Peacock Feathers & Virtual Apples

It gets to the point where you’re not sure what exactly it is an apple a day is supposed to keep away. You can remember only three kinds of fish, and you’re not getting any younger.

You sleep on a bed. You try fitting a snow globe into your mouth. You begin to ask all the important questions.

How did [c]hristians ever meet before the advent of christianmingle.com? Why would [g]od wait so long to have humans invent the internet so more [c]hristians could meet and find love and procreate?

Why wouldn’t [g]od just have the [c]hristians [h]e wants to fall in love with each other live in the same city, the same neighborhood, the same street, the same house? Well, some do, maybe.

Was it [g]od’s plan to have humans eventually invent the internet so that more [c]hristians could meet and find love and procreate?

It is believed that [g]od is outside time. If there is no time, then [g]od either always created the universe or [h]e never created the universe. There could not be a point in time when the universe did or did not exist.

If [g]od created the universe, then christianmingle.com has existed since forever (but forever implies non-time, so chistianmingle.com never existed which means maybe life does not exist...). But there are television commercials convincing us to believe otherwise, so now I don’t know what to think.

American commercials do nothing but promote treating other people like shit because other people don’t have something you have, or because they have something you want. Every commercial I see lately is just, someone has something someone else wants, and someone won’t let someone else have it.

Or someone makes someone else jealous, makes someone else feel they don’t deserve it. Like, someone in a commercial is eating something and their friend wants some, and their friend distracts them and when they turn back around their friend ate all the food.

What if [c]hristians meet on christianmingle.com, actually fall in love, procreate, and their pious progeny grow up unable to find any other [c]hristians in their immediate area, and so must resort to christianmingle.com to find another lonely [c]hristian?

People who find love without the aid of computers, who meet other people in real life and fall in love, always say things like, “It was meant to be,” or “It was fate,” then hug each other real big with cutesy, wrinkle-nosed smiles while their friends roll their eyes like motorcycle wheels.

I think it’s just, you happen to live in the same city, accidentally, and the inevitability of you meeting at some point was…inevitable. Everyone knows at least one other person.

If you didn’t meet, or did but you didn’t fall in love, it’s just as easy to think, “It wasn’t meant to be.” Was christianmingle.com meant to be? Was this part of [g]od’s divine plan? What else are we not allowed to learn from television commercials?

There’s that commercial where someone has miniature hamburgers and his coworkers steal them all because the miniature hamburgers are so good and his coworkers can’t resist them. The Temptation of Wilde. This person’s coworkers must have seen a commercial that explained to them how good these miniature hamburgers were. (I’m afraid they wouldn’t’ve figured it out on their own.)

This is how we’re taught to behave. Don’t share anything you have, steal from your friends before they have a chance to refuse to share with you. [C]hristian nation.

The forbidden fruit, despite various artists’ depictions, was not an apple. The fruit is not mentioned by name in the bible, though biblical scholars, and the writers/producers of White Men Can't Jump, contend it was a quince.

Other experts believe the human race is not actually descended from two people whose children would’ve had to’ve slept together to create all the other humans who appear out of nowhere a few chapters into Genesis.

Probably, there are more Phil Collins fans than Peter Gabriel fans.

I liked that Gervais movie, The Invention of Lying. The movie takes place in contemporary life, and its characters exist in our culture. The only difference is: No one lies. Everyone tells the truth, compulsively, almost biologically inclined to do so. People tell other people exactly what they think, regardless of how it will affect them.

The movie explores how religion is merely a fabrication, an institution invented to offer comfort to people who know they’re going to die. (Other interpretations of why religion was invented include the acquisition of power, lawn fetes and really fun hats.)

But the problem with the movie’s premise is that it presupposes religion is secondary to civilization. It takes place in a world already built, a world with a history that somehow propelled it toward the same point in time in which we exist. But I don’t think anything would’ve gotten done without religion.

Civilization is based on religion, and despite my loathing of religion and its dangerous influence on people, I don’t think humans would’ve erected a civilization without lying to each other and ourselves about the nature of existence, just going around telling the truth all day.

Civilization is how men say "Let’s fuck" without being direct about it. Civilization is nothing more than peacock feathers. Without such lies, we’d’ve descended into chaos long ago.

But there is already chaos. You know this, you feel it. You begin to forget there’s no [g]od. You begin to forget what the important questions are.

You are getting younger. Everyone is. The end is getting younger. Waking up feels the same as going back to sleep.

You begin to realize there’s no question you could ask that you could ever receive a sufficient answer to. There are so many kinds of fish. You throw the snow globe against the wall.

Why do we care about things? Is it because we’re afraid to admit that we’re alone?

Other than everything, I can't think of one thing I'm afraid of. All I know is, I don’t believe in [g]od and it would take a miracle for me to feel loved.