The Afterburners of Recall

I was looking at photos of the first nights of Ramadan in the UK. It was in an urban area, I thought, for there were a lot of young working type blokes. It was somewhere in the UK; I forget where exactly; could have been London, but I think it was somewhere near the interior of the country.

OK. I checked everything. The photos were taken in the Islamic Centre of England; originally I read this as "the Islamic centre of England", which explains why I thought that everything was going on somewhere near Birmingham or Coventry nearer the geographical center of England.... but which does not explain why the Church of England had disappeared from the hinterland!

It was one of those quandary things brought on by odd writing. (It was exactly like those years when I fancied there existed a franchise of camp grounds named "Camp Fire Wood", based upon crudely written signs, which signs should have been rendered "Campfire Wood" instead.)

So, photos of Ramadan in the UK. All very interesting. I particularly noted the makeshift screens which served to separate the men from the women.

Incredibly fast I went like a jet to the novel Studs Lonigan, wherein there was a section ( I am sure! ) where Studs was sitting in the church during Mass, and he was surveying all the dolls, or his main doll at the time, perhaps. I thought of my own woolgathering and musings during various religious services, thinking you can't screen all distractions.

Then I thought Studs Terkel wrote Studs Lonigan, but that was one Studs too many, so I went back to William Something-something-something... no, it was James T. Farrell who wrote it back in 1932.

It was filled with impending Irish doom

Mr. Patrick Buchanan et alii

The American Conservative, Huzzah! The American Conservative has joined my blogroll of honor. Mr. Buchanan and his associates are rather brilliant. If you wish very good Conservative opinion, read them. (If you wish a sort of The Onion presentation of Conservative opinion, read The National Review.) You will notice that I have Juan Cole's Informed Comment and Patrick Buchanan's The American Conservative on the same list. Most people would consider that a Liberal-Conservative paradox. However, one reaches an age where one finally becomes tired of being lied to incessantly and opts for the Truth, no matter what the political suasion. Health Care and Medical Insurance The problems at Walter Reed hospital have been going on a long time. In my life, the tawdry way that wounded soldiers have been treated has been commonplace, going all the way back to Vietnam. The Executive branch and the Legislative branch do not care. At least, they do not care to the point of doing anything. That is the measure of care: whether they do anything because it is the right thing to do, not merely because a free press has once again forced them to own up to their incompetence. So, if this country's elected representatives cannot even supply a Health system to those of its citizens who have given the utmost in devotion, why do you think they will be able to create a Health system for the rest of the country? The Leviathan of the Bureaucracy will crush us, and they will not lift a finger. Perhaps we should keep the present administration on. They did get things done by allowing the companies involved in the Health industry to write their own rules. If we extend this to allowing them to perform their own oversight, we would probably see a Health system overnight. IBS A lot of Bloggers suffer from IBS, Irritable Blog Syndrome. They can't go anywhere without knowing where their notebooks are, and there is the constant wind, nausea, bloating, pain, and spasms. I know a great many that do. They usually have a serious political bent, such as "I am a serious political blogger." I am not a serious political blogger. Sometimes, I obviously am not a serious writer/blogger. I wrote a monstrous piece on Negative Comments that was tantamount to putting a jester motley on and a hat with bells, capering around the blogosphere and saying "Call me Wamba!" I started this Blog to write about God. Sometimes I lose the way. Or, I am a fish on a hook on a line stretching to the ends of the earth, and He pulls me back with a twitch on the line. Hound of Heaven, eh? Tags I have been quite bowled over by tags. I thought I could organize things in the Blogstead, the Blog-pantry, the Blog-wine cellars, the Blog-garage, but now I have more tags, one says "Blog-pantry", another "Blog-garage" and so on. If this were an exponentially Inflationary thingey, like that Big Bang wheeze, I would be in the existential soup! (Crikey! A tag labelled "tags" was just added!) Memories I could not remember the name of my accountant yesterday. I was driving my car. I do not mean to imply cause and effect here, that somehow driving causes me to forget everything, names, addresses, inhibitions! No. Merely setting the scene. Creating a pied-a-terre, to use an expression Jeeves is fond of. His name is T. I could not remember it. So, as I approached the stop by the University of Funny Architecture, I thought to myself that I should have to call his office and ask the receptionist to go through all the names, and that would be embarassing. So my mind drifts along, and makes the call for me, as it were. The mental imago of the receptionist, quite a looker, by the way, picks up the mental telephone and begins going through the names. She literally says " Is it P? Is it Q, R, S? Is it T?" I jump at it and thank her. It was the right name. It took me about 20 seconds, after my intial feeling of euphoria passed, to realize how odd this all had been.