Good Friday eh? What's so good about it? I understand and respect the answer of "oh, it's good because we were freed and yadda yadda" but everything's bloody well closed down so it realy isn't so good. Furthermore... *sigh* furthermore it's just boring. No meat, no drinking (which I don' do much of anyway) and no fun. Geez, they might as well just call it "stay home and don't eat meat friday." Oh wait, no, that's what every friday used to be called back when nobody woudl eat meat on friday decades ago. Does matter anymore though - nothing does. I swear to god, this whole Religion idea has potential and whoever decided to come up with it is a very, very smart person. Only thing that made him a dumbass was the fact that he never thought of charging people some dollars for membership. I guess that would make the corruption too obvious. That's right, maybe he was smarter than I first thought. Keep the financial matters on the DL, the followers'll never learn of the scams we're pulling and fool-hardily they'll just give us the money anyway. Hmm, doesn't sound lke too bad of an Idea. Hell, for that money, I ought to just start my own religion and get people to give me money in the hopes of being healed. I won't be too blasphemous, I'll make it the new form of catholisism. It'll be known as "catholic-lite" oh wait... that's the Apiscibles. That's the problem with the world today, we've learned to tap so far into our minds that we've found numerous ways to fester our laziness. With this in mind it's not unreasonable to believe in the fact that we've gone as far as w're going to go as far as ethics and technology is concerned. We've hit the vertex, or zenith if you. They've met on the graph and now one is plummitting towards the negative numbers while one continues to grow expontentally. And the saddest part of it is that although we can take things apart, put it back together - soon we'll be able to live on another bloody planet even. But the saddest part of it all is that although we can do that - over half of us won't even be able to make a friggen marriage work, and those of us who will be able to make it work, about one third of them will be living a lie - keeping the secret that they're having an affair with their secretary, the janitor, the janitor's wife, the mail-person or the neighbours. These days you can't trust anyone. Before you know it you'll pet dog'll be taking your spot in the bed, let's just hope that he ain't sleeping with her too because the day that happens you can actually call her somebody elses [female dog]. But aren't we such a powerful society? We're living hypocryts actually. We do everything we say not to do and than we wonder why in gods name things are going to hell in a handbasket. And than what do we do? well, what do some of us do? We place our complete and utter faith in God, Braman, Allah, Yeaweh, Re - whoever. We place our faith in some kind of god, who, just as luck would have it, was created by the same corrupt people we're trying to get away from. Oh wait - wasn't it created in a much more real time though - a much more proper society? If that be the argument than I ask you what we are? if the old days were better how can we be advanced than them? I'm sorry but the only way we're more advanced than back then is that we can blow ourselves up 3 times over with a drop of a single bomb. That and the fact that we're probably more advanced when it comes to screwing up. And what's more than that is that most of us are so god damn arrogant, so self-righteous that we'll enver think of it that way - we'll never see what we as a whole are truly worth. Instead, what we do is we take what we believe is right, what society says is worth-while and measure ourselves by it and judge our own self-worth. And that's why we have the prettiest girls both on the inside and outside thinking that they're worth no more than a standard office stapler. And they beat themselves up for it because they're not worthy enough to be a part of society ebcuase they don't live up the bloody standards. Well I'm sorry - if we have this going on, there's no way you can convince me that we are so much more advanced. We're advanced alright - advanced at making people feel like garbage. Anything other than that I'll stand up right in-front of you and ask you to not urinate in my ear and than tell me it's raining; just don't. It just doesn't add up. It's a wonder we're even sitting here, in fact - it's a wonder that we made it this far. We got our teachers and everybody else telling us to live up to our full potential, telling us to never give up and that we're number one. We've got the media saying that if you don;'t look like this you have no potential and that you're better off to give up than to try and change because it'll just be too hard. And then convienently we've got corporations following thereafter with the machines, devices and foods saying "here, take this it'll make your life easier. Why have a double big mac when you can have a quad-big mac?" By now so many of us shouldn't be here or in our right state of mind that it's almost amazing that I'm here to talk to you right now. And here's another reason that most of us shouldn't be here either. Child-safety items. Door-locks, oven locks, toilet locks, tub lining, no walkers, safety barriers. I never had any of these as a child but nowadays it's essential. Essential my big toe (don't worry, it's not that big.) I'm sorry what ever happen to just watching your chidren? Maybe I missed something along the way. I know I was never worse off w/o this yet parents feel safer knowing that their kid won't flush themselves down the toilet. Come on - give me a break here. And somehome, somehow the corportions have convinced the seemingly advanced soceity, this new generation of sophisticated super parents that all of these devices are needed because *gasp* god forbid your child is home alone and decides to open the oven that's cooking dinner for the family. That's the biggest load of crock I've heard since I last heard someone say that they loved Jesus. Here we go - I'm sure I just offended someone by saying that. I really hate offending people - honest to god, I try to be the most diplomatic person and although I'm sure that you may love Jesus I just find it difficult to believe. Bare in mind that it is not for me to judge - you know what you feel and thus I dare not judge you; you're your own person and I'll forever respect that. But riddle me this batman; They say you can't hate someone who you've never met, talked to, seen or know anything about correct? I cannot hate you because I've never met you, you cannot hate me because you've never met me - we cannot hate jesus because we've never met him, we've never talked to him, heard any of his words, his oen thoughts nor do we know anything reliable about him other than he was a carpenters son and met his faith on a wooden cross. Alright so if we can't hate him, bearing in mind that hate is one of the furtherest extremes of dislike, how on earth can we love him, bearing in mind that love is perhaps the furtherest extremes of like? Don't get me wrong here, I'm sure he was a good guy - just how I'm sure that Mr. Robert Frost or that Sir Wallace was a good guy. I've never met them but until I hear to the contrary- I believe that they were good people. This Jesus chap, good guy - son of god, possibly - do I love him... well, that's a stretch. Can I love my dead grandfather that I only knew for the first six/seven years of my life? No, I never knew the man but from what I'm told by first-hand sources, he was a good guy and you know what he never harmed a hair on my head as a child so I believe that. Does anyone see where I'm going with this or am I the only one saluting to the idea on the flagpole? Don't get me wrong here, I'm not just beating up on Christians and as irrogant as this is going to sound of me I'm going to say that "I don't discriminate, I pretty much dislike everyone equally." And this is technically correct because there is a certian level of dislikement you have for everyone. you can only handle so much of certain friends. Some of them do things that annoy you, other seem perfect or maybe you can't find anything wrong with them - in that case your dislikement level is 0 or -2 or something like that. Now I don't want you ladies asking me if I dislike you because I don't - I love ever single one of you. Maybe that was too bold of me to say, but you've all grown on me and helped in so many ways and I'm forever in your debt, honest to god I am. Do now, you're asking when Im going to stop this seemingly belligerent entry but I think I'll thoughtfully carry on for a while longer just because... well, just because I can. If it troubles you or you think I'm being uncharacteristically rough feel free to contact me or to comment, but rest assured I am not bitter nor is anything wrong. I was just sitting here today and all of these things flowed- one into the other. I don't know, maybe I'm not as good as I use to be. If it troubles you don't have to put up with me anymore, maybe I ought to just stop all togehter but then I'd be giving up and not only would that make me a bad person, but that would make me a bad role model... that plus someone's got to stop the person who'll try to take over the world and maybe by doing so I'll just be able to make a difference in various people's lives... maybe even the people so close that I can't do anything for right now. Don't give up though - my advice to you is to never give up, but know when you're beaten and live to fight another day. You can't win them all so don't be a zealot and actually try to take on a losing battle unelss there's some kind of greater good at stake and by doing so you'll actually be meeting the objectives that you would have if you had fought and won. Trust me on this one. Don't give up the ship unless giving it up will create the same effect because than you're in the same place, w/o the ship and you'll have what you fought for. So I tell you this, make sure what you're fighting for is worth it because you may just lose it all in the end and only be left with what you fought so hard to preserve. As Q said "always have an escape plan." Signed, -Captain B. Planning