I had a dream last night. I remember that ardoise_vide was there, and savage13lossom and someone else too. We were in a car. And we were bemoaning the how the necessity of the separation of church and state had fallen by the waysides. There was more politics in the dream. But that's all I remember.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

here's the challenge, list 50 books NOT in the meme book list that you think people should read

you can tell that the group who created that 100 book list were a bunch of frustrated novelists, because the entire list is all about "The Great Novel I Wish I Had Written" (which is why "the bible" and "shakespeare's complete works" in that 100 book list seem so oddly out of place -- those two selections are the only exceptions to the rule of listing only the "Great Novels")

1. The panda's thumb, Stephen Jay Gould
2. The Feynman Lectures on Physics Richard Feynman
3. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
4. Cosmos, Carl Sagan
5. concepts of modern mathematics ian stewart
6. The Black Sheep, balzack
6. Somerset Maugham, of human bondage,
6. Robinson Crusoe, daniel defoe
7. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
8. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
9. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
10. The Call of the Wild Jack London
11. big two hearted river hemingway
12. voyage to the center of the earth verne
13. atlas shrugged, ayn rand.
14. mein kampf hitler
15. Machiavelli, the prince
16. clausewitz on war
17. aristophanes, the birds
18. dialogues of the dead, lucian
19. julius caesar, gallic wars
20. i claudius, robert graves
21. the day of the triffids, john wyndham
22. do androids dream of electric sheep, philip k dick
23. adam smith, wealth of nations
24. democracy in america, alexis de tocqueville
25. the murders in the rue morgue, poe
26. conan, robert e howard
27. the call of cthulhu, lovecraft
28. origin of the species, charles darwin
29. tipping point, malcolm gladwell
30. the last journal of robert falcon scott
31. Heat, bill buford
32. diary of anne frank
33. flowers for algernon, Daniel Keyes
34. it, stephen king
35. a study of history, arnold toynbee
36. histories herodotus
37. the war to end all wars, Edward M. Coffman
38. the longest day, cornelius ryan
39. Goedel, Escher and Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
40. thousand nights and a night
41. Hans Christian Andersen Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales
42. Bhagavad Gita
43. slaughterhouse 5, vonnegut
44. founding brothers, Joseph J. Ellis
45. Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels
46. The Five Ages of the Universe Greg Laughlin
47. phantoms in the brain vs ramachandran
48. flatland Edwin A. Abbott
49. first man in rome, colleen mccullough
50. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Edwin Lefèvre
51. working by Studs Terkel
52. sweet science aj leibling
53. six easy pieces Richard Feynman
54. cry to heaven, anne rice
55. hannah arendt the banality of evil

ok fine i went over, I'll stop now.

what is it about texan politicans that makes them such terrible leaders, president johnson, president bush, even president eisenhower.

Maybe it's the cronyism of the state of texas. It started out democratic, johnson only had to win primaries and then the general was his. It's the same today only now the entire state is republican. When an entire state is only one political party, this leads to cronyism and corruption. There's nobody there to say stop it. Plus there is this incestuous tie between business and government, like some sort of communist party led state, only it's all dressed up in the red white and blue, and pretends to be capitalism. It's cronyism capitalism where the government leaders kick back everything to this giant energy business in texas and they call it private enterprise.

Maybe it's the great texas heritage of white and black hats. If ur a bad man in a black hat, u need to git killed. If ur a good man in a white hat u need to be presudent. Good is good and bad is bad. Just boil it all down to black and white, that's the texas way. You can't talk to bad people, there's no conditions to wonder about societal causes or political differences to figger out, you just kill the bad 'uns and help the gud un's, because bad people is born bad and good people is born good.

Maybe that's the problem with texan presidents. All you have to do is figure out who is bad and who is good, use the CIA and the NSA to spy on everyone once you figure out who is good and bad, then you're almost done. There's no idea of understanding motives, analysis.

Or maybe it's this vast feeling of anti-intellectualism. This hatred of easterners. The hatred of the ivy league intellectuals. This sense that all the book learning in the world is not worth two cents. This idea that trusting the feeling in your gut is worth more than someone with a fancy degree talking about stuff he learned in college.

Or maybe it's their faith and this sense of entitlement. Their christian faith, a deep and unquestioning well that they can go to when they feel weak. This probably ties back into the black and white hats thing though. This Manichean sense of good and evil. And this sense of entitlement. Texans know they are the good guys, with a sense of christian certainty in their own goodness. If they are good, they deserve what is coming to them.

That's it. I'm done hating on texan politicians. For now.

So, I met Lou Ferrigno yesterday. He's still massive, unsurprisingly.

It was cool.

This morning, I got up to see Wall-E, but ended up catching Wanted, first. Wanted was entertaining and fun action...go into it assuming nothing and you'll come out having had fun. It's nothing like the comic, though. So, comic purists should take a pass. James McAvoy did a good job.

Afterwards, I caught a showing of Wall-E. It was great....one of Pixar's top three in my opinion. The other two being Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo. I forgot I was watching Animation...that's how amazing things look and it's a lovely story.

Then I headed over to my friend's card store to hang out for a bit. We played some Mario Kart on the Wii, which is always entertaining. Then we all headed together to another friend's house to watch the tivo'd mma fights that had been shown the night before on HDnet. The true bonus treat for me was that they had a kitten! She was maybe 2 months old and so tiny and cute that I wanted to steal her and take her home. I settled for enjoying her while she curled up on my chest and slept for a couple of hours during the fights.

Then it was back to the shop for a little more Mario Kart action before heading home.

Nothing useful was done today, but it was quite an enjoyable Saturday, nonetheless.

I was having a very intense dream this morning in which dream me (which means, I was skinny, cute, and pretty) was in a mansion, surrounded by people. There was a party or a charity auction going on...some sort of event. I felt like I lived in the mansion. It wasn't mine, but I was the lover of whoever owned the property, but they weren't around. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sense of panic and anxiety. I knew without a doubt that something horrible was about to happen and all of the people needed to get out and leave me all alone. I started calling out loudly for John. Crying out his name over and over, and John wasn't my lover, he was the head of security and the person who made me feel safest. The other security guys/force (they were all military-esque) started clearing the room while John's second in command hurried over to me to see what was wrong. I remember him reassuring me that John was on his way when I woke up with my heart pounding and my breathing quickened. I woke up with the thought in my mind that everything would be okay if John would just get to me and hold onto me...that we'd make it through.

One of my co-workers asked me if I'd been anxious about something in my life...not overly so, though. What does make me laugh, is I have multiple John's in my life as friends, but none of them were the John associated with the name in my dream. It was an entirely new John and quite the vivid experience.

I don't often remember my dreams, so regardless of the fact this one was stressful, I'm glad I did.