All because some guy didn't tie down his cargo. Will the offender ever know what he did? Not in this life. I’m not saying you should go to hell because you didn’t secure the sofa cushions when you moved a friend, but there ought to be a Stern Words Room in heaven where some burly angels scowl at you and rub brass knuckles, and when you look up at the clock on the wall you note that the time is measured in centuries.
¶ The Bleat (10 Oct. 2002)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/02/1002/100202.html#101002
Any vacation would, under the current circumstances, not be a vacation at all, unless my dearly beloved child can be cryogenically frozen and stored. Even if this were possible, I would spend the vacation worrying about the reliability of the power supply in the freezers.
¶ The Bleat (16 Aug. 2002)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/02/0802/080202.html#081602
Posterity sometimes just seems like a drunk passing out cigars at random - when it passes over men like John you realize how arbitrary fortune can be, and how the Valhalla of the Briefly Reknowned But Mostly Obscure is probably the most interesting quarter of the afterlife.
¶ The Bleat (21 Apr 2003)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0403/042103.html
Nutritional science is half sensible wisdom and half alimentary feng-shui, if you ask me. I know too many guys in their late 70s who ate pancakes and steaks all their lives to believe that sugar is Nature’s Plutonium.
¶ The Bleat (24 Feb. 2004)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0204/022404.html
Always make sure that the vehemence with which you express your opinions has a toehold in reality, or people who actually know something about the subject will conclude you’ve taught your rectum to form words and rammed a megaphone up your arse.
¶ The Bleat (25 Mar 2002)
The modern world breaks down into two categories -- those who say things like “systems change” with utter confidence that everyone knows what they mean, and those who hear the phrase and are stricken with that sharp pain above the eyes you get when you eat your ice cream too quickly.
¶ The Bleat (27 Nov. 2002)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/02/1102/110204.html#112702
The passage of time makes these men seem unhuman. We need to remember that they weren't dropped on the planet by leather-winged minions of Moloch. They were people. Hitler brushed his teeth; Hitler took a leak and may have whistled while he did so. He may have clipped his toenails while listening to light opera on the Gramophone. Being evil is not a full-time job.
¶ The Bleat (28 Feb. 2003)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0203/022803.html
I swear: some people will not be happy until the people who are usually happy aren’t.
¶ The Bleat (29 Jun. 2004)
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0604/062904.html
