The Individual

This has taken a bit of a backseat in my life lately. Actually, if anything, this has been dumped in the furthest corner of the trailer hitched up to the back of my metaphorical life-mobile. You know, the life-mobile. Like the Bat-mobile only with less men in tights and more spiralling entropy. Anyway, the essence of this paragraph is that I haven't written here much for a long, long time. It probably shows.

By semi-sort-of demand, I'm back doing this, though how long I can keep it up remains a mystery guarded only by the gods of time itself, the ever-knowing, pre-determined path of destiny, a Magic 8-ball in the loft and the fictitious Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come. I suppose that if I do keep this up as regularly as I'd like to, there'll probably be more and more kinda-being-used-too-liberally-to-string-words-together-to-form-some-kind-of-adjective hyphens.

I've come across some real-life people in recent weeks who've spoken of this little mess of crap I've built here and it's transpired that many of those people feel let down that there isn't more crap here to distract them from their slow, yet inevitable, decay. Also, I suppose it's nice to look at someone else's crap and realise "hey, at least my crap isn't as crap as this guy's crap".

My crap (read "life" [read "the continuous string of time I spend existing"]) has taken me to various places over the last however long it's been since I did something here. Mostly it's work, where I spend my days writing enough words that I don't have many left in me by the time I return home and have to resort to a series of grunting noises and hand gestures if communication of ideas is required at all. Yes, I work in Writing now. I actually have a job that relates to what I've spent years of my life working towards. The only real downside is that I've neglected this thing, despite me initially setting the damned thing up to keep me writing, to keep the creative juices flowing and to keep the clichés and metaphors cliché-and-metaphoring. Ironic, really.

I fear the socialising time of my life has come to abrupt stumble, though, as I'm effectively living an adult whilst stuck with the mind and soul of a child. I like to play with interactive televisual softwares. I'm often thanking the gods for making Netflix a thing. I enjoy the idea of socialising and the individual people who make up such company. Chances for satisfying any of these are rare, meaning I often feel as though I have a frustrated child being stifled within me, which doesn't exactly seem to be the best sentence to be writing on the Internet.

As part of my rare outbursts, I recently visited Manchester for less than 24 hours, in an attempt at rekindling some social fires. For the most part, it worked, but as the imposing adult life dictates, they didn't last for too long before the train dragged my inner child away, internally kicking and screaming. I was, however, introduced to the city's Chinatown district during my brief stay. Of course, "district" is a bit of an over-stretch, where in fact "three streets or so" is probably more accurate. Still it's more extensive than Liverpool's Chinatown, which is really one street, and Chester's Chinatown, which is really a Wok&Go.

The inner child now hates the rest of me and the outside world for limiting its potential for fun. The inner child also wishes for me to communicate to you that it feels extremely lonely. I keep telling it that it's not special, though, and that compared to the other billions of folks out there, it's pretty normal. Everyone's just as stifled and lonely in their own ways, and that they all just have to make do. It's around this point that the inner child sticks its fingers in its ears and screams, thus allowing me no chance to reason with it like an adult.

This is rambling. See, this is what happens when I suddenly come back to this with no set topic or focus on what it is I'm actually typing purple banana lamppost. Let's try to sum up, shall we? I'm a child. I'm actually an adult. I'm lonely in the wider world. So is everyone else. I'm not special. Time will eventually kill us all. I like Chinese food.

Balls In The Air

Juggling was never really a specialty of mine, which is weird because I went to juggling club in high school. Oh yeah, my high school ran an after school juggling club, run by the maths teacher who wasn't the old man or the Indian woman everyone struggled to understand; it was run by the other woman who, evidently, juggles. It ran in the same vein as other extra-curricular, after school events, like chess club, drama club, art club and trying to make friends with absolutely-anyone-through-some-kind-of-shared-activity-club. Naturally, I dabbled a little bit in each of those too.

The aforementioned juggling took place in the temporary drama space provided by what was essentially an open plan static caravan parked in the field. The interior walls had been painted so black that what little light came through the windows was instantly killed off before reaching us and the carpet was evidently comprised of gravel and string. The main door also suffered a broken hinge, allowing me to give a very convincing performance one time, when my drama group decided to re-enact a typical soap opera. This ended with me being fake punched in the face and falling backwards, bouncing off the door and playing dead on the floor. And for those 20 seconds in between me 'dying' and the rest of my acting troupe looking sheepishly at the class sized audience and mumbling "that's it", I managed to make a trainee teacher genuinely think her teaching career had just crumbled to bits. I digress.

I'm bad at juggling. Maybe I should've just opened with that.

Doing multiple things at the same is, well, let's say "difficult, but not unmanageable". Actually, let's not say that for the sloppy use of a double-negative. But you know what I mean. So much to do, so little time, yadda yadda death. Having a hectic lifestyle means I'm a) tired all the time, and b) officially a grown-up. Incidentally, I haven't used my Nectar card for a while; I have far more grown-up-ly duties to attend to.

I work a weekday 9-to-5, office-based lifestyle these days. Also it appears I like hyphens. Look-at-all-these-damn-hyphens! See? Anyway, back to reality, I've been keeping a lot of metaphorical balls in the air lately and often dropping them when I feel like I want some free time to, you know, look at rocks or something. In all fairness, the office work isn't even bad. I read stuff then write stuff. It's like my normal life but more topic-specific and less rambl-o-matic like this thing usually is. Also, I don't get to use as many hyphens. You know, unless it's necessary.

The struggle stems from my daily commute, which has frankly become more exhausting in temperatures that qualify as "positively Saharan" to a pale, ginger northerner. Being torn away from my bed earlier than I'd like often allows me to tap into my inner zombie as I shuffle about a bit and grunt at a self scanner when all I want is breakfast and it refuses to co-operate. In conclusion, work's going well, it's the to and fro that's tiring me out.

I know what you're thinking. This commute would be so much easier if you didn't have to rely on public transport. Come on dumbo, you're 25. Learn to work a car for yourself. Way ahead of you. I've been taking weekly lessons and am progressing positively. But much like juggling, there's lots of things to keep your eye on and think about (and then actually do something about) before gravity takes hold and makes a fool of you when those balls hit the floor. Except in this scenario, it's not balls but motorised heaps of metal. And should you mess up somewhere, it's not gravity making you a fool, but velocity making you dead. Stakes are bit higher up here. Perhaps I should've mastered juggling first to be honest.

Still, I managed to be alive enough to type this so I clearly I've been doing something right.

Hiatus

Once upon a time, I wrote weekly entries for this bit of internet right here. Having chosen the path of a writer, I needed some form of keeping my brain and typing fingers active. I also liked to kid myself that people would read this, I'd get noticed by some big city recruiter type - complete with giant cigar and monocle - who'd say "hey kid, I like your work, you have such a unique style, I can give you money" and so on, but you know, slightly muffled because of the cigar.

That didn't happen. Sure, people read the crap I put here, but mostly because I put links on Facebook as if nonchalantly dragging a free-standing cafe chalkboard into the vicinity of a neon arrow and strolling away pretending to look at the sky. Of the people who have read it, several have sprouted words of praise and flung them my way, which my brain doesn't know what to do with because I suddenly become overwhelmed with a strong sense of smugness I keep masked under modesty. These words are my life, sure, but in my eyes they're also pretty crap and anyone caught reading my words should pray to whatever deity they may believe in for salvation straight afterwards.

It probably feels redundant to say this in a space I've left neglected, once again, for a terribly long time, but I'm finding it a struggle to write. Okay, let me clear something up, I don't necessarily find writing to be the struggle, it's more the commitment; the commitment I made to myself that I'd stick with this so regularly. Take right now for instance. I literally just stopped mid-sentence after the second mention of "commitment" so that I could have an imaginary conversation with thin air and take a leak. I then had to force myself to pick up from where I left off when really I'd just rather go to sleep.

The actual writing aspect isn't the problem though. In my web-based silence, I've managed to secure a job that involves me typing words. Hooray, etc. I've also moved into a small room in the parental home, driven a considerable distance under the guidance of a man with the appropriate pedals on his side, and cried uncontrollably whilst curled up on a bare carpeted floor because a devastating bout of depression struck again. But they're all stories for a different time... probably. Except for that last one. I'll do that one now.

It's rare, but the feeling of absolute emptiness and carelessness (i.e. devoid of caring, not clumsiness) came worse this time, and there's no sure-fire way to kick start the damn feelings again. I even rolled around the floor thinking I'd rather feel sad than feel nothing. It's difficult to describe feeling nothing, you just stare vacantly ahead and let your brain recite every word it knows simultaneously, thus causing white noise in your blank head. I can't remember what got me out of it again, probably a song, or dinner. But even so, I ended up getting my wish and started to have my monotony replaced with constant sadness, which I suppose is some kind of a win.

I'd like to go on hiatus for a bit; not on the blog. Hell, I can handle the blog, although I've made an executive decision (I'm the executive of this blog, I've just decided) to switch "New Post Day" from Wednesday to Saturday. I work full weekdays now, I'm a grown-up, somehow that happened. But back to the hiatus, I really just want to fall off the radar for a bit.

I spent a week not posting to Facebook. Odd, because I've come to recognise myself as a bit of a status whore, just giving it away to the Matrix. It's also occurred to me, however, that I've become a bit of a clown. Any time I share something with the Facebook masses, it's usually some form of amusing observation, anecdotal aside or use of the word "bum" to make people laugh. And it works, evidently, if Likes are anything to go by. As for comments? Very few people speak to me these days and the loneliness of the virtual realm has started to set in. Like I said, I haven't made an update for a week, but nobody really seems to have noticed.

At the risk of sounding all angsty, emo, attention-seeking teenager with black dreadlocks and lip piercings, it's really hit home how much I want to be cared about, and how much I haven't really been getting that recently. There's really no other way to say that (trust me, words are my weapon of choice) without drawing criticism, but I want to be open and honest. I also want an overflowing bank account and to be fed grapes whilst lounging with a wreath on my head, but the openness and honesty are the bits I actually have control over.

I'll do my best to keep this thing updated once a week again, but chances are I'll be keeping away from many other forms of social interaction, virtual or otherwise. I have issues I'd prefer to moan about rather than talk about; I'm human and I just need a break.

The Bubble

Yes, my general disposition over the last however shitting long it's been has remained one of dissatisfaction with the way life seems to pan out in the real world. It seems that all I'm doing with this blogspace is constantly trying to use different words to find ways of saying the exact same thing over and over, leaving this place fairly stagnant.

I'm on one of my depression kicks again, it seems. I've written about it previously as the sensation of feeling nothing as opposed to the sensation of feeling sad. I don't like to throw the word "depression" around though, especially as I've seen worse cases of it than my meandering existence. Besides, as it stands, I'm not completely in that state since I seem able to pick myself up out of it as easily as I can find something to distract me. Namely TV, video games and generally doing something that doesn't involve me staring forlornly out the window for hours at a time.

It's finally occurred to me that I've spent quite a while wrapped in a bubble of niceness for so long that I've failed to realise it popped several months ago. By the way, in this analogy, the bubble is my time at university. I've figured that because I enjoyed myself a great deal towards the end, I wasn't ready for it to be over when it was. Staying in the area with a couple of friends may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but in the long run (i.e. around about now) it's left me feeling as awful as my writing habits.

Those who stayed behind were a select few whilst several others left for better pastures, which isn't hard since the area in which I'm currently trapped is a less than desirable pasture. Of those ones who've stayed behind, I very rarely meet up with them due to conflicting schedules. All of a sudden, the uni bubble has disappeared and I've been thrust back into the real world I spent the best part of four years trying to get away from, and I've finally been forced to admit that all of those friends I made during university have become the very thing I swore they wouldn't become. "Just Facebook Friends".

Don't get me wrong, in an ideal world I'd drop every aspect of life and several others to see a lot of them again in a former uni-like capacity. But that harsh reality of a bubble-less existence is that, whilst I may still consider a bunch of those people to be some of closest friends in this life, my only real contact with them anymore is sparing... and virtual.

On top of that, I have to deal with the practicalities of life and resign myself to the fact that what I do for a living needs to be just that: practical. So what if I have a degree in the Creative Arts? Actually, so what if I have a degree in anything? So many people end up spending the more extended portions of their lives in a field not even remotely related to what they spent three years striving and stressing towards.

So this is me, just trying to adapt to real life once again. Turns out the journey of discoveries and other such fruity metaphors isn't over, just of a completely different nature. The uni bubble is gone and I've suffered the initial faceplant back into workaday normality. Now I just need to brush myself off and try adapting to this much bigger bubble called Life. You know, before that one pops for good too.

The Easy Option

I can't live alone.

I absolutely could. I'd manage. It'd probably be the easiest way for me to live the life of day-to-day dull and drudgery I seem to have going for me. Ideally, I'd spend the rest of this paragraph coming up with all sorts of situational reasons to back this point up. However, since I've reached a certain point of hopelessness, apathy and another word that means "UURRGGHHAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH", I'm gonna use the words of someone else. I transcribe from the televisual text How I Met Your Mother: Season 7 Episode 21 - Now We're Even; author, Chuck Tatham.

"When I first moved into my new apartment, I was nervous. For the first time in my adult life I didn't have a roommate. But then it hit me. For the first time in my adult life I didn't have a roommate. If I wanna walk around naked, nobody cares. If I wanna leave the laundry basket in the middle of the living room, nobody stops me. If I bring home soup from the deli and leave it in the fridge for two days, nobody eats it. And if I do something collossally stupid, nobody ever has to know."

Okay, I probably would've done it much more British-y than that. I mean, like I'd bring soup home from a deli. But the fact remains that living on my own would be the easy option for me. If only it was, actually, an option. But it's not.

I can't live alone. I can't afford it.

Instead, I need to rely on others to contribute financially, just like I need to rely on others to write half my blog posts for me.

Progress

After wasting three years of my time in the pursuit of progress, I've finally managed to fall back into my old routine of going nowhere slowly. Whilst the two month gap between entries here might be enough evidence for any doped-up monkey with an axe through its head to come to that conclusion, it only occurred to me two days ago whilst I was in the middle of boiling pasta and realising I can't quite master the subtle art of incorporating metaphors into blocks of prose like I used to.

Over the last however long it's been since I last cared about the progession of time, I've been reacquainting myself with my old friend television. I've caught up with programmes old and new that I've either been meaning to watch for some time (Firefly, Happy Endings) or haven't seen in some time (Fawlty Towers, Friends), or have seen fairly recently but due to the sheer scale and complexity of the plot I've had to rewatch a couple of times whilst reading complete episode synopses just to make sure I can actually follow what's going on (Game Of Thrones).

It was during a recent rewatch of several Simpsons episodes, however, where the point of this ramble originated. Of course, it could be said that The Simpsons is a show that has stood the test of time, but all that really means is that its audience still finds the older episodes amusing. The thing is that as the show has gotten older, the audience has gotten older too, and "standing the test of time" is really just a fancy way of saying "I remembered this then and I remember it now" as some faint form of nostalgia. Essentially, the point that I'm dragging these words towards is one that struck me when laughing at minor gags that involved outdated technology; primarily video tapes and audio cassettes.

As much as I hate using other people's children as examples, I often find myself imagining how my young niece and nephew might hypothetically react to such comic gems of the 90s if they were to be subjected to these old cartoons at some point over the coming decades, which - to be fair - they probably will be... by me.

"Hey kids, come watch this animated show about a funny yellow family and all their friends and the super-hilarious situations and mishaps they get involved in."
          "But we already told you," they cry in unison, "we've had enough of you trying to relive your teenage years through our eyes, uncle. For Christ's sake, you're forty-two! Leave us alone!"
          "But this is a funny one, guys," I retort as I navigate the endless DVD menus to play one single episode without Spanish subtitles or a hidden audio commentary track. "Homer sings in a barbershop quartet and they put their songs on vinyl records. Meanwhile, Marge distracts the kids with Homer's voice on an audio cassette which gets garbled up and freaks them out."
          I can barely contain my amusement, speaking through gasps of breath and tear-filled eyes as I slap my knee at the joviality of it all.
          "We don't care about any of that," they still seem to speak in unison since my brain can't decide between them over which one I like more in this hypothetical fantasy. "We just want to read our laser-vision books in three seconds and go hoverboarding down by the grand carbon fibre statue of the almighty Global Lord Bieber."

The rest of the vision becomes hazy at that point, although I do know that the kids foolishly neglect to take their protective shin guards with them and that I cry into my palms watching that Simpsons episode whilst still being able to sing along with every word of "Baby On Board".

The reasons I default to using those kids in this hypothetical situation come down to a) familial proximity and mutual knowledge of each other's existence, b) the idea that they simply weren't around throughout the 1990s, and c) the fact that they're currently being raised in a world of iPads and high definition. At some point towards the end of my shared generation, those quaint notions of obsoleteness will themselves become obsolete, as the next lot of humans after us will fondly reminisce about mobile phone recycling and physical screens that were only confined to a 16:9 aspect ratio. And as they slowly say their goodbyes to our dying generation, they'll take comfort in the shared virtual world as operated by an imbedded brain chip.

So really, what point was there in me trying to progress anyway?

Priority

My dreams aren't entirely dead yet, but I often fear that they've been coffin shopping behind my back recently. This week's morbid musing stems from the fact, just as with the case of Christmas, I have taken time away from my normal work/sleep routine to visit the ever-presents of my life. Just as with the case of Christmas, my thoughts have wandered in the direction of "no direction" and how, for possibly the billionth time in my life, I realise I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Furthermore, for possibly the only time in my life, I realise that such a thought is crippling me. Not physically. That would be impossible. I mean psychologically. But you got that; you're clever, you understand hyperbole.

In an attempt to force myself out of mental cripple-dom, I've had the epiphany to start approaching life with a new mindset. One which says that I am an adult, I can do whatever I want, wherever I want, for I have no ties to any people or place. That probably sounds like a linguistic slap in the face to the people who know me, but trust me, I have reasons to justify my words. And they are reasons that I've had to keep telling myself in order, as I opened this paragraph with, stop being mentally tied down.

Over the last three years or so, I've come into contact with various people by way of university study. Some of those people have proven themselves to be smart, open-minded intellectuals. Some of them proved to be alcoholics-in-waiting. Some proved to be warm and caring, and some proved that simply opening their mouths was more than I could handle. On the other side, I've come away with, what many ex-students call, friends for life. The only issue here is that life gets in the way, as do the lives of all those other people. But still, Facebook friends for life is better than nought.

Meanwhile, back from whence I came, all the old friends I had have also sprouted lives and seem to have peeled away one by one until the only "old friends" left are few and far between. Returning to my origins would feel like taking a step back career-wise whilst not broadening my social circles. Basically, the point I'm labouring towards here is that whilst I've met, befriended and am determined to stay in contact with several people from on my travels, none of them are realistically a strong enough reason to keep me around, and ultimately, what I'm going to do for a living is my number one priority. So yeah, all point and sneer at the guy over there typing this shit. Point and sneer at his selfishness.

On that mental note of not being tied down by personal human connections, my mind is free to explore career-oriented possibilities wherever I actually want and doing whatever I want. My main problem here is that I've always been indecisive. Hell, I've stopped writing this particular load of babble three times up to now because I wasn't sure if I could be bothered with carrying on.

And that's not just a recent thing. I studied Art at school, segued into Graphic Design at university, abandoned that for retail work, found myself again with Film Production, somehow spun that into Creative Writing and have now wound up back in retail. I've enjoyed aspects of all of them, but I still don't know how I want a further career to pan out like. Over the last few days, I've even dug into mental lists of stuff I am still yet to explore. Needless to say, my browser currently has multiple tabs open that relate to the basics of Flash animation, computer coding and interactive game design and development. Evidently, I'm never satisfied.

I still have avenues I want to trundle down but somewhere along the way I need to make a living. And while making that living along the way I need somewhere to live. Before me is a vast freedom to seek out roles related to what I'm capable of right now coupled with the freedom of being able to travel wherever those roles may take me. My biggest stumbling block right now, though, is the fact that I'm a fairly social creature and would be abandoning every aspect of social life I know and have currently. Once I get over that and feel able to loosen those people ties (I would never want to cut them completely), I'll be able to embrace that freedom and that sense of the unknown in a slightly more positive light once more.

By the way, I apologise if all of that made absolutely no sense, but like I said, brain's a bit crippled right now.

Explaining Religion

Sometimes my mind drifts off. When this happens, the brain follows one particular thought train, but doesn't stick with it for very long. Soon after disembarking, my mindstuff suddenly regales itself with "Let's Go To The Mall", the song from the Robin Sparkles episode of How I Met Your Mother. That's probably because I've been watching endless repeats of those episodes in a similar fashion to the way E4 treated Friends for years. In light of this recent lifestyle, meaningful thoughts and thoughts in which I search for any meaning have been abruptly halted by twee bubblegum pop songs that proclaim how cool it is to go to an indoor shopping centre with friends.

I've recently conducted fabricated conversations between myself and my young nephew set in the future. Here, he plays the role of himself as a young teenager - his mind brimming with questions about life, the universe and everything - whilst I play the all-knowledgeable, wise, advice-giving uncle I keep kidding myself I'll one day be to him. In these hypothetical conversations, he's asked me about a multitude of topics: history, relationships, politics, religion. However, simply because of the fact that at this precise moment he is still actually a toddler, my way of speaking to him in the future in my head borders on patronising baby-speak. Yeah, that's right, you try explaining the concept of religion to a four-year-old whilst trying not to forget to take your robot pal with you when we go to the mall, today. Now tell me you don't have a massive headache.

Forget the toddler bit though. Imagine a human being, any human being. Actually no, better yet, an alien. An alien just about clever enough to understand our language, cultural practices and able to survive in the environment of our planet, yet not informed enough to know a single thing about the concept of religion. Now try explaining religion, without implicating anybody or any belief system as good or bad, right or wrong, and without causing offense to anybody or any belief system through any prejudices or scepticisms brought on by personal viewpoint. Explain religion. And you're not allowed to get a headache or to be sidetracked by the jingles in your head that keep vying for your attention.

I've found that the only way to describe religion comes down to two words: essentially stories. But you can't boil religion down to just two words when it just produces another mesh of thought-lines on top of that, and then another one on top of that. In its simplest terms, one group of people have a set of stories with morals and meanings, meanwhile another group of people have another set of stories with morals and meanings. Then another, then another, then some other ones after that, but by that point you're straying far from the realms of religion and slipping down the scale towards Tumblr-based fan-fiction. Seriously, if Christianity was a modern-day anime series, there'd be a plethora of tales and fan art depicting the on-again, off-again made-up relationship between Jesus and Moses, despite the fact that they lived in entirely different centuries. How the fuck did I get here?

With many different religions floating about and many different stories relating to each one, that well-educated alien or teenage toddler nephew in the future in my head who doesn't even exist yet but still totally exists will start to wonder something along the lines of "why don't we all just believe the same stories then?" or even the much more likely "so which religion is the right one?" And that's where we, as humans - as utterly stupid, simpleton humans - fall down. There is no right answer as far as we can ever be concerned. Even if there is a right answer there's no possible way that we moronic, Earth-bound, thick as absolute pig-shit humans could ever find out, or even come up with the means to find out. We humans have done some wondrous, genius things with our time here. Medical advancements, technological progression, intricate storytelling; they're all grand achievements from our fellow kind, but there's only so far we can go, and proving religion is well out of our puny, pathetic reach.

Since we have no way to prove our religious ideals, we then have to resort to convincing each other that we're right and everyone else is wrong. Humans are stubborn and fickle like that and it's at this point I start to blame the kettle. I was in the kitchen at the time I had this imaginary nephew conversation. This stubbornness and borderline ego-centricity that we are right sometimes overspills, and depending on your viewpoint of your religion - whether the stories are a set of metaphorical and symbolic messages to stick by for harmonious living with your fellow man, or a set of literal instructions to be fundamentally stuck by to the letter - this overspilling of righteousness manifests itself as conflict. And boy, do we clever, stupid, genius low-life humans know how to do conflict?

You then have to inform your alien or made-up teenager about "the bad man" and "the good guys" in your most patronising toddler-talker-toer voice. But wait, didn't I tell you you can't use terms like "good" and "bad"? Look at it from the opposite side. Sure, for some, religion leads people to acts of public atrocity, but as far as they're concerned, they're doing right by their stories. Who is anyone else to tell them they're the bad guys. Nobody's right or wrong, or good or bad here. Everyone follows morals and ideals for harmonious living, but they also have conflicting ideas about the stories and are too stupid enough to realise that's why they hate each other. And absolutely none of this can be described easily or effectively to any child. Each person has to grow up in the world, follow whatever's taught to them and - providing they can keep their mind open a sliver - discover the bigger picture as a young adult and try, feebly, to get their head around it without causing themselves any undue stress. Fucking sink.

Hopefully, the kids will see the beauty of life and that, ultimately, religion shouldn't matter. That's not to say religion is stupid and I absolutely hate it and everyone in the world is wrong except me. Religion is extremely important in the ways that it keeps people together and gives them a sense of purpose and a set of codes and ethics to live by so that they can treat people as actual people without pissing everyone off too much. But religion isn't the be-all and end-all of us. Or at least it shouldn't be. The most important thing is people and the sense of goodness that they share with each other; sharing good times with good company, having fun in a wide variety of places and situations, whether at home or at a popular hang-out spot.

Because, at the mall, having fun is what it's all aboot.