The Triumph of Joe D.
So, the Pistons versus the Lakers, eh? The Beast of the East against the Best of the West. As stated before, I do not like the NBA and I hate what it has done to the great game of basketball; however, I do want the Pistons to triumph. For this desire, I have two reasons: a) any victory by a Detroit team is good for Detroit, and though things are now better than they once were, Detroit can still use all the help she can get, and b) the Los Angeles Lakers are like the New York Yankees, it does not matter against whom they are playing, I always want them to lose.

Moms and Dads
Sad, but true: I almost always prefer spending time with my father to time with my mother. She is my mother and I love her, but I am hardly fond of her as a person. There is an old song which contains the lyrics, "I want a girl just the girl who married dear old dad"; tee hee, nothing could be further from the truth. My father is a facist hatemonger and the worst person I've ever known, but we share many common interests.

The World
A pretty girl in terribly unflattering clothes came by the house this evening selling Bibles. (Not really Bibles, but Bible study guides, after a fashion.) One of her principle pitches was that we needed the Bible now more than ever because the world is bad and getting worse. This, I utterly fail to understand. Yes, people are starving and people are committing unspeakable evils toward one another, but at the same time more people have more wealth and more health and more convenience and more food than at any other point in human history. Slavery still exists, but for the first time in history it is looked down upon and active efforts are being made to stamp it out. How can you say we are in moral decline when slavery is unacceptable? Whole diseases have been eradicated and, were our resources properly focused, we have the power to eliminate poverty. We are being fruitful and multiplying. Even for those wacky Evangelicals, the types who view a high divorce rate as a greater evil than slavery, things should be looking up: there are more Christians alive today than at any other time; one third of the human race are Christians, a higher percentage than in any other era. Atheistic Communism has been defeated! The Holy Inquisition's unholy efforts have been suspended! How can the world possibly be worse now than it used the be?