Death Collider

May 23, 2008
REM is Twittering the sequence of songs they are playing at soundcheck. Incredibly geeky, yet incredibly cool.
Marketplace is reporting that speculation is growing we’re going to be out of oil by 2030. Part of me says, “Oh, well. I’ll probably be dead by then anyway.” That’s a thought that stuns me. That’s 22 years from now. Yet I could easily be gone by then, given my current state of health. If I were to die suddenly, I would get some satisfaction of knowing that I’m screwing over Chase Manhattan as I do so.
Interesting point from the NPR “It’s All Politics” podcast- Senator Kennedy isn’t dead yet. Arlen Specter had a malignant brain tumor and beat it, so there is a possibility he’ll beat it. It’s still a grim diagnosis.
It’s hard to really think about death at all. (Duh.) I have so much STUFF. I love my stuff, but it’s just going to sit there when I’m gone, until someone gets rid of it for me. Thinking about your own absence is a mindfuck.
This week’s Studio 360 includes a short story about the slightly crackpot notion that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth. I take some comfort that if the exceedingly unlikely event takes place, we’ll never feel it. We’ll be here, then we’ll be gone. Kurt Vonnegut (or Douglas Adams) would probably respond that it has already happened, and all of this is an exceedingly realistic illusion.
After that, there was a Richard Price segment. His new novel, “Lush Life”, sounds like a winner. It’s been out a while, though, so I should wait until it comes out in paperback. I love the novels of the writers of “The Wire”, yet I have never seen the show. I just don’t have that kind of time to devote to television, and I know I can’t dive in and really appreciate it.