Operation AXIOM
Happy Dominion Day to our friends in the Great White North, eh! Ooo, sorry, I mean happy Canada Day. One hundred forty-two years ago today, the Province of Canada (composed of the two Canadas, Upper and Lower, later known as Ontario and Quebec), the Province of New Brunswick, and the Province of Nova Scotia fused to form a confederation, the Dominion of Canada. I hold Canada in both high esteem and utter contempt, but for today we think only of the good and I offer them all congratulations. Way to go, eh!

The Queue
I cannot write the following without sounding terribly arrogant, even though such is not my intent, but I find in Chesterton's writing patterns of thought that remind me of mine own. However, I find also that he has embraced my unfortunate tendency to write myself into corners out of which only nonsensically complex sentences may be employed as a means of self-extrication; in short, the man writes in circles, approaches his subjects only obliquely, and seems to disdain ever coming directly to his point. Also, though eugenics is still an issue of great import to our society— tottering as it is on the edge of an abyssal age in which parents may harness the power of science to twist their yet unborn children into genetically "better" versions of what and how God Almighty intended those babies to be—Chesterton's arguments are firmly rooted in the immediately post-Great War epoch in which Eugenics and Other Evils was published, and thus, not being currently of a mind to fully tackle the implications of eugenics and out brave new world of genetic selection, I find the book of only minimal interest. Combine minimal interest with Chesterton's infuriatingly roundabout and noncommittal text and I feel no guilt over abandoning Eugenics and Other Evils.

I am hoping Chesterton's fiction is more straightforward that his essays, because I really do want to like the man, who was my very favorite kind of Christian: the adult convert to Catholicism.

Recently
David M. Friedman, The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever
William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White, The Elements of Style Fourth Edition
Nick Hornby, Shakespeare Wrote For Money
G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State (abandoned)

Currently
Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy

Presently
Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table
Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage
Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
Francie Lin, The Foreigner
Saki, When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Michael Jackson, "Beat It" from Thriller (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "You're playing with your life / This ain't no truth or dare."