Not long ago, I went to attend another seminar, and it provoked some of my recurring thoughts.

If you had not known by now, I am basically a quiet, introverted person, most of the time.  I grew up in a place with humanity packed like sardines, thus I have developed an innate allergy to crowds.  I spent most of my young life standing in line, and I had sworn to myself, even without knowing that I did, that if I did not have to stand in line one more than, that would be just fine with me. 

Being in front of an audience, big or small, can be interpreted as the exact opposite of standing in line, because I will be hanging out there, two sheets to the wind, with my knees trembling, and nothing but hot air escaping from my trap.  Public speaking, a requisite for aspiring leadership, much less that of entertaining in front of a crowd, is something I have yet to attempt.  If I have something I feel strongly about to say or impart, I am capable of putting in my two cents, in my somewhat incoherent fashion.  But generally, I believe I am better off in a "one to one" situation. 

It is said that in any seminar, the potential, would be leaders, or the wannabes, usually sit up front, many in the first row, to catch the pearls of wisdoms that rain forth from the speaker's mouth, or to grab that hundred dollar bill held forth by the speaker as a demonstration of who is capable of taking decisive action, and what it means to take action, despite making an apparent fool or spectacle at the moment.  For me, I tend to hang out in the back row, in the corner, to blend in with the furnishings if you would, an unknown face in a crowd, not one you would normally pay much heed to, so that I can doze off if necessary, or to observe the rapt attention of my fellow inmates, how mesmerized and captivated they seem to be, bewitched by the razzle dazzle, the half-truths of nothing but the truths, and the occasional, rare instances of enlightenment, of being touched, or better still, being struck, as an emotional heartstring has been pulled, a siren has gone off in the head, or a sledged hammer has just landed squarely on my thick skull. 

Most of the time, such audiences are like sheep, ready to be programmed, lead by the designated shepherd, either to the Promised Land, or the slaughterhouse.  Everyone is there for his or her own reasons, to use or to be abused, to gain or to lose, to escape from the mundane of everyday living, the drudgery of the moment, the chance of spiritual uplifting, or the praying of salvation and redemption.  If you were to observe keenly enough, you will witness the whole spectrum of human drama in action, unfolding the fear and greed, the dreams, hopes, aspirations, along with apprehensions, befuddlement, and outright insanity. 

Am I on a row, in this stream of consciousness type of letting it fly, or what?  Suffice that this bout of diarrhea at my finger tips should cease and desist forthwith! 

Did you know there is a new wonder drug that has been out on the market for sometime? 
First the good news:

Enfuvirtide, also known as T-20, is the first of the newest class of anti-HIV drugs called fusion inhibitors; the first new class of drugs developed and approved for the treatment of HIV since 1996. It is a synthetic 36-amino-acid peptide derived from the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein gp41 and it interferes with the entry of HIV-1 into cells by inhibiting the fusion of viral and cellular membranes. The use of enfuvirtide should be reserved as a salvage therapy for individuals who have advanced disease, are treatment-experienced, and continue to show evidence of ongoing viral replication (i.e., show resistance to current HIV treatments). Enfuvirtide should be used in combination with an individualized antiretroviral regimen. Enfuvirtide remains active against HIV strains in patients who have previously received and developed resistance to other classes of antiretroviral agents. In clinical trials, patients receiving enfuvirtide in addition to an individualized antiretroviral regimen were less likely to experience virologic failure or relapse compared to those receiving an individualized antiretroviral regimen alone; patients whose virus was sensitive to a greater number of antiretroviral drugs did demonstrate a greater sensitivity to enfuvirtide. At least 98% of patients who use enfuvirtide will develop injection site reactions to varying degrees, with almost 85% of patients developing the reactions within the first week of use. Patients should be appropriately counseled regarding injection site reactions before enfuvirtide therapy is initiated. Enfuvirtide was granted accelerated FDA approval on March 13, 2003, and received traditional approval by the FDA on October 15, 2004.

Then the bad news.  This drug is available at the acquisition or wholesale cost of over $1,600 per dose, and prescribed therapy is administration twice a day.  So we are talking at least $3,200 per day, never mind how much it would cost the patient.

My question is:  are you willing to pay for it?

And the answer is elementary, my Dear Doctor Watson, you already are!

Editor's Retraction:

For everyone I may have offended, I sincerely apologize for making a big mistake, and causing such controversy.  It was an serious error on my part when I first noticed the costs on a computer screen and did not see the word Kit.

I have since researched the drug more thoroughly.  The acquisition or wholesale cost is about $1,600 per KIT, not per dose.  Each kit contains 60 doses or a month's supply.  The annual cost of therapy is therefore over $20,000, not over a million dollars. 

Simon and Garfunkle wrote "The Sounds of Silence" about a hundred years ago.  Their lyrics can still be illuminating.  The absence of words is not necessarily an indication of a lack of interest.  It can also be a reflection of the contemplative mood which finds a person steeped in.  Nothing to worry about though.  All is well with me, relatively speaking.  Same song, largo tempo.

As a matter of fact, I have been slightly under the weather, only in the sense that of philosophizing.  My inner reconstruction is proceeding at my neck breaking, racing turtle pace.  I am chipping away each day and making small measurable progress in reasonable time.  Unlike Michelangelo's "David", what I should eventually chip away that is not "David" will not set the world on fire, and be so ever lasting, if one should consider the endurance of five hundred years of weather and humanity to be eternal.

Are you keeping your inner light and fire going?  How are you feeling about life right now?  As most gurus, ranging from shamans, snake oil salesmen, to motivational speakers and self-appointed experts, have pontificated, we are but physical manifestations of our thought processes.  Think good thoughts, and and we manifest them outwardly in desired results, eventually.  Think poor thoughts, and we manifest the results of them also.  In the long run, as one noted sage had observed, we shall all return from dust to dust.  Life is but a dream, the dream of the butterfly, emerging from the cocoon to the fleeting beauty and wonder of a fluttering lifespan.  And when we awake, did we dream to be a butterfly, or were we butterflies dreaming to be mortal?

So, there, see, nothing to worry about.  I am still alive, kicking, sometimes in the vertical, yet often in the horizontal, as of late, taking in a bit of hibernating in the beginning of Summer.  You keep yourself kindling as well, my dear friend, whoever you are.  May the spirit that was once yours will be yours again. 

According to an article in a recent edition of the Los Angeles Times, "Chinese bloggers who use Microsoft's new Web portal to post messages captioned "democracy", "capitalism", "liberty", or "human rights" are greeted with a scolding response.

A bright yellow warning appears:  "This message includes forbidden language.  Please delete the prohibited expression."

The restrictions were agreed upon by Microsoft and its Chinese partners, the government-linked Shanghai Alliance Investment.  But they have sparked a debate here and in the online world about how free speech could be threatened when the world's most powerful software company forges an alliance with the largest Communist Country."

Now aren't you glad you are not Chinese, and living in China? 

I was just thinking last night, how some of us get attached to things, places, and people.  This is mine, mine, mine, all mine, I said.  Then events came to pass, and what was once thought mine was no longer mine. 

We are simply granted the duration to enjoy and cherish that which we love and delight in, for however brief and lingering moments that we have them in our vicinity, and then they are gone.  Gone, the way of all flesh.  Material possessions, fame, fortune, loved ones, either we survive them, or they survive us.  Everything is so fleeting.  One day, they are here within our reach and touch, then next day, they are gone. 

Our collector's mentality, the hurried rush and insatiable greed to acquire, what good is it?  I got off the boat with two suitcases and the clothes on my back.  When I leave, as I may soon, I won't even be able to take those two suitcases with me.

Understanding thus, let's treasure our memories, and celebrate life!

I would like to put up a digital photo or two of my cats from albums stored on my hard disk such as this one, but it does not look like it is coming out :(

Are we complacent, irrational, and spoiled?

In response to a recent blog I posted, entitled “Before Tinnamen Square”, Mr. Berlin Bear of “The Capital Letter” raised three interesting points of such significance that I would be remiss if I do not share them with our gentle readers.  This was what he offered:

The first is that I think there is some danger that "cherishing our freedoms, to piss and moan ..." and recalling that our lot is better than the lot of most others can be used as an excuse not to do anything to improve our own lot, even though there clearly are things that need improving. So, for example, while it is clearly *more* shocking and *more* worrying that China executed over 3000 people in 2004, it is *also* shocking and *also* worrying that the USA executed dozens of people in the same period, and we should not let the knowledge that things are worse elsewhere and that we've "got it good" lead to complacency on our own part. I appreciate, Beyourself, that this is not what you were advocating, but I fear that it might be where too much laurel-sitting can lead.

The second point is that I think I must go along with Lynne in taking issue with your concept of "healthy fear of Communism". I appreciate your further explication later in the comments thread differentiating social-democratic or even socialist politics from totalitarian socialism, but I really feel, having spent a lot of time in the last few months reading American political blogs, that in actual fact in America things have gone well beyond a healthy fear of Communism to what is much closer to an irrational fear of Communism. So much so that, in some right-wing quarters I've had the misfortune to read around, anything that is liberal, progressive or otherwise left-of-centre, is written off as Communism and therefore dangerous. When that is coupled with a troubling lack of understanding of what Communism actually is, or was supposed to be, that is worrying and frustrating. You, of course, know exactly what Communism, or at least the Maoist totalitarian version thereof, is. But in my experience, not many Americans - especially not those who froth at the mouth about it the most - really do. Perhaps I've been reading the wrong things, but it seems to me to be very widespread. America's fear and hatred of communism, viewed in the light of 20th century history, is understandable, but you'll have to forgive me for saying that I think it goes well beyond "healthy" and well beyond rational in many instances.

My final point is not one with which I disagree with you at all. It is one where I take this off on a slight tangent to ask: Do you, like me, have a problem with the fact that, although China still has a terrible human rights record, has a foreign policy that is even less principled than the United States and is still, essentially, a dictatorship (albeit a more open dictatorship than it once was), Western countries are lining up and bending over backwards to do business with it in a no-holds-barred, no-questions-asked fashion, now that China is well on the way to becoming a financial and economic powerhouse? I find this development - and my own country is as guilty here as any other, having signed the very first free-trade agreement with China recently - worrying and disappointing. As I see it, there is scope for Western countries, who are in possession of energy, commodities and markets that China desperately needs access to continue its development, to put great pressure on the Chinese regime to sort out its human rights record, to apologize for Tiananmen, etc etc. Instead, I feel that Western avarice and the eye for a great business opportunity and national interest prevents them from doing so. Instead they turn a blind eye, allowing the Chinese regime to continue its abuses with impunity. I think that is sad, and I'd be interested to hear your take on it.

After some deliberation, here are my further thoughts on the subject:

Point One:  Since I do not keep up with current events to any extent, I am not aware that China executed 3,000 people in 2004, and during that same period, the U.S. had also executed dozens of people.  The glaring difference, not so much in terms of the number of executions, is the respective judicial systems in question.  In Communist China, in many instances, there is no due process of law, trial by jury, and the accused is judged guilty of his crimes until proven innocent.  In the U.S., the underlying legal philosophy is the presumption of innocence, equality under the law, trial by jury, based on evidence presented, the defendant can only be convicted beyond the shadow of a doubt, and sentencing is based on precedents that fit the crimes.  Capital punishment remains relatively rare.  Incidentally, we do have the best legal system money can buy.

Most Americans do have it far better than other inhabitants on this planet, and we often take our degrees of liberty and the good life we enjoy for granted.  No doubt there is “complacency” in our general populace.  No doubt there is laurel-sitting among our achievers.  That’s partly because most Americans are not in tune with what’s happening in the rest of the world in relation to their own security and comfort zones.  While I suggested that we should cherish our freedoms, because so many of us are totally ignorant of the alternative, I often shutter to think of the collective complacency we have developed among ourselves simply because we are so much better off, at least in terms of standards of living, not necessarily the quality of life, than the rest of the world.  The arrogance of some of our political leaders, along with the apathy and ignorance of many of our citizens, are hardly tolerable.  That’s why we are often labeled in many parts of the world as the Ugly Americans.

Point Two:  What is a healthy fear of Communism, and are such fears bordering on the irrational?  If my understanding is not totally incorrect, there is always an element within the extreme right wing of the American political spectrum that believes the entire world moves under the guise of international communism, formerly directed by the Kremlin, and now possibly shifting to Peking.  Many years ago, I remembered reading a little book, “None Dare Called It Conspiracy”, which was the manifesto of those who believed in the Conspiracy Theory.  Now, those folks were extremists, and their fears were irrational.  For the average American Joe, however, his fear of Communism should only be healthy.  Until one has lived under a totalitarian communist regime, such as China a generation or so ago, or China as it stands today, one cannot possibly imagine and appreciate the gravity of living under the conditions of the State dictating every aspect of one’s life via mandates, decrees, and proclamations. 

As I had alluded to earlier, when the government takes away the ability of person to choose, pretty soon, the government will take away his choice to read, to speak, to think, and to act.  That’s what I understand Communism to be, and I had escaped from it thirty years before that British Colony where I was born reverted back to Communist China Control.  Speaking for myself only, I seriously doubt if I could have survived living in a Communist regime, and my fears are all logically founded, not a bit irrational.

Point Three:  Even though China has such a terrible human rights records, the United States, along with the rest of the world, seem to be clamoring to trade with China.  Why?  Because we are spoiled.  We, especially the citizens here living in the great land of the United States of America, are spoiled rotten.  We have less than one tenth of the world’s populations and yet we consume more than fifty percent of the world’s natural resources.  We succeed by our excesses.  Our movies and television programming demonstrate to the world how spoiled we are.  We are like the viruses that will soon wipe out the entire planet. 

And since we are spoiled, we cannot live without all the conveniences of affordable products, coming out of China, in endless streams, from the industry of the Chinese hordes through forced and cheap labor, who are being paid a pittance to fulfill their own meager dreams and aspirations.  It is a game to go into a department store, a discount chain store, or even a hardware store, to find a product that is NOT made in China.  Call it business acumen, call it business avarice, call it greed, call it unofficial blessing for the Chinese regime to continue it’s abuses with impunity.  But first and foremost, call it a fact of life.  To live in our world, which we do not make to our specifications, sometimes we have to come to terms with reality.  For me, I can either get on, or get off this merry-go-round.  And my time to get off will be soon enough.  

I am happy to report that Mr. Berlin Bear of “The Capital Letter” fame, which you must visit, has just tagged me to enumerate the five things I missed most in my childhood.  Already I had responded with my short and sweet version via the comment link, but in order to make sense, my list requires some elaboration, which gives me another opportunity to ramble on a bit.

1. Basketball
   I grew up in a lower middle class family, which meant our family was just a tad above the peasants.  In my early teens, one of my first treasured possessions was a basketball (no I did not even have a tricycle or a bicycle).  At the back of the tenement building where our family lived was a “primary” school, ran by converted Catholics, where I had attended, before "secondary" school.  The school yard was almost big enough for a full size basketball court, poured concrete without markings, which also doubled as an impromptu soccer field.  After classes were over and on weekends, I used to take my basketball over there and dribbled around, developing the delusion that I could play.  Now given that I am relatively small in stature, I could then still compete, almost, on agility and enthusiasm alone.  Later I had learned that Napoleon, Mozart, Beethoven, and Louis XIV were all short-stops, which made me feel so much better, for at least a day and a half.  After all, I was almost as tall, or taller, by at least a couple of inches, than those European giants.  (Incidentally, the average height of Napoleonic France was five foot five, but that of the Prussian Army was six foot even.)  Needless to say, after I got off the boat, I could no longer play, considering the size and height of the “average” American basketball players, not to mention the NBA.
   


2. Open Fish Market
   When I was growing up, that little rock of an island, euphemistically named, “Flagrant Harbour” where I was born, was not nearly as crowded as it is now.  I used to enjoy taking the nickel ferry across the harbor from where we lived and trotted through the mud and sludge of the open seafood market, where fishermen brought in their catch of the day, straight off their fishing sampans and junks.  There were prawns, shrimps, scallops, squids, sea anemones, sea weeds, octopuses, abalones, clams, oysters, crabs, lobsters, (the marching kind), and the zillion kinds of fishes beyond the salmons, groupers, snappers, flounders, cods, tunas, sharks, that I could name.  Because refrigeration was not yet common, and we believed that freshness was next to godliness, all our varieties of seafood had to be living, breathing, or swimming, in giant aquarium tanks where shoppers got to pick and choose, or pointed their fingers at.
   


3. The Fishing Villages
   They were like little shanty towns, of makeshift dwellings, cardboard boxes of salvaged plywood or corrugated metal sheets that were used as walls, and often doubled as roofs, with none of the modern household appliances we take for granted, and in extremely dilapidated and unsanitary conditions, where entire families of two or more generations were crowded in a couple of partitioned off rooms.  They reminded me of how poor many people were, and how fortunate we were by comparison, living in a pre-World War II tenement building which was later to be condemned as unfit for human habitation.  The Open Fish Market I knew as a child, the shanty hovels of the fishing villages, and the tenement buildings were all long gone now.  The land they had occupied had become far too valuable for residential or commercial re-development.  Once again, Thomas Wolfe was right when he wrote, “You Can’t Go Home Again”.
   


4. Banquet Dining
   I remember in my childhood years, we used to attend banquet type dining at least once or twice a month.  Costs of living were still relatively low.  Most people could afford, occasionally, to invite fifty to a hundred of their family and friends to celebrate their birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, first born child, promotions, business successes, or even their ancestral claim to fame.  These banquets were held in restaurants comprising of several floors, with each floor capable of sitting two hundred people or more.  Ten or twelve guests were seated in a big round table, and about ten different courses of the most delicious, mouth watering, platters were served one after another.  A waiter in attendance would divvy up a tiny portion of each delicacy in the form of about two bites for each guest into their individual bowls and plates, amidst lively chatter, congratulations, and tall tales.  Unfortunately, banquet dining is pretty much out of fashion now, because the costs of throwing such a party are now prohibitive and only the very wealthy can afford to do so.  The so called Chinese food you are now enjoying is basically family cooking, the descendant of the chop-suey and lo-mein, or left-overs, which the overseas Chinese, tired of doing laundry, had developed to please the Occidental palate.   
   


5. Chinese New Year
   This was of course the most celebrated of all holidays, when all debts were paid, in with the new, and out with the old, turning over a new leaf, beginning afresh again, for happiness, prosperity, and longevity.  Everywhere there were fire crackers aplenty to chase away the bad spirits, red envelopes of money for good luck and good fortune, new shoes and new clothes to begin the new year, many visits between families and friends, much feasting and celebrations, sometimes lasting well into the second week, all around good cheer, and good wishes. 

So, “Kung Hay Fat Choy” to you too, or “Congratulations to You for Your Striking Fortune!”  Now at least you know one of the most redeeming Chinese salutations!  

Some days, as we know, are better than others.  I function better by not having too much spare time on my hands.  Years ago, when we were all younger once, I used to live via a mode of operation commonly known as "management by crisis", on top of the "cross finger" theory.  Now, with the passing of the years, and hopefully gaining a modicum of wisdom, I am much more laid back, by planning and looking a little bit ahead, down the road, and keeping my eyes peeled for that Mack Truck coming around, out of the corners of my peripheral vision.  I like to think that I am more relaxed now, although, recalling one of the recent fiery emails which I let unfurled, I did manage to use a couple of "expletive deleted" when I was describing the quality of our personnel, of the "warm body syndrome", at the place where I earn my daily pasta.  Things and people seldom change.  The seasons have basically remained the same for millions of years.  The ability of how we perceive and handle the changes is within us.  It is not what happened to us that count, because most of what happened to us also happened to everyone else.  It is how and what we do about what happened to us that really matters.  A thought or quote just flashed through my mind.  You, and I, are the only people, who can use the abilities you, and I, have been given, or blessed with; and that is an awesome responsibility!

There may have been a few of you who had commemorated the 15^th anniversary of the Tinnaman Square incident recently, but probably very few of you would remember the dreaded period of history which took place on the other side of this planet about forty years ago, because first, it happened “over there”, and second, most of you were not even born yet!

It was called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, one of several Great Leaps Forward, which basically sent Communist China back into the Stone Age.  It was a time when children betrayed parents, brothers betrayed sisters, and cousins betrayed their grandparents, and workers spied on one another, because the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao, not only believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress, and he also believed now and again, a campaign was a necessary expediency to consolidate his power so he would be elevated to the position of deity.  Millions of Chinese youths, reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts, stormed through the cities and the countryside, waving their little Red Book, shouting slogans and epithets penned by the infallible Chairman, tearing down anything old, families, traditions, learning, customs, superstitions, relationships, religions, Confucianism, Taoism, etiquettes, and replacing them all with the new Marxist and proletarian half-truths.

It was also called “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, and it was a dictatorship by any other name.  Everything was done by government decree, handed down by the Central Committee.  What was white one day could very well be black the next, and back to white again soon afterwards.  Individuality and due process were concepts only the West had the luxury to enjoy.  The preferred method of liquidating the reactionaries, the running dogs of the Imperialists, was not the firing squads, which would have been much more humane.  The Chinese were after all a very civilized people.  The madness in their method was to “re-educate” those found guilty of Capitalistic and Revisionist leanings to the official Communist party line through months of public criticisms in the form of confessions, and/or years of solitary confinement, until the human will of the accused could no longer withstand the onslaught, and their spirits were broken.  And for the few truly recalcitrant dissidents, there were always the equivalent of the Soviet Gulags, near the frozen tundra along the Soviet borders, where they were shipped to and never be heard from again. 

Even though said events of political upheavals and human rights violations were publicized in the world press, not many people outside of China were really concerned.  So what if Chairman Mao killed off a few millions of his own people.  He wasn’t quite as onerous and evil as Hitler implementing “The Final Solution” in his attempts of genocide to eradicate the Jews in Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe.  Unless you were Chinese, and unless you had lived through and survived that seminal period of Chinese history, liberty was just another word, until after you had lost it. 

So when we Democrats and Republicans squabble over issues of pro-choice against pro-life, the rights of minorities over the majority, the social inequities of the rich versus the poor, the young versus the baby boomers and the retirees, the wisdom of fighting terrorism on foreign soil before terrorist acts are imported domestically, let us cherish our freedoms, to piss and moan, and let us remember why we have developed such healthy fears of Communism, where Socialist Utopia can be every bit as much and a great deal more of a nightmare than we could possibly imagine on Elm Street.

For all you aspiring writers out there, and for one in particular .... here's what he once wrote:

To be a creator, to weave the fabric of thoughts and emotions, to capture the spirit of the moment, the intangible, that not only takes talent, skill, and imagination, it also takes dedication to one's task, to sit and labor for hours on end, days, weeks, perhaps even months, for a sustained production effort resulting in a tangible and coherent whole. 

How few of us are capable of doing so, we asked and we answered.  You are therefore among the elite, for having written, produced, and published a work that is a piece of your life, your experiences, your essence, in reflection.  It is no small task, regardless of whatever people might think or say. 
 
I have read my share of books in my life, books on different genres, different subjects, which happened to attract my interest and fascination at the time of my study, and I must confess, without undue flattery, that I have enjoyed reading your work thoroughly.  You are the writer, so you must write.  I am but a mere scribe.  Sometimes I cut and paste, compose and decompose, manage to come up with a fine mess.  So please consider, for what they are worth, you have my applause, and my accolades.

Once again, I came upon the passing of a man, released as he was from "this mortal coil".  It prompted me to look up the closing paragraphs of an epic which I had never read, but wanted to. 

For all you learned scholars out there, I am sure you know where this comes from, as I borrow it once more to share and savour for the sadness of its beauty.

"In the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither. All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.

This stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.

No name is to be read there.

Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, to-day, probably effaced:

He sleeps. 
Although his fate was very strange, he lived. 
He died when he had no longer his angel. 
The thing came to pass simply, of itself, 
as the night comes when day is gone." 

Since I do not want my daddy to take my t-blurt away as yet, I just clicked on a new blog posting that clamored the equivalent of Achtung Baby, implying a must read, pertaining to a matter of life and death.

As it turned out, it was a very thinly disguised attempt by an anonmyous blogger with an amazing handle in a miserable effort to push his or her brand of term life insurance.

I know I am going to die someday, and I know I won't be able to take it with me.  It is more than enough that I should be looking at porn sites or drug sites by default or design, then there are people out here, in this niche of la-la-land, who would think that bloggers, or even t-bloggers, slow as we may be, would be so stoooopid as to fall for this kind of insiduous marketing?

Presumably, people have their rights to be here to promote thei r brand of corn flakes as the best since Post Cereal, as much as we have the privilege to tap on our keyboards to vent, but why take up the oxygen, or the desk space?  Wouldn't these online business tycoon wannabees be better off sticking with their incessant telemarketing to those people who forgot to sign up on the "Do Not Call" list?? 

..... there is no need for you to say good-bye.  Say, until we meet again - when we are both at better times, in better spirits, in better surroundings, when our accomplishments will have dwarfed the disappointments and setbacks that we are currenly experiencing.  Time will pass, whether we make use of it or not.  We can invest our time wisely, or we can continue to squander it.  And when our time is up at the end of our flaming moments on this here blue planet, whether there should be an after-life or not, the entire Tabernacle Choir singing in unison will not make the least bit of difference.  Therefore, we've been told, instructed, even brain-washed, to live now, live today, live as best we can, because this moment, and the moment to come, is all that we have.

Despite our pledge to acknowledge diversity, we appear to be a nation of religious fanatics in our own right.  Many of us believe that the “Bible” was, and is, the inspired WORD of God, and a few of us even cling to a literary interpretation.  Never mind which version of the “Bible” we are talking about, and from what arcane languages the “Bible” was compiled from.  When in doubt, somewhere in the Bible, King James Version that is, what most people rely upon as the pedestrian authority, can be quoted to suit our purpose, or argument. 

Many years ago, I actually had the audacity to try to read the Bible.  Immediately, I got confused because apparently, the “Bible” is divided into the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament”, that is roughly before and after the birth of Christ.  Most of our enlightened Christians now rely on the “New Testament” as the Gospel, (or Gospels if you must, since there are four different versions), basically ignoring the “Old Testament” as irrelevant or hearsay, unless of course a quotation may be lifted there from to establish the irrefutable basis of our arguments. 

To me, it would seem logical for my reading to start from the Beginning, with say, The Book of Genesis, which I had a great deal of trouble plowing through.  On the very first page, I ran into a minor problem.  I learned that GOD created the Heaven, the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon.  And then, as an afterthought, He made the stars also!? 

Then I learned that GOD first created Man, and called him Adam, which I presume was why I did not know him from.  GOD took one look at Adam, and said, hey, I could do better than Man, so HE or SHE created Woman, who was Eve, from one of Adam's ribs.  But Adam blamed Eve for tempting him to eat the Forbidden Fruit from The Tree of Knowledge planted right smack in the center of the Garden of Eden.  (Or was it somewhere to the side?)  And Eve blamed the Serpent, who of course did not have a leg to stand on!  After being banished from the Garden of Eden, I learned that Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel.  Soon Cain slewed Abel for reasons only Allah knew, so Adam and Eve went ahead and brought forth a third son, named Seth. 

My question was, where did Cain and Seth go later, and who did they mate with, in order to produce the rest of our humanity?  Did they go somewhere East of Eden where there was already a well established civilization, suggesting to me there were already littered with people and not aliens, family structures, and fair maidens for them to pick from and choose as wives? 

If so, half of us must bear the Mark of Cain, while the other half must bear the Mark of Seth?  Who then made those God-damned Chinese, already breeding like flies at the time, over there on the other side of the planet??  Surely, they had to be crawling out from under some rocks, like, spontaneously, you think?