I was desperate for a little bit of conversation. So I conducted this exchange between me and myself… how I wish I could talk like either.

- Why do people throng to see the eclipse?

- What else do you suggest them to do? Live their lives? That would be far too consuming.

- But it happens only once in five hundred years, doesn’t it? Not many people I know live that long.

- What people don’t realize is that everything happens only once in five hundred years - in eternity to be more accurate. Each moment is unique, but nobody goes through them on that assumption. We’ve got one chance to say ‘thank-you’ to the waitress who serves your dish; Only once we can read Paul Auster for the first time; we don’t expect to see that gorgeous girl who stand in front of us in the subway ever again… these are the things that matter. Moon blocks sun for a couple of minutes? I don’t give a fuck.

- Is this the media’s fault again?

- A nation gets the media it deserves. A field reporter declares in front of a camera that, (though it’s cloudy and he can see no shit) he is incomparably excited and, as though we failed to grasp his excitement, he repeats the sentence, replacing jidong with xingfen. If the out-of-nowhere histrionics was not enough to make me want to punch him in the face, he certainly made sure by bringing into play one of the most over-used phrases in Communist Chinese language. This kind of journalism should be PG13 – just think of the harm it would be doing to the kids. But, as I was saying, the media incompetents should not be the only people embarrassed here.

- I certainly grasp your point that an eclipse is not all that important, but don’t speak as if you have always put your time to the best use. If one decides to waste his life, why can’t he waste it on the most profoundly pointless stuff on the largest scale – on the solar level I mean? What were you doing when that happened, watching porn again?

- First of all, porn is indeed better than an eclipse, and it’s not only because it has sounds. On the other hand, you misunderstand me so much that it makes my opinion far more intelligent than it was intended. I was not objecting the wasting itself, but only the manner in which it was done. Maybe I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm and flamboyance.

- Oh you rambling pretentious self-contradictory cunt, you don’t know what you are talking about.

- No I don’t. You are quite right. Why should I? Being coherent and comprehensible is an insult to my eloquence. And, by the way, fuck you.