Category: Abbey, “Cactus Ed”
-
The Stupor Bowl is a Super Bore
Panem et circenses! I am no fan of spectator sports. We have too many sports spectators and too many overpaid* professional louts. I preach the People's Sports, despite the leftish ring of that. Remove your sorry tail from the couch of sloth and start a softball league with your friends and neighbors. Play volley ball…
-
Cactus Ed on Sweet Gone Jack
Here: Some of Abbey's most entertaining letters involve skirmishes over literary reputation, one of his enduring obsessions. In a letter to the Nation, he contrasted Kurt Vonnegut's "concern for justice, love, honesty and hope" with "novels about the ethnic introspection project (Roth, Bellow)" and "the miseries of suburban hanky-panky (Updike, Cheever, Irving)." He disparaged Jack…
-
A Note on Vox Clamantis in Deserto
This just over the transom from London Ed: Pedantic, but I think you will secretly enjoy it. Matt. 3:3 quoting Isaiah 40:3. The Vulgate has Vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini. [Right, I checked both quotations in my Biblia Vulgata.] There has always been a question about the parsing of this. Is it A…
-
Stupor Bowl or Super Bore?
Time for my annual Super Bowl Sunday rant. But perhaps I should not be so harsh on the masses who need their panem et circenses to keep them distracted from matters of moment, both secular and spiritual. The Latin could be very loosely translated as 'food stamps and football.' I won't be watching the game.…
-
Trigger Warning!
The grandpappy of them all is attributable to Hanns Johst: Wenn ich Kultur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning! "When I hear the word culture, I release the safety on my Browning." Often misquoted and misattributed. I myself misquoted it once as Wenn ich das Wort 'Kulture' höre, entsichere ich meine Pistole. I apologize for that…
-
Stupor Bowl or Super Bore?
Here is my annual Stupor Bowl Sunday rant.
-
Journal Notes on Ed Abbey from May 1997
I purchased Edward Abbey’s posthumous collection of journal extracts entitled Confessions of a Barbarian (ed. Petersen, Little, Brown & Co., 1994) in April of 1997. Here are some journal jottings inspired by it. From the notebooks of Paul Brunton to the journals of Ed Abbey – from one world to another. Each of us inhabits…
-
Answering Questions With Questions
It is a commonplace that the grammatical form of a sentence is no sure guide to its logical form or to the ontological structure of the chunk of reality the sentence is about, if anything. For example, 'Kato Kaelin is home' and 'Nobody is home' are grammatically similar. They both seem to have the structure:…
-
Rock, Reality, Ed Abbey, and the Attraction of the Incoherent
There is no denying the charm, the attractive power, of incoherent ideas. They appeal to adolescents of all ages. Edward "Cactus Ed" Abbey writes, "I sometimes think that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and that only rock is real." Well, Cactus Ed, is this thought of yours an illusion too? Cactus Ed's thought…
-
Variations on a Theme
Life's a bitchAnd then you die. Life is a bitch. And then you die?No: Life is a joyous adventure. And then you die. (Ed Abbey, Confessions, p. 325) Life's a beachAnd then you dive. Life's a beach? Which?Sonova Beach. Life's a bitchBut I'm married to one. (Redneck bumpersticker) Life's a bitchBut I found my niche.…
-
God and the ‘No Angry Unicorn’ Argument
This from an astute reader commenting on the Hell post: 'No angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon' Does this not refer to doxastic uncertainty rather than a fatuous equation of God with something material? This is how I interpreted it when I read it. More in the vein of: why venerate something…