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RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
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2001-09-25
Julius Robert Oppenheimer
B. 4.22.04 New York City / D. 2.18.67 Princeton, New Jersey
Throat Cancer
The scariest of fortune cookie fortunes at the scariest of times. It just popped out when I was cleaning underneath the toaster oven.
�Soon you will be sitting on top of the world.� For once, I�m swiping a sponge around there and ka-boom.
Nothing to do but to paste the thing in a notebook and start recording observations. The happy thrill of casual conceit I felt when this message made its first appearance in my fingers, weeks ago�the vaguest recollection. But now I have to be taking the subway into Manhattan tomorrow afternoon. I picture my frozen-faced reflection in the train window watching the words flash among my last thoughts�
Soon�soon you will be blasted into moisture, matter, and a weightlessly ascending soul. (while there�s still time I must write something dense and vatic naming the Chinese fortune cookie industry�s anonymous copy writers as the creators of a post-modern literature both scriptural in nature and global in potential scope�and sell it to Granta)
Soon the weensiness of you which sees and knows will perch, an atom in the fire, on the rim at the top of a radiant wheel, looking down on eternity. �bracketed by little smiley faces.