Two unrelated items. Or maybe they're not unrelated.

With Mad Men off the air for a few more months, I have no must-see TV these days. Or maybe it's called "appointment TV." But HBO started a new series on Sunday called True Detective, and after Doug previewed a bit of it and deemed it "not too violent" I decided to try it out. (I don't do violent on TV or in movies any more, which is why I don't see a lot of movies or watch a lot of TV.) One of the characters in True Detective has this monologue that really grabbed me by the throat. Here it is. I fear he's right. Screenwriter is Nic Pizzolatto.

"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist, by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." Rustin Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) in True Detective

And this YouTube video is also wise. Quirky but wise.