if_only raze i criticize something adored by many &, instead of attacking me & my views, people decide to agree with what i've said. i guess it has to do with how you go about tearing something down; if you back up your arguments & they turn out to be valid, other voices grunt in support. if you go about it with all the elegance of a bird shitting on the head of an elderly woman (which can be elegant in its own twisted way), you'd do well to prepare yourself for a brace of screaming opposition. but that's hardly relevant. the issue here is having one's own work destroyed, without any outside parties participating in any way. is the lesson that, if you are proud of what you're doing, it will curdle? never admire what you've accomplished? kill it before it spreads? you control your own reality, to varying degrees. there are usually outside influences of some sort. paper sutures. & yet, for such a powerful tool, the mind has very little pull when it comes to what's important. all the pleading in the world won't offset the supposed natural balance, the way things are "meant" to be. who decided that someone or something else could decide our lives for us? you cannot do anything you set your mind to. that's a cruel lie. maybe not quite as cruel as raising children to believe in some bearded gift man, only to devestate them around the age of eleven when they discover that it's a ludicrous sham, but still. there are things you cannot do. there are things you'll never say. and for what? so you have something to pore over even more than you do now after you die, if anything even happens once you are stripped of your ability to interact with the masses? there will always be people you loved who never knew you gave a shit about them, & people you despised who thought you were pals. no one ever really knows much of anything about any one person. you could observe every mannerism, you could engage in marathon conversations devoted to stripping away artifice & sarcasm, & you still wouldn't be much farther ahead. even in my dreams, i'm eating fudgsicles with freezer burn. 031002 ... raze i'm also falling prey to the making of stupid typos during late-night blathes, too tired to give what i've typed a once-over. "devestate"? jesus. "yes?" so you do exist? "oh, yes. & for doubting my existence, i condemn you to typo hell. your words shall become littered with such affronts to the english language as 'sepirayte' & 'luhbeedoh'." fence-sitters everywhere, repent. 031003 ... lostgirl i had been alone. 101113 what's it to you? who go blather from