The only way to read a book is to start at the top-left corner (unless it's in Chinese)

My fortune cookie predicted: 'The way to get to the top is to get off your bottom.'

Fine advice, but they're not called cookies o'quotables. As soon as I finish filling out this lottery ticket with my lucky numbers, I'm going to call the local Red Dragon Buffet and complain about their lack of authenticity. At least they could have said that today I'll get off my bottom. I'm not looking for them to get my future right, but I am looking for them to try. They may as well have told me that my lucky numbers today are the ones that have always been my favorite. The lost effort on the front of my white slip of clairvoyance must have actually just been used up on the back where I'm learning Chinese a word a meal. Dian-hua means...you guessed it - telephone. Now if I could only find my Chinese pronunciation guide. So I won't be able to say it, but at least it won't stump me next time I'm flipping through my collection of Han era literature. Or I guess Sima Qian would never have mentioned such a device. Which leads me to how much I can't stand trivia. That's basically what you get in history majors. All I really learned, but it really was a big lesson, was that history was real. It doesn't matter exactly what happened, just that things happened, and yes, there are, at the least, vague patterns. My personal life-view is strongly affected by my four year immersion in history, anthropology and archaeology. Every other class I took, as electives etc., stood as training grounds for my historical view. The notes I took while in 20thc Russian Literature had nothing to do with anything the teacher was saying. As I've said before, as all the other kids heads came up, my went down. The only reason it's good to know someone's name, historically, is so that people know what event you're alluding to, or what time period. And when all you do is study history, you begin to see it all on a larger view, and even WWII becomes little more than a blip on the timeline. History, to me, no longer concerns specific events except for as examples. History is the progression of the way people have lived, even somewhat into pre-history. And then I take this and judge it on my feelings based on all-important undefinable values such as justice. But I try to do this with the knowledge that my feelings are only important to me because the idea of what is 'just' changes with each society. Finally, when I look at it all, I can't get a certain feeling. I'm not sure. I guess it's really our decision though. We can try to slowly go back to a more natural, earth-friendly way of living, or we can try to treat the ailments and ignore the causes for them. I see us in the future either as a blissful maybe Vulcan like state and at one with our environment, or as a bunch of futurama-type heads in glass on robot bodies.