A Spot Of Bother

just read the book by Mark Haddon. It's good. =)

He also wrote "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" about a boy with autism.

A spot of bother is about a recent retiree who discovers eczema on his hip and becomes convinced that it is cancer and that he is going to die. However, he's an old dignified Englishman, who doesn't want to trouble anyone, least of all his wife, who he one day discovers is having an affair.

If I were a book reviewer I would call it "darkly funny" and "honest". [Although Lisa and I have learnt not to trust any film that is "darkly funny" because that is film critic code for "Not humorous at all. Just extremely weird and almost painful to watch."]

Anyways, the book made me think about

1) Retirement
This is jumping the gun a little-- even worse than Leonard's thinking about divorce.... But my goal has always been to retire early. Make $5 million dollars, then get out. Live off the interest. Yet... today at the supermarket I realised that inflation has reared it's ugly head... milk in safeway is $2.50/half gallon, $4.69/gallon. Insane. Used to be $2/half gallon. That's a 25% increase. Well... good thing my stipend has gone up to $2100/mth from $2000/mth. Truly, A*STAR makes me feel so loved.

Anyways. Moral of the story... I should raise my estimate to $10 million.

But I asked BS today what was his ideal retirement, and he said that ideally he would never retire-- that he'd be able to work a little forever and ever, and get paid for it too.

Yeah... I'm glad the world has people like BS. So the rest of us can slack.

2) Dying
In line with my early retirement plan is my early death plan. I've been thinking about Robert McGough's poem:

Let me die a young man's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns
burst in and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a young man's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

I totally disagree man. Especially about the living-till-104 part. Perhaps in 2080 living till 200yrs old will be commonplace. But perhaps not. Homo sapiens are not designed to live so long.

I wonder if there will be other species in the genus Homo after Homo sapiens.... But perhaps there will be another Ice Age soon, and we'll be wiped out all together? I've been watching the NBC drama "Heroes". It's very gripping. I don't agree with any of the science, but it makes for a great story--- people with super powers who want to do good, a pervading sense of destiny, a race to stop a foretold tragedy, powerful mysterious people who may be good or bad, husbands and wives and brothers and sisters and friends --- very addictive.

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Back to 'a spot of bother': Like the protagonist in the book, I want to die a sudden death. None of this suffer-for-a-long-time stuff. Ever since I watched the movie 'Final Destination' (the first one, not the sequels), I've fantasized about getting hit by a bus.