i am going to get my dinnner in a couple of minutes.

Matthew Good / August 15th, 2000
Beyond this Place Behind the Stars
Once, not so long ago, the world came to an end. Millions of people ceased to exist all of a sudden, all with no time to prepare. This did not mean that they stopped moving or speaking or producing. It just meant that they ceased to exist all of a sudden. The world had come to an end.
One morning, some years after the end of the world, a young woman patiently sat in a waiting room with fourteen other women. These other women were all roughly the same as her. They were all exactly the same age, they were all unwed, they were all relatively dim. These three primary characteristics had brought them together on that day. They had all had birthdays during the previous week. This meant that they could be legally put to work. So, their names having been run through various machines that do nothing all day except compile lists of names, they received notice that they were to come that morning to that office to be given a job.
She hoped she might be given a fantastic job. It was not to be, of course, but one can always hope.
During the hour or so that she spent waiting, she fantasized about being given a job so fantastic that it would make her burst with happiness. Perhaps she would become an events coordinator on a cruise ship or at a holiday resort.
Instead, she was given a job painting pieces of coral. She also painted a plastic word that had been glued to the coral. It consisted of the following four letters: M-A-U-I.
It was to be her life’s work.
The real world. That being the one in which we live.
The People’s Republic of China is a very large place. It is rather easy to become lost within it. Not so much because it covers such vast distances, but because there are so very many people vying for the solitude that such a vastness once offered. There are, at this very moment, approximately 1.2 billion people living in the People’s Republic of China. It is one of the most populated countries in the world. There was a time when China was ruled by emperors who were considered divine. After the world came to an end, the Chinese government spent a great many years telling its countrymen that the ways of their forefathers were wrong. Unfortunately, they did little to present anything concrete that showed themselves to be any better. But that is the way of the world. Everyone’s got to learn everything the hard way for some reason.
There was a time when a fraction of those 1.2 billion people tried to do something to change that reality. But it seems that it made for good television rather than being entirely realistic. So little has changed. Taiwan is next on the list. And thousands of incarcerated criminals still labour to produce cheaply made clothing and souvenirs for stupid North Americans. Oh how ironic, and so on.
Sometimes something is better than nothing. Sometimes having enough is better than expected. There are those that might consider painting clay dolphins glued to coral altogether unappealing, but if it’s all you’ve got then it’s something. And sometimes something is everything.
The unreal world. That being the one within my head.
There are tiny people living inside of your head, at this very moment, just as I write this, just as you read it. Some of those tiny people are making you second-guess everything that you take in, whatever it may be. Some of them make you confident, some of them are undecided as to what should be done. Most of them are far too busy making sure that you have enough inner power left to keep you going long enough for you to feel as though you’ve earned the right to stop.
There is a peace to assembly lines. More so to those that do not move at a fast pace. An assembly line that consists of a variety of different work stations is far more attractive than one that employs conveyor belts, ramps, and levers. Mostly because you get to sit down and work. Assembly lines with conveyor belts usually require workers to stand during assembly. Better to sit your life away. Better to have an impossibly uncomfortable chair than impossibly uncomfortable shoes.
When the girl was shown her work station she had no idea of her good fortune. She looked down the endless rows of work stations, each occupied by entirely miserable women.
Twenty-six years later she would look up from her work and watch another young girl, not unlike herself, look about the factory floor with the same quiet disgust. And, twenty-six years later, she would crack the slightest of smiles. By that time in her life she had come to realize that most things aren’t about keeping up defiant appearances in an attempt to buttress whatever’s left of some youthfully over-romanticized inner core. But rather one’s ability to convince oneself that life is nothing but a series of impractical maneuvers ending in a standoff with either a disappointing god or a disappointing devil.
Before the world came to an end the planet was populated by people that refused to acknowledge their defeats as anything but failures. They had spent evolution winding themselves up over the matter, convinced that forwards was far more interesting than any other direction. Up had nothing to do with it, mind you. Just forwards. Many of these people, unknowingly mired in the make-believe state of emancipation, had come to view their liberties as nothing more than “things that people are entitled to just because.��? That’s not to say that everyone was blind to the dangers of the Forwards Plan. For decades prior to the end of the world, a handful of gas jockeys, Orange Julius girls, and dishwashers had begun to realize that all was not well with the presumption that forwards was the way to go. Most of those people spent their lives standing in one place, wishing only that the smell of bullshit would eventually wash out of their clothes. Everybody else kept pushing forwards though. And then, all of a sudden, the world came to an end.
Despite the fact that the girl ended up painting clay dolphins and coral for the majority of her existence, she was granted something in the way of compensation for her complacency. She was given a son. And that might not seem like much to you, but that’s only because you’re waiting for the lights to change.
The World Unanswered.
An incomprehensible number of years ago something rather odd occurred. Something quite large and altogether volatile decided to explode. This sent a great manner of things every which way, some of it good and some of it not so good. Things flew, things cooled, things boiled, things adhered to the cosmic rules of magnetic repulsion and attraction. All in all it produced some interesting side effects. The most important of them being, of course, the Tilt-A-Whirl and the Garden Weasel.
There are those who contend that the world was created by an all powerful force, perhaps even a supreme being. There are those who contend that the world was created by a galactic event of unimaginable magnitude. There are those who contend that Elvis Presley is still alive and, if not, was actually a talent beyond compare. It’s a crapshoot really.
1] The universe is expanding. Throw some deceleration in there and you’ve got yourself one hell of a deity killer.
2] Did ancient peoples really begin building a massive tower in an attempt to reach God only to be made to speak different languages so that miscommunication would halt construction?
3] Why did Pink Floyd perform at the pyramids on the eve of the millennium?
People are stupid. I did not come up with that on my own. I had help. The world, entirely in love with itself, has come to condemn all things opposed to the fundamental aspects of “safe intelligence.��? Some might say that we are intelligent simply because we can communicate with a variety of complicated sounds and can recognize the indoctrinated difference between the moral and the immoral. Drop anything on its head long enough and you’ll probably get the gist of what it’s trying to say.
Unfortunation.
Men are pigs. It is universally acknowledged that all men are just looking for one thing: sex.
I couldn’t agree more.
Females, considered by experts to be far more mature than men, have been cheated out of millennia of consequence-free clam baking. The end of the world aside, to all things a backlash. Take feminism. In the years leading up to the end of the world a great many women were prancing around in revealing tops and tight little skirts. Most of them believed that such attire should not diminish the respect that they should receive as women. That’s the problem with having your cake and eating it too, I suppose. I would love nothing more than to walk around wearing a shirt with a giant arrow pointing downwards, but I have this strange feeling that most people would take it as some kind of sexual suggestion rather than an attempt to infer one’s final destination. The ability of the standard human being to realize that most things aren’t literal is next to none. So why, in the face of such knowledge, do people play such ridiculous games? Nothing better to do, I suppose. At least women know what men want. Mostly they want sex. Sex and relative silence. It’s not their fault that women have skipped several steps in the evolutionary ladder, now is it? Were it so simple for women then I highly doubt that men would have ever been given the chance to take control of this planet. Instead, women would balk at the notion of using sex as a control mechanism. They would simply use the other thing that they seem to have in abundance. An entirely unique and irrational adaptation of common sense. This, of course, would divert the connection between sex and singular devotion towards the unexplored regions of sex as a sport, leaving men either a) too tired to cause trouble or b) too hungry to.
That resolved, we are left with sex’s primary function in nature: procreation. The most powerful weapon of all. Despite what you might think, there is no greater force on the planet than the deliberate multiplication of a people. History is filled with examples of sexually minded warfare, as it would be altogether boring if nations of conquest were to have gone to the trouble of defeating their enemies only to turn around and go home. Back in the good old days soldiers were often promised rape and pillage as reward. This was done for a number of reasons, two of them being: a) to ensure that your men were contented and realized that you, their leader, wanted them to be so, and b) to impregnate local women, forcing them to give birth to illegitimate children that would, if all went to plan, ultimately lead to the complete disappearance of the aforementioned conquered peoples, leaving a unified realm for the conqueror’s heirs. It rarely all worked out, of course, but on occasion it did leave lasting impressions. The problem with such an undertaking is time. To see something such as the deliberate “breeding out��? of a people come to fruition one must ensure that the people in question remain conquered long enough to be “bred out.��? It is far easier to wipe out a people than breed them out. It’s just nowhere near as fun is all.
If you stop to consider the implications of time (and the ability of mankind to spread like anthrax through a dairy field) you’ll come to realize that nature has always had time in abundance. Nature has mastered time, as it has existed long enough to have become intimate with the forms and functions of necessity as they apply to perpetual endlessness. Thus, it is only a matter of time until nature itself uses this weapon against her inhabitants. The world will one day become too small to offer separation and, as the globe shrinks, the inevitable union of all peoples will occur. One day, in a future that neither you nor I can possibly imagine, the world will be filled with a single people. And knowing full well that you can change the clothes but not the man, we will have no choice but to look to the stars in hopes of finding someone else’s ass to kick. If anything, predictable we will always be.
The Universe Of One.
One can attain immortality through one’s own children. That’s not to say that things always work out as planned. Just that they work.The years sped like clouds in wrathful passing. Last year she was twenty-five, this year she’s forty-two. Somewhere along the way she encountered a man. And then, some years later, they had a child. And then, some years after that, the man left. It is not unlike men to leave. Parents die slow deaths so that their young might rally in their stead and get a little back for their sake. Some men, the good ones, know the difference between aiding in this principle and foolishly battling against it. But it is not unlike men to leave.
In the mornings she would often find herself staring at the seat of her chair, contemplating the years she had spent sitting in it. The carefree days of hoping to be a cruise ship events coordinator were far away. Here she painted coral and the word MAUI. Somewhere else, presumably in MAUI, tourists purchase the coral and send it to the people back home that they care little for.
She named her son Jack. She had always liked that name. She did not know that it was actually John. She did not know a great many things. She was lucky.
When Jack was born, his father, who had also worked at the factory, accidentally dropped him. The boy tumbled from his grasping hands to the floor and sustained massive head injuries. From that day on Jack became what professionals like to call special. Jack’s father left, afraid he would kill the boy by accident in the future, or so the story went. Jack never did learn to speak like normal people. He never did learn to swear or talk about girls with his mates. He had no mates. He was special. Special people only have friends on specific days of the week, depending on the state of health care. One life, no chair, and friends with union benefits.
The day that it happened she was doing what she always did. She was sitting painting coral. Water based paints were applied to the coral and then quickly brushed over to allow the natural white to highlight the ridges. Then she painted the letters blue and put the finished product in a box. The box was collected and taken to another table. And someone at that table glued a plastic dolphin onto it. And that’s how it had been going on for almost thirty years. The day that it happened was no different.
That morning Jack hadn’t eaten. Some days he ate, some days he didn’t. It depended on his mood. The friends of special people rarely tried to push the matter. If he didn’t want to eat then they didn’t bother trying to make him. They went back to playing cards and let him sit in his wheelchair, staring out the window. On that particular afternoon Jack’s eyes closed and never opened again. His mother, to whom Jack was everything, was most likely painting coral when her son slipped quietly away. Perhaps Jack had no comprehension concerning the ramifications of mortality and his part in it.
A friend of mine once told me that special people were not special at all. That they were, by her reckoning, cognizant disciples of humanity come to test the waning compassion of man.
Jack was not discovered by the friends of special people. They thought he was sleeping. His mother walked into the room, ran her fingers through his hair, and realized that he was cold. And she was left there, alone to rediscover the horrible truth. It is not unlike men to leave.One day, not so long ago, the world came to an end. A woman stands on a beach, her feet brushed by the advancing and retreating water. In her hand she holds a piece of coral emblazoned with a word and a little dolphin. She is standing on that word. She is looking out to sea, talking to her son.
this is from:
http://www.matthewgood.org/2000/08/beyond-this-place-behind-the-stars/