the ontological argument

"I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life.... Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying)."

--Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942, translated by Justin O'Brien

Dharma Bums III

"Then suddenly one night after supper as I was pacing in the cold windy darkness of the yard I felt tremendously depressed and threw myself right on the ground and cried 'I'm gonna die!' because there was nothing else to do in the cold loneliness of this harsh inhospitable earth, and instantly the tender bliss of enlightenment was like milk in my eyelids and I was warm. And I realized that this was the truth Rosie knew now, and all the dead, my dead father and dead brother and dead uncles and cousins and aunts, the truth that is realizable in a dead man's bones and is beyond the Tree of Buddha as well as the Cross of Jesus."

--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, 1958

Edgar Allan Poe

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents."

David Foster Wallace Has Killed Himself

"If wealth of talent, steady productivity (eight books of fiction and nonfiction), a MacArthur grant, and adulation from fans, critics and peers are not enough to make life's isolation bearable, what hope is there for the rest of us scribblers?"

--Richard B. Woodward, The Wall Street Journal

Our nada who art in nada

"The Nothing is a relentless monotony, unbroken by joy or sorrow. It is unending emptiness without comfort or companionship of man or God. It is the senselessness of each heart-beat that is just like the last and refuses to give in to death."

--Elizabeth S. Wall, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway"

Golden Gate Bridge

Joseph Dwyer Has Killed Himself

Ali Sattar and Joseph Dwyer
Iraq, Mishkab
2003 March 25
photo by Warren Zinn

"I don't know that the photograph of Joseph was the best one I ever took, or my favorite, but I think it represented something important. At the time, it represented hope. Hope that what we were doing as a nation in Iraq was the right thing. Hope that our soldiers were helping people. Hope that soldiers such as Joseph cared more about human life than anything else.

"But now when I look at the picture, it doesn't feel hopeful. It makes me realize that so many soldiers are physically torn and in such mental anguish that for some of them, hope has turned to hopelessness."

--Warren Zinn in the Washington Post

You Are Capable of Atrocity

"There are people who insist that they could never kill anyone, but they invariably add a telling caveat: 'Unless, of course, a person tried to harm someone I love.' So the resource of violence is in everyone; all that changes is our view of the justification....

"We use the word inhuman to describe these murderers, but I know them both, and they are not inhuman--they are precisely human....

"When a bank robber shoots a security guard, we all understand why, but with aberrant killers, people resist the concept of a shared humanness. That's because US and THEM is far more comfortable....

"Judgment results in a label, like calling Robert Bardo a monster and leaving it at that. Such labels allow people to comfortably think it's all figured out. The labels also draw a bold line between that 'wacko' and us, but perception carries you much further.

"Scientists, after all, do not observe a bird that destroys its own eggs and say, 'Well, that never happens; this is just a monster.' Rather, they correctly conclude that if this bird did it, others might, and that there must be some purpose in nature, some cause, some predictability."


--Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear, 1997

stand on the utility sink

“His undershirt is wet; he can feel the sweat rolling from his underarms. He sits on the step with the empty glass in his hand and watches the shadows fill up the yard. He stretches, wipes his face. He listens to traffic on the highway and considers whether he should go to the basement, stand on the utility sink, and hang himself with his belt.”

--Raymond Carver, “Are These Actual Miles?,” 1972

Happy New Year, Yes

There is this song that I've been hearing for the last month or more, which must currently be the most popular song in Mongolia. I finally googled the only lyrics of it I could understand: "happy new year" and "might as well lay down and die." Holy batcrap, it's by ABBA, and it's from 1980. Wow, the lyrics are awesome:

No more champagne
And the fireworks are through
Here we are, me and you
Feeling lost and feeling blue
It's the end of the party
And the morning seems so grey
So unlike yesterday
Now's the time for us to say...

Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don't we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives
Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks he'll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he's astray
Keeps on going anyway...

Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
It's the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we'll find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of '89...

Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don't we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Calvin and Hobbes

This website contains the only writing I’ve come across that pinpoints the disturbingly subversive brilliance of Calvin and Hobbes. The visual and textual parallels to the Columbine High School shooting presented by the author, Douglas Ord, are brilliant in themselves.

“As brought to life both by Watterson's ‘magic’ and -- in a second order of activity within the strip -- Calvin's waking dream, Hobbes was obviously so much more than the stuffed animal that ‘others’ saw.

“As a truly noble beast, he became, at different times, the voice of sophistication, of charm, and of irony. A voice, that is, which was almost entirely denied, in Calvin's real world American suburban vicinity...

“But Hobbes, while being an awesomely indulgent and intelligent playmate, was also complex in a different way. As a presence, he both personified and contained the projection outward of a coiled spring rage that -- as kept within the waking dream -- could then rebound on Calvin harmlessly, as he and Hobbes bantered with one another, mocked one another, sometimes even thrashed one another, in the privacy of Calvin's backyard.

“How big was that rage, though, that potential for violence? In this there was a critical uncertainty, and even a mystery, because Hobbes himself had a night-time side that, apparently on Watterson's whim, could stalk and terrorize Calvin: the side that was captured in Calvin's own description: ‘homicidal psycho jungle cat’.”

Part One

Part Two

Jon loaned me this book and it's pretty good

“He visited my class, we set some poetry readings up for him, and we set up his Free University meeting room and place. I think the title of the class we said he would teach was Tantric Yoga—no it was Telepathic Communication. His class was a tremendous success, though not because of his lecturing on telepathy. The first night he was supposed to teach it, we walked with him to the student union building. The room was on the first floor and was packed with people sitting quietly, intently, as though waiting for Jim Jones to pass the Kool-Aid. Either it was that or something else, something false, levy picked up on, and he simply walked on by the door and out the side. I thought for a moment of going in and telling them it was another no-show, but what the hell. We all walked over to the 602 Club and then thought no more about it, until Ann Krooth told me that levy’s class was one of the most successful in all the Free University. People there assumed he was trying to reach them telepathically, and many of them heard him, as they sat there, meditating in the classroom. That class went on for several months after levy had returned to Cleveland—months after levy was no longer alive.”

--Morris Edelson in “Portrait of a Young Man Trying to Eat the Sun (the life, legend, & mysterious death of d. a. levy)” by Mike Golden, first published in BEET magazine in 1994, collected in The Outlaw Bible of American Essays

See Sunny Afghanistan

Advice for travelling in Afghanistan from a U.S. soldier.

Seriously, advice for travelling in Afghanistan from U.S. soldier Jonathan Miller, who "has a passion for travel." 21 years old.

"If nothing else, you must come see this country for its amazing terrain features...

"Since there are no beaches, you won’t have to pack your bathing suit...

"Stay away from the Afghanistan and Pakistan border on the East side of the country or you might find yourself in the middle of a firefight...

"Pack light and don’t bring too many valuable belongings...

"Before you come you should also do some research on suicide bombers (what they wear, how they act, etc)."

The Travel Junkie - Untamed Travel for the Young and the Restless

Typewriters and Shotguns

And yet, I thought there would be more.

Wikipedia: Writers who committed suicide