The Vikings

A matter of economics. They were a warring people. It was their nature just as it is the nature of some others to be 'peaceful' people. They called themselves 'berserkers' owing to the frenzy they would whip up before attacking.

 In real life when people speak or behave in a way that I don't care for, I thump my cane on the floor, hard. I learned it from Bruce Lee. Scares the hell out of people, I don't know why. 

So I do it all the time, just for fun.

 House of Cards.

In order to push our house of cards forward we have created all manner of new and unnecessary professions. Realtors, paralegals, travel agents, decorators, compliance specialists, lobbyists, telemarketers ...

It's a wholesome feeling to be truly useful, even essential in society, as for example a cook, a baker, a candlestick maker.

 On Death

All I do all day every day is maintain, maintain, maintain. There's little time left over for fun or progress. When the day comes that there's no time or opportunity for good times, and no change in sight, that's the day I should question the value of my life.

It will be best then to embrace the inevitable if only for the sake of the eternal dreamless rest that I can look forward to.

Life is for the living. Just keeping up with laundry and bill paying is not living. Yet, now I think about it, it's all I've ever done.

But it's getting late and I'm probably cross. Anyway, now I think about it, it's the thinking I do during all this maintaining that is fun.

 From the stuff of stars to the atom, from meteor ash to dust, we're here then we're gone like a fart in the wind.

"We are made of star-stuff." --Carl Sagan

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." --Book of Common Prayer

 A New Year's Toast 

In with the new, but cherish the old, to health, to peace and AI, to Good Fortune, to a cure for wrinkles, to flying cars, and hope springing eternal. Happy New Year!

 Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is neither a privilege nor a right. Privileges and rights are by definition entitlements that in order to exist must be 'bestowed' upon us by someone. I say to hell with them and their favors, I was born bitching and I'll keep on until somebody shuts me up or I croak. It's intrinsic.