or am I just paranoid?

Yes, I'm still stockpiling LSD, Ecstacy, Benzadryne (do they still make this stuff?) and blue tips (gotta sleep sometime)... for retirement. No other time in your life other than your teen years when you can play your music loud and noone will care (hell, it's expected when you're old!), you can stay up all night, sleep all day, got no real commitments, etc... As far as philosophy about death, the Pinhead says, when you gotta go, you gotta go. Since you don't know the final destination, why bother to pack? You might as well just concern yourself with matters right here and since you're here, you might as well have a good time :-)

In all candor, I think nking suffers like we all do. He just seems to be a bit more sensitive about the whole thing. I have a lot of "Eastern" friends that taught me a long time ago, "people do not make you mad (or stressed out) - you allow yourself to become mad about what people do". I have internalized that one simple statement and I must say that my life has improved 97.5 percent... It tells me that "I may not be able to control the outside world, but I sure as hell can control how "I" react to it".