I was rude to The D.J, though in my mind he's over it already. The guilt is just kicking in now though, thanks to a second major social mistep that catalyzed the whole process.

I read Emerson's Self-Reliance today, which as The Insurrectionist noted, is "a really great essay". The Poet dislikes it; you'd think after Cooper she'd be thrilled.

I think I'll start adherring to some sort of general moral system, rather than just making it up as I go along. Like Nietzsche's contemporaries, and prettymuch everyone else, I'll just adopt the moral system (Catholic) I grew up with and pretend it's original. Emerson's transcendentalism, for all it's flaky pantheism, sounded good too. Here's a bit of exemplary flakiness, you don't have to read it:

Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool�s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Emerson, by the way, disliked people who quoted the ideas of dead men rather than express their own. And expressing other people's ideas can be dangerous, I've found. Well, I need to codify something, or identify myself more strongly with the lapsed-Catholic moral-community.

Or maybe I don't; living moment to moment is fine, but I'd have to think about everything I said, which just doesn't seem possible -I'm not quick enough, and any good Brainerdite knows that if I talk for long enough it becomes clear that I have no clue, even if I really do know the subject matter.

I just watched the last third of Andy Richter Controls The Universe. Hilarious!