Post Sunset and the first taste of Autumn was in the warm air. I had been hanging back on the outlying bordering areas of the thick sinister little Drake concert after party, scanning one mind after another, letting the hubbub cash against me, smelling the perfume of the cigarette smoke, hot blood and male cologne, and grooving now and then on the pure avarice and cynicism of the group. Speakers all around poured out a low thumping rap song that came on like a collective heartbeat. As Russian women were being imported through the young arrogant pimp—slick brown hair, fashionably emaciated, Armani jacket, shiny enthusiastic face, who worked his guest, buyers all, in methamphetamine fits and starts, bragging about the “White flesh, the blonde hair, the freshness, the class” he had coming in from his connections in Moscow and St. Petersburg. “You have never seen so much white gash.”  The trade was so rich they could replace the girls every six months; we pass them on down the line, do not worry, how was that for a guarantee? “I am talking crème de la crème, I am talking ladies who will score a thousand a half-hour, we pack with clothes or without, I am talking unbroken flow to the point of purchase.” #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7

I narrowed in on the pimp, and the big rawboned oversold bodyguard who was hovering around him, a drone in a badly cut dinner jacket with traces of white powder on his lapels. Drug slobs. All of them drug slobs. Even the white-jacket waiters passing glasses of champagne were high. The bald-headed man from Oakland pushed his way to the pimp: how much for the redhead? He wanted a right to top anybody’s price, “hear me?” They were all giving him the word in passing whispers, and he was now staring at me full-time.  Granting that some people after once realizing their doom cannot banish the thought of it from their minds, so much so that it interferes with all their other activities, this is neither inevitable nor at all common. It is, on the contrary, in the opinion of all except some existentialist morbid and pathological. The realization that one is a mortal does not in the case of most people prevent them from engaging in activities which they regard as valuable or from enjoy the things they used to enjoy. To be told that one is not living “authentically” if one does not brood about death day and night is simply to be insulted gratuitously. And this was certain not as great as music by 2Pac or Notorious BIG. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7

A person who knows that his talents are not as great as he would wish or that he is not as handsome as he would have liked to be, or that he is not a real rapper is not usually judged to live “inauthentically,” but on the contrary to be sensible if he does not constantly brood about his limitations and shortcomings and uses whatever talents he does possess to maximum advantage. You have been watching me face to face long enough that I feel like you should know me and what I am all about. Sure, there are a lot stories of who I am and people try to play into them, but you see it is not working. I find it amazing that people who have never talked to me a day in my life are obsessed with me and think they know what I am all about. A guy from Detroit with beautiful white hands was murmuring on about how he would put that young lady up in a crib in Miami Beach and give her anything she wanted, lady like that, you could not let this business dumb you down to where—the claim that death is better than life. It should be remembered that we are here concerned with such pronouncements when they are intended not merely as the expression of certain moods, but as statements which are in some sense true or objectively warranted. It may be argued that a value comparison—any judgment to the effect that A is better or worse than B or as good as B—makes sense only if both A and B are, in the relevant respects, in principle open to inspect. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7

If somebody says, for example, that Reese Witherspoon is a better actress than Neve Campbell, this seems quite intelligible. Or, again, if it is said that life for Jewish people is better in the United States of American than it was in Germany under the Nazis, this also seems readily intelligible. Or if someone says that there is discrimination in the housing code in San Francisco, California USA because if an earthquake strikes and destroys a significant number of San Francisco’s soft-story residential buildings (building with three or less units), the city will face an instant housing crisis because most of the units within these buildings are currently rent controlled. If these buildings collapse, they will be rebuilt in the absence of such tenant protection codes, and former residents would like be priced out of the housing market (source: Alastair Bland of East Bay Express), as opposed to Colin Kaepernick sitting down during the national anthem, as a protest, claiming there is ongoing discrimination, but not sighting specific codes of violation. In such cases the terms of the comparison are observable or at any rate describable. #RyanPhillipe 4 of 7

I smiled at the pimp. I had my elbows on the black iron fence behind me, heel hooked on the lower bar, black sunglasses down. White polo shirt and khaki short and white tennis shoes on. I loved my own clothes. The pimp sidled over, throwing sharp highly personal smiles here and there like cheap necklaces at Mardi Gras. On my right side (she was on my left) he said, “Give you a hundred grand for her now, no questions asked, got the cash in my coat.” “What if she does not go for it?” I asked, eyes on the shifting clattering party. Sudden smell of caviar, cheeses, fresh fruits, hmmm. “I will take care of that,” he said, with a scornful laugh. “You just take the other guy and leave her here.” “And later on?” I asked. “There is no later on. Do you know who I am?” He felt sorry for me. “You are fancy but you are stupid. Two hundred thousand for her. Take it or leave it. Five seconds. No more.” I burst into a soft laugh. I looked into his heartless frenzied eyes. Pupils enormous. Stanford Law School, drug trade, female slavery. Up and up and down and down. He flashed his glossy perfectly bleached teeth. “You should have asked around about me,” he said. “Want a job? I will teach you so much people will think you are smart.” #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7

“Get the host a chair,” I said to the first waiter I could snare. Half the drinks on his tray crashed into the other. Customers turning, murmuring. After all, the host had slipped down to the tile floor. Not so good for the slave trade. If the conception of an afterlife is intelligible, then it would make sense for a believer or for somebody who has not made up his mind to say such things as, “Death cannot be worse than this life” or “I wonder if it will be any better for me after I am dead.” Again, the survivors can meaningfully say about a deceased individual “It is better (for the World) the he is dead” or the opposite. For the person himself, however, if there is no afterlife, death is not a possible object of observation or experience, and statements by him that his own life is better than, as good as, or worse than his own death, unless they are intended to be no more than expressions of certain wishes or moods, must be dismissed as senseless. At first sight the contention that in circumstances under discussion value comparison between life and death are senseless many seem implausible because of the widespread tendency to think of death as a shadowy kind of life—as sleep, rest, or some kind of home-coming. Such descriptions may be admirable as poetry or consolation, but taken literally they are simply false. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7

Sometimes I wonder why no one wants to take me out and show me a good time? Luscious gloom of hotel mezzanine floor, marble and golden lights, mirrored elevator, swoosh of doors, glowing fields of carpet, gift shop full of pink stuffed monsters, heavy glass, outside pavements, filth, shrieks of tourist laughter, innocent and deodorized half-naked people of all ages in wrinkle-free scraps of brightly dyed clothing, paper trash in gutters, glorious heat, screeching roar of the crowded Oracle Arena. So many…many good people…so very happy. When the small self is transcended, the true inner Self shines forth. Let go and let God. Be still and know that I am God. Turn your life and will over to the care of God as you understand Him. Surrender to what is, for God is in all thing. Those who do not consciously have any religious or spiritual goals have remarked that it facilitates their capacity of lovingness, which is substantially increases their happiness and well-being. God is one of the major archetypes in the unconscious, each person has to take a position about God whether they like it or not. God brings resolution to long standing conflicts. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7