Crash Landing

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. If you take a look out of our left windows, you will see that one engine just dropped off. That screeching collection of junk is now earthbound for that spectacular vista below, as are we. 

I also regret to inform you that the coffee machine in first class has turned into a firestorm, incinerating our barista, Pedro. Espresso specialties will not be available for the time being. 

Second class is experiencing a complete breakdown of cabin electronics. If you are feeling left in the dark, do not worry. So does everyone else. We are currently working on a solution. In the meantime, please use the light of the flaming inferno in first class to navigate the walkways.

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Barbed Wire

Self-delusion is rarely considered a good quality, for drastic differences between our perception and good old reality could at best be read as a lack of self-awareness and at worst pose a serious risk for our well-being.

In mild cases of being somewhat smitten by our own self, the common victim is not ourselves but the people in our immediate surroundings who have to endure our cringe-inducing display.

In more severe cases, one finds the narcissist or our 21st Century sufferers of furor principum.

But it is not these cases I am thinking about today, but those at the very other end of the spectrum. Those, who, though capable of shining a mighty light, are somehow dimmed by the world or, even worse, their own perspective on things. 

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Hic Sunt Dracones

… or Here Be Dragons is an old phrase said to adorn those parts of a map that lie outside the known, traversable world. 

The historical use of the phrase or the exact wording is debatable, with the Lenox Globe of the early 1500s long having been the only reliable use of the phrase and the Ostrich Egg Globe only recently coming to light.

Yet the practice of filling blank geography with monsters was so widespread and the phrase so memorable that it has become a well-known saying whenever someone talks about the dark and dangerous corners of the world. 

Those places where the warming light of your civilization fades and you cannot rest assured about the safety of your quivering skin.

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