This Is the Most Evil

YT

Gitmo. Guantanamo Bay detention camp.  Current events are urging that we mop out some of those old rooms, for new occupancy.  Hamas has a clear and present presence in the good ole USA -- self identifying too, like gender, very good of them, with their I Am Hamas.  That's their pronoun, we, we are Hamas.

In olden days long long ago there was a "war on terror",  specifically moslem islamist terror, where they went around blowing up buildings and planes and trains and buses and open-air markets and pre-schools  and old-people's homes and discotheques  and synagogues. 

Some of them were called, um uh, well I'm forgetting. Undocumented combatants? Illegal? Is that it? Illegals sounds familiar, but something about not wearing a uniform. Anyways, these hombres just loved bombing and poisoning and beheading.  I'm talking about Gitmo, not Hamas right now, not the vast, vast drug cartels, not right now.  Hamas loves all that too, rockets and raping and microwaving … well, you know what, or who.    

And here it is again, what rolls round…

The Left of course of course vowed to close down Gitmo  because terrorism is a civil right  and part of the open exercise of religious freedom and islamist gender identity, which is the highest form of patriotism. obama promised it, closing Gitmo.  He was super.  The races are united and the climate is cured. We were the change we were waiting for.  Yes we could.  Thanks obama.  You were like Jesus.

But, to take off my dunce hat, and  put on my common sense cap: How do we deal with blood enemies Understand their childhoods?  Well, no. That's not how we deal with them. That's a small part of understanding them, but more important than understanding is what we DO about the problem. If the answer is four, I don't care if I get to it by adding one and three, or two and two, or 3.27 and 0.73 -- just get to it. 

We're not talking about art, or some opinion.  Reality. We deal with blood enemies by stopping them. How they are stopped is incidental.

Gitmo is exile. It's banishment, for people not fit to live among civilized people. An island in the midst of the Lake of Fire is beyond the pale, for some reason. Perhaps a few moments too many passed after some terrorist was  caught in his atrocity, -- so  summary execution just didn't feel right?

Exigent circumstances  grew stale, and bureaucracy took over. So be it. Some other, more terrene island will have to do. Gitmo, then, rather than instant transportation to an island in Hell, complements of battlefield justice.  

obama, so weird,  just became a more sonorous Bush.  He kept Gitmo. Broken election promise.  He kept virtually  all of Bush's policies, re Iraq and Afghanistan, and rendition,  military tribunals with state secrets and denial of habeas corpus, and Predator drone attacks, and 'The Patriot Act, and wiretaps, and e-mail intercepts.  

Riffing on FDR,   Charles Krauthammer, said Obama had a first-class intellect and temperament, and a third-class character. But  intellect  is more than manipulating words into  portentous-sounding sentences, like this one; intelligence  needs to express correct ideas clearly.

Character shapes intellect. It has to do with the discipline to pursue truth, even if we disagree with it. Character agrees that four is four. We shouldn't be convinced only after the fact -- after, say, our bridge falls down because someone thought four was 390059503 point zero. Why, there's not even a four anywhere in that number! I think it's a prime!  How wrong can you be?  It's like on purpose.

We should weigh evidence according to past experience rather than idealism and theory.  Thus, the mass, mass protests, anti Israel, pro Hamas, the terrorists.  They think they're right -- the very immature and ignorant protestors, unemployable students, studying subjects that are useless garbage, so very young -- or the older useful idiots. Plus  their puppet masters, cynical islamist terrorist Hamas and Iranian. 

How do we decide what's right?  Jesus talks about turning the other cheek, and about ocean bottoms and millstones tied around necks. He talks about Hell. You don't get an infinite number of chances to be wrong. You get the duration of your lifetime. Then you get your eternity. So how do we deal with terrorists? In a harsh and civilized way. Effectively, and according to rules.  Thus, Gitmo.  Banishment from human society. 

But, so what. Like, dude, why am I yammering about Gitmo, that was like forever ago, nothing to do with now.  Right? Except that there are so many crimes, and so few cells.  Like this current lot, pro Hamas, blocking bridges and freeways and occupying their own lefty universities.  Why are they still walking around, outside of prison walls?

Even obama, somehow, was american somehow enough to still at least pay lip service to rule of law.  All this long time later, in this our age of defund the police, and get out of jail free, and no such thing as felonies except for the holy day of January Six and its  orange man -- in this new age, the Jan 6 era, with biden's fine people in Hamas, I'm sure he said that, mumbled it -- how, how, i muse, are we to protect our Jewish students?  Our roads and bridges? ((Don't get me started on protecting borders -- well Ukraine's borders -- our 51st state))

How, how to protect rule of law, the most vital of american traditions? We just have to hope that history really does work in cycles, far to the chaotic hateful left, and swing back to the center.  We've never had a rightist terror. There are always abuses, right and left.  The Palmer Raids, after WWI, and HUAC and McCarthyism -- the commie infestation was real, but McCarthy was not entirely honest. And now, biden and his federal instruments, and complicit media and corporations and blah blah blah. 

How to fix this, this lack of rule of law, actual law?  Light, more light?  Louder and clearer and educational condemnation?  Faith and patient waiting?  

The Democrat party is about castration and abortion, as it has been about slavery.  But that really would only be about ten to maybe 30 percent of them -- the inevitable worthless third.  The rest are just intellectually lazy, and haven't thought it through.  Immaturity, that cliche that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged.  Is old lady Palosi a conservative yet?  You know, her husband at her front door getting hit  on the head with a hammer?  

Some depravity is invincible.  

But that's not all democrats.  Are they embarrassed yet?  Some are shameless, so embarrassment doesn't apply. They pick the strangest things to be passionate about. Abortionism. Anti-defense. Carbon. Tranny and terrorist rights. Whatever.  People who exercise, or own dogs, are racist.    Odd things.

But the opposite of defense is not offense; the opposite of defense is defeat. Gitmo was not an OFFense, or an ofFense. There is a Devil's Island because there are devils. 

Is there a solution anywhere in all this?  Yeah.  We get back rule of law by enforcing law.  Force.  That's the police.  It starts with one arrest at a time. Please officer, your duty is to arrest criminals -- thieves and public defecators and hopped-up drug fiends and psychos who commit assault with the deadly weapon      of a hammer. Scum politicians and appointed bureaucrat lawyers, forbid such arrests, so that's a problem also that needs to be solved. You stupid stupid voters.  

So, single arrests, and mass arrests, at one protest after another.   Blocking bridges is insurrection.  Defunding the police is sedition.  

Use a gun go to jail. Carry a sign that says I am Hamas, and go to jail. I am Al Qaeda. I am ISIS.  I am a Terrorist.  I am Hamas.  Too stupid for words. 

Okay.  Believe them. It is a terrorist threat. Where's a Homeland Security , Patriot Act when you need one.  

Of all the clueless protests we have seen over the decades, anti Viet Nam war  and anti nuke and anti G8,  anti Iraq war, pro abortionism, pro illegal alien invasion, Occupy Wall Street, and climate & blm (BLaMe)...   Of all of them, this, this, anti Israel, anti jew, anti semitic,  pro terrorist Hamas, this is the most evil.  

J

*How biden is Responsible for 9/11, or, Beheadings & the Fresh Kills islamist Memorial Dump

YT

In 2022 Saudi Arabia commemorated March 22 by sponsoring the public mass execution of 81 felons.  All in one day, a Saudi personal best Beheadings, of course.  This was well-reported by Amnesty International, and by the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, the ESOHR?  Ee-sore?  They should pick a better name.  Amnesty international -- that's a good name.  Well … AI.

For Saudi Arabian executions - the Year of Our Lord 2020 was an all-time low.  In the whole year, only 69 beheadings ... heh heh ... 69.  But actually the statistics are variously reported.  These bleeding hearts are not always about the math.   Double, half, a third, two-times -- who could be bothered.  Likewise, their noteworthy usage of sarcasm-quotation marks.  "Terrorism" -- another man's "freedom-fighterism."

But 2020's low beheading score is said to be due to a moratorium on drug-related executions.  Coincident somehow with the worlds' 2020 flirtation with co-vid.  Maybe the Arabians thought Allah was handling his own metabolism-related executions?  Ah, 2020, the year for perfect hindsight.  

It is not our place, of course, to have an opinion about the mores and totems of other cultures, such as the female head-covering ethnicities slash races.  I should be silent except to appologize, as  a patriarchal binary cis male-identifying nominally hetero privilaged, um, white I almost forgot white -- my unforgivable whiteness.   I am sooooo white.  

So, an interesting bit of trivia: for several decades now, Saudi Arabia's beheading schedule has been computerized.  Maybe correlated with the phases of the moon?  It can get confusing. I mean, there was just an eclipse.  Who knew?

So many bodiless heads.   Like a straight-to-video End Times movie, from a Fundavangelist ministry.

Big Hair Productions is prideful to present ... SATAN'S BIG ADVENTURE!!!

It's big Big BIG!!! See! 144,000 virgins!!!  See! Myriads of beheadings!!!  See! Hell expanding its borders!!!

Etc. The Beast would have a PC. Point is, the bad guys, Hamas, Iran -- yes, even our close allies the Arabians -- enjoy the benefits of mechanization. Why, if we average our two civilizations together, it's almost the Industrial Revolution!  Likewise, barbarian invasion, and the Triumph of the Will … the self.  The greatest difference, is the pastels.  

Which brings us to a related topic. That bothersome nine eleven thing, from a few decades ago.  Did they ever get around to building a memorial?  I haven't been paying attention.  Well, lets look.  Oh, yes, I see.  A pit, a pond of some sort.  Well that makes sense.   Fill up the hole with water.  Do they allow swimming?  

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum.  Is the "the" part of the name?  But, frankly, it's very, very derivative.  The Viet Nam Memorial is also in a pit.  A wall, in a hole.  Like a grave.  America, with its subterranean memorials.  Walls, pools…

Might we be allowed something actually above ground level?  A monument! 

What a super colossal idea! What sort of Monument, you query??? How about a sad little virgin wrought large and gazing wistfully out to sea?

How about a ring of ethnically diverse children holding hands with soulful eyes focused on a single central point hovering in the middle distance? How about a mechanical 1,792 foot-tall bronze sunflower that always faces the sun? How about a gigantic green CRESCENT symbolizing the um inexcoriable passage of time while suggesting the uh completing arc of the lifecycle of the comity of um socio-economo-religical entities as they relate to huh multiethnicalositous perpendicularity?

Yes. While all of the above are really good ideas that I made up, I have another suggestion -- impossible to execute now, even if we used computers, but a really good idea nevertheless. How about we ... leave the rubble in place! Perhaps we can jump into our Wayback machine, travel back to 9/12/01 and resolve to let reality speak its own mute eloquence? Clean up the neighborhood, clear out the asbestos and other sundry carcinogens, sop up the body fluids as is only fitting, but leave the broken concrete and twisted girders unmolested where they fell? Too raw, you say?

No. Just raw enough.

But that ship has sailed, that garbage scow, laden with 1,200,000 tons of dust and debris from The Pile that was the former World Trade Center. Sailed. Sailed in the form of countless dump trucks, you may remember, bound for Staten Island -- now that much larger an island. One point two million tons larger. Perhaps it will grow to be a new continent. Yes, we might feel some assurance that if the no longer quiescent islamists have their way there shall be a sort of reverse Atlantis, a Brave Newer World rising from the troubled gray waves of our eastern shore -- a new land congealed from the dust of toppling american landmarks like so many falling dominoes.

And this wonder the neo islamists will have performed, using our technology and their native genius for mayhem? (Neo islamist -- now that's an oxymoron.)

What shall we call this new continent currently waiting to coalesced from American blood and grit? We'll call it ... Allahland!!! No, too West Coast. We'll call it ... Seventytwovirginistan!!! No, gauche. Um, Saudi America!?!

Oy. What am I thinking? We won't call it anything. We won't be around. There won't be any we. The dodo, the passenger pigeon and, uh, American culture -- which of these three is not like the others? Trick question.

And this fact, this clear and present fact, this self-evident truth -- that there is a death cult that wants us dead, Jews, but us, and you, regardless of the identity of your pronouns? -- and safe as you suppose you are, on your island? -- Well, this fact ... there should be some sort of Monument to this bit of, this datum and jetsam. It seems that important. A Monument not to commemorate the evaporated dead, but to bring the imperiled future into focus ... so that even rings of ethnically diverse children might see it.

You see, before they dug deep enough for "the" National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Sub Monument, there already was a 9/11 Monument. It is on the leeward shore of Staten Island at the dump that received some megatons of demolition detritus from its former upscale Manhattan address. Guess what the name of that, uh, landfill is. Did you guess? Wrong. Okay, get ready. Since the dump's opening in 1948, it's been called ... Fresh Kills.

Too obvious for irony, isn't it. Fresh Kills Landfill and islamism Memorial Park. they haven't really built it yet.  Sounds like prophecy to me. Maybe those big hair preachers are right -- more beheadngs on the way. Or maybe somebody owns a Wayback machine, to 1948, and the naming of names.  

George Orwell named that book by reversing the digits, 19 48 to 19 84.  He thought it would be true, by then.  But 1984 is not a year.  It's a process.  And one of its New Year's Days was September 11, 2001. Because it's not about the notable event, or our notable response.  It's about our failure to learn.  

biden's open borders, and the War that he is Pro.  And the race, and the sex gender, that he is against.  His particular 9-11 is lasting 4 years, if he lives that long.  And to further mix my metaphor, I don't know that Trump can be a Lincoln to biden's Buchanan.  

The monuments of that former Civil War, are being torn down, as are the monuments of the Framers of the Constitution.  Replaced we have seen, by pits and holes and dumps.  I could go on and on.  If there's a single word that says it, I'd suppose it's Castration.  

J

*Greatness - about how things only *appear* to be futile & useless & hopeless, but sometimes they are

YT

Truth matters. So when we find our heroes, we cannot be surprised to find that they are human. Our admiration must rest on something other than the beguiling semblance of virtue. And even if they seem to succeed – if we look out on the proud towers of our accomplishment, and proudfully declaim, “Look on my works ye mighty, and despair” – how are we to know but that the bare and boundless, the lone and level sands will soon sweep over every success achieved or hoped for?

Robert E. Lee was a man of sterling character. Higher praise is rare, than what was said of him: he was what he seemed to be. So highly was he admired that at the start of the Civil War Lincoln offered him command of the Union Army. But Lee was a man of powerful loyalty to his native state, and set his allegiance accordingly. The personal turmoil and sacrifice his decision entailed can only have been monumental.

Saladin united the Moslem world to resist the Crusaders. He is counted today as the nonpareil and inspiration of the chivalry that defines for us the highest aspects of Medieval Civilization. Hospitable, merciful, magnanimous.

But when Saladin captured Jerusalem, his original plan was to slaughter all the Christians. Only at the threat of the Christian defender Balian of Ibelin - to retaliate by destroying the city and killing all its Moslems - did Saladin countermand his order. Instead, he merely enslaved those Christians who could not ransom their freedom. When he captured Hattin in 1187, Saladin commanded that every last one of the Christian defenders be beheaded. The scholars and holy men of his retinue each begged to whet his sword on a Christian neck, and Saladin magnanimously assented. His secretary describes how the “unbelievers showed black despair” during the executions, while Saladin reclined on his dais, his face bright with joy.

And Bobby Lee? He does indeed seem to have been what he seemed to be. No fault can easily be found in loyalty to your home – his loyalty doesn’t require a failure of judgment or of values. But how loyalty is expressed is another matter. For all that Virginia was his homeland, it was the Slave Power. Some 640,000 Americans have been killed in all other wars combined, some 620,000 killed in that bloodiest Civil War. Without Lee at the head of the Confederate Army the Civil War would have ended years sooner. What large fraction of those deaths, then, might we lay in his defense of slavery at the feet of Robert E. Lee and his noble, loyal character?

Bolivar, the great liberator of South America, looked back and summed up his life. “I have plowed the sea.” Goethe - perhaps the greatest of German poets, and master of the science, the mysteries, of optics - cried out as he lay in bed, “More light!” – then he died. Accounts vary, and this would be a minority report, but Lincoln’s last words are said by some to have been of his desire to travel to the Holy Land, once his term was over. We shall walk the sacred paths of our Lord, he said. We shall go up to Jeru…

Jesus on the Cross cried out, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Didn’t he know?

We can find futility and despair where ever we look. Human virtues have value in themselves. But we are judged, in some sense, and rightly, not on our intentions but our effect. If we serve evil righteously, what of that? If we yield to a taste for blood, what then? If the great purpose of our lives, or the intimate strivings, fail, where then do we find value? If we stumble so near the finish line, how will we be judged?

Since truth matters, we may find an excuse in sincerity only to a limited degree. After that we find that relativity shatters like waves on the breakers. Because there are, also, absolutes. Slavery is wrong, and although good men have had to make an accommodation with it, in the face of the reality of their powerlessness, still there are times in history when a clear choice is offered. It is at such times that accommodations amount to nothing but cowardice, or worse.

There is a higher virtue than loyalty. I can’t think of the word for it, but it has to do with being right - something about an allegiance to truth. Wisdom?  So with slavery, and chivalry, and politics and religion and abortion and sexual conduct and whatever the current random terror is. 

Opinion is a function of faith, and is congruent with fact only by a smiling fortune. This is why in matters of solemn importance, the highest degree of diligence must be employed, by each of us, to discover what is true and bind our allegiance to it. Otherwise we are soldiers fighting for slavery rather than freedom, or preachers of vice instead of virtue, or defenders of what is indefensible.

But if we strive for what is truly right, and fail, still we have undone to some degree the curse laid upon creation in Eden. We cannot rescind the law of entropy, but we can fight for order and intelligence in our own small corner of the world. More than this can no man rightly hope for. Mighty towers will fall, their only trace found as dust and wind. To rule in the world is to fail. A man's only kingdom is his own heart.

J

*How to Avoid Needing Abortions

YT

I really don't want to talk about this. But what am I for?  

I was reminded off, um, an opinion piece on Abortionism. From two collaborators of La Times ... oops ... the L.A. Times. And I meant writers, not collaborators, two writers. I shall quote: 

ahem, 

Abortion means many things to many people. It is a very good thing. To some, abortion seems bad. To others it seems good. abortion means many things. Many people have different ideas about abortion. Some think abortion is good. Others think it is bad. abortion means many things. People like abortion, while other people do not. The different ideas that many people have about abortion mean many things to them. There are many opinions. Many people have opinions about this. abortion is a very good thing.

ahem

I kid. You know that's not from the LA Times, because it's so even-handed. There is only one opinion about abortionism: it is a good thing.  What those who disagree with that fact hav  -- it's not opinion, it's bias.  That's me, disagreeing, and therefore biased.  The real quote?  Written in 2008

"Thirty-five years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed in Roe vs. Wade that women have a fundamental right to choose abortion without government interference."

So.  Let's put on our thinking hats.  The Court Most supreme

"...affirmed..." 

Well, Self-evident things are affirmed by reasonable people. What actually happened was that the court Supreme imposed its will on America, subverting the democratic process in a move that even Ruth Bader Ginsberg affirmed was ill-advised: the matter should have been decided politically, thus avoiding the rancor of these subsequent decades. Roger Taney, would have approved.  Dred Scot, Roe v Wade -- potato potato. Tomahto tomahto.

So "affirmed" is not just bias - it's ignorant and/or a lie. 

Next, women have 

"...a fundamental right..." 

How odd. One would presume that fundamental rights had been affirmed in the Constitution, at the time of its establishment -- and one would assume and affirm that no right would be affirmed and assumed that was alien, abhorrent and indeed anathema to the Framers, in the Constitution. Abortion was reviled by that distant civilization.  There was no abortionism -- just criminality. 

And can there be such a thing as a new fundamental right? Would this be an example of Evolution at work? I'm not a man who refuses to affirm it when he's been wrong.  But facts are demonstrated, not merely asserted.

Next, a women have a fundamental right

"...to choose abortion..." 

Choice. It's such an American word. A synonym for freedom. How can having a choice be wrong? It can't be. It's just the thing that is chosen that might be wrong. The thing? Abortion?

 I have to point out the careless oversight of the opinion-piece writers. They didn't actually mean to say "abortion." Abortion is such an unsightly word. It needs a pleasant-sounding alternative. Like, say, choice. 

They meant to say that "women have a fundamental right to choose choice." Ah, that sounds so much better. As we know, there are no wrong choices. Only different choices. 

Oops. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say "different." I meant diversitous, because diversity is what America is all about. Whereas differences are bad. Why else would there be what we used to call Affirmative Action? -- now it's DEI.  Die, differences, die.  

Diversity will make us all even, alll the same, , after a while -- a few centuries or millennia -- Evolution will choose.

Next, the fundamental right choose abortion

"...without government interference." 

Well, What else is it that governments do, but interfere? Governments ONLY interfere.  The question is, where and how. The Left supposes that drug-use and baby-killing are morally neutral choices, if morality even exists.  Whereas social engineering is a good thing, funded by extorted taxes via the coercive threat of imprisonment, and swat teams, etc.

The Left has no qualms about wielding government power, as long as the Left can choose the victims -- babies, mostly, and conscience.

Well. That takes care of the first sentence.

Oh God I can hardly stand it.

“...that landmark decision...” Gravemark. Except medical waste doesn’t get buried -- well, maybe in a landfill.

“...the United States has some of the most restrictive policies on abortion in the developed world.” 

Yeah. The developed world, developer of mustard gas and death camps, and partial birth abortion. We should be more like the developed world; as it is, we’re the only developed-world country with a non-shrinking native population.  

“...the U.S. forbids the use of federal funds for abortions...” 

Hi there, I'm Uncle Sam, can I get you some more crystal meth?  Fentinal?  Maybe help you insert that gigantic vibrating phallus into your anus? Cuz that’s what I’m for -- providing resources for your vices -- facilitating your degradation.

“...the Supreme Court has upheld state laws that require parental consent or notification...” 

Draconian!!! A word closely related to Dracula, notorious drinker of the blood of the innocent. 

“...mandatory waiting periods...” Gun purchases should require a waiting period, but abortions for minors should not. Cuz, uh, guns kill people. And stuff. I guess.  Abortion is a time-sensative process.  Wait to long, and an abortion becomes a birth.  Dang.  

“...and antiabortion counseling.” The gall! Sex education obviously works so well for teens, but only the “have it” kind ... I mean the “have sex” kind. Don’t have “it”, it the “baby”. That would be restrictive.

“The court's 2007 decision on so-called partial-birth abortions was an unprecedented infringement on physician autonomy.” 

Y’see, here’s how it works. A doctor knows that when a woman is in labor but doesn’t want to be an actual mother, cutting up that baby in the womb is a better medical choice than, say, a C-section. Giddit? And even if s/he doesn’t know that, h/er/is autonomy shall not be infringed. It says so right there in the Second Amendment. Unprecedented. Simply unprecedented. Like when Lincoln sort of threw out the Dred Scot decision, and infringed the slave masters' autonomy to whip the niggers to death.

“...public opinion has been relatively stable and favorable to legal abortion.” It must be true. The abortionists who wrote this opinion piece have been accurate on every other point. “

Early efforts to overturn Roe failed miserably.” And the fact that the body which might have done the overturning was the same body that imposed the ruling in the first place? I’m sure my question must be illogical in some way. Us Bible-thumpers are so irrational, after all. And we just know that if that same body hadn’t invented this new right, it would have arrived anyway, being a historical inevitability, like Communism. Inevitable I say. Aren’t we after all appealing to popularity right now? Nevermind those other popular laws -- the ones that so vilely as we have seen restrict abortion -- those ones that the rubes in the square states are shoving down our throats like some horrible thing that belongs to a male chauvinist pig, and you know what I mean, sister.

“...the anti-choice movement changed tactics...” “Twenty years ago, being pro-life was déclassé.” Where’s a mad bomber when you need one.

“Three-dimensional ultrasound images of babies in utero began to grace the family fridge.” Ahem. “Babies”? Your slip is showing. 

“Fetuses … that is, "babies"... underwent surgery. More premature babies survived and were healthier. ...These trends gave antiabortionists an advantage...”  Y’think? I have found that, as with sex, it is easier to kill someone when I don’t have to look them in the eye. It's just too intimate.  

“Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus. The preferred strategy is still to ignore it and try to shift the conversation back to women. At times, this makes us appear insensitive...” No comment. No comment needed. Okay, one comment. It makes them appear insane. 

“To some people, pro-choice values seem to have been unaffected by the desire to save the whales and the trees, to respect animal life and to end violence at all levels.” My, that’s an awkward sentence. Let’s restate it. 

Some people think abortionists enjoy a bizarre disconnect, worshiping whales and trees and animals and vermin and cowardice and feckless passivity, on the one hand, while ... while, uh ... 

Well, they don’t quite open up that other hand, for us to see what’s in it. Just something pulpy, I would suppose -- a sort of red paste.  Gooooooo abortion!

“Pope John Paul II got that, and coined the term ‘culture of life.’ President Bush adopted it, and the slogan, as much as it pains us to admit it, moved some hearts and minds. Supporting abortion is tough to fit into this package.”  Wow.  They speak a human language, these opinion piece writers. I’ll give them that. If only humanity resided in words. 

If only humanity resided in words. 

Odd, though, this, uh, choice of words. It pains them. Everyone knows that pain has no place in a discussion about abortion. Everyone knows fetuses can't feel pain. Silent s

“In recent years, the antiabortion movement successfully put the nitty-gritty details of abortion procedures on public display...” Nitty-gritty. Itsy-bitsy. Teenie-weenie. Okie-dokey. Hokey-pokey. Helter-skelter. Willie-nillie. Silly-willy. Wee wee wee all the way home. Fee fie foe fum. Grind his bones to make my bread. If I should die before I wake. 

“...increasing the belief that abortion is serious business...” People believe the funniest things. 

“...and that some societal involvement is appropriate.” Time was, all the societal involvement we needed in abortion could be found in a back alley. Maybe I’m thinking of another sort of society. And another sort of involvement.  Is this good?  Bad?  Under Row v Wade, total dead babies, ​​63,459,781 

Those who are pro-choice have not convinced America that we support a public discussion of the moral dimensions of abortion.” I’m a little confused. The words, “moral” and “abortion” in such close proximity -- it’s like mixing bleach and ammonia. Semantical chaos. She-all did it before when she-all used the phrase "pro-choice values". What would their pronouns be.  It's been quite a few years … people evolve.  Is she, a they now?  My intuition is, HU, you know, for human. 

“Likewise, we haven't convinced people that we are the ones actually doing things to make it possible for women to avoid needing abortions.” Cf. the preceding paragraph on sexual education, which education so clearly outlines the methods most approved “to avoid needing abortions.” Oh, it's so good, that phrase -- "avoid needing abortions". Hey! -- that’s gonna be my tattoo! 

I AM THE ONE WHO CONVINCES PEOPLE THAT I AM THE ONE ACTUALLY DOING THINGS TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR WOMEN TO AVOID NEEDING ABORTIONS!!!

All Gothic and shiz, with skulls and blood dripping from the tips, all across my belly. Way cool! 

How to avoid needing abortions? I suggest -- per the state-mandated educational curricula -- mutual masturbation, blowup dolls, oral sex, sodomy, bestiality, necrophilia, and intercourse with the extremely aged or with prepubescent children.  You know, non-fertile.  I think I read this somewhere. 

“Let's face it: Disapproval of women's sexuality is a historical constant.” Me too! I’m afraid I’ll fall in.  Or be eaten. Vagina dentata.

“So our claim that women can be trusted still falls on deaf ears.” Women ARE trusted to be mothers, one of the two most important jobs ever. Men make better executioners.

“And when the choice movement seems to defend every individual abortion decision, rather than the right to make the decision, it too becomes suspect.” Question: what could these writers ever consider to be a wrong decision? Because if there is no wrong decision, is there a decision at all? -- any more than the tide decides to flow in, and flow out? Just whatever, random or deterministic.  And if there is a wrong decision, is it sufficiently wrong to remove the option?  Honor killings.  They think it's right.  But we would remove the option. 

“If pro-choice values are to regain the moral high ground...”

Regain.  The moral. High ground. And this is where we must stop.

Words, it seem, do not retain humanity.

If only humanity resided in words. 

If only humanity resided in words. 

J

*Famous Fetuses

YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      -----

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

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

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

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

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

J

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

J

*Ghosts and Atlantis and the Hollow Moon, Oh My

YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

*Radio

YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

*Owl's Moon

 YT

Here.

J

*Bizarre Books

YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can't help our names. 

- Yoshimoto Banana 

- Gottfried Egg 

- Knud Bugge 

- Dee Day (heidi hoe!) 

- Violet Organ 

- A. Farto 

- O. Hell 

- Harry Prick 

- Pierre Anus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

*Economics According Two Cows

YT

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

-----

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

*What the Sirens Sing

YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


J

*CUSSOM

 YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

biden thinks he's funny.  The sotto voce whisper 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XY is the 

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

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

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

Goonight.

 

Good night,

 

ladies, good night, sweet ladies,

 

good night, good night.  

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

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

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

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

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

 kaiju monster movies and the

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

Maguma!  

Heh heh!!!  

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

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

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

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

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

J

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

Only $20.24 (plus 19.73 tax plus 49.99 shipping and handling, plus $246.42 cussoms duty -- other fees may apply)  at YeOldeWhiteHouseGiftShoppe. gov and the DisneyStoreOnline.  One size fits all.  Supply unlimited.  (Also available, Biden Balloons!  

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

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

*Shipwreck: as the answer of the meaning of life

YT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J