My presentation today:
Sometimes I feel like life is one big, mean-spirited joke, and I'm the only one in on it. Life is so redundant and pointless. But I keep on getting up every morning and coming back like the cat that would go away, the cat came back the very next day. I mean, do I really have to deal with the same girl who has a conversation on her damn cellphone so loud everyone can hear? Or that idiot with the stupid clothes, I mean really who wears that stuff? I want to punch him in the back of the head. Or this damn cold that hovers around me like a rain storm? So I started asking myself where I could find answers to this mess, and the Slave and Ecclesiastes seemed reasonable. However, all I got from it was that I need to realize life is pointless and enjoy it while I still have it which is hard to do some days because of the likes of you people. And that's what really my paper is about, why I do anything at all because it would be a lot easier to do nothing.
There was a philosopher named Albert Camus who said the most important philosophical question we can ask ourselves is whether we should kill ourselves. This is morbidly depressing, but it does beg the question: why bother with life?
Most of us live our lives chasing after things to distract ourselves from our eventual Death. The fact is, we take life way too seriously. Jacob (from the Slave) also lived this way, and like many of us, he was miserable. The Book of Eclesiastes, according to Frye, tells us, "we should relax and our real energies begin to flow into the soul", and "the secret to wisdom is detachment without withdrawal". We should all take a step back from our chaotic lives and remember life is short, don't et caught up in the "vanity" as Koheleth would call it. If you get too focused on the "vanity" your life will be miserable.
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Here's something that I wrote concerning Jonah, but I never finished it:
Jonah was a pious man, gregarious, generally happy, and in good health. He lived a simple life as the Lord intended. Pray, sacrifice, worship, any religious term you name, he did it. He did it well. When God first came and told him that He was going to blow up Ninevah. Jonah said, "Blow up? Like Rambo?" God said, "You bet your ass, Jonah, you bet your ass." Jonah was a tad horrified. He didn't sign up to be a terrorist. He didn't sign up to be a crusader. He didn't sign up to be a repetitious asshole. No, he signed up for the God of sex, be fruitful and multiply. He wanted a God that would give him women. Jonah knew that was shallow, but sheol, he was a shallow f**k. He liked giving into the simpler, lustful pleasures of his existence. Didn't Solomon say, "Oh vanities of vanities, all it vanity"? Life is in vain, and Jonah reckoned, he might as well enjoy getting down and dirty with his sinful self.
Socially speaking, Jonah may put on good show, but he didn't like people in a recreational sense. In truth, he hated almost everybody, not excluding himself, whom he held a particular distaste for. That is why Jonah didn't want to inform the sinful lot in Ninevah that they would all die in a very painful way. He didn't like dealing with people, plus God would make it really painful. God didn't do not painful. He told Jonah all about the pain and the suffering and agony and the sun that could be blocked out by gourds but it wasn't and that pissed Jonah off, because honestly, he sunburned easily, and well, f**k off. And so it went, and so it went, and so it went, that Jonah felt morally ablidged to warn the people of Ninevah that they were all going to die, amen. However, though he may have been guilt tripped into being morally ablidged, he had no intention of carrying out the morally ablidging of it all.
Jonah snuck off in secret at midnight, cloak wrapped around his body. No God could surely see him fleeing away this late into the night? Jonah hopped aboard a ship, and he cast his lots that God was completely oblivious to the whole affair. Finally relaxing, enjoying the solitude from this Michael Bay like God, he fell asleep and dreamt of happier things not involving Rambo. Bunnies were hopping on a grassy hill, a metallic door opened in the side of the hill and out came a vacuum cleaner. This confused Jonah on a number of levels, mainly on a personal level because he had just shared a cleaning experience with a similar vacuum. Ah crap, now things took a bizarre turn. Monsters emerged, one purple, one green, one yellow, and one red, all with antennas on their bulbous bloated heads. They shrieked and giggled with what could only be a demonic possession. Television screens lit their sick bellies full of fat and girth, ick. Jonah screamed in disgust, grabbed an uzi, and did what was best. Then he woke up in a sweat, and some sailor with a cigar growled about tourists, and left him alone in peace. The days past slowly and with a calmness about them that reassured Jonah that God had been aptly fooled. He was sure he had seen the last of that omniscient deity. Taking out an ornate pipe, Jonah smoked and blew rings. He was merry. Smile plastered on his face like the smiley face head from Wal-mart, he relaxed for what he was sure was eternity. The gentiles on board the ship gave him nervous glances. Surely this jew had lost his mind? Then the sky turned black, and the gentiles looked up nervously. With a bang, the sky lit up. Jonah smirked. "You found me." He was sure he had given the Greatness the slip. Banging with what could only be righteous anger, the heavens let their waters fall upon his restless head, burning his ample sun burns.
The sailors screamed with the typical sea-faring storm lingo. The whole affair confused Jonah, who had not read Moby Dick and was therefore completely oblivious to anything having to do with sailing. Men ran to and fro, and Jonah sank into the background. For awhile things seemed like they would work themselves out. The storm was letting up and the ship stopped swaying back and forth like a maraca. However, that was simply God building suspense, and He wailed on the crew like Poseidon. God had truly forsaken his poor servant. Jonah wiped away tears and shouted above the nonsense, "It is me! Kill me! Throw me overboard! I am unsightly before He that is good and great and all in between! Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!" The sailors looked at each other with "that crazy jew" look.
"Sorry dude, you aren't going no where. Keep yourself safe now and don't do anything rash," one of them said.
"So be it, but you will certainly die."
The sailor gave another a knowing glance, pulled straws out of his pocket. "Here, take one, if you get a short one, we'll throw you over." Jonah clenched his tongue between his teeth, grabbed one. "Well, you got it." The sailor kicked Jonah in the chest and he plummeted overboard, greeting the sea like a dead mule.
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Here's something else, concerning my feelings at the time (Nov 20th, it appears by the marker). It also has to deal somewhat with my paper and "vanity" I suppose:
I wish nobody died, and I wish nothing went away. I don't want to miss anything, and I don't want my family to die, and I don't want to leave school. I want to feel either everything or nothing, and I want to love somebody so much it hurts. Stare into her eyes until the universe falls away, and wax philosophy late into the night when the infomercials are on and Billy Mays lives. I want to watch childhood movies until I die, and I want to play make believe in that empty field across the street. Long, dried up grass stretched forever, and the grasshoppers chirped, and Everyday was an adventure, and everyday I was someone new: a jedi, a transformer, a pokemon trainer, a grasshopper hunter, a podracer pilot, Link searching for the triforce, getting married at the alter, staring at the sky and imagining God was giving me signs in the clouds, collecting ants in a tin can, and believing I would never grow up. I would whisper all this, that Fern Gully terrified me, that I would cry in daycare everyday when my mom was late in picking me up, that I always dreamed of leaving this planet behind like Levon's Jesus, that the world seemed too small for me, that I would never be the person I always wanted to be and my predictions came true, that I cried myself to sleep more than one night because I knew I was growing older and it would some day all end. She would smile and tell me everything is going to be okay. Then I would smile back and tell her she is lying. I would tell her about the romantic mountains, how they represent the earth's harshness. We're not supposed to live here, I would say, on such a hostile world. Then I would tell her they are the most beautiful damn things I have ever seen, that they made the earth a romantic place and I would never do away with them. I would tell her about accounting, economics, politics, pop culture, science fiction, movies, television, books, poems, history, Say Anything, Animal Collective, Sunset Rubdown, Star Wars, and all the stupid crap that I think about that nobody else thinks about because it is stupid. And she would listen to it all and judge me like at the end of days. God, Moses, and Jesus will sit on their golden thrones, rubies sparkling in the ceiling, and they will shake their heads and call me unfit for their kingdom and be deemed inadequate. The gates will shut. But she won't do that, and I shall be set be free.
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I also promised a nude painting, so I searched and searched, but nothing satisfied me. If I'm going to do this it has to be great. Then I found a pretty good one with Zeus and two naked people. I think they are getting married because it's called "nuptials". Anyway, here it is:
Edit: image seems to have gone to heaven, sorry
Have a good winter break, you crazy kids.
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