Somewhere in the dusty ruins of time I would be in a math department today hearing Pi jokes. I should have written them down. I think I"ll Pi one on today. Somewhere in the closet I have a Pi tie that I would always wear on this day. I once memorized the first 25 numbers. All I remember today is 3.1415. Good enough. My favorite math department was Mississippi State. There was one Renaissance Man in that dept with whom I could talk American history. I called him Leonardo. He liked it. Happy Pi Day, Chuck (Leonardo).
I am out and about on this cold day in the Homewood area, the Little Professor Bookstore, watching the SEC title game, trying to stay clear of the Werewolves of Homewood. If you see me, please say hello. I'll be the old guy in a polka-dotted hoody, shuffling along, looking straight ahead in my own world, singing "Is this all there is?" Hopefully I won't see the Buddha on the road as I abhor violence. It will be up to you to initiate contact.
As Adam Serwer of the Atlantic famously wrote in 2018, "malice is embraced as a virtue" for the Republican Party in modern times. Cruelty, he argued, "makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united." It's not just a nostalgia for the past that animates them, it's a nostalgia for the ugliest, darkest parts of the past. The suffering most of us are glad is in the past is something the GOP wants to bring roaring back to life, even as they erase the documenting of it in the history books.
Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at Salon and the author of "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte and sign up for her biweekly politics newsletter, Standing Room Only.
In the middle of his second week in the hospital, Yossarian dreamed of his mother, and he knew again that he was going to die. The doctors got upset when they gave him the news.