Login: greymage       			Name: Bob MacDowell
Directory: /u/greymage              	Shell: /bin/tcsh
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Plan:
    I used to think that I was serving humanity ... and I pleasured in the
    thought.  Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served;
    on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it.  So now I do what
    pleases Jubal Harshaw."  
          - Jubal Harshaw, on Jubal Harshaw, 
                    from Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land

The trip south was made tolerable only by my ability to appreciate 
things in their purely phenomenal aspect.  I sat next to the 
minister's wife, a woman of quintessential vapidity, and within ten 
minutes had exhausted all possible conversation with her.  The others 
in the car were even less interesting at first glance, so I settled 
back to enjoy the passing scenery.  But after about six hours of 
traveling I noticed something odd.  One of the girls in the front seat, 
Louise, hd not said a word or moved from her position for the entire
time.  I found myself stealing glances at her. Either she was in a 
light trance or a Buddha in disguise.  Later, when I asked her
what she had been thinking, she said "Nothing.  I hardly ever have
any thoughts." 

She had been born and raised on the outskirts of Tuscon, by
a pleasantly conservative schoolteacher of a father and a warmly
efficient housewife of a mother.  The single largest impression in
her life was the stillness of the desert, and she had grown up 
without a single complication in her mind.  She was not in college,
was moderately intelligent -- as such things are measured in our
so-called educational institutions -- and had all the proper attributes
of a young lady her age.  But for one.  When she wasn't actively
involved in something, her mind and body fell into automatic 
repose.  An enviable state. 

                   - Marco Vassi, The Stoned Apocalypse