Tim and Joe Reap What They Sow

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the Boston sociopaths has been summarily despatched to wallow for eternity in the company of those of his brothers who better understand him. His brief and tortuous journey through life's trials and tribulations led him to seek less rather than more, and this goal he accomplished.

As for his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, his unhappy trails and trials have just begun. It is a bitter shame that this newly naturalized American citizen chose to follow the paths of homicidal maniacs, rather than the road taken by so many millions of  immigrants who chose not to dismiss the following inspirational words:

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Experience Can't Be Taught

In Martin Amis' memoir, Experience, he includes a letter that he wrote to his father, Kingsley, and his stepmother, Jane. The letter contains the following passage:


There are only 4 days to go until the Oxford interviews and, since I haven't received a telegram, it seems that I've passed the first hurdle. There are now about three serious candidates for every place. I am rather dreading the interviews: shall I be refreshingly different, stolidly middle-brow, engagingly naive, candidly matter-of-fact, contemptuously sophisticated, incorruptibly sincere, sonorously pedantic, curiously fickle, youthfully wide-eyed? ... Should I play the profound truth-seeker, the seedy anti-hero, the crusty society-observer, the all discerning beauty-appreciator? No, I suppose I shall end up...just...being...myself.

I realized upon reading this confession that Martin Amis and I share more than just the damnation of dental dilemmas. I have observed that I constantly choose to show any and all of those characteristics he listed whenever I am simply asked the time of day, or when commenting on the current local weather conditions. Experience has taught me that I can be all of those things, and more, and still be myself. I couldn't, if not wouldn't, have it any other way.