It is the killing joke. I wonder if maybe, all this really is pointless - you know the whole love and life and taxes bit. (Jeez - I get a little more angst here and I could be a writing seminars major...). Still, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense - after all it is the basis of several major religions, isn't it - the material world sucks. Spiritually, we are lost sinning and foolish (have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior? Have you begun the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment? Have you started a Crusade lately?). We must be cleansed/purified/ saved, etc. It does make a sort of twisted sense, doesn't it - when we die, everything that we have done becomes moot (for those of us that are cremated, everything becomes soot. But the point remains). Nothing that we could do makes a difference - our little achievements and our little pains, they don't mean a damn thing to anyone or anything. We exist in a little world of our own making - things are only important because we believe them to be so. After all - what could we do to the planet itself? What cares the universe for someone's great fortunes or downfalls. The breakup of a marriage, the passing of a class, the Holocaust itself - it is all so pointless. That's the joke - do you understand? We sit here and we pretend that we actually make a difference, that anything that we do could possibly have any real effect upon anything else. We pretend all the way up until the end - and then God or the Grim Reaper or Eris or Whoever doesn't show up, and we understand the joke at last. We finally understand exactly what our lives (long or short as they may be) meant. They meant nothing. We are so pointless. We spent our whole lives in a massive, futile endeavor; we exist only to reverse entropy on a local scale, and pretend that this will change anything. We survive by making things die, and we must eventually pay our dues...

         I sit here now, at the computer, and I am thinking. I am thinking about what I should do tomorrow (I believe that I have a paper due and a neural net due and a orgo test on Tuesday). I am thinking about when I should die. Should I wait, should I choose, should I simply try to find out when? Should I care? What happens when I die? I will bet money (what a cute thought - to bet money on when you will die...) that I will not long survive the worms... I will bet money that there is nothing out there - not even the Death of the Endless. I toy with the idea - perhaps I could become immortal. But then something within me decides that this is not to be - it reminds me that I am mortal, and that I was built to be mortal. Nothing else should ever matter, so long as I remember that fact. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing noble or pleasing about that. There is nothing that being mortal does to us, save put us in the same category as every other animal and plant on this poor world. Why do we die? Why do we care? I almost long for the time when I didn't know that I would die. When, I wonder (wondering at the same time at the recall in my mind of R&GD) did I learn of this fact. I don't remember when I found out, but I remember several times when I really didn't believe that I could die. It simply never occurred to me. Now that I think about it, I think that perhaps I do remember... Such a waste...