FORGOTTEN PROPHETS

Millions

2012-01-25T23:38:00.000-08:00

Haven't been doing a lot of political reading lately. Looked a Mark Steyn just now though, and he is as always right. Speaking of Mitt, he wonders, "Why is the stump speech so awful? 'I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.' Mitt paid some guy to write this insipid pap. And he paid others to approve it. Not only is it bland and generic, it’s lethal to him in a way that it wouldn’t be to Gingrich or Perry or Bachmann or Paul because it plays to his caricature — as a synthetic, stage-managed hollow man of no fixed beliefs."

Indeed. It's obvious. Really really bad writing. Obama bad, in fact. The sort of thing I parody here, when the Spirit so moves me. '... our children's children, and our children's children's children, and our children's children's children's children's children ... what, did I skip one? Uh, um, er, eh, let me start again, tee hee .... We shall go forward into the bright and shining sunshiny brightness of tomorrow's glorious sunrise unto the last recorded syllable of sound and fury, signifying nothing, that our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children's children ... what, I did it again? Well, America, the failed policies of the past 8 years, no, 11, um, no, er, uh, 11 minus my 3, which is 8, but it's not my fault...'

Mitt seems to be doing the same thing. Mitt should not be uttering the word "millions." It's like what the CIA did in Chile in the seventies ... put pictures of Allende in the newspapers, next to pigs, and garbage, and funerals ... subliminal. Mitt is a millionaire, see, and it resonates. When he says millions we automatically put my in front of it and of dollars after. You'd think some of his hirelings would be more than just yes men.

I am troubled by the field. Newt is erratic and unethical and a great juggler when he's on, but when he's not on he's on the couch next to Pelosi. A moonbase would be cool, and I'm all for it, but it's off-topic re the issues of the day. Mitt is competent, which is the beginning and the end of what we need ... but in between, we need someone who can get elected. I don't care if he flip flopped, which he didn't. To change one's mind is not a flip flop. It's a flip. I'm all for flipping, from wrong to right. Who could complain about that? Fools, partisans, hucksters, hacks ... pols and their tools. Mitt has not flip flopped. Try to tell anyone that though. Does he have a soul? Do robots dream? I don't care. Get the job done.

But for all that Mitt is caricatured as robotic, he sounds frantic when he speaks. Like a high school debater. Slow down, Mitt. And keep the rhetoric simple. I just heard that Obama's State of the Union List, I mean Address, was analysed for content and grammer, and it appears to have been perfect for 8th graders. So much for eloquence. "And then the werewolf reared up on its hideous haunches and launched itself at the black-caped vampire! 'Grrr,' it snarled, hideously!" Maybe that's too simple? But grasping for high-flung oratory is not the job of bottom-line businessmen, which is what we'd be hiring Mitt for. Don't be all things to all wo/men. Play to your strengths.

Well, there's much to be said. My dick can deadlift 120 pounds now. I'm going to get maybe two hours of sleep tonight. Are these things connected? That's for me to know. But stay tuned.

Manly

2012-01-23T22:38:00.000-08:00

No, I still haven't bought a computer. What the hell is my malfunction. I just sent a "text" to my son, however, seeking council on the subject. I don't want to pay for more, or less, than I need, or pay more than I should. I'm frugal. Maybe a little too much so, but we'll count it as a strength. The weakness would be a tendency to procrastinate that is effectively pathological.

I'm not feeling very manly. I've been thinking about how people carve out a place for themselves in the world, select and build a career, find a good woman and start a family, buy property, invest, save ... find a place, and status, and respect. I did all of that, once, not well but it was something, and the world rose up like a mounting storm and took it from me. Not self pity ... I am God's fool, and for that I deserve what I get. But I never rebuilt. I went to ground, like a wildman in the wilderness, and stayed crazy for a decade or more. It's not manly.

I've got a friend who made a little self-deprecating joke that went largely unnoticed. Call it about height. And I think, being as I am in a certain frame of mind, that he has a beautiful wife, and great kids, and material prosperity and personal accomplishments, and he has earned my respect and won my love, and he's certainly the most manly person I know, in the fullest meaning of the word. Lest there be any confusion on the matter, that doesn't have anything to do with height. I would give up a few inches, to have a better character.

But that's not how it works. There is a swelling melancholy in my soul, a sense of squandered potential. Well, of course you recognize my potential. It is self-evident, as in this blog. But this blog is smoke signals, ephemera, incunabula, and it's almost all I have done in many years. Insignificant. I would like another family, a son and then a daughter, and foster kids maybe, and a house, and a faithful woman who loves me.

Know any available fertile women, who like sex and kids and have a sense of humor and are into health and fitness and have enough patience to outwait the diversionary defensive tactics of a really weird but loyal and fundamentally worthwhile man? No? Well screw you then. Wasting my valuable time.

A Few Observations

2012-01-20T14:22:00.000-08:00

Beautiful:

because caprice is delightful,

and meaning is invented,

and because butterfly wings do not cause chaos;

... and because we have a right to aspire.

Not beautiful:

because choices are responsibilities,

and not all effort is rewarded,

and because, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree,

and because cruelty is so casual.

I knew this guy in high school.

Hm, seems harmless enough ...

... oh.

You just never can tell.

Gonna mess you up.

Perils abound.

mdck

2012-01-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that I have not been speaking enough in recent days about my dick. My dick is powerful. It loves oatmeal and has a cholesterol level of 7. My dick is ambidextrous. It can do backflips and can deadlift 115 pounds. It can tell the difference between every type of American southwest elm tree with 100% accuracy. It was once runner up on a Jeopardy! celebrity edition, and shook Alex Trebek's hand. It tastes like a gingerbread man, with a hint of cinnamon. My dick can drive a motorcycle. It once dug a hole through 3 feet of river ice so it could go fishing. It is vegetarian. My dick can type 87 words per minute. It is an expert in Bulgarian pop culture. In a fight with a hammerhead shark, my dick won. People claim that they have seen it breathe fire. It would be on Mount Rushmore, but there wasn't enough room. Everyone respects and is in awe of my dick, especially women and gays. It is the best dick that has ever lived.

On a less interesting note, it came to me as a flash, or shall I say, a flush, of blinding inspiration: Occupoo. The Occupoo Movement. The Big Movement. The BMers. Yeah. Git it? Cuz they pooped all over the place and didn't clean up after themselves. See?

It's been an odd week or so. I am surprised by my fragility. Once more, if not constantly. I'd like to think it's some sort of peptide imbalance, disrupting a more pacific thought process. Easy fix, that -- just identify the remedy ... a pill or something. Meds. But I think it's a problem of the soul. I've been fine, good, for, what, months? Consciously aware of it. Observing the fact of non-depression the way I have been known to do with depression itself. An objective disinterest, almost. Hm, I am depressed, there is the shape of the darkness. Or, Ah, is this happiness?

But now it's here, again. Not profound, but sullen. And despite improved material circumstances, with reasonable long-term hope, it gets bothersome, burdensome. I look for past causes, but the reality is that it's not the past but the present that matters. But that peptide thing, where some slight incident from the distant past pops up and burns as if from just a moment ago. It's a sort of madness, and I'm sick of it but in its clutches. Ho hum.

I wish there were a drug I could take. Maybe I'll consult my dick.

Rhapsode

2011-12-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

Victor Davis Hanson has written an utterly damning analysis of Obama. One of his points is that Obama is a mere rhapsode, a reciter -- Hanson cites Plato's Ion (available free on Kindle or the Gutenberg Project), which I have just gone back and read. (A little slow, but okay. Socrates is a man I would have liked to argue with, back when I liked to argue. He makes assumptions in the premises of his syllogisms that I would question.)

As I say, damning. And I've said before, O got elected for one reason only -- not his race, white-ish, or is it blackish? -- well, black, by declaration and against any loyalty to the people who actually raised him, you know, rather than abandoning him. Not because of his shrewdness or craftiness or innate political cunning. Not because Big Lib was behind him, that snapping hydra of media and unions and entrenched interests and other loppable heads if only there were a hero among us. No. O got elected by the gullible country girl called America because of his sweet sweet talk.

Two speeches, specifically.

So this is what occurred to me, just now. Who ever before has gained so much from so little? Two speeches, masterfully delivered, poetry actually, rhapsodic indeed, inspired and imbuing the enraptured throngs with, with, well, inspiration, with enthusiasm. Inspiration: to be possessed by a spirit. Enthused. To be indwelt by theos, god.

If such a thing were possible, this would be it: Obama sold his soul for two speeches, which ushered him to the Presidency of the United States. Not magic beans ... or rather, yes, truly magic beans, were there such things. It may be happenstance ... a perfect storm of empty oratory and a profoundly unthinking electorate. But that's almost always the case, an unthinking electorate, and empty oratory. There is no actual need in this case for Satan to be actively involved. Native stupidity answers almost every question, and a smooth sand-dancer like O had only to sway his hips a little bit and we all just spread ourselves wide-open for the penetration.

You must pardon my imagery. I did some heavy static holds earlier this week and I'm all hyper sexual.

This smirking punk is president. Shame on you, America. You are so stupid you deserve what you get ... knocked up and abandoned. And who is there to save you from yourself? Hope you've enjoyed your pottage, and that roasted goose, you know, the one you killed for the golden eggs ... and, uh, how's that golden touch working out for you, now that you've destroyed your little child? -- and Pied Pipers, and poisoned apples, and any other fairy tales about bad bargains.

Who will save us? What gallant horseman will ride in and slay this slight dragon? What kinsman, what father will step forward and defend his ravished fallen daughter? Gingritch? Romney? Some other? Please. It may be that idols are broken and the pieces lost in the dust, all so that we may see how great dust is, made, as it is, by God. That may be. But this idol has yet to be broken, and in any case even unworthy kings cast long shadows, and in falling bring much destruction.

Ah well.

I am no longer surprised that I am alive. Does this mean I have given up? How long will I wait before I find the comfort of meaningful small talk? -- not even banter, just the sounds we make that stand in for touching. Between silence and noise there is a third choice. God has never been alone, and he has a compulsion to create. We are made to be the same way. We might dream that we are strangers, then wake to remember our love for each other. Or I might dream of you, imagine a life complete, only to fall awake and find myself still alone.

So much for soul-selling, and sex.

Hard Truth

2011-12-23T16:48:00.001-08:00

Christopher Hitchens died of his cancer on the same day, 12/15, that Obama quit Iraq. Not ironic ... just a coincidence, in the literal sense of a meaningless correlation. Nine Eleven made a sort of conservative out of Hitchens, changed, then, in a way that I for one could not have been. It doesn't take attrocities for me to recognize how to deal with evil. Hitchens, too, had a profound sense of moral outrage. That I believe is the root cause of his unalterable atheism -- not just a disbelief, or a belief against, but an enmity. Like what we share toward, say, OBL. Hitchens saw God as an evil enemy.

His death has troubled me, because I liked him. He died in his sins, and since there is a God, who forgives if asked, and since there is a hell, for those who refuse to ask, well Hitchens died and woke up on hell. The more one should think about that, the more unsettling it becomes. Life is a very serious and dangerous thing. It is a very sad thing. There must be, my moral sense demands, some absolute need for life, since the stakes are so high. If God could have found some other way, I'm sure he would have done without hell. But he couldn't, and didn't. It's not just us, though, who risk or actually suffer an eternity of hell. Jesus feels that torment, eternally radiating out from the Cross. No. If God could have avoided damning his Son, I suppose he would have. Even God has cancer.

Steve Jobs' last words were, "OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW." Sounds beautiful, one might think, and it was reported that way in eulogy. I looked it up however, and Jobs was a Buddhist. What am I, in my narrow understanding of salvation, to make of this? Jobs' presumed wonderment was merely a psychological process, and his spirit, unredeemed, not born again, dead, remains dead, and now, with Hitchens, in hell.

There is no satisfactory answer to the torment of the innocent in this world. There are reasons, but no answer. Our craving for justice must wait on faith, a trust that the cruel will eventually, in a time beyond our immediate apprehension, meet with a fitting response. But faith is just philosophy, and for all that etymology makes this a good word, the root of such things is opinion, and happiness depends so much on temperament, genetics, that it might as well be luck. Free will? Of course -- from a faith point of view. Change your actions, change your temperament -- stop brooding and get to work. Of course. And same with God, and the problem of evil, of injustice, of good people going to hell. Just don't mind it, and get on with your life.

That was the answer Jesus gave, sort of. "Why did that tower fall on all those people?" "Just you make sure you do what is right." Mind your own business.

A universe in which we cannot understand ultimate meaning may as well have no meaning at all. Aside from faith, that is. Most unsatisfying. Faith becomes the meaning. Trusting, hoping, believing that things will work out, for the best, ultimately. How childlike we must be.

For my part, I am an odd and grim man, trapped for a few more days in the Christmas season, understanding its importance to so many people, but soured and privately resentful about the whole pageant. I feel some social pressure to give presents, but I rarely give in to it. What the hell is my problem. It's just that it feels like a compromise with something unclean -- the lies of my childhood, which I survived, alive if not whole, by resolving never to succumb to lies. I rarely relax, because I'm still expecting a next betrayal.

I will buy myself, but not for Christmas, a laptop computer. I want something with a big enough keyboard to actually use. I was thinking about a, um, notebook, but the screen may be uncomfortably small. I just want, need, a tool that will get the job done. My old computer stopped working some months ago, which is a primary reason there's been so little activity on this blog. I am encased in amber.

I will buy some things for friends, love ones -- the same thing, really -- but only as the need presents itself. Pride, you see, is one of my most endearing traits. I will not compromise, or not often, when it comes to the neurotic structures I have erected to protect my soul from rapists.

All that being said, I'm doing okay. Hope you're the same

Wind

2011-12-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite time of year. It feels like weather.

Someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I said I have everything I want. Meaning of course everything that can be given as a Christmas gift. It's not that I have a lot, it's that I have what I want -- small, purchaseable things of the sort that people might want. It's all so philosophical. What does it mean, to want? I want a 1949 Chrysler New Yorker, convertible of course, and red. Who knows, maybe it's true. I want one of those little computers that you can take anywhere, but the screen is big enough, that has a keyboard and gets internet for free out of the air. I want my life to have more purpose. I want to be loved as sincerely as I have loved. You know, the meaning of Christmas.

By any measure I am in the autumn of my life. Very little to show for myself. Not well done, not good and not faithful servant. These things come in fits, of course, these feelings. I'm much better than I have been in recent years. The critical depression has subsided. But I'm empty, and that's not good. I've missed my purpose. I don't think I've said it outloud. I should have written my novels, by now. I've written some of the nonfiction, but that doesn't sing and I long to fill the air with music. Not enough to do it, though, apparently -- and I'm not getting any younger.

There's that self-destructive, self-loathing rage that I can't express without irreparable harm. Everyday I think about my father, getting pretty old now, isolated in his high tower, probably in a pretty bad way, and I feel empathy and pity, but he got that when I was a child, as well, and that certainly cannot be the order of things, a small boy pitying his father. Point is, his demand for it was toxic, and damaging to the children entrusted to his care, and now I am simply repulsed by the idea of him. All this talk in the news about coaches abusing boys. I have no memories of anything like that. But I'm so fucked up.

I have a lot more energy now that I'm getting some sleep. Kind of disorganized though. Someone is telling me I should enter the CrossFit Games next year, but it's only like six months from now and I'm not ready. Not strong enough. Not really motivated either. Encouragement helps. It's how I think of myself, as an encourager. I like that about myself. But nobody can live anyone else's life for them. A very painful lesson -- that we can hardly even help anyone, let alone save them.

I said tonight that I must be a lot easier to get along with now, than some years ago. I always had to be right, in those days. I still want to be right, but I can keep my mouth shut. As I've said before, when a child falls, it's not the bump that hurts. It's the idea that no one cares. Kiss the child, not the booboo. We all want to feel good, or better. It's surprising how good a hand on the back can feel. I had forgotten.

Current Events

2011-12-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot on my mind, but I find myself inarticulate with dismay at the incompetence and irrationality of, well, the news and suchlike. You've heard how moslems in Paris are blocking off whole streets and holding whatever the moslem version of religious services are called. Native, real French are stuck in their homes, not allowed or daring to leave. Public services of any faith are unlawful in France, a secular benefit of The Revolution. But the PC apologists dasn't confront the alien. Only the traditional, Western traditional is verboten. What ever is to become of France. So sad.

And there were massive riots in Great Britain, disaffected youths, unskilled, undisciplined, entitled, useless. Surprised at the relatively stiff sentences they've been handed by the overwhelmingly leftist magistrates. Whose policy is to let "first offenders" (by which is meant first-time caught) walk. Only murderers, and self-defenders, go to jail in England. And now, a passing fad no doubt, a few rioters. Still, it's a twitch in the right direction, and away from the left, gauche, sinister.

And something about the EPA, trying to forbid fracking. You now, cuz oil is bad? Better to get it from Venezuela, at a premium cost plus terror? So it seems. Cuz Chavez will protect the environment so much more than Americans. Victor Davis Hanson has a phenomenal reputation among conservatives, and he absolutely extols the new energy technologies ... the salvation of America ... a new golden age. Energy Independence is like the Philosopher's Stone. As opposed to funneling money to terrorists. Well? Somewhere in there, the EPA, patriotism needs to have a presence. We are not citizens of the world, if for no other reason then that the world has no government ... heaven forfend.

Another way we subsidize terrorism is via the drug industry. I mean illicit drugs. Is it $50 billion, or $100 billion? More? Annually? From America alone? That's sort of insane. The cartels have become much more corporate nowadays -- not so much blowing up airliners as subverting whole governments. Well, I'd do it too, if I were a monster. We, decent people, want monsters to be stupid and crude. They've smartened up, like any well-run corporation, and figured out that profit is the bottom line. No duh. And in their corporate interest is that there be a number of terrorist states ... that is, lawless, from which cartels can operate safely. Get it? Drugs and terror are effectively the same thing.

If we buy their oil, we empower them. If we buy their drugs, we empower them. Seems obvious. I thought for a moment about the math of the thing. 100 billion dollars divided by 300 million Americans. But it's not all Americans who use drugs. Hm, let's see ... let's just guess we're talking about appropriate adults, say half the population, and 20% of "Americans" identify themselves as liberal, and we'll say half of them are the drug users. What is that, 15 million? No one can ever really know for sure that 150 divided by 5 divided by 2 is, but we'll just suppose it's 15 million. Who are sending 100 billion dollars to monsters. Nearly $7000 a year per liberal, on coke. Seems like a lot. Seems like a misallocation of welfare payments.

In a sense, the lefties are right. It's not the terrorists. It's us. Paying them.

More public flogging, please.

These past few weeks I've been grappling with the sad intimation that it falls upon me, for the next 10 to 20 years, to take care of my aged mother. I had sort of been thinking I'd like to have another family, but I have such an unskillful personality, and such poor social skills, and I am profoundly untrusting, and private, that I can't envision a situation where I trick some fertile female into loving me. And I really don't want to be a sixty year old mamma's boy. It was pretty depressing for a while there, facing this potential future. I'm still sort of angry about it, not that I can blame anyone else. It weighs on me. Trapped by duty. Self-sacrifice is noble, in someone else. In me it blows chunks.

My experience has been that God does not rescue anyone. He seems to enjoy making us go through hardships. Some shit about it making us stronger. But mercy would have been nice, you know, being rescued, from our own follies even, let along from the general evil of the world. Every life ends in death, though -- hopefully in a timely manner, but inevitably in loss and grief. To depend on the intellectual construct, that we are saved from unseen hardships, so don't know about them ... that takes a lot of faith, and I'd like proof, once in a while.

Well. We must be thankful for the blessings that we know about. Because ingratitude is as ugly as injustice. Same thing, in fact.

Pragmatics

2011-11-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

By which is meant, politics ... as opposed to theory or ideology or religion or idealism. Getting things done. Not the perfect thing, or the right thing -- rather, the less-bad thing. The distinction has been made in these pages before, between politics and tyranny. Tyranny is when one person only gets his way. Everything else is compromise, that is, politics. Jesus in his Kingdom will be a tyrant, a despot, an absolutist. Good. Anyone else though, no please.

The grownup understanding is that it's cyclical. They win and that's bad, but we'll win too. We'd like it to be the 1971-72 Lakers winning streak, unprecedented and unmatched. We thought they'd never lose. But, first, it's only a game. Second, everyone dies. What, you think it will always be the American Century? Our decadence is manifest. China is not good, but it will be great. Why not? Resources and drive. Human rights? Hardly anyone cares about that. The Russians in WWII would through themselves in front of tank treads just to slow them down a little. That too is human nature. Neither good nor bad ... were they fighting against Nazism or for Communism? Or just demonstrating human nature -- loyalty to what you know? We as a country no longer fight so very much for the purity of or institution, witness open borders. So we are losing. Something else will take our place, if history lasts long enough.

My point? Ethics matter, in public life more than almost anything. Make your own list. But in this world virtue does not prevail. That would be a religious law, but it is not a physical one. Strength of purpose prevails, when supported by resources. Is that us? America is like a bag full of cats -- lots of movement, and perhaps a tenancy to roll in a general direction; maybe a hard blow from outside with a stick will change the direction. Not all power is physical. Human power in fact is almost entirely psychological -- intimidation, or inspiration, or what have you. So when we speak of power, and greatness, we wish put are not promised that the individual be considered. There is no guarantee.

Four years ago I read a lot on candidate Fred Thompson, and decided he simply lacked the energy to be president. We get in line behind whomever, because the other guy is worse. Thus ... oh, I'm blanking on the name ... McCain. This time, well, Cain had his blip, but he is so utterly not ready. We want more than a theoretician who mouths the party line. Perry likewise, manifestly unready. Bachmann is a non starter as I may have said. Paul is unelectable. Romney sounds like he's class president trying to win a debate -- talking over himself trying to rush out all his good ideas: it's nice that he has good ideas, but he should slow down a bit ... seems a bit desperate.

Gingritch? Deeply flawed. Like Giuliani. But he's the adult. Hey, junior, this isn't a popularity contest. We want tough, in fact, we want mean. I want, for once, a real asshole to be president. An openly mean guy, ruthless in the cause I espouse. Like, I'm for waterboarding, not because it's the least tortuous technique, but because it's the most torturous that we allow ourselves. Not only do I believe in hell: I want more of it. There is too little justice in the world.

So, so what if Gingritch was a lobbyist for Freddy Mac. A man can't work, for money, in this country? You have a wrong and unamerican idea in your head. Did he give them good advice? He says they didn't take it, so he must have. Unless he's lying. What a surprise that would be. Let's hope he's good at lying, then. Cuz that's what we hire pols to do, and I am not being cynical. Lies I don't find out about, I don't care about. He is an adulterer? Yes. And since you're taking the principled position, you must respond to the fact that he is a repentant adulterer. Or is it just point-scoring that you're interested in? In which case, first, I refer you to Clinton, and second, to your own character. I never did and do not believe I ever would have cheated on my wife. That does not mean I'm not a pig. But maybe you're different.

Get it? Of course old sins matter. They matter if they are unrepented, as showing a low character. They matter if repented, as showing an improved character. I don't want a little boy in office. Sort of what we have now. I want an adult, warts and all.

It's like hiring a lawyer. You want the guy who will fight hard, and win. That's ethics, professional ethics. A vigorous defense. There's a code of professional conduct, ultimately the Constitution. Or the Bible. The Koran? Something outside oneself. Point is, it's a pragmatic thing. We hire someone to do work for pay. I don't care if my plumber has a gambling problem. I don't care if my lawyer cheats on his wife. I don't care if my preacher can't fix a transmission. I want them to be true to what they're paid to do. So if Gingritch sits down with Pelosi to say we need to do something about climate change, well, he has a reason that doesn't show up in the ad, but that is still a good reason. Not great communication on his part? Off with his head. But wouldn't you hate to be on the opposite side of the table from him, debating?

I wish but don't think he'll be the nominee. A safe bet, then. My guy hardly ever wins. Romney is just another pol. Right side? Good. I hope he wins. But this isn't really the time for more of the same, alternating between incompetent left and uninspired right.

Alternative history is a cool genre of science fiction. I'd would have liked to see what it would be like, in real life.

Junk

2011-11-20T17:57:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that was very unpleasant for you. I'm not even going to look at it. I'm not that way in real life, all morbid and depressive. I bottle it all up, like real men should. FP is where I allow things to leak out. It has its own fascination, for all that it's tiresome. But no one holds a gun to your head.

Just needed some sleep, is all. But I make it a habit of integrity to always say everything that comes into my head. Everyone always finds that utterly charming.

I'm finally looking at The Myth of Junk DNA. It's the sort of think I love. And hate. The shoddiness of the Evolutionist logic is, well, shoddy. Really, really breathtakingly bad, their reasoning such as it is. A primer in logical fallacy, and hypocrisy, and blindness. So it's irritating, being exposed to it, as is required in a book like this.

Every protein is made from the blueprint of a corresponding gene. No protein is made without a corresponding gene. Chromosomes are rife with psuedogenes, however -- genes that do not code proteins. Ah ha! Evolution is true! For what Designing Intelligence would allow so much extraneous trash to clutter up his elegant, um, design. QED.

See? The materialist presumes to know the mind of the God that he does not believe in. The materialist supposes that his own grasp on theology is more subtle that that of the religionists. Well, I'm arrogant too. Some arrogance is merited. Some is not.

The "theological" and logical error of the atheists lies in supposing that what is now called junk is actually junk. Non-coding genes could, first, simply be unexpressed -- environmental factors, known to epigenetics, have not yet activated them. They represent unselected but real potentials -- like unordered items on a menu: simply because no one has ordered the sautéed rat fetuses does not mean the cook isn't ready to fry them up. Second, some genes could indeed be obsolete, in the sense that they are mutated into non-functionality. What powers, what attributes, might all lifeforms possess, were these genes to become active, as they would have been before the Fall? If silent genes are not junk, than what might we suppose of Baalam's talking ass? Well, we see talking asses all the time. Wherefore dost thou smite them?

Yes, the Fall, a theological concept, but also a scientific one, completely unacknowledged by the Evolutionist who presumes to refute the Intelligent Design position. Because strawmen are so much easier to beat, than real men.

The clutter of the current genome, demonstrated in mutations if not by Evolutionarily vestigial DNA, is comparable to any other product of entropy. Decay, death, is not part of God's primary design. Vandalism has occurred. God's masterpiece, his paradise, was ruined. So? What great artist would put a useless ugly mustache on the face of a beautiful woman? Clearly, such a mustache is the work of randomness, not of a great artist. But, um, hey, stupid, it is not da Vinci who put the mustache on his Mona Lisa. That you pretend to suppose any serious person would think so is just surreal. Git it? Is it not possible to start with a high order of organization, and fall away from it? If one supposes otherwise, I commend him to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I don't have my copy with me, but last year Dawkins said 95% of the human genome was junk, and the year before another polemicist said it was 50%, and that alone tells us that one or both of these dudes is pulling the numbers out if his or their butt or butts. Well, when you're right, facts don't really matter, eh?

And we've been told about the long strings of mindlessly reproduced DNA, somehow recopied and mislocated on other parts of the double helix. And because, we are told, genes are selfish, they somehow, for hundreds of millions of years, trick or manipulate an organism, or species, or order, no, class -- well, phylum and kingdom ... no, all biology, life itself -- to carry the baggage of these parasitical genes. Even though natural selection conserves resources, rewards efficiency, and pares away useless attributes as a non-adaptive drag, this principle does not apply at the genetic level. ??? Sure.

I've only finished chapter two. It's a short book, but all intro so far. Upshot is, though, that the presumption is demonstrably wrong, that genes must either code for proteins or else be junk. It is known that very much "junk" DNA regulates RNA -- a non-coding process, but a vital one. Well, I had not known that. I haven't paid a lot of attention to this field for the past 10 years. It's been a hard decade. But all along I have not bought the idea of junk DNA, or of useless strings of replicated and misplaced material.

Because there's this thing called polyploidy. Common in plants, and I do recall occurring in fish -- were whole sections of DNA are mistakenly reproduced, and are expressed in the resulting creation of a whole new sustaining species. I think I have a chapter on this, in one of my books, but it's been 15 years so the the precise examples escape me.

See? The same genetic information, cut and pasted onto a different part of the double helix, is or can be functional, adaptive, and vital. What does this do to the heart of "junk" DNA as support for random Evolution? I leave the answer to one's own capacity for logic and critical thought. Of course refuting a given position need not prove some other. But how many of this monster's heads need to be cut off, before it dies? Always, it seems, at least one more. Thus with all religions. Gods can die, and still be worshiped.

Well, I wish this were a discussion group, in which we could go paragraph by paragraph through the book. The author is very solid -- coldly logical, which is my favorite. Here. Or you could borrow my copy, but you'd need to return it.

I am generally so reclusive now, or publicly non-communicative, that it's a bit of a waste, my vast knowledge and amazing intellect. Every once in a while someone is lucky enough to enjoy my tutelage, but it's rare. So sad.

At least they have something to be thankful for.

Like the chicks, who are all so into me, and always listen when I talk about the things in my head, and they're all like, Oh Jack you are so hot and I'm like sure I know that bitch, now go make me some toast, and be quick about it.

French

2011-11-19T17:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe I should buy myself a computer. One of those little ones? A tablet? Do they have internet? Is there a keyboard? I haven't even ever seen one. But it seems like a good idea. That's why I hardly write, here, anymore. I do get my usual inclinations and intuitions, but opportunity is lacking, and obligation is what you owe to me, not the other way around.

I find myself more fluent in French than I was after two years of "study", in my teens. Languages are easier than math. You don't have to think -- just do it. You don't understand my meaning, but have you ever?

Thanksgiving is imminent. I will do nothing. My urge to isolation is increasing. I wonder if I'm giving up. I had a disturbing insight into myself the other day. I'm not going to share it. But it does not bode well for a happy future.

Likewise, this time of year obligates one to consider one's previous family. You know, birth family. My father's birthday is in a few days. I can't fathom why I am so repulsed by the thought of sustained contact. I thought earlier today that all he wants is pity, and he got all he's going to get from me when I was a child. Doesn't that seem pathetic? A child obligated to pity his parents? Burned that gland out. Only it didn't.

It's hard to forgive someone his weakness, when he pretended to be so strong. I believed the lessons of my childhood, about how a man should be. That's how I am. Unyielding. Well, I'll get the forgiveness I'll give. Which seems not to be too much, where it counts.

It's easy to be all weepy about puppies and orphans. But they don't need forgiveness. My idiot father does. I do. Forgiven of my unforgiveness.

Every correction he ever gave, was harsh. Every time I change the radio station I remember him snarling at me when I was, oh, ten, that it wasn't a "channel," it was a "station". Why so violent? Now, around him, I try to keep my mouth shut, lest his voice come out of my head, so angry, aimed at him, old now, and feeble, and pathetic.

I just can't forget. Betrayals like a pursuing pack of wolves, I flee, I howl, useless and self-consuming.

How did you last, without me?

Finger Pointing

2011-11-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

Jerry Sandusky, retired defensive coordinator at Penn State, is in the news. Arrested and charged for, so far, 40 counts of, well, rape? -- child molesting? Ah, thank you Wikipeda: "seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse; eight counts of corruption of minors, eight counts of endangering the welfare of a child, seven counts of indecent assault and other offenses."

Sandusky, if guilty, needs to be executed. He enjoyed not just the peccadillo of oral intercourse, but actual sodomy, on 10 year old boys. A janitor, say, heard a rhythmic slapping sound coming out of the shower area. Jerry's man-sized dick fucking a little boy's asshole. Not that there's anything wrong with it. Between adults, I mean. The difference between an anus and a vagina after all is a matter of mere inches.

Jerry it seems adopted over the course of his family-man years some six children. Boys? He also had numerous foster children. Boys I'm guessing. Those who are bringing charges are not guessing. Either they are speaking the truth, or they are lying. In any case, reports had been made over the decades to the University authorities, who did nothing. I was a teacher for many years, and as such was a mandated reported, obligated by law to report suspected child abuse. Is it different in Pennsylvania? Psychologists are mandated reporters. Janitors, perhaps, are not -- but the janitor reported it. Why didn't the administrators who received such janitorial reports? They need to be ruined, the way these kids have been ruined.

But that would be sweet justice, which we find almost exclusively only in works of fiction.

The little fantasy I have is that some parent confronts Sandusky with a shotgun, and explosively castrates him. Maybe takes out his prostate and bladder too, and the terminus of his large intestine. Collateral damage. I don't have the stomach for such justice -- it's not hypocrisy, just a peccadillo, a kink in the wiring between my moral sensibility and my ability to act. Not everyone can eat meat. But we do need the swift bloody men to whom butchery comes easily. I'll write the soulful poetry -- they can wait in the shadows to cut the throats of creeping monsters.

So there's that. Then there's Herman Cain. Great speaker, attractive personality, down-home man of the people demeanor. Is he a ladies' man as well? I don't care. clinton disabused us of the fantasy that sexual fidelity matters. And clinton reeducated us so that we now understand that it's okay to lie and purger yourself about it. In any case, the worst I've heard about Cain is the accusation that he put his hand on a woman's thigh, and his hand on her head urging it to his crotch. And he stopped when told to stop. So maybe he misread the cues?

Not my sort of behavior, but I was just thinking how the phrase "living in sin" is as obsolete as "shine my shoes, boy", or, um, "sodomy". It's not my style, groping woman. Never have. During my unfortunate marriage, I can't say I was not approached by interested females, and I affirm that I understand the temptation. Opportunities present themselves. But even then, in my frustration and anger, I did not consider the option of betrayal. Some men are different than that. If Cain has an open marriage, so be it. If he lies about it, well, lies are common. Knowing men as I do, I expect it's not unlikely that he's a player. Attractive in his way, type A, confident, a traveling man ... do the math. It should be easy to test.

But isn't injustice an ugly thing? I do happen to know something about false accusations. Were I another sort of man, I would buy a shotgun. But I am mild in almost every way.

Who should the nominee be? Well, the one who can win, but maybe that's not such a small number. Romney is okay, I guess. Perry seems erratic. Bachman is a non-starter. Cain is a business man, but that means all he's ever risked is money. Cain is like Fred Thompson -- attractive and authoritative seeming, but it may be that there's less there than meets the eye.

Gingrich is the smartest guy in any room he's in, and profoundly experienced, and hugely capable, and not unwilling to, say, shut down the government. Very very hated though, as anyone who remembers the 90s will recall. He would make mincemeat of BO in a debate though. Please let that happen. I liked Guilliani. Notice a pattern? I want competence. Don't care so much anymore about peccadilloes.

Discuss.

Mute

2011-11-06T19:44:00.000-08:00

I heard today about some sort of online game ... just looked it up, CityVille, by Zynga. You build a virtual city, or a farm, and no doubt other things as well. Like Simcity I should think, although I've never played or even seen any of them. Last video game I played was Super Mario Bros, in the mid 90s. I understand things have evolved since then. What struck me was that while the game is free, you can buy, with real money, at drugstores or somewhere, credits with which you can purchase things ... yachts or tractors or the ability to do things faster ... to augment your virtual environment.

On the one hand, you're buying nothing at all. On the other hand, what is a crossword puzzle book, or a paint by numbers set, or music, or any passtime? That it's virtual doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. It's a sort of art. I build things. I'm building something right now. For my foolish mother. So I understand creating. And anyone who's read as much as I have shall have no reason to complain about how people spend their leisure time, or their entertainment dollars. It's not a new thing after all. But, um, Zynga is now a billion dollar company. They sell imaginary merchandise for imaginary places. That's a new thing.

Brilliant.

Yesterday I heard on the radio about what they're doing with genes nowadays. There's a machine about the size of a microwave oven that takes jars of powdered nucleotides and combines them into genes with measurable attributes. You want your E. coli strain to smell like bananas? Can do.

Then they talked about a woman who gave birth to two children, but when she needed a donated kidney the kids were not a match because they didn't have any of her DNA.

Not a typo.

It seems when the woman was a 4 day old pre-blastocyte, she was actual twins, which incorporated each other and segregated various functions to one or the other. Blood was one sister, kidneys another. One person, two sets of unique DNA. She is a chimera. How odd.

Then they talked about a college student who wanted to do the experiment: inseminate her own egg with chimp sperm, implant it in her womb and chart its development. What would she do with the, uh, child? "Oh, abort it of course ... it's just for the experiment."

Would it be human? What would its attributes be? Its rights? None, of course, since it would be aborted. Half-chimp fetuses are beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect. So says the Supreme Court, and there is no higher authority, whether moral or civil. I might be getting my centuries wrong, but whatever.

Then some guy was talking about how he envisioned a day when kids and housewives had at-home DNA splicing kits, where you could cut and paste together your own unique species ... part fish, part bat. Cool. Part octopus, part koala bear. Neato. Man, this could be fun.

Given the microwave gizmo, this may not be too far away.

There's a late night radio show, usually utter crap, but one guest said that UFO implants were not tracking devices but a prototype of the mark of the beast, function of which would be to alter DNA. Very interesting. As in the days of Noah. Nephalim were a hybrid mix of angelic and human DNA slash spirit -- angels have biological bodies when they materialize in this dimension. There's an idea that DNA is a sort of conduit between the quantum and the chemical worlds, through which spirit manifests. Mutate DNA and you mutate spirit? In any case, doors are closed, or opened.

We are very near the end, my friend. These are strange and interesting times.

SF

2011-10-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

"We have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge." So says The Idiot.

First, when he says "we", you know he's not including himself, cuz he's the smartest guy in the room. So he means you. Why are you like that? Why are you so lazy and unimaginative and uncooperative? Tsk tsk. You're the reason America is not great, not that it ever was.

Second, he's not saying "We are losing..." -- nope, we have lost it. Past tense. Ship has sailed, then hit an iceberg, then a tidal wave flipped it upside down. And you know he means it, because he's so eloquent and skillful and nuanced. He couldn't not mean it. That would be gauche and boorish and incompetent and inarticulate and really breathtakingly poor leadership. We would NOT elect someone like that. So he means it. Sadly, the aforementioned incompetence applies if he does, which he does, mean it, and also if he does not mean it. A paradox then. We got into our time machine and killed our grandmother. We elected someone we could not have elected. Like Humpty Dumpty, BO is the master of his words, which mean whatever he wants them to mean.

Hey, moron: ambition for what? Building Golden Gate Bridges? Great Government Sponsored Five-Year Planned Projects? Y'ever hear of this thing called individualism? Cuz we haven't lost that ... it's just being highly demotivated by your eh-hole sophomoric masturbatory policies. I got yer too big to fail right here. Stimulate this. Sorry, yer highness ... I am unwilling to be a worker in your hive. Not a problem to imagine what that would be like.

So we've got another carter, giving another Malaise Speech. Hey, moron dumbass, "presidents" have this thing called "the bully pulpit" -- a phrase coined by a good president. Browbeating the country by telling us what "we" need to do isn't actually helpful. Leadership requires more than cheerleading. Cheerleadership? A phrase coined for a crap president. Tied with carter for second worst. Pierce was the worst, what with Kansas bleeding all over the place, but then again, BO could be reelected, and then he'd be the worst. Out carter carter, the highest superlative of naive arrogant incompetence.

Oh, it certainly could be worse. I could be on fire. That would be worse. But please, America, what we need to do is be willing to build some imagination with our ambition, envision a Golden Gate Bridge to Nowhere, for our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children. Never mind why children are having children. My sex ed policies will eventually take effect, in just one generation beyond testable limits, and then Global Warming will be halted because all the body heat from these extra fetuses will quantitatively ease.

Thank you, thank me, and Allah bless The United States of Mexico. Good night.

Extinckoreneous

2011-10-24T16:02:00.001-07:00

I'm having a lot of promiscuous sex nowadays, unprotected of course. Oh, didn't I tell you? I've joined the Occupy Movement, and to dramatize how the Bankers want to screw us all, well, that's what I'm trying to do. Also, I don't bathe, do demonstrate how dirty they all are. And I'm using an assload of drugs, to demonstrate their greed and lack of self control. Mostly crystal meth, but whatever, I'm a real garbage head, to show the world how bad they are. I defecate publicly -- that's just me .. sometimes I don't even drop my pants -- or when I manage to find an indoor john there's no need to flush, cuz I do it on the floor. I make sure not to buy anything from the store, because capitalism is evil. In fact I do a little shoplifting, to share the wealth.

My "gig" is to recite spontaneous poetry, accompanied by mandolin and bongos, while girls dance with scarves. Here, let me make one up now, totally extempore.

Ooooh (moan)

woooooooo!

Hugahfuhbuh

hugahfuhbuh hugahfuhbuh

hugahfuhbuh

flap!

Oh u man wit duh big briefs ... case --

think ur so macho but u ain't the shiz!

Bulging in ur pants like that all

beefy

bulging

but nobodyz looking at u hot cakes

ur money don't make u no man!

Big man! Dat

BULGE

itz in duh back!

uv ur pants!

U carryun a wad all rite ...

of shiz!!!

HUGAHFUHBUH!!! FLAP!!!!!!!!!

Thank you. Thank you very much. I call it Wad Man, no, Wad St. Man -- yeah. To symbolize how phallocentric they are, and how they want us to live in the streets. I think I'll submit it to the New York Review of Book. I was a History of 20th Century English Language Liturature Major, you know, before I dropped out because Major sounds so militaristic and homophobic.

Now I'm getting all these rhymes, like street and sheet, and, um, I forgot.

Oh, another poem:

Occupy Movement!
Occupy ur moment!

ur street

ur sheet

ur bowel movement

ur toilet moment

ur tp role

ur 1-ply street!

Write on the wall, street!

Right on! Rite on! Write one ply

ply ur trades

all day

triple play

okay no way

in ur tie and ur brief

brief

double cross

case!

Thank you. Thank you very much. That one was in danger of actually becoming good, so I had to stop.

But man that Obama, he was the best prezident ever, but since they're all bad, he's bad. Ironic.

Now excuse me while I shiz.

What If Cannabis Cured Cancer

2011-10-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

As I was wet-vaccing the gym floor in my capacity as parttime night janitor, I was also listening to the local communist homosexual radio station. It's their Fall fund drive, and they were touting the cancer fighting miracle of marijuana. Well. Quite a wonderful thing after all! And did you know that the very document of the Constitution of the United States of America was actually written on hemp paper? And can you name one single person in the history of the world who ever died even once from marijuana excluding of course accidents and shit? Why, you'd have to smoke 15 tons in an hour and then you'd just die from lack of oxygen, lol. Um, and, you don't even know the real history of cannabis, it's been used medicinally for centuries and in 1974 the University of Virginia did studies that showed cannabis stopped tumor growth but the US government shut it down. And the body has receptors for isocannaboloids that occur naturally in the body and increase appetite and cause cancer cells to die. Lots of really good science, literally dozens of studies, and a new video documentary narrated by Peter Coyote.

Who knows. Maybe it's true. Of course it's coming from the same Global Warming crowd that thought An Inconvenient Truth proved some sort of actual case. But maybe it's true. Of course it's the same mindset that thinks occupying public parks, bridges and streets is a terrific way to share the wealth and eliminate greed, crony capitalism and, uh, greed. But maybe it's true? Even if it is from the UFO vaccine/autism crowd.

Well. I have such an abiding and profound contempt for drug use, it's hard for me to be open minded. Truth, however, is truth. Lot's of toxic things act as medicine. The body has receptors for opioids as well -- is that an argument for heroin? Of course there are receptors. Otherwise the drugs wouldn't have the effect users love so much. Duh.

But what if it is true? Then I do, really, have to change my position. I don't like that. But I realize that I don't respect alcohol or its use, and its benefits are, um, negligible. There are entrenched social evils, that we have to find ways to live with. Minimal levels of abuse, but abuse there will be. Prostitution. Public, and private, intoxication. Deliberately inhaling noxious smoke. Moronic.

It's just these moronic people who argue for it. I have such contempt for them, or rather for their discernment, therefore their character.

Ah well. Just had to share my dilemma. Because maybe it's true.

fabbook

2011-10-20T11:21:00.001-07:00

This facebook thing is quite disturbing. I went to my page for some reason ... maybe they're always sending me emails ... and there up at the top were four pictures of ME. My name, my image, together, on the internet. For all to see? There was some poorly written stuff about privacy, that I'm not following. Unclear prose: yet another justification for public flogging.

So apparently, if anyone in the world "tags" your name or account to a photo, it appears everywhere? Or only on your own page, and theirs? Or everyone who's friends? A post-highschool photo of a group of us at the wedding of a friend. Three of me getting my brown belt. Man, I am not photogenic. Sort of a Max von Sydow slash Ted Danson slash Charlton Heston slash Patrick Stewart thing going on. Lots of unforgiving shadows. There's another of me on the same original account, shirtless in the midst of a workout. I gave it some thought, and figured, if three are up of me in my gi, then I might as well get a little ego gratification and "tag" the workout photo as well. Cuz I'm not bulky but I am "cut", as you kids say. So there it is now. One of the few genuinely immodest things I've done.

Oh! Hey! Maybe you'd like to see it? Oh, okay.

drumrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroll

No, on second thought, I won't.

But that moronic facebook interaction from a year ago with a highschool friend, I replied briefly to it. I'm finding messages that I didn't know were there. Bit late now. I just don't get it.

Oh all right. I will show you a picture of me. Get set!

Okay, here it is:

Ready? So brace yourself, kay? Cuz here it comes:

Right ... now!

Well, no.

Okay, yes:

No, just kidding. But here I am, for real:

ahem

So brace yourself. One ... two ... three ... get set ... steady ... and .... go!

Go!

Here it is, right ... NOW

BAM! I think I can see Jesus.

I'm deliberately flexing, really hard, total unnatural pose, cuz that's how I am.

Or maybe it's not me, but rather some magnificent beast I found on the internet, a glorious Adonis, an incredibly ripped mega stud that all the chicks totally dig, resplendent in his blinding aurora of virility and unbearable hotness. Maybe.

Or maybe it's me, not posing, not flexing, just doing a workout, the way I do, and that's just how I am.

What?! Kuhdaffy is dead!?!

Progress Report

2011-10-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a lot of gay porn lately. There's a cable show called 1 Girl 5 Gays, which says it all. Talk show, on something called Logo, not a Christian channel. One of the commercials was a bunch of drag queens ... a gaggle? bustle? ah, a glee of drag queens, sashaying on a runway or in a hallway or something, coming in and out of doors, not closets, while giving condom advice. Quite tasteful. I forget what the advice was. But 3 out of 4 AIDS cases are gay males, and a quarter of those are unaware that they're infected. Good to know.

The show is this chick, lesbian I seem to have gleaned, asking questions, and the dudes all chime in. What line would you use to pick up a guy in a bar ("I'd ask him what he thought of my eyebrows"). Describe the lips of the guy sitting to your left (I missed the answers). In a 24 hour period, what's the most penises you've had in your mouth (no zeros: one to 20 -- "What, you've never been in an orgy?"). Whose life coach would you be? ("Sarah Palin -- I'd give her all this shit-advice." ("Oh, I hate her so much." ("I do too.")))

Some of them have the stigmata, lisps and odd vowels. Well, I have an odd vowel. They are all committed, of course, to their lifestyle choices. Lots of fashion, lots of grooming, lots of verbal mannerisms. Of the guys on this show, who's the most rebellious? None of them. They all conform perfectly to their culture.

I don't know. I think we've lost. I think it's too late. Gays openly in the military. So what. Except it's a movement away from one thing and toward another. Legal gay marriage. So what. Except now what's the argument against polygamy? Against incest? Against sex with "mature" 16 year olds, or 14, or 12, or 8? I taught 4th graders who had breasts, large ones. Very mature. All social limits, all mores, are arbitrary. Somebody decided, most others agreed, and society was cohesive -- a necessary element in the definition of society.

Short of a Black Death or a global cataclysm, or takeover by ChiComs or a Great Awakening, there is no hope. These things can happen, but they are rare (plagues) or catastrophes (asteroid strikes), or localized (absorption of Tibet) or miracles (salvation). In other words, unlikely. So what remains for us? The political will follow the social, and this decline will be answered by some horrific and repressive movement from the left, perhaps disguised as the right. It's just a matter of the timeline.

Consider this incredible Occupy thing. Thing is a weak word, but I can't think of a better. Movement is clearly wrong. Phenomenon is not it. Ploy might work, organized as it is by Soros cabals and leftist unions and Canadian radicals. Utterly moronic. They're demonstrating against ... greed? Puh. Thetic. They want all debt forgiven? My mind is boggled. A living wage for all, working or unemployed? Need I say it? Why work at all then? If you can't support yourself, move in with your grandmother. Stupidity does not say it. It is a moral blindness. Like thinking that having 20 penises in your mouth within a 24 hour period is just a thing that can happen when you chance to find yourself at an orgy. Hey there, glad to meet you, I'm Xantu ... here, let me suck your dick. And why not. It's nice to have your dick sucked. Who could turn down an offer like that? Would you? I admit that I have, turned down a few over the years, flattering though it be, but I'm not a normal man. Nice to be paid $20 an hour for being unemployed. Nice to think that behavior should follow desire.

Describe yourself. I have a brutal forehead, an arrogant nose, angry lips, a dimpled chin, sad and watchful eyes, a muscular neck, broad shoulders, narrow waist, wide hips, bow legs. Blond, blue eyes, more hairy than not, lean, almost sallow, increasingly asymmetrical. I don't lie, I will never betray, I weep easily, I rarely trust, sporadically brilliant, underachieving, broken, valuable, not normal, holding my breath. I crave nobility. Of more or less, I am less than I am.

Flawed, then. But it is men like me, you, who will save America, if we do. How? How? America does not have parents. TV, and schools, and peers, and so on, have passively conspired to undermine discernment. Even the not-impressive education I got in the 60s and 70s was orders of magnitude better than the warehouse system we have now. It's not enough to parent our own kids. We have to parent the adults around us. How do you do that? Quietly, patiently, subtly. With moral authority that is discovered, not declared.

But I'm being an idealist. For there to be hope, there has to be a God.

Well?

The Center for Non-Reproductive Rights

2011-10-11T10:49:00.001-07:00

My conscience has been tormenting me, about how small-minded I am, and self-righteous and hypocritical, so I finally decided to stop being such a coward for a moment and actually tried to slightly lessen if not overcome my probably invincible ignorance. I am speaking of course about the The Center for Reproductive Rights, which I am pleased now to inform you is a legal innovator seeking to fundamentally transform the landscape of reproductive health and rights worldwide, and which has defined the course of reproductive rights through their victories in regional, federal, and local Courts around the world, as well as at the United Nations, and also influences the law outside the courtroom, by Reporting on Rights and Engaging policymakers to promote progressive ideas and defeat proposals that are discriminatory, punitive, or dangerous to women's health. Why, The Center is expanding the world community of knowledgeable, committed reproductive rights champions. It sponsors Conferences and Trainings for lawyers and other advocates. And their Law School Initiative is revolutionizing the way reproductive rights law is taught in the U.S.

Okay, I admit, nay, affirm that I just cut and pasted a lot of that, with maybe some changes in pronouns and concomitant grammar. I wanted to preserve the raw, the authentic style -- not entirely conforming to the conventions of standard English usage, you may insist, but that would be paternalistic. We're talking about women here, and their Reproductive Rights, and you want to quibble about capitalizations and dashes. Pathetic. What a hater. The Center people are such committed reproductive rights Champions! Hooah! We shall overcome! They are rights Champions, thrice so, Champions of the Third Right, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ... no, wait ... ah, liberté, égalité, fraternité, except not fraternité cuz that's phallocentric ... sororité ... Reich Champions, I say, Aryan heroes I mean heroins, and not Aryan, Venusian, who are reproductive!

Understand that by "reproductive" is meant "non-reproductive." Cuz we're talking about abortion. Burn baby, burn. What is the word? Sterile? Let's see ... re, pro, duce. From "produce," a section of a supermarket; see "duct," from the Latin, ducere, to lead (c.f. Il Duce, a one-time leader of Italy); "product," to lead forth ... re pro duct, to do so again, generationally, from "generation": the process of creation (c.f. Genesis). "Abort": to interrupt a process. "Process," from the Latin processus, a going forward, root, cedere, to yield, surrender. See "pro-choice," favoring the negative; antonym: "pro-life," opposed to the right to choose.

So that's that. Clarity has been achieved. I feel so much lighter now that I've opened my mind. It was getting crowded in there, what with all those trapped words.

And on The Center's webpage we find the satisfied smile of a lovely young woman of color,

content in the memory of a job well-done. Minorities after all are the major beneficiaries of the right to choose reproductive services. Oh! LOL! Minorities are the majority!!! Haha! That's funny. If there were more of them, they'd be majorities! Hm. I wonder why there's not more of them. It's a puzzlement, a Mystery Rite to Choose, git it? Almost like somebody doesn't want too many of them, these minorities. But that would be racist, and we know who the racists are.

And The Center's webpage also had a cartoon caption contest, and here's a winner:

Right on, man. Word. Cuz the Man is so like that. Ho! Stop, in the name of the Law! Unhand that damsel, you blackguard! Man, that Perry and all those Republicans. More like, um, ReFascisticans. Yeah.

Oh! That cartoon's by Jack Chen! I wonder if it's the same Jack Chen who did such stellar work for the Peking Review (one, two) back in the mid-60s.

See how "Uncle" Sam (the United States) is making that little man jump through hoops? Looks Irish. Imperialistically oppressing Ireland. Looks like Jack got the dollar sign backwards, but he probably didn't really speak English so much in those days. Oh! It's John Bull! Ha ha. Who's the imperialist now, little man?

And here's the Reptile of the North, oppressing Latin America in the 60s. Take that, and that, Serpent! Those gringos are always trying to sneak into the south. Here's a video about Jack Chen, CIA agent who follows the case for six years...!

Babe is hot. Jack must be a double agent, secretly fighting for the People's Republic and Justice for the Common Man and Women's Rights.

Is Jack still alive, fighting the good fight? Must be. Keep on truckin', comrade. You rock for an old dude.

And here's another The Center cartoon (not by Jack though) caption winner:

Oh, that's rich, baby, rich. Situation comedy, dude. Laughter is the best medicine. You can't make this stuff up. So. When you're a winner you're a winner. Wit like this, it's, um, cutting.

Just thought I'd share my new perspective. Death to the unwanted fœti! We shall overcome their persistent and inconvenient impositions and so-called "lives". Nothing but organized mucus. Fuck 'em.

JK

2011-10-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

The untoward consequences of my intemperate lifestyle have overtaken me, and Monday night I had a sore throat, and yesterday I was a bit shaky and fevered, and today I'm a tad drippy. What ever shall tomorrow bring? Yep, I stay up all night partying with my chicks. Sunday morning around 7 AM I snorted a punchbowl of cocaine and threw a credenza out a tenth story window. Then I went to Burger King and ordered 11 raw paddies brought to my table by a Brazilian hooker. I screamed at the guy, "That's right sucka, I WANT IT MY WAY!" Then I pulled out my wang and peed into the potted plant ... well, mostly down my leg. So? I do what I want.

Usually, about once a year, I feel it coming, and just get more sleep and tighten up my diet. This year it came too fast. Raspy voice Monday, sore throat Monday night, and there it was. Gotta get more sleep.

It's coming toward the end of the year now, and I was giving some thought to a charity, International Children's Fund. Very efficient, doing what needs to be done. Then I thought it might be nice to sponsor a child, and went looking for an organization. Save the Children is highly ranked, but I looked them up on Wikipedia and guess what? Closely associated with Planned Parenthood, the world's largest provider of abortion services.

Also closely tied to Population Action International, mission statement, to "ensure that every person has the right and access to sexual and reproductive health, so that humanity and the natural environment can exist in balance with fewer people living in poverty." You know, poverty, cured by fewer people.

Also closely tied to The Center for Reproductive Rights, "a global human rights organization that uses constitutional and international law to secure women's right to an abortion in over 45 countries." Why, not long ago the Center "expanded human rights to its work in the United States. It is now documenting U.S. rights violations through fact-finding reports and holding the U.S. accountable before U.N. bodies that monitor compliance with international treaty obligations."

You might very well call it toxic. I couldn't possibly comment. But. Save Only the Born Children. No thanks. I prefer that humans be killed for capital crimes, rather than for being inconvenient.

Then I looked up World Vision. Again, high ranking, but a bit shady in their advertising, as I see it. No actual sponsorship of a child -- they do communities. That's great, but don't manipulate.

Then I looked at Compassion International. Slightly less efficient, in their higher advertising budget and administrative costs. But I couldn't find any ethical issue, and I figure that's, like, the cost of doing business -- burn 3% extra of a donation, to buy something that gets the job done.

I don't care much about humanity in general. Individuals matter. So they've got a bunch of pages of kids waiting for sponsors. All over the world, all ages. Well it's a big world. Who to choose? It could break your heart. My people, the Scandinavians, they're doing fine. Then I thought, I've got a buddy, let's look at his people. His wife is Laotian: a country not listed. Okay, Thailand then, right next door. Boy, cuz he has boys. Ages 6 to 9, cuz his boys are 6 and 9. And they're all so cute and sweet. Some waiting for over six months. Break your heart. And I figured, the ones with AIDS, or who are crippled, well, they'll get sponsors. After all, we're Americans. So I picked a healthy little six year old. Oh, here:

Well. What a horrible place the world is. I mean, there are actually highly ranked charitable organizations that promise to save children, but support abortion. All you can do is shake your head. What is there to be done? Yet as long as we have the means, something must be done. A small thing, but necessary. So what is it, a 12 year commitment? All of my neckties are more than 12 years old.

When we have the means, generosity is not a virtue, but a duty. Thus, it's not even generosity. As I say, I have a buddy, and for that I count myself blessed. How do I merit kindness? Well, we don't deserve kindness. We deserve justice. But how is the world to be saved? Call it compassion, international. The world is redeemed through kindness.

No.

I am redeemed through kindness.

Fortune

2011-10-03T04:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry, but somehow it just isn't funny to me. The obvious jokes won't do, for some reason. Sarcasm seems inappropriate, and even bitterness toward God, mankind, parents, society -- it just seems like silence is the most appropriate response. What else is there? We see, and we speak or we are silent.

Saini, 25 miles east of New Delhi, India. The little girl, aged one month, is named Lali, meaning "red". The condition is called craniofacial duplication, or diprosopus, and is exceedingly rare, but well documented.

Such infants can have surprising functionality. Little Lali eats with both mouths, and all four eyes blink at the same time. Says the mother, Shushma Kumar Singh, "She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her."

Her parents have refused any special medical treatment for the baby.

Doctors in New Delhi wanted to take a CT scan to determine the state of the infant's internal organs. The father, Vinod Kumar Singh, declined the offer. "I don't feel the need of that at this stage as my daughter is behaving like a normal child, posing no problems," he says. "My baby is fine." Singh, 23, is a poor farm worker, married in February of 2007. The village doctor, Brigdal Nagar, has grown exasperated with reporters. "She is very normal," the doctor once shouted, wagging a finger and shoving the father aside. "We don't need the media here. She's not an abnormal baby. It's just that she has two faces. And she's living a very normal life. And if she dies in the future, it's as God wishes."

The parents view her as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess of power, Shakti, or alternatively as Durga, the fiery three-eyed deity of valor. They have installed loudspeakers outside their home, that blare religious hymns all day.

"Lali is God's gift to us," says Jaipal Singh of the local village council. "She has brought fame to our village." Head of the council is Daulat Ram, who hopes for a temple to Durga. "I am writing to the state government to provide money to build the temple and help the parents look after their daughter." The crowds of pilgrims have dwindled, however, and local curiosity seems to have been sated. Worshipers are rare.

On the other hand, consider Lakshmi, here aged 2, of the state of Bahir, India. Analogous situation. Born with four arms and four legs, remnants of a parasitic twin, anacephalic.

Sometimes babies are born with only one body, and two brains.

An Egyptian girl, Manar Maged, victim of carniopagus parasiticus. The identical twin, unnamed, although having no body of her own could still smile, blink, look around and sleep independently, with a reportedly fully functional brain. Manar died of a brain infection after the twin was removed. Likewise with Rebeca Martinez of the Dominican Republic,

who bled to death after a corrective operation.

As for Lakshmi, surgeons have removed the limbs, transplanted a functioning kidney, and reconstructed the child's pelvis.

After recovering from the 27 hour surgery, Lakshmi was able to stand for the first time in her life, "which is remarkable," said chief surgeon Sharan Patil.

She was taken back to her rural village in eastern Bihar, where, earlier, she had been worshipped by some Hindus as an incarnation of the eponymous four-armed goddess of grace and fortune. After two years, however, she started going to school. No ... she started walking to school.

She has developed scoliosis, which may deform and cripple her. She has other problems as well -- no buttocks, bladder and intestinal issues, abnormal nerve connections to her spine, pelvic malformations. When she walks, it hurts.

But she walks.

What a pretty little girl.

Today

2011-09-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

Got my massage today. As I say, I'm like a thoroughbred. Sort of jumpy. They wanted me to get naked. Nice sweet little voice, "Take off your clothes and she'll be along in a few minutes." I said, "What, all of them?" I'm really not a prude, and not incredibly modest, but that wasn't going to happen. "I'll keep my shorts on." Deep tissue massage. Felt nice. They went easy on me, because I was clear that I'd never had a massage before. "Never?" "Well, not professional." I was after all once married, and while it was not a good marriage, it was a sort of marriage.

Had a nervous stomach all morning though. I don't like new things. But I follow through on my commitments. I don't break appointments. There's a sort of dread resolve about me. Face the music. I know, it's ridiculous, in this instance. But it's an attitude that's borne me through some hellish situations. I have faced ruin, and been overtaken by it, and survived, with rage and bitterness, but with dignity and integrity as well. The wounds bled over into the rest of my soul, and I am damaged, I think, beyond repair, but I am not broken. Who would have thought that getting a massage could be so unsettling to the spirit.

It was nice though. I don't know the etiquette of such a situation, but I try to cooperate. Calm, and as relaxed as I could be. I've had my little jokes, in these pages, sometimes just to be, well, me, and sometimes as a protective device. But a moment of honesty here, uncomfortable for me to speak of, regarding, well, you know, being touched rather intimately by a female. A bit of, um, bumping contact with my junk. Glad I kept on the shorts. To view it as sexual would be ungentlemanly. I did kind of have to think about baseball though, if you get my meaning, a lot. I am happy and relieved to say that I created no cause for embarrassment. With me it is as it were touch and go. I remain disconcertingly hormonal. Unseemly in a man of my years, but I have good genes. Nevertheless, I was technically unresponsive. I am pleased with myself.

But I was utterly wrapped up in my very tightest defenses. Calm, polite, pleasant I think but unengaging. Aloof yet personable, if such a pairing is possible. Entirely professional. Would I recommend it? It seemed like an extravagance. It was a luxury. I am pretty much of a spartan, with a very low need for pleasure. For someone who is more open to life and the world, it's very nice. I have nothing to compare it to, specifically, but I'm sure it's everything it should be.

Later I grew a bit depressed, mourning my lack of normality. I wish I could be normal. I fake it pretty well, I think, but it boils down to a pathology of trust. How often do blessings fall upon us, that we find peace and friendship and love? There is a temperament, such as mine, that I affirm aspires to a sort of nobility, guarded, honed, but at a cost, and out of balance. I mourned my inability to find peace.

But I'm fine now.

Also today I got my bjj brown belt. It is an obligation. Unexpected, surely, since I am not very skilled technically. But I've loosened up a lot, playing a more open game, less cautious. Took long enough. Rolling with white belts once in a while helps quite a bit. Got the purple belt May 14 of '09, so almost two and a half years. If I'd been training all this while it would certainly be time. But I'm so rusty. Ah well. Secret learning must be happening. I'll take it. Gonna start looking through my bjj books though. Gotta represent.

Coming into the dark months now. I get up well before sunrise, drive through the blue-gray streets, having slept generally perhaps four hours, maybe three, maybe five. Can't nap in the day, hardly ever. Just can't sleep, and if I do, I'll be awake all night. Get to sleep in on Fridays though. My favorite day, then.

So. Now I will go buy some brown dye, and bring my old white belt, then blue, now purple, up to date. Only one more transfiguration to go, and I'll be done.

Awkward Photos

2011-09-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

They blocked my craigslist account on account of it was so many inappropriate and all the ads were constantly being flagged, so I had to set up a whole new account, and so I was on yahoo and so I saw this picture

of some sports guy, Brad Marchand, and his tattoo that he got when he won some sports event. It was about how the tattoo was misspelled. "Champions" had been spelled "ChampiAns." Actually, it was, and remains, "Starley Aip Chanpiars". Here he is prior to getting his tattoo. Alcohol may have been involved in the decision. And just who are the Bruzns? I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

This got me to thinking about macho guys and shaved hairy bellies and so on, which brought me right to my brother:

Very attractive.

But not as hot as me

here with one of my babies' mammas.

Here's me before my latest girlfriend:

Sorry, just can't reveal my face to the world. Modesty, of course.

Here's the president of a charitable association my across-the-street neighbor belongs to:

Their mission statement: "We like to take kids to parks and stuff."

Ah well. Some selections from my album:

Sometimes we let the dog babysit.

My nephew took his mom to the Prom.

My brother went alone.

We're the freakin' Jetsons, baby. Now let's go "chat" on Myspace with all these phat nobs.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

How can Bunnies be Evil?

Oh yeah? Well we're happy with them, and that's all that really matters.

This is the story / of a man named Boody...

A picture of my soul.

Election Day, 2008.

Step Back

2011-09-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

My son came by and did a workout. Made me do it too. He beat me, 237 to 234. Not bad, eh? Three points. He said after that he hadn't thought I was in such good shape. Then he said I would have won the Masters Level at the competition he organizes. Well, that's nice to hear of course, but I'm not strong enough yet. Squats aren't where they need to be, nor deadlifts, and this particular workout was tough, but perhaps not representative. Even so, a little validation from someone you respect is nice.

I definitely was not feeling it. Just finished rolling, all stiff and achy. I'm out of practice. No technique at all. Distressing. I'm very limited, and get by just by having long bones. Ah well. My nephew came by for a few BJJ lessons. He is very very skinny. Six two, maybe 145 pounds? He said that a few months ago he was 130. Emaciated. Boy needs to eat. Of course, he'll be 31 in a month. My family is full of very slow starters. Failure to launch. It's a parenting failure. The job of parents is to prepare children for successful adulthoods. This includes but is not limited to a capacity for happiness. Also important is character, and contributions to society, and stability ... being not worthless ... you know, being a full and rounded human being. Not my strong suit, but I'm pleased with my own son.

That's why I was glad he went into the Army. As soon as he graduated high school. I'd have liked to have talked a bit more with him about it -- he went with his mother to sign up ... that was odd, her an old lefty hippie and all -- but it certainly broke the dysfunctional H family pattern. Frankly, the Curse. My father actually talked about it, lectured us when we were kids, my brothers and I, all set down in the livingroom listening to his hellish sermons for hours and hours. How he had been cursed by his father, and we were cursed by him, and we would curse our children. You know, poisonous and stupid. Under the circumstances, I knew I was cursed. But I also knew I would not pass it on.

N came with a lovely young woman, who did the workout as well. Same woman he was with last week, at the competition. I was a judge there. I always have nowadays in the back of my mind the question of when N is going to get married. When I was his age, he was three. I loved being a father. I expect to love being a grandparent even more ... no, just as much. But it's not my style to push. Pushing doesn't work anyway.

My father is on my mind. I can't think of a way to visit him. He's old and pathetic and crippled and fading pretty fast, but I just can't be his savior. I'd visit him if someone came with me, or if it were not at that mausoleum of a house. Yes, I know, a lot of ifs. My love is conditional. I said to my nephew that I didn't really know him -- I'd probably spent 50 hours around him in his whole life. Then I launched into a philosophical disquisition about love. Hope I didn't curse him. But I was the sane one in his childhood, trying to council his moronic parents into responsible effective parenting. I mean, I'm an expert, for real. You recognized that of course. Everyone knows that Jack may be hard to hear, but he's right, and if he's not right, he's honest.

Ah well. Politics is in the air, but it hardly seems worth while. The Resident of the White House is proving to be corrupt as well as incompetent. Quelle grande surprise. Chicago rules: don't bring a Bible to a Koran reading.

And the rest is silence.

A Second Look

2011-09-12T01:42:00.000-07:00

I realize you don't constantly flip through the pages of this work. It's your loss of course, since I have been known to go back and change a few things ... style is my style. Jack "Style" H, in fact. I did it just now, with Duh, and it's so fascinating to all right-thinking people that I feel the need to share the changes, re-edited here to stand alone. Because I know how you are.

Context: a comparison between human and ape skulls, from an Evolutionary perspective. Some sarcastic evidence adduced on my part, taken from a racist website:

Rodney Rhines, whose extreme racial characteristic, specifically of the prognathous jawline, is taken as a sign of primitiveness. And also, Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev:

whose forehead is something to behold.

One of the burdens of being incomparably brilliant is that I think beyond the mere surface at which people of your ilk are stuck. So I wondered what appearances would yield if I took up God's chisel and crafted a few sculptural changes.

Hmm. It seems there is room for a human brain in that skulls. It's not that he doesn't have cranial capacity. It's that he has extra bone. Like me! Well then. He must be a genius.

As for Rodney, La!

Oh my. My my my. Rodney is quite a handsome black man. If I, with my crude Paint skills, can so recraft Rodney's features, imagine what a slightly more benevolent Providence could have had in store for him. We might know him through his pictures in fashion mags, rather than municipal police department mug shots. Fellow looks like Mario Van Peebles. Beauty is a game of inches. He's a rock star if you shorten his profile by three inches. That's what she said.

As if we knew a man's character by the shape of his bones. I saw a man once in a Staples store, who had marble-sized lumps all over his visible skin, placed about two inches apart. Not warts, not pimples, just lumps, like a horned kiwano melon.

It must take incredible character to face the world with good cheer, when one is deformed in one's face. But let's Move On.

So here's a lament over the flood of Irish immigrants in the last quarter of a previous century, combined with the disaster of the emancipated slaves. Both groups could vote, you see, and that couldn't be a good thing, ruining the North now, and the South.

We know they're bad, because they have big jaws. They're after our Lucky Charms, begorra, and our White Women.

Moving from the minefield of political opinion to the comfort of objective measurement, we have Camper's Facial Angles, scholarly monograph from 1821, offering empirical proof of Evolution:

A. B. C. D.

E. F. G. H.

A. tailed monkey 42º, B. orangutan 48º, C. Negro and D. Kalmuck 70º (Western Mongol tribe), E. European 80º, F. Grecian and G. Roman busts 95º, and a diseased H. hydrocephalic 100º. See? That proves it. The best thing to be is hydrocephalic. I think that's the point. Maybe European. Northern European. Scandinavian, specifically -- Danish and Norwegian. From Østre Toten on the maternal grandmother's side.

Well, Camper was not an Evolutionist, but we drink from many wells.

Yes, there's so much more to say, but you are insufficiently appreciative, and therefore unworthy of my further notice. I do however trust that you had a Merry Nine Eleven holiday, enjoying all the customary festivities. I got sunburned. First it hailed, I kid you not, then it made the side of my neck red.

I hate it when stereotypes are true.

9-11 + 10

2011-09-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

What, is it ten years already, from Islam's greatest achievement since the sacking of Byzantium? I don't mean to be very insensitive -- just a little bit -- but come on, America. Move On. You know, like the Left has done. It may have been the worst single thing to happen to America for three generations, but as these things go, in much of the world having your village attacked and most of your acquaintances killed is a common thing. Pick almost any country in Africa, or many regions in the Middle East, Israel included -- China, or Soviet Russia, where the government itself is/was the terrorist -- and reconsider. Our 3000 dead, out of a population of 300 million, well I know I'm being Bill Maher stupid, but get some perspective, people.

Indeed. Perspective. It's not about post traumatic stress, or reverence for the fallen, or on-going health issues. It's the resolve to find and kill the enemy. Given that the media elite continue to protect us from the actual images so thoroughly preserved via countless cameras, it's hard to take this commiseration seriously. We don't need only the monuments and the flowers at memorials. We need the taste of asbestos dust and the stench of day-old blood. A present reminder. Lest our first passion grow cold.

It's like being invaded by Martians though, isn't it. An alien race that looks upon us with cold rage through a reptilian faith, feigning heat because it suits some habit of mind. Oh, we're so enraged by the idea of your decadence. They plot their assaults, laying in wait, women and children are the sweetest victims -- they have such soft bones.

Moslems aren't bad, mostly. They're just typical humans. Stupid, lazy, cowardly. Don't make waves. Better to let the haters have their way. Maybe they won't come for me. And if they do, maybe I can join them. Honestly, we have seen it before, this whole Punch and Judy shambles. Arabs are a bit more ramshackle than their orderly Aryan brethren, but we have so very much seen it before.

So today, when the car bomb does or does not go off, don't be angry with me, for knowing a future that is as predictable as a sunrise. What do vandals do? Rapists? Poisoners? We are all true to our natures -- the scorpion included.

Ten years, and what? Status quo, as I see it. New enemies for old. It's not an Arab spring, it's an Arab fall. It's what happens when you suppose a tribal people could understand the greater world. We're dealing with a child-sacrificing moon-cult, fer cripes sake ... of course they are eager to burn down the world to destroy us. Is al-Queda weaker? Broken? Irrelevant. Hey, Lefty -- it's your phrase, so obey it: follow the money. Iran? Saudi Arabia? Imagine a country named after its ruling dictators. Money can always buy chaos from crazy men. Stuck in their leather tents, they can bay at the moon. But somehow we import them past our borders. Let the wolf guard your babes -- it'll be find ... have faith.

Why? Because we're crazy too, and stupid. Like everyone. Adam had a paradise, and look what happened. Upshot? Who will save us? Obama? Politicians? No. Heroes will save us. Don't you know that? If you've forgotten, well, it's been ten years, and that's a long time. Look on YouTube. Maybe there's a video, somewhere, of a hero or two.

Happy Nine Eleven Day.

Always

2011-09-10T01:53:00.000-07:00

Duh

2011-09-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

I am, frankly, a little embarrassed. It's so obvious, so very very obvious, and I never thought to do it before. I took a look at Hybrids, from a few weeks ago, and then just now went looking at various neanderthal skulls, to see how different they were from Homo erectus. You know, because we Evolved, from germs, and from inert matter, out of the Big Bang, which happened for no reason. Isn't that what science proves? Go back far enough, and you find randomness and spontaneously forming organization? Of course it is. Read a book, ignoramus.

So here are some neanderthal skulls:

and here are a couple of Homo erectus:

...well, this last guy has fangs, so there's that. But no, not necessarily fangs. I mean, he has no gums ... and lots of people have a long canine. The notable feature however for all these individuals is that slopping bony forehead. So primitive. So apelike. Clearly not human. Humans after all are white. Not these dark races, these, uh, you know ... subhumans. Man I hate them all so much. Stinking animals. They breed like rats, they live like pigs -- can't read, can't write, can't think. Hitler was right.

Oh, did you think that was my opinion? LOL. No, That's what the Evolutionists must think. You know it's true, for two reasons. First, they think that some humans are more human than others, depending on the Evolution some races have enjoyed over others. You know, they think that some races are closer to this,

a gorilla, or this,

an orangutan, or this,

a chimp.

And that's what I'm embarrassed about. When you compare different races of humans, there are, well, differences. Of course. The lovely, high, straight, Aryan brow we find idealized in textbooks, so intelligent and superior and human, when compared to the sloping microcephalic lump of the mudpeople ... well, Hitler was right ... if you're an Evolutionist. Except, when you compare any of the human skulls with any of these true ape skulls ... the difference is not one of interpretation or opinion. It is beyond dramatic. It is decisive. You are dealing with animals, or with humans, with no ambiguity betwixt. Is that not obvious?

Paleontologists have a number of dirty little secrets. One is that ape bones and human are often found together, and an Evolutionist has little reason for not confusing them as belonging to a single individual. Nuff said. Another is that you can frequently adjust the angel of the facial plate re the cranium, because of the fragmentary condition in which these bones are found. You can slope the face out and make it look like an animal, or tilt it in to make it look human. It's not dishonest -- just a bias at work ... and that's called opinion.

But really. I have a bit of a keel running longways along the top of my head, like Captain Picard. Oh, I've got lots of bones. I've got bone where most people don't have body. Jealous? In no way to be mistaken as brutal or stupid, thank you very much. If anything, because it is me we're talking about, it is a sign of superiority, of course. Are we therefore to conflate bone morphology that falls within the human continuum, with apes? Does that chimp snout or those fangs, or the flaring sagittal crests of male apes, look anything like the previous, human bones? It answers itself.

Second, this guy:

Probably still alive. A native Malaysian. Indeed, that is one dramatic forehead. I thought I was spectacular, but this vato has me beat by inches. Get the point? Dude's skull is not even neanderthal. Homie is erectus.

And here are some pix I got off a neo-Nazi site. You know, Evolutionist:

Spike Lee, noted racist and sloping-forehead possessor.

Some black dude, Rodney Rhines according to this impeccible source, with not so much an ape forehead as, well, need we say it?

And my favorite, Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev:

Now that is one impressive brow! Wowwie! But being me, so kind, so merciful, I've airbrushed this brute's forehead into something a bit more human.

Hmm. I may have to re-think this man's humanity. It seems there is room for a human brain in that skulls. It's not that he doesn't have cranial capacity. It's that he has extra bone. Like me! Well then. He must be a genius.

And while we're at it, let's see what we can do for poor Rodney.

Oh my. My my my. Rodney is quite a handsome black man. If I, with my crude Paint skills, can so recraft Rodney's features, imagine what a slightly more benevolent Providence could have had in store for him. We might know him through his pictures in fashion mags, rather than municipal police department mug shots. Fellow looks like Mario Van Peebles. Beauty is a game of inches. Shorten his profile by three inches, and he's a rock star.

But it's the comparison between human, any human, and animal that is dispositive. It's so clear that to see is to be corrected. I must have been the first person to ever think to do it. Typical. You mere humans are so limited. It's so lonely, being Homo superioris. How I pity you, so contemptible, so loathsome. But I digress.

Or do I.

ER

2011-09-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

Time gives perspective, so there's that. Sunday I got the message that my father needed to go to the emergency room. He's not allowed to have a drivers licence. Well, I'm trapped, aren't I. Who else is there? He's insulted my brother's wife so deeply that this door is closed. My other brother is 40 minutes away, and my father doesn't like him anyway. Not that he likes any of us. He's done me, at least, the courtesy of informing me that he doesn't like me, so I don't have to wonder. I spent most of Sunday night ranting to myself like a madman. I am definitely sick, on this issue.

But that's how I spent Labor Day -- in the ER, waiting for my father to come back out. He'd fallen a couple of months ago, and hurt his shoulder and his hip, and he said there was pain and it wasn't healing right. Now the doctor has told him there's significant atrophy. My father has been a weightlifter for over 50 years, so it's a real crisis for him. And of course there's the sad fact that half of all old people who break a hip die within 18 months. He didn't break a hip, but he is fading.

You can see this is a real character flaw in me. A pathology, frankly. A disease of the soul. Poisonous. There must be a big reason for it. I wish I could remember. But it's on him too. There has never been a relationship that he has not betrayed. Now he is living out the end of a life that brought him to a place of profound isolation, loneliness, regret, incomprehension and pain. I wrote a poem over 35 years ago about it. It ended, So die alone, you/who did not need and/would not have/our love. How did I know? Even as a teenager I could see it coming. If I'm unsympathetic, it's not because I don't see how pitiful he is. And I am sympathetic. But I don't want to expose myself to the madness.

As I was dropping him back home, he told me again how any day now I was going to have prostate problems. I just gave a cynical laugh and shook my head. He wondered what it was. Apparently he didn't remember having this conversation with me on a prior occasion. I suggested that prostate problems are powerfully correlated with dietary animal fats. He disagreed, being, as he is, a bigtime milk drinker. I asked him when the last time was that he read a book. He said, sort of softly, that he reads. I asked if it was anything like a large body of non-fictional information presented in an organized manner.

I am right, but it's unworthy of me. Something about leopards and spots. He is a foolish crazy old man who needs to be loved, and although I have many complex and confused feelings, I don't feel love. It's not only that I am a hard man. I am harsh, as well. An unlovely trait.

My foolish mother has a number of untrained and not housebroken little dogs that, if they have names, don't know them, and who yap and snarl at the wind and shadows and the spots that float across the surface of their eyes. I suggested that she give one to my foolish father. She said, "Oh, but they all love each other so much." I said, "Did you hear what you just said?" She hadn't. Better that a dog be stupidly indulged, than that a desperate old man have at least a dog as a companion. No matter. He wouldn't accept a dog anyway. Don't ask me how I know. He wants things exactly the way he wants them, or nothing at all. Sort of the reason he's alone now.

I wish I were braver, in this. I just don't need the pain -- facing all the turmoil of ugly emotion boiling as in a magma chamber in the depth of my heart. If I could have someone with me, for a visit, or if it weren't always at his god-awful house -- emotionally something like the house in Silence of the Lambs. But who would go with me? My brothers? Not likely. Trapped trapped trapped. What a world.

Pulp

2011-09-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty pleased with myself. More so than usual, that is. I've long been thinking about smoothieing salads, but haven't gotten around to it until now. Juicing is not actually all that incredibly great an idea -- mostly what you're getting is the carbs and some colored water -- good nutrients in that, but it's only part of what should be available. All that pulp is fiber, and all that color in the pulp is nutrition, usually being tossed out. Waste is a sin.

So I hunted up my old Champion Juicer that I bought in 1979 (before I was born, since I'm only 29), and put it to use. (It's still going strong, like me!)

Mine’s yellow too!

The juice comes dripping out the square bottom there, into a bowl or something, and the pulp comes out the barrel into another bowl as a rather obscene-looking tubular extrusion. Not a great design, I affirm, what with all these bowls, but there you go. I took bags of frozen chopped spinach and Brussels sprouts and mustard greens and turnip leaves, and romaine lettuce and endives and parsley and arugula, celery and yellow carrots and half a red onion, and so on -- all the salad stuff that it's a chore to eat -- and jammed it through and then mixed it all together again, juice and pulp, in the blender. Got about 6 cups full of slow thick green goo. Put them in the freezer, ready to go.

Had some last night -- drop the frozen block into the blender, add lots of water, get something more than two glasses out if it. Add a bit of Braggs for seasoning. Sip, don't swill. Icy cold. Really, it's pretty good. Quite good. All things told, it's easy. Get five days or a week's worth done at a time, the equivalent of an unreasonably big and onerous salad, but nothing except fantastic nutrition. It is, frankly, a genius idea. Makes literally every nutrient available, no need for cooking since the fiber is completely broken up, sipped so there's no overwhelming of the enteric enzymes, really easy. How else could anybody be expected to eat chard, whatever that is, or bok choy, whatever that is. Yuck.

For my recent 29th birthday someone gave me a gift certificate for a massage ... a therapeutic massage. I have to admit I'm feeling some trepidation about it. Scoured the website searching for the difference between deep tissue, Thai and shiatsu, and not finding it. That troubles me. I'll have to talk to someone and I'd rather read than talk. Well, they're masseuses, not web designers slash professional communicators. My tissue has the consistency of a leather bag filled with fist-sized rocks. It seems there's something more to health than just a superb diet and an amazing capacity for stellar athletic performance. It fills me with inexplicable melancholy, the idea that we need other people, sometimes, to maybe touch us.

Do I have to take my shirt off? Will they touch my legs? Oh, I can handle it. But I'm pretty skittish, like a thoroughbred, high strung, untrusting. You know, normal.

All in all though I'm feeling pretty good. Now I have to figure out how I can share the genius of my many brilliant insights. Because the people are like sheep without a shepherd, knowing not what to do.

Big Suppluh

2011-09-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

All this talk about Big Pharma. Well, there used to be these things called "Rail Roads," and they were Big and controlled a lot of the old-time American economy, and they had Influence, and controlled Legislative Bodies and Executive Branches and Judiciaries. Nowadays however Rail Roads are a Foot Note.

I like the railroads. I think they're a good idea. I think trucks are for moving freight around inside cities, and trains are for moving freight around between cities. Call me a Stalinist if you must, but there is an economy of scale. No matter. We've moved beyond railroads, and reality is what it is.

Same though with the drug companies. They are very important, very powerful, because people give them a lot of money because they want and think they need the drugs. Money is for getting power -- even if only the power to fulfill material dreams, buying things to be happy. But in this instance it's about influence and power -- lobbyists and favorable laws for large corporations. No point in complaining about it. If you don't like Big Pharma, don't need their drugs.

I have a dear friend, best friend I've ever had, who recently had some back pain and nerve issues, arm tingling etc. His doctor said it was trauma-induced arthritis in the neck, and to restrict physical activity, like, forever, and to stop doing the sport he loves. My instant visceral reply upon hearing this was, "Absolute bullshit."

We do not give in, give up, submit, merely because of an opinion. We investigate, research, find alternatives, find solutions. We never crumple. We stand, or we fall and then stand, but we never lie down and fall asleep in the snow. Is there no one who loves us, that we should despair?

Medical doctors are about illness and drugs, not about health and healing. Suppression, instead of cures. No, not all doctors of course, but the Establishment, man ... Big Medi. I'm certainly being simplistic. But it's true. Don't take medicine, drugs, unless they cure, or rather aid your body in curing itself. Better, provide your cells proactively with what they need, feed them the nutrients, the necessities that allow them to do the job they're made to do. Metabolic competence. Nutritional rationality. Rather than diktats based on theories and imposed from far off centralized bureaucracies. Who knows, maybe Great Leaps Forward and Five Year Plans and New Deals and, um, Stimulus Packages could work ... someday. And maybe toxic drugs are the best way of dealing with some diseases -- the kind where you're about to die, so try anything.

My friend now thinks that the symptoms or signs rather of arthritis in his neck are coincidental only, and not a cause of the pain. The doc saw an issue, and assumed it was the problem. A logical fallacy. My contention is that with excellent nutrition and some time, will come healing, and the pain and tingling or numbness should go away. Provided the body is given a chance to heal itself. When it comes down to it, our concern is not with causes, but with cures, not with problems but solutions. It's not about blame, it's about results.

Meantime, the second relevant thing I did, after saying "bullshit," was to go online and order some nutritional supplements, all demonstrated to have a beneficial influence on arthritis -- which may not be the cause of the pain, but it was the cause of confusion, and could have been the cause of a man giving up on a whole area of his life that was very important to him. This sort of confusion needs to be eliminated.

I'm not much of a gift giver -- it's just that there are needs that people will not fulfill for themselves, until someone else starts the process. It's what friends do for each other -- we care about each other, and show it by caring for them, tangibly, whether materially, or emotionally, or what have you. There are limits, boundaries, and that's a nuanced thing, but there are clear needs as well, and helping in such instances is not only a pleasure, it's a duty.

I'm expecting a couple more packages over the next few days, but it's a long weekend and I didn't want nearly a week to go by before at least some of these pills could be put to use -- so tonight I handed over what had already come. Call it an early birthday present, although it's not, or a Labor Day present, if there were such a thing. But it's friendship, and it's love, as much as I can show it.

We protect and fight for and sacrifice and are loyal to what we love -- country or family or friends. It's faithfulness, without which everything is betrayal.

ggl

2011-08-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Images that come up when I googled "$800 vagina":

No, that's not it. More of a dick than a vagina. Dude's lady talked him into trying to impregnate a 12-year-old girl, so the lady could get a bigger welfare check. Here's the lady:

Orange suits them.

And this came up:

I fail to see the resemblance ... but it's been a long time since I've actually seen a vagina. Is this a vagina, nowadays? Has Evolution been at work behind my back? This, if I'm not mistaken, is an asteroid. I am not an asteroid man ... back in the day, I identified myself as a vagina man. But I'm old now, and passed all that.

Ah, this is getting closer:

This is the strip mall that a sex-crazed loser and pervert crashed a semi into and grabbed an $800 vagina, complete with legs and buttocks. No torso. And I mean he used a semi TRUCK.

So I'm a part-time janitor at the gym I workout at in, and I've got repetitive strain injury in my left elbow from all the mopping I do. I've switched lead arms, and keep the left crooked into my chest, but that's not helping a lot. I asked Duwayne, the head trainer, for some sort of electric mop, but he just laughed at me and later poured crushed ice down my shorts. Man I hate that dude. He's all roided up, so I don't make eye-contact with him, but I'll find a way to get even. Like, uh, switch his contact lens solution with super glue, or, uh, switch his hemorrhoid cream with ben gay, no, tiger balm. You know, I'll switch something for something else, and it will be great. Maybe his steroids with hemorrhoid cream. Get it? That'd be great. Yeah. Sterrhoids. That's good. I should market that, make a lot of money, quit this nowhere job and open that carwash I've always dreamed about running. Hot babes in shortshorts all wet and wild rubbing down red convertables with lots of suds and a little Ozzie blaztun from these mega hemi PX amps I got my eye on about the size of a two story building. And the chicks'll be all, Oh Jack you're so fine and hot and we love your rippling muscles and your hairy chest and masculine bony forehead and long pointed nose that's so hot, and I'll be all, sure baby, I'm yer one and only, now go wash my red TransAm and make me some money, and put on some Arrowsmith and gogo dance for me and shake your long hair all falling in front of your face and sweaty. Yeah, that's what it will be like. Man.

What, is it Sunday? Missed church again.

Hybrids

2011-08-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

Creative energy is a temperamental thing, and I find that mine is sleep-dependent. This blog will continue to be rather neglected until my own schedule becomes a little more civilized. It's not so much time-management as it is desire. Just not motivated -- like a starving man, who only sits.

But here's a very cool idea. I was watching a NOVA program on neanderthals. Didn't see much of it, but a child's skull yielded info on its diet, which was almost entirely meat. All across Europe, for all those tens of thousands of years, a very consistent diet.

I of course do not adhere to the religion of Evolutionism. I have a very primitive, backwards way of looking at the world. In point of fact, I am a biblical literalist (sadly, it needs to be pointed out to bigots and ignoramuses that there is such a thing as poetic language), and I find convincing evidence for a young Earth, a world Flood and an Ark of Noah. Whence then, neanderthals?

The evidence for multiple hundreds and thousands and millions of centuries is the same evidence for a young Earth. Evidence is evidence. It's the interpretation that has power to convince or dissuade. I shan't go into it here. But if neanderthals were so very different from our current human gene pool, it is a confounding and perhaps invalidating problem, for me. Some explanation then?

It was said in the NOVA program that apes have a far greater genetic diversity within species, than do humans. Let's accept this as true. They had lots of time to mutate, Evolve, from a parent strain? Or they are segregated populations from which environmental stresses have selected traits -- so that modern apes, in their clans, are less diverse, rather than more, than their founding pair of ark-borne ancestors. See? We choose our interpretation depending on our bias.

The ape info was used to highlight the very narrow gene pool of humanity -- one authority said there was a genetic bottleneck in humanity's distant past, to explain this. Well, yes? Um ... the Ark? Alone, this would be a simplistic explanation. Understand though that it was not one family, but four, on the Ark. At least four: there is no need to suppose that Noah's three sons were also the offspring of Noah's (current) wife. So, Noah's line, and the genetic contributions of four unrelated women -- and unique contributions from the three sons as well, if each had a different mother. In any case, among the wives do we find neanderthals, a now-extinct fully human race?

Wow, these neanderthal skulls are REALLY primative looking ... primatish:

Great big bony ridge across forehead -- really hideous ... like mine ... although my forehead itself is quite high ... still, those bones.

I'm somewhere between the guy on the left and the guy on the right:

Brrr.

Be that as it may, I kept thinking how racist they are, these Evolutionists: because a race has a bony forehead, they're practically apes? And I was thinking I'd like to see, say, the skulls of Australian aborigines, as a comparison. Because they have skulls that are morphologically indistinguishable from bones identified as Homo erectus.

So Homo erectus, and please note that he's blond, like me (and therefore superior) ...

...and this guy:

... who is/was an Australian aborigine who lived no more than 150 years ago.

QED.

Well, I seem to have taken a tangent. My point was something else. I said there was a cool idea. All this has been cool, but other than my intention. Here it is. Call to mind the biblical Nephilim, the race of giants bred from human females and (fallen) angels. Nimrod and his ilk. All sorts of extrabiblical stories about them. Well. What if these angels mated not only with humans? I mean, they don't have actual DNA, being as they are spirit beings. They just get DNA, while they're slumming down here on God's footstool. Could they not just as easily manifest as animals, and mate with them? Satan after all came as a serpent.

And what would the offspring be, of animals and angels? This is where it gets cool. A transmogrified ape, then, raised higher than apes, intelligent now, with language, with tools, morphological enhanced, as the nephalim were giants -- but still, somehow, primitive.

It is Satan's attempt to supplant humanity, create his own intelligent race, which seems, somehow, to be his intent. How would God react? What genocide was ordered, to slay on sight these marked outcasts? When Joshua conquered Canaan, he was ordered to kill even the children of some cities. Wherefore? It was the land of the Anak -- who were Nephilim -- human-angel hybrids. See? God doesn't like this playing around with DNA.

Oh, it gets cooler, but this is enough.

As for neanderthals, it's always suspicious to me, these incredibly long, static periods -- multiple tens of thousands of years, where nothing changes in the paleontological record. Same with the various "dark ages" -- fictions, by my reconstruction of ancient chronology -- where in Egyptian or Mesopotamian archaeology there is no evidence save the lack of evidence, or, in some cases, an actual resurgence of styles obsolete for many centuries. Ad hoc inventions to save a bad theory. So with apemen. Must it be stasis for a hundred thousand years? Perhaps, rather, it's centuries only, stretched out to fill the millennia of Evolutionist expectation? Oh, there's evidence for such an idea, lots of evidence. You should have read my book on the subject, when you had the chance.

Last time I did research into Homo erectus skulls, there was no internet. You kids have no idea how easy it is for you. You know that today is my 52nd birthday?

Hmm. I must have gotten some sleep last night. Lots of creative energy. But that's just me -- get all caught up in something. When I can find someone to get up early in the morning for me, I'll have all kinds of energy. Work out more. Write a few more books. Until then, you will wait patiently for my next blog post. Sucka!

Horns

2011-08-19T16:19:00.001-07:00

If it weren't for Jesus, God would be a monster. He would be Satan -- Look at how glorious I am ... worship me. Aloof, judgmental, a monster of self-satisfaction, for all that he is glorious. But that's not God. God is more than that. It isn't only mankind that is redeemed by Jesus. God is justified by Jesus. Which is as much as to say nothing, since it's not about justified, but revealed.

The religionists who worship some other god -- moslems, buddhists, etc -- not perhaps Jews, since they, some of them, await the revelation that we have seen -- those religionists, I say, depend on their capacity for faith, rather than for discernment, in worshiping their god. A god of power only ... well, how is that not Satan? A capricious god, like Allah -- one must have faith that Allah's caprice will favor oneself, despite caprice. The God who is God has shown his goodness, beyond that assumed by faith. Jesus shows it. One might object that we have to have faith in Jesus. But we have to have faith in the sunrise as well. That which has occurred, still requires faith. But it's objective faith. How is Allah good? By declaration. I am good. Trust me. But words are what we use to tell lies with. Actions tell the truth. Jesus, action, truth. By definition.

I say this because I am consumed sometimes by the horror of the world. The injustice. What a monstrous place. Pointless and cruel. A god who is in charge of this must be cruel. The logic is sound. To excuse it as preparation for something great is to ignore that fact that hell exists ... imagine a tragic life followed by an eternity of hell. Cruel and pointless. God's justification is not that we may have a reward. It's that he has suffered too, infinitely, for every sin, eternally. That proves that such suffering is necessary. God, you see, is not all-powerful. There are things he cannot do, or change. He can't lie, or betray, or be false to his nature. He cannot be irrational. He cannot be capricious. This is indeed the best of all possible worlds, within the limits of free will. God, being intelligent, would not choose to suffer pointlessly.

I say this to underscore my predicament. I am immobilized with rage, sometimes. Someone, aside from myself, must be responsible for the atrocity. I have the option of ignoring or forgiving the world its horror, but it remains what it is. For all that there are proximate and ultimate causes, the Christians cannot have it both ways, saying God is in charge, yet not responsible. So it's a dilemma. God is hateable. Jesus is not. That's why we have to take them together, along somehow with the Spirit. The Trinity is not easy -- it's just necessary. Otherwise life would be unbearable.

And how could we bear what is unbearable?

Slacker

2011-08-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Two hours last night. Sup the hell with that? Do I have a disease? If I sleep in the daytime at all, I won't be able to sleep. Dude, that totally blows.

Obama is the worst president in living memory, and that's 109 years. But he showed a little class with new-candidate Perry, who sort of implied that Obama's not having been in the military was a thing. It's not a thing. We can serve in any number of ways, or not at all, and still be competent executives. Or not. The Big O handled it well -- a tad condescending, but it was called for:

"Mr. Perry just got into the presidential race. I think that everybody who runs for president, it probably takes them a little bit of time before they start realizing that this isn't like running for governor, or running for senator or running for Congress, and you've got to be a little more careful about what you say."

It's nice to see someone for whom you have no respect, rise to the occasion. It's what we hope of a politician, that he should grow into the office. Hopefully O will not have enough time to do that, however. Did I mention he was the worst president ever?

He's been riding across the country in big black Canadian armored buses, campaigning, on the tax payer's dime. That's sort of slimy. He should pay his own way. Making a really awful speech -- he's an awful speaker -- about his bad luck. Well ... ours is worse. We elected a blamer. Really, really unmanly. Men, take, responsibility. That doesn't mean he has to take

blame -- but he needs to act, like, lead, from in front. You know, lead.

Ah well, just venting. I'm a little dizzy, with fatigue.

Saw this, somehow, on a facebook thing. Oh, I'm all about facebook.

How lovely and how fair. Sometimes there are coincidences, and justice just happens, blindly, randomly, like Evolution. Pretty funny how that fall was so severe, but there were all those witnesses, so who could doubt it. Like UFOs, or Sasquatch, or Global Warm-Climate Changing. The evidence is compelling. The debate is over.

Ach. What am I going to do. I decided last night, yesterday, that I actually hate God.

Shrinkage

2011-08-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Well that one sure got dated fast. Credit rating? And ... twenty-three skidoo. What a time. England is melting. They need a little Kent State action, get things under control. I haven't read anything much of Ann Coulter, but she seems, a lot, to be right. Smash the mob. Detroit never recovered from its riots. Whatever the means, quiet meditation or radical surgery, cancer needs to be killed. Parents: assert your authority upon your teenager, or s/he is liable to be shot dead like a dog in the street under martial law. But that's a fantasy. Churchill was alive when I was a boy, but I'm old now.

Leadership? I do have to say that I just saw Rick Perry, gov of Texas, and soon-to-be-announced candidate for the currently-vacant office of President of the USA. That is one fine looking man. Right out of Central Casting for what a Pres should look like. On top of that, he seems actually to be, uh, competent ... not a requirement apparently for the job, for all that it is a qualification. As opposed to, oh, say, this guy:

The two flanking characters, in green, are Mr. and Mrs. America, appropriately androgynous in this craven new world.

I'm up before 6 AM most mornings, and I get to bed, after I eat, around midnight, and I don't fall asleep right away, at all, so I'm generally chronically sleep deprived. Cuts into my energy. I finally figured out that this is a major reason I'm just not motivated enough to do strength training. Can't neglect it, but it's hard enough without the somnambulance.

Even so, and through a recurring depression, I see cause for gratitude, for thankfulness. Last night I was stricken with the powerful memory of my little son's pet frog -- taken from the mountains and kept in a terrarium. I was stricken, I say, with guilt -- it was neglected and underfed. Finally I drove back into the mountains and let it free. Eighteen years ago, and I felt the need to beg forgiveness, last night. That's what it's like to be me. I just can't let go of these things. That, and a tendency toward procrastination that amounts to abandonment, and an urge to isolate ... not such a good prognosis.

Even so, I think of myself as an optimist -- a pragmatic optimist. I don't see how I can ever rejoin society in a normal way, but such things happen, feeling like catastrophe but just a, oh, let's call it a market correction. I'm too young yet, too hormonal, to want to be alone forever. Just another area of neglect. But here, in America, we chose our destiny.

Oh by the way, you know that Diana Ross song, "Upside Down"? (I only know the title because I googled it.) It has the lyric, "Respectfully I say to thee I'm aware that you're cheatin'." It really bugs me. First, the illogic of claiming to be respectful in that context. I respect you, and you are a cheater. Respectfully, you suck. Then the attempted formality of the formulation, combined with the colloquial "cheatin'". But most, and really really the most, is the THEE. Respectfully I say to thee. Thee is the second person singular familiar objective pronoun in English. It's dropped out of usage, but it's the way you'd speak to children and dogs and family members. Tu, du, etc. Hitler never used the familiar case. See? It is not just inept. It's contradictory. So there's that. It bugs me.

I was just going to use my hotmail account to send an email, but it seems I am the only contact listed, aside from drunkgirlroom and freshteengirls. Now, while teengirls are fine and all that, the only thing drunkteengirls are good for is having sex with, and they're not even good for that, in the sense of good that I mean. Please refer back to a previous paragraph, where I urge the execution of all criminals, whether rioters or internet hackers.

Just staying in touch. What would you do without me?

Faith v Credit

2011-08-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

Woohoo! Double A+, baby! Way to go, Obamyman! Dig this, it's not just an A, not just an A+, not just an A and an A+ or an A and another A and then a plus -- dude, it's an A+A+!!! Woohoo! Yeeeeah! Wooooo!!!!! Fistpump! Boobflash!!! What could possibly be better than all those As and pluses? Nothing is the answer. We must really be fantastic, and strong. I mean, we're borrowing money to pay the interest on money we've already borrowed, and we still have this unbelievable credit rating? Who else could do that? Nobody is the answer! USA, USA, USA!!!! Why do I keep typing USQ? What the hell is that? United States of, like, Quebec? That's not even a country -- not yet .... ZING! Take that, Canada! Hm, we'll just look up Canada's credit rating. I bet it's like, uh, a B minus. Let's see, Wikipedia ... Oh ... well, never mind. You know what Canada is, right? America's hat. Stinking Canadians. Man I hate them so much, eh? How come it's not Canadans? Like it's not Americians? Weird, right?

That's all. Not much. The governement can do what its citizens cannot. Got a limit? Just change it. Easy cheezy. Rules? They make the rules. We follow them. It's the order of things. A normal household must either cut expenses or increase revenues. Or both. The government can increase expenditures less, and call that a cut. It can increase taxes, but not revenues.

The rest of the world still gives the USA full credit -- standing in line to give us their money at a good rate of interest. Capitalism at its purest. Who could object? Theoretically, an enterprise borrows to increase its worth -- you know, improve the factory or train its workers.

What precisely the gov is squandering all this borrowed money on is hard to say. Well, no, I just said it. One squanders on crap. But the USA gets full credit, while raising the so-called limit, for good reason. A household that borrows money to pay interest is desperate and most likely incompetent -- in any case, has not taken effective measures to remediate the underlying problem, high expenses and low revenues. The difference is that when the USA does this, it's not a single household, but all of them, averaged into the calculations. And when you average all Americans together, you get the greatest nation in the world.

This is cause for comfort -- the way having the money for a painful operation is a comfort. Hard times ahead, but the cure is there to be had. Better to not have the disease. But the American diet is garbage, so of course we're sick. Fix it.

Well, I had some other brilliant observations to make, but I forgot them, and it's not worth the bother to recreate them.

Economics According Two Cows

2011-08-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

First heard a version of this in the mid-70s. Pat Paulsen did it in the 60s, on the Smothers Brothers. I've trimmed it down a bit, but here are the essentials.

-----

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 homeless man. 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 an 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 vegetarian should need. You are not vegetarian.

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, 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. 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 complaining 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.

PC Multiculturalism: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the male-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-abled (but no less valuable to the community) bovines of non-specified gender. The government regulates you from exploiting them. The bovines get married as required by the Constitution and adopt a veal calf.

Obamaism: You have two cows. You are taxed for being a millionaire or billionaire. The cows are given mandatory healthcare. Sea-level is carefully monitored. You lose your job.

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

Surrealism: You have three giraffes. The government requires you to 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.

----

You choose.

J

Butterfly Wings

2011-07-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

When I was a child my mother would read from the Bible at bedtime. It was a good thing to do. I remember asking, "But what if Jesus had sinned?" Because he didn't. This question was too weighty for my mother's simple faith, and after saying he just couldn't, she said that she supposed God would send another Son. Well, she was young.

Maybe my own son asked a similar question, "What if Jesus sinned." Maybe my reply was, "What if you grew butterfly wings and flew to the moon?" Y'see, it can't be done. We don't have the genes for it, and Jesus did not have the genes for sinning. He couldn't do it.

Next question is, what sort of moral virtue is there in not being able to sin? Answer is, it's not about morality, but one's nature. Being what you are is not a virtue, but a necessity. Jesus was different than we are. Not that he was a sort of mutant. We, of course, are the mutants, altered and degenerated by the Fall and by the inherited corruption of our spirits handed down from Adam.

What then was the difference between Jesus and the unfallen Adam? Well, a woman can and a man cannot bear children. Butterflies can and humans cannot have gossamer wings. It's not about good or bad. It's about the fundamental nature of things. There are men, and there are women, and there is Jesus. Adam and Jesus were both fully and perfectly human, both unspoiled in their spirits. Different though, in that one could, the other cannot, sin.

Sort of a major difference.

In this case though it's the similarities that matter more. Both can suffer.

There are very few people that I speak to about personal matters. But yesterday I started yammering about my gun-toting brother, and I said that I just wished I could forget these things. The reply was maybe to try to, you know, forgive. I said here recently that I hold a grudge. That's not quite the right word. It's that I can't forget, and I can't trust because of it, and wrapped up in there is the original pain and its concomitant anger. Forgive is a complex word -- its operative meaning here is, let go of the hard emotion.

When I was little, and vulnerable to the abuse and stupidity of my family, I vowed, fervently promised myself, that I would never ever ever forget such and such an event. This had the urgency of survival about it. I must never be in such and such a place again. I must never never trust them. Well, I am a faithful man, true to his convictions, and, indeed, to this very day I do not trust them. With a very few exceptions, I trust no one.

The problem is that I had to mutate myself to achieve this goal. It still feels like a necessary thing -- it's how I survived the madhouse. Now I'm not in the madhouse anymore, but I've carried its corruption with me out into the great wide world. I would forgive if I could, if I knew how, if I allowed myself that indulgence, if I had the courage. But I have to remember, and with memory comes the emotional ice and branding iron that outraged my soul in the first place.

Somehow, many years ago, I got a wife. If she ever really loved me, that ended, also, many years ago. How sad. By now I'm so strange, set in my ways, outside the bounds of normative socialized behavior, that it would take a figurative miracle, an act of positive grace from the Divinity, to redeem that part of my life. Trust trust trust. More precious than pearls and gold.

Willfulness, as of children, and adults, need not be a bad thing. It's a matter of loyalty. We just want to be on the right side. For my part, more unbearable than loss, is betrayal.

Am I yammering again? Sorry. I seem to think it's rude, to speak, out loud, too much about oneself. Is that another way I'm strange?

Son

2011-07-18T01:45:00.001-07:00

I was having one of those imaginary conversations not long ago, about what an amazing father I once was. That led me to think about how my son interacted to my, uh, other boys, my foster sons. N was cold and aloof with Joe, Joey. Didn't like him at all. Well, Joey was very immature, and needed a lot of handling, and N was used to being an autonomous only-child. A 13 year old need not like an instant 9 year old pseudo brother.

I have no guilt at all about N's displacement as the single sun of a parental solar system. He was given the very most solid of foundations for security, and that he had to learn to cope with a somewhat less ego-stroking adolescence was a long-term benefit. So I maintain.

These ruminations led me to wonder what ever become of my lost boys, nearly 10 years gone now. I don't know. Sometimes I allow myself to approach this subject, and if I come too near, well, reefs and shoals and jagged rocks, and wild wind and seas that remain utterly indifferent to tears. Sometimes I wonder what I would do, if I saw any of them, say, in the mall. But I don't go much to malls. I expect I would just watch for a few moments, then turn away and leave, having said nothing. I might then find my car and sit in it, and weep until I could not breathe.

But maybe I'd feel nothing at all. That's also how I am. Or maybe I'd say hello, although not "hello" -- rather, "Joe." I'd say, "Joe," and smile in a quiet way, still, sociable but barely breathing. The fantasy doesn't go further than this. Small talk, I'd guess. He'd be 23 now. Maybe he has a job. Maybe he finished school. Maybe he's still alive, and prospering -- my love and dedication having taken hold, flourished, undone the evil and corruption of his earliest years. Perhaps the years were redeemed, reclaimed from futility.

Or Jason, the betrayer, 27, father perhaps of 2, perhaps more by now, perhaps none, what with all the choices available to prospective parents. Nothing much to say. Coward, liar, Judas, that I loved.

Then I thought that it would be my son, N, who would see them, one of them, at the mall. Seems more likely. And whatever that exchange would be, if any, my expectation is that N would not tell me about it. "Hey dad, you know who I saw at the mall the other day? Joey." Something I never expect to hear, for all that the encounter might happen.

I don't understand life, its point. I don't understand how people enter into life, our lives, and leave from it, returning or not as chance may have it. I don't understand love, I don't know the purpose of suffering, I don't see how anyone finds the courage to risk the inevitable load of grief that towers over us waiting for some tremor that it may fall. I know that the purpose of life is not to understand it, but to live it, submerged and swept about by the mechanical rhythms of its currents. That's what life is, to me. Submission. It seems pointless.

Oh, pardon me. I got distracted there for a moment. Brooding about disappointments and deceptions and expectations that experience continues to prove unreasonable.

God, who is so great, and has such a small still voice, has patience that surpasses the span of our lives. This is a bad thing. Time runs out for us, and God is still waiting.

It's ironic. We have to be patient with God. Well. Maybe we'll run into him in the mall. Maybe he'll say hello. "Jack."

"Get to the point,

2011-07-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

bitch."

That's what a rape victim ... alleged Detroit rape victim said to the "defense" attorney, Gabby Silver, who upon cross examination took the hectoring course of implying the rape was deserved. You know, cuz the slut was dressed like a whore. Begging for it.

The young woman grew impatient with this line of discourse -- somehow the prosecution nor judge interrupted it, for all that it is unlawful -- and took it upon herself to move the proceedings along. "Get to the point, bitch." The judge, Vanessa Bradley, mindful of the dignity of her court, found the accuser in contempt and sentenced her without warning to three days in jail.

By a delightful coincidence, the young woman spent two of those days in a cell next to her very rapist, one Curtis King. Ironic, huh? LOL. The rapist ... I mean, ALLEGED rapist, spent much of that time threating to have her killed by his still-at-large partner in rape. Rape after all should be a shared experience.

When the judge's action was made public, she had a "change of heart" and ordered the rape victim to be released from jail, one entire day early.

Hell is not soon enough. I'm forgetting which of many parts of the Bible says it, but we do know there is an especially harsh judgment against corrupt judges.

America is not blessed by the character of her people. People are people, and character changes with the generations. That after all is what decadence is. America is blessed by her institutions. They chart the course. How true the captain, and pilot, and crew, determine where we arrive. We have, in Detroit, an instance of scum, commanding.

I have had cause recently to consider my harsh and unforgiving character. I'm willing to be judged, that I may judge. All my sins are private. Despite or because of this, my craving for swift and severe punishment for arrogant self-seeking petty despots increases exponentially from moment to moment. Perhaps I exaggerate. But mounting like the very anger of the Lord, I call for calamity.

Nations, alas, are judged through their leaders. Us, more than any, since we select our leaders. We have been protected for these several centuries by our Constitution and the genius of the Founders. Entropy is the great leveler, though, and only revival and another Great Awakening can save us. Sort of a Jonah in Nineveh thing. Can you envision BO calling for a time of repentance? Risible.

Ah well. I'm rambling. Never mind. Nothing to be done about it. What are we to expect of institutions that institutionalize gay marriage and abortion. I was considering the Roman Empire yesterday, and its downfall. Do you remember the causes? Invasion by barbarians, and uncontrolled debt, and incompetence in high places. The past is prologue.

J

You were terrified,

2011-07-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

but of course the very idea that I, even *I* should be foiled in my ingenious aims ... it is ridiculous to conceive. Brilliant mastermind that I am, I instantly invented the genius method of pasting the images from Word directly into Paint, as only I could envision. The glorious results are perfect in their wonderfulness, compliments of your humble servant, Jack H, superb mega-puissant gigantic-brained Lord of the Blogiverse that I am. How blessed you are to have exposure to the radiance of my magnificent splendor. To brighten your otherwise pathetic drab lives even more than I already have, I grant you the privilege of glimpsing the slightest scintilla of my heroic intellectual accomplishment.

Thus,

and of course,

As a further act of pure grace, albeit plodding unworthy drones that you all are, I bless you again, with a little something I dashed off in a spare moment ... you will certainly be unable to decipher it, but even the congenitally blind should be exposed to sunshine.

And then, inevitably,

You're welcome.

COEXIST

2011-07-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Well, who could argue with that? Delightful sentiment. Nazis, islamists, abortionists, Ebola, Obama. Gosh darn it, we can just all get along! A mere matter of becoming perfect Christians, ready, eager, demanding to perpetually turn the other cheek. Like twirling figure-skaters -- a very beautiful sight, so graceful, so dizzy.

Sadly, I'm not quite that Evolved yet, as one may deduce from my inability to upload images from Word into the very FP entry you are currently admiring. But I, more ingenious than savvy, have found a way, adequate if not ideal. So, that Teach Peace bumper sticker? -- well, snap:

As for "CO-EXIST", puzzle this out:

I don't mind arrogance, nor naivety. But when people combine the two, we must hope that they themselves are their only victims.

The Third of July

2011-07-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

It is my son's birthday today. Little family get-together, cousins and uncles etc. My eldest brother is a state employee. Works in some capacity for the prison system. He wore his gun on his belt for the gathering, and his badge. You know, so we'd know he had a gun? It was an act of dumbfounding rudeness. Seriously weird. Or maybe I'm hypersensitive. He's become a bodybuilder, and has gained "50 pounds in the past two years." So of course he wore a muscle shirt. And indeed, he's made progress in the direction he seems to have wanted. Really big arms. His conversation centered around "bulking." A subject about as interesting to me as, say, how to insert dildos into anuses.

I can't stop thinking about it. The weirdness. The rudeness. The bloated egotism. The transparent insecurity. To think that these shallow, stupid, vain, stunted, narcissistic fools had power over me when I was small ... well, it's enough to make me a bodybuilder. The fact that I was once vulnerable to these mediocre scum is insufferable.

It calls out of me an immaturity that I rarely have to face. A sort of competitiveness that I've avoided my whole life. A cross between the learned helplessness of a double-bind childhood -- where futility was the dominant lesson -- and a rage that if indulged it would require traumatic intervention of the legal system. So I avoid it.

The BBC has been on the radio, interviewing Ron Kovic, the Born on the Fourth of July Vietnam War protester. And I'm thinking, this is how they mark Independence Day? I think of that protesting generation as cowards. Justifiably I think, because as soon as the draft stopped, the protests stopped. But it can't really be cowardice. Nor backstabbing liberal antiamerican disloyalty. It's just a different perspective.

I'm not a man who has many doubts. Mostly because I make sure of the evidence before I adopt an opinion. I see the other side of the argument. I see it as the weaker side, taken by those who take it not necessarily out of malice, but from some specific human failing that controls us all, generally. Not a lot of doubt, then. That's something else I avoid. But I really don't pray anymore. I doubt God's willingness to intercede. That can't be the faith of my original salvation.

Well, I'm a little low right now. No matter. That's what holidays are for.

Mohammad Please

2011-06-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

What does an infidel have to do around here to create an outrage? I've been ranting against Mohammad the False Prophet and his satanic so-called false "god" Allah for years now, and no one, repeat, NO ONE has ever bothered to threaten me or even call me names. Some hapless businessman in Egypt tweets a cartoon of Mickey Mouse wearing moslem headgear

and Minnie wearing the niqab,

and he gets boycotted and threatened, like with tongue-cutting-out ... betonguing, and all sorts of great attention like that. I say Mohammad is being sodomized in a cesspool by Satan, and ... nothing. I describe Allah sitting on a cloud masturbating, and ... bupkis. Hardly seems fair.

Probably because it's not actually pictures. Moslems can't hardly read, ignorant Third World cannibals that they all are. So here are some pictures, hopefully REALLY offensive. Honestly, I just don't get it.

So here's the Prophet Mohammad, PBUH,

waiting for his boyfriend to smear balm on his anal warts.

Here's Allah,

getting ready to insert a gigantic pigmeat salami into his rectum.

Here's one of Allah's drag-queen "daughters"

posing for "her" centerfold in Blueballs Magazine.

Here's a wall

behind which a bunch of, uh, Albanian-Americans are wiping their butts with the Koran.

Well. I have to admit this one makes me uncomfortable. We hear about the insanity of the Left, where any dissent from their oxymoronic PC doctrine sets one up for attack -- you know, attack the intolerant. But it would just be legal and social and fiscal and cultural attack. The islamists will kill you, along with any bystanders. And their liberal collaborators will facilitate the matter -- hand them the stones, as it were. Hold their cloaks. I'm a guy who anticipates attacks. But I don't welcome them. And as an American, I remain naive enough to think that our institutions, although degenerating, will protect us. You know, freedom of political speech.

What I've done here is purile, but it actually is offensive. Tough. Hopefully, not tough for me. I am exercising my rights as a free man. I am free, right? I do happen to know something about injustice. I do know that institutions are profoundly flawed, so that even "imperfect" is a completely inappropriate word, since it contains the word "perfect". Even so, fool that I am, I expect our American love of freedom to protect me. Not from the islamists and their enablers. Rather, from more proximate attacks, as from the intolerant (by definition) Left.

There it is. Pray for me, maybe. Truth is no more a defense than is innocence.

Poison

2011-06-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

I realize it's a profound moral failing, a truly shameful character flaw. I'm not a guy who is inclined to confession, but I'm alienated, disassociated, what's the word, from it enough that I don't feel the need for a sincere apology. To whom should I apologize? You? I owe you nothing but the truth -- that is the nature of our relationship. Not all the truth, what a nightmare that would be, but as much as I chose. That's always how it is, with everyone.

It's not hatred, again not the right word, but a profound revulsion and resentment. Just leave me alone, the fuck alone. Forget that I exist, please. I wish you well, really I do, but it's a passive wish, that I want no part in. Go, and be well. But go. Do I need now to be the object of his obsessive fantasies?

I just can't forget, events or their concomitant emotions. Sorry. I think of something, or it arises spontaneously, present like a sudden monster, and I have to live it again, frisson and shiver. I don't like being this way, but it is what it is. So I think how I was driven from his house as a teenager, I return from school to find my things actually thrown out onto the yard, or notes on tables saying Get the fuck out of my house, and I am dismayed that now, albeit 35 years later, he claims to want contact with me. I mean what I say. Didn't he? Sadly, he did. So he must be lying now.

I got another letter from him, what, Friday. I haven't actually read it yet. Launched myself into a rage upon see it. Opened it, skimmed it, more of the same shit. Shit shit shit. He speaks of his pain and his tears and his prayers, begging for forgiveness. See? Everyone else is the bad guy, so unforgiving. If only we would forgive him, he'd be happy. I, confined as I am to reality and logic, observe that regardless of my hard heart, which has power to harm only myself, he is responsible for his emotional state. Forgiveness, as every adolescent must eventually come to puzzle out, depends on repentance. Change, and feel forgiven.

My father is not capable of change. Neither am I. I'm okay with this fact, about myself. As long as I'm left alone, that is. I don't expect to be happy. I don't expect my solitude to end. I am fragile and filled with rage, but I seem to have struck an equilibrium, and I don't want any more poison spit into my eye.

He wrote a book last year, a page of which he sent me. Understandable. We want to be known. Maybe I'll take a picture of it and post it here. You know, so I can be known. He's entitled his book something like Confessions of a Schizophrenic. I suppose I'll have to reply to his letter. Do you think it would be cruel of me to correct his title? Because to be accurate it should be "Confessions of a Narcissist". "Confessions of a Borderline Personality Narcissist" lacks zip -- isn't really marketable. But it just goes to show -- why would he think anyone would want to be around, as he has it, a schizophrenic? Sort of makes one wonder if he's sincere -- if his apparent self-awareness isn't just another manipulation.

Like that father years ago who set his small son on fire in a motel room. After prison, or from it, he wanted some sort of contact with the victim -- I'm so very sorry. But crimes that merit death short-circuit claims to parental rights, to any moral or biological or humane claim on a right to contact. Regardless of the reason or method, ties can be severed, relationships can be killed.

I myself am laden, for my weakness, with the archetypal baggage that allows him to have power over me, but I can still smell the stink of burning flesh, and it nauseates me. Because I am a fool, bound to duty if incapable of heroism in this travesty, I will go through the motions like a backyard zombie, awaiting the inevitable castration, invalidation, that sick parents reflexively work on their offspring of any age.

Should I be ashamed of these truths? I got a pleading, begging really, note from my mother, eloquent in its way, that I crumpled up and threw away, saying I should forgive, and have compassion, he is alone. My response is rage. Do I have to move out of the state, to get away from these people?

Logic, baby!

2011-06-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

All atheists burn in Hell.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore atheists have beards.

That's Logic, baby! No ... wait ... that's NOT logic, baby. While it's all true, and completely factual, it is not logical according to the commonly accepted definition of a syllogism.

On a related note, I still can't get over how you so-called Americans elected this utter moron to the Presidency. Obamoron. Now YOU are stupid enough to think BUSH was the Obamoron, but you're wrong of course. Y'see, it's not any reputed celerity of apprehension nor a solid hold of easily grasped ideologies. That's a qualifier for Toast Master of the United States. What we need, needed, was competence. Not OBlaming. If someone supposes he understands how to fix the economy, and gets his chance, and the situation becomes worse ... well, here's a syllogism:

All demogagues are liars;

Obama doesn't know how to handle a mop;

Therefore Americans are very stupid.

So in conclusions, you are very dumb.

Born the First Sunday of Last Month

2011-06-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

In the Garden of Eden.

Adam squats, trying to start a fire with a stone. Eve stands watching, carrying a basket.

Adam: I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I’ll call it “fire.” Or “music.”

Eve: Gosh, Adam, you’re so smart.

Adam: Yes, I know.

Eve jogs the basket.

Eve: Um, what’s this called again?

Adam: I told you yesterday, Eve. It’s a “basket.” Pay attention. You’re over a month old already. Act it, will you?

Eve: Well pardon me, Mr. All-Superior-Acting.

Adam: Let’s not get into this again, okay?

Eve: And you don’t have to be so grumpy.

Adam: Look, I’m sorry. It’s just ... I’m so busy -- do you know how many animals I haven’t named yet? I’m just now getting to the Darwin finches.

Eve: Well, I -- I have stuff on my mind too, you know.

Adam: Something small, I expect.

Eve: Ha ha. So I went for a walk today? Oh, here, have some.

She holds out a piece of fruit from the basket. Adam takes it and eats.

Eve (cont’d): Anyway, I was admiring myself in a puddle? -- thinking about how pretty I am and stuff, and how long and shiny my hair is? -- and my lovely bosoms? -- and how hot it is to be naked all the time and stuff?

Adam: “Naked?” What -- what do you mean, “naked?”

Eve: You know.

Adam: No, no I don’t know.

Eve: You know, like with your thing, there. (pointing)

Adam: (looking down) What thing?

Eve: You know, your little thing.

Adam: What “little thing.”

Eve: You know. Your -- your dormouse.

Adam: What in creation are you talking about?

Eve: Your little pink serpent there.

Adam: Serpent? What about the serpent? I told you to stay away from him.

Eve: Oh, that reminds me! So I was talking to the serpent?

Adam: What?! You were talking to the serpent? I expressly told you never to talk to him!

Eve: Oh you grouchy. What’s the big deal?

Adam: Eve. Eve. Do you, do you remember Tuesday, when the salamander told you to eat mud?

Eve: No.

Adam: Do you remember when that trilobite told you to see how many lima beans you could stuff up your nose?

Eve: Um -- sort of, I guess.

Adam: Yeah, I guess, sort of.

Eve: Well, if you weren’t always so busy, always running around naming things and stuff I wouldn’t have to talk to all these icky slimy things--

Adam: Look, I’ve got things to do -- important things, alright?

Eve: You know, you’re only five weeks older than me.

Adam: “Only?” I’m twice your age.

Eve: Well that’s not so much.

Adam: Well, I was married to Lilith. That’s a lot!

Eve: Will you please stop harping about your ex? Anyway I wouldn’t go around bragging about being married to a demon. (making a scary demon-face)

Adam: Whatever. The point is, if you get into that much trouble when you listen to invertebrates... (pauses meaningfully) So that’s why I told you not to talk to, oh, say, the SERPENT!

Eve: Oh, that reminds me! So I was talking to the serpent? And I ate this new fruit? It was really good!

Adam: (beat) What -- what “new fruit”?

Eve: You know, silly.

Adam: There are no new fruits. We’ve had them all. We’ve had every fruit there is, in every combination -- fruit salad, fruit bouillabaisse, tofu fruit--

Eve: You know. The one with the red? It has seeds.

Adam: What are you saying?

Eve: Gee, it was really yummy! Really juicy and sweet. You just had some.

Adam: (slowly) Eve, are you trying to tell me you ate of the forbidden tree? And you gave it to me?

Eve: Huh?

Adam: The tree, the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Eve: What?

Adam: The one in the middle of the garden! The one I expressly told you never to eat from!

Eve: Oh, yeah, that’s the one.

Adam: You did?! After I expressly, I, I--

Eve: I forgot. And he said -- the serpent said just go ahead.

Adam: What?! You ate it because the serpent said to? After I expressly told you not to? Not to talk to him, and not to eat that fruit?

Eve: What’s the big deal?

Adam: What’s the big deal? What’s the big deal? Um, uh, oh, how about death? How about entropy and absolute zero and Black Holes and the Big Crunch? How about hell, and death and disease and suffering and death and hell? How, how, how ’bout, how ’bout--

Eve: Say it don’t spray it.

Adam lapses into stunned silence.

Eve (cont’d): What’s the big deal. It was yummy, wasn’t it?

Adam: (silence)

Eve: I’m gonna call it the “grumpy-man fruit.”

Adam: (dully) No, Eve. I’m the one who names things. Fudge. We’re gonna have to hide from God now. And I’ll never hear the end of this from Lilith.

End

Burn

2011-06-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

The wind blows, clouds flow, rain falls, sunshine, moonlight, wind, rain, hot, cold. We blink through it like coming out of solitary confinement, or stare it down like a mad dog, or find a hand to hold and stand side by side, for a moment or through the decades.

Yes, time is a fire. We don't want to put it out or slow it down though -- time is what life is made of. We burn through it, understanding there will be pain, and scars. There are caresses and embraces and quiet smiles and rollicking laughter and the swelling of our hearts with love and pride and tenderness. So it's more than worth it, the pain, if we do it right. Wait long enough and everything is calm.

More pearls from the clam of my wisdom.

Bailing

2011-06-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

End of another week and I'm restless and unsatisfied. Yet again. Of course I know what it is. I know everything. All night long and every morning I have muscle pain between my shoulder blades. The attentive reader will recall that this is a long term thing, decades, really, early nineties. I try to press it out on the ground, stretch it, crack it, roll it out, bunch it, whatever. But I'm a guy who expects pain to come and never leave. And yet I think of myself as an optimist. Go figure. Someone suggested a massage, but that's so intimate. I don't even want to eat with company.

My general fitness training is going pretty well, not really focused, no direct goal, just overall improvement, which is nice but sort of a beginner mentality. I suppose I need something along a formal commitment and dedicated workout partner. I've neglected strength training, and that really is foundational. I suppose it's a function of my chronic depression, this devotion to neglect.

I would have liked to have had a larger family. Just the one son remains to me. I tried to have others, after a fashion, but that ship sank, and there weren't any survivors. So sad. The experience, I think, ruined me. Even the people I love, I keep at a distance. And I don't love many.

I'm so angry, I'm so filled with rage, suppressed, unrecovered from life's traumas and trials, that I just don't know what to do with myself. Get a massage, I suppose. Eat at a table with people. Play poker. But that's just things to do. I don't understand happiness. Is it supposed to last? I'm so tired of being this teenager. Growing up means letting go. But there's no one who's more loyal, or more stubborn, than I am. Not on purpose. I just can't forget, and I can't violate my conscience. So it's incomprehensible to me, how betrayal is possible. And that's how almost everything ends. In betrayal. Yet I am an optimist.

I write these pathetic self-indulgent mewlings as an attempt to purge. Like bailing out a boat. But as I said, the boat has already sunk. That doesn't mean I'll give up though. As an optimist, I refuse to acknowledge the concept of futility. So I keep stretching my back, bunching my shoulder blades, looking for the ache to go away.

Perspective

2011-06-07T09:02:00.001-07:00

I admit it seems to be holding a strange attraction for me. Or I have a strange attraction to it. It's attractive, is what I mean. Well, not it, you know, the thing. It as a subject. The Weiner Issue. Weinerquiddick. Funniest thing I've read about it? "Bush's fault."

But for me the serious fascination is watching the lies. I have been a connoisseur of lies, raised as I was in the House of Lies. So watching Weiner's various tactics has been, well, old news to me, but mesmerizing as well. The indignation. The attacking back, turning of tables. Shoddy, shameful, shameless, childish, pathetic. Culminating in, not yet justice, but, well, if you will, exposure.

I don't have the inclination to explicate the whole timeline. Too much research. But there's one startling thing I've noticed. That first undie shot I was generous enough to reproduce. You know, this:

You're welcome. No big deal here ... just something you'd see maybe in a locker room. Odd angle, but that happens.

Here's the point. This is not, actually, the right camera angle. In doing the internet thing for yesterday's FP masterpiece, I found the not-cropped version of this package deal. Here:

Pow. Somehow, somehow it's completely different. The first has an impersonal aspect, as if taken from a distance. It looks like it was taken of someone standing up. This one, though, forces us into Weiner's head. He's not standing. He's slouching in a chair. In his Congressional office, judging from the venerable hardwood floor, upon which great statesmen will have trod. At first I imagined he'd climbed up onto his desk for some reason. But no, he's just slumped down, pantless, or pants around his ankles, pushed back from his office desk, legs wide, employing his smartphone in one of its many functions.

Guy needs a glass door on his office. Like a teenager. Deficient in necessary accountability. Can't be trusted, alone.

I've never taken a picture of my unit. Few things could be less tempting to me. I'm not about fantasy. And while I'm sure there are powerful strains of narcissism in me, I have, parody aside, the decency to be self-controlled about it. After all, I grew up around the real thing, and it's just so very ugly.

A man should be forgiven his harmless frailties. An arrogant man in power, caught out in his hubris and merely shamed rather than truly repentant -- his name should be blotted out. His nose should be held to the stink of it. He should be driven from public life, the way monsters should be pursued by villagers with pitchforks. Repentance? -- redemption? Certainly. One after the other, as a necessary progression.

Asserting as Weiner has that he will not resign, well, that's just another power-hungry self-seeker refusing to make room for someone with integrity. Did he apologize? Indeed he did. He was "deeply sorry for the pain" he cause his wife, his family, his constituents, his friends, his supporters, and his staff. A pro forma apology to Andrew Breitbart. But, with radiant conspicuousness, not, not to his country.

How deeply I regret that there is no more public flogging. Not because we've seen the bundle of his groin. Because he has no honor, but seeks privilege. Whom does he represent? No one worthy of citizenship in this country.