But... watching Steven Barnes taught me to treat my life like an art form.
I do not believe they've run out of surprises.
Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.
Once every hundred years, the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clean as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won't have to look at it.
Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.