Of course I'm sane, when trees start talking to me, I don't talk back. // Terry Pratchett

The difference between cheap and expensive bottled water is taste (and texture). The reason most people don’t taste a difference between tap, cheap, and expensive bottled water is that people, especially in the West, drink water cold and mainly after eating, both which largely cancel out differences of taste. If you were to regularly drink water at room temperature, as I do, you’d realize that (except for the sense that it seems to always be more aerated than most bottled waters) tap water isn’t that amazing; it leaves a chemical aftertaste because tap water sources are treated with chloramines, and in part because they contain certain quantities of bacteria, tylenol,…

The statement's playing with three ideas...

I like fried insects, with a carbonated soft drink or beer to wash them down. Not all fried insects are synonymous in taste though. I can still smell the yellowing fried grasshoppers of my very young summers in Kigali, Rwanda thanks to a neighbour who couldn’t get enough of his own outdoor fried particulars, and though he’d offer me a bite on numerous occasions I’d remind him, once again, I didn’t like the stuff (too much work, not enough crunch). But, if he’d cooked up some Maeng Kee Noon beetles or Jing Leed crickets the Thailand way (fried in a wok briefly, with a light coating of Golden Mountain Sauce,…

Most of us have only one truth to clearly speak of and it...

We're all mostly driven by...

The only way to know yourself is to sit with yourself; asking yourself questions, revealing everything, baring every feeling, and asking for understanding. The obvious is that this helps you know yourself because you reveal yourself to yourself. The less obvious is that through this process you lose something very crucial, your need to know things about yourself that you don’t know. To paraphrase Don DeLillo, “What you don’t know about yourself allows you to know yourself.” In Point Omega, in that specific sentence, Don warns against thorough self-examination because it satisfies curiosity about self. It strips the well. He warns that you will dive into the dark well that…

To deal with shame is to deal with pride. Shame stems directly from it. This is why when people say, "Have you no shame?" what they really mean is, "Have you no pride?"

Franz Kafka's notion that "the messiah will arrive only when they're no longer necessary" feels right.