Pred­ator. 24.05.71 – 05.06.04. “Ah, so that’s what’s under here’

I think of all the funer­als I’ve had the mis­for­tune to attend, that one was the least like the per­son­al­ity of the deceased. We were reminded so many times by the priest that ”Mike” had been bap­tised and we were even told he was a ”believer”.
Here are his own words on that sub­ject, addressed to the family priest, Ron:

If he so much as tries the merest hint of a pre­cursor to a deathbed
con­ver­sion, he is really, really gonna get it. Some­thing like:

——————————————————-

Ron!

There is no God! 

If hell exists I am just about qual­i­fied to run the place. I’ve committed
every sin you have a com­mand­ment against and a few for which there aren’t
but bloody well should be. In no par­tic­u­lar order:

I repro­grammed organ­isms which you think your god wrote.
I flung a load of voca­tional oppor­tun­it­ies down the can.
I’m enjoy­ing a debauched rela­tion­ship with sev­eral women, and they appear
to be enjoy­ing it right back.
I own porn, drugs, guns, and books by Richard Dawkins, and have used all
of them in their inten­ded capacities.
I’ve com­mit­ted carnal acts on a dead per­son’s tombstone.
I’ve paid to have killed my own bas­tard before it ever got out of the first
tri­mester, and I wasn’t even com­pletely sure it was mine.
And I’ve quite pos­sibly sired some and might sire others.
I got sly hard-ons for the blonde girl with the nice arse in the forth pew from
the back while you were doing your sturn und drang sermon about pre­marital sex.
And for the sleek guy in the third row from the front.
Years ago I con­fessed to fab­ric­ated sins I wished I’d had the guts to actually
commit and you for­gave me for com­mit­ting them, so later I went out and did
’em, feel­ing licensed with pre-empt­ive forgiveness.
Parts of me are immor­tal, so I can prob­ably be busted for imper­son­at­ing a God.
I star­ted an organ­isa­tion which breaks more laws per day than most people
break in a life­time, and the mem­ber­ship loves me for it.

I’ve told the woman I love that I don’t fuck­ing care if I see her again or not.
I’ve turned off sets of traffic lights, tapped and taped people’s phone
calls, jammed people’s radios, ripped CDs, thrown copies of Gideon’s
Bibles in the hotel toi­lets, dodged rent; broken/fixed, entered/departed,
and stolen any­thing I could carry.
I estim­ate I owe a couple of mil­lion in fines for tres­passing in drains at
$20k a go. 

I’ve lived a life to which no CV could ever bear wit­ness. I am guilty as
charged, shame­less, and unrepentant.

I have good reas­ons to think organ­ised reli­gion is a cen­tur­ies-old highly
evolved inform­a­tion-sys­temic cul­tural para­site which has successfully
taken over your whole brain for the last sixty years primar­ily to use you
as a vector for its own propagation.

As for the human con­di­tion, dying *is* the fuck­ing cure, noth­ing stops it, and
that includes prayer. 

If you have the chutzpah to come to give me last rites, I will ensure you don’t
live long enough to recieve yours. 

Any­thing else? 

Fuck off.

Noth­ing per­sonal, Ron. 

At least the euo­logy men­tioned the predat0r I knew and cared for. Also a very appro­pri­ate poem by Kath­er­ine Mans­field: Risk! Risk everything! Do the most dif­fi­cult thing in the world for you! Care no more for the opin­ions of others!

It goes on… but I can’t find it online right now.

Joss was a mess. Naomi and I had a hard time too but we all sup­por­ted each other. People put a few cara­bin­ers into the grave with him and a comic book to keep him going.

There’s a trib­ute art­icle to him at Sydney Indy­Media.

I’ve now read through all the bits of his journal that I missed recently. I feel so ter­ribly selfish for con­cen­trat­ing on my thesis in the last month and not check­ing in occa­sion­ally. If only I had, I would have seen that he star­ted going rap­idly down­hill around mid-May. I would have seen this entry on his 33rd birth­day and I would have caught a plane up then:

Monday 24th. My birth­day. I go to Edge­cliffe to get more ascorbate shot up
me then to Rand­wick to scream at my onco­lo­gist. I can’t walk straight. I
think I will have to end the log here since I am per­per­tu­ally weak. I am
dying. Goodbye.

Broad­cast mes­sage from root@pred:
Send­ing all pro­cesses the TERM signal.