Thanks Again, Flannery

Here's a paradox:

1. Karl Rove has resigned. That's good. He is an incorrigible liar and relentless imperialist.

2. On Sunday, Jeanette, in her sermon, quoted Flannery O'Connor as saying, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd." Karl is odd. But it's not the truth that makes him so. Because he's a liar. But wait. Maybe it is the truth that makes him odd, but in a way different from what O'Connor meant. You know that spooky feeling one gets around a person who is into not telling the truth, like, as a manner of living? In that way, the truth is making that person odd because it's hidden, and so there's this icky opaque veneer over everything? Do you feel me? Others are odd, though, because the things they say don't sound like what most people are used to hearing (i.e., The Usual Propaganda). I think that's more like what O'Connor meant. Yes? Anyway, me loves it and is putting it on me email signature.

The heat is relentless, too. I had a second heat-related illness episode, and I think that unless I can manage to get this thing behind me my future fighting crime on tropical islands is limited. Which sucks. I'm serious. But one worries about all the old people and all the homeless people and the world just getting hotter and hotter. One tries not to be sad about it all, but alas.

Thank God for the bits of love and happiness that come one's way. The bits and the showers. The luckiness. The droppings off of juice and cookies; the invitations to sudden salmon and steak. The unexpected kirs royale (like courts martial?). Did you know that in Monaco all subjects are given a residence from His Highness? Next life, may I please be born a subject of His Serene Highness Prince Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre, Prince of Monaco, Marquis of Baux? Do you know how really pretty it is there? You see, this is what confuses me: Those who would damage the earth, can they not see all its beauty? Do they not know that without beauty there is no life? I just don't get it.