The Blind Assassin

I had to double check the spelling for assassin, I wasn't convinced there were 2 double "SS"s. But anyway, the book The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is my latest and last read. I'm pretty proud of this feat after the growing stack of books with all sorts of paper, bookmark stickings - at least one can finally be released from the folding and inserting and be among the stuff I can pass on to whoever else.

Defence

I came across this argument: humans need to be exposed to a certain degree of harmful chemicals, toxic waste, etc to help raise their defences. as an animal, we often forget how amazingly adaptive our bodies are and as the environment changes over time, so do we. - well, I don't know if going back to smoking at this point will help raise my defences for an increasingly polluted world (but I do know that many can use that argument) however, I do remember how the europeans rendered the tribes a "lesser species" (look up eugenics) because of how they literally wiped them out by bringing western disease. while immunity is important, prevention is still better than cure. at this point, raising consciousness works as better defence than voluntarily swimming in the muck.
or should we all just jump in?

honesty and choosing which bits matter

For a while in the blog-sphere it was all about honesty and just being brutally in your face, the truth as it escapes from your gut whether as bile or smoke or smut (hey that rhymes). and just leaving it out there like some kind of conceptual art - pay no heed as to what damage it might cause to tender souls raised with tact and if it does invite a tear or two, or better yet - shock the bejeezus out of em', all the better.