24th
AND
Today there are two warring factions on campus: The Bible Givers and The Condom Givers. Who will win this age-old battle between Pushy Religion and Meaningless Collegiate Sex?
There was a certain time for me (late high school/early college) when I would mostly just trundle around old Nazareth PA with headphone on, listening to sad music and feeling panging sad sack feelings about something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. This is teenage life though, probably: feeling 10,000 feelings and not knowing what to think of them. So you throw rocks and people, or buy CD’s with your allowance, or if you are me you walk traipse around sadly, listening to some sad something or other. Anyway, it was around this time I developed this desire: to marry everyone in the world and have them live in a big house somewhere on the face of some high-up mountain in hopes of keeping them safe from the oppressive doom that was so clearly EVERYWHERE. This was a big fat Holden Caufield type desire that probably has all manner of weird psychological mothering-issue types of implications. BUT I DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT SO LEAVE ME ALONG YOU STUPID TALKING BUTT OF A PERSON.
But, anyway, so, now, working on a college campus, I am confronted on a constant basis with the pushy extroverted fashion of college freshmen who are aggressively trying to FIND THEMSELVES.
“THE REAL ME, THE ME I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR ALL THIS TIME, APPARENTLY HAS HEARTILY GELLED HAIR THAT VACILLATES DAILY IN COLOR AND NOSE RINGS THAT CONNECT TO OTHER NOSE RINGS AND STRONG HATRED OF PARENTS DESPITE (OR MAYBE EVEN BECAUSE OF) THEIR UNCONDITIONAL FINANCIAL SUPPORT. ALSO I WILL NOW TALK ENDLESSLY ABOUT MY OWN POSSIBLE LESBIANISM,” they all strut about saying all the live-long-day.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
At this point, the sad sack idea of saving the world from its own raving ugliness is the dumbest idea I can recall having (not really). I walk around trying to see doom and golden fortune finds as the same thing. Trying to see the Million Dollar Man with the monocle and bushy mustache made entirely out of $100 bills as EXACTLY THE SAME as the burlap man who lives under the bridge and has had both his arms chopped off in his old job at the cannery. And if the booming narrator of the universe says to me, “HELP THE BURLAP MAN!” or “TAKE THIS CHARITY FROM THE MILLION DOLLAR MAN” I will do so. But mostly people keep to themselves. Except the loud and brazen Self Finders. And of course the ever fist-fighting Bible Givers and Condom Givers. “I’M JUST TRYING TO UNLOCK MY BIKE, I DON’T WANT ANY CONDOM/BIBLE!”






