tomorrow

[Les Smith]

WARNING:_ WAY_ OFF TOPIC!!!!

On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Horace Greeley wrote:

> When reading Freud, one is always well
> advised to remember that his cigar,
> was a cigar.

Sorry, Horace, I gotta disagree. What's important is that while Freud  
SAID his cigar was just a cigar, and maybe even BELIEVED that it was just
a cigar, as one of his colleagues pointed out, when you create a universe     
bounded on all sides by bagels and cigars, a cigar can never again be
"just" a cigar, nor a bagel, "just" a bagel. Jung goes on to tell us
that Freud's father always smoked BIGGER cigars and was often heard to
remind his son of the famous words of that well-known existentialist
philosopher, Jimmy Durante, who once said that "The piano player who
smokes the biggest cigars always gets the girls". Modern, post-Freudian 
piano technicians attribute the somewhat strange ideas and theories
expressed in CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS to Freud's inability to
escape from the shadow of his father's presence and also to Frued's
proclivity to using CA glue without adequate ventilation. Nevertheless
it still makes fine reading because when brilliant minds miss the mark,
sometimes they make brilliant mistakes, which are, in themselves, still
more interesting and instructive than those made by mere mortals like
ourselves. So it was with Freud. I have always thought that Freud would
have nade an excellent speed-stringer in a piano factory, because he
would have undoubtedly visualized each pin to be his father as he
visciously pounded it home into the pinblock--at least that's the way
_I've_ always done it! :)

Perhaps, in that not-too-distant future, when they come in the dead of
night to take the two of us away, we can request adjoining padded
cells. That way, in addition to discussing pianos and philosophy, we
can also play chess and consider an idea once expressed by turn-of-
the-century (WHAT ELSE?!!) World chess champion, Emanuel Lasker, when
he  said, "I have spent the last half of my life trying to forget
everything I learned during the first half of my life, in the hopes
that I might thereby be able to exchange knowledge for wisdom." Not
bad for an old German dude, with a droopy mustach, who liked to smoke
cigars, huh?! 

Regards,

Les Smith
lessmith@buffnet.net