i would now like to talk to the youth of america. i realize that you are going through a tough time right now, although it is always tough growing up these times are especially hard and troubling. you might find yourself making poor decisions in an attempt to escape your present reality.
i understand the pressures facing todays youth are more than you feel you can bear. during this time you may feel peer pressure to go along with what many sports heroes, actors, rock stars, and other role models you look up to seem to be telling you to do in order to be "in" and "hip". you know what i'm talking about, you can barely go anywhere these days without hearing it "be cool, stay in school".
i know how tempting it can be. i bought into it, and i'm here to tell you that while you may feel "cool" when you are in school, one day you will hit rock bottom. while you're having fun being "hip" and "in" school you are racking up debt. debt that will prevent you from doing things you want to later in life. trust me. don't go to school, and if you are in school presently drop out now while you still can. school is not worth sacrificing your future, your career, your family. school will only bring you lifelong poverty.
sure, there are plenty of rich kids out there whose parents can afford to buy them fancy cars and cocaine. these kids parents can pay for them to go to school forever, but chances are your not one of them and school will only bring you debt for the rest of your life. do these sports stars, actors, and musicians have degrees when they tell you to stay in school? no. they are only telling you this so they can pick up a check. they are living proof that knowledge is not power, it just gets you in debt.
Whenever I don't know what else to do, I read travel books. I was reading about the history of fingerprinting in my Michellin guide to DC yesterday. They were first used as evidence by an English enforcement officer in imperialist India. Currently, Judge Pollak is ruling that a portion of fingerprint related evidence not be allowed in a current case because it is hard to state whether the evidence was objectively analyzed. This is a fun epiphany of the obvious. Although he isn't addressing fabrication of evidence, evidence of this type, as requiring lab analysis, and being nearly invisible at a crime scene, such as DNA data, seems easy to fabricate. Or at the least, able to be influenced by favor. From the New York Tomes, "The French, for example, require that two fingerprints match at 16 points before they can be accepted as coming from the same person; the Australians, 12; and the Swedes, 7. The F.B.I. refuses to state a number at all, relying instead on case- by-case judgments."
So the Jesuits have a great saying - it's on a lot of buildings, de-commissioned rectories, tombstones, and bumper-stickers around here, on account of Loyola, I guess: Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam.
I think I've mentioned it before. Anyway, it's a simple little battle standard: a catch-all that alludes to the metaphysical gist and truly empyrean activities that actually inform the seemingly much-less-than-otherworldly business of these lawyers for the one true faith.
I just wonder, if, if perchance, naw, well... I'll ask anyway. Do you think that any of those recently uncovered Catholic pedophiles was a Jesuit?
Do you think, that maybe - just maybe - those little words occured to any of them, as - to rob a poem about infidelity of another type - they opened silk that never should have been opened?
Furthermore, do you think any catechism-trained ears pricked to hear the words ...Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam... creep past, somewhere behind the vestments racks?
I wonder what the headlines are going to be, 10 years from now almost 6 years after they began to allow girls to serve as altar-servers, too...
Um, Meredith called. I've given her the black-lung, too.
I forgot where I was going with this. oh, a shiney nickel, that's gotta be worth 5 cents...
