Pragmatism is my way of life.  It keeps me from having too much faith in humankind.  I may not be a Calvinist as far as my theology, but I go along with Calvin 100% regarding the Total Depravity of Man. Even though I intentionally try to avoid the news, because as far as I’m concerned mainstream news is nothing but proof that Orwell was right, I do have to go out and deal with people in places like Walmart.  Devolution has been going on ever since the Fall, and there isn’t enough chlorine to fix the human gene pool.

Let’s face it, most people suck.  If people didn’t suck, God wouldn’t have to tell us to be nice to them.  Being nice to other people takes work because they suck. I suck as well.  We all suck, which is why we are so crappy to each other. There are plenty of things in this world that completely suck too. Buck up, buttercup, and deal. I can buck the natural progression in subtle ways, but I can’t change the parameters humanity has been given.  As long as we are in these bodies, on this planet, things are going to suck.

I am wildly amused by date setters- people who think they have nailed the date and the time of the End of the World (even though Jesus tells us not to, and you don’t have to be a fantastic theologian to figure it out, just read Matthew 24:24-36 .)  Nobody knows when the world’s going to end.  I don’t particularly want to know, any more than I want to know when I will drop dead.  The surprise is part of the fun.

I am not afraid of death.  I just hope it’s a matter of going to bed and waking up dead.  Jerry was fortunate that way in that’s how he went.  He wanted to stay out of the hospital (especially after watching the hospital completely ignore his Dad’s Living Will and DNR orders) and he managed to do that.  Pain is what I am most afraid of- a long, suffering lingering death.  Pain and suffocation. I’ve always had a thing about suffocation especially because that was one of the torments my sisters loved to engage in when I was a little kid.  Just sit on your younger sibling until she turns blue and stops moving, and/or Dad thinks it’s getting too quiet, so he gets off the couch to investigate, sees that one of his offspring is losing consciousness, and makes you get up off of her.  What a fun game!

If I am given a choice I just want to go to bed and wake up dead. But that’s not for me to decide.

Our friend David Meade claims the world’s going to end tomorrow.  If that’s true then I shouldn’t have bought that pack of new underwear or bothered to stock up my fridge for next week.

I think I might just chill to the REM song End of the World as We Know It a few more times.