Charles,
Imagine, if you will, flying through the clouds, soaring over fields and rivers, and oceans. The wind is in your face and your hair blows wildly. With your arms outstretched, you bank suddenly, and curve through the sky, chasing birds and diving through clouds. Now imagine, with me, that you forget how to fly, and you begin to panic. You lose control and begin to plummet toward the ground. The altimeter on your watch that you got for Christmas says you are at 3000 feet, now 2700, now 2400, now 2000, you are going faster and faster, and all you can think about is eating. You crave an omelette, you need pizza, but you can't think of how you will find either of those things at 1400 feet. Then you realize that when you land, there might be a pizza next to you, and you could eat it. With no knife or fork, you would have to tear it apart with your hands, but you don't have fingers, because they came off when you reached terminal velocity -- they are not guaranteed under severe conditions, you know. So you bend down, and begin to gnaw at the crust. It's is a slow process, but you know that once you get through the hard part, the rest will be easy. The sauce will make the middle part of the pizza softer, and it will be easier to eat. After the pizza, you remember that you had also wanted an omelette, but that you are full now, so you decide to not even bother looking for one. So you get up and race across the plain, going faster and faster, until you are cruising along at forty-five miles per hour. You pass cities and towns, going even faster, --you race along highways next to semis and motorcycles, and cross bridges, without paying the toll, because now you are going so fast, no one can see you. You get a little winded and decide to take a break. You sit down on a grassy hill, and lean over and throw up, remembering that you shouldn't exert yourself after eating, especially a whole double cheese pizza that had been sitting on the plain for three weeks, since you put it there before you went up in the plane. As you glance at the chunks which are still laying next to you, but beginning to run down the hill a little bit, you decide to run down the hill a little bit, then, your better judgement tells you that there might still be some pizza in your stomach, and it's not worth wasting that much good nutrients, so instead you slowly begin to walk up the hill, and as you reach the top, you realize that there is not another side to the hill. It just stops right there. Good thing you didn't run up the hill, or you would have fallen off the edge. But anyway, you're no Magellan, you don't even know how to tie your shoes, so you turn around and head back to the last town you passed. When you get there, you recall an old song you once knew, and the song says something about a girl who knew everything in the world, and most everything not in it. She got around, I guess you could say. She didn't "know" everything in the King James sense, that would be pretty impossible, she was just really good friends with everything. She had gone down to the bottom of the ocean, with the little submarine guy, JASON, and she met all the stuff down there. It s rumored that she had a long, philosophical discussion with a heat vent amoeba thing she met. It was supposed to have been about the existence of life on other planets. The amoeba argued that until she had come along, he had had no idea idea that other beings lived out of the water. She said that although he didn't know it, her society, and the whole, outer-world had a profound effect on even the deep sea happenings of the whole world. For instance, the polluting that humans have done on the surface, will, if it hasn't already, permeate to the bottom of the ocean, and introduce chemicals that have never been down there before. He argued that it is possible that other cultures, in other solar systems have had profound effects on human life. Perhaps aliens from other planets landed on the earth in prehistoric times, explaining the south American references to space helmet type people. And maybe that's why humans are all so stupid: we are actually just a strain of aliens that inbred and went crazy. The cool aliens sent them to Earth, much like we sent criminals to Australia, and then the humans, over a few zillions of years, evolved into all the cool stuff we are now. She agreed, hesitantly, because all her motions and emotions took a long time in the bottom of the sea. You see, the water pressure there is a little bit more than in the regular water you swim in every day at six o'clock in the morning, before you go to school and learn material, and eat lunch, and converse with people that you call friends. Actually, they aren't really friends--they talk about you behind your back, they think mean things about you, and they even say mean things right to your face sometimes. No, real friends don't talk at all, they just listen, and if they have something to say, they let you say it for them. That's why I've always loved my bear. He would just sit there and glare at me, as if I had done something wrong. OK, so I was supposed to be doing my homework, and instead I was writing a letter to Stan Lee. It was kind of like English, anyway, and its none of your business, so leave you out of it. I should just talk to myself, everyone else always judges what I say, as if what I say really matters. And so I don't care, but what really bugs me is when they judge ME by what I say. They think I'm some nerdy guy who spends all his time watching the people's court, when really it's not that bad of a show. You should watch it some time, cause I think you might like it. Judge Whoppner is really funny when he gets mad at the defendants for being stupid, and he always calls the plaintiff stupid names. For one, he calls them the plaintiff, which is a really stupid sounding word, that has no significant meaning in our language, we should just call them the ACCUSERS! That way more people would watch because it would seem more like a trial and less like a sitcom. But sitcoms are really funny, and probably get the best ratings of any shows on TV, so maybe it's not that bad that the people's court seems like one. One time a guy that got a piece of pizza at a pizza place was suing the pizza place because the piece of pizza they sold him wasn't the way he liked it. He said they had made it while their hands were dirty or something, and he thought he would get aids or something. So he sued them for two dollars and fifty-three cents, which was the cost of the piece of pizza. I think he should have sued them for charging too much for the piece of pizza, because that's a lot of money for one piece. When I buy pizza, I get the money from my dad so it doesn't matter, cause if I had to pay for it myself, it would be the nastiest, cheapiest, skankiest pizza you d ever seen. It would look like something your dog had left somewhere he shouldn't, and just smelling it would make you want to run away and throw up. But throwing up isn't really that bad of an idea after all. It purges you of stuff that's bad for you. No one ever said your body never makes mistakes. I mean it's not the food that's bad, but the thought of eating the pizza. But your body is doing the best it can and you really should appreciate it's efforts. Not everyone does everything they can for you, I mean, just put yourself in my shoes: When's the last time you did something nice for me? Try never, cause that's the last time. But don't worry, I don't really care, I mean, that's what casual acquaintances are for. They fill that gap between friends that always do cool stuff and friends that always do really mean stuff. I mean, that's what enemies really are, just really, really good friends in the wrong direction. So the phrase, "why can't we all be brothers?" is pretty true, except for the fact that fifty percent of the people are girls, but hey, fifty percent is not bad for a phrase to be true. Stuff like i before e hardly ever works, and they still teach that in public schools. Anyway, I was talking about a little town before the Whoppner story, and it wasn't any accident either, it was a really important town, but instead of boring you with all the boring details, I'll get right to the punch-line. The gun wasn't loaded! So as you went past the town, on your way to never-land, the big lady in the general store stopped you and wondered why you were dressed so funny like. Head to toe in nothing but a plastic Kroger bag around one ear and a pair of running shoes. If she had asked you, you probably would have told her all about the running thing and about the drag coefficient needed to keep your nose from getting burned, but she never did say what was on her mind, so you just continued to wander through the store, constantly keeping both eyes on her, to make sure she wasn't watching you. Of course, she was, but without your contacts, you couldn't tell anyway. It was a miracle you got out of that store without tripping on some sort of immigrant, of which most were already trampled by previous customers. But hey, they were all pretty sick of the constant verbal degradation anyway.