The frequent casting of condemnatory stones is my great failing. Not just the first sinner to cast such stones, I'm usually the last also, and I'll be searching for yet more stones to cast when all the other Pharisees have long gone home. Jesus would be disappointed but he must know my targets don't feel the pain of cast stones anymore. They don't notice the persistent hail of judgmental missiles bouncing harmlessly off their bodies. Their thick-skinned foreheads are impervious to being bloodied by rocks of criticism thrown by the likes of me.
Years ago, I remember a prominent politician's vociferous response to my impertinent application of a Mark Twain quotation to himself. Nowadays I doubt any congressperson would acknowledge my existence, never mind reply in kind. And I don't blame them. No sane person would voluntarily enter the maelstrom of brickbats being tossed back and forth by anonymous maniacs on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever cranky, frazzled area of the Internet they inhabit. I live on this blog, which is obviously the lowest form of opinion, the most decrepit corner of the web from which electronic stones are cast, so my pronouncements are the least noteworthy.
But I'm not bothered about that. What concerns me is losing all sense of whimsicality and just being bad-tempered. Scrolling down this page to previous posts from ye olde blog entries from bygone times, I detect traces of whimsy and inspired humor when my herd of brain cells grazed in left field. God forbid that picturesque meadow has become barren and brown, a blasted heath where only ineffectual stones are scattered, where the Mount of Olives, Ozymandias' antique land, and my personal Waterloo all merge into one unreadable map reference. Meanwhile, I'm casting this stone at myself, a large prune pit, and "ouch" that hurts.
