The Book of Dead Philosophers has on its cover a photo of a book with the title The Book of Dead Philosophers. The book in the photo is lying on its back, presumably in a supine, dead-book pose.

This is already annoying on many levels. But I looked inside anyway, and the introduction started with a quote from Montaigne’s “That to Philosophize is to Learn How to Die,” which went thusly: “If I were a maker of books, I would make a register, with comments, of various deaths. He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”

Oh well, this is better, I thought. Kind of a how-to book on dying. I’m all for that. I’m entirely susceptible to the idea that if I knew how to die I’d know how to live. It might explain so much, I mean, about my general level of despair: I’ve got no clue how to die properly.
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I saw a jet trail in the sky this morning and wondered why there aren’t so many of them any more. And instantly started grinding through the useless, absorbing little inquisitions that keep the mind from wasting its time on lesser matters like making a living. I’ve learned to be wary of the first, natural hypothesis of any 53-year old mammal’s brain, which is simply that the world is going to Hell, damn it. I’ve learned to squint around that little mental cataract and formulate slightly more rigorous options, little lists of possible responses like the heads-up display that leads the Terminator to choose “Fuck you, asshole.” Standing at the top of the alley, the dog sniffing the weeds beside me, I came up with three quick possibilities for the scarcity of jet trails:

1. Jet trails must be some sort of condensation of hot exhaust in cold air; so, because of global warming, the outer air isn’t as cold so condensation doesn’t form.

2. Better engines and jet fuel mixes mean less exhaust; hence, fewer jet trails.

3. There are as many jet trails as ever, idiot. You’re just getting old and whiney: “When I was a boy, there were jet trails so thick the woolly mammoths used to trip over them….” Shut up and keep walking. (more…)

A 20-year-old in Yaroslavl does a back-flop off a 70 ft high bridge on a dare, breaks his back upon entry and sinks to the bottom of Volga like a stone. His friends catch the whole thing—including his last puffs on a Prima cigarette—on video and from the looks of it they had been drinking. His body was fished out downstream seven hours later. (more…)