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June 9, 2005
s.a.r.s & stryper
i'm a little bit worried that i don't
do enough in my life to prevent another outbreak of s.a.r.s. sure i
make a boiling hot shower a big party of my daily routine and i'm
often known to wash my hands for no good reason - but still...wasn't
it just a few short years ago that s.a.r.s. threatened to wipe out the
continent of asia?
and now i'm wondering if asia is a continent...if it's not it
certainly should be...at least this was the premise of the cult that i
once belonged to known simply as the continental dividers.
which, yes, the name in and of itself can be a bit misleading
because we really didn't want any part of dividing any
continents - in fact the one thing that we all had in common - the
very thing that drew us to one another in the first place (aside from
the public nudity ritual of certain surprise of course) was an intense
hatred for long division.
also the cult was founded by several members of the formerly great
christian heavy metal band stryper who were much more cold,
calculating, and money hungry than your average christian rock outfit
(with the possible exception of c.a.r.m.a.n.) - in fact it's come out
only recently that the only reason they started this cult is because
they had the hair brained idea that if there were at least 5 more
continents they could stay on tour forever - and also, one of the guys
was originally from lincoln, nebraska and he secretly confided in me
that it was his dream to create land masses in hopes that someday by a
group vote of 3 to 2 stryper would agree to change their name to the
lincoln continentals and who knows what that would do for
t-shirt sales & headband sales...i kept trying to tell them that no
one really sports the headband anymore - but i was shouted down and
nearly excommunicated so i simply gave up -
and also, the lincoln nebraska guy died from a case of the as yet
undocumented s.a.rs. all because he refused to wear the biohazard suit
- i say undocumented s.a.r.s. because this was like 1987 if memory
serves and s.a.r.s had not yet been discovered - all we knew was that
a plague had stricken our tight nit community and was threatening to
wipe us out - our critics asserted that this was some sort of divine
judgment for our love of the rock 'n roll & our cultish ways.
we, of course naturally assumed it was a result of our fast track
lifestyle and exposure to explosive compounds - so we decided to take
some safety precautions with the biohazard suits (in nifty yellow &
black of course) but dude decided there was no way in holy
heaven he was wearing one because it wasn't form fitting enough - and
he also thought he could ward of germs by wearing a snorkel instead of
a sterile surgeons mask - he was a wierd guy. of course his untimely
passing led to my short term gig as the bass player for the world's
greatest christian heavy metal band - but i was ousted when i
attempted to fulfill our departed comrades wishes by casting a vote
for the band name change.
so after this unpleasantness we set about our goal of adding 5 more
continents - because in case you hadn't noticed the continental
shelf has been barren for several centuries. and i think that
maybe the malaise that plagues so many young self-starters like myself
is due in large part to the fact that there are no new territories
worthy of exploring. of course if we'd only been a bit more intuitive
we could have discovered s.a.r.s. or the internet or yogurt in a
squeezable tube - but we weren't that intuitive. so we at the
continental dividers undertook the task of developing new
frontiers which we attemtped to do by draining several large lakes and
setting dynamite charges in an effort to separate chunks of existing
land masses thus creating new continents. we also added a second tier
to antarctica which looked totally rad because instead of being remote
and icy it was all tropical with oily natives drinking coronas by the
sea - but then the folks at osha got involved and because they lacked
vision and we lacked backbone (we were a rock 'n roll cult - what more
do you expect) the project never really got off the ground. okay
that's not true because we totally built it, but then we had to tear
the whole thing down...but i still have some of the fake patio grass
in may garage to catch any unsightly oil spills.
well, long story short apparently all the blasting and the draining
that i just mentioned happen to be highly illegal and had i not turned
states evidence against my fellow dividers i'd probably be
sitting in a white collar prison somewhere enjoying the best that
satellite television has to offer - (like stryper live from costa rica
for example) while exploring various & sundry escape routes which
no doubt would have led to great adventures (in babysitting) instead i
chose to sell my soul for the freedom of a 37.5 hour work week - my
parents warned me that stupid cult would brainwash me.