Journal Entries
Sacrifice /this/, grandma! (Or: This Researcher Invites the Death Threats)
Posted Apr 14, 2003
Look, rat-fans, I've got this gripe. I mean, yes, I've got a lot of gripes, I like griping, but this is... also one. That I have.
I mean, Christianity, not a big fan. Never have been, never will be, /but/ that's not because I'm all 'woo' and alternative, it's because above all else I've always considered myself to have a clearly defined moral sense that the worship of Christ and the teachings of the Bible basically do not fit in with. To whit: a) The treatment of homosexuals, who frankly aren't harming anyone aside from supporting some pretty terrible music and b) Hell. Noone's getting away with that 'eternal punishment, fire and brimstone' on /my/ watch. Punishment should fit the crime. A loving God doesn't send adulterers (or, even, to my mind, baby-killing nutjobs) to burn forever and ever and ever if he's supposedly a just God. Nope. Sure, a thousand years of pitchforks up the bum are probably just what the doctor ordered for a certain large percentage of humankind, but /eternity/? I think not. And, should I ever meet the Big Beard in the Sky, and this is indeed how things are, I shall say the very same thing to His face.
This, however, is not my gripe.
Of course, then you get those Christians who just blatantly /ignore/ the bits of the Bible that they don't agree with - or make them uncomfortable - generally muttering something about 'many interpretations', which - in my eyes - is cowardice and hypocrisy on a gigantoooormous scale.
However, this is also not my gripe.
No, gentle readers, today I'd like to gripe about the /other/ side of the coin. Alternative religion, if you will.
I mean, first we have Wicker crowd, who start off with a truly superb tenet of 'And ye harm none, do as ye feel like. Grasshopper.'. Or something. Great! /Excellent/ religion. But could they leave it at that? Ohno, then it had to be beefed up a bit with a bunch of airy-fairy wishful thinking nature-worship about some God who fathers himself every year. This, in itself, is bad enough if it weren't for the self-deluding magic (sorry, magicK, because that - of course - makes it sound cooler) part of the whole shebang. 'But, Mark!' whine the Wickerans, 'I did this ritual and then my cousin's friend won a stuffed teddy at the fair!'. It really demonstrates the capacity for humans to thoroughly fool themselves that's kept the Pope in REALLY BIG HATS all these years.
Pretentious, yes, but - I suppose - morally slightly more acceptable than the world's favourite JC.
Then, oh then, we have the Satanists, the modern chapter of which was pretty much founded by Kane from Commander and Conquer. Wait, no sorry, I mean Anton LeVay. Born 'Howard', but presumably Howard the High Lord of Darkness didn't have quite the same imposing ring to it. Satanism. A religion - as far I can make out - all about 'self improvement', which seems to translate to 'doing whatever the Heck you like and being completely in it for yourself'.
Well, geez, people have been doing that for centuries without needing the Satanic Bible to tell them to.
No social conscience, no charity, love only to make /you/ happy. I cannot think of a world more horrifying than one founded on the principles of Satanism. Frankly, I'd be happier if they were out there sacrificing goats and drinking the blood of virgins.
The fact that Satanism also encourages the practice of magic-with-a-cool-k is pretty small beans when compared to its primary moral fallacy.
I'd have a pop at the Scientologists too, but frankly anyone who believes /that/ line of tripe is well beyond reason.
I realize I've barely touched on the various new belief-systems that are springing up all over the place now that the Vatican doesn't send its boyz 'round to pop a cap in your dome for not giving props to Jesus, but these - in particular - are those which make me want to gripe.
Live life, be happy, make /other/ people happy as best you can. That's all you need, and you certainly don't need any mercurial Goddess, horny demon, the ever-popular Big Beard in the Sky or tiny space aliens that live inside volcanoes (or something. Gratz, L. Ron Hubbard, you wrote some /dull/ novels) to give you a divine sanction to do that. Put some of that energy you use for wearing robes and drawing magicKal circles with knives into making the world a better place and we might just make it through the next few years without obliterating each other.
Now, everyone tell me how I don't 'understand'.
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Latest reply: Apr 14, 2003
It's not easy to be me
Posted Apr 9, 2003
Well, now that was embarassing. I just spent 3 days trying to remember what the Hell my user ID was for this place so I could log in. Don't tell you how to do /that/, now do they?
Anyway, I just spent a while 'surfing' the infoweb supercyberbypass, and I've come to the horrible conclusion that there's a whole bunch of people out there /way more clever than me/. I mean, admittedly, they're all horribly self-obsessed (not that I'm not, but I try to do it behind locked doors, where it won't frighten the horses), but I don't think I ever really got used to the idea of people having more in the brains department than little old me.
Is it possible to suffer from low self-worth whilst still actually quite liking yourself? On the whole, generally speaking and taken broadly - I /do/ rather like who I am: I have a keen moral sense, I'm intelligent, I'm witty in a rather dry, self-deprecating and offbeat way, I'm honest and loyal and - in a certain (dark) light - I'm even rather cute in an annoyingly persistent boy-child anime kind've way. Almost. Sort've.
Now, admittedly, I'm also arrogant, opionated, grumbly, sulky, worry..y, blessed with a whole host of personality problems and with a distinctly dubious - if improving - sense of personal hygiene (in short, I'm my mother, which is too frightening a prospect to think about).
The point is, though, the point /is/: The former are things I want to be, and the latter are things that don't bother me. I am what I want to be, I am what I have crafted. And I saw it was good.
I just don't expect other people to feel the same way, I assume I will be disliked, I assume I will be... well... ignored, pushed to one side, and expected to put up with it. And I do. Because what's the alternative? Blind rage? Hardly the way to win friends and influence people. /I/ like me, and I expect to be disliked by others, where does /that/ fall under our shrink-wrapped view of Jerry Springerisms?
I used to be a lot geekier than I am now, I've had this pointed out to me (and boy, would I like to thank the perpetrator of /that/ comment with a fist in the face). Now, I've merely cultivated a level of geekiness that doesn't take itself too seriously. However, the mindset formed in school runs deep, the wounds /don't/ heal properly, and people have two ways of dealing with this:
1. Anger. Utter, mind-fogging rage at the whole world. A whole psyche geared to Do Not Fork With Me aggression, a walking pre-emptive strike. (My mother again!) Eventually culminating in clocktowers and high-powered rifles and all kinds of nastiness.
2. Fear. Of everything. Of life and people and pain and humiliation. These people's first instinct is to run and hide, because it /hurts/ out there, and all the subconscious screams at you is that YOU ARE WORTHLESS. This subject tends to forget which end of the rifle is which - in extreme cases.
Now, option the first is pretty rare in me. Not unheard of, but rare. I don't wanna be angry guy, and I don't much wanna be fear guy either, but I am at times.
I don't /want/ to be. I want to live. I want my Thing. I want my Cool.
It's not easy to be me.
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Latest reply: Apr 9, 2003
I come from a land down under
Posted Apr 3, 2003
16 days and about twelve hours and I'll be Leaving On A Jet Plane.
That's... no time. No time at /all/ in the scheme of things, is it? And yet it's not really sunk in. So I write to sink it. 16 days, twelve hours, I will be boarding a Boeing 747 and flying though the air - first to a disease infested Singapore, and then to Australia, where I will be landing in Sydney International Airport there to gaze blearily at a girl.
That is some /scary/ stuff, people.
She's a special girl, in various senses of the word. 
Maybe certain people need a certain kind of people, and that's all there is to the matter. I... despair at the world, sometimes, I worry that it's /not the way I think it should be/. Too simplistic. Too shallow. My hope is that no matter what a person thinks of themselves, no matter how much they wallow in their own self-loathing, there is someone out there who will adore them - worship the ground they walk upon more than they ever would have dared consider.
And I adore her. I'm beginning to get that annoying, uplifting pressure behind my breastbone when I think about her. But then... I've felt that before, so there's caution, and there's fear, and it all gets mixed up in my head to the point where I can't think about it at all. Instead I just plunge on with practicalities and hope and pray that it will turn out /right/.
Every time I take a leap like that, I come away a winner, laughing all the way to the bank. Still, every time, there's the fear.
Wish me luck.
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Latest reply: Apr 3, 2003
Booze
Posted Mar 29, 2003
One drinks, and it strips away the nonsense and the lies. Just between you and me, I just want to be with her, that's all, and I would... I /will/ give anything for that.
Simple, really.
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Latest reply: Mar 29, 2003
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Marcus Arac, connoisseur of manly Ausgirls since 2002.
Researcher U223543
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