by Jerome du Bois
It happened while I was in the middle of reading Lee Smolin's new book The Trouble With Physics, as I was struggling through the history of string theory, as I was trying to wrap my brain around branes, supersymmetry, and Maldacena's conjecture about the correspondence between string theory and gauge theory: I felt good. In fact, I felt great. It was exhilarating to follow along as real thinkers engaged the challenging conundrums presented by the real world. And I suddenly became aware that the cloud of depression that had been hanging over me for months had, if not departed, at least parted.
What was the source of that cloud? Islam, of course. On the news, it's all Islam, all the time. We are surrounded and overwhelmed by the relentless picking picking picking away at our lives by this antihuman ideology. Every day it's something. Rumors of bin Laden's death set off a two-day running rumination of speculation, complete with incessant reruns of old video loops of that bastard in a morning-to-evening blanket of face-time that any publicity hound would swoon over.
And every day, for years, I've been dutifully checking in with Robert Spencer, and Charles Johnson, and the Counterterrorism Blog, and a bunch of other sites, to see the latest depredations this hateful religion has committed against human dignity and freedom. Against the very fact of our humanity.
It's taken its toll.
For months and months I felt a bubbling anger underneath every ordinary moment, a sense of frustrating foreboding every time I turned on the television or went online, a gnawing away at every blessing in my life. Which is just what these Muslims want.
While reading Smolin's book, I imagined a roomful of physicists arguing the arcana of extra dimensions, debating the reality of the cosmological constant, speculating on whether the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will detect the elusive Higgs boson --and then a militant Muslim-- say, Ibrahim Hooper-- steps into the room. What would he have to offer? How could he advance the conversation? What could he even say? Only one thing: the answer is Allah. Forget everything else and get on your knees.
Of course. That's all they all have to offer: the worship of the ultimate infantile fascist, a self-centered bloody baby who thinks it's all about him, him, him.
Well, I'm done with all that for awhile. I'm not about to stick my head in the sand, and if any jihadist shows up at my door I'll send him straight to hell, but I'm done paying minute attention to these shitheads. (Notice how the sidebar is now absent the I Slam Islam section, and the one about Mexican illegals and OTMs, too.) So Muslims can go suck rocks, the Koran can swirl in the toilet, and Allah can eat my shorts. I have a wife to love (and photograph), books to read, art to make, meals to cook, stories to write, a life to enjoy.
I'm already two-thirds of the way through Ron Rosenbaum's astounding new book, The Shakespeare Wars, the reading of which is like being repeatedly struck by lightning. My mind is abuzz with ideas of my own. Then I've peeked at Rupert Sheldrake's The Sense of Being Stared At, which claims some of the paranormal is normal, and based on evolution. Fascinating. Plus there's a new Harry Bosch novel out. Woo-hoo! I just finished a new piece of digital art, which I'll put up tomorrow.
You see, life is good.
Posted by Jerome at September 26, 2006 12:42 PM | TrackBack