Me and God, we have this little game.

We're still working out the finer details, but it basically works like this: He does something really spiteful... normally to someone I care about... and I get to ask a lot of questions about it.

Prayers are, like, God's way of staying interested. I swear he does this stuff to us so that we'll complain and he can have someone to talk to.

Dear God, the thing is this: my life's a joke.

I mean... if you're so infinitely wise then why would you send someone like the Green Goblin to try and ruin my life? Since when did my family and friends ever do you any harm?

And where did I go so wrong that you needed to hold a mirror to my heart, just so's I can see my ugly reflection?

OH, PETER... DON'T YOU SEE? THAT'S ALL PART OF MY GRAND DESIGN.

Uh-huh... is this one of those "create by numbers" things you got going here? Only I'm not sure I see the entire picture.

WOULD IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IF YOU DID?

Probably not. So just why do bad things happen to good people?

I CAN'T TELL YOU. IT'D SPOIL THE SURPRISE. YOU'D KNOW EVERYTHING, AND THEN YOU'D GET ALL GRUMPY AND YOU'D BLAME IT ON ME. IT'S MUCH BETTER THIS WAY, PETER... YOU GET TO FIGURE EVERYTHING OUT FOR YOURSELF AND WHEN YOU DO, IT'LL MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.

...

Funny how most of my conversations with God end like that.

- Paul Jenkins, "The Big Question"

"The Big Question"
Since last we spoke, much has happened, which is really an odd way of saying it's exactly the same.

First off, and most importantly, I saw this episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends entitled "Spidey Meets the Girl from Tomorrow," in which this spacegirl crash lands from the future and when she meets Spider-Man, it's love at first sight, and they're off playing in the snow together, making angels, and she turns to him, struggling with our primitive 20th century vocabulary, and asks the big question: "What is it that we've fallen into?" and he says "It's called snow," and she says "No, the other thing," and his response -- which is so precious it's either freakin' brilliant or utterly disgusting, and I still can't tell which -- is "Oh... You mean love."

...

So yes, this is the end of me.

I'm out of ideas. I don't know when I'll ever go home again. My sister's flown off to New Zealand and I never got to say goodbye. I've been hurt, I've been poisoned, I've been embarassed, and worst of all, I've been a prick. Once more, my foolish little theory on my hardened heart making like Bruce Willis in an M. Night Shyamalan flick has been disproven... and how!

The only thing that's helped me keep it together over the last couple of days has been a steady routine of listless shouting, about a gallon of chocolate milk, the constant drone of the idiot box, and old 60's Spider-Man comics.

And the thing that keeps threatening to tear me apart is the very real possibility that when you scratch away the holly jolly, happy negro surface, in my heart of hearts, I'm really just an asshole, and I deserve everything that's coming to me -- or everything that's not, as the case may be.

So I'm going to see Spider-Man 2 tonight, and if the movie is as bad as the first one, I'm going to impale myself on a circus midget right there and then, and thus will end the unremitting horror of my humdrum life.

Now. Don't get me wrong. As a matter of course, suicide's not my bag, baby. No matter how bad it gets, and when faced with that horrifying prospect that there is absolutely no order to the universe and bad shit happens just because bad shit happens and that there is no God or if there is (S)He doesn't care what happens to us, my general response is the other big question:

So the fuck what?

Let's say that Jesus, Allah, Buddha, and Vishnu are nothing more that desperate fabrications to fill some hole in us we can't begin to understand. Let's say there's no heaven or hell and we just die and that's it. Let's say human morality has no basis greater than our best guess of what we feel like doing and what we feel like should have been done. Let's say that life has no meaning other than us walking around and shitting every once in a while... so the fuck what? I like "Imagine," and only recently realized what was going on in that scene in Forest Gump.

If there is no meaning to life other than what you make of it, to my mind at least, that doesn't mean it ain't worth living. If for no other reason than I want to see how it ends.

And yet, I submit to you this: if Spider-Man 2 sucks, I'm history.

I'm a petty man, and I can see that plain as day. Killing myself over a bad movie is so pathetic, it's not even funny, but here's the thing: That's the only thing I'm asking for at this point. I've given up on everything else, and if that's too much to ask -- not that this stupid little sequel be the greatest movie of all time, or even a great movie at all, but just not suck -- then that's the last straw and I'm ready to cash in my chips and take my chances with whatever comes next.

Of course, you can probably file all this under "Empty Gesture," because I've heard nothing but good things. And if life's taught me anything, it's that with great power yadda yadda yadda... but moreover, if you're life don't quite measure up to what you want, and you've done everything you can/feel-like-doing, just lower your standards. It ain't eloquent, but it's got me through the many shitty days I've left behind me, and God and Sam Raimi willing, it may just get me through all the shitty days I got coming...

NEXT:
"Godspeed, Spider-Man"