One of my favorite books of all time is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Pirsig.
I originally read it in my teens, but at some point I was hanging with a buddy and said, "Hey man, you need to read this." And then I gave him my copy.
Then a little time goes by and I think, "I need a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"! So I buy it again, usually in the form of an abused old paperback. But then some time passes and I am hanging out with a different buddy and say, "Hey man, you need to read this."
I must have given away four copies of that book over the years to different people.
But it's not just that book.
It's also Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, Stranger in a Strange Land, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and on and on.
Giving a friend a book that you love is like offering them a little bit of yourself.
It's a decent and human thing.
Hopefully, a current recommendation is decent and human as well. In any event, try "White" by Bret Easton Ellis. He narrates the audio version.
ReplyDeletePaper books are the best!
ReplyDeleteTell your friends, "hey, I need that back." Libraries do it all he time.
If I want to give my friend a book, I buy him one (him, her, zir, gapoopa), or give one I don't want back.
If you need any more advice, I'm here. :0)
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ReplyDeleteOT
ReplyDeleteI saw a bunch of stuff yesterday about "Indigenous Peoples' Day" on line from people who advocate for such things and hate the US, Western Culture, "White People," or what have you - basically left wing posers and haters of Uncle Sam and all he represents to the old/current marxist mindset (although any old ignoramus is always welcome!).
So, "indigenous people" would be, to these folks, all the people between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego excluding those people of European descent. Jesus H. F___, is that broad enough?
But I see a problem in this thinking (Quel surprise, Gomer Pyle).
I was challenged on FB by one "Johnny Rodriguez," name courtesy of England and Spain, who said that Columbus was a liar, a murderer, and who was disgraced, and "tell me he's not?"
Wow!
This was all after a post by the account's owner, Julia, where she decried the "stupidity" of the holiday, Columbus Day, comparing it to Germans having a holiday called "Hitler Day." She claimed that Germans would never be that stupid. I assured her that indeed, Germans certainly are that stupid and as Kurt Vonnegut would say, "and then some."
I tried to point out things like, "hey, you know you've been fed a lot of stuff that might not be exactly true, and besides, Columbus was a man of the 15th Century and comparisons to your own sense of virtue are a real intellectual no no. A better comparison to the Nazis might be the way the finances for the voyage were obtained in part through confiscation of Jewish wealth and property in Spain, etc."
Such dissenting views apparently are no longer to be tolerated by "liberal thinkers," as I and someone else were unfriended in about two seconds flat.
Now, of course, Columbus' landing in Hispaniola turned out not to be a picnic. Most of human history is not.
But did it ever occur to these modern day morons that human life did not spontaneously generate in the Americas? I'm sure they never think about such things.
For all those indigenous people do not really represent one group of people, at least from the perspective of the indigenous people. They did not all arrive on these continents together, regarded each other a good deal of the time as xenophobes do, hence tribes, and participated in much murder, mayhem, colonization, etc. I am sure many an earlier indigenous people thought of many of the newer indigenous people they met as "foreigners," or, dare I say it, aliens!
Aside from all that though, I can't think of a more profound anti-immigrant sentiment than the one behind "indigenous peoples day," because this one is an attempted cultural annihilation of us in as the trendy saying goes, "here, in the 21st century."
One of my FB "friends" was actually bragging about how the city of Berkeley had played the prominent role in getting this "I've got nothing else going for me, duh" holiday going, because that's what many people in Berkeley spend their time doing, bless their hearts (or is it Hearsts? lol). I think I might have already mentioned on this very forum the graffiti in the Berkeley sidewalk story, proclaiming the resistance of the indigenous people with the Christian cross.
To these meshuga KKKooks we are all anglos. (Broad enough?)
Oh, life in the age of the Western racial masochist!
As Van Halen used to say,"Jump!"
Anyway, the thing that struck me most in Julia's tirade was a defense of the Germans, all of Spain's historical culpability heaped on the back of one man, Columbus and the English.
DeleteFellas, this is not a one-off. Although Julia is not very bright or well-informed about anything really, sometimes it is from such people you find what the intellectuals of a movement are disseminating.
Two books that i recommend to my fellow Jews:
ReplyDeleteTHE HANDBOOK OF JEWISH THOUGHT by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
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Sefer Limudei Atzilut
by Rabbi Yitzchak Luria
[the Arizal, born 1534, died 1572]:
“When a Jew is killed by Gentiles – even though he was not a righteous person – since he was punished by being killed in this manner, his soul [neshamah] and his history are engraved on the King’s cloak.
In the future, the Holy One Blessed Be He will don this cloak and avenge the spilled blood of His people.
This soul [neshamah] is purified and made greater, even though it has no good deeds. Its death was for its own benefit.”
SOURCE: Fortunate is the Person Who Suffers
by Rabbi Aharon Roth of Beregszasz and Yerushalayim,
found in: The Best of Light Magazine, Volume One
(page 37) by Rabbi Yehoshua Leiman, 1995 CE
===================================
In this short article, Yossi Kuperwasser [a retired Brigadier General of the Israeli Army] explains that the Palestinians are not serious about peace with Israel, because the Palestinian government refuses to stop [or even reduce] the money rewards it pays to terrorists who kill Jewish civilians [including Jewish teenagers and children]:
Still no partner for peace
by Yossi Kuperwasser:
https://www.jns.org/opinion/still-no-partner-for-peace/
At what point did people begin to believe that the 'palestinians' were a partner for peace? There's not much solid there. The notion that these are people just looking for their 'human rights' and an independent state to live in next to Israel is a modern fiction. When did this start? The PLO used to be quite up front publicly about its malign intentions. I know that some words were mouthed at the time of Oslo (when the PLO had been pretty much driven from the Levant) that they accepted Israel, but were caught pretty quickly in that lie. Hamas and others have never even said they accepted in Israel in any form, except Arab. So, when did this peace and coexistence fairy tale take hold, why, and why not just call it out for what it is?
DeleteA lot of politicians here (Clintons) and in Israel (Peres and the whole Leftist establishment) were heavily invested in the success of Oslo. So it became the Left vs Right issue, "deniers" have become the enemy, and today it's gospel of the Progressive Millenials, most of whom have no first hand memory and absorbed everything they know from partisan hacks.
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