A tired man they see. No longer cares. The old man then prepares, to die regretfully.

Accomplishments in life should be long-term and meaningful, not short-term thrills. Each one makes the threat of death, decay and old age seem a tiny bit less worrisome.

As the tides rise, eventually to drown us one by one in senescence and illness, I try harder to build things that will stand as monuments and withstand my death.

But still, Metallica's lyric above, from Unforgiven, still fills me with dread.

Is anything enough?

Tags: death, life, metallica, music
Current Location: Monchengladbach, Germany
Current Mood: busy
Listening To: "Unforgiven" by Metallica

Isn't this just awesome? It's ideal and obvious that the most ancient life had to be the subterranean "extreme-ophiles" and anaerobic, heat-loving simple single-cell type, as nothing else would survive this:

“Chiron, a recently-discovered planetesimal, is on an unstable orbit near Saturn and measures 180 km across. The consequences of it hitting the Earth are too horrible to contemplate. And Chiron is by no means the largest known minor planet. Four billion years ago such objects would have been far more common than they are today. [...]

An impactor 500km in diameter would excavate a hole 1500 km across and at least 50 km deep. A huge volume of rock would be vaporized in a gigantic fireball that would spread rapidly around the planet, displacing the atmosphere and creating a global furnace. The surface temperature would soar to more than 3000 ºC, causing all the world's oceans to boil dry, and melting rock to a depth of almost a kilometre. As the crushingly dense atmosphere of rock vapour and superheated steam slowly cooled over a period of a few months, it would start to rain molten rock droplets. A full millennium would elapse before normal rain could begin, presaging a 2000-year downpour that would eventually replenish the oceans and return the planet to some sort of normality.”
"The Origin of Life" by Paul Davies, p140-141.

I read The Origin of Life while on holiday (I'm back now! Hi! Photos to follow!) and have got quite a few quotes from it. It is not groundbreaking stuff anymore, but it also gave me a good understanding of the hardy little critters that we call extreme, but they'd call cosy. It is us, desperately relying on the sun for heat and production, living on the cold, weather-prone surface of the planet that are the extreme ones, trekking out to the surface where we have to build our own metabolisms because everything is so cold!

Tags: abiogenesis, asteroid, bacteria, biogenesis, collision, death, evolution, extinction, extremophiles, life, meteorite, oceans, paul davies, rock
Current Location: Monchengladbach, Germany
Listening To: "Sex dwarf" by Soft Cell

"Funeral Ritual Instinct" by Vexen Crabtree (2002)

The Not a Donor Card has long been a good idea. When people die, their healthy organs can be used to save others, unless they carry a card to say they'd rather let others suffer. There is no humane reason to de facto deny others your own healthy organs, once you are dead. There should be European-wide legislation to make all of Europe a donate-by-default region.

If peoples' religious or cultural delusions lean them towards social malefaction, then, they can carry a "not a donor" card, to exempt themselves from the moral duty to help others. By allowing these exemptions, the scheme is more likely to be implemented. Then, later, we can remove this exemption. Only religious extremists and confused individuals will oppose it, once the scheme is seen as a success all over Europe, not just in Spain.

Tags: burial, cremations, death, funeral, funerals, medicine, morbidity, organ donation, organs

Cat thieves deserve to be assaulted and their car and house windows broken

Casper was just found in a town quite a long way away, run over, after being missing for a week. ( Read more... )

Tags: affection, animals, casper, cat, cats, death, kitten, pets
Current Location: Mönchengladbach, Germany
Current Mood: Upset

New page: "The Food Chain: Esoteric Lessons From the Energy of the Sun" by Vexen Crabtree (2007), conclusion reads:

"What appears at first to be a purely technical matter; studying the rise of energy from basic single-cell life forms through the trophic levels to the predators that gather food over massive areas, can lead us to some serious exobiological, philosophical and even theological debates. Firstly, advanced alien life is likely to find it hard to gain enough energy to survive from digesting us alone, so probably won't be inclined to try. But alien life may well use different metabolic pathways and different biological chemicals so we may find each other utterly inedible and potentially very poisonous. If life in the universe is generally carbon-based, then, it is possible aliens could digest at least parts of us. But they probably won't, as space-faring advanced species have probably out-grown genuine carnivorous diets, as perhaps we are doing by relying on increasingly processed food (eventually grown in vats) coupled with increasing care for animal rights. Now, dietary exobiology aside, the very fact that life evolved from its unconscious, automatic beginnings, to rely on a cycle of life and death (where life survives by killing other life) indicates that if the cycle of life has a 'designer', such a God is an evil one. Only an evil God would design life so that to stay alive, animals have to kill other animals. This 'victory of death' is the exact opposite of what a good god would have designed, where all animals and plants survive on mystical energy from heaven without need for killing or competing for food ('victory of life')."

Tags: aliens, biology, death, earth, ecology, energy, evil, evolution, exobiology, food, life, predators, prey, satanism, sun, trophic, vampires, zombies
Current Location: German
Listening To: "Recoil" by Flesh Field

A dream from 2002, Doomed: We fight dying tramps in an underground car park, and turn to ashes when time leaves us behind. It was a truly awesome dream, but I've never posted it on LJ, so here it is... abridged... click the link for full version & some commentary:

A girl and I are on a bed, in a public place. We are in [...] a cinema where everyone watches the film on beds. She is attractive. Her and I take it in turns to stroke a cat that is wandering around on our bed. [...] I asked her name, but she didn't say. At one point I pounced her, laid on her and kissed her cheek and neck. The kissing bit was awkward.

Suddenly, we are in a car, in a very old car park near an old, large low quality hotel. There is a freeway nearby, and the area is run down. A policeman wrenches open the car door and says (in these words I imagined him to say) "if you ever have bad luck, you better get out of here"

The car park has filled with fully armed police hiding around all the old or wrecked cars, pointing their weapons at the hotel. I take the girl away, towards the freeway. The other side of the freeway is an uninviting forest that looks dark and brooding, and the freeway has many cars going fast.

There are 2 ramps going down to an underground place. A smelly, old, dirty, disused place with tramps in. The dream has become a horror. Tramps appear frequently in my nightmares! We go down there because I want to be out of the line of fire. At the bottom of the ramp is a large room, with vertical pillars. Like an underground car park, but a very small one.

I am wearing tough black combat trousers, a leather jacket and tough leather gloves. I am holding a large heavy duty torch. [...] She says "we should go back up" and I agree. Someone throws a knife at us. I pick it up. A well built person stands in front of me with a big knife. I shout "no" at him. I make 3 similar pretend strikes at his hand, each time he moves out of the way. The third time, however, I know he is going to make a chop at my hand, so I only make half a strike and as his chop comes in, I make a quick slash and cut his hand.
[...]
He jumps on to the girl. I jump on to him. I press my knife into his back slowly by 2 inches. I think about pushing it all the way in but am scared it could go all the way through him and into the girl.

Something happens, and the guy runs away. The lighting changes, it is still night time and now is very quiet. There is a feeling that something is changing. I realize all the police in the car park are no longer there, and the hotel is now deserted. Even the tramps have become still, asleep and seemingly they have all died and began to rot. A foul smell is in the air.

For some reason "hell" is happening to us, the environment's dying means that an area of "hell" is surfacing inside and out of the girl and I. It's strange and there is a period of time in the dream where I'm bodiless. Not floating or moving, just observing the dark decaying basement car park with no body.

Using strong determination, I make the pair of us appear back in the car park outside the hotel on ground level. Momentarily she and I are there, and we are beginning to feel relief -- but something seems seriously wrong. We realize that we were too late, and there is no world for us to return to. We have been left behind.

We felt a moment of "connectedness" to each other, some emotion and sadness and some feeling, some recognition that our short term relationship has boosted our self esteem and sense of worth, because the relationship was so innocent and simple.

Before my eyes, she turns into a crumbling, rectangular pile of scorched black rock and her humanness evaporates; she is dead forever. This happens because we've been left behind and can no longer exist.

A moment later I know I turn into a similar black pile of rocks. In the very last moment of the dream, I see the cold wind brushing over her and sending thick dust into the atmosphere [...]. I will be blown into nothingness by the wind; all my strength was taken, but I didn't notice how or when.

The idea of just turning into rock and ash, and blowing away in the wind, made me feel melancholic in the dream. After it happened to the girl and I knew it was going to happen to me, I was resigned to it. There a bit of disappointment that life is short and things are unfinished, but the inevitability prevented panic or desperation. Things just ended with a sigh.

Tags: death, dreams, tramps
Listening To: "Say Something" by James

Billions of people are completely forgotten, having left no legacy and with no-one alive to remember them. And with so many Humans alive today, and so many recently dead, who has time to wonder about the forgotten dead?

Wouldn't it be interesting to, pretty much randomly, pick out one person from history, a completely unknown person say from 1920s London, and get to know them? Find out about them, their interests, loves, hopes?

Just in the vain hope that if WE can remember someone else, someone in the future might also be affected by OUR insignificant lives, and somehow rectify the fearful nothingness death that encroaches on us all?

I was thinking about responses to near-death experiences... many people are energized by it. My response to impending nothingness, the victory of death, is to be obsessively productive, short and elitist... but nearly always in intellectual, high-brow ways... I want to understand, forsee and affect the future BECAUSE my life is short.

But others, instead, become obsessed with trivial life, they merely want to see, experience and do. I was thinking, what good is having seen that or having been there, once you're dead? Who would know or care what you've seen or done?

But if you make yourself great and productive, creative in a Nietzsche superman way, it seems to make life worthwhile.

What merit is there in either of these two reactions? Physical, experience, or in future power and foresight? One person decides, because life is short, to do as many extreeme sports as possible.. another decides to change the future and make the world a better place, not caring for their own life. One is a hero, the other is shallow... but both are equally trying to nullify the pointlessness of life.

So is it interesting to find out, WHO IS a dead person? Nearly all dead want to be remembered... but hardly any are. Everyone should research a random dead dude!

Tags: death, history

*excited rarrrr* I haven't had a decent dream for ages!!! So here it is:

Arctic Zombies

We're on an expedition. There is snow and snow dunes in every direction forever. There are occassional trees. To survive, we build a camp by digging a hole a few feet deep and store our stuff and sleep there. It acts as a wind barrier.

One day one of us dies with a look of horror on his face. When we came to marking a grave, we couldn't find the body. It unnerved us. We travelled in a snow jeep to a new location and made a new camp. After a few days we realize our dead friend has crawled across the snow, his flesh black and purple, to come get us. He bites one of us. It's like a zombie film, anyone who is bitten or shares blood with one of the dead becomes one of them.

We all run away a long way and form a new camp. We keep lookouts and call for help. Help arrives, and they decide to stay to study what is going on. Time and time again we're all forced to flee, as the numbers of the living dead increase around us. Anyone who dies becomes one of them.

We decide to retreat to the medical center, the antarctic main base. On the way we are constantly besieged by the restless dead, including a child and a dog. We fight and evade constantly. All of us are eventually overwhelmed, stabbed, bitten or suffocated by the dead. I go the rest of the way alone and get to the station.

Inside, there is blood on the walls and only the undead to greet me. I wonder around aimlessly, avoiding them all. In the front reception, a nurse and a tramp and arguing. The tramp attacks me with a drawing pin that he was cutting himself with. I can't hold him off, and he breaks my skin. Then he laughs and staggers away. The nurse shouts at him and tells him to go tidy his room, and they both laugh. There is no-one alive in this station.

The last undead are running out of energy and dropping to the floor; now all the living are dead, their job is done. It's getting very quiet. I produce a Christmas card, and as I'm writing it a living friend, Orinoco, is with me. He sniggers at my black humour as I address and finish the simple card:

"Dear Hellraiser and God:

I hate you

From Vexen & everyone"

Throughout the dream I had felt that Hellraiser & his subservise pleasures were the cause for the humans losing thier lives. It was only a bit scary... maybe if this heat continues, I'll have some better ones :-)

Arctic Zombies (Online)

Tags: death, dreams, god, hellraiser, zombies

Who is Satan? Satan, for me, represents Death, and the inevitable truth that every living being eventually dies (exceptions assume beliefs that I do not accept):
http://www.dpjs.co.uk/death.html

Been meaning to write this one out for a while.

Update: 2007 Jan 01: Added text "The Taboo Of Death" by Vexen Crabtree and posted it to my blogspot.

Tags: afterlife, corpses, death, fear, funerals, hades, heaven, nirvana, paradise, satanism, taboo
Current Mood: happy
Listening To: "Celebrate the misery (acoustic)" by Kill Switch... Klick

A precious friends' boyfriend's Dad has died from SARS... my condolences.

Tags: death, sars
Current Mood: sad

I dreamt of being in a new house, and there was a banshee inside a locked cupboard. If you stayed in the house you would become aware of it's endless wailing. The longer you stayed there, the more maddening it got.

Banshees normally appear as a warning of the imminent and sudden death of someone in the house. In the dream I knew this, and no-one else knew what it was, we all just ignored it, but I was worried because I felt it might make one of us go insane and kill one of the others, thereby making it's warning a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, the others were less worried. They could all hear the wailing, but I could hear it louder, except one of us. He claimed he couldn't hear it at all, and denied it completely, unconvincingly. Irrationally. So I was scared he was staying up at night with his hands over his ears going insane.

Anyway I hate it when dreams go unfinished! I napped a bit earlier after snuggling a friend, on her uber-comfy massive bean bag, and dreamt briefly of the banshee but the dream had (no pun intended) no substance.

The banshee which has been haunting my imagination for a while (a few monthes) is one that wailes "make this torment end!" and "why have you brought me back?" in a intensely high pitch and melancholy voice. And if provoked, will chant "U. N. D. E. A. D. Tell me what it means to me". She sounds like she wants to die.

You get 50 goth points if you can name the creature that facilitates this type of banshee's hauntings! Clue: It's not a celtic or gaelic name.

Tags: banshees, death, dreams
Current Mood: good

The Funeral Ritual Instinct: Death and Society

Tags: animals, cannabilism, cremation, death, funeral, funerals, instinct, science research, society
Current Mood: hungry
Listening To: "Solitary Waves" by Chalice

"The Christian Crucifixion and Plan of Atonement Makes no Sense and is Immoral" by Vexen Crabtree (2002)

Tags: christianity, death, jesus, religion
Listening To: "It ain't mad, yet" by Wumpscut

A Illinois man left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it in from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife whose husband had passed away only the day before. /when the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen: DEAREAST WIFE: JUST GOT CHECKED IN. EVERYTHING PREPARED FOR YOUR ARRIVAL TOMORROW.

　　P.S.SURE IS HOT DOWN HERE.

Tags: chicago, death, florida, hell, humour, illinois, jokes
Current Mood: happy
Listening To: "War (revenge and nemesis version)" by Wumpscut

... has drawn a day closer over the past day.

No second gone comes ever again take heed and see ye do nothing in vain.

I'm going to go dance now, and turn myself into a mindless demon in the name of self reflection, strength and fitness.

I just hope there are many days left and that every day is worth it, because in 80 years every we've wasted is going to be a tragedy as our bodies and minds fail.

Science And Technology Are Necessary to prolong our lives, so how did I get distracted into doing Computers when I set out (at College) to do Bio Technology? Ah, money! Oh... and talent. Needed the former, and don't have the latter.

Hail Satan, see you in a few hours.

*Setting off for Slimelight, a portal that takes us to the place between worlds where the Jinn await us*

Tags: death, life, slimelight
Listening To: "Half Asleep" by Apoptygma Berzerk