My God, what a frightening future, the loan interest rates start to rise and every fashionable cafe goes out of business...all those bizarre baristas wandering the countryside, like Kane, in Kung Fu, wondering what to do with their respected professionals skills, and their pig tails...like the new poor...like...immigrants. yech.

back to the malaysian plane being brought down in the South China Sea...I remain amazed that no 'proper news journalists' on earth have ever sought to find out why, following this mysterious event, the Prime Minister of Malaysia was given a personal US$800 million as a gift from the Saudi Royal family when he identified that the plane turned around and went away...or why President Obama landed in Malaysia soon after and offered them a really good deal on Defence. Isn't that odd to anyone apart from me? Doesn't that kind of raise a bit of a flag about the events? Just a little flag?

Locally, with the exodus of Chinese buyers, the property bubble in Melbourne is starting to pop and, nationally, loan interest rates will begin to climb to about 5%...and that will mean about 8% on home loans. Start saving.

There are a bunch of things that you do notice as time goes by. For example...the plan for the USA to accept our refugees on manus Island etc in exchange for Central American refugees the USA wouldn't accept because they weren't refugees at all, but rather narcotic criminals, was ,in fact an agreement with Mr Obama...but after it was made Australia said it wasn't an agreement at all, but it still is...

You don't have to look back very far to see how things have gone. There was the 2008 Global financial crisis...a Massive World Recession that wasn't allowed to be called that. A Recession with a big impact for 20-25 years...still rolling out. In response to this, wealth went from countryside to city, thus the new Rising of London City and New York City (+LA) as Elite City-States with all the money. Then, There was the Brexit vote... people in England countryside were far worse off than people in London, so they wanted things to change...thus Brexit. In the USA, people in the country were much worse off than the City States of New York (+LA) so they wanted change and thus Trump. In the Middle East the impact of the GFC was catastrophic for anyone not really rich...thus the rise of terrorism. Fortunately, through the wisdom and intelligence of the Communist Party of China, the impact of the GFC was minimal...and the bad guys who participated in this remarkable theft there were in fact taken out and shot rather than given more money, as the west gave their criminals. Thus China leapt ahead 30 peaceful years in a day...and the West receded into the new beginnings of real poverty and a lot more war...which is simply a larger form of terrorism.

Good Thinkers and Tinkers

I like a few modern thinkers, but not many. I liked Christopher Hitchens because he was a great and eloquent Atheist, especially when he had had a few drinks, even though I do believe in a very personal God, myself. I do. I just do because I choose to, even though it makes no sense at all. My life doesn't need to make sense. that is not why I am here.
Christopher was a brilliant light of 'passionate reason' and you don't get that kind of person in 7 billion once in maybe 5 hundred years on this world. I miss him.
He went on from being a devout Atheist to being a devout Contrarian, and I felt sad for that change...but still I respected that what his mind and heart chose was totally up to him...as it is with us all.
I joined the Church of Reason for some time after I heard him speak. I wish he was still around, but, alas, he is very dead now. Extinguished. Such is life.
After him, really, for me, there was only the Reformed Church of Spongebob Squarepants, that held any allure. I must admit that the notion of a belief system that will not accept your money is a pretty damn good one...and the Reformed Church of Spongebob Squarepants does indeed set forth this Primary Condition in its Doctrine...and I just wish all Churches did. I hope they all will, one day.
As we have all done, since the Dawn of Time, or at 5am on a Tuesday morning, instead of putting one's head in the oven, we all simply believe what we prefer, and why not believe some good things? Why not believe in the capacity of people to think for themselves and work out what they prefer? Isn't this the base of all belief, in the self, in others, and in the gods? There will be a time when sticking one's head in the oven does make sense, if we are lucky to have the choice and take it wisely, but before then, well, here we are...and some of life is pretty good as far as I know. I've noticed that the longer I live, the better life gets...and there is a scientific equation for this...childhood is basically happy, as you progress through teens and adulthood, its pretty unhappy, but when you get older, its is okay, and quite happy again. That's the Science of human life. this is not rocket-science or rocket-surgery, it's just how life is for most people who get there.
As for a good death, well, there is no such thing. This is one of the great myths of our time...but that's not important. Death only takes a few minutes. You just breathe out and don't breathe in again. That's not rocket science either, and its all as natural as it has always been.
If I had to send love to anyone dead, apart from folk I love as kin, then I would send it to Christopher, for being so passionate about the Mind, and way back 500 years to my hero, Michel de Montaigne, for being so passionate about Being. Well done! Love to you both from way over here in time. You 'done us' and yourselves so very well with all the love of your hearts and minds, and in your wondrous word-smithing craft. Fine bhoys both, and bright as buttons, to be sure, by any reckoning of the lot of us.

I was enjoying waxing poetically and philosophically, just then as I like to do from time to time, and then I got the fucking gas bill. I can't even afford to stick my head in the oven now. bastards.