Today is the first day of the second half of the year. Use it wisely—perhaps in contemplating your life to this point, rejecting attempts at body shaming, or enjoying a mildly hallucinogenic fungi.

Today's spine-chilling read.

is provided by The Wall Street Journal, who, on a perfectly fine morning of reading, snuck this line into an article: [they] populated virtually every important leadership role in their organization with candidates barely old enough to remember the Clinton administration.

Or stripped of the cuteness, they barely remember the eighth Presidential election I was eligible to vote in.

But I'm not angry or bitter. In fact, I say let's frame it in a context and medium that encourages the young 'uns to learn more about and understand events of the last century. So I propose we make a video game, tentatively called Kenneth Starr, Demon Hunter. It's got it all—Sex. Power-grabs. Alleged assassinations. Frustrated Republicans. Graft. Bribery. Saxophones. Arkansas politics. Welfare reform. And Billy beer.

Rule breaker—

a confessional.

When I wrote the paragraph immediately above, I realized I was starting a sentence with a conjunction, a crime almost as heinous as leaving a verb out of a sentence, comma splicing, infinitive splitting, or ending a sentence with a preposition.

I gotta admit it felt good. When I looked around, though, I saw no civilizations crumbling, no rioting in the streets, no packs of confused, disappointed readers of The Chair, and the Washington Nationals were were playing .500 ball, which isn't right.

Well, since we're confessing, I knew a long time ago that I was breaking not just the conjunction-sentence rule, but a lot of rules.

The problem with a lot of grammar rules is that we try to cover all situations with one set of rules, sometimes made up, sometimes imported from other languages, sometimes anachronistic, sometimes intended for one situation but applied universally, sometimes conflicting, or sometimes just plain wrong and/or dumb.

The way I see it, there are two choices: make yourself crazy and try to follow all the rules, or rebel, free yourself from the tyranny of the King's English (sorry–I've been watching too many of those 250th American Independence TV shows)! If you do, remember the context/audience, be selective, make the 'mistake' fit the voice and context, be consistent.

I think we should give Humpty Dumpty the last word:

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.'

Tooth fairy.

So what's the deal with the tooth fairy? All of the other mythological figures of our childhood have a backstory grounded in religious or cultural practices, with meaning and significance at the time of their creation.

But here's the tooth fairy, just floating around with no associated origin story or history, no purpose, no motive, no set date of appearance, not even a commonly agreed-upon form. I mean, say 'Santa Claus,' and an image will pop out almost immediately–Beard. Red suit. Jolly laugh. Bowlful of jelly. You know–the guy in the Christmastime Coca-Cola ads. But the tooth fairy? Once we get past 'wings,' confusion reigns.

We don't even know why she does what she does. I mean, was there some time in our past that made monetizing discarded bits of mouth enamel profitable? Was there a black market in baby teeth sponsored by ADA lobbyists? Was it to keep cryptids from taking over the neighborhood? If it's that last one, well, it hasn't worked.

Success!

I am pleased to report that on page 172 (of 278 [or 62%, almost 2/3 of the way through the book]), the picture of Dorian Gray made it to the attic.

Piling on.

There are few things as enjoyable as a good pithy quotation. Ben Franklin understood this when he penned, in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

The only problem is, people keep mucking up the beauty and conciseness of aphorisms. In the past, I myself have been such a phrase-mucker, adding both change and criticism to Franklin's phrase.

And now I'm back with a new candidate for inclusion: the future, making the phrase in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, change, criticism and the future. But what we gain in accuracy and comprehensiveness, we lose in memorability.

Easy come, easy go, I guess.

Reentering an age of belief(s).

I bumped into My Dinner with Andre, a 1981 film featuring Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory sitting around talking, mostly about the nature of reality. At one point, Shawn speculates that we may be entering, or at least have the opportunity to re-enter an age much like that before the scientific revolution of the Middle Ages, when it was possible for anyone to hold their own reality.

It was 45 years ago he made that statement. Now, with the growth of the world wide web, social media, the death of the gatekeepers, and AI, I think it's much more achievable for anyone to hold to their own reality. Probably impossible not to, even several realities, simultaneous or sequential.

Related to this conversation, there are many other indicators (some of which I have mentioned here before) that the 20th Century may become known as 'the age of literacy.' Declining book sales, for one. The current popularity of podcasts ( it seems everybody [except me] has a podcast, even people who have no right having a podcast.) and homemade videos on TikTok and other social media sites. Education is putting less emphasis on literacy and reading. Our own history, which has detection of motion central to our survival.

Education and books, along with commonly-watched popular media, are two of the main ways the gatekeepers have of maintaining control over our view of reality. If we're all watching I Love Lucy and Ozzie and Harriet, we all know/learn what family reality looks like.

And at core,

READING IS UNNATURAL.

And yes, in the course of the movie, Mr. Shawn did say 'inconceivable' at least once.