This Web Blog was haphazardly produced without using Spell Check one danged time. We like it that way.

ESOTERICA: Yeah, the top country for readers here is still the USA. But only about 47% of the people reading this site come from America. More than 50% come from elsewhere. We're still trying to figure that out.

In the coming weeks, expect our partnership with CinemActivist.com to provide you with reviews of great documentaries from Cinema Libre Studio, PBS, the History Channel and Working Films that provide you knowledge and move you toward activism. Just so you know.

And, yeah, I ditched the Forums thang because no one was using it. Superfluous.

10 August 2007: First of all, birthday greetings, in some cases belated, to my sister (-in-law) Martha Rudell Amis, my friends, Bill Purcell and Barbara Atwell, and my former friend Julia Kofke. Now, on with the show.

The one statistic we get from Google Analytics that I've found disconcerting is that the "bounce rate" - as they call it when people click away - is lower here at Lightning Strikes than it generally was over at my older endeavor, your World's Magazine. Disconcerting because there were so many other voices than my own over there - and still are [See the link to "G21: The World's Magazine" in the left sidebar.- RA] covering so many different and interesting topics. I'm afraid I still don't understand you people.

Nonetheless, I mean to get on with the game. I've got a lot for you over this weekend. (Most of which I'm sure you won't read until Monday. I've found Saturdays to be slow Internet days for all but the driven like myself.)

ITEM UNO: You'll find me next week over at CrimeNZ (yes, the pun is intended) over in New Zealand, writing for this new Web Blog focusing on issues faced by victims of crime. It's run by my long-time acquaintance Lou Harrison-Smith who lives in Christchurch and has decided that more should be said about this issue. I am flattered that he would believe an American could speak out on the issue, considering the many ways we still need to get our own criminal justice system right.

I believe many people will find it unusua l that I should contribute to this particular Blog, considering that it's orientation might be facilely taken as conservative. Personally, I don't think there's anything conservative about speaking to the issue of how victims of crime are treated. I hope you'll visit CrimeNZ and bear with me as I make my case.

ITEM DUO: My friend Cheryl in Vermont sent me this GOOD news, as published in the New York Times [Registration Required - RA] , that I trust you'll appreciate: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07hero.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

Some good deeds don't get punished.

ITEM TRIO: From DC in Florida, this bit of drollery came along:

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.? I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dazed and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking... "? "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"? "But honey, surely it's not that serious."? "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors. They didn't open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra , a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.

You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster. This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a? TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today I took the final step... I joined a political Party.

Much like Oscar Wilde, I've been accused of being primarily a "phrase maker." I come up with clever bon mots, I'm told, that work at cocktails parties or that you can use when making a stinging retort. A gentlemen in Germany wrote publicly that I am "the most quotable person on the Web" some years ago. I'm certainly not insulted by the notion that I write memorable phrases. Someone has to be able to do so and have people repeat them (even if they do so without attribution.)

In another era, I might have been described as a wit.

The problem that I have today with being called the "phrase maker" is that some people miss the larger point that I believe all writing is a conversation - a conversation not just over decades or centuries but over millennia. I am talking back to Homer and Apuleius, not to mention Bierce and Twain - who I have referenced in the past here. To be reduced to being considered a mere phrase-maker, a wit, diminishes my goal.

BUT THERE'S MORE. The central issue is that of "voice," for most writers. I think it would be silly to say that I have one voice. There is the satirical, the Jeremiad, the journalistic, the straight humorous - and I have employed them all. Maybe somebody missed that. I have spent my life work attempting to master a number of voices. I have revealed some publicly but not all. Recall that I once mentioned that I have "ghosted."

On my Day Jobs, I can only use that third, journalistic, voice. That is tedious but I must pay the rent.

I was made to think of all this because I recalled the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, and felt I saw a parallel in his tale and the larger issue of the conundrum of all writers. The obsession diminishes the person's ability to explore and expand, in short.

Lightning struck! I saw part of the problem, the angel, I have long wrestled with. I could spend more paragraphs explaining to you but suspect only other writers would understand....

IF Bonnie and I still worked together, this is a Blog posting she would not like at all. She would say it is too "text-based." Whenever she would say that, I would think of the Emperor in "Amadeus" claiming that Mozart used "too many notes."

I can only imagine what that Emperor's impression of Beethoven would have been or what Bonnie might feel if ever exposed to Tolstoi.

Neither the composer or the writer would last five months here on the 'Net, of course. And therein lies the rub.

Cheers!

Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.

Thanks for visiting.

Talk to you in a day or so.

Be well.