This blog fills a much needed gap (and goes on a much needed hiatus)

So they tell me that Genealogy of Morals will actually read like traditionalist philosophical material. The last time I read it, Coolidge was in the White House, and I don't remember a thing a thing about it, so maybe I'll give it a try before abandoning this project. Putting down Fast Freddy last night, after a heartwarming series of bombasts regarding the female of the species, I felt that he and I were getting nowhere with Good and Evil, although I can now provide any feminist in the LD pool with some pretty good highlights of what it must have been like to, say, go out on a date with old Zen Ethics back in the day. Suffice it to say that it would be unlikely he would be asking you your opinion of the zeitgeist. On the other hand, I found his comments on Jews interesting. Given his inherent political racism, I had expected good-old-fashioned anti-semitism of the highest order, and, contrarian that he is, I found something quite different. Whoda thunkit? While you can fashion a nice totalitarian government around the will to power, and while you can envision Germans as a master race based on Fast Freddy's political racism if you wish to read the man that way, you might be a little harder pressed to go to the point of what we now call ethnic cleansing, a nasty term replacing the dearth of terms to describe focussed mass murder (and maybe there's no language for this because it's rare, if that's not Pollyannaism on my part). Anyhow, I may or may not throw the book into the backpack before I head out today.

Speaking of which, the answer is: Doctorow. The March. I know, this came out of left field, but I love ELD and this may be the only chance I get to read the new one, so there you are. With, maybe, Fast Freddy on the side. There's a trip for you!

So, I'm all packed. Nothing but old clothes. If you want to know where I've been, follow the trail of discarded jockey shorts across the back alleys of Central Europe. (Eeeeewwwww! Too much information.)

In my absence (wow -- no Modest Novice, no email, no Legion of Doom, no Nostrum, no Hen Hud, no NFL, no Nigerian solicitations, no nuthin'), you can sup mightily on the info at WTF, the only other regular beacon of debatism of which I am aware. NFLs will be starting soon, and no doubt the troops will be providing minute-by-minute photographs of the schematics and lots of messages from teammates wishing their reps in Dallas a hearty woot-woot. Thank God for bandwidth! Thank God for Bubba Chut's Intergalactic Communication Chip!

Thank God for vacations... I'll see you toward the end of the month.