So what with my birthday approaching I have been wondering what it is that I have actually somehow managed to accomplish so far, and so I have picked up a biography of Mao. By that standard, I am doing better than he was at this age, but then again he was a Hunanese peasant and card-playing comrade of my paternal relatives, so the fact that he was just a primary school teacher and successful bookstore renter-outer is not so scary. I suppose I just need to remove all opposition to my personal rule in the Party by my early forties and to overthrow the bourgeois-military-capitalist-roader elements in my country by the time I'm in my late fifties, exiling them to Rhode Island. Yeah... Time to start working.