Our show on the weekend went well. We made some money. I sold some CDs. In between the time I arrived in Chilliwack and the show began I had a couple hours to kill, so I spent a lot of time at the Save-On-Foods ogling the bulk section. I bumped into Amber and she told me about the Rotary Book Sale the next morning. While I was actually looking at The Book Man window some tall lanky guy came up to me offered me a pamphlet which I refused and he said “Question for you: do you know where you’re going when you die?” There were a lot of things I could have said, “Yes, the cold cold ground; No and neither do you; It doesn’t matter because I’ll be dead.” What I did say was “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All the people in Hell do.”
I turned away from him and he walked off. First off, I hate being talked to by strangers on the street. About pretty much anything. I don’t want to be asked for spare change. I don’t want to be wished a nice day. I don’t want to be asked to join Greenpeace (I’m already a member). And I certainly don’t want to engage in religious or philosophical discussions. But even if I did want to talk to strangers, why would I want to hear your zany fairy tales any more than you would want to hear mine? If you’re not the kind of guy who, like me, believes in only what can be proved, what is the basis of Christianity besides a) taking everything you read in a book written by a host of dead guys from HUNDREDS of years ago who have no reliable references and b) hearing voices in your head, which if they weren’t the status quo would get you locked away so you couldn’t interact with society?
Yeah, so there’s this huge white guy with a beard who created the human race in HIS own image (except for women which make up more than half of the species and non-caucasians which make up like 95% of the species) because it’s such an awesome design what with the back pain and the hemorrhoids, and he lives up in the clouds with his swan-winged buddies and then one day one of the swan-winged guys shows some independent thought and he gets turned into a bat-winged guy and he gets his own realm that’s constantly on fire and if any of the human race don’t follow the white guy’s rules they’ll be tortured for all eternity. Oh yeah, and every human has an invisible, intangible version of himself which lives forever, but not animals because people are inherently superior to dogs and cats and blue whales and amoeba and even the planet that sustains them was only created by the Big White Guy for the humans to carve up like a roast. And you can pretty much be as much an asshole as you want as long as you give 10% of your wages to the head spokesman for the Big White Guy and only worship him and don’t commit suicide and on your death bed ask for the forgiveness of his kid who had magical powers.
OR
The universe was created when The Great Space Hedgehog sharted out a big rainbow and all the poop particles became the celestial bodies. The stars came from his dinner of a Red Hot Burrito and the planets came from undigested carroway seeds. The Holy Roundworm came with them and created all life on the planet Earth by sloughing off its molted skin. He gave his one species, humankind, intelligence by giving them a big old sly WINK! And then he went on the internet (just like the internet of today but much bigger and, like, totally 1000 years old, and with less popups) and downloaded a program to randomize how long everything lives. And when a person dies his left patella absorbs all the memories and feelings from his entire life and flies to the center of Neptune and there takes one of two forms: If you’ve said “yup” more than 4000 times you become a robot which will live on the bright side of the roundworm where everyone reads Time Magazine; If you’ve said “yup” less than 4000 times you become a mummy on the dark side of the worm and read Maclean’s. If you’ve said “yup” exactly 4000 times you become a bowl of tiger stripe ice cream.
Now how is one of those mythologies any more or less arbitrary and ridiculous than the other?
Anyway, back to my story. There were some people at the show who I recognized but, naturally, couldn’t remember their names. But that’s okay. So after the show I went back to Chris Woods’ and we played some Godzilla: Save the Earth on his XBox and then I became sleepy. In the morning we went to the Rotary Book Sale and I bought a book on weird insects, a photo book of birds, a huge National Geographic photo book of everything, a book called What’s What which is kind of a “How Everything Works” kind of book with illustrations, a photo book on elephants and other large animals, and a book on the atomic structure of matter — all for $12. Then we had breakfast at the Airport Cafe and I had the pie recommended as the healthiest – pumpkin. It was damn yummy.
Afterwards we rented a video game called Republic Commando which was pretty good for a first person shooter, but we couldn’t figure out how to be on the same team. Finally we went to see Magnificent Desolation which is a 3D Imax film. It was so-so. Too much filler and not enough tech talk. It didn’t really need to be in 3D, but that said – the 3D was amazing. We saw a trailer for some 3D undersea documentary and if I don’t go see that I think I’ll die.
After that Chris drove me home and we watched some DVDs here with Stewie and Darcey. Lots of fun but I couldn’t stay up too late as I had to work on Monday.
It looks like I’m going to be doing some more web design in the near future. Can anyone recommend a good online store service? You know, the “add item to shopping cart” deal and something that can take credit cards securely. Etc. Any advice on that would be appreciated.
