FU-WHAM!

Q:If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

A:Yes. Sometimes a very loud one.

It's a dumb question but there are dumber ones.

This is the dumb question that made me completely lose track of what I was thinking:

" How do I work myspace?"

That is an actual question voiced over the telephone about an hour ago. It was directed at me by someone exactly half my age during a discussion about something else.

I was unable to respond. My first urge was to hang up. My second was to hurl a string of curses and insults into the phone and then hang up.

Instead,I played it back in my head. Perhaps I misheard.

"What did you ask me? "

"How do you work myspace? I can't find it."

At this point I'm about ready to take my phone to the river and drown it like a burlap sack full of deformed kittens.

"You don't. You type the name I gave you into Google and hit search. Then click the link at the very top. You will be directed to that person's Myspace."

"Oh. Does it cost anything?"

"Only if you let it."

"What does that mean?"

"Dude, I don't know squat about myspace. You can listen to that person's music though- free."

"How much does it cost to buy one?"

"Buy one what?"

"Buy a Myspace."

"Dude, my oven just exploded- there's pieces of frozen pizza lodged like shrapnel in the walls of my kitchen. I gotta go."

"But, but... I have more questions."

Your Big Gay Baby

Have you ever fired a shotgun at a hobo? The traditional method involves removing the lead 'shot' from the ammunition and replacing it with chunks of rock salt.
This is slightly less fatal than buckshot but guaranteed to hurt like hell in any wounds it causes- but most hobos will jump from a moving boxcar at the sight of a shotgun, rock salt or not- a hobo trapped in the narrow confines of a railway freight car is an easy target.

But there are easier targets.

Fundamentalist Christian Homophobes, for example. Attacking them and their ludicrous 'beliefs' is easier than drowning slugs in a barrel of pickle brine.

These Christians, who hate Science when it teaches evolution or uses stem-cells to fight diseases, have opened up Pandora's Closet with this almost unthinkable uproar about Gay Babies- in theory, these Christians hope, science will allow them to determine their unborn child's sexual orientation , giving them the chance to 'cure' unborn queer babies of their homosexuality, which no serious modern scientist would call a disease anyway...

A Fundie Christian wrote this:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

My idea would be to guillotine the writer's penis in order to help him avoid the "inevitable effects of sin" - but why stop there? Let's remove his fingers before he pens more poison words - heck, lose the whole hand.
Dude.
Save yourself from the Sin of Onan.

This dogmatic freak is using religious insanity as an excuse for practical applications of eugenics theory.
Even the Nazis were not this crass- the Germans conducted their atrocities in the name of science and Nation and left God out of their vocabulary of horror- but this man implies that God would be OK with Man tinkering with the unborn if it kept them from being gay...hmm, what's next? Does Thalidomide prevent self-abuse? Does being born with a flipper instead of an arm keep you pure?

They could test for other 'degenerate' traits...what if you were a Christian Couple and the doctors told you that due to some miscegenation during the Third Crusade, there was a slight chance you might have a Muslim baby- or a Jewish baby...what if your child was destined to be an alcoholic or a vegetarian? A serial killer or the next Gandhi?

What if you made a drastic, irreversible decision about your baby based on a faulty screening test- what if your mistake turned your straight fetus into a gay one- or into a liberal- or made them creative- or atheist-or intellectually curious- or any other item off of the seemingly endless list of things that Fundie Christians cannot tolerate... I reject this idea of aesthetic fetal modification for ethical and practical reasons- if, for example, Oscar Wilde had been "de-faggotted" before birth, would he still have been an excellent author? What else gets destroyed, changed or lost when you start modifying the minds of the unborn? I trust science a lot more then Faith, but I'm not gonna let anyone- Labcoat or Frock- tell me I shouldn't love my child simply because they are gay.

I would have a gay child.
I would love them.
So what?

They'd be loved because they would be my child.

Even atheists love their children, although, in my case, not enough to force mutation on them in the womb.
I might reconsider if they were to be seriously deformed, but probably not.
What if some 'curative' treatment was applied to an unborn Stephen Hawking- perhaps he'd walk, but what would have become of his mind? Would he have been the same?
Aren't people like Mr. Hawking part of God's Plan? Some of us are strong, some are smart...together we are supposed to work it out and take care of each other.

Isn't that the idea? Not according to Fundie Freeks.

If Stephen Hawking was my kid, I'd be proud. Very, very proud.


Fundie Freak makes a great point here:

The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.

What he really means is that this will allow guilt-wracked Fundie parents to stop agonizing over why their kids turned out gay- it's not because of the painfully sado-masochistic homo-erotic imagery of the Crucifixion, it's not because their role-model Pastor likes giving head to the gay hotel hookers who supply his amphetamine habit; it's not because they were never shown the love and attention that they needed at home and wound up getting buggered by the priests- now they can blame it on the DNA. Simple and cleansing.

Fundie insists God created DNA and His "pernicious" handiwork can be seen in the DNA helix, Original Sin being just another genetic marker, but the Bible tends to contradict this Fundie statement:

Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment.

Ummm...riiiiighhhtt...

Personally, I think God a is pretty poor consultant when it comes to matters of conception, breeding , DNA and whatnot- at least one precedent comes to mind:

Once upon a time , this Old Guy named Zelophehad died , and he owned lots of land but he didn't have any sons, just daughters- and Jehovah was pretty sexist towards unmarried women and property (women were property, they did not typically own or inherit it), so there was some dispute as how to keep the father's wealth in the hands of his unmarried daughters - and, of course, in the tribe.

Moses was pretty much the spiritual go-to guy back then , so he was dispatched to go ask God about how to settle this dilemma.

This is what God told Moses:

"This is the word that Jehovah has commanded for the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, ‘To whom it is good in their eyes they may become wives. Only it is to the family of the tribe of their fathers that they should become wives."

What God was saying is : "Marry your father's brother's sons- marry your cousins and keep the money in the family."

This concept explains a lot about American Evangelicalism but it shows an alarming ignorance of genetics, especially from the Being who allegedly Created DNA.

Marry your cousin?

God should know better.

It amazes me that anyone could attribute 'Intelligent Design' to a God that is so intellectually dense that He doesn't even understand the basic chromosomal principles at work in His own creations.

Didn't God invent Mendel and those famous beans? Can't He read?

However, the agnostic idea that there may very well be a God, and that God is as thick as the proverbial brick, seems to gather steam every time I hear about these close-minded and dangerous lunatics; in fact , the idea of God being really powerful but a bit clumsy, a trifle stupid and dangerously incompetent seems quite logical.

After all, it's His image.

Sick and Tagged

I am tagged, nauseous and ashamed.

The tag is from Thivia. I am to list five things that most people don't know about me.

The nausea , I believe, is from the stomach flu or perhaps arising from something that I ate.

The shame is a result of the realization that I haven't yet linked this:

Reconstruction: Why We Blog

Why We Blog is the work of Thivia and many others , and it examines...well, the reasons people blog. Duh.

A number of bloggers were consulted as well. This was my humble offering.

-----------------------------------------
So. The tagging thing.
Five things most people don't know about me:

#1: I am six minutes older than my twin brother.


#2: I once sold a comic story for real money. It was about vampires, a subject that bores me to undeath. It was a long story...here are some pictures.
The title, Destiny Angel, didn't scan very well- in several meanings of the word ...it was a female vampire character created by the publisher, who really wanted to publish a book about female vampires.
His character's background?
She is a female vampire- surely you can come up with one hundred pages based on that, said the publisher.
For a grand? No problem.
The cover title is in red foil print, a common comics-industry 'collector's item' ploy. What it really meant is that a crappy comic that should have cost a buck or two actually cost $4.50 !
In 1996 dollars!

It was awful. Even the fine print sucked. My publisher couldn't spell and was too proud to let me proof-read his copy. "Concent", anyone? Sheesh...



#3: If I am lost, someone will inevitably ask me for directions.



#4: I don't perform routine maintenance on my equipment as often as I should.


#5 : My next-door neighbor is plotting to kill me. She is going to drop a flowerpot on my head as I walk underneath her porch on the way to my car.

WWHD?

After hearing Bush telling 70% of America to: 'fuck off, I'm the decidinator and I'm gonna invade Iran too!' it's become clear that BushCo never intended their conquest to end at Iraq, that indeed it was just the first step in a regional campaign encompassing the greater Middle East; and that the entire PNAC plot collapsed when Iraq didn't turn out to be the 'cakewalk' that the neo-cons claimed it would.
Well, duh, we all know this now...so:

Let's go back a bit to Sept 1, 1939. That's the day Germany invaded Poland, which caused much of the world to declare war on Germany.

They declared war on Germany because it is wrong for one nation to invade and occupy another nation merely because it wants to do so.

That's the reason we, as an international community, went to war with Iraq in the first Gulf War- they invaded Kuwait.

Anyway, back to 1939- by the time the nascent Allies got it together, it was too late for Poland, which, ironically, would have to wait a long, long time to be 'liberated' , as it went directly from Nazi to Soviet domination.

But imagine if the USSR hadn't attacked Poland from the east and that Germany was unable to
roll over the Poles and instead of easily taking control of Poland and going on to wage WW2 for the next 5 1/2 years, the bulk of the German Army had become bogged down in Warsaw, waging an endless defensive war against a fractious civilian resistance .

Let's say that after about four years of escalating German casualties and no tangible results in the Poland war, the German people start to wonder if their leader knows what the hell he is doing. Perhaps the German public becomes informed that one of the major reasons for the invasion was actually staged by the Government in order to justify the war they wanted so badly? Perhaps they would start removing the 'H' bumperstickers from their Volkswagens and start declaring their dissatisfaction by taking to the streets in angry demonstrations of what is now the majority opinion?

How would the German leader react?

First, he'd remind the civilians that he was The Boss.

Then his minions would insinuate that pointing out the Emperor's Clothes was tantamount to treason .

Then he'd declare war on Russia.

Can I Go Home Early Now?

"Dude. What are you doing?"

"This belt is too big for me- I'm punching a new hole in it."

"With scissors?"

"Well, yeah, there's nothing else...YEAAARGGGHHHH!"

"Dude. Maybe you should have taken the belt off first."

Camouflage

It doesn't look like things went very well during my two-month absence from work. I started last Weds and was told that HR Guy was coming down from HQ on Friday to give us a training session on "Professionalism in the Workplace". New Guy, who was the main beneficiary of this inane exercise, didn't even show up to work that Friday, which sort of explains why we were having the meeting in the first place.

The boss and I were given new handbooks explaining the new uniforms we are required to wear.

Uniforms? What the fuck? I read a bit of the booklet.

"We are Records Management. Document Services wears uniforms. We don't."

"Right. Well, here are some guidelines about dressing on the job."

I skim the documents...the word "camouflage" catches my eye- there's nearly an entire page under this heading.
How strange. I would think that wearing camouflage clothing to work would simply be prohibited, it's a Law Firm, not a Sporting Goods shop... but there's quite a bit of detail here...hmmmm:

-Loose, puffy sleeves can have a 'slimming' effect , as can certain darker colors...avoid bold patterns and tight or clingy garments...

Huh? This is a "how-to guide" for women to "camouflage" a few extra pounds! I wonder how women who receive this booklet feel- they should be insulted; regardless of weight, the whole idea of instructing ladies to "camo" their bodies seems extremely sexist to me- who are they supposed to be hiding the flab from anyway? For whose benefit?

Then we watch a grainy 1990's VHS tape about how to shake hands firmly and make eye contact when speaking to others.

Remember: You only get one chance to make a first impression!
(I have hated that platitude since the very first time I heard it)

Did you know that mumbling, twisting your hair and staring at the floor can lead people to have an unfavorable opinion of your professional competence?
That's what the video tells us.
It's important to look attentive even when you don't give a shit.

After the vid, HR Guy asks us to discuss the video. There are three of us in the room. At 40, I'm the youngest by several years.
I push the various papers aside.

"Look, we are a bunch of old men. We already know how to dress for work. Even when I was a kid I knew how to dress for work. If you give me a wimpy handshake I will immediately dislike you and if you twirl your hair into your mouth I'll think you're stupid and I don't need to watch a video to reinforce those prejudices. All I need is a wimpy handshake or some hair twirling."

HR Guy is smiling. He's visibly relieved to hear my speech. Our lesson is concluded.

We spend an hour talking about football and women and what to do with kids these days, tsk, and then it's time for lunch and hell, might as well knock off early, it being Friday and all.

Mostly Good , Trying Harder

Last night I had the chance to talk with an old friend I hadn't seen since before I got sick and quit drinking. My friend , of course , was drunk, so my words were most likely wasted, but I can't shake them off...

Many years ago, my friend drank a hole in himself in much the same manner that I did- he too almost died, yet once he'd recovered from his surgery he started drinking again and really hasn't stopped since. He has had life threatening surgeries and seizures. He tells me he's had another alcohol-induced grand mal seizure just last year- but he just doesn't have the willpower to quit... I have a hard time listening to this.

Look, I say, we have both had surgeries and seizures and done our hospital time- for me it was the most traumatic time of my life- I am haunted every single day by my memories of that time- you--you know what it's like to go through that and you KNOW that it's going to happen again and you still keep drinking...
I stop my tirade because I'm trying talk to a drunk about drinking and I know it's useless to do that.

He knows it's killing him and he keeps drinking despite that certain knowledge.

That takes a lot of willpower. I know because I've been there- "drink 'till it hurts" was not a Spring Break slogan , it was a lifestyle choice...oh, don't mind the blood, that's normal right? Everyone pukes a little blood now and then, don't they?

I actually convinced myself that a little blood in my vomit was normal- I never allowed myself to think that about why I was sick all the time in the first place- must be the flu, food poisoning, an allergy- anything but the truth.

Believing my own lies almost killed me.

My friend isn't even lying to himself - he admits what's happening but doesn't seem to care enough to stop. I wanted to shake him, yell at him, beat him...stop, stop, stop STOP...
I didn't do that. Maybe I should have.

It was an otherwise perfect night of good friends and much joy, so I didn't do that. Instead, I had great time bar-hopping and staying up into the early hours- all without drinking. I didn't even smoke any dope- I didn't want to.
I was enjoying myself too much to want to get high, which is something I never thought I would hear myself say.

We have, as a group, pledged to arrive en masse in London in 2008, where we have a number of gracious hosts who know exactly what they are in for but have invited us anyway. I am told, not for the first time, that I'd be much happier in the U.K.- plans for seeking political asylum need looking into*...

When we left the bar, my English passenger walked 'round to the driver's side of my Volvo and stood there expectantly while I unlocked and opened the passenger side door for her.
I waited a moment, holding the door open...my passenger looks at me like I'm nuts...

Oh, right.

"Hey, in America the driver sits on the left side."

Haha...we switch places and are on our way.

Two good nights in a row, this is a habit I could live with.

In Search Of...

SPACE DRUNKS IN DANGEROUS DATING TRIANGLE





Whoa...has Blooger updated their search engines or something?
Has anyone else had a huge upsurge of search engine traffic from people typing in really weird shit?
Not all of it's bad, just weird...

Since 2007 my blog has been visited by people looking for:

"amazing grace" ford. Am I the only one who noticed the piper botched "Amazing Grace?"

EDIT: Since posting, my meter has gone nuts with variations on "Ford Bagpiper " , so I'm guessing I wasn't the only one who noticed...but no comments on it. Geez, maybe it was inspired musical improvisation and my lowbrow mind couldn't grasp the true sublimity of the moment.

"living near a hospital is bad" According to Google I am the only result for this exact phrase, so I guess I'm an expert now. Another reason not to trust the Intertube.

"dating a drunk" This field is more crowded , but I'm still #1. I get a lot of hits on this theme, for obvious reasons. Sometimes I even get emails, in a good way.

consensual necrophilia Uh, ok...I'm #9 for this search but I'm not sure that's so good...


grab the radiator and pull down your panties I'm #7 on this search. My only problem with that is I'm not #1.
Not that I'd blog about it.

amazing coincidence 20$ This was from Canada. I'm already a celebrity in Canada, being #4 on this crowded list just ices my Canadian Fame Cake.

"how to pull cable" Unlike consensual necrophilia, I have actually pulled cable.
A lot of cable... And it's not a euphemism, it's pulling cable and I'm #7.

Eleni wet spot I'd actually like to meet the person who is #1 on this search. I'm #5.

schematic on construction butterfly knife- To my old pals at the Company- relax. It's an amazing coincidence (see above) that I'm #4, is all.

Ok, I'm bored now.

Fuck Doll Ruins Holiday

"Mommy, my doll told me to fuck off!"

The hysteria is exceeded only by the idiocy...

Click the link below this story for the video. It's workplace safe- they actually bleeped the alleged naughty word out.

Can you f*cking believe this sh*t?



There's also a link to a story about a dog whose fur pays homage to the Crucifixion...the owner, who is obviously a lunatic (check out what the dog is forced to wear if you need proof) , is treated as credible by the 'newsteam investigators' , who are neither credible nor sane.

The doggie story may be slightly more deranged than than the doll story... but it's close.

Ford Pinto

It's somehow appropriate that the bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace" for Gerald Ford's pallbearers hit so many wretched, discordant notes that he actually had no alternative but to stop and start over during the procession, which I am currently watching on TV.

Some Ford notes:

Mostly, all anyone on TV says is "he was a nice guy".
Great.
Maybe he'd have been an awesome neighbor or bowling buddy, but "nice guy" isn't even on the list of traits I find desirable in a President.

Of primary importance, the President must always place the needs of his country above his own needs. Sound pretty simple right?

The image of a crippled FDR comes to mind- leading America- and indeed, the world, through some of history's darkest days- being the man we needed even though he himself was dying...not merely troubled...the man was fucking dying and he put his country first, protected us.

Think, if you will, what might have happened if Dubya Bush, not JFK, had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Think about that and look at the leaders the two(one) party system are offering us now.
Do any of them have what it takes to be a hero?
Because, no joke, what we fucking need right now is an honest-to-god hero that can be bigger than the job that needs doing and we need to stop worrying if so-and-so would be fun to have a beer with or who they diddled and how they diddled them and instead ask:

Do they have what it takes to be a goddamn hero?

I have yet to see that quality in a politician of my generation.

That sort of Presidental courage is long out of style, it seems.

I think Bobby had it, but he never got the chance.

Bill Clinton, who I generally respect and greatly miss, failed that very simple test of country first- if he'd just said "yeah, I did her, it's none of your damn business", he'd have saved us a lot of stupid national grief
( honestly, I don't care if my Prez fucks around, it's hard to start a bloody war when someone's going down on you-or at least it should be)

---------

Ford?
The best thing I can say about him is he wasn't Spiro Agnew.

He only got the job because Agnew got busted for tax fraud , bribe-taking and general bad behavior- damn, imagine if Agnew had become Prez- that's a scary thought, but it coulda happened.

First, Ford pardoned Nixon's thugs, just as intended; decades later, he had the chance to use his Presidential Voice to warn against Bush's Warmongering Hegemony and chose -for his own reasons- not to use the powerful platform that history had given him.
A great many so-called leaders knew that this war was wrong from the very beginning and they were afraid to speak up.

There is a word for that and the word is not "hero."

Jesus, I just learned Henry Kissinger spoke at Ford's ceremony.

Man, I don't like Ford, but no one deserves that sort of abuse.

I can't think of anything that would be more debasing, insulting or disgraceful than having Henry the K speak at one's funeral, so I'll ease up on Gerry now.
Feel kinda bad now, actually.

Rest in Peace Mr. President.

Hey

Look, I'm sorry if you thought I had killed myself.
Most of you will be relieved to know that I am fine, some of you might be disappointed -in either case I'm sorry.

What happened is:
-I wrote a long series of really depressing essays in response to some hard questions. It sent me on a sort of emotional snipe hunt, looking for non-existent problems that I was assured were there. Sometimes we look too hard for meanings and we find mistakes instead, make mistakes too.
-The person I wrote these essays for got bored with me before I published them, so I took them down from the blog, as well as some widgets I had put there for that person. There wasn't much left after that but the Dove but I thought it looked nice that way, plus I really didn't have anything nice to say...I go entire days without comments, so I figured I'd just fix it later when I had something a little more upbeat to share. Maybe a new pic or something.

- If you read my no-longer deleted posts , you'll see that I said I didn't plan on suicide, that I had a hard time talking about it in real life because the first thing people think is "hide the guns", even though I don't consider doing it, I do know about it. I mean, yesterday I was blogging about how much I was looking forward to my weekly radio show- if you listen to my show, you will know I am not a suicide- I love what I do and you can hear it when I am on-air.
I make up a lot of silly BS (google Whalanol) here, but I love my radio station and they count on me. I couldn't fix my blog because it was 6 am and I had to be on air. Call the station if you don't believe me, as the commenter on my recent radio post seems to scoff. I really do love doing my show- why should I have to prove that?

- I've already apologized personally to one blogger and my apology was rejected. That's too bad, but there's nothing else I can do. I'm not a mad villain plotting ways to make people cry, I'm just a person who's trying to work some very difficult things out and sometimes it comes out wrong- so I deleted the words- and the deletion came out wrong.
Everything I do comes out wrong but I am not suicidal about it. If I was I'd be Kurt Cobain and I'm not Kurt Cobain.
I'm sorry, I'm confused and hurt , but I'm not an evil person.
I want things to be better and I try as hard as I can not to fall into the old traps and sometimes I goof up, but please...I have a lot going on, if my blog goes away, it'll come back eventually. If you are concerned I am right here at camelsback@msn.com , please, if what I write upsets you write to ME , not to someone I barely know, and ask ME what's up.
Or stop reading it if it's that painful.
I'll miss you, but it's better than hurting you.

Matter

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

As a child, one of my first enduring loves was for dinosaurs; paleontology to be more precise- I loved my trilobites just as much as my allosaurus ; can't have archaeoptyrx without having 'T.Rex' first (archaEopTyRX, see?), and did you know that some scientists used to speculate that Rex actually had a form of rudimentary plumage, although I think it that idea has been abandoned...

For a period, I refused to watch movies that featured dinosaurs alongside humans- hogwash! I would declare, full of childish indignation- everyone knows the dinosaurs were extinct for millions of years before homo sapiens walked the earth...sheesh. Insufferable fucker, I was.
Was?
At least nowadays I can enjoy movies where dinosaurs eat people without ruining it for everyone else by shouting out how there is no way you would ever see a mastodon and a pterodactyl together in "real life".

When I was ten, I read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller ; it profoundly changed my thinking, suddenly it dawned on my young mind that not only was man trying to destroy himself, he was going to fail, and he was going to use that failure as inspiration to try harder at the next attempt at self-destruction and so on...

But, as I would cheerily point out, none of it really matters anyway because the sun will eventually explode and destroy the solar system, which will slooowlly be sucked into a black hole at the center of the universe, which will then contract for eons upon eons , crushed by gravity until it eventually vomits forth another universe which will very likely be inhabited by organisms just as wretched as humans could ever wish to be.

I started reading books that were beyond my years or just plain weird: Ellison, Burgess, wildlife guides, Burroughs, atlases,Vonnegut, almanacs, Batman comics,Heller, Illuminatus, various tombstones etc.... nowadays, I doubt that our schools would encourage or even allow such reading by grade-schoolers, but back then it didn't matter.

Often, I didn't even have to attend class.

Did you know that galaxies die? They do.

It's hard to study while galaxies are dying.
As a child, it's hard to explain this to adults without scaring them.
When I got older I had more and more classes that didn't exactly involve attendance, it was easier for every one that way.
It saved a lot of explaining.

I knew the system was bullshit and I played it so that I wouldn't have to do much of anything. I'd just write a few papers about books I would've read anyway, get the teachers all worked up and by the time they discovered what a truly fucked-up child I was- that they'd basically been conned out of giving me 'real' homework and into giving me plum assignments- I'd be whisked away to another school, soon to be standing in front of yet another group of unfamiliar children, explaining how it's better to read the glossary first when you read A Clockwork Orange, otherwise they might find it confusing.


So.

Long ago there were dinosaurs, then they died (and all the smart people knew it was a meteor, even then) and eventually they turned into oil, which we turn into gasoline -which was being rationed back then because OPEC wanted to punish the US for it's support of Israel in whatever war was raging in the Middle East at that time -Yom Kippur, I think, as if it matters.
Yeah, 1973...fuck, it really does seem like yesterday. Like last hour.

Jesus, back then I was too busy watching the nightly 'Nam body counts to understand the nuances of Middle East politics.
(I still don't understand those nuances, perhaps because there are no nuances to understand)

Plus, I was 8 years old and didn't understand a lot of things that I currently don't understand - I just have a better understanding of my lack of understanding now , is all.



Anyhow, the dinosaurs are gone and surely aren't coming back during my wholly insignificant lifetime, besides, like I said, the whole Universe is constantly going BOOM! crush BOOM! anyway, so why bother with anything- every thing's doomed to extinction, subject to be extinguished all at once or over billions of years- what difference does it make?

My 5th grade teacher asked me where I learned to be so nihilistic.

Nowhere. Duh.

I used the same line in 6th grade, in response to the same question.

By the time I was 12, I had used science and reason to soundly establish my own insignificance as well as that of everyone and everything around me. A sort of cosmic resignation sank into my spirit-didn't break it, mind you; though it might seem that way from the outside. In truth, I think I really enjoyed the awesome power of negation that comes with knowing more than is good for oneself.

Suck it up, keep on truckin' yadda yadda 'cos it don't mean shit nohow, right?

Even though I clearly understood, -understand, rather - just how empty, pointless, pathetic and unremarkable my puny existence is, I still didn't lose interest...I can't stop the stars from exploding, but it would be cool to watch one blow up.




















I have been asked, more than once, why I bother carrying on if I feel that life is so hopeless...these inquiries miss the point, misinterpreting my meaning- I never said life is hopeless.

I don't believe life is hopeless- if it was, I would be dead right now because right now all I have is hope.

I am. Therefore. Life is not hopeless.
Sum ergo whatever...

Life, however, is pointless, especially when viewed on a cosmic scale.
Can't argue with that.
We don't mean diddley-squat.
Boom!
Back to dust, wait for gravity to start forming new planets, don't hold your breath 'cos this might take a long time, Rocketman...

I honestly don't care if life is pointless. I'm a lifetime supporter of pointless causes, a pillar of pointlessness in my community, an ardent champion of Things That Don't Mean Shit-which, by my childhood definition, is everything and everyone, past present and future. I'm passionately pointless and pointlessly passionate.

For no reason.
I can't justify it.
I don't have to- I don't even pretend that any of it means anything.
Why should I?

I know it's useless, that nothing I do will ever mean anything, that my old fantasies are absurd and that there might not be any new dreams to replace them with... but so what?

I don't have the willpower necessary to give up living.
I'm too lazy to do nothing.
It's hard work, this doing of nothing. Just thinking about it wears me out.

I might as well try to do something. If nothing matters, it can't hurt to try.