June 10th, 2007
Death by fiction
These days everything is out to kill or maim you.
There was a time when eating fish was considered good for you, now it causes alzheimers.
Jogging is no longer a form of excersise, it’s a punishment for your knees.
Oxygen, essential, but lethal.
It seems to me that life is allergic to just about everything, or is that just me.
Sean on 
Maddie on
you are completly right. at one point, chocolate was healthy. now it’s gonna kill you, but after it becomes vegetarian. (obviously)
It’s a commonly accepted tenet of nutritional science that every substance in the world either causes cancer or cures it. I wouldn’t worry too much, though- that which does not kill you only makes you stronger… unless it’s one of those things that kill you slowly over time.
Look on the bright side. It’s the fear of death that makes life meaningful. Without death, we’d have nothing to push us to achieve things now rather than later. We’d also be stuck with the winners of American Idol for all eternity. Living in such a universe, death might start looking pretty good…
This is the second attempt at leaving you a comment for the first time - if you know what I mean. I love ‘Death by Fiction’ it reminds me of a similar one you did a while ago ‘flower’.
Here goes again - I’ll try and post this comment….watch this space…..
teenagers yay!
i am one, by the way, not some kind of a fetishist. or i suppose pedophile is the more correct term.
i hope im a part of this clever bunch you speak of.
but seriously. love your work, man.
Maddie – I was reading yesterday about how Mars Bars turned non-vegetarian overnight, and then back again. I always wanted to know what you would have to put in chocolate to make it non-vegetarian.
Mr Hewitt –
Dante would have been proud of you, give me a lake of perpetual ice and torment any day.
Dishwasher – Yup, I’ve been caught out recycling my ideas again.
And congratulations on your first comment… or at least the second attempt at a first comment.
Justine – the fact you read The Flowfield Unity definitely makes you part of the smart teenagers I was referring too.
and thanks, that’s very kind of you to say so.
aw, well shucks
If you look hard enough, you can find the negative in anything. The converse is true, of course, you can find the good in everything too. Reality is somewhere in the middle, most of the time. I prefer to have a positive outlook. It’s better to err on the bright side.
Hear hear! I do the same.
*trying out a Woody Allen impression*
I once erred on the bright side, then I got sunburned and had to retreat indoors.
*stops trying out a Woody Allen impression*
Despite my recent, apparent morbidness, I have a fairly positive outlook on life… and why not, mine has been pretty good, especially compared to the majority of people on this planet. Once you realise that you are not going to die of starvation, dehydration or disease, and that you’re not going to get shot on the orders of some deranged dictator, how bad can it be?
Doesn’t stop you thinking about it though.
Laffs– I love your Woody Allen impersonation!
It’s as a great man once said. “It could be worse. You could be on fire.” I teach that one to my students all the time. it’s surprisingly useful.
yeah, i did notice the morbidity of late, but i get where youre coming from. the news is always filled with horror stories! it gets to me. but yeah, it also makes me thankful. a drought is the worst thing we’ve got going on right now (im from australia) but i do feel sorry for the farmers!
I’ll keep working on the ‘Woody’…
‘…You could be on fire’… It’s very similar to ‘Worse things happen at sea’, which if you think about it is true… Imagine something pretty bad, then imagine it happening at sea and it always gets worse.
The dought in Australia seems fairly bad from what I’ve read, that and the fact you’ve had flooding too. Biblical-style disasters are a real nuisance but at least they keep the news networks in stories.
Adam-a mars bar is none vegetarian because it has animal fats in.
now explain to me this. i have a friend. she is *sarcastic quotation marks* vegetarian. and she insisted, one monday, that she would not eat mars bars ever again because they had animal fats in.
then, on the tuesday, i told her the news that they would be vegetarian soon. so on wednesday she ate 5.
and she continues to eat them, though i did tell her that although news travels fast, they weren’t vegetarian yet….but she does not listen.
seriously, does anyone know how people with brains like these survive??
Maddie asks: “does anyone know how people with brains like these survive??”
Do you mean those of us who don’t have Mad Cow disease and blocked coronary arteries? ^Q^
hehe. i mean, if you haven’t got some sort of short term but terminal and probably non contagious but easy to catch, simply, complicted, rare, common disease that has no symptoms except the symptoms, you’d probably go mad…
i think if i imagined myself on fire, I’d very much like to be at sea.
well if the fire is imaginary, I’m sure you could think up a sea too.
Nope, a sea is trickier. Also most people believe the worst, so if I was on fire, I don’t think I’d believe in any sea I saw, because it’d just be too convenient. For all I know it could be more fire.
i guess that depends on what kind of person you are. i mean, if there was a sea in my imagination i would probably try to sail to safety or look for a fire blanket or do something irrelevant without realising that water kills fire, because thats how i roll a lot of the time.
Without bad, good would be meaningless.
Without death, life would be pointless.
Hippies hate me, but I know I’m right.
I prefer Milan Kundera
“what happened once might as well have never happened at all”
Hippies don’t hate me, but they attempt to correct me.
is mass hysteria a super hyped up version of hypochondria?
I read in Time magazine the other day that kids are becoming more susceptible to ilness these days because parents are becoming obsessed with hygiene. Now don’t get me wrong hygiene is good, to an extent, according to their research you need to go play in the germ infested sandbox witht the other kids, it helps your body build up resistance. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.