Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then - the glory - so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.
At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Why does Adam's pee smell like an elephant pen at the zoo? It's grassy and clean to the extent of piquing curiosity, but ultimately nauseating. -T.N. of SomervilleThanks, T.N. This smell is caused by a surprisingly large number of urinary tract infections, not diet as many believe. The vast majority of these infections are symbiotic with the others, resulting in a sort of miniature ecosystem in Adam's bladder and urethra. The net result is not especially deleterious, but very strongly scented.
If I was punched at Taco Friday, could I be pregnant? -B.H. of ArlingtonNot just could be, B.H., but definitely are! I would recommend giving up alcohol and buying a pair of knitting needles, some yarn, and keeping your fingers busy before the little one arrives. Congratulations.
Will there be a Taco Friday this week? My life is a fucked apart dead thing when I'm not having fun. -Y.T.D. of SomervilleYOU GOT IT, Y.T.D. Taco Friday kicks back off this Friday at the same taco time, same taco place as you've grown to love/tolerate. As always, R.S.V.P. so I know what the hell I'm doing with my life.
Taco Friday for Friday, June 11th
HEY HEY HEY
We are in for a double-header; tacos on Friday, AND THEN tacos on Friday. This is to celebrate the arrival of summer and also the departure of grody, grody spring. Things that were horrible about spring: rainpocalyse, the death-blow dealt to the FTC, etc.
It's time for more tacos. Last Friday was a return to yelling and talking about my dick; let's keep a good thing going. Themes are a thing of the past; Taco Friday returns to form. Semi-colons are a return to letting you know that I went to college. Come to this thing, guys.
Taco Friday for Friday, June 4th
Yeah I said it. HOLD 'EM.
Guys it's Wednesday and I am telling you about a Friday Taco Friday. I know it's late and I know I'm disappointing you. Guys I know. Allow me to assuage your disappointment, if ever so slightly.
Taco Friday for Friday, May 21st
people are not good to each other.WE DOIN' THIS. Taco Friday is back in action, no themes to slow us down. We will yell at each other, electrocute each other when arguments cannot be resolved via yelling, and punch me when that too fails. Taco Friday is exactly like the comic book hero Batman.
perhaps if they were,
our deaths would not be so sad.
"Gorilla Until Proven Human" proved to be one of the most difficult and frustrating party concepts in a while. The name sums it up pretty well: only those who can prove that they are human are recognized as such, while those who either have not or can not prove their humanity are assumed to be gorillas. This idea is taken in whole cloth from the "innocent until proven guilty" precept of the criminal justice system of the United States.
Criteria for one's humanity was not chosen before the party began. A small oversight, but it turns out that this is a tremendously complex qualification with many equally legitimate points of view. In short, what is gorilla to one may be human to another, and vice versa. Small ontological eruptions broke out very quickly; whiskey only fanned these sparks into a roaring flame.
Additionally, there was an unexpected psychological angle that was not even considered until a few folks who did not meet the qualifications for "human" decided that, since they were deemed to be gorillas, they would act as gorillas. Humorous, to be sure, but this caused a schism in the room between confirmed gorillas and confirmed humans. By coincidence or some unknown "gorilla factor," the known-gorillas were possessed of greater-than-average strength and cruelty. The known-humans were subjected to surprise "jungle locks" (simply a choke hold) throughout the night, and every unwatched drink belonging to a human immediately went missing. The hosts eventually instituted a "no grabbing" rule, but many drinks were still compromised in anger.
As the party went into the early morning, an epistemological shock wave moved through the crowd; only humans have the high-level intellect to determine human from non-human! No humans existed at the beginning of the party, according to the premise, "Gorilla Until Proven Human." Therefore, if there are no humans present to do the judging, no judgments could be made. All human/gorilla judgments made earlier in the night were thus invalidated; all present were gorillas. A few who were previously determined to be humans tried in vain to keep their title but were quickly browbeaten by the massive gorilla contingent. It got sad fast. Everyone left feeling worse than they came.
As we have said before, here at Taco Friday we are committed to bringing you the best, every time. There will be no Taco Friday this week, but instead, please enjoy a selection from my personal Goofus and Gallant fanfic archive.
"Good Salesmanship" - Goofus captures rats and sells them to younger children as "puppies." Gallant only sells real puppies, at affordable prices.
"Respect for Family" - Gallant helps his mother with the chores. Goofus sneaks out at night to shove beef suet into the tailpipes of neighborhood cars.
"Keeping Ahead of the Class" - Gallant hands in his homework on time. Goofus only raises his hand in class to speak when he feels that flatulence is coming on. He does not stop talking when he begins to pass gas.
"Your Body is Your Temple" - Gallant stays in bed when he is ill, so that he will get better quickly. Goofus reads medical texts, and then fakes potentially fatal ailments with eerie accuracy.
Taco Friday for Friday, April 9th
Last Taco Friday was such a complete success/mess that it's taken me this long to get back into the throne in which I sit to write these dispatches. Thanks to everyone who came, especially the new folks. This throne, by the way, is not a metaphor. Ask Me About My Throne; No, It's Not My Toilet.
This complete exhaustion that sometimes follows Taco Friday reminds me that my friends and companions are like leeches that drain the little precious vitality that I have. You, reader, are like a parasite of the best sort. The liquor that we drink is my blood, which you somehow digest into friendship. If we follow this analogy to its logical conclusion, you use the friendship that you draw from me to spawn your fiendish vampire worm offspring. No, I'm not deleting this paragraph; we're just going to play it fast and loose.
If it's not clear from this, I am inviting you to a Taco Friday this week. This week's affair will be more like the days of yore. Not quite like the days of yore, but basically this means that T.F. will be slightly less elaborate than the more recent days. I'm going to make you tacos, and then, I am going to drink so much that I lie through my liar's teeth. Sorry, or, you're welcome.
Please let me know what up.
Weeks without tacos; who could imagine this fate? Moreover, who could survive? This is what it must feel like for a father to fail his children, or maybe for a father goose to fail his goslings. I have no way of knowing in either case.
There are still twelve horrible days before Friday, March 26th, the next celebration that brings us together. This will be a grand time with a grand menu, enough to make up for three weeks of personal failings. Let's all consider what we've accomplished in Taco Friday, and how we've been bettered or worsed (read: wurst, or sausaged). What have you gained from Taco Friday? Have you gotten hit? Hit on? Did you meet your spouse or spouse-to-be? Did you rage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? I want to know.
Your personal essay task: What Does Taco Friday Mean To You? My video response:
This is the wise wantonness and benevolence of my soul: it does not hide its winter and frosty storms; neither does it hide its chilblains.
Let them pity me and sigh with me over my chilblains: 'He will yet freeze to death on the ice of knowledge!' — so they wail.
In the meanwhile, I run with warm feet hither and thither upon my mountain of olives: in the sunny corner of my mount of olives do I sing and mock all pity.
Thus sang Zarathustra.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Mount of Olives"
