I realize I shouldn't write or talk about the subject, as it is counter-productive and really at all ends a moot point, but constant dealing with idiots and backward simpletons seems to be sucking the life right out of me. At times I can almost feel the inspiration and creativity, the very zeal for the pleasures of a balanced life being tapped as though from a keg of much-too popular ale. There's a healthy reserve but it isn't meant to operate that way.

It isn't that I need to be around a certain type of people so much as I need to stay the hell away from another type. For many out there, you don't need to deal with them to any real extent; you shake your head at them in traffic, nod to them as you pass in a doorway, say thank you for this or that paltry thing. Point is, they are of no real value to the substance of your day, much less your life as a whole. I, on the other hand, am forced through the trials of my occupation to deal with them in detail, on a routine daily basis. The disease of the homogenized and narrow-gauge man seems to be spreading to the general population these days, intellectual calibre not withstanding. These are the times that try men's souls, indeed. Once more into the breach...

Make the world to suit you, if you can scrounge up the materials to build it; if not, make the materials!