The Corpuscle

So The Corpuscle's 90-day free trial at Typepad is up in less than a week. Upon reflection, I've determined that this blog thing is kind of entertaining (for me, at least, if not for you) so I signed up to pay real American dollars to keep things going. Now that money is involved, I expect things to get a hell of a lot seedier around here. What's the blog-ad rate for about 80 hits a day, I wonder? Hmm. Not much, I'll bet. Well, never mind. A number of tawdry, media-whorish stunts are in the works. I look forward to the day when I can insert ads directly into the body of posts (rather than letting them ride the sidebar where they actually belong) so I can thoroughly annoy my (as yet to materialize) billions and billions of readers.

In other Corpuscular news, I'm freakin' out over this Lord Layard book I talked about the other day. A lot of what he has to say about how the science of economics has to rebuild itself is fascinating, and promising, and feels viscerally correct, but a lot of other stuff he talks about seems wrong. But that's all right. In my view what we have here is a new idea a-bornin', which is good in a way because I feel like I am now perfectly entitled to not become a disciple of Layardism. I am free to take what I like about what he proposes, think about it for a while, then throw my own treasured bit of cracked pottery using the wet clay he's provided. This is known as the relentless march forward of human thought. Or, in my case, it's "what he said, only different". I talk and think and respond at a somewhat lower level of discourse than most philosophers. Sometimes I crack wise. I'll let you know whenever I want you to laugh.

One interesting upcoming topic: Failed Lives and the Roots of Happiness. It's a hoot. It's a meditation on how come I, inexplicably, unaccountably, seem to be one of the happiest and most relentlessly optimistic people I know. By all rights, if I actually listened to what other people thought, my good cheer could not long survive, let alone even exist in the first place. Fortunately, I am something of a nutbar and so feel pretty unobliged to pay very much attention to the way things are supposed to be. Perhaps I am some sort of latent Buddhist. Or, perhaps I am the Buddha himself? Can one be the Godhead and not know it? Seems unlikely, but what do I know? I think I might have even met myself on the road once, but I was wearing sunglasses and so couldn't be sure.

But be of good cheer. Yesterday was the last day of your previous life and, yes, in fact I do feel a bit giddy this morning. This always happens whenever I'm required to spend money. Spending money reminds me that cash is fungible and so is my time on Earth.

And Happy Balumtime's Day, by the way. Be your own Balumtime if you want. It's a free country and I'm pretty sure the Buddha won't mind.