The Church of Euthanasia

e-sermon #5

Today, once again, we are honored to have $aint @ndrew as our guest speaker. But before we wheel him out, I'd like to read an e-mail I received from someone who wishes to be known only as Jeremy. I think it accurately reflects our feelings about the Net and the various groups and individuals who would like to see us banned from it.

I think the advertising thing is great... let's all start posting advertising. I know I'm not upset about getting a couple of messages in my mailbox. I can easily hit the 'delete' key. Others, apparently, are delete-key impaired and get terribly whiny when they receive tons of unsolicited messages about nothing of interest. I think these people are losers succumbing to the media hype about the 'net; they don't know what the hell they're even doing on the net. They just want to be here, to be cool, or something. These people suck. War-mail the hell out of them.

Spamming is awesome. A few days ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about a little "email" triangle between three U.S. Freenets. As you probably know, CWRU's Freeport BBS software allows email forwarding to any valid Internet address. So what I plan to do is this:

I have three Freenets: A, B, and C. Mail that enters my box at A is forwarded to B, B to C, and C back to A. In this manner the mail never stops circulating. Then I was going to just drop in a file or something every few days to build up the load. Eventually the load would be overbearing and undoubtedly cause crashes.

Well, we're all for it, and the sooner the better. Why be content with just peeing on the information highway when there's a way to DESTROY IT? The sooner the Internet dies, the sooner the people who spend all day masturbating themselves with it will wake up, and possibly even realize that they are living in a dream world. That's right! I'm talking to YOU! WAKE UP! Something's burning! I think it might be your MIND!

Let us now read aloud the holy words of the greatest living sodomite, our exalted spiritual leader and sacred poet, Allen Ginsberg:

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbow soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

-Howl, part ii.

That's RIGHT! Moloch whose name is the MIND! Come on! Let's hear it!

SAVE THE PLANET! KILL YOUR SELF!
SAVE THE PLANET! KILL YOUR SELF!
SAVE THE PLANET! KILL YOUR SELF!

And now, for the continuing edification of God-fearing Christians everywhere, I give you: the one and only $aint @ndrew!

Greetings Lemmings and Lemmingettes:

At a local event, I was given the opportunity to try to explain the core beliefs behind The Church of Euthanasia. I was confronted by two "born-again" Christians (*) who spotted me out for the Kevorkian Records "Save The Planet, Kill Yourself" T-shirt I happened to be wearing at the time. They didn't understand the basic premise of the Church, nor its four easy to understand guidelines. I'll try to relate some of the highlights of our conversation to you. Perhaps it may help clarify any questions that you have about the Church in the back of your mind. Perhaps it will make you want to put Hershey's Chocolate Kisses in your left ear. Perhaps it will do neither of these things. In any case, a simple Q & A follows:

Q: "The Church of Euthanasia?! As in mercy-killing? Death?" A: Yes. The Church of Euthanasia. We are an organization, unlike yours, that believes that death is always a viable option to the woes human existence throws our way.

Q: "I don't think I like this. What's the main belief in your Church?" A: There is one commandment, and that is "THOU SHALT NOT PROCREATE". Beyond that, there is a basic platform of four different guidelines. They are Suicide, Abortion, Cannibalism, and Sodomy.

Q: "Okay, first off, is this some kind of Satanic Church? Who is your god?" A: [laughter] It figures. The first moment you hear anything that doesn't agree with your propagate-the-species-in-the-name-of-Yahweh ideology, you consider it satanic. NO, we are not associated with your belief system in any way shape or form. YES, we are aware that in the eyes of your system, we are heathens and sinners. NO, we don't think that we should repent and fall back into what we consider the ways of Moab, and YES, we think that it is your belief system that is essentially killing the planet. As for a god, each member of the Church of Euthanasia has his or her own belief system. The overall product, however, is under the umbrella of our commandment and our guidelines.

Q: "You keep saying that your guidelines are just that, guidelines. With a name like the Church of Euthanasia, wouldn't killing yourself be your first priority?" A: We've heard this argument before. Essentially, 'if you folks preach about killing yourself, then why don't you take your own advice?'. That sort of thing. It's very simple. Right now, the earth is overpopulated. We cannot continue to live our lifestyles and expect the resources of the planet to not run out. A viable solution to this is to lessen the population of humans on this planet. Suicide is a way to do that. However, we also realize that through simply not reproducing, mayhaps the other, more radical platforms of the Church need not be carried out. Our main concern is lowering the population quickly. Now, before you get the wrong idea, the Church of Euthanasia condones only voluntary forms of population control. Our commandment: THOU SHALT NOT PROCREATE is a personal choice. It's very simple. No kids. Do not reproduce. If we can sway enough people to make a moral commitment for the good of the planet, the population will reduce to a level where humans can live on this planet without destroying it. Our guidelines further clarify this. Suicide is not mandatory, but condoned: one less mouth to feed. Abortion is encouraged because of its direct relation to our commandment. Before you go off on your "abortion kills a beating heart" thing, let me add that this part wouldn't even be necessary if only proper precautions were being made about using contraceptives. Think about it: you christians abhor the use of birth control, but you get all up in a fit about the subject of abortion. Sounds like an oxymoron to me. But anyway, back to the platforms... Cannibalism: instead of leaving the flesh in a putrid state, utilize it to help keep others alive. Again, I see so many outreaches by you christians about helping all these starving kids... which would you rather see? Your little laws obeyed and kids going hungry, or kids with a full stomach? You decide that on your own time. Sodomy: Yes, we know that you only condone vaginal intercourse. This we don't agree with. Our main thoughts are for our commandment, these are just means to an end... again, it's a personal choice. No one has to follow any of these guidelines if they don't want to, so long as they keep the one commandment at the top of their minds. We don't advocate forced killing, forced sterilization, or forced population control. We trust that people will be altruistic enough to make the moral choices themselves. Does this help you any?

Q: "What I want to know is why you believe humans to be such a scourge? We were placed on this planet to procreate and glorify God. Genesis says that God told us to "go forth and multiply". Don't you realize that this is part of His plan and what you believe is against His plan?" A: Two times two is four. Four times four is sixteen. Sixteen times sixteen is two hundred and fifty six. See how quickly the numbers grow? That's called exponential growth. Now: One plus one is two. Two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight. Eight plus eight is sixteen. Imagine that to be the amount of food, and the exponential to be the population growth. If that really is part of your god's plan, then he's going to have to send down christ again, we're gonna need a lot more miracles at the Mount [loaves of bread and fishes].

[there was a lot more, but for courtesy's sake, I'll stop there.]

(*) "Born-Again" Christians. Just the term "born-again" seems to me to mark them as antagonistic to our belief system. Isn't it bad enough that we were born once into this world?

The final result of the conversation was that I will be damned to everlasting pain and suffering in a hell that I personally don't believe exists, but even if I am, at least I know that I have helped in a small way to save this hell of overpopulation that we live in now.

The main key lesson here is that as advocates of the Church of Euthanasia, we will be confronted by those who believe in the old ways. With patience, insistence, perseverance, and well-thought out arguments, we can stand our own and perhaps reach someone else with the message: WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

So, go out there! Proclaim it in the streets, go tell it on the mountaintop! SAVE THE PLANET! KILL YOURSELF!

Kill me, $aint @ndrew

"I still find myself rather charming."

-Tristan Tzara

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