*Famous Fetuses

YT

Norma McCorvey was the sine qua non of the Baby Boomer Generation.  She was the Roe, in Roe v Wade, the Great American Abortion Case.  Wade was the Dallas DA.  The fetus (in this instance a kind of "daughter") that was not aborted became Shelley Lynn Thorton, born as a human being on June 2, 1970, currently age 53.  McCorvey would have been aged 21 at the time of the fetus's conception.  She had previously endured two live births, and an unknown number of dead ones.

During a telephonic communication in 1994, McCorvey informed her (the person with the mature uterus) biological offspring that she (the offspring) should thank her (the person not allowed to have had her [the person "not allowed" (certainly NOT the "person" not allowed to have become a person)] abortion).  (Huh.  You can see we're having pronoun trouble.)  Replied the non-aborted now-human being, the daughter (because she became human by having been given live-birth), to the mother (person who has not, in the specific instance, had an abortion, which is a matter between a woman [either a person with a uterus slash ovaries, and slash or a vagina slash birth canal, or, by declaration slash feeling] and her abortionist [pardon all this slashing]), "What! I'm supposed to thank you for getting knocked up...and then giving me away?"  Well.  That's harsh.  She (the post-fetus in question) stated that she (ibid) "would never, ever thank her for not aborting me".  

Gloria Allred (attorney) & Norma McCorvey ("Roe"), c 1989

McCorvey published her autobiography in 1994.  The following year she was baptized and became an anti-abortion activist.  

In another place, long ago, I wrote the following:

Norma McCorvey. Do you recognize the name? Perhaps you know her by another name. Jane Roe. Of Roe v. Wade – the Supreme Court case that struck down all regulation of abortion in the US. Sometime around '94 I saw her interviewed by Tom Snyder on his late night interview program. She was working at an abortion counseling center, and Operation Rescue, a pro-life Christian group, had moved into the next office. I recall she laughed and sneered at their hammering on the walls, pretending to be hanging pictures when it was so clear to her that they were just trying to harass the pro-choicers. I remember she made allusions to her wiccan faith or the goddess or some such. I remember Tom Snyder encouraging her, ending with, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” She smiled and said, “Oh no, I won’t.”

Some months later I heard that she had become Christian, and was working with Operation Rescue. It is a secret, but I’m a passionate guy…don’t spread it around. And I sat there and sobbed like a little girl.

So.  That's one famous fetus.  There are three others.  The one in the film, Rosemary's Baby. 

It's fictional, but all fetuses are fictional, in that they're not real and don't matter yet.  

The final two are those that would evolve into the well-known second cousins, Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist (cf Luke 1:41-44).

      -----

My first grandchild, a girl, was born today.  5 am.  Four hour labor.  8 pounds nine ounces.  That's a big baby girl.  20 percent above average.  Precisely full term.  Superb health, of course.  My son was early and therefore underweight, but superbly healthy.  Of course.  

My son and his bride are both deeply invested in health and fitness, so their preconception nutrition was, of course, superb.  And her pregnancy nutrition was, well, as should be expected.  Superb.  Midwife, home birth.  Someone who has expertise in the matter said the placenta -- they'd never seen any other as healthy -- big and lots of veins -- whatever it is that it should have.  This is not a minor thing, although certainly not mainstream.  

The womb of a woman who wants an abortion -- that womb is a toxic workplace, toxic environment.  The fetus is at work, growing, maturing.  Living.  Living for as  long as it's allowed to.  My daughter in law's womb was a place of care and love.  Of diligence and responsibility.  

So there it is.  This child, my grand daughter, was never a fetus.  She has always been human.  

That's what love does. Without it, there is such a thing in this world, as a fetus, that is aborted. 

J

PS - I skimmed this.  I cannot bear to read it.

J

*Ghosts and Atlantis and the Hollow Moon, Oh My

YT

Cable television, and now the internet of course. A wasteland of diamonds. The content of crap. And some things worthwhile. So there's a show, content, canceled and revived, resurrected, zombified, about ghost hunters. Some tubular enthusiast with a tight teeshirt so we can see his big guns, going through abandoned death rows and insane asylums and, uh, abortion clinics at night, with geiger counters and light meters and cardiovasculo-spectorographs  and thromdimbulators and infra red -- no, cuz it's green -- night-vision cameras.

"Oh!" he enthuses, peering intently at a screen, "did you SEE THAT TOO!?! It was a GHOST!! Clearly a dancing sphere of light on the screen, and a sharp echo!!! You saw it too! It was astounding!!! Are you HERE, spirit!/!!?? Are you trying to tell us a message about your existence??!e;?!?!> ? wuz ur deth paynfulLl!!?!!!EI??"

So we can consign Ghost Search! or Spook Quest or Spectre Seekers or Shade Surveyor ...  Wraith Watchers Spirit Spiers Apparition Apprehenders … to the crap factory. 

 Then there's stuff that's light, but not shameful.  Something about Jack the Ripper -- made a fair case for a suspect. 

But looking around, for similar or recommended content, why, here's something about ... wait for it ... Atlantis!!!  About scientists I guess divers, exploring the old news about the "Bimini Road", and some rectangular "storage buildings" that would have been ten feet above the 10,000 BC Caribbean coastline, but now 100 feet below water. The Ice Age, don't you know. Long story short, carbon dating, somehow, on the beach rock of the "road" gives a date of about 3000 BC, or maybe 1600 BC -- I forget. I, I'm sorry.  Radiocarbon dating is not for rocks. 

 But these rocks were somehow 7000 years or more too young to be the artifacts of *hyperventilate* the Lost Continent of Atlantis.

Again, the "scientists" slash "explorers" were filmed, as is always the case, staring at and commenting upon the sonar and video images of their efforts. "See that?!? It is clearly a right angle, a perfect right angle, indicating carved rocks of human construction proving Atlantis of course. And notice how regularly spaced these storage structures are! It's such a shame they are utterly covered by 10,000 years worth of coral overgrowth, which law forbids us from removing, but the sharp angles of these humanly carved blocks have nevertheless survived 12,000 years of eroding strong currents that threaten us in our dives to sweep us out into the miles-deep ocean."  I think I'm quoting.  Maybe not.  Whatever.

I, an objective viewer, did not see right angles. I saw random formations of rocky outcroppings or displaced boulders. Hard to say which. As for the "road", it is indeed an interesting "archaeological" or geological phenomenon. Analogous to natural formations found on, say, dry lake beds. Highly ordered and regular geometric shapes. Who can say. But where does the "road" go? Has its course been mapped? I've known about it since the mid 70s, and in the ensuing 5 decades years we would expect this elementary question to have been pursued. How long is it, this road? How wide? Does sonar or other testing reveal a network or a pattern?  Has any "flagstone" ever been retrieved and studied?  Perhaps there are answers, but the show did not give them.  Nor has any other such show, over the decades.  Questions that remain unanswered due to sloppiness and dishonest -- it's not about some mystery.  Scams and cults.  

The show concluded that perhaps this too-young lost civilization, if it is one, was of the descendants of the Atlantians. Sure. They survived the 9000 years of utter silence, in Bimini.

Atlantis is crap. Absolute garbage, archaeologically speaking. Neato myth, from Plato, used as a codicil to his utopian Republic, told in Crito and Timaeus, but useless as history. Nearly 2000 years followed Plato, with nothing new about Atlantis. Then Thomas Moore wrote another work about another Utopia, an island, and Francis Bacon wrote his New Atlantis, placed in America. 

It's not even a theory. Theories are for testing. These were literary myths. No problem with that, but fools later tried to make it history.

Atlantis was the Minoan Civilization of Crete. It is a certainty. I don't have easy access to my old, pre-internet notes, for the second volume of my reconstruction of ancient history, the first volume of which, Most Ancient Days, is partially available here online. Because I'm so generous. I may never write the second volume. But it would deal with, in part, the Minoans and Mycenaeans. Hittites and Kassites and Assyrians and Carians and Hurrians and Mitanni and Uratuans and New Kingdom Egyptians and Dorians -- well, it goes on. I'm getting a little distracted thinking about how cool it is.

But the point is, the island of Thera, Santorini, was the cultic center of the Minoan religion, and it blew up volcanically about 1600 BC, leaving a caldera, ring-shaped island. The consequent tidal wave crippled the Minoan civilization on Crete, 70 miles away. We find the signs of the waves. The Cretans  rebuilt, a pathetic shadow, that lasted a few hundred years more, then got wiped out again in another disaster.  

Plato tells us Atlantis lay beyond the Gates of Hercules. Gibraltar, right? No. There was another strait by that name, in the Aegean. Beyond which lay Crete. Plato says 9000 years. 900 years before Plato wrote, that second destruction of Crete occurred. Plato says Atlantis was a series of concentric islands and harbors. Thera survived as a ring-shaped island. Get it?

We can find the correctable errors. I like that. As for the UFO pyramids on Mars dudes, I get a little impatient with them. I love mysteries. I like their solutions to be rational, and to answer the evidence in the simplest way possible. You know, parsimony. Occam's Razor.

When we are young we love to speculate, but we generally have only a little actual knowledge, so we may be led to all sorts of pleasing but incorrect solutions. With maturity should come probity. We must be skeptical of even our cherished ideas. The Bimini swimmers needed someone on board who had a capacity for critical thinking. 

As for the Phantom Phinder hosts  ... well, I looked them up.  One may have graduated high school; the other seems to have gone to junior college. In itself, that's as it may be.  As is the fact that their day job is as plumbers.  It's a good job.  And yet, the quality of their thinking.  They need to open a stripper bar and do their reality show about that, instead of "science."

Look. I think the world is 6000 years old, and UFO aliens are fallen angels, and demons are the shades of a hybrid cross between fallen angels and the daughters of mankind. I think there was a literal world Flood, survived by a single human family in an ark that contained the entire genome of all land-based vertebrates. 

I believe many ridiculous and disreputable things. Understanding that dignified things can be ridiculed, and disrepute is a fashion, not an inherent quality. Like, the Bible as history rather than merely as metaphor. Like Jesus on a cross, dying and actually redeeming the sins of mankind. Ridiculous things, that some people honor. Jesus on the cross was ridiculous.  We know it, becuas ehe was ridiculed.  Thats what mockery is. 

There are the great questions that are interesting, fascinating, but secondary. Maybe Evolution is the true religion. Maybe space aliens seeded the cosmos with panspermia. Maybe there are giant faces on Mars, and a hollow moon, . I could be wrong. It's important to remember what's important. But regardless of whether we're right, let's not be right only by coincidence. Let's analyze the evidence methodically, instead of being wishful-thinking clowns.

It's just embarrassing, is all, and annoying. I don't consider being annoyed to be a form of entertainment.

J

*Radio

YT

There's a De Niro movie, Everybody's Fine. About a family that's all right, or fine, or something - I did not see it. But DeNiro has a line, "All I want to do  is just be a good father, that's all." He's pretty old, talking to thoroughly adult offspring. It's a well-delivered bad line, hack to me, because it provokes in me an internal argument. Too late to be their father.  This is, of course, me reacting to my own father, who is dead now -- but it was too late long ago, when we were alive.  I said something about this, in "Poto and Cabengo".

You can't be a father to adult offspring. Notice how I don't say adult children. Same reason. Adults are not children, and when the kids are grown, the fatherhood role is done. There is a role, and I, for example, am a father. But I can't be a father to my son anymore. He has outgrown the need. What the De Niro character means when he says that line, is impossible. There is no undoing the past. No present effort is retroactive. The fathership has sailed.

There's a way that I'm wrong, we can revise our understanding of the past.  But I expect you to see my point, despite the limitations of English vocabulary, and I doubt that the French or the Germans have a word for it. 

My point is contained in the question, or the answer, what exactly does the De Niro character imagine he can do? What he means is that he wants healthy communication and a loving relationship, and to be a blessing. He wants forgiveness, and he wants to be understood, even in his ancient failures. If he's wise, he wants to learn what kind of people his children have grown up into. He has a claim on them, inherent in the role, the way our parents can still control us. He has a responsibility to them, no longer of support, but still of integrity and wisdom.

A very little boy once trotted up to me and asked, how can Jesus be God, and the Son of God. He will have been fed the question, but that he could even remember it was impressive. I said something like, think about your dad -- he's your dad, and he's somebody's son. It's about roles. God will always have a fatherhood role with us, because we are always comparative children. But just as there is no marriage in heaven, there will be no parenthood either. So it seems to me. And here, in this life, parenthood ends, and becomes something else.

What? A deep friendship, I think. A lot of pride, which is a sort of ownership, and a strong remnant of responsibility. Since we are human, there will also be less pure elements -- competition -- a demand for hierarchy, however muted. It will vary from man to man. But we have a right to that, or at least to the feeling. We would, after all, die for them, still. There is obligation even in unsought sacrifice.

I've been listening to the radio again. Got some grunt work to do, and that's what radio is for. When I do cerebral stuff, I can't even listen to music anymore. I think it's a maturity thing. Same way that I get sore two days after a workout, rather than next day, as when I was young. If I get sore - not often. Same way that I hold things about a foot away from my eyes now, to get a good focus. See? Things change. There's no going back, and there's no re-creating. There's only moving forward, or being stuck, with regret.

Sometimes I think about how very strange this universe is, of God's. Not the death and corruption part. That's on us. The design behind it, where we have to eat, every day just about, for example. That's so strange. This whole metabolism thing. It's so strange. There must be a meaning in it, like there's meaning in seemingly random events in the Bible. It's all symbolic. Food, as a daily reminder of our dependence -- grafted limbs, ensapped by a strong root. Aging, as an enforced humility. Death, as interest on a debt already paid, but the transaction isn't quite finalized. It's all about motion, change, experience and transformation.

Not an easy thing, for some of us, who hold on rather than let go. But there it is. It's about trust. Trust for our daily bread. Trust for the safety of our children. Trust that our friends will be faithful. Trust that we will always have a father who guides us as best he can.

Let's not think of it as failure. It's freedom.

J

*Owl's Moon

 YT

Here.

J

*Bizarre Books

YT

Mostly from Bizarre Books.  All of the following are real books, written in good faith by authors who acknowledge no sense of irony in any of their efforts.

Some just have unfortunate titles. Games You Can Play With Your Pussy, pub 1985. Old Dykes I Have Known, 1996. The Big Problem of Small Organs, 1966 -- that would be PIPE organs ... if that clarifies the issue.

Cock Tugs, 1963 -- the meaning of which is helpfully explained: "a short history of the Liverpool Screw Towing Company." The Nature and Tendency of Balls, Seriously and Candidly Considered in Two Sermons. The date, 1818, cues us as to the true nature of these "balls" -- soirees.

Shag the Pony, 1952. The Boy Fancier -- a manual of domestic pets, 1912. The Boy Hunter, 1938. Fishing for Boys, 1961. Not one of these words is inappropriate. And yet. The increasing depravity of our culture makes these titles less humorous, and more literal.  There's something called "grooming," I've been hearing mentioned in the news.  I have not yet used the Urban Dictionary to hone in on the definition.

Invisible Dick, 1926, with this succulent passage: "'Jeehosophat! What a disgraceful scene!' said Dick Brett, doing a series of physical jerks behind a bush, as he began to grow into visibility." Talk about yer "small organs."

School Experiences of a Fag at a Private and a Public School, 1854. The Gay Boys of Old Yale, 1869. Queer Chums, 1887; Queer Doings in the Navy, 1896; Queer Shipmates, 1962. 

The Gentleman's Recreation, 1928, by Cox, preface by Cuming. Common Truths from Queer Texts, 1908, by Rev. J Gay. Funny how the meanings of words seem to change.

Churchill wished he'd said, "The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash."

Why is "queer" an okay part of the alphabet plus sexuals, but not "faggot" or "dyke"?  "Faggot" was practically my nickname, from my scum brothers when I was a vulnerable, neglected and abused little child.  What's the BS Woke lie?  Words are violence?  No, dumbass, violence is violence.  Words are words.  And pain is pain.  But not all pain is the same.

Well, that can get old, the way words have more than one meaning, queer, fag, jerk. Let's turn to a new page.

Handbook for the Limbless, published 1922 by the Disabled Society. Not so droll, when we remember how close this was to the First World War.

A Treatise on Madness, 1758; by Wllm Battie (git it?), who informs his rapt readership that madness does not respond to the general cures, such as "bleeding, blisters, caustics, rough cathartics, the gums and faetid anti-hysterics, opium, mineral-waters, cold bathings and vomits." The problem was, no universal healthcare.  Thank you, Obama!  You saved us!  There is no more madness, now.  Everyone is completely sane!  No one is demented!

Another healthcare problem: The Symptoms, Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Gonorrhoea, 1713, by ... Wllm Cockburn. Is that a name or a symptom? I prescribe faetid gums and a rough cathartic, or maybe rough gums and a faetid cathartic, for a gonorrhea.  For a syphili, too.  And also for a herpe.  

We can't help our names. 

- Yoshimoto Banana 

- Gottfried Egg 

- Knud Bugge 

- Dee Day (heidi hoe!) 

- Violet Organ 

- A. Farto 

- O. Hell 

- Harry Prick 

- Pierre Anus

Ludwig von Baldass. M. Fucker. Wolfgang Kundt.  Ach.  Those Germans.

No, we can't help our names ... but we can help the titles and subjects of our books. Obesity: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment, 1974, by L. Lasagna. Care for Your Kitten, 1986, by A. Mews. Motorcycling for Beginners, 1980, Geoff Carless. Some Examples of Wave Motion in Fluids, 1975, G.D. Crapper. Punishment, 1972, by Robin Banks. Vasectomy: The Male Sterilization Operation, 1972, by P.J. Gillette. Shy Men, Sex, and Castrating Women, 1985, by Claude Balls. The Adolescent Diaries, 1980, by K. Horney. Monitoring Family Planning and Reproductive Rights, 1997, by A. Hardon. Sexual Desire and Love, 1983, by E. Fuchs.

Well. A lot of the contents of Bizarre Books are just repetition on the theme. Odd but not incredibly funny titles and authors. Gay Agony, 1930, by H.A. Manhood. (Huh -- he also wrote Nightseed.  I learned about that in 7th grade health class, "nocturnal emission".)  

They use the word Gay, or Queer, or Inch, or Dick or Roger, or ask earnest questions on obscure topics. Guys named Money write books on finance. Some are just out there. Dildo Kay, 1940. A novel of the shoreline?   

Lesbia's Little Blunder, 1934. Um, something about lost, and dildo key?

But on the other hand, these authors followed their dream. They poured their minds or hearts into it and produced something they were proud of. Bad titles or odd names don't mean bad books -- although judgment is distributive. In any case, I have been, in my youth, a name bigot. Haha, your name is funny sounding!!!  Something to grow out of. And I, your humble host, have a name that some may find odd. As for all of my books, they are brilliantly titled. The Light Touch, by Jack Hammer. Birds I Have Loved, by Jay Human. Yes, I use noms de plume. 

Point is, I have compassion for the multitudes. Of course I do. Writing and speaking, communicating as felicitously as I do? --  is so so easy to do, for I am one for whom there is no need for irony for.  Self awareness is for losers.

J

*Economics According Two Cows

YT

Pat Paulsen did a version of 2 kauw ekunamuks in the 60s, on the Smothers Brothers Show.

-----

Feudalism: You have two cows. The lord takes some of the milk and all the cream.

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Direct Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

Democracy, Democrat-style: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty. You elect politicians who raise your taxes, which forces you to sell one cow. The cow is given to a "newcomer". You feel like a good person.

Democracy, Republican-style: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You move to a better neighborhood.

Singaporean Democracy: You have two cows. The government canes you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in your apartment.

Indian Democracy: You have two cows. You worship them.

Theoretical Socialism: You have two cows. The government makes you share them with your neighbors.

Actual Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor, a chicken farmer. You have to take care of chickens. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as its regulations say a vegan should need. You are not vegan.

South American Socialism: You have two cows. The government won’t license them. After taking bribes, it regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both cows, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows and milk. Then it burns your village and you are drafted.

Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. You are tortured.

Soviet Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You stand in line all day, in the rain, for sour milk. Your neighbor denounces you for smelling like cheese and you are sent to a gulag. You write a brilliant novel about those 30 years. It is banned.

Chinese Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them, sells them to WalMart, buys US Treasury bonds, builds up its blue water navy and takes over the world.

Italian Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

German Fascism: You have two cows. The government shoots your neighbor and takes his cows.

Anarchy: You have two cows. Your neighbor shoots you and takes the cows.

Khmer Rouge Communism: You have two cows. The Government shoots you and the cows and your neighbors.

Counterculturalism: Wow, dude, there’s like . . . these two cows, man. You have got to try some of this milk.

Surrealism: You have three giraffes. The government makes you take harmonica lessons.

Athleticism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull, resulting in the birth of a calf. You carry the calf everyday until it is a bull. You are the strongest human being alive. Milk? Milk is not Paleo. Government? You take care of yourself -- it's called "fitness," baby.

Wokism: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phalocentric, racist, LGBTplusphobic past) two differently-abled (therefore more valuable to the community) gender fluid bovines. The government investigates you. The bovines get married as required by the Constitution and adopt a veal calf.

bidenomics: You have two bulls.  They are now cows. You are prosecuted for being an ultra maga billionaire. You are stupid.

J

*What the Sirens Sing

YT

You will have seen my anger, implicit and  expressed. You’ve seen hatred, very rarely. There's a species of vice that needs to be hated.  Every emotion has a legitimate purpose, albeit often perverted.  You've never seen rage from me, though. I’m a pretty self-contained guy. But we’re the dangerous ones, eh? He seemed like such a pleasant fellow. Can’t imagine how he could have committed so many atrocities, and so viciously. 

So I was a runner, until I found BJJ, then I did that. A long time go now.  In the first15 months I took two days off. That’s just stupid. It wasn’t even good for my training. But it wasn’t about the training.  Such expedients are necessary, palliatives for bigger problems.  Rage.  Anguish.  Futility.  If we cannot fix the problem -- an empty tool chest -- we can indeed find ways to cope.  This is how we don't give up.  Run.  BJJ.    

Ah well. You, faithful reader, will have noticed that I use different voices in these little efforts here. Not planned. Like the seed of a poem.  Something on my mind, or in the back of it, and I just start, usually with writing.  Just singing in harmony with myself.

Here’s what it is to be human: something bad happens, and we get angry about it. Since we can’t have justice, we become angry with God. He’s big enough to take it, but that doesn’t do us any good. So when we get the chance, we grab hold of God and kill him. What, it didn’t happen? Why do you think people kill babies? I bet that some of them, Jews and Romans, knew who they had, in Jesus, and killed him anyway. 

You think that you wouldn’t. But you would. Almost everyone dies damned. If I could get my hands on God, and get away with it, it would not be pretty. Unfortunately, that would be Jesus, and he does not deserve it. Awkward.

I’m just talking. When faced with it, there is no getting away with it. There are people that I can’t think about -- or rather, that I simply do not think about, because there’s only one thing for me to think, and it would just make me crazy. Please, keep your advice to yourself, this is me singing here, my solo, aria -- air guitar, hairbrush microphone, headbanging. Such is the nature of addiction. 

 

And you don’t know these people anyway.  Forgiveness.

Once I talked to my son when he was far far away in a land of war and madness, and he was saying how he’d like to be able to be vegetarian, but it just was not possible. He said he’d get so hungry but didn’t want to eat all that fried grease. So he got hungry, then ate the fried grease. I told him he could sprout like we used to have to do back in hippy days.  Grow your own. So he did --he ordered a sprouting kit online. My point is that I said, “Yep, food and sex, the two appetites.” And he, young man,  gave the instant agreement that comes at hearing a true thing you never noticed before.

Odysseus lashed himself to the mast of his ship so that he could hear the sirens’ song. It drove him mad for a time, with some appetite, but he could not jump overboard to swim to them. Save for his bonds he would have died. There is no swimming to sirens.  Dying for them.

I heard on the radio about a film project that videoed the Golden Gate Bridge for a year. Caught thirty people jumping. Saved six. Twenty percent survival rate, from that year of filming, and jumping. Sounds about right. One fellow changed his mind just after he launched. Adjusted his angle and survived. In the icy water he tried to cry out for help. He could only gasp. He felt something brushing his legs. Great, I survived just to be eaten alive by sharks. But it was a seal, and only its circling kept him afloat.

The director got the idea for the film when he saw the planes crash into the towers. People jumped rather than burn. Well? Some people leap to the sirens. Some stay and face the inferno.

There are true things that we do not dare admit. Things about hatred. Things about love. What a horrible world, where appetites are poisonous and innocence is mocked. Sometimes we pass through fire. Sometimes we are consumed by it. Sometimes we are saved from the water. Sometimes we are saved in the water. Sometimes it swallows us whole, or in pieces. What choice, and what power do we have? We are what our natures make us.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Freedom is being able to dance like no one is watching. I don’t dance at all. But this is me, singing.


J

*CUSSOM

 YT

A few select quotes from President biden's 1924 Stay duv duh Yunyun Speesh.

The violence and evil and intolerance of the MAGA Republicans will be destroyed.  We will exterminate everything the haters love.  They have no idea what's coming, yeah, see?  Never again, MAGA!!!

A new glorious new age is here at hand.  Let us rise together, waft majestically across this broad green, green and windpower land, from Alaska to Myrtle Beach!  Let us stride heroically forward onward into the glorious sunshine of the radiant future and the solar powered sun!

Let us ... Create the United States Super Once More! CUSSOM!  We can rebuild it back better! We have the green technology! We can make it better than it was! Better, stronger, faster, um, newer!  Bigger!  Diversitier!  Possibly!  Come, yes, aha, be, with me, besides and ... CUSSOM! CUSSOM! CUSSOM!...  

-- JRB, Jr, on our 247th year as a nation on Earth 

biden thinks he's funny.  That has been my problem too.   One of the guys I am, is the exaggerated disgustingly vain persona -- because it's so  funny.  

But I'm too old for it to work, now.  Like Jerry Lewis being his monkey, at age 60, or 70 or 80 or 90.  It just didn't work. Young and skinny worked.  I'm not sure why my know-it-all vanity-guy doesn't work.  It doesn't feel right -- I still use it, accidentally, an unthoughtful laziness or a very old habit.  But I immediately notice and regret it.  A minor regret.

biden thinks he's funny.  The sotto voce whisper 

-- "I'm the President" -- "I'm the Commander in Chief".  Wow.  Just wow.  You know, absolutely know that he thinks he's funny.  That's why he so frequently informs us that he is NOT joking.  It usually seems to mean that he IS lying.  So, useful. 

There's a lot of silliness, pettiness, carping and picking at the other political side.  That's fine, people do it, and hopefully it's amusing for a bit. But it's just trivia, not really trying to convince or establish a point.  

President Ford was clumsy and said the Soviets did not dominate Eastern Europe.  President Carter was attacked by a rabbit and had been a peanut farmer.  Bush I was a wimp. Dukakis looked funny in a helmet in a tank. 

clinton, well, all that was true.  Bush II looked like a chimp.  Candidate Al Gore invented the internet. 

Candidate John Kerry wore a bunny suit and said Jangus Khan.  Obama ... but we don't dare say anything about him.  Trump was orange and a huckster, which was true, but not consequential.  

And now biden, for a few more months -- probably longer than he'll be alive, if you take my meaning. 

 Ford inherited the office, and did not win when he actually ran.  It will be the same with the Kamaltoe Harry  ssssSorry.  She will be pres for a few months, only.  

For biden, look, being old is fine, it's a good thing.  But let this be a warning. A lifetime in high political office should have an expiration date, a minimum, or maximum bar -- above or below which, no presidency for you.

Forty-nine years, now, minus Trump's four year interregnum -- biden's nearly 50 years is more than enough.

Thank your for your service.   Make it a general rule, the biden Bar. X number of public falls, Y number of miss-named leaders and countries and murder-victims, and years your son died …  XYZ and it's time to stop trying to recite the alphabet.  I'm telling you right now what I think of you.  

XY is the 

patriarchy, and why does tranZZZ come last, I'd like to know?!?!??

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Goonight Joe. Goonight Joe. Goonight Joe. Goonight.  Ta ta. Goonight. 

Goonight.

 

Good night,

 

ladies, good night, sweet ladies,

 

good night, good night.  

Biden walks old, and off in the wrong direction -- it's just bad optics.  Verbal gaffs and misreads are regrettable, but fair-mindedness looks for the substance and the intended meaning of what people say.  It's just that there's something so unserious, so small about him.  So obvious, so insecure.  Partisan.  Petty. 

This isn't ad hominem.  It is about him, but politics is not my point.  The man himself.  The guy, the dude.  He doesn't have the discipline to stay on message, let alone on script.  He's so bad at the job -- yes, policies, but politics.  Always, always blaming.  His predecessor, a newcomer 

of a word, to him. He actually pronounced all for syllables, a fe times.  presebebe.

 Last years SOU  sow   speech was him just repeating "MAGA Republicans" -- The great number of Trump supporters are bad?  The hackness of it.  Joe Biden, president only of the ultra CUSSOM Democrats who agree with him. 

Honestly.  MAGA vs CUSSOM!  It's the clash of

 kaiju monster movies and the

 Lovecraft mythos: Mothra vs Chthulhu.  Or, no, make that 

Maguma!  

Heh heh!!!  

Deep in the Stygian bowels of some oppressive magma chamber, the loathsome ichorous spawn of nameless chaos bestirs itself from a scathing torpor of roiling millennia and, hideously awokened, unutterably outraged, unreasonably triggered ... CUSSOM rises!!!  

Meanwhile, freed from the frigid bonds of deplorable boreal ice in the melting frost-bound farthest climate-changing climes of the north, slavering noisomely in its bloated greed and squamous intolerance ... MAGUMA creeps forth!!!  And so on.  Adjectival doom awaits us at the utmost adverb.

I do play this game -- say, my quandam obsession with  pronouns -- but I'm not a serious person. If I had great responsibility, I would train myself to never, never do my big ego guy.  It doesn't work at my age, and it wouldn't work in a position of authority.  

biden uses social tricks that he learned in the 1960s.  They will have been how, 50 years ago, he got elected to the Senate.  Dramatic or humorous stories about how interesting and admirable he is.  Glad-handing and backslapping.  Somehow, they got him this far.  But now, completely inappropriate.  

biden … Joe, find some other fake way to be.  You are the Commander in Chief.  Respect that.  A rookie officer has to learn command presence.  How much more, you.  You are President of the United States.  Have some gravitas.

J

Notice: CUSSOM hats are now available in aquamarine, gaslight, and stylish blue yonder!

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Guaranteed large enough to meet all your transcontinental needs.  Forgivable FHA loans available.)  

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!!

*Shipwreck: as the answer of the meaning of life

YT

My relationship with God is complicated. Characterized on my part by neglect. Maybe God is waiting. Maybe he's working. I don't know. It's hard to see through the smoke. There was a time when I went to church three times a week. I would have gone more but it wasn't open that much. Bible study. Couldn't get enough. I never mistook it for spirituality. It was just me, looking for truth, for meaning. I did find it. Didn't do much with it. Much that was meaningful, I mean.

Like the parable of the man who sells everything that he might own the pearl of great price. When you have the pearl, what do you do with it? Look at it? Polish it? I own the pearl. I've never figured out what to do with it. What good are pearls? Their good is in their beauty, and the joy that beauty brings. I have very little joy. It must be a small pearl. Or maybe I didn't sell everything I had, to own it. Apparently the pearl gets bigger if the box you keep it in is empty.

I keep my box full of pain, of memories and fear and anger. My heart is broken, and I keep the pieces there. There's blood on my pearl. I want to blame God for that. He didn't protect me. He didn't protect the ones that I loved. He allowed suffering more than I could bear. He must have misjudged me. I only look big. Funny that God could make that mistake. Does he think that we can bear the pain of this world? Did he learn nothing from the suffering of the Cross? Did he get into the habit of forsaking us? Is anguish the only tool he uses to call us to him? Is there any gentleness in his patience? Or is patience just a countdown to wrath.

Worthiness has nothing to do with it. We stake our hope on his promises. He'll love us when we are unlovable. Like me. How my heart yearns for comfort, some comfort other than that false drugged indifference of avoidance and neglect and emotional stupor. Maybe there's something that God doesn't know. We need to be saved more than once.

I am so tired of this world. If there were some way out of it I'd like to know. Other than the obvious, I mean. But everything is death. What, a shipwreck? -- with bodies in the water and survivors clutching onto debris? And the cold and fatigue and thirst and the sharks and despair claim us, one after the other? Because no one gets away alive. The only rescuing we can ever suppose there is would be spiritual. That would be no small thing, since it's all there can be, but it seems only to be a theoretical comfort. Faith floats, and it will keep us warm, and it answers our thirst, I'm told -- but it attracts sharks, faith. And everyone drowns.

Quite a few years ago, I recall, I was talking to a friend. I don't recall how the subject came up -- probably just rose out of my soul's yearning to find light -- but I mentioned that my son would be coming home in not too many weeks, from the military. And the realization flooded over me, that life was always only loss, and that everything we love goes away, and that this was the first time that anything was coming back to me. And I wept. Publicly. For just a moment. I don't pretend to be hard. I'm soft.

I know what it all means, and I know why. My great learning has not driven me mad. It's kept me from succumbing to my madness. There's a way that this is a good thing. But it is not pleasing to God. He wants me broken. I don't trust him to hold me together. How can I trust God? He's so hard. I take his forgiveness as granted. I have no quibble with his grace. But his mercy is so implacable. He thinks our suffering teaches us something, and he thinks we'll turn to him when we've had enough. I don't care about God's compassion, the feeling he has and why he does things. How would that be my business? I want a miracle, to be rescued from myself. 

There are things, though, that we can do and God cannot. I don't believe that anyone gets saved from their body of death. I think that if you're surrounded by a body of death, you die. Tell me where you think I'm wrong, and I'll refer you to the sharks.

I was thinking about how easy it is to love little children, and how unfortunate it is that they become like adults. Apparently innocence past a certain point is just stupidity. Does God look at us, in our depravity, and see us as we see little children? That would be sweet, and a comfort. But a dark realization haunts such an understanding. Not all children are loved. I see myself sometimes as small, and lost, and wretched. What kind of a man is that? I see myself as foolish and useless and as a joke. Poor little me.

If I ask who could love me, well, wouldn't it be arrogant to suppose that I'm unlovable, not loved? It's just that in such an imperfect world, no matter how bright love starts out, it arrives dim. The world is filled with smoke. There is fire on the water. Shipwreck.  Something else to regret.

I can't end there, though. My knowledge won't let me, for all the darkness of my heart. Because I know the answer. I wish it would do me some good. Here's the answer. Since we're in the water, we should be pearl divers. We should risk the depths, that something beautiful might be found and brought up. There's light enough to see the beauty. That's what the fire is for, if we dare the flames.

Jesus, Jesus, come get me again. Reach down and pluck me up from the deep. It's been so long since I could breathe, and darkness twists me so I don't know up from down. I'm hard to love, but pity my wretchedness. Your humanity is my only claim on you.

J

*Why China is WINNNINNNG!!! (24 characters and how usa is stpd)

YT

Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader of China into the 1990s, spelled out the wisdom of the East and the strategic course of the future, in his dictate of "24 Characters": 

        Observe calmly

        secure our position

        cope with affairs calmly

        hide our capabilities and bide our time; 

        be good at maintaining a low profile; 

        never claim leadership.

Four more characters were added later:

      ...and make some contribution.

That was in the clinton Error, so nobody worried, and everyone was happy.  History had ended.  The Millennium was imminent, and arrived, as obama proved.  obama cured GLOBAL WARMING!!!! after all, until Trump ruined everything. 

United States would have gotten better, not worse, if we had the wisdom to match our power.  But as one declines, so does the other.  I don't mean Chinese wisdom, because different circumstances require different responses.  But analogous.

Alas, the bright American spirit has grown dull. Exponentially more unseriousness and irrational. The pragmatism of the hard-scrabble Yankee farmer has presented its backside for the pleasure of the ballroom popinjay -- is my metaphor inapt?  Inept?  I remember a Greek who once told me, “All American students want to do, is dance.”  That, too, was in the 90 -- so we see the streams of history, albeit ended. 

America is still, somehow, first among nations, rudderless tramp steamer though it be. I used to think it was like having a dance-happy teenager make all the family decisions. How naive I was.  "Dance happy."  What a mild rebuke.  Pansexual, now.  No need to dance -- it might arouse a hormone other than the ones for being triggered.  No teenagers now -- not even a gerontocracy.  There must be a word for it, "government by the demented".  Oh, yeah, heh heh.  "The biden Admiseration".

So few leaders. Popularity polls to select politicians, and if you recall your teenager days, popular kids are not generally the smart ones. 

Eight years as president may seem like a long time, enough for long range planning.  And there have been 13 presidents in my lifetime, and I’m not 104. There is no ruling body of wise human persons, vested with promoting the interests not of some contributors list, but of the next generation, and the one after that. The wrongly-named Senate (supposed to indicate wisdom rather than mere age) -- the Senate OUGHT to fill that need, for sensible planning.  But, everyone OUGHT to be happy and healthy.  

That old fashioned idea of public office as a public trust, an almost sacred position that requires self-sacrifice. The idea is obsolete, disfavored, hateful, patriarchy cis race genital pronouns. Outre.

Societies move like pendulums, back and forth. But it's not vertical movement, upward progress.  Experience shows, almost always, decadence, somehow.  How is that possible. It's like fractals, like Mandelbrot sets -- however depraved things get, there are yet ever deeper hells.

Wouldn't it be grand, a noble spirit taking hold in American governance, and a generation that knows not Pharaoh rising up and casting down the idols, the lingam and yoni interchangeable fetishes, rising and plunging like maypoles and venuses. It has happened before, for all that depravity is a law, a subcorollary of entropy, just identified, by MEEEEEE!!! 

It's mere wishing, though. The hard fact is, this scow of state has no direction, this ferry.  The current feeble hand at the tiller is as likely to fall, lifeless, as to pilot. Captain? O captain, no captain!

Lower and lower in narrowing gyres, downward, drill baby drill, to hell.  It's unseemly, is all.  Unbefitting. Short-term goals, or rather, chaotic. Hatred of energy independence.  Borders open to every criminal.  Unwinnable wars.  Generational blood enemies.  I am too delicate to go on.

There is an irreparable and fatal flaw in our character. Dance baby dance.   

We are a great people because of what we have been. Has been, a star on history's stage, getting the hook.  Powerful, the way someone with really bad intestinal gas has power.

There is an understudy -- a rising star rather.

 China has ambition beyond Taiwan. What is the Chinese character, counterpart of the American?  Well, simply, authoritarian.  Of all national characters, American is most benevolent, albeit unseriousness.  The world should fall on its face and thank whatever god it worships, for kindly stupid old Uncle Santa.

But these are serious times, yet another hinge of fate, like a trap door, or something aspirational.  There is a checklist that would determine which -- a list of serious problems that need to be resolved.

The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote of challenges and responses. Well? Here we are.  Islamism is currently mostly Jew hatred.  Outspending and having a bigger military just seems like a waste of resources. Hardly even has  any meaning.  It's not working for Ukraine.  Old solutions do not apply. What then? 

Wisdom. A paradigm shift.  Whatever.  The most vapid of generalities. A stranger with his hand behind his back may be holding a club.  Children will take it for a baseball bat.  Can we learn a lesson without it being a 9/11.  All we learned from that is surveillance.

Being the jolly fat guy at the party doesn’t make us loved. Love has nothing to do with it. China gets it right. Plan, plan, plan. And then plan again, and again, and once more. Then some more. Mao called us a paper tiger. He was wrong. We are a real tiger, but a tame one, spade or  

Mao wasn't capable of understanding America. Tojo got it right -- a sleeping giant, dreaming, no higher cognitive functions.  Dreams are not plans.

What then? Wisdom learns and adapts. So:

Observe calmly: let other people be distracted by emotion. 

Secure our position: whether or not the ice is thin, it is slippery. 

Cope with affairs calmly: we’ve been here before. 

These are precepts we should hold. As for hiding our capabilities or biding our time or keeping a low profile or never claiming leadership -- these apply to someone else, who is very serious about following them, and who might gain the whole world for doing so. We shall see. 

Mao was a venomous serpent, a dragon, a child of lies, and anything he ever uttered of truth he did so only by coincidence. Paper tiger? More and more.

As for that final precept, of always making a contribution? Well, that’s what tiggers have done best.  Here, have some money, and citizenship.

And now, the punchline: China has an updated slogan, a fresh set of 24-characters, from Chairman Xi Jinping, for “national rejuvenation” by 1949.

Is Xi just a biden, muttering and blustering and wandering and stumbling? Peking is not Delaware.  biden's policy is surely succinct. "Don't?"  Don't hurt me, please, sir.  Don't take away my ice cream.  Don't vote for Trump -- WE do all the voting around here.

As for China, observe: 

   沉着冷静 Chenzhuo Lengjing；

   保持定力 Baochi Dingli；

   稳中求进 Wenzhong Qiujin；

   积极作为 Jiji Zuowei；

   团结一致 Tuanjie Yizhi；

   敢于斗争 Ganyu Douzheng. 

In English:

     Be calm; 

     keep determined; 

     seek progress and stability; 

     be proactive and go for achievements; 

     unite under the Communist Party; f

     dare to fight.  

Quote: 

At the National People’s Congress … Xi used strong language against the US [vowing] to modernise China’s military to make it a Great Wall of Steel, calling on the country to step up efforts to defend national security amid mounting tensions with the United States."  Xi demanded "greater self-reliance in science and technology, at a time when the US has blocked its access to … cutting-edge technologies".  Xi said, “Led by the United States, the West has implemented all-round containment to suppress China, bringing unprecedented challenges to China’s development".      

That's it then. For the past 30 years, China has been working according to a plan.  Now the plan is updated, responding to a nominal challenge, but actually providing the challenge.  I like China, and Chinese culture.  It's just that they are, now as much as in the 1950s, the clear and present enemy.  We are too busy dancing, with our arms above our heads, to notice.  They're winning.

J

*Butchers Day

YT

Civilization is an idea, not something with material reality, not an object taking up space. Were it mere buildings, then ruins would be a civilization -- say, sacked Carthage.  But it's not. It's not unread books in unattended libraries. It's not more musical artifacts than it is wind wailing through hollow trees. Civilization is an agreement between people about rules. 

At a certain point of degeneration or growth, civilization might and should be imposed by some more benevolent power upon some mere chaos of willfulness and self-seeking.  Barbarians have to be subdued, their barbaric practices suppressed, their savage culture extinguished. Not all behaviors are equal, you see.  We're not speaking about technology, but of sensibilities.  

It's the specifics of culture, modes of dress, hair styles, face painting, shavings, piercings, tattoos.  It's rule of law and, not compassion, but, say, charity, for the, say virtuous poor, and widows and orphans, and those who cannot, cannot care for themselves.  Those who will not care for themselves  - well, the determined will always find a way to destroy themselves.  My 600 Pound Life.

So we are civilized either by temperament and custom, or by force, the way  some children are mild and need few rules, and some are undisciplined, spoiled, and need effective punishment.

I very, very rarely punished my son.  Like, a one minute timeout in the corner.  You sit next to him, and hold his hand,  and have a talk.  Done.  But punishment, for people who are, and who have been surrounded by, stupid people.  Unlearn it.

 I'm saying this because I was hearing news about a certain scum culture and ethos with regard to our neighbors to the south.  Specifically the cartels -- Zeta, Sinaloa, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Matamoros. Savage border towns ruled by drug cartel anarchy and terror.  Scum.

Unless it's your head on the block, it doesn't matter, the details. It's like knowing the details of the Gestapo compared to the SS  -- maybe a little different, but so what. Yes, that's history, not current events.  But it's just the difference between  a depraved legacy, and a depraved  present -- if you're not affected, as by violence and crime on your very streets, it's practically theory -- like sewer gas that you get used to.  

And so I was thinking about what civilization is. What happens when the agreement falls apart, and there is no power to impose justice? The rules of civilization are no longer in play. You can't play with cheaters. Civilization is not a thing, an object. It is a set of rules that apply only under particular circumstances. When those circumstances change, behavior, responses must change.

So, Los Zetas, the Letter People, whose names must not be uttered, such is their terror, like Voldemort. It's not just that they behead, say, journalists. They sew in penes where tongues once were. Funny!  They took the time and trouble, the care to do that. 

They are to be destroyed through uncivilized means. On a Night or Week or Month of Long Knives, they must be isolated and butchered as one butchers pigs. Not warned, not frightened, not driven away, not reformed, not saved. Slaughtered. Also, their children must be killed, and their wives, and their abuelitas. Genocide, like Joshua son of Nun, against the Nephalim, in the Land of Canaan.  Because there was a point where they became satanic.

No quarter. Is this savage? Of course it is. But civilization, like the Constitution, is not a suicide pact.

Night of the Long Knives was a Naaazi thing.  Soviet purges just swept people up, innocent with the guilty, if there were any guilty.  KGB custom was to come for you at 3 in the morning, the Devil's Hour.

But, no quarter.  A very unchristian proposition, you assert.  Perhaps. Let's examine the point. Jesus could afford to sacrifice himself, offer himself as the archetypal victim, because he was the Son of God. Among other things, it is his nature and purpose to sacrifice and suffer and die. So may it be for every good man, to be selfless. But the family situation of Jesus did not stop only with his Father. Or rather, it did stop there. Brothers and sisters, including some of us,  but he was, you see, not married, and had no children. He could afford to sacrifice himself. No one was depending on him.  Please don't quibble.  My meaning is clear.

It is the first duty of a man to protect his family -- by which is not meant his birth family, the one that happenstance or Providence placed him helpless within.  A man's real family is, becomes the one that he himself forms out of his own character and commitment -- it has dependents. A man who follows his theoretical ideals about helping his neighbor, or the stranger, or the monster, at the sacrifice of his children,  this person is not just a fool -- he is a reprobate.  Help the stranger, second -- perhaps as a way of teaching your children about decency, about civilized conduct. It's not me first, it's mine, first.  On every level of decency.

When society, culture, government, fails to protect from savages, when the social compact is abrogated, disavowed, then vigilantism is not just understandable, it is required as an act of survival.  Honor and manliness, now forbidden, these are civilized and barbarian traits, both.   But self defense is justice. 

To save civilization, the families of monsters will suffer, as, in the decline of civilization the families of the innocent do suffer. 

This is not Old Testament verses New Testament. It is how to save a society in the first instance, and how to save an individual in the second. No contradiction. Different contexts. Evil is not tamed or accommodated. It is contained or destroyed.

You might tame a wild fierce animal -- but do not trust it around children.

That is the battlefield upon which we find ourselves. Savage gangs, cartels, and their filthy corrupt governments, among which I count the current american regime.  

We, who adhere to that highest american ideal, rule of law -- we would be peaceful but must be fierce. Find the multiple heads of the monster and lop them off.  Which follows the cartels' example, only virtuously. Let the guilty suffer.  Perhaps the monster's limbs, the digits, little toes, will fall still. 

Satan cannot be saved. Like the poor, the evil will always be with us. With the poor, we are kind and firm, mindful of compassion, diligent to not enable sloth, a forbidden word -- prudent in our stewardship, grateful for our own blessings. With evil we must be intolerant and judgmental and utterly bigoted, and we must hate it. God loves, but he hates. Jesus rejoices always, but he was angry. Deal with it. Both. Different circumstances call up different reactions, out of a righteous character.

We are at the end of our civilization. Only a Great Awakening could actually save us, understanding that every civilization falls.  Almost all of the kings of Israel were bad, so, what hope have we? 

A politician and presidential aspirant once observed, to great derision, that about half of Americans get an unearned government check. Approx 25 million others get a government check for their employment.  Is that 60% of americans, not counting invaders? -- I'm too lazy and self-indulgent to bother to verify, and do math.  

But, who has the grit to stand against the check-writer? 

European college students have been observed to riot, at the mere suggestion of receiving less than their parents did, regardless of any impending calamity.  Any continent  is doomed, that has had to look to Germans to save it. And here we are, open borders, paying illegals 10k in tribute to their, what, brownness?  Indigence?  Can I say that?  

I'd say the same of Norwegians, if they were invading.  The vikings were monsters.  My people.  Then.  See the point?  Uncivilized.  

What hope? No hope. Or only that which will come from sacrifice -- blood sacrifice, in the case of, say, monstrous drug lords, lords, and their acolytes. And there are not enough men in the world, resolute enough to pick up knives and start butchering the pigs.

I've been vegetarian since I was a teenager, and that's likely before you were born.  I'm not blood thirsty.  I'm starving for justice.

So as I sometimes do, I ask again, am I serious.  Of course not.  You don't kill family. Well, drone strikes,  bombing terrorist compounds.  What's the euphemism?  Collateral damage.  "Collateral" is a word nobody ever uses, except as a modifier of "damage".  Damage, here, is a euphemism for "killing".  And "killing" is a euphemism for, well, fill it in yourself.  Then do the same for "abortion".

People who use euphemisms are not serious.  And that's why I say: kill them.  I want to be taken for serious.

 J

*Book of Job, Chapter Nine

YT

I've re read the Book of Job again, for some reason.  Intently. It never really interested me, except for the first and last chapters.  All that arguing and philosophizing, just going no where.  The history of philosophy is the story of wrong ideas. 

But this time, there were parts where my heart quickened. Was it David who was a man after God’s own heart? David does not speak to me. It was not a king, like King Saul, who afflicted Job -- it was Satan, and it was God. Seems like a bigger deal, than Ahab going after Elijah. Maybe there was some drama in the heavenlies of which we are not informed, where David too is handed over to Satan -- like Peter was, like Judas, like Job. Well, we know God plays favorites. For all that Job was, eventually, blessed, David was chosen.

The book is not easy to follow, all that arguing and poetry. It would have been written long after the events, with much license. Inspired, like constructed -- the way art can be.

Job’s friends, his comforters, are bores, and boring. Job, the man, is riveting. “What is man, that You should magnify him, set Your heart on him, visit him every morning and test him every moment? How long? Will You not look away from me and let me alone till I swallow my saliva? Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O Watcher of Men? Why have You set me as Your target, so that I am a burden to myself? Why then do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust, and You will seek me diligently, but I will no longer be.” 

 It is enough. Too much. Job is doubled over on his knees, soundless, strings of drool undoing a lifetime of dignity. Promises that we are not given burdens greater than we can bear do not ring true. Promises that God will comfort us sound like noises from the other side of a door. There’s something inconsistent, about being both a savior and a judge. “Though I were righteous, I could not answer God. If I called and He answered me I would not believe that He was listening to my voice -- for He crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds, without cause. He will not allow me to catch my breath.” Job’s children were crushed in a tempest; Job’s body was infected with wounds; of course he can’t breathe.

There’s righteous and there’s righteous. We try, and that has to be enough. That’s the deal. We try, and fail, and get forgiven -- then through the Law, now through the Cross. Always, through blood. But there is too much evidence to the contrary, to suppose we’re not pieces on a game board. God may at any time chose to turn our lives into object lessons.

“God destroys the blameless, and the wicked. If the scourge slays suddenly, God laughs at the plight of the innocent. The earth is given into the hands of the wicked. God covers the faces of its righteous judges. If it is not God, who else could it be?” 

We were told right up front that for some untold reason, God gave permission to Satan, to torment Job. If it’s not God’s doing, whose? It must be that suffering doesn’t really matter. Sure feels like hell though, don’t it? But we’re also given the answer, pretty clearly. “God is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him and go to court together. Nor is there any Mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.” Mediator, Reconciler, Councilor. God without Jesus might as well be Satan. A Judge who can only condemn does not need an Accuser.

If it is not God, who else could it be? It’s a complex situation. God uses the wicked as well as the good, and both the weak and the strong. God optimizes, and everyone suffers, and evil doers have happiness perhaps as much as the righteous, right up to the end. Clearly our understanding of justice cannot be accommodating all the variables. It’s nuanced. God cannot tolerate imperfection, yet we’re counted as good enough. That’s why quantum mechanics is necessary -- because particles are waves.

Job, blameless Job in the bitterness of his pain said true things that are not true. God laughs at our pain. But it’s not so much laughter as a chuckle with a shake of the head, as at a crying child who is overly distressed by some small thing. Small, and not small.

The pain of life is like fetish pornography. It’s not at all interesting, unless that’s your thing.  Pain. Otherwise you have to just shake your head, and chuckle, if it’s not too gross. Poor, foolish, wretched creatures. Just get on with what’s important. 

J

*XFace

YT

Xface. You know, like blackface.  Tranzface.  Could be ZFace, GenZ, FaceZ, FaZe. But X.  X it out. X out yer sex.  Bring out yer dead.  How is it different.  Let's say it's a white guy, in blackface.  He's NOT black, but he's attempting to represent, if not simulate, the appearance.  How is it different?  You're not black, not a woman, not a black woman.

Well, there's a surgery, 

if there is, so not as temporary as blackface, with shoe polish, or a tarbrush, maybe with feathers.    

Although a previously completely obscure hiphop bebop Doo-wop Boop-Oop-a-Doop, um, artist? performer? personality? bandwagoneer has partway tattooed himself, toward his aspirational race.  

Vaudevillians like Al Jolson used burnt cork, easy to remove.  Bert Williams

was a black performer who wore blackface.  He wasn't black enough, otherwise. That's a problem nowadays too, not being sufficiently authentically black, not all BLM and Reparational and Democrat. 

As biden would say, you ain't black.

 There are chemical ways to darken, but that would fade, slough off the skin, or the pill or shot would wear off.  Melanin wouldn't be permanently ramped up in cells.  Like the guy who turned himself blue by supersaturating himself with colloidal silver; he's dead now.  

Whereas amputated organs do not grow back.  We're not lizards, most of us, to regrow tails.  Cal Gov Gavin Newsom, 

The Nightmare of California (now streaming on Peacock), might, as he reportedly said, "creep out of my skin for you like the snake that I am.  That's right, sssstupid, I'm coming for you.  Sssscum."  But non-Silurians (or does he identify as Sleestak?) can't regrow penises.  Penis penis penis.  I enjoy my penis, but I depend on my testes -- penis, like the girl you'd party with

 -- or testes, the woman you'd marry.  

So it's not quite the same.  But that is the nature of all analogies.  If there weren't differences, they'd be the same thing.  Blackface, and tranz surgery.

But they're pretending. They've x'ed out their birth genitals, excise, ex-size, shrinking penis into a clitoris, and they're passing as something else -- as the other.  I won't bother to inform you about the ethno-sociological … regrettable? tragic? phenomenon of passing.  

The difference is that race-passing was for social advantage in a repressive state, and sex-passing is about narcissism, dysphoria -- a dysfunctional state, emotional, spiritual.  

We should have compassion for those who are sick.  It's a christian and jewish virtue.  But to believe the deluded is to follow them into destruction.  We know what male and female is because we have eyes and hands, and an awareness of reproductive reality.  It's not belief, it's fact.  A fact is something that can be demonstrated.  Otherwise it's theory, or opinion, or deception, or delusion, or etc.  As they say, someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with a theory, or, moreso, a feeling. 

So, Xface, latinx, hispanix, larynx, phalanx, manx, minx, lynx, jinx, latinx.   Latino, ex out the o, O-face,

X-face.

Xface, a generderized blackface, a pretending to hate the male or female that you are, or actually hating what you are and pretending you're the other thing, or you're something that you just made up, or that you feel, or that you overheard and believed.  We'll hammer out the specifics later maybe, over a sun-dappled brunch of brie and Chardonnay, from Gavin's vineyard.

The Genderfix Bible - all "binary" gender errors corrected! Sample (copyright): "For Gox so loved the world that xe gave xers only begotten donx..."

We haven't been asked to participate in a mass hysteria before ... well, the Salem witch trials ... and the Civil War ... and Covidism. 

Stalinist Russia, 

aside from Stalinism, had Lysenkoism.  The Dutch had tulip-mania.  St Vitus' Dance.  Examples are easy.  Ours now is specifically evil, attacking children, like a hollywood demon movie.

 It is particularly toxic, because wokism is sexual in nature, down past the genetic level, to spirit itself, male spirit in wrong body, or contrariwise.  Wrong chromosome, wrong sex, wrong race, wrong god.  Everything is everything else. Aum, mother-father.

J