-Mark Twain

...Yes, so the presidential debates have gotten me feeling rather anti-anything-politics. I'm taking rather fiendish glee in the Wall-Street-dilemma--not because I wish the economy to fail necessarily, but because these people have spent years and years bowing down to their wretched economic success, and watching it fall is...it gives one a sense of rightness, a sort of "your gods have ears but cannot hear" feeling. Perhaps Elijah felt similarly (although undoubtedly with more strength) when the prophets of Baal could not summon fire on Mount Carmel. Perhaps the state of America's economy has fallen asleep...

In better news, the weather is glorious, and by glorious I mean the temperature is dropping with the stock market! I am more unashamedly and uncomplicatedly happy about the former. Coldness--whether it is cold in the clear-and-crisp sense or cold in the blustery-and-turbulent sense--is awesome. My employer and I have decided that if a certain candidate wins (three guesses and the first two don't count) we'll go to Mexico for the winter and Canada for the summer (PEI. Booya.). I'm thinking of just packing up and heading off to Canada for...forever. Find someplace with moderate-leaning-towards-low levels of population, beautiful scenery (I should like to have the ocean relatively nearby), and lots of cold. Seems to me an ideal situation. (The one flaw in either of these plans being the undoubtedly seedy nature of both the Mexican and Canadian government...unfortunately, one cannot lower the levels of natural human corruption by merely changing locations. Watch The Village if you've got any doubts about that. Or rather, tell your two-year-old "no.")

I've got a 13 page history paper to write, and even though 'tisn't due 'till the end of this month I need to take five pages of something to my discussion leader within this week. Obviously, I don't have five pages of much of anything, though I've got lots of ideas and notes, so I think I shall be off to try and formulate something solid. Whatever that means.

Cheers.

I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear...

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand."

-C.S. Lewis, 'A Grief Observed'