"Problems with drugs and crime on Kensington Ave, Philadelphia's most dangerous street. In Philadelphia as a whole, violent crime and drug abuse are major issues. The city has a higher rate of violent crime than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas. The drug overdose rate in Philadelphia is also concerning. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50%, with more than twice as many deaths from overdoses as homicides. Kensington's high crime rate and drug abuse contribute significantly to Philadelphia's problems.
Because of the high number of drugs in the neighborhood, Kensington has the third-highest drug crime rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia, at 3.57. The opioid epidemic has played a significant role in this problem, as it has in much of the rest of the country. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed in the United States over the last two decades, and Philadelphia is no exception. In addition to having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% of Philadelphia's overdose deaths involved opioids, and Kensington is a significant contributor to this figure. This Philadelphia neighborhood is said to have the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast, with many neighbors migrating to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high concentration of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have focused on the neighborhood in an attempt to address Philadelphia's problem."
"It’s over… those are the words being told to Ukrainian president Zelensky about the war… it’s over. While at the same time the US is openly admitting that the U.S. is actively attacking Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder to do it."
"All of a sudden, we are getting some serious advice from the billionaires again. Do you take this advice? The majority of them are giving their real estate and inflation advice."
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
"The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object - the joy of living - is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road."
- Eiji Yoshikawa
○
"Benedicto"
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”
"The Full Obliteration of the Ukrainian Army is Here"
"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."
"A Third Of All U.S. Shopping Malls Are Closing As
‘Space Available’ Signs Go Up All Over America"
by Epic Economist
"The ominous signs of a retail collapse are everywhere, looming like dark clouds over the American economy. If one were to look past the facade of "Space Available," they would see the ghostly remains of shopping malls, once thriving epicenters of commerce, now empty and abandoned. The forecast is dire - nearly one-third of all malls in the United States are set to close, and the number of distressed retailers has spiked to levels not seen since the last recession. It's a haunting reality that strikes fear into the hearts of even the most optimistic observers.
The retail apocalypse is upon us, and it's spreading like a contagion. Walmart, JCPenney, and countless other once-reliable retailers are shuttering stores across the country, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.
It's a scene straight out of a horror movie - the once-bustling corridors of shopping malls now eerily silent, abandoned storefronts with "Space Available" signs as the only indication of their former occupants. The retail industry is in disarray, and the impact is felt far beyond just the companies themselves. The economy is at risk of collapsing under the weight of these unprecedented closures, and the future looks bleak.
The retail apocalypse is a warning sign of what's to come, a chilling reminder of the fragility of our economy. It's a wake-up call to take action, to find ways to support and protect our businesses and communities before it's too late.
If the U.S. economy was actually doing as well as the stock market says that it should be doing, all of these retail chains would not be closing stores and going bankrupt. But of course the truth is that the stock market has become completely disconnected from economic reality.
We live at a time when middle class consumers are tapped out. According to one recent survey, 68 percent of all Americans do not even have enough money in the bank to write a $400 check for an unexpected expense.
Despite the significant decline of the U.S. economy, it is quite astonishing that the Federal Reserve is most likely going to increase interest rates at their upcoming meeting.
Beware! The giant bubble of false economic stability that we are currently basking in is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. This financial mirage has persisted far longer than it should have, but make no mistake, we are living on borrowed time. The truth is that nothing has changed about the long-term economic outlook, and it's only a matter of time before the entire system comes crashing down.
America is hurtling towards an "economic Armageddon", a catastrophic event that will leave our nation reeling and gasping for breath. The retail industry, once a cornerstone of our economy, is now a canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of doom, warning us that our day of reckoning is rapidly approaching. The warning signs are all around us, and those who refuse to acknowledge them will pay a heavy price. Brace yourselves, for the end is near!"
"You notice this whenever you work with an outlier. The bar they set for themselves and others is beyond what most people imagine. Standards apply not just to the quality of work you produce but the opportunities you work on. If you accept substandard work from yourself, you'll only get average work from others. If you say yes to average projects, you'll have no time for exceptional ones. Raise the bar to raise the results."
"The evening got away from me. I’d love to tell you that I was doing something productive, but I was really just goofing around. I felt a bit blah (not sick, mind you, but blah) all week. So, I decided to goof around. If today’s thoughts are a bit shorter than usual, that should explain it.
When I was a young adult, I read "Atlas Shrugged." Now, I said, I read it, but when it got to the part where John Galt hacked into the radio to give a (what seemed like to me) 700-page speech that was just reiterating every point Rand had already made in the book, but this time with crayon, I skipped it. So, I read most of it. Except 90% of the speech.
One thing that stuck with me about the tone of the book was that it took place in a world that had moved on. Stuff just didn’t work. I seem to recall a broken clock, and broken rails, and the image of a society that had done great things but was no longer capable of them.
The mission of NASA used to be to send people and things up into space. The goal was to learn more about the Solar System, the planets, and the Universe beyond. The other part of the goal was to make man an interplanetary and, hopefully, an interstellar species.
NASA was doing one of the hardest things that had ever been done – inventing technology at the very edge of what humans were capable of, and then using it. It was one of the grandest adventures of the 20th Century. It was also staffed by young people. Gene Kranz, the “Failure is not an option guy” was the Flight Director for several Apollo missions, most notably Apollo 13. When Apollo 13 happened? Kranz was 36.
Our nation at that point had failures, sure. But now it seems like that’s the definition. And the things we’re failing on aren’t even new tech. East Palestine (The Mrs. told me, “It’s pronounced Palesteen, Froderick”) Ohio is suffering from one of the biggest failures of tech that is nearly 200 years old.
Then there was a fire at Oak Ridge involving uranium. Normally, one tries to avoid burning radioactive things. I mean, it’s not like this is Russia and all of us are protected from radiation via the consumption of massive amounts of vodka. There are others, of course. The Jackson, Mississippi water plant appears to not work (sometimes) because the people running it don’t know how to run it. I could go on and on.
In one sense, it almost appears that we’re suffering a crisis of people who just don’t care or are, well, stupid. I hate to say stupid, because water treatment has been around for hundreds of years, too, and is far simpler than the Apollo project.
One symptom, perhaps, of the increasing and accelerating rate of change (notice I didn’t say improvement, I said change) in the world is increasing failures of the basic systems of life. Sure, we can have Doordash™* deliver tacos, but the justice system is failing, too. And how many readers here trust our elections? In the race to be “efficient” we’ve made it easy to cheat. Even if there wasn’t cheating, creating systems that are opaque enough so they’re not shenanigan proof is a failure in itself.
Our social systems are failing. Our infrastructure is failing, and it becomes ever more obvious the things that bind us together are failing. Here in Modern Mayberry, the power has worked pretty well, but investment in power and infrastructure has made the system nearly third-world in some places.
I expect it to get worse. I don’t even think we’re close to the level of failure we’ll be seeing due to the incompetence of the leadership in the country. I see no real thoughts that our leadership will get better, since the idea of hiring smart young folks like Gene Kranz is out the window, and hiring people who share the same ideology, regardless of ability, is in.
We are living in the time science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein called, “The Crazy Years” – in his words: “Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation and social institutions, terminating in mass psychoses...”
I believe the signs are there that we are in that “mass psychoses” and that is the end of this cycle. The mere fact that truth can no longer be spoken in public due to the offense that it might give shows that the mental bending is built deep into discourse today. To be clear, there is little of today’s society when it comes to values and morality left to conserve – the Left has taken it all. No, where we are going into our future has nothing to do with conservation, it’s going to be about restoration. Failure is not an option. *There is no Doordash™ in Modern Mayberry, unless it's raining."
San Martin, Argentina - "Bear markets take time. They also provide countless occasions to lose money. With each bounce comes an opportunity for investors to buy higher so they can later sell lower." ~ MN Gordon
“Here’s an article in the French newspaper, Le Figaro, from yesterday,” Elizabeth reported cheerfully. “A woman was found cut into pieces in a freezer, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Her husband has been arrested.” “Gee, I guess Paris isn’t safe anymore,” responded another member of the family. “Wait a minute. There are 2 million women in the Paris area,” your author introduced a statistical analysis. “The odds of getting hacked to pieces is very low." “Unless you live in the 9th arrondissement,” Elizabeth suggested. “Or, you’re married to a guy who cuts up his wife,” we replied.
Manipulate, Distort… and Destroy: In a few sentences, we had identified the problems with statistics. One part useful, one part misleading, and one part a damned lie – they are always a menace. The ratio of butchered women/population is interesting. But not particularly helpful to the woman in the freezer.
Warren Buffett made the same point in his famous speech in Sun Valley, 1999; it’s the particular that matters: "The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors."
Last week, we explored the numbers used by the Fed to manipulate, distort and destroy the US economy. Today, we look at the headlines and wonder where the next dismembered body turns up. Benzinga: "Larry Summers Points Out US Never Evaded A Recession At These Unemployment, Inflation Levels: 'Powerful Historical Truth.'
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers reportedly highlighted the absence of past examples in which the U.S. managed to avoid a recession when the unemployment rate fell below 4% and inflation rose above 4%. That's a powerful historical Higher for Longer."
We asserted on Friday that inflation is now ‘embedded’ in the system. Like a weed in a garden, it will grow until it is pulled out. The Fed is on the case. Here’s the latest from Bloomberg: "Fed’s Preferred Inflation Gauge Accelerates, Adding Pressure for More Rate Hikes." "The personal consumption expenditures price index rose 5.4% from a year earlier and the core metric was up 4.7%, both marking pickups after several months of declines. Consumer spending, adjusted for prices, jumped 1.1% from the prior month, the most in nearly two years."
And more…Bloomberg continues: "Fed May Need to Hike to 6.5% to Cool Prices, Study Says." "In a paper presented Friday at a conference in New York, a quintet of Wall Street economists and academics argue that policymakers still have an overly-optimistic outlook and they will need to inflict some economic pain to get prices under control."
Oh yeah? The Fed may have to go even higher. Here is Research Affiliates, with more bad news: "Given the recent US inflation rate, which has been above 6% for the last 12 months and above 8% for the last 7 months, history tells us that the median number of years to reduce inflation below 3% is 10 years, with a 20th to 80th percentile range of 6 to 19 years. How many economists—let alone pundits and policy “experts”—have suggested we may have elevated inflation for six years, much less the longer outliers?
That is the good news. The bad news is at 6% and higher inflation, cresting inflation is the exception, not the rule: inflation usually marches to the next threshold. When inflation subsequently rises to the next threshold, we call these cases accelerating inflation. Indeed, once the 8% threshold is surpassed, as happened this year in the United States and much of Europe, inflation marched to the next threshold, and often well beyond, over 70% of the time.iii The lesson we should take from this is not that inflation is destined to move to new highs in the months ahead (after all, nearly 30% of the time, it is, in fact, cresting!), but that we dismiss that possibility at our peril.
Is it possible that inflation will recede to 4% and then to 2% in the coming year or two? Of course it’s possible! History says it is unlikely. Our fiscal and monetary policies have done far more harm than good in recent years. truth and I think it's one that's relevant to our current situation," Summers said."
Heads They Win, Tails You Lose: In other words, inflation ain’t going away anytime soon. When it goes over 8%, it usually goes higher. The Fed knows this too. So, now – with its many statistical obfuscations and ideological delusions – it is committed to continuing to raise rates. That will inevitably lead to lower stock prices, higher bond yields, and a recession.
Making a long story short, the Fed has to continue raising rates until one of two things happens – either the inflation rate falls (below the Fed’s key rate)…or higher interest rates cause something to break…and the Fed panics.
Our guess is that the second hypothetical will happen before the first one. Then, the situation will get worse, for a long, long time."
"People are falling behind in their bills. People that do not have their property taxes paid are finding themselves the victims of losing their homes. The equity is being stolen."
"Millions of people in the West see the spiritual catastrophe their societies are being led towards. The elites are going crazy, but that is their problem. What we have to do is defend our children from this degradation and degeneracy." - Aimee Therese on Twitter.
“It’s Coming.” That’s what Elon Musk said a while back apropos of the Twitter files that show all the US government suppression of Covid-19 information mis-labeled as “misinformation.” Think of whatever the truth is as mis-misinformation. Get it? You might have to read that sentence more than once to comprehend what went wrong with the American consensus the past three years. And then you’ll begin to understand why the operation is called mind-f*ckery.
“It” comes out in weird ways now. For instance, Woody Harrelson’s little prank on Saturday Night Live. The A-List actor opened the show acting stoned, talking about how much he likes weed and getting stoned, and, at the very end of his routine, spoke of a “movie script” that spun out in his stoned head:
"The Biggest drug cartels in the world get together, and buy up all the media and all the politicians… and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes… and people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drug… and keep taking them over and over. I threw the script away. I mean, who’s gonna believe that crazy idea?”
One can also imagine the NBC lawyers’ iPhones lighting up and emitting a cacophony of ring-tones in the late-night hours following Woody’s little gaucherie. After all, this is the TV network that still employs the likes of Rachel Maddow, Misinformation-Informer-in-Chief of the whole USA who, for years, has performed as the icon representing how the political Left thinks of itself, and what it thinks. What the Left thinks of itself, of course, is that it’s collectively the smartest person in the world. And what the Left actually thinks is exactly what Woody’s movie script implied: believe everything that the government, the news media, and the drug companies tell you, and act accordingly, and destroy anyone who says otherwise.
Woody’s gag offended the news media hugely and instantly, said media being scaffolded on the Internet. The response was wildly censorious. Vanity Fair’s insta-bulletin said, “Uncle Woody… taking the stage to float conspiracy theories disguised as provocative humor is both intellectually dishonest and tedious.” Tedious? As if you’ve heard that come out of A-list actors’ mouths a thousand times? I doubt it. Who is being “intellectually dishonest” exactly?
Rolling Stone, likewise headlined: “Woody Harrelson Spreads Anti-Vax Conspiracies During SNL Monologue.” (Just how anti-anti-establishment now is the old counter-culture rag I once worked for?) The Daily Beast, The Left’s house organ, echoed that: “Woody Harrelson Spews Anti-Vax Conspiracies in Rambling SNL Monologue.” Notice, “spews,” as in the most vile and disgusting bodily function imaginable, you revolting piece of filth….
Now, what Woody actually didn’t say in that little riff, if you’re paying attention, is that the vaxxes in question are ineffective and dangerous. Yes, he actually left that part out, though there were enough dots in the monologue to connect that message, if you were of a mind to. The problem for the smartest people in the world is that their minds stopped working about five years ago - mainly when a certain DJT stepped onstage to declare that the Left’s management of national affairs was corrupt, depraved, and dangerous. This enraged the management class to the max
Graduates of Yale, Brown, Harvard, and the rest of the elite service academies went nuts over that and, in a bizarre switcheroo for the ages, became the staunchest defenders of anything the government decided to impose on the people of this land, starting with a series of political hoaxes - RussiaGate, Ukraine phone call impeachment - cresting with the Covid-19 hysteria and its vaccination cherry-on-top. The smartest people in the world were all-in on all of that, and knocked themselves out enforcing and defending it.
And now… its coming… out. They were played. Absolutely snookered. All. These. Brilliant. Morally unassailably upright. Good. People. Taken for a ride. Spoofed. Put-on. Conned. And they sold out their country in the process. And now they cower on the verge of being unmasked for the mendacious fools they are. One might empathize at how horribly painful this is, the ethical wreckage of a whole social demographic! But don’t confuse empathy with sympathy. They are about to sink in historic disgrace and ignominy, and that’s why their official interlocutors react so harshly.
Another part Woody left out is what happens after the suckered people take the cartel’s drug over and over. They get sick and many of them die. We are just getting started with that chapter of the story and, as statistical investigator Edward Dowd said recently, the mRNA “vaccines” have already killed more Americans than all the wars this country ever fought. This is the kind of mis-misinformation that the managing elite really don’t want to face. But get ready. It’s coming."
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"Did you know that banks can legally seize all your money whenever a major financial crisis erupts? And do you know where financial markets are headed right now? If you’re a regular on our channel, you probably guessed it: we’re on the brink of a historic financial meltdown, and the odds of a widespread banking collapse are getting increasingly higher. With the central bank intervening in private banking institutions, and soaring interest rates leading businesses to default on their loans, a very scary scenario is forming. And if I were you, I would take my money off the system right now.
U.S. banking institutions have been silently decaying for decades. Our money isn’t as safe as we would like to believe. Our system is flooded with banks. For the longest time, the idea that U.S. banks were the benchmark for how powerful a bank could be became almost unquestionable in our society. But that belief is probably linked to the narrative that the United States itself is the most powerful nation in the world. We must face the truth – our country has been losing its power on the global economic stage, and that deterioration extends into our banking sector as well.
Understanding the principles of banking isn’t an easy thing to do. We don’t really see banks as businesses, but that’s exactly what they are. And just as any other business out there, they have the potential to fail too. Obviously, no nation in the world wants its society to think that its banks are prone to failure. That’s why they spread the notion that our banks are entities that aren’t fallible. But when we look at the data, several indicators tell us otherwise. For example, over the past five years, despite one exception, not one single US bank has made it to the safest offshore banks list. A major contributor to that is the fact that we have nationalized our banking industry, and now the central bank controls the flow and supply of capital of private institutions.
An analysis released by financial experts with The Telegraph notes that the creation of the Federal Reserve was originally justified as an introduction of a device that ensured economic stability. “But the occasional chastisement of imprudent bankers and their foolish customers was just an excuse to get government into the banking business,” they wrote.
By making private banking problems systemic, the Fed can solve them using its favorite method: printing more and more money. In other words, the Fed’s actions do not solve the root cause of the issue, it just places a Band-aid on an infected wound. For that reason, today, we have what experts call “an unsound banking system,” which puts our savings in great danger.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Chief Marketing Analyst at ITM Trading, Lynette Zang, came forward to warn the public that banks can legally confiscate their clients' money in the event it needs to stay afloat, and most retail investors are not aware of this. "They're laughing at us," she said. "They're saying that normal retail clients don't need to understand that there's really no money in the FDIC deposit insurance fund."
Most people have no idea what really happens when the banking system collapses, let alone how to prepare. But as we get closer to a widespread banking collapse, choosing where to put your money is crucial to ensure it doesn’t get caught in the crosshairs. A better option for you would be to close your U.S. bank account and look elsewhere. The clock is ticking. The stakes are too high, and if you don’t act fast, you risk losing everything."
"It looks like the insurance companies are going to expand cars that they will not insure. How far will this go? Plus, more and more auto makers are joining the subscription platform. Imagine never owning your car outright?"
"Finally It's here the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the universe to date: Webb's First Deep Field. The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.
This first image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared, have appeared in Webb's view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arms length by someone on the ground."
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry."
“No. Not like this. I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.”
- James T. Kirk, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"
“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'”
- Carlos Castaneda, "Journey to Ixtlan"
"When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way. The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?” John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.) The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)
Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.
No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.
I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet. I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?
A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.
Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us. And I’m not sure I care.
Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.
I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.
What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today. I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.
Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today? Hell no.
t’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life. So, not YOLO.
One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.
For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.
I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.
The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.
So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way. Oh, wait... I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything."
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