There's no question, we've become good at being good at ourselves.
The question is: Are we smart enough to like ourselves and be kind.

after 11? years here...first time with the black pudding...in the pan...damn...tis good

well, i've read i'd say 90% of orwell's output now: i've read the personal letters that have been collected from about age 17 onward to his personal friends, then publishers, then contemporaries (that he signed 'yours eric blair' up until his death) and all of the associated novels...i've read all the essays he wrote on subjects ranging from english cooking to communism, i've read all of the 'london letters' that he wrote to the partisan review in new york throughout the war years and his infomercials to india via the bbc...i've read hundreds of his book reviews and his critiques from dickens to koestler to twain. i've read his blurbs while editing the tribune and his spanish war diaries...but i have not yet read 'homage to catalonia' (which i probably won't)...'animal farm' or '1984'...(which i will)

in the chronological 'letters and essays' that i'm reading it's 1943/4, there remain air raids every night in london but no bombs drop. people are now confident that hitler will be defeated. the fact that he was shot through the neck in the spanish civil war is far behind him.
he has only six years to live..he's 40..he's just starting animal farm
he's someone i definately would've wanted a beer with.

They say laughter is the best medicine but I actually think it's saliva.

I apologize to him, his seventh isn't so bad after all.
.....I take that back, listen to the 5th again and compare.

There is a certain amount of strength you must have to follow up your ideas...this is not the same as having some stupid ideas and standing by them.

My bulls are not bulls, they're vacuums.
My cows are not cows...nor my people..etc.

I've always tried to make Art without Propaganda.

if you don't entertain yourself
somebody else will