Posted by drummer (209.105.155.54) on April 28, 2000 at 22:32:39:
In Reply to: Nope I believe it to be totally false posted by August on April 28, 2000 at 21:30:44:
I have just read about a teenage father who shook his baby to death because it couldn't control its anal sphincter yet and wouldn't stop crying. I can't help but wonder if the baby was thinking this:
"I never asked to be born in the first place."
My best friend told me the Government should paint the crazy, teenage father red, white and blue and place him in a six-foot by six-foot, padded cell and have him wear a sign that says, 'Enola Gay', because he killed the crying baby, who couldn't control his anal sphincter yet.
Enola Gay was an ominous silver B-29 that dropped the world's first atom bomb on the unsuspecting city of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. The bomb killed some 140,000 men, women and children, which never asked to be born in the first place. The co-pilot, of the Enola Gay, said this just after the bomb left his airplane: "My God, what have we done?"
The answer to that question is in the second sentence of the paragraph, above.
The best book ever written, in my opinion, was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller is dead now. Catch-22 is ultimately a book about ideals, about the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions and about how hard it is for people to behave well, especially in groups and institutions under duress. This is one of my favorite passages from Catch-22:
'That's my trouble, you know, 'Yossarian mused sympathetically, folding his arms. 'Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.'
'You must try not to think of them, 'Major Danby advised affirmatively, 'And you must never let them change your values. Ideals are good, but people are sometimes not so good. You must try to look up at the big picture.'
Yossarian rejected the advice with a skeptical shake of his head. 'When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.'
'From now on I’m thinking only of me.'
'But Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way.'
'Then I’d be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?'
If I could go back in time, and ask to be born, I would ask to be born on August 5, 1945, in the village of Hiroshima, Japan, so that I could be with all the innocent, unsuspecting men, women and children that got blown to hell and back, the very next day, by the bomb that was dropped by the Enola Gay.
I went back in time today. I didn't go back in time to August 6, 1945. I went back in time to August 6, 1980. I was 17 years old. It was a beautiful warm day. The sun was shining as brightly as I have ever seen it. My best friend and I were talking. We were engaged in highly intelligent, thought provoking, 'small talk'. Human beings don’t do too much of that anymore. My best friend and I were talking about our bright, shining future. We both decided to change the world as soon as we graduated from High School. We weren't sure how, but, by God, we were going to change it!
My best friend and I were about to enter our last year of High School. My best friend would later go on to become an Anthropologist and study cultures and societies that were much different than our society. He was searching for a Utopia. I joined the United States Air Force after High School. I was searching for a Utopia, too. Neither of us ever found one.
My best friend and I don't talk anymore. We write each other E-mails. E-mails are a letter, which is typed on a computer, and then sent, at the speed of light, or faster, from one human being to another.
E-mails avoid 'small talk'. I miss talking to my best friend.
My best friend sent me an E-mail the other day. He explained that he had just purchased a computer game. He said the computer game simulated real life. Imagine that! My best friend said he created digital human beings and gave them personalities, food, shelter, friends, ad infinitum. He said there were questions that popped up on the computer screen for each digital human being in the game, as he created them. One question was this:
"Do you want this digital human being to have babies?" My best friend said he always answered this question with a resounding, 'NO'!
My best friend told me he felt like the Gods. He told me that this was his chance to create his Utopia. I was very excited for him.
I received an E-mail from him yesterday. He told me he was troubled and concerned. It seems that this computer game gives the digital human beings free will, sometimes. It seems that when my best friend returned home, from being an Anthropologist all day, that his male, digital human beings had placed their penis in the vaginal canal of the female, digital human beings. All of a sudden there were babies, popping out all over, from the vaginal canal of the female, digital human beings.
My best friend was quite troubled and concerned. He said this would greatly jeopardize his perfect little Utopia. He said that his philanthropic society was taking babies from unfit digital human beings and giving them to fit digital human beings.
He said he placed this philanthropic clause into his little Utopia, just in case free will "fucked things up". Those were his words, not mine. He said the digital human beings had lost some babies, during delivery, through the vaginal canal. He said the digital human beings invented a God, so they could be at peace with their loss. The digital human beings were saying things like, "our baby is in Heaven now" and "God bless our dead, little, digital baby".
He said some digital human beings claimed there were three Gods and not just one. This was causing arguments and fighting among the digital human beings. It seems the one God inventing, digital human beings, were all the time beating up the three God inventing, digital human beings and visa-versa, and on and on and on, ad nauseum. All this arguing and fighting is why my best friend, the Anthropologist, was troubled and concerned about his little Utopia. My best friend said, "free will is fucking things up."
My best friend asked for my opinion, via E-mail. I immediately sent my best friend this E-mail:
"So, the Gods are a bit troubled and concerned, huh? So, your little Utopia is a bit fucked up, huh? Those fucking, little, digital human beings and their precious, little, free will can really piss off the Gods, huh?
Well, guess what? It's not their fault. Free will is not to blame. It's you. The solution is quite simple. They never asked to be created in the first place. You created them. You need to talk to them. Human beings don't talk anymore, whether they be digital or not. They need you. Simply tell them that you're around and that you love them. They'll stop making shit up if you simply talk to them. Tell them about yourself. Tell them you're only human, and for crying out loud, don't forget to tell them that you love them."
I haven't heard from my best friend in quite a long time. The last E-mail I received from him was this:
"The computer program wouldn't let me talk to them. I tried and failed. I loved them. I really did. I'll miss them. I really will. I deleted them. I really did. I threw the computer program away. I finally realized that life is pointless, and there is no Utopia."
To be quite honest - I don't really have a best friend. I invented him. :-)