Do I need to start at the beginning?

Everything that once was, is, or will be, exploded in a burst of light damming the nothingness that was, screaming to exist

Or maybe not that far back Mommy Y and Daddy Y loved each other very much and hooked up in this motel off of Route 19.

Okay, okay, you don't care about that. I'll start a little more recently, with a piece that I like to call, Nothing Really Matters.

One day in college, during a philosophy course, I came to the mind-shattering realization that nothing really matters. There isn't anything in and of itself that has value. My whole life is pointless. Everyone I know, had met, will meet none of it matters.

There is no more meaning in a flower than there is in a tree than there is in ten dollar bill. (Though, if youre lucky that ten-spot will buy you 'everything'). If I recall correctly there was a two- or three-day bender soon following. When I came to, I wiped the dirt and vomit off of myself apologized to that poor old lady down the street and her poodle, then went home.

I was a student in college, already piled in debt, a part time retail job, no direction, and I had hit a new low. This is when I found God. It was kind of strange to find him in the bottom of that bottle of vodka though. As much as I tried to take him in has my personal savior, he'd just keep coming back up. This was getting expensive. I then introduced my new God to tonic and things settled down quite a bit.

I decided that if I wasn't going to commit suicide, then I should set some ground rules. What can I start with? Aside from the God in my vodka bottle, and tonic, I didn't have much going on. What do I know? I know that I exist; or rather I think that I exist and thats close enough. (Thanks Rene!) The rest of you figments, I'm not so sure about.

Basing my belief structure around my worship, or 'drinking' as my mom calls it, seemed like a good place to start. The most important thing would be to establish the means by which I could procure more God, tonic, a tumbler, ice, a lemon (or lemon juice if youre in a pinch), and a stirring rod (though that's ancillary as you can usually use a finger provided it's mostly clean). Fortunately for me, you figments have already figured this out and I can use the same concept MONEY! Yay!

After depleting my future education (read savings account) and losing my job (going to work in a religious trance was somehow viewed as just being drunk by my clearly unenlightened employers), I decided that I needed to find other ways to get money. Fortunately, the government, and government funded entities, will give you lots of money if you're a student. I took them for the full extent that I could and it worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, my world view hadn't expanded to the point where I realized that I would, in fact, have to pay this back to them along with a fee for the privilege of them raping me I mean pay interest.

Once I had the money part taken care of, and figured out what I wanted to do with my time, I needed to find some place to do it. Apparently, it's quite common to worship the God in the vodka bottle (there's a whole pantheon of libationary deities, most of whom are very popular), so it's pretty easy to find a place to worship. Further than that I wanted to have a comfortable place to confess my sins and receive forgiveness so I continued to pay my rent. A cold God is more rewarding than luke-warm God, so I had to pay my electric bill and so on.

Now I had my God, assorted holy paraphernalia, a source of income, and a place to pray. I just had to continue to be a student. I prolonged graduation for as long as possible changed majors four or five times (I lost track, I was drunk after all) and finally settled on a double major - Philosophy and Cartography. After I accidentally acquired the correct configuration of class credits I was graduated by the University of Wisconsin - Madison. My college life lasted just five and half short years.

After graduation, I faced some rather unsettling situations. I was no longer a student and therefore no longer receiving funds for being a student. Payments would soon be required on those pesky student loans and I had to find a new way of getting money. I cleaned up slightly had my then-girlfriend, now-wife (love you baby!) write up a snazzy resume for me, and I applied for jobs.

Looks like Im going to have to cut this short as I'm running low on time something about supposed to be working now. It's kind of hard to hear through all this religious frenzy I got going on right now. Hell, I'm not even typing this my assistant is, and he's doing a fine job at that. At least I think he's my assistant.

Maybe I'll continue on this little parable later, but if not, I'll leave you with this piece of advice: " ".

Yeah, go get your own damn ideas.