OK, it's happened. I'm becoming the thing I most hated. I'm becoming fogified. How else to explain the fact that for the first time in my life, I'm about to complain publicly about Doonesbury? But -- sorry -- a week after London, I'm having a little trouble with this. With, you know, the clever sophistication -- nudge nudge, wink wink, we're all too sophisticated to think that the Islamists might be motivated by anything as crude as existential nihilism. No, no, it has to be U.S. policies and root causes. Not to mention the light comic tone. Yes, I know, he's dealing with the insurgency, not with Al Qaeda, but the distinction seems a little blurry this week. And the tone seems, well, off. Maybe it's just me. Or age. Or irritability. Or the odds of an attack in the New York City subways. Nudge nudge. Wink wink.
I was much more impressed with this, and to an extent with this, and with this. Re: the latter -- yes, New York will do that to you. A head nod to Andrew Sullivan for all three.
Speaking of New York and ironies and existential matters -- I'm trying to figure out if the supermarket that collapsed on the Upper West Side yesterday was the same one that I shopped in for eight years, back when I was a farther-left-leaning, more classic Upper West Sider. I think it was. It's hard to tell, because news organizations don't seem to share information along the lines of, oh, you know, the address (source of confusion: there's another supermarket across the street). If it was -- well, perhaps I could try to make something out of then vs. now, protesting landlords vs. defending vested interests, your past crashing down, things like that. Or possibly I could conclude that bad things happen when you put, oh, I don't know, an overweight backhoe on top of a building you've already weakened as you go through the demolition process.
Actually, my metaphysics are now such that I can accept that there's a universal spirit that created this event, in part to get me to reflect on changes in my life. And that the way that spirit manifested itself was to inspire the demolition crew to put an overweight backhoe on top of the building.
Thankfully the injuries weren't worse.
Now back to the hard work of tracking randomness and meaning...
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