The Hemlock Society Updated

Alexa Joel, according to newspapers in South Africa where I currently am, tried to kill herself with an overdose of homeopathic medicine. That is sad. But homeopathic medicines are supposed to work strongly by virtue of their extremely minuscule doses. Suicide by homepathy requires even stronger doses, and so, logically, the most potent way to kill yourself homeopathically is to therefore take no homeopathic medicine at all.

Sex in America

I saw an enjoyable movie on the airplane — Juno, by Ivan Reitman. Funny, cute, and everyone very matter-of-fact in a hyper-realistic way about teenage sex and pregnancy. It reminded me of an old book I once found in my original home in South Africa and read recently, from the 1950s, called The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy, recently deceased, obit in the NY Times, a one-time wife of Kenneth Tynan, which apparently caused a sensation in the early Fifties when it took a funny offbeat mock blase look at grown-up twenty-something American girls’ matter-of-fact promiscuity and adventures in Paris. Over fifty years the matter-of-factnesss has moved from 23 year olds to 16-year olds, and Juno was much more matter-of-fact than the ill-concealed attempt to be blase in The Dud Avocado.

Sic transit gloria suicidii fututiique

if you’ll pardon my Latin.