God, H.L. Mencken, and Taco Bell

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin - H.L. Mencken.








In my attempt to abort my chronic insomnia, I was reading late into the night The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and found it intrinsically interesting and more readable than that pompous ass Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great. Hitchens seems to always be on the make to try and impress his audience that he's the smartest guy in the room, even when he's writing. And he may well be the smartest guy in the room - at least if it were just me and him in that room he would be.

I found myself wanting to put down Delusion so that the whiskey and pills would kick in (though I read in Prevention magazine this is not the preferable way to travel to dreamland) but continued reading because it's some pretty interesting and compelling arguments that Mr. Dawkins presents in defense of atheism - the belief that there is no God, as opposed to agnosticism which basically holds that God is unknowable.

One of the people quoted in The God Delusion was the newspaperman and book critic H. L. Mencken is perhaps still one of the most quotable and acerbic wits of his or any other generation. Among the things a self-confessed atheist Mr. Mencken had to say about religion are:

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

And perhaps most apropos in this political season is this:

The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. - A statement that can apply equally to preachers and politicians and the general electorate.

Me, I'm still trying to figure it all out and in 50 years of searching still don't know, but it seems to me it is better to be a skeptic than someone who claims to know all the answers - who is completely sure of an afterlife and spirit world, of heaven and hell and what any God who is capable of creating solar systems and human beings has on his or her mind.
Hopefully I'll know more when I've finished the book.

Read, read, read - it's the only chance any of us have. Thank (well I was going to say God, but really it is the writers) writers and publishers and editors for books so that we might know just a bit more than we would without them.

Some stuff that happened on this day in History:

This is the birthday of Robert Bailey Thomas, founder and editor of The Farmer's Almanac - which I personally have never found to more accurate than a monkey tossing darts at stocks. But then again I'm no farmer, just ask anybody.

It is also the birthday of Pulitzer prize winning novelist, and one-time poet Laurete, Robert Penn Warren, who never gave me credit for teaching him how to write. But as you can see, I hold no grudges.

Congress passed a bill in 1800 establishing the Library of Congress - which, may have been the last thing Congress ever actually did other than try and get themselves re-elected, each and every one.

It is the birthday of writer Sue Grafton who is most known for her alphabet mystery series.

Spain declared war on the U.S. - failing as a war machine, they did start a string of Taco Bells which have become highly more successful

IBM introduced the first personal computer in 1981.

A POEM WRIT BY ME

I Did Not Sleep Last Night or, The Night Before

Sleep is the woman I’ve fallen in love with but
She does not love me. Every night I chase her and
Every night she eludes me by sleeping with other
Men and even women and children – in their beds,
Upon couches, park benches, army cots, in chairs.

Oh, they have a lovely time together while I
Pace and watch the moon wax and wane, my
Head a rumble of thoughts, offering prayers to
A god I’m not sure exists, but surely hope does.

The next day’s chapter not yet writ formulating
Itself, sexual fantasies that come and go in
Memory of those who came and went in my

Youth – thoughts of those women now? I
Still see them the way they were then when I
Desired them so madly – we could not figure
What it was exactly, love or something else and it made
Our love difficult, except, except when sleeping.

Some I grieve for are dead and in their graves
Sleeping the eternal sleep, or as Raymond
Chandler put it: The Big Sleep. What a clever
Boy he was. Some are widowed no doubt and still
Asking forgiveness for their sins of having
Slept with me, and me with them.

We were all in it together, and the sleep came
Nicely afterwards with the summer breezes
Blowing in, lifting the curtains caressing our long
Sweaty limbs, touching us with drowsy fingers.

Not even our sin could keep us awake.
The others I’ve slept with I’m not sure about.
Where are they? Sleeping soundly in their beds,
Old women now as I am old. Come pace the
Floors with me and my lovers from the past,
Keep us company and watch the moon wax and wane.

Do well, be well, and take love where you can find it.

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/