last saw Beatrice at the county fair. It was five years after high school graduation, and she was one of the few Mexicans who finished high school. She was pushing a stroller, and between that and the rugrats gathered around her, I counted five noses announted with cotton candy, candied apples, salt water taffy and other fair fare. They were having the time of their lives, and Beatrice, if you gave her even half a glance, was joyful as well.

Most new college graduates have never - NEVER - dialed a telephone. They've only ever used touch-tone pads.

She wasn't very friendly to me in high school. She wasn't un-friendly, perzackly, but she didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. She had her sights set on a Mexican boy, and any undue familiarity with a gringo threatened that relationship.

I Don't Know How