Tuesday morning 24 February 1999

Pic of the night: You were always on my mind.

Or, bluntly, I am sick.

I like hot-dogs, in principle. In fact, I like most sausages. The catch is, I usually get sick if I eat them. I don't know if it's shoddy ingredients, unhygienic storage, insufficient heating, or if I've just eaten so many bad hot-dogs that it's become a kind of habit. But if I eat hot-dogs, I will usually get sick. Yesterday I ate two of them.
I wish I could just throw up and be done with it. Unfortunately, I can't. (Presumably one can stick a finger or some such in one's throat and one will throw up. Doesn't seem to work with me. I bet there are people who would gladly have swapped this feature with me. And I'd be happy to trade any day. Life just doesn't work that way.)
And anyway, the offending foodstuff is probably running wildly back and forth in my intestines right now, leaving the poor late night sandwich to take the blame. Life has never been fair.

Perhaps death is fair, but I am in no haste to find out.
Unlike most of you, dear readers, I'm theoretically a christian. So, theoretically I should look forward with joyous expectation to cross over from this mortal valley of tears and through the pearly gates into the next and better life. Theoretically. The fact that I never felt that way has worried me and still does.
Is my religion, as John the Baptist indicated to the pharisees, just an attempt to escape a judgement that I feel I deserve? Then again, isn't my religion the main reason why I fear death? I do not fear oblivion in itself, the end of all. I resent it passionately, rage against the dying of the light. But I do not fear it.
What I fear is something I don't consciously belive in: A vengeful God that tortures people indefinitely for their short time of vanity and self-absorbedness, which is what life is for most of us. I have argued from the christian Bible often and many places that the "wages of sin" is indeed death, as promised, not some painful half-life. I could certainly find justice in that: That those who preferred oblivion over subservience to their Creator would get their choice.
What I fear is not so much being found unworthy by God. That is a given. What I fear is to find that God was unworthy of me. That he is indeed the twisted, hateful, spoiled child that Christianity has portrayed him for centuries; to meet God and know that I should have fought him, even if in vain, with every breath of my life, but that it is too late. That would indeed be hell.

Pretty morbid thoughts for two overpriced hot-dogs, don't y'all think?

Now for the tough question. Dawn is breaking: Should I go to work, with a barf bag for the bus ride, sick up at the office, nap with my head on my desk (after two hours of sleep tonight) and be publicly miserable for a decent but unimpressing hourly wage? Or should I stay in the vicinity of the porcelain throne, as my body loudly claims, and lose a day's pay, while my boss (not the young stunningly beautiful one but the old bald one) thinks I'm home playing games and surfing the Internet? Which I'll probably be, in between my mandatory paying of tribute to the Plumbers' Altar.
Decisions, decisions!

Visit the Diary Farm for the diaries I've put out to pasture until they buy the farm:
January 1999
December 1998