April 25, 2002

Convince yourself of one thing:

It's better to lose a lover than it is to lose a friend.

 

  Then try to convince yourself you're not living a lie.

Right-o, so! Today is off to a good start! I find out that my ex-love-of-my-life has been rather... umm... busy.

Here's the story:
She meets this guy a couple years back on a trip to freaking missionary camp, of all places. He wanted to date her at the time but she had no interest in a relationship. After she rejects this guy, he goes and gets a girlfriend. They date for about half a year, then his girlfriend meets my ex at missionary camp. They become pretty good friends. After this, the three of them seem to hang out quite a bit.

Now, you may think this is going to end up in a threesome, but it's much, much more complicated than that.

Mainly, because her friends just broke up. She's torn between the two, celebrating with the girl and consoling the dumped guy. Poor sap got his heart broken...

Here's where the rabbit warrens start. First off, this ex of mine is currently 15. Second, she *knows* that the girl dumped the guy because she was cheating on him.

....but that's not the best part.

The girl was cheating on the guy with my ex.

That's right.

Lesbian sex, age 15. Devout catholic.

Worst of all, she giggles girlishly about it.

I'm scared.

Note from author: This was composed by me listening to a friend for many months about their thoughts of the LDS faith/religion. I have put them together as if they were speaking to me and I occasionally answer back and return info. This is entirely opinionated and if you could be offended.
Let us say I am in a place. People have pulled me with strings from the left all my life. You came along and pulled me right, with a greater force than I have ever known and I moved to the right. But more people started pulling left with greater forces than before. I have moved to the right from since you came along. But I am not to the point of where you are, not to the spot where you are pulling from. I want to walk in your direction but I do not fully understand it. I don’t know if I need and want to go into your direction, but my desires and curiosities confuse me, and keep me from going any direction. I don’t hate your religion, but I don’t love it. I need time to think and figure things out. I don’t know, but I am not ready to accept anything. My morals and life style have changed since you came along, and I actually like it. I don’t laugh at movies with people drinking and doing drugs and having sex. I don’t like being around people that do those things, nor do I do them now. Even if I had not done drugs or sex before my thoughts about them have gone in an opposite direction. Everything that you have caused me.... your trying to convince me a ton, but you have convinced me a little. But as soon as you get me to that point, I will be pulled back. If I am not close to you, in the position I am in, I will lose all these thoughts. The people in my life, and the people in my life after you, they will take out everything that you have put in my life. Because I still like them and I am close to them at that time when you get taken away from me, I would lose it.

What I like about the church? What I like about your religion is a better question. I don’t like going to church, but I don’t necessarily dislike learning about it. What they say in the scriptures, I find it very interesting. And a lot of the stuff has made a lot more sense than it did before, and the stuff that has made more sense... well... I prayed about everything, and when I pray, I needed it every single time... and I pray a lot more than I use to. And I find it to be one of the best things you can do. As long as you pray for the right things. Generally people from the church are nice, and good examples. And for the people that say they are apart of the church and do the bad things aren’t really of it, they may go to church, they may read and pray... But they are not really a member unless they follow it fully and act upon it. Few people realize that. The few who don’t follow it and say they do ruin the imagine for some, but it does not for me. I haven’t been to church in a few years, and I’m in active, yet I pray every night, and I think there is some greatness that is out there that people are missing and looking for, yet I am close to God because of praying. Which is the best way to get close to God, by praying. Not only do you realize things about God, but you realize things about your self. Your greatest hopes and fears. My entire day is a walking prayer, and every time I am sitting here, it is just as if “God, I wish I didn’t do that,” or “Please help me with this.” A lot of people think they can’t think, and all those tired people in the morning of school, just getting up. I think all the time, and constantly, and what else are you doing when your thinking is talking to God. Thinking is such as prayer, and prayerlike thinking, without the other, the other one is garbage.

When it comes to dating “dating,” that can mean going on dates with someone, or being with someone. When you are 16 it is way easier to go out on a date, and at that age people are not as immature at that age. Things are also easier when you are 16 because you can drive. But the church makes dating a huge negative sign until you are 16. It is not the worse thing in the world to date before 16, but there are consequences. And if you have feelings for someone and they have feelings for you and if you don’t nurture them they go away. Which is what the church wants. I hate how the church controls peoples lives like that. But for people who need it, like modesty, it is good for them. Now I do not think God on judgement day will send me away because of what clothes I wear. But the sins that are related to them I will be judged on. Wearing sexy clothes and getting in troubles with guys will matter. But if I wear a belly shirt at my home I don’t think it will matter. Personally I’d go out how ever I want to be dressed but the sins closely related to them are easier to do because the opportunity is there. I wouldn’t let any guy have sex with me, but others may and that commandment may be for them. I think not eating a porkchop is a ridiculous thing for a religion. I understand this tatoos and piercing thing the church wants, but at one time I did consider it. I also considered pot, but now I wouldn’t. I drank alcohol, but now I won’t. But my mom is happy I don’t any more, and since her little ordeal last week where she got a huge hang over after being drunk, she will be even more against it. I have reconsidered everything, my thoughts of things have changed. I haven’t even pierced my ears. But if I did, I wouldn’t be a better person, same thing with everything else. You and I both have never seen drugs, that is apart of being in Utah. Living in Utah? A good thing or bad? It has it’s pluses, but it is good for some things and bad for others. It doesn’t even matter to me if people are Mormon or not, I choose and pick who I like. There are so many bad things about a lot of Mormons, but there so many good things about a lot of Mormons. I can’t rent a movie on Sunday, and I don’t like that but it keeps me from sinning. Also the Monday night thing, family night, the idea is good, but it wouldn’t just be for Mormons. Religion and government don’t mix, and I am glad. I respect belief of others and their religion, but I don’t want to do what they do. I also think they should have their choice, it isn’t a catastrophe that they believe in one thing and I don’t.

You are the weirdest person I know. “You are so weird!” And you shouldn’t be writing this down. But you are, and that makes you unique and I like it. Every time we would play our game where I would say something or vice versa and the other would go liar. We’d always admit it, even if by smiling or patiently waiting. This conversation sucked until I started talking about the affect you had on me, definitely the part of religion and how you tugged me on this one. We were talking about how our relationship wouldn’t last and how the summer was coming and we would break up because you’re a grade higher. But religion has brought us together, and as much as I hated religion before, I like it because it makes you happy. Here is something I was thinking, that seems to be the way things are. You are saying we can’t get any closer, unless I accept your religion, it is an obstacle and I can’t possibly accept your religion further. Here is another observation, you say to me... pretty much what you say to me... is we possibly can’t become closer without I becoming closer to your religion. But I say I can’t become closer to your religion unless you and I became closer. I would like to explain to you that my point of view of us becoming closer first. That is not my decision, that is just something I think things are, I just know it for a fact. Too many more sources, “pulling me left.” And I won’t be “pulled right” any more, and the “left people” will take over.

Let us think about this, music is a big part of my life. However it is only the music I listen to, the music which speaks to my soul. I don’t need music to go along with a prayer, but then you say back to me that music is a prayer. I don’t like church hymns, but then again you back to me, “they are my favorite.” I tell you how there is no way they are your favorite but you don’t budge, you just sit there knowing that what you know is true. You also say, “Hymns are scriptures, and they go hand in hand.” My night has been made by you and I thank you. I am sitting here on my very “very” comfortable comforter. You didn’t tell me you were writing this down for a while but when you told me I was nervous for a while but then I felt at peace with it. Religion is so apart of my life, everyone I know is either against it or fully for it. The only person letting me choose what I want says it is ok to believe what you believe. I can’t talk to someone who completely is against it because they will just shoot it down, and they understand. But I can’t talk to someone fully for it because they may not understand that other religions are also ok, and they sway only their own thinking. If you were raised another religion would you not just be as annoying about that religion saying how true it is? But you say back to me, “I would find the true of God, and learn about it, it is God’s will.” If there was a Jewish person, a catholic, and perhaps I was their really good friend and they would tell me that they hope I find my way to the right path and they think how their own religion is correct. But you say you know your church is true, and I see that in your eyes. When others say their religion is true, I just don’t know. But what if the Catholic religion was more true than what you believe? Or the people who think Jesus Christ hasn’t been born before. I think you will never know if they are right because you were raised one thing. I could poison someone else’s mind saying what if this is true, but you hold strong to your religion saying, “no, this is not true or is true.” I find it more comfortable to read the Bible because it is not just set for one religion, but the Book of Mormon is for one religion. You pull me clear to the second book, and it is harder to comprehend and understand. But I think I can get just as much from someone saying a nice thing about their religion as well. I believe human beings will eventually will get it right, but I don’t know what religion it is. I am not sure your’s is, but I am not sure it isn’t. You fell asleep earlier today, it is late now and you would normally be asleep. But you are up, and that means you were suppose to speak to me about this subject. So obviously God’s hand is involved in this. I would listen and consider your church on Sunday attending church with you. Our friend who is of your faith bashes down your religion even though she is a young women beehive president. I believe she needs some direction in life, if she saw me at church with you and her there and saw I was listening and pondering about it. She may just realize maybe this religion is true. Her parents and her would get more along if this happened. Opposed to her going to church every Sunday and sleeping through preaching about something she doesn’t believe. I have a deep respect for you and if you wanted me to listen to something I would.

You told me a story, it went something like this. “If a man owned a house and invited his friend over for breakfast and poured freshly squeezed orange juice into a picture and drank some, and he didn’t offer it to his friend. Then his friend asks, “Can I have some orange juice?” and the man would reply, “Oh sorry, I thought that if I offered you some that you may be offended because I didn’t know if you liked orange juice.” It is related to religion, where as if I didn’t offer you my great joy in religion than it would be like orange juice where as I didn’t offer you some and you wanted it, but even if you didn’t want it and I found out that I did because you asked. So it would be important you share your joy. So I also may benefit and learn with you the joys of life and religion.”

I look at you and see you are happy being LDS and someone such as I would say to you, “You are happy with your life and religion, I wish it was me. I don’t know about my beliefs, but your’s are firm as a rock and stable. You know your religion is true, you know for a fact.” Sincerely, yours truely.
P.S. Drinking water is like kissing, my quote of the day.

ANZAC Day 2002.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We shall remember them

Lest we forget.

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For the record, in today's traditional AFL game at the MCG:
Collingwood 9.12 (66) defeated
Essendon 4.9 (33)

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I have such a good time, but sometimes, in the haste of my good fortune, I neglect my problems. Sure I'll have fun, I'll smile, I'll joke and laugh, but it is so easy to pretend if you forget the things that make you tick.

Sometimes you reach that point where you are having such a good time, that when the bad reaches up and pulls you back down you just want to collapse. You go from low to high in that instant, surrounded by your friends, but at the same time you are somewhere else.

It hurts even more then, and at those times I really feel bad, when people turn to me and ask me "what's the matter?" and I just tell them "nothing" or, "don't worry about it." And I'll admit, I really do want them to ask. I want them to know what I'm thinking, if only for the sake of understanding how pathetic I feel at those times.

---

I'll just leave them there, wondering what they did to make me like that, but I will never explain, because I'd like to keep my friends.

Philip K. Dick response journal #3

In reply to previous journals, questions you have asked. The Phil Dick quote about his being revolutionized in the mind by Robert Anton Wilson is on the jackets to many of his non-fiction books. In particular Quantum Psychology. The fiction that I had given you last time bore much relevance and relatedness to Dick, I thought. Questioning reality itself, just from different perspectives. As a writer, I have my similarities but larger differences with Dick. He likes to focus on characters, and plot-driven action—he likes the everyman, as we’ve discussed in class. People with bad jobs. – My own personal universe consists of a world beyond this, where there is no such thing as an extraordinary man, or a subordinary man, or the idea of a man at all. People aren’t pushed into these shapes called characters, people are too unstable. Often I find when I’m reading Dick, that he oversimplifies a character every now and then, putting them into the place of “being something” – when nothing is. Nothing. And to reflect the world as actually being something, or a person as being something tangible, only perpetuates the lie and confusion. I feel like Dick’s own perceptions on what it is to be real, as he always is debating even in the earlier work, began to change after the Valis experience. The construction of characters in Valis is similar to my own… transient. Shifting. Split in the middle. One person does not equal necessarily one person. One person could be two people. Split. Different sides. Shifting.

I’m sorry if you don’t like abstraction. It’s the only language I know, can know, will ever know. I don’t trust reality enough to engage in concreteness on the level as it is known in the academic world. Sometimes I fit my self into the little role, but I realize often to concretize something is only to lie about it. If I bring something into being as a concrete thing, I always must qualify that I have no attachment to assessing something in this way. That my own interpretation of it as a non-abstract thing is temporary, fleeting.

And then I realize with the whole problem of me not being capable of being compatible with the way reality is described, makes me incompatible with reality itself. Communication itself. I am willing to delve into that, in pursuit of trying to live what I fluctuate to think of as “truth.”

Last night my geek told me he loved me. Needless to say, I was surprised. I've only been 'going out' with him for four weeks. It was a pleasant surprise, but all the same a surprise.

He took me for sushi on Sunday when he heard that I'd never had it and consequently I'm now addicted. I want to learn how to make it. Plain tuna sushi is my favorite so far, but I still have a great deal to try.

Once I get all the material together I'm going to write a writeup on how to make home made bread, using my mom's recipe which she doesn't mind passing on to anyone who wants to know. It's very simple to make and very tasty. However, it may be a couple times before the baker gets it to their particular taste.

On a last note for the moment. Green tea and shortbread are a good breakfast, with a little chilled cantaloupe.

My air conditioner in my car stopped working sometime last fall. I didn't think much of it at the time because it was fall and winter was close at hand.

It's now April, and I live in Texas. I'm getting sunburns from driving with my windows down so I don't melt.

I call my Honda dealership and tell them I need to get my A/C fixed, and ask about my warranty. My car, right now, is over 36,000 miles, so my warranty is gone. My car was actually under 36,000 when the A/C went dead, but that doesn't seem to matter a whole lot to the dealership.

I found out today that the problem is my compressor exploded. It's going to cost about $1200 to replace. So, now I have to commence a long drawn-out sob story with the dealership, and then most likely with Honda of North America, to get them to fix something that shouldn't be breaking on a car this new.

I hate cars.

I want to believe. I yearned for the guidelines to be laid out for me, for a line to be drawn and everything on one side is good and everything on the other side is bad, for it all to be figured out for me no contemplation necessary. You see my parents, disillusioned with their own religion did not take me to church and as a result, when I looked for the right thing to do, I had no guide. Mormonism was what my grandparents practiced, but they stopped, apparently around the same time my parents did for reasons that can't really be refuted. Why did God allow such atrocities in life? Sure it can be answered, but like faith if someone believes God should not allow such things and religion is wrong you can't really refute them.

We moved to Illinois and mentioning Mormonism meant a predictable negative response somehow involving polygamy and the lower status of women. If you look at most religions, they had incorporated many of the same ideas, besides Mormons, or the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, as they like to be called now, did away with polygamy sometime around 1890 (Some sects of Islam still encourages the practice).

So Mormonism wasn't the answer, I quizzed many of my peers, with the normal religious questions, and had the normal religious arguments many of which ended with the blanket argument "Faith". But faith is an individual thing, and if you don't have blind faith in a religion, nobody can give it to you. I have faith that there is a God, and faith that there is a right way to act, but do I have faith that the holy trinity is as Traditional Catholicism defines it? No. Do I have faith that Muhammad was the last and only truly correct prophet? No. Do I have faith in any of the small specifics that are frequently the only thing dividing religions? No. These things aren't really the type of thing someone has faith about, and they are what define a religion. Faith is a personal experience and no proof or justification can create it. It is a blind reason to follow whatever religion you choose as well as a justifiable reason to follow the religion you believe in. I looked into Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and while they all have fairly noble and lofty overall definitions of the world, ideas that make sense and can be readily accepted, they all contain the elements of other religions. You know what elements I mean, all those things that deep down make you think maybe the people who say that religion is just a means of mass control are right.

Proclaiming Jesus as the Savior and as also God clearly marks you as Christian, something that is important for the survival and growth of Christianity, any surprise that is why they say its the only way to eternal life? What is the more reasonable answer, God wants us to outwardly proclaim Jesus as the savior, or clearly labeling yourself as Christian solidifies your commitment to the religion and encourages its growth and acceptance. Why are there only personal visions? Because only some people (those who are slightly departed from reality) have these visions, or because that is the only way God chooses to reveal himself. Why is there so much counter-scientific stuff in the Bible? Because it was created from stories and parables or because God decided to make things drastically different in our past from what we experience now and what we can determine to be true?

Anyway my point is that any religion, when approached from the outside as a person trying to evaluate which religion to accept, and how to live ones life, none of the religions distinguish themselves and all show signs of politics, human error, and mass control. Why are most people the religion that their parents are? Because they are institutions that have survived the years by gaining members, proclaiming they are right, and saying its a sin to believe in anything else. You know I have met people who believe that people in other countries who have never been exposed to Jesus are going to hell because they haven't accepted Jesus as the savior.

I met someone, a liberal protestant who was giving a guest lecture at my university, and he answered all my main questions about Christianity sufficiently. Yet I?m still not convinced that it is the right path to follow, I mean I believe in a lot of the same ideas, and really want something to tell me exactly what is right and wrong, but I still cannot. I still doubt the necessity of constantly praising the Lord's name, is he that insecure, and of necessarily believing that Jesus was God, there really isn't that much evidence pointing towards it, and why should I. Would God really make salvation dependent on believing in someone who lived thousands of years ago and of whom we have little direct accounts? I have heard estimates that less than 100 words in the Bible are directly quoted from Jesus, and there are parts of Jesus' life missing, like the teen years. These seem like characteristics of an organization trying to expand and preserve its members rather than a religion prescribed by God as the ?right? way to eternal salvation.

So now I'm not associated with any religion still, yet I find concepts in many of them truthful and appealing. I want to believe but have nothing to believe in.

grrr! Now I'm really incensed.

A not so long time ago, in this very galaxy, I did a wu for padiddle. There were, at the time, entries under that spelling as well as pediddle. I chose the former for two reasons: it was the spelling with more entries, and more on-topic entries; it was the way everyone in my area spelled it. After a short web-search using Google, I've found that padiddle is by far the more popular spelling. (don't the editors or such do research on their own before doing a move like that? I know I certainly would!)

So, anyway, it's been a while and some sharp cookie out there decided to request a node consolidation. Normally, I'd agree with that idea, but in this case, since there really is no official spelling, I thought it was fine to leave both up and in the spirit of Everything2 I also mentioned the alternate spelling.

Normally, I also wouldn't mind that the wu got moved, but due to a minor mistake in the moving process it ended up being deleted accidentally. This also wouldn't be a major problem as since it was accidental, it wouldn't be against the rules to go pull it up in Node Heaven and resurrect it.

That is, if it hadn't disappeared entirely.

This is the second of my wus to be deleted and to have disappeared entirely. The first was Viagra in your mailbox which was a humorous rant about email spam that was inspired by the wu free sex in your mailbox (which I don't really think is all that good, and certainly not as coherent as my own, now slaughtered wu). Regardless, while an oddity that it never reached Node Heaven, I'm not really upset that it's gone. Sure, I'd like to visit it now and then, but it's not like it was all that special.

The worst part about this whole thing is that I'm upset and mad and want to take someone to task 'cause one of my better wus is gone, but there is nobody at fault. Unfocused anger is the worst sort. Unless you find some way to exorcise it or get distracted, it just kinda eats a hole in your psyche's middle.

And now I am one fewer wu from reaching the next level. And these days, getting up enough interest to put up something new and worth reading is rather difficult for me.

Otherwise, my day is going rather decently, even if I am buried in work, and I'm really looking forward to going to ConFurence this year and having a booth in the dealer's room with Nekojin. I hope it all works out.

    Always watching my every move. Anything I say, do, the slightest mistake, and that old devil-whore Ereneta sweeps out of the ominous nether-regions of the nodegel and cuts me down.  A misquoted song, a lyric that lacks the author's personal life story, and even the nebulas:

        "Personal write-ups that are daylogs that aren't in the daylogs."

Lay the hell off, of foul referee of knowledge, oh anonymous judger of my fate! All are observed, all our judged, all downvoted, /msg'ed, scorned before the ever-vigilant, glowering eyes of hate. What mishaped you, what twisted your soul so? What could have degraded you, stripped you of all morality, lowered you so much as to use a god-forsaken ukulele? I tremble in fear.
   
    Yet, as I raise my eyes to the expected carnage and chaos, instead I behold--

   something pretty. Something better. What was left remains, but now it is purified in your holy fire and thus expurgiated of its former, sinful state. For though the baptism in fire brought me to the gates of hell and back, I now see the wisdom in the old man's savage cacklings:

"Crickets go down better with beer. If you're eating moths, drink Mountain Dew."

This bug's on me.

This morning, we were all up at 6am so that my youngest brother could be put on the school coach for a trip to the battlefields of Flanders for his GCSE history course. Then the remaining three of us - Mum, Dad and me - were off to our own French break. We took the M25 and the M20 to Folkestone to get the 'le Shuttle' Channel Tunnel car-carrier to Calais. We had lunch at a favourite northern French location - the little hilltop town of Cassel. Founded by the Romans and surrounded by dead straight roads across the Flanders plain, it's got a windmill and defensive walls several centuries old. From there we headed on eastward to St Amand-les-Eaux, by the Belgian border, which is a spa town where Napoleon Bonaparte came to take the waters in 1805. The sight to see here is the free-standing west front of an otherwise demolished Rococo church. It's truly hideous, and houses an unexceptional museum of local pottery. While looking for the entrance, I succeeded in getting crapped on by one of the shabby pigeons that make the towers their home.

Swiftly onward.

We followed the motorway from St Amand to Maubeuge, from where we cut across the Namur district of Belgium - very pleasant and rural. Our route brought us down to the town of Givet, which is on the end of a finger of French territory extending northward into Belgium along the valley of the river Meuse (or Maas). A huge fortress (not open to the public) overlooks the valley there. We headed up the river, past a large nuclear power plant, to Vireux-Wallerand, where we crossed the river and headed across country, through the French Ardennes, to Monthermé, where we crossed the river again, and went over a pass overlooking the crags known as 'The Four Sons of Aymon' to Charleville-Mezières, and down to Bazeilles, close to Sedan, where we would be staying. Bazeilles is notable, in that in the battle of Sedan in 1870, it was there, in a farmstead now known as 'The House of the Last Cartridge', that a group of French marines, outfaced by the German army, vowed to fight to the very last bullet.

The hotel dinner was good, and we went to bed pretty exhausted.

Forward!