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156 lines
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" .OOOOOO OOOOOo OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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OOOO oOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. OOOO oOOOO
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OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO"
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OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO'
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OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO
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OOOO oOOOOOOO..OOOO OOOO "OOOOOOO OOOOoOOOO"
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OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO'
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OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO
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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #26 |
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- One Hundred and One Ways to Wash a Brain -
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or Why I Don't Like Church Trips
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by Mystic Juggernaut
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(This file is totally and entirely based on my own real-life experience, so
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much the worse for me.)
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Ah. The Christian Church. Great and venerable institution, moral
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pillar of society. What's not to like, eh? Let's just go sit in the church
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for a minute, listen in. They're done with the hymns now, the pastor is
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saying a little message on how Jesus saves, and Jesus commands us to take
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communion, that charming little ritual cannabilism thing. Of course in
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these here little Protestant churches it doesn't SEEM as much like ritual
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cannabilism as in the Catholic ones, but it still is, really. But what's
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wrong with that, eh? God's will and all.
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Anyway, now Mr. Pastor seems to be warning us. HE says that those who
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eat and drink this with an impure heart are only eating and drinking their
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own death. Impure heart--I guess that means me. By their standards anyway.
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Being an agnostic I think it's very unlikely the cup would harm me. But I
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refuse the bread and cup anyway. This isn't my religion, it belongs to my
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parents. Just a typical Sunday for me. Sitting through a service I don't
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half believe in, getting preached at. I hate that. Wouldn't you?
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Now let's sit in on a nice meeting of youth pastors. From quite a few
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different churches actually. They are babbling about typical youth pastor
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things when one of them comes up with a great idea. Why not have one of
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those youth retreat things? They're always fun for the kids, and they teach
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them about the Lord Jesus. So they plan one. Nice Christian Rock concert,
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sports and such. Lots and lots of fun. Toss in a good speaker. REALLY nifty
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now.
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Eventually this plan gets out to the general public, particularly my
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parents. I want to stay home and hang out with some "worldly" friends. My
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folks will hear none of it. Listen to them discuss it now.
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Mom: "Oh, it'll be such fun for him. Much more fun than those other friends
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of his. Anyway he can be with them any time. This is just this once."
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Dad: "You're right. That speaker would be good for his spiritual life. I
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heard he was very good, and _________ hasn't been reading his Bible
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much lately." (After passing through my patented
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Doublespeak-Strip-o-Matic device, this came out to "What the hell,
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the kid's brain could use a nice thorough scrubbing.")
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So it's set. Not my decision. That's nothing unusual really. My
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parents don't think it's right that I always want to hang out with all
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those tools of Satan, no matter how nice and clean-cut they might seem,
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which they didn't always, at that. Especially lately. Essentially it was
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go, or get kicked out and live on the street. So I went. How bad could it
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be anyway?
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Very bad, I found out. Worse than I'd imagined. First of all, they had
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that Christian concert, rock type thing, nice and loud. Everyone got all
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hyped up, which was fine. Good even. Except that they followed it right up
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with a sermon. After people were all like up on the seats clapping and
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waving and having a great time. Very relaxed-like in a way, but still hyped
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up. Very nifty post-concert state. It only has one really huge
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disadvantage. This point is important: whatever mental defenses you have
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toward preaching and persuasive speech are very much decreased, as I've
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learned by experience. According to people who've studied this kind of
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scientifically, it can go down as low as 10% because a lot of people enter
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a state of alpha consciousness. That's more or less what you get when you
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meditate or go into a light hypnotic trance, only in this particular case
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you are more aware of your surroundings.
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In any case they brought in that speaker. Nice technique he has.
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Intonation, emphasis, all kinds of stuff. He's speaking in a very
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persuasive manner. It would be even under normal circumstances, but to this
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entranced crowd...I don't seem to be in a trance myself. I had a feeling
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they'd try something like this. I know this type of people, and besides
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that I'm slightly paranoid. Being slightly paranoid is an immensely helpful
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thing in getting through life, as long as you can handle the stress. If you
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can't, you'll have a heart attack at age 40 and that's that. The slightly
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paranoid man will find a lot of cases where they really ARE out to get him.
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Unparanoid will miss them and get nailed. TOO paranoid and you see more
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imaginary than real dangers. I think my paranoia is closer to optimum than
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most people's, but I wouldn't know really, having never been anyone else
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but me.
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In any case I tried not to really get into it. It seemed to work. But
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some people have a suspiciously glassy-eyed stare. They send us to bed
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late, in the wee hours of the morning. No one in the place gets as much as
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six hours of sleep.
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In the morning we all get up and are treated to a meal that makes a
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school lunch look like a royal banquet. I try to dig into the spam and
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soybean curds, but the roadkill is just too much. No full stomach for me.
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No one else either. We are forced to drink coffee and eat sugar packets to
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keep going. Then we go play sports most of the day, stopping only to refill
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on reprocessed bat testes.
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More than a hundred tired, wired teenagers go to another meeting. They
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have another concert. Kinda slower music. Big difference. Then we sing some
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songs set to the tunes of old pop rock, with words like "Looks good, looks
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fine, gonna serve him all the time." Sick thought. I don't particularly
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like the idea of serving anyone at all, being somewhat anarchistic of
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tendency. Some people can't stay awake through the whole thing. Everyone's
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thinking is muddled. Everyone gets woken up by avid youth pastors to listen
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to the nifty speaker. Great way he builds up that guilt through the speech.
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We're all guilty of not becoming total mindless puppets. He wants us to
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change, to do anything God tells us. Five conversions he makes, or
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something, with that speech. Five people hardly awake enough to remember
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their own names, five people with enough caffeine and sugar and little
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enough sleep and nutrition in their systems that they are probably
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incapable of elementary logic.
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I felt the pull of his words. I could feel I was weakened too, they
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were pulling down all the hedges and fences and walls I had built to
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protect myself against such propaganda. Fortunately they didn't get
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through. I was strong enough. I could have taken more maybe. I'm glad I
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didn't have to find out. But I was born and raised in a Christian home, I
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broke away from the hold of that faith while still going to church every
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Sunday. All that still got to me a bit. And I'm an anarchistic type, as
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I've said. Imagine what all this would do to a "true believer" type, one of
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those all-too-common fanatics ready to happen, the kind that feel that
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their minds are inadequate, that they need someone to think for them.
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Instant total mind slavery. It seemed organized enough to have been
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designed by an expert. I don't know if the structure is really systematic
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or just a result of decades of trial and error, but it is structured and it
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does work, just the same.
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I've gone home now. I still feel a bit vulnerable. The last of my
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mental barriers are slow to regenerate. It's those deplorably catchy
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surgically altered pop tunes. I can't get them out of my head. I think I'll
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go listen to some metal now. Maybe that'll help. Psychological attacks and
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mental scarring are really no fun. That's why I hate Church trips.
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