Fragments

by Joel Marks December 17, 2015 It came to me in a flash how extraordinarily limited is our hold on consciousness and hence that which most distinguishes us from inert matter. In the shower I used to invariably find myself in a quandary about whether I had already soaped up my body. This would happen when I had rinsed off and was considering whether to turn off the spigot; I would suddenly wonder, “Did I just wipe off the lather, or did I not put it on my body in the first place?” Sounds like senility, doesn’t it? But I am not senile. I have various other self-checks on my memory to assure me that my memory remains as healthy as anybody’s my age (of 66, though this has been going on for years). So one day I thought of a tactic. I would make a sign on the moisture misted glass shower door when I was about to lather up. I rather dramatically chose the sign of the Z, after my childhood memories of Zorro. (You see? My memory is intact!) Then when I am wondering whether to turn off...

Dear Editor: I've figured it out. Donald Trump's campaign is a joke! I mean, we've always known it was a joke, but now I think it may have been intended as a joke all along. We've seen this before. There was Borat, that is, Sacha Baron Cohen, who traveled America to interact with the natives in all their (our) wackiness. He fed on gullibility, exactly as Trump is doing, getting people to reveal not only their silliness but their darker sides. Then there was Guy Grand, the protagonist of Terry Southern's wickedly funny novel,  The Magic Christian.  Grand is wealthy beyond belief and spends his time perpetrating outrageous spoofs on the unsuspecting public. Sound familiar? Donald Trump has skyrocketed to the lead in the Republican race for the nomination for President of the United States by uttering empty policy pronouncements and vacuous assurances, making hallucinatory factual assertions, putting forward outrageous proposals, hurling insults, making faces,...

Dear Editor: Perhaps the most obscene aspect of the San Bernardino massacre was seeing the pictures of the assault rifles that were used by the perpetrators. For these, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, had been obtained perfectly legally.             It hardly matters to me whether the purchaser was an intended terrorist or a plain-old law-abiding citizen. Why are such weapons legally available to almost anyone in the United States? What do they have to do with hunting? What do they have to do with sport? What do they have to do with self-defense?             Do we really expect to see men and women carrying such weapons to work in case some disturbed or fanatical person invades the premises? And would they be sufficiently trained so that their efforts at defense wouldn’t wreak more collateral damage than the intended damage of the malefactor?   ...