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=  F.U.C.K. - Fucked Up College Kids - Born Jan. 24th, 1993 - F.U.C.K.  =
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                              Mortality?
                              ----------

     Damn.  I just realized the other day that I am going to die.  I 
     mean, this isn't a NEW thing to me, I came to terms with it a long
     time ago but it has always been sort of an abstract concept to me.

     It took the death of a guy I went to Armor School with to really
     drive the point home.  I have had people die around me : family, 
     friends from school etc, but this guy just really made it REAL to
     me.  Mind you, it has been several months since he died but for 
     some reason it suddenly clicked as I was thinking about it.  This
     guy was driving a truck through a mountain path in Bosnia and the 
     truck went off the side of the cliff.  Now, Floyd here had volunteered
     to go to Bosnia knowing that he would be taken off a tank and 
     stuck in the support elements.  I don't know what made him volunteer,
     but it cost him his life...  Strange how random it is.  As I recall,
     Floyd almost didn't graduate OSUT with me because of a low PT score.
     He didn't have to be a Hemitt driver.  He might not even have ended up 
     on that mountain at that moment if not for a billion small factors...
     But, those things all added up to the fact that he went out and died.

     If any one of those things had been different would he have gone off
     that cliff?  Not passing that PT test would have put him out of 
     OSUT and into Germany two weeks later and probably in a different unit.
     Not volunteering would have left him in the rear pulling lawn mowing 
     details.  Five minutes sooner or later might have avoided that slick
     spot.  I dunno, it just seems so bizzare to think about all the things
     that have to go right just to make something so wrong happen.  A million
     details for one end result.  Death is either one hell of an equation, or
     one hell of a fractal.  It's beyond me.

     Now, I suppose that I've dealt with my impending status as worm food
     I should be getting all mushy and going on about how only God can make
     it all right for me and that there is something after this mortal coil
     is sloughed off.  I suppose I should be going on like all the people
     who get to this point, but I won't.  I can't.  I gave up on a higher 
     being looooong ago.  I really would like to be able to do as so many
     do and have faith that all I have striven to learn and do won't just
     end up as so many rotting cells and ended impulses.  It seems so 
     hard to believe that the time my friends and I were caught trying to
     steal pumpkins will vanish with us.  All the adrenaline when that 
     first cop light hit us (all 15-20 of us.  Subtle we were not) and all
     the jokes that followed days later will  be gone.  The time I 
     popped a smoke grenade in a phone booth here on post.  Crawling through
     drainage tunnels under my hometown.  Laughter...Sadness all those X 
     numbers of years gone like that.  I think that it is these kind of 
     thoughts that have me on this "life is neat" kick I've been traveling
     as of late.  If all that I feel and know is going to dissapear I 
     might as well not bog down a finite amount of time with needless
     bitching and moaning.  Hey, alles gut mit mir.

     So, you might be saying "why is it you can't believe in God fj?" 
     (Of course, you could be thinking about the time you took to snag this
     file).  I dunno.  I suppose that it is mostly a selfish reason.  I just
     couldn't get over this believe or burn thing.  Why can't a Godly life 
     without God get you some sort of eternal life.  I mean, heaven can 
     sublet to kind agnostics and atheists.  What?  You don't think God has
     infinite space to deal with real estate wise?  Really tho, the first 
     time this occured to me I was probably eight or nine.  I had been 
     smuggled onto my fathers truck (he drove for a shipping company) and
     was going to Chicago to drop something.  At one point in the trip I was
     lying there, looking asleep next to my father as he got up to begin
     driving after that nights rest.  As he headed into the cab he stopped
     and reached over and brushed a lock of hair off my forehead then went
     about the business of driving.  At that moment I thought "God, if you
     do exist and you allow my father to go to Hell, then I can't believe in
     you having infinite wisdom like they say...But infinite cruelty is 
     within your grasp."  There in that sleeper in my head I spent a lot of 
     time that trip rationalizing how I felt about the universe in that 
     sense.  Sure, my father was a big and verbally abusive man.. But when he
     showed you love he showed an almost unending capacity for it.  Only his
     violent mood swings kept him from being a diety to me because I knew that
     he might love you then and there, but then something from the day would
     set him off and everyone would feel his wrath.  It's because of this 
     that I can't believe in a merciful God.  How is an all of nothing 
     system of belief supposed to be merciful?

     SO, OK Michael (that's me)  we've come to grips with the fact that 
     death is indeed imminent.  We have also explored the roots of your
     atheism and discovered that no matter how much you want it, at the
     heart of it all you can't believe that you go on after the EEG goes
     flat.  So, what is a man supposed to do?  Just what is the meaning
     of life to the rest of us slobs and yourself?  Fuck, like I have
     a clue.  Probably the best meanting of life I have ever heard is 
     Monty Python's : (paraphrased) Be nice to people, read a good book, 
     try to get in a walk now and again, use a condom etc.  Sometimes I think
     the closest I'll ever get to heaven is the feel of being warm on a 
     cold night, under a blanket with a warm female body next to me..
     And I suppose that is all I can really ask for.

     Enjoy.


-fastjack

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