5 Thoughts On A Thursday

1) Oh, man, I am totally ready for the Civil War game tonight! I have been Oregon-geeked out all day today; I've got my Ducks sweatshirt, my Dead Guy Ale*, my copy of Sometimes A Great Notion. I am psyched!! Go Ducks!

2) By the way, does anybody else think it's a bit odd that it's the Oregon-Oregon State game that has become the Civil War game? I mean, doesn't every University of X play X State at some point during the season? And it seems to me that, of all the 50 states, Oregon may have the least to do with the actual Civil War? (On second thought, that's probably exactly the reason why. There's probably be a lot more violence if they started calling Illinois vs Illinois State or Georgia vs Georgia Tech the "Civil War" game. Who gets to be the Blues? Who's the Greys?)

3) I actually did end up answering that student who asked me, "What is philosophy?" I fumbled about a bit, and then told him that it was kinda like psychology - because he knew what psychology is - in that it's a way to learn about people and find out why they do the things that they do, except that philosophy is also interested in trying to find out what are the right and wrong things for people to do, and to find out why those things are right or wrong. This seemed to satisfy him, and I was able to breath easy knowing I wouldn't have to get into the whole Meaning of Being issue.

4) I'm sorry about the big vacancy at the end of November there. Robyn and I were in Ohio for Thanksgiving, visiting her grandparents and other relatives. As you might have guessed, the grandparents don't have WiFi; we were able to get a weak signal from one of the neighbors if we stood in the corner of the guest bedroom at just the right time of day and held the laptop over our heads while spinning in a counter-clockwise direction. Having said that, we had a great time in Ohio, and got to eat lots of good food, drink lots of good wine, and play a lot of Bridge with Robyn's grandparents.

5)

The Oregon bears, Jonas Stamper found, were all well fed on clams and berries, and fat and lazy as old house cats. The Indians, nourished on the same two limitless sources of food, were even fatter and a damn sight lazier than the bears. Yes. They were peaceful enough. So were the bears. In fact the whole country was more peaceful than he had expected. But there was this odd... volatile feeling about the new country that struck him the very day he arrived, struck him and stuck, and never left him all the three years he lived in Oregon.

*Only because Deschutes Brewery doesn't have a distributor east of the Mississippi. Does anyone else want to start a petition to change this sad fact?