Well, crap, Typhoon Fitow is a-fixin’ to pass right over us in this here Kanto plain. I decided to cook the pork loin I had in the fridge and make rice. There is absolutely no chance I will starve, but it’s always nice to have a plan in times of epicurean crisis. I have bottles of excellent sake for sterilizing wounds and general sedative effect.

The Japanese TV news is all a-twitter with analysis of past typhoons that kicked the crap out of Tokyo. The newscasters are bowing their heads to each other significantly more deeply than usual (almost touching their foreheads to the desk), which I find creepy. They cut to old video of flooded tunnels, people wading thigh-high in water through the streets of the city, landslides at kiddy parks. Good stuff, it got my ass out of the beanbag to fill the tub with emergency water.

Speaking of epicureans, Thomas Jefferson shows me I need to reform my hebetudinous ways and follow the true teachings of Epicurus:

Monticello, October 31, 1819

Dear Sir, — Your favor of the 21st is received….

[...]

…. As you say of yourself, I TOO AM AN EPICUREAN. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus, indeed, has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. [...] I have sometimes thought of translating Epictetus (for he has never been tolerably translated into English) by adding the genuine doctrines of Epicurus from the Syntagma of Gassendi, and an abstract from the Evangelists of whatever has the stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of Jesus. The last I attempted too hastily some twelve or fifteen years ago. It was the work of two or three nights only, at Washington, after getting through the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day. But with one foot in the grave, these are now idle projects for me. My business is to beguile the wearisomeness of declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the delights of classical reading and of mathematical truths, and by the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear.

I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which presents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know, is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road….

Sorry, Tom, I’ll have a drink and watch an episode of House before bed. Oh, beautiful fragrant flower, please don’t bum us out tomorrow.