Stop the planet, I want off!

By Daniel Martinez

I would think it safe to assume that the majority of the population here in the United States subscribes to their local newspaper. I was reading my paper today, and a few stories struck me as humorous. Let me correct that last sentence. I was, in all actuality, enraged by what I read. Buried on the seventh page of the "News" section, were the second half of several stories. The only two stories that I found to be of any interest, both contained people complaining. The first I read was a business owner pissing and moaning that if the city did some road construction on the corner where her pizza parlor is located, she would lose money. This lady, who I will refer to as Ms. Self-Absorption, stated that she receives seventy five percent of her annual income during the summer months. The road construction is scheduled to begin in May and will span a time period of approximately five months. Ms. Self-Absorption feels that the city absolutely cannot continue with its plans to renovate this intersection, which is about ten years too late I must add, because she may not be able to afford the perfume she likes to put on her toilet scrub brush, that just so happens to smell like rotten peaches. How horrible that would be? I don't know if I could live with myself if I was in favor of a city improvement that would benefit the fifty-eight thousand motorists that use this intersection each day, if Ms. Self-Absorption was unhappy. I am not really sure why parents would brainwash a child like this and keep her locked in the basement for her entire childhood, but I am willing to bet she would be better off if someone slapped her in the face with the reality stick and got her head into the game. The general consensus in the United States these days is that the hard working masses owe a lifetime of security and comfort to the lazy. No one in this country, or in the world for that matter, is owed a living. The only thing people are guaranteed is the chance to earn one. I would ask for an amen, as I stand upon my own personal pulpit; but, I am an atheist, and that would be against my religion.

Another story, which happened to have its conclusion on the same page as Ms. Self-Absorption's little rant, was one involving a Texas based company. Apparently, this company placed a bid on a government contract, which it was not awarded. This company then filed a lawsuit against the government. I almost fell off the throne (my preferred seat for reading the paper). Does this sound peculiar to anyone else? Could it be possible that the company placed a bid to charge the Federal Government seven thousand dollars for a toilet seat, and the government came to its collective senses? Please don't misinterpret me. I am in no way congratulating our government on a job well done. That in itself would be laughable in my opinion. I am just curious who told this company that they were entitled to this contract? What would drive them to file a lawsuit against an entity, when the said entity apparently was not impressed with the shoddy work of the company. This is yet another example of people spending their entire childhood watching a man named Gordon talk to a seven foot tall, yellow bird, with hands instead of wings. We won't even get into the brown, dancing, snuffle-whose-its. I am willing to bet that Ms Self-Absorption has a few relatives living in Texas.

As previously stated, I am an atheist. It is my personal belief that religion is the single greatest piece of wool pulled over anyone's eyes. I am allowed to believe whatever I want after all. If I prayed to the almighty purple cantaloupe of Cucamonga, there is not a damn thing anyone can say about it; other than I am a complete freak! That is fine. It is not necessary for people to think I am wonderful, and handsome, and sane. I don't particularly care. The thing about religion that bothers me the most, however, is that everyone seems to feel that I should have some. I had a friend that I hung around with all the time, and every time we walked by someone that was talking about religion, he would turn to me and tell me I was going to hell. My reply was, of course, always the same. "See you there." I always thought that this was pretty humorous, but then one day I sat down and really thought about what he said to me, and I still don't care. I have, however, become more aware of the numerous people that try at each opportunity to push their religion on me. I had an argument one day last year for forty minutes with some Christian that came to my door to "save" me. He wanted to know all about creation, so I told him how he came to be from microscopic organisms and chemicals, millions of years ago (it just so happened that I was taking a class called Science of Biology at the time). He stood on my front porch with his head cocked to one side for the majority of my talk, and when I finished he just stood there. He didn't say or do anything. I thought that his brain had perhaps melted, because he just stood there. I am not talking about a five or ten second pause; I am talking about a fucking camping trip. He was out of it. After he had made his smores and eaten his oat and barley bar, he said "nope," and walked to the sidewalk and up the street.

I have decided that from now on, I am going to have an answer when someone asks me what religion I follow. I am a solipsist, and damn proud of it. As far as I know, there is no such thing, and that is an even better reason to pick it as far as I'm concerned. I was sitting in the office one day thumbing through the dictionary, and came across the word solipsism. It means:

The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known or verified.

When people die, I think they go to see the Soliptian God, who happens to live in Colorado. I have no problem with people believing in a religion. My only problem with someone's religion, is when they try to make it mine as well. Please feel free to pray to Jesus, but leave me out of it. Don't waste your breath praying for me. When I die, I am going to Solipcianna to play poker with my Oompa-Loompa friends, whether you pray for me or not.

I hope that I have not offended anyone by what I have written already. I further hope that whatever other thoughts should ooze out my ears and onto this page, that I offend no one. If you are offended already, or think that you may be if the rest of this work remains as it has started, please set it aside and never pick it up again. This work is for open minds. If your views are your views, and you don't want to know what anyone else has to say about them, STOP! The key to enjoying this work is to read it with an open mind, and to relate my thoughts to what you may or may not already know on a subject.

It is rare that I smile, but every time I sit down in front of the computer to further this work, my cheeks crack. I can relate to what is on these pages, because it is my point of view, and thus funny to me. I stated previously that it is rare for me to smile. That's because I always seem to do so at the wrong time. A few people that I work with had found themselves in the middle of a riot and in a fair amount of danger about two weeks ago. Tensions were high in the office, and everyone was very serious. I nearly got in a whole bunch of trouble that day. During a pause in the reports coming in from the riots over the radio, a hush fell over the room. That always seems to happen to me, every time I say something that is completely rude or wrong, the room falls dead silent about a half second before the words flow out of my mouth. Back to what happened. As the reports were coming in, I had a thought of a man at this well organized and planned riot. My thought was of this idiot standing in front of his new car, and right next to a tent to conceal his actions. In my minds eye, this fool lit a molatov cocktail and tried to throw it over the tent. He didn't quit make it over the top of the tent, and it hit just below the apex of the tent. It then rolled down the roof of the tent, and into the open passenger side window of his new car, where it exploded. The explosion took place in my mind at the same time the hush fell over the room, and I began to laugh. What an insensitive jack-ass, right? That was the general consensus in the office that day. Oh well, I knew what I was laughing about. I suppose that now you are enlightened, and the next time you see or hear someone laughing for no apparent reason, you know what is so damn funny. Just to ease the minds of those of you that think I am a monster, the mental picture I described was just that, a mental picture. It did not actually occur. If it did, it obviously wouldn't have been funny, unless of course the man made the same face he did in my mind. It was kind of an "I am the stupidest person to ever walk the earth," sort of face. I guess you had to be there.

I am, at this time, taking a course on psychology. It is pretty scary to me so far. I am not really sure that I want to know how my mind works and why I do the things I do or think the things I think. It would be horrible if, in the numerous pages of text in my book, there was a clear and definite description of a normal person. I don't know if I could handle that type of rejection, unless of course I am normal (thus meaning that my thoughts are normal), and you people are all fucked up.

Actually, I am well aware that there is no definition of what normal is. Everyone knows what normal means though. There is a normal running temperature for your car. There is a normal way to drink water from a cup. How would you describe a normal person? If it is not normal to think about flying monkeys riding skateboards out of your ass while you sleep at night, would that mean that so long as you have never thought of that, you are normal? You can think about cats and water buffaloes mating, and what their offspring might look like and you are okay; but, if you think about that flying monkey thing, you're a fucking wacko? I believe that I am completely normal in every way, and if you have never thought about the flying monkeys, you're mad as a hatter. That is just my personal opinion though, I may be wrong. My rambling on this subject is leading to something, I promise. If there is not one person that can give me a clear and definite description of what normal is, how can we tell if someone is crazy? We say that we cannot put prisoners to death for their crimes if they are crazy. My thoughts are, how do we know they are crazy? I think we should let other people we claim to be crazy, kill the crazy people on death row. That is kind of like the trash in your kitchen walking out to the curb and jumping in the can itself as far as I'm concerned. I'm all for the death penalty, as should be obvious to you now. If someone was "crazy" when they committed a crime, let them be "crazy" when we kill'em too. What the fuck are we keeping them around for? They're nuts, right? Or are we?

The way nature works follows a very short and simple rule. Survival of the fittest. Whoever is the strongest, smartest, or fastest, gets to survive. All those that are not worthy of continued existence in Mother Nature's eye, are lunch meat. Simple. It doesn't get any easier than that. People are a part of nature too. Survival of the fittest should apply here too. I think we need to take all the people that are on death row and place them in a huge cage with no supplies of any kind. An empty, barren landscape would be the only contents of this cage. Then, we let the prisoners go for it. No reason to make it a public spectacle, just let nature take it's course. They will weed each other out, and when one person is left as the fittest, we can give him a nice big fat steak and baked potato, and shoot him anyway. After all, they were all on death row to begin with. I am aware, of course, that the Constitution of the United States does not allow cruel or unusual punishment. That is wrong. Cruel and unusual punishment is a great deterrent. If every man that was guilty of a sex crime had his dick cut off and was then raped with a telephone pole, I am pretty sure we would see a severe decline in the number of sex crimes in this country. But no, we have to be nice. We give prisoners a TV to watch, and a health club to work out in so that when we let them out of jail, they can really kick the shit out of us. This country as a whole needs some toilet paper, because we have our heads up our asses. Political correctness is the "in" thing right now. Well, if you are only four and a half feet tall and weigh in at three hundred and fifty pounds, you are not overweight, you are a disgusting fucking pig. Get over it and worry about something worth worrying about.

Well, I suppose that you are thoroughly offended by now, because you probably think that I curse too much, and am making fun of you personally. Please allow me to enlighten you. I actually do not curse much at all; the main trouble I have is writing with words that are 18 letters long, that no one understands. I have taken a few college courses, although I am not finished yet. I have read many of the "great" works, as well as some of the not so great ones, and I have come to this grand conclusion long words suck royally. Okay, okay. I am getting even more vulgar. Again, I promise this is going somewhere. Who wants to read a bunch of long words, that they have never heard anyone actually say, although they may have read them someplace once before? You don't refer to someone that acts in a cowardly manner as pusilanimous. He is a weenie. End of story. Why a writer would use long words that he himself has to look up in the dictionary is beyond me, I prefer to get straight to the point. So, if you are doing something fucked up, I will just tell you it is fucked up. I am not going to spare your feelings and tell you that "a more efficient method of deriving at that same conclusion could have been more beneficial to you, and quite possibly saved the company large dividends in the next fiscal quarter." I am just gonna say, "stop fucking that up, do it this way!" Isn't that a lot easier? I would much prefer to be directly told how I am doing, rather than all that damn verbal sneaking around. When you use large words and try to make things sound much more important than they really are in an attempt to make yourself sound intelligent, what you are actually doing is making yourself look like a moron that has no idea what he is saying so he is using double-talk to try and hide it. Just fucking talk to me! We'll get along better that way.