"To Be or Not to Be"

Ironically, the worst pain involves giving birth. There are those, however, who have given birth before or after a barbarous introduction to kidney stones and have stated that the latter took the cake and thrust it against one’s face till the only thing one could wish for was utter unconsciousness. I would have shot myself dead at each occasion in which I had suffered the effects of a kidney stone (there were often more than one), if I had owned a gun, before the morphine shot would cheat my brain into “thinking” that all was well again. I still do not own one, but I could get a gun and wait for the next stone to strike. But why not use it to stop the steady pain and suffering? Why not press it against my left temple (I rather like the right one) and shoot (pain, no more; dead, instead)? Because suicide is painful as well, and pills do not achieve it in most cases. On the other hand, assisted suicide would be one’s best bet, but one has to be terminally diseased to open a death account, and it can be costly if one wants to depart in style à la Switzerland, although there is no elegance in dying, unless one considers films (not documentaries) to be copiously representative of real life.

As of 2018 (it will surely change after 2020), assisted suicide may also be legal in the Australian state of Victoria, Germany (no comment required), the Netherlands, and the U.S.A., but for the latter, only in the states of California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia. As for voluntary active euthanasia, it may only be legal in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

Assisted suicide entails making lethal means available to “patients” to be used at a time of their own choosing, whereas voluntary active euthanasia enables the physicians to take a voluntary active role in following patients’ requests, usually involving an intravenous delivery of a lethal mixture of toxic substances. Life is deadly, after all.

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Beautiful is not enough of a word to describe you.

“Oh!”

Enchanting is better but still lacking. Ravishing! Not quite! Stunning! Very close! Striking! Yes! Striking me dead!

“Thank you!”

You do understand that the most of each of these; most beautiful, most enchanting, most ravishing, most stunning, most striking; is death.

“Oh!”

Oscar Wilde had mentioned that Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace. I doubt that one could apply his blissful reverie to those who were incinerated. Their ashes can end up anywhere, even on one’s lapel (both, at times), in one’s nostril (the wind is only kind when the Sun is not, tissues are always handy, and there are two of them too), on one’s hair (boldness can be advantageous), and in one’s tea (green tea is apparently best).

To be or not to be? What a healthy question!

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No Children Allowed - Death Blow Poem

We despise death because we’re born to die.

Nonetheless, we still want to have children,

surely knowing that they will die as well.

Shouldn’t we, accordingly, be against

having them, to avoid their bound demise

while giving a lordly out-worldly blow

to death in the offing at the same time?

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Children - A Timely Tanka

The children’s happy

flushed faces meant that AI

eradicated

both child pornography and

priestly pedophilia.