Happy Black History Month from Lil' Benny

February's Humiliated Dog And Dog Attack

Dog Attacks Woman at Hotel, Police Shoot.

http://www.wtnh.com/news/new-london-cty/dog-attacks-woman-at-hotel-police-shoot

A Six-Word Fascination

You taste like cigarettes. Marry me.

  Devil saw my baby and ran.

    Don’t die. There’s more to do.

The Act of Seeking: Part One - Are People Inherently Equal?

Are People Inherently Equal?

I was posed with this question and I attempted to provide an honest answer to it. Go ahead, answer it right now. I have no way of judging if you answered the way I did. I do, honestly, believe that people come in different qualities. I also believe that people inherently know this. If I were to rephrase the question as “Are there Good people and Bad people?” most people would agree that there are. Someone that kills and steals isn’t as good as a person who doesn’t. Why, exactly?

Is theft inherently wrong? Is killing inherently evil? I hearyou. You’re reading this, thinking “Yes, of course.” When you say that, I think about Les Misables’ Jean Valjean, who had been arrested for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister. I think about our American troops who leave their safe homes and go half a world away to fight, and sometimes kill, for us here at home. These are extreme examples, but they’re getting me to my point. The acts, themselves, aren’t inherently evil. It’s the context that makes them evil. If Jean Valjean was a rich man imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, he would be evil; he would be a bad man. If the same soldier in Iraq came home and killed here, that soldier would be evil.

Let’s expand upon this:

In what context is intelligence good?

In what context is hard work goo

In what context is stupidity good?

In what context is laziness good?

If you answered these questions like I did, you might say that there are many contexts for the first two and there are few contexts for the latter two. Somewhere, there are contexts in which stupidity and laziness are good things, but those contexts aren’t of value in our society. You can, from that, extrapolate that people who exhibit those behaviors aren’t of value in our society.

This isn’t to say that people who behave stupidly or who are lazy will permanently suffer under that condition. For example, take a baby and a seven-year-old. Technically, a seven-year-old’s ability to read is of more value than a newborn infant. If you needed some instructions read out to you while you fixed a broken pipe, you’d ask a seven-year-old before you’d ask a baby. Let’s go ten years into the future. That baby is, now, ten and the seven-year-old is, now, seventeen.

If that seventeen-year-old still reads at a second-grade level and that ten-year-old reads at a fifth grade level, to you, the ten-year-old is now more valuable.

What had happened?  

My sister had started to read Their Eyes Were Watching God. She left the novel on the coffee table in our home and my father picked it up, studying the back cover. My sister caught him in this moment of curiosity and told him that it might be nice if they read the book together.

“I’ve read enough books. Thank you.” My father said.

This is the inherent divide that makes a person better or worse. If you ever believe that you have done enough, you are making yourself lesser. I am not a fan of Absolutes, but I do believe that people cannot stagnate. Never, ever stagnate. If you stop moving, you are moving backward.

I’ll get into this more in the rest of the book but, technically, you only need to know this: You can make yourself better by seeking.

(Guess what, you got the moral of this book on the fourth page!)

Will you be Lil' Benny's Valentine?

News Item Of The Month: February

Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, announced February 5^th that he will enact a law to balance the state’s budget and flood the state with cash by committing half the state’s tax revenue to the purchase of lottery tickets.

Rick Scott reportedly claimed, “I got a ‘Can’t-Lose’ system for picking numbers, but I’m not going to put all of Florida’s money on the lottery machine. I diversify with some scratchers.”  

Reports have been raised that Governor Scott, then, kneaded his hands together and bobbed his head up and down, saying ‘Yeah. Yeah. Y’all are going to see. Y’all are going to see.”

A Six-Word Fascination

   

  She didn’t burn. She got revenge.

  Old man dies alone, then forgotten.

3 Don’t kill cats. Cats kill you.

February Nerd Words Puzzle

Across 5. The Lady Of Shadows 7. An Evil witch who worshiped the Glass 8. The Theme of this Crossword 10. The Last Gunslinger of Mid-World

Down 1. Who Holds The Dark Tower, but can not ascend. 2. A Demented Momorail Train 3. The Man In Black 4. The Prisoner 5. The Author 6. The Youngest Gunslinger 9. Billy Bumbler

LIL BENNY!