I noticed a lot of dogs when I was out on my New Year walk, they were chasing sticks and barking — just doing normal doggy things. I got the impression that they don’t pay much attention to the calendar. It’s admirable, encouraging them to live in the present rather than work like a dog human in return for a couple of days holiday. They live within their means. Now, you might argue that dogs haven’t achieved much recently, but then neither have most humans.
Of course, it is from the Greek word for Dog — kyon — that we derive the word Cynic. The prototypical cynic was Diogenes of Sinope who was reported to have been seen barking in public, urinating on the leg of a table, and masturbating on the street. I mention this because apparently my Mum has started reading this blog. (Hi Mum!). In the past I was slightly self-conscious about certain people inspecting my casual thoughts, but not anymore. Come one, come all, as long as you don’t mind reading the blogging equivalent of Diogenes of Sinope.
I told her that my blog is like a letter, but a letter addressed to everyone. She said that was fine but that because it was public you couldn’t write what you really think about people. I said that I try not to think anything bad about people so that didn’t matter. Of course, neither are true: it isn’t anything like a letter and I think bad about lots of people, but it sounded good at the time.
One of the things that I have been looking recently is this list of teetotalers, which is full of interesting and/or admirable characters, such as David Bowie, Don Bradman, Russell Brand, Warren E. Buffett, Tom Cruise, A. A. Gill, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Will Self to name just ten. I had assumed that most of the people on the list would be terrible ex-alcoholics who had to stop drinking or die, but it seems that this is not always the case. Some simply prefer to not drink.