The wind whistling through boarded-up windows. Tumbleweeds scratching across dry, sandy tracks. That's how towns die. Not with a bang, but with whispers and whimpers.

What, smoking after sex not Zen enough for you? We gotta rewrite "The Art of War", too?

I have found that people lie, most often deceiving themselves. Not so the dead...
The dead are so very, very loud. And yet, lying is not in their nature.
It its so... humbling - to listen to the dead speak.

Man dies the way he was born: soft, weak and helpless. Death, the one certainty in this universe of chaos, can be both a tragic end and a release from suffering, It can come as an unexpected twist, or as a beautiful, crowning counterpart to a live well lived. The curse we face as humanity, the only living beings in constant awareness of death, is our inordinate focus on the fact. How much happier is the life of the gazelle that escapes the cheetah's clutches, thinking that it evaded death once and for all, than the poor soul living out his days knowing each step inches him closer to the void!

Speaking of harm's way. Know what I see lookin' at you? Walking, talking corpses.