81

Do you think that birthdays should be celebrated once every two years, rather than every year? I've got no objection to my own birthday being celebrated every year, but other people's - well, there are rather a lot of them, aren't there? It can be a bit tedious, can't it, to be honest? You want to mark the day as a celebration of someone whom you love, but instead it just becomes another chore, another petty duty eating away at your freedom. So, why not making them more meaningful and less tiresome by making them biennial?

I'd vote for any party that'd say it would make birthday celebrations biennial, but not of the main ones seem particularly interested.

What do you reckon?

80

Latest news: the rheumatic pain in my left foot has increased slightly.

79

Today there is a protest march by the unhappy. They are protesting against the world, the world that has rendered them unhappy.

It is mostly a silent protest. There are some who protest their unhappiness loudly, but these are unpopular with the majority of their fellow protesters, who take pride in carrying their unhappiness with a quiet dignity.

Least popular in the ranks are those who use their unhappiness to justify anti-social behaviour. The deeply unhappy regard it as their privilege to empathise keenly with suffering: in their eyes for an unhappy person to create unhappiness in others is an abomination. How many have there been who have taken their own lives, yet took great pains never to harm a fly? These are the true unsung heroes and heroines. The march celebrates their honour.

78

The sheer unlikelihood of existence, the something - the everything - that came from nothing, renders it all too deep a mystery.

Way too deep.

77

I think that symmetry is overrated.

Odd socks. Unmatching curtains - on the same window.

76

Isn't it a nuisance that, after you've gone and got something and finished using it, sooner or later you have to go through all the effort of putting it away again?

75

Tip: start from a base of deep pessimism, and then savour all the little positives. And sometimes some large ones too.