signs on the freeway flashing ozone alert. don't fuel up if you don't have to. don't mow the lawn. don't breath unnecessarily. or.... or we will die of ozone? it's a race. the sun, or the chemicals in my food, or the fluoride in the water, or the secret e.l.f. waves from the Russians, or the radiation from my apples, or the microbes in my sheets, or the micro waves from my cell phone, or the secret backward lyrics in the rock music telling me to kill myself, or the asbestos I breathed thirty years ago, or the twin than never developed in-utero that I absorbed and will become a tumor, or the west Nile virus, or the fire ants, or the dear tick, or the slow evaporation of water form the surface of the planet, or a meteorite from the sky, or Armageddon, or the seven plagues, or choking on a Dorito..... or..... or i can just not think about it. and go along with my ten thousand little distractions. and look for the flowers in the cracking urban rubble. or i can hypnotize myself into a trance of la-la-la-te-da-de-day and smile at the traffic and the man with the vanes popping out of his neck, and the tramp on the side of the road - already a goner. and listen to the crazy people blather on the radio, and fly away in my imaginings to some utopian escape. or be real, and grave. or get mad as hell and not take it any more - till I get tired of all that negative churning, or try, again to accept life on life's terms, and try again for compassion, and grace, and belief in the sanity behind the absurdity, or be Buddhist, or sleep, or laugh.