I hate writing research papers. I'm completely restricted to telling the truth. Oh, I don't mind doing the research. It's often quite interesting. But as I begin to smash together all my findings on paper, I want to change things. I start to invent conversation in my head and must restrain myself from writing it. If I could, I would chop up the facts and rearrange the stories into something more interesting than wartime ideals and patriotism. As I write these thirty pages about World War II and Stanly County, NC, I feel like I'm lying. In a way I am. I was never one to be objective in telling a story. You have to be sneaky about it, making it look like you're objective and unbiased and without prejudice. But really, what you're composing is a big, huge lie that tells about reality more than the truth ever could. That's what fiction is. Or that's my type of fiction. That's what I'm devoting my time to when I'm not reading or writing for school, which is always. As soon as this semester is over, I'm going to spend the five weeks afterward in this room. I'll be quiet as a keyboard. I'm going to allow my beard to come back for the fifth time. After sunup I will take pictures of dew and grasshoppers and count squirrels at the park. Then I will come home and write this crazy book I started.

I have found a way to make this paper more interesting without lying. First of all, don't get me wrong—the stories and information of the World War II era in Stanly County are quite interesting. But as I came close to finishing the paper, I felt something was missing. It was a very important something. It was spin! Not really, of course. The paper just lacked a central thread. In reading over the thing, I found what it should be. Hooray.

I'm a dummy.

I'm getting foreign spam now:

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Maybe this is normal for others, but it represents a new dimension of spam for me—one that's more fun.

Americans get an 'F' in religion. The author states that he "grew up Episcopalian and now says he's a spiritually 'confused Christian.'" Amen.

Why Intelligent People Tend To Be Unhappy. Society fails them, basically, with lack of proper emotional and psychological development. The information in the article is obvious, but needs to be restated again and again until serious attention is paid to the problem. See the discussion below the article, too.

There are several parks within twenty minutes of my home. I am blessed, for certain, in this regard. They allow refuge from people and proximity to wildlife. I am able to think and walk, which is when I do my best thinking. Today I thought about kindness. A lot of humans have it backward. First, we often assume the worst about others. For that reason, they must earn our kindness. I think society would improve if we practiced undue kindness instead—being nice to everyone for as long as possible, regardless of negative feedback. Second, the limiter for undue kindness would be the point at which being kind has lost its value for the moment. That is, until the person or situation can no longer benefit from your kindness. For example, an ignoramus who constantly refutes your attempts at congeniality with verbal, emotional, or another abuse has passed the point. But this is similar to a turn-the-cheek method, so one would not abandon undue kindness until all efforts to establish rapport have failed and hostility on the part of the other party has won dominance.

For those of us with hot tempers, this is hard.

My monitor went out in January. I've lived with a very old fifteen-inch Sampo since then. I finally broke down and ordered a Dell seventeen-inch flat panel LCD monitor. The quality is amazing. I'm able to edit my photos again, which is an ineffable joy. Also, it arrived in less than forty-eight hours after I hit the Submit Order button. I'm very happy with it.

Today I walked around Albemarle, taking photos of anything, everything. It was warm and sunny. Lots of people were out. It is the second day of the Albemarle Art Gallery Crawl.

There was nothing for me to worry about. I just wanted to take pictures. So that's what I did. After a couple hours, I came home, uploaded the photos, and pumped them through Photoshop while listening to music. Today was a good day.

Now I must find a way to make a career out of this.