I love the feeling when we lift off
Watching the world so small below
I love the dreaming when I think of
The safety in the clouds out my window
I wonder what keeps us so high up
Could there be a love beneath these wings
If we suddenly fall should I scream out
Or keep very quiet and cling to my mouth as I’m crying
So frightened of dying
Relax, yes, I’m trying
But fear’s got a hold on me
The fear’s all gone today. Live life.
Have a great week.
Narrated by the awesome Stephen Fry…
Wikipedia
Robin Williams (1951 – 2014).
A legend exits the world stage…
I’ve been wondering… and that usually means irreverent thoughts.
Our President has been in hospital. Today he was released… to continue plaguing his subjects. Yeah, subjects. I’m positive he thinks no less of us. My Monday is ruined.
So I was wondering. Why doesn’t he just die. It will mean a lot less heartache for everyone, including the few good people still left in his party. They won’t have to throw him out on his ass, which is an absolute necessity if his party means to rule until Jesus comes, as his accomplices are so fond of reminding us… subjects.
Is that cruel? Really? Death would be a kindness, even to his own revolting presence. Sure, the possibility exists that his replacement will be worse. But hey, at this point, I’m willing to take that chance, and I’m pretty sure many others are too.
South Africa deserves better. We have been through so much already. We really can’t survive another five years of el Presidente’s rule.
Satan if you really exist, please clean up your crap.
Having just returned from attending my aunt’s funeral, my mind is morbidly fixed on death.
I can’t help cursing the public health care system that failed her like it does to countless others. Mercifully she succumbed to cancer within days of being released from hospital. That might sound callous, but I would like to think that death is preferrable to an indeterminate period of suffering and mental anguish for helpless family members.
After enduring hours of sermonizing at the funeral, I’ve got to thinking about my own eventual disposal as it were. I’ll have none of this piousness, hollow platitudes and pity from vultures in dog collars.
It’s time to write down some guidelines for well-meaning family and friends on how to send me off permanently. The details still have to be worked out, but it will involve lots of music, alcohol and laughter.
Until I’ve got it all figured out…
Image via Wikipedia
What are the chances? Kim Jong-il dying at about the same time as Christopher Hitchens who absolutely despised the North Korean dictator. Some coincidence, yes?
While Hitchens’ death was mostly lamented and regretted, Kim’s death was mourned openly, as evidenced by this YouTube video, to a degree that is quite bewildering. Now that is deeply disturbing.
Either the North Korean people genuinely loved the degenerate old tosser, or the show of grief is a put-on by a fearful populace. I’m going with the latter.
The passing of this evil tyrant will be mostly welcomed by all people in the world who have their heads screwed on right, but it also leaves everyone a bit jittery about what’s going to happen to the country which has nuclear capability. Kim’s successor, his own son Kim Jong-un appears to be just as evil, if not more so, just judging by this picture embedded after fact number 14 of this article in The Telegraph.
Off course there are a few sub-humans in the world who are at this moment bemoaning the death of Kim Jong-il and the decimation of the Despots Club; most notably one Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe. And it’s only a matter of time until some dingbat in South Africa’s own dictatorship-in-the-making, the ANC, will come out publicly to sing the praises of Dear Leader.
Now if only Mad Bob would croak before the end of the year in less than two weeks; it would be a bumper year indeed for the obliteration of tyrannical pieces of fecal matter. Come on Santa, make it happen!
Its been just over a week since my father passed away after a protracted illness. Now that the business of laying him to rest, and the memorial service has been concluded, I finally have a chance to pen some thoughts about the experience, which I admit does not make for particularly pleasant reading.
During my years at school, I read a wonderful quip by someone, which goes something like “Death is a dreary, dull affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.” Brilliant, isn’t it? Until it comes calling at your door, off course! And now it was my turn to deal with it.
My father had been quite ill for many years. In the last year or so, his dialysis sessions were increased to three times a week, but his condition steadily declined. His death was not unexpected; however it was delayed by his tenacious will to live, quite evidently through a lot of pain. The painful expression that was almost permanently etched on his face, still dog my mind. Amazingly however, he insisted on functioning normally and doing the things that were of quintessence right to the end.
This situation posed a few questions which I tried to analyze for a time, even just prior to his death, but I could come to no real conclusions. The natural evolutionary tendency for humans is to try to survive, even if the body is in revolt. But is it desirable for a person to endure pain and suffering , especially when afflicted with a terminal illness, as in the case of my father? And while its natural for family and friends to hope for someone who is ill, to hang on for as long as possible, is it not somewhat selfish in the case of terminal illness. Is it not possible that our wish for longevity, could place pressure on terminally ill people to force themselves to live a little longer, usually under tremendous pain? And off course, watching someone waste away in pain, is extremely distressing for family and friends; not to mention the burden that care-giving places on them. A vicious cycle indeed!
I received news of him being admitted to hospital about a week before his actual passing on. With the above thoughts playing out in my mind, I delayed traveling down to Durban from Johannesburg, secretly, irrationally hoping that he would pull out of this latest setback, like he had done so many times before. On the advice from my brother that the prognosis did not look very good this time, I finally decided to make the 600 kilometer trip. Again, with irrational hope, I packed just a few jeans and t-shirts, thinking that somehow he would surprise us once again, and I would be happily back on my way to Johannesburg in a few days.
I didn’t get to see him alive one last time. He passed away while I was in transit…
I remember arriving in Durban to the smell of fireworks, and receiving the news from my tearful mother. Strangely I felt no immediate grief. I was actually relieved. Is that wrong? Does being relieved when death ends pain and suffering, constitute immoral behaviour? I should certainly think not. Yes, I’m sad, but I’m happy too, for the end of my father’s pain, and just as importantly, the end of the anguish endured by his family.
The funeral did pose a moral dilemma for me, being the eldest child. I agonized for a little while over participating in the elaborate Hindu funeral rituals, but realized that supporting the family in a time of bereavement was more important than my secular principles. Although I did not participate fully in all the prayer rituals, I did ensure that I gave them my full support and was present throughout. And, the arrival of my father’s only surviving brother from Canada, did relieve some of pressure off me. At times my rational self did get the better of me when I questioned the logic of some of the religious practices, but I relented soon enough.
I volunteered to pay tribute to my father at a memorial service held yesterday, and I managed to write down a few thoughts, but quickly had to scupper that when my sister, suspecting that I would use the opportunity to speak about my religious and political beliefs, asked me politely to refrain from turning the eulogy into a lecture. I had to resort to winging it, and I suppose I did a fairly decent job, since no one in the largely conservative, religious audience, had a heart attack.
For me, life goes on. I just hope that the rest of the family can put this tragic episode behind them fairly quickly and live their lives normally again.
While driving to a technology, computer and gaming exposition [RAGE 2010] today, I got to thinking about what I would miss the most about life, when I finally expire. Note that I do not say if I die, because death is inevitable (currently), and I also do not say after I die because there’s no evidence for an afterlife that will allow you to feel, let alone miss anything.
Without further ado, here is my list, in descending order of importance:
If you too have a list, let’s have it…
There are two radio adverts that I listen to every day while on my way to work, and I chuckle every time I hear them. And that’s not because they are amusing; but because they are so damn presumptuous about what people want or need.
Both are adverts for government agencies; one for the South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) and the other for the public broadcaster, The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Both exhort the public to shell out money for something that no sane person would ordinarily pay for. Both these agencies invite you to become an unwilling partner in what can only be described as a monstrous fraud scheme with the sole aim of aiding and abetting gross incompetence in the case of the SABC and legalised extortion in the case of SANRAL.
While the SABC tries to persuade you to pay your TV licence because apparently it’s the right thing to do, SANRAL on the other hand tries to convince you that the new roads they’re building is going to be so great for everyone (including the environment), you should gladly pay the exorbitant toll fees they’re proposing.
The SABC offers all of 3 television channels spewing forth some of the most pathetic rubbish, masquerading as entertainment, and probably just one decent radio channel. To top that they have some of the most incompetent people in management, and are constantly plagued by management upheavals, in-fighting and gross mismanagement of public funds. While SANRAL does offer some decent roads, the toll fees they’re asking of around 50 cents a kilometer is pure extortion. Why are we paying taxes and ridiculously inflated surcharges on petrol prices anyway? Shouldn’t that pay for the construction of roads? Or is that revenue just to keep our fat-arsed politicians forever pigging at the trough?
I wonder how the ad agencies who came up with those advertising gems approached their task? Being asked to come up with adverts for the SABC and SANRAL must surely be tantamount to getting a contract from a funeral parlour to dolly up their macabre service offerings which can only go along the lines of hurry up and die, our services are tuned for your demise, or our services are to die for.
Surely, the SABC and SANRAL don’t seriously think that we are all going to get a warm happy feeling after listening to those pathetic adverts and are going to pay with a smile? But then again, where government is involved, unadulterated stupidity is a given.
Are you one of those people who are just waiting to die so that you can cash in your “morally good” life, in exchange for a place in heaven, partying with your particular version of god? And perhaps some of you in this group, who are a little apprehensive about hell, are right now tearing your hair out trying to be “good.”
Or perhaps you are one of those fatalistic people who are “exceedingly good” and believe that you will be spared the agony of death, to be raptured into heaven on a winged horse or something equally spectacular. And perhaps right now, you are fervently praying for the second coming.
Or maybe you are one of those people who is naturally hard on himself or herself, and are just waiting for death so that you can get on with your next life or re-incarnation. And perhaps some in this last mentioned group who are just a little apprehensive about what form their next incarnation might be, are right now spending an awful lot of time trying to be “good.”
Or perhaps you, like me, are none of the above, and have “discovered” through critical thinking that life is all we have, and we need to own it, love it and live it. There is absolutely no evidence for anything spectacular or painful or even mundane, after death; and thus there is no reason to think about it, worry about it or dream about it. Rather, think about life, dream about life, even worry about life, if you must. Or better still; touch it, feel it, share it.
Perhaps the following words of wisdom supposedly written by an old man, sent to me only recently by a work colleague will help to contextualize my plea:
First, I was dying to finish my high school and start college
And then I was dying to finish college and start working
Then I was dying to marry and have children
Then I was dying for my children to grow old enough so I could go back to work
But then I was dying to retire
And now I am dying…
And suddenly I realized I forgot to live
Lenny Says 