soren kierkegaard was a philosopher in the eighteen hundreds who didn’t think he was a philosopher.  i read “the sickness unto death” “either/or” “philosophical fragments” “the concept of dread” “fear and trembling” “repetition” “concluding unscientific postscript” “the attack on christendom” and “the modern age.”  i think my favorite of his books is “the sickness unto death.”  i have read it probably eight times and every time i read it i still pause in between every few pages and do like, a little air guitar solo thing that represents how much i like what i am reading.  one time i was on a train to new york and i was reading it and a man who called himself “the gay rabbi” came up to me and started hitting on me.  he called me a skinhead when i ignored him and then he started hitting on this goth kid in the next seat and the goth kid kept threatening to “beat the shit” out of the gay rabbi.  the only things i vividly remember from that trip were “the sickness unto death” and the scab on the end of the gay rabbi’s nose. i think that along with “beyond good and evil” and “being and time,” “the sickness unto death” is the most important, concretely applicable book of philosophy i have read.  my favorite smaller piece of writing from soren kierkegaard is called “what says the fireman?”   if kierkegaard were alive today, i feel that he would be the character in a frat movie that is smart and for some reason helps out a group of kids that are considered rejects but then he would become terrified at how much he is failing as a christian.