In The Morning I Awoke Early And

I Refer Of Course To The Soaring Wonder Of The Age Known As The Eiffel Tower. Never In History Has A Structure Been More Technologically Advanced, Materially Obsolescent, And Gloriously Pointless All At The Same Time.

We Are So Used To The Notion Of Our Own Inevitability As Life's Dominant Species That It Is Hard To Grasp That We Are Here Only Because Of Timely Extraterrestrial Bangs And Other Random Flukes. The One Thing We Have In Common With All Other Living Things Is That For Nearly Four Billions Years Our Ancestors Have Managed To Slip Through A Series Of Closing Doors Every Time We Needed Them To.

I Wish I Could Adjust My Voice, But It's Just What's Happened To Me. It's Because I've Lived Abroad For A Long Time, And My Wife Is English And My Kids All Have English Accents, And Every Voice I Hear Is English. I've Never Intentionally Changed My Accent At All.

Where I Grew Up, In Des Moines, Iowa, There Is Hardly Any Downtown Economic Activity Now. Everybody Shops In Malls - You Don't Find A Sense Of Community In Malls.

To An American The Whole Purpose Of Living, The One Constant Confirmation Of Continued Existence, Is To Cram As Much As Sensual Pleasure As Possible Into One's Mouth More Or Less Continuously. Gratification, Instant And Lavish, Is A Birthright