Way to go

Q: “If you could choose the way you die, what would it be?”
A: “Burn up on re-entry.”

“It gives a man character as a poet to have daily contact with a job.” (Wallace Stevens)

During the Cold War, as a teenager, I would stand outside on the front lawn at dusk as planes invisibly went over. Hearing that long roar from high-level airplanes passing over the city, I wondered whether it meant annihilation.

It would always finally fade back to birds.

Further back, at the age of three, I went to a night rocket launch at Woomera. I shouted, “Stay in the car!” in case it fell to earth and hit one of us.

I thought it was the end of the world.

I thought everything was the end of the world.

Cunningham’s Warehouse advertisement for Tiffany products

“Cunno’s puts the fanny in Tiffany.”

Quitline advertisement

“Smokers: You Disgust Us.”

Intelligence draws intelligence to itself. It will seek and find itself, replicate itself, feed and grow on itself.