Max is fine!

(Just thought you might like to know?)

I'm writing this using vi. Why? Because I'm fucked in the head, is the most rational explanation. The fucker just aint reading it's .exrc ... hang on ... that is better ... hmmm ... time for man page reading ... hopefully quick.

Okay, that's a wee bit better. vi should now be always wrapping for me. Why am I learning vi? I heard some words that it'll be very very useful in my next job. Apparently NCSA NetDev is a vi shop. Scarey. Fear them! It's actually not that bad though. Different. Interesting. :mk! ~/.nexrc, :q! and ZZ are all quite useful.

So, today I rank as a most excellent day. Why? Well, I spent all day arguing with Christians on the Quad! I did not even go to class! Class being a lecture for CS225. The problem was I was gettin' down and dirty even before 1! I made it to work but at least found a sub. Besides, isn't my eternal soul more important than a rather dull lecture? Thought you'd agree.

Anyways, so like started out Mr Man in a Devil Costume ... well really only consisting of pointy ears and a tail with a pitchfork, well he's out there harassing Mad Max. Well, this don't sit too well with Mr. Born-Again for a Year Christian. So he and Satan are arguing, getting in the way of Max's thunder. Max moves over some, and we got two crowds goin' I stick with Satan and Fundy.

Fundy's shoutin' about how since he found God and Jesus everything's Peaches and Cream over what it had been in his life. Fine. I was attracted to that message with which I agreed that Max is a lunatic and really if you're going to repent and find your faith in God and Jesus that you gotta find it yourself, it can't be given or driven in to you. Good words, hallelujah, amen. Then he starts pulling out the silly logic. Words like God is proven by the fact that we can't explain everything(?) and uhmm, that we all be lookin' for God, else why are we listening to him? He delivers his personal testimonial on Christianity. A powerful persuasive tool.

I've had just about enough, so I get up there and try to deliver my own testimonial. I tell how yeah, I don't know where I'm going in the afterlife, I don't know a lot of stuff, but I'm not worried about it. I ask him a question or two, he been talkin' a lot, about why is he good? To get in to Heaven or because he wishes to be good. "Because I love God!" Okay, that's a bit vague in my view ... well we had words. Best conclusion is that I'm happy for him, but not looking for God myself. He's content that I'm content, but I think not so happy about that. Well, different strokes for different folks. Such is life.

One woman in the crowd though, named Amy. She's short, she's wearing a cross, and she's really cool, actually. She takes me aside and we sit and talk awhile. She's ... dammit vi again ... okay, :set wm=3 and I'm happy ... anyways ol' girl Amy's a Catholic, pretty comfortable in her beliefs, not perfect, but learning more ... Bio person, so she's pretty cool it seems with Darwinism, Natural Selection. She says for her the point where things seem to break down there is Altruism. It's not good for spreading the genes, or at least not proven in her experience (yet?) that altruism makes any bit of sense as far as sowing your wild genetic codes goes.

Good point. Actually something I've thought about. So Dannyman's shares an idea that well ... interesting that perhaps if Altruism were to be completely weeded out of gene pool species would face extinction. I remember a thing I read in Discover Magazine long time back too, about a cool project that proved mathematically experimentally why altruism would work. Very interesting read and I gotta find it again. But anyways threat of extinction is best I can do. Note my brothers a tension between different sorts of things we wanna do. We wanna change the world but we wanna have lots of orgasms too. Focusing on the latter can mess with the former, and we got stuff like Religion to keep us on the big picture, ideally.

So may it be with altruism. Religion advocates Altruism. Christ died for your sins you know. I advocate altruism too, I eschew materialism, I think a bit more than average and perhaps to the point where it may be a bit unhealthy.

Anyways, the more interesting part is she wanna know where do I get moral absolutes (I dunno if that's her but some of this is.) and more important, like where do I get the purpose to live and stuff, where do I know to be going in the afterlife? Wouldn't I like to know? Why aren't I putting more effort in to finding out.

That's good, questioning my system. Amy's a wonderful gal that questions hers, so I run the question through. What do I get? Caution, trepidation, wariness. Why? Well, a few reasons. One, I don't wanna mess up. It seems to take an awful lot of moxie, cockiness or ignorance, I tend to wonder, to find a religious answer and be confident it's the right one. This isn't just for me. "Jesus healed the sick, Jesus preached love, Jesus performed Miracles, Jesus came back from the dead and I Can Prove It!" I'm talkin' the real deal. An air-tight waterproof system that doesn't have any real major flaws. I don't see that in Christianity of all places and I don't see much reason to make much effort to hammer it in to something workable.

I didn't say that much though, I said mostly I didn't want to be going down the wrong path. Notice how everyone seems to have found God and Jesus and very few of them agree 100% on some of the more important specifics. You got misogynistic buffoons like Max out there talkin' about how Man is meant to Rule over Women, you've got stuff like Homosexuality being an accursedly bad thing, but you've got He who is free of Sin Casting the first stone. You've got Amy agreeing that us mortals are unfit to judge, you've got many Christians disgusted with Max because he Doesn't Get It, he preaches from Anger and all, not like Love like Jesus said to do.

I dunno, for a perfect God, Christianity presents to me an awfully intimidating picture I'd like to be wary of. It's like Windows95 in a way. It works for a lot of people, but it also seems to crash at random, and it requires one hell of a commitment of resources just to get it squared with your system. Luckily though a lot of it makes sense and it's pretty clear how one uses it.

Okay, maybe that's a bit crackpot, sorry. Anyways, where was I?

Nah, hell, I'm tired. Okay. So I also went to Wole Soyinka's lecture. I dunno, not the greatest thing in the world, but I can't complain. I met this hot-lookin' woman from the Daily Illini. Luckily maybe I see her at a lecture with Ang Lee she mentioned that's goin' down next week. Anyways, well, I didn't get to talk to her enough, but she strikes me as somebody I'd like to get to know. Who knows. I think she was like half Caucasian half Asian. As far as I understand, it's not at all hard to look good when you got that goin' for ya. Likely as I am to marry Asian, I expect I could have some good-looking kids indeed. They better not be morons though. My momma always said she never had any dumb kids.

So, hey I got a girlfriend anyways, but it never hurts to have bitchin'ly attractive female friends you know. What's cooler is that since I really have no need to go hit on girls, I can be far more, uhmmm, cool about talking to them. I've got nothing as awesome as a girlfriend to gain from any particular woman. Asao has already filled that role. God she's tough.

Yeah, you heard me tough! I don't think like, I'm a particularly easy character, particularly to date. While Asao seems awfully happy about me, and I'm happy about her, I'm also happy that like, the world doesn't have to bear with me running around trying to find a woman. Now that is truly an argument for divine existence if ever I've heard one.

We would be warm,
below the storm.
knowing that we're happy and we're safe.

Alright. I also got email from this freak who actually seems pretty cool. Apparently she's just stalking people in the local news groups. Not bad.

Well, anyways it's 5 'til midnight, and I'm arranged to meet Asao after I close da place. I'm at work you see, subbing for Morris who took my afternoon shift for Soyinka's sake! Right. EOF.

H O M E
31 March << 1997 >> 7 April