Amen

All right, I've been driven to it.  Obama, again.  He says he understands the plight of  students, what with his big student debt that he still hasn't paid off, or hadn't as a Senator of the United States of America, even though he'd made millions on his several autobiographies. Only 8 years ago, he got around to it.   Um, he was saving his money, for something else?  Charitable contributions?  It is a mystery.  So sad, that he and his bride grew poor together.  Can I get an "amen"?  Only 8 years ago.  Think about it.  I'm the Occupant of the What House.  This means I got elected far too soon.  I'm immature and inexperienced.  Man are you Americans dumb.  

Obama never once in his long academic career went to an American public school. That Madras in Indonesia may have been, uh, public ... that may be how they do things in that part of the world.  But it would have been markedly unAmerican.  Later O went to the most prestigious and expensive, private, prep school in Hawaii.  His grandmother, who raised him, was the vice-president of a BANK.  Obama plays the word game, but he is "African American" only in the sense that one of his parents came directly from Africa, and the other from America. His "black experience" in America is utterly atypical.   Of all possible possibilities, Obama is the least authentic black man possible. I know, it's not okay for me, a blue-eyed devil, to observe this inconvenient truth.  Typical -- all whities are racist.  I just can't help it, it's in my blood, this racism.  Just ask any New Black Panther, or Moslem Brother Hood.

So when Obama raises up his elegant lanky not-white-by-self-declaration frame and pretends to be one of the people, well, he must be talking to the cool people, and that includes me out.  What's his name, the guy who wrote carter's epic Malaise Speech, Chris Mathews, entertained talk about the cool-factor and Obama's attractiveness.  Well, junior, I'm not looking to play with the popular kids during Recess.  I don't want to have lunch at the cool-kid table, and get asked to the prom by the cool boy, even though he's such a total stone fox.  I want an effective leader, who is competent.  I want, in fact, someone who is uncool, the way it is uncool to drill for America oil on the American continental shelf, and uncool to send petroterrorists to hell.

Latest is O's demagoguery re student loads, I mean loans.  "Don't double my rate.  It's pretty uh everybody I wanna you er repeat that."  And all the sheep when Bah. "Don't double my rate."  So, childern, let's step back a moment and consider the meaning of the term, phrase, empty rhetorical flourish, "patriotism."  It is not a word that suggests a mere  feeling.  It is not an intellectual commitment to a political system.  It is not an adoration of land or tradition. It is a word that requires a personal sacrifice.  For students, it might require not getting even more charity from the government in the form of tax-payer subsidized student loans.  It might require a summer job.  Something other than self-seeking.  Patriotism does not require that we subsume ourselves into a hive mind.  It is profoundly individualistic.  But it does require sacrifice.

They don't teach this anymore, to students, most especially, apparently, students who matriculated out of Madrases and Prep Schools and Elite Universities.

You know Obama knows he's lying, because that's when he stutters and stammers and ahs and ums.  In other words, whenever he isn't reading off a teleprompter.  He's lying when he reads, too,  but that's when he's so eloquent that you don't mind the lies.

Man are you dumb.


J

On the Menu

Romney put his dog on the car roof some decades ago, and man oh man is that a big scandal to the lefty Dehmocraps. Explosive diarrhea from the beast, so options were limited ... dad should have just cancelled the road trip. The kids could stay home, play in the backyard, see Walley World next year. So there's that.

The Repug sithlords are striking back, pointing out that Obama ate dogmeat. Not dog food, like Alpo say, which is horse; no, he ate actual dog. As a child, in Indonesia. Savory dogmeat, tough snakemeat, and crunchy grasshopper, roasted. Sounds like ingredients of Lucky Charms.

It's all very stupid. No dogs were harmed in the making of Romney's roadtrip. Dogs were harmed in the preparation of the Indonesian consumables, but that is the order of things, our narrow Western mores not withstanding. If there is a scandal in boy Obama eating dog (which is unlikely to have been anyone's pet), it would lie in the fact that Obama actually wrote about it in his book ... being so completely tonedeaf that he didn't see that Americans, some, might be repulsed by the action. America, I, future President Obama, ate dog meat, isn't that interesting? -- so buy my book and vote for me, cuz I'm fascinating and eloquent and nuanced.

I must return to that presiding theme, character. It's almost a mantra now with me, a long one. When Obama stepped up, pushed himself forward, for The Job, he was saying I'm The One for The Job.  I can fix this. Give me the responsibility. Well you stupid Americans did just that, and either he was lying, or deluding himself, or profoundly ignorant, or all of the above. Because as soon as his first effort didn't fix the problem, he lapsed into what must be the habit of a lifetime, and blamed blamed blamed, which is exactly the opposite of taking responsibility.

The Big Oh can't be blamed for Secret Service agents being derelict -- bringing whores into the hotel they were supposed to be securing. That level of micromanagement must be reserved, in his administration, for the lives of religious Americans, and parents, and other malefactors, like conservatives. Of course. We need to be controlled. Otherwise we might emit carbon dioxide and shrink the now-growing glaciers of the Himalayas. End of Days! No, O can't be held to an unreasonable standard. O has full faith if not credit in the director of the Secret Service, who has decidedly NOT "acted stupidly", for all that the man does not look like Obmama's son.

Is there a culture of corruption? -- or just its appearance. Snake rots from the head down. It's unlikely to be a sort of corruption that takes actual monetary bribes. It is certainly the sort that bribes en mass, as with the free-wheeling million dollar Vegas junket that the governmental furniture-buyers awarded themselves. "What is your job title, Mr. Furniture-Buyer Director?" "I respectfully decline to answer based on my 5th Amendment rights." "What is 1 million dollars plus 1 million dollars?" "I respectfully decline to answer based on my 5th Amendment rights." It's not that he's brazen. He's terrified. His sins have found him out. If he has balls, they're so far indrawn they function as ovaries.

If O gets reelected -- and you are stupid enough to do that -- it will not be the end of America. A woman who gets beaten and raped need not be ruined. A woman who asks for it is already ruined, so it is not her end. There are psychotics, male and female, who ask for it. Maybe that's America. Or maybe we, you, have just been stupid, and need to really get effed up, before you smarten up? Sadly, the dog returneth to its vomit. Maybe it's a loyalty thing ... close to the opposite of blame. Maybe it's the Stockholm Syndrome. What I'd like to see is pragmatism. Cut your loses. Write Obama off as if he were a hippie commune experience. Something we learned from, but overall a waste of time. You did this, asked for it, and you got what you deserve. Does God need to send locusts to make you repent? Kumbaya, dumbass.

Do you smell rotting snakemeat? Tastes just like dog.


J

Random Thoughts

An opportunity came up today for me to talk about the size of my penis, and believe you me, I did NOT miss the chance to brag. I was met with unaccustomed argument ... everyone knows I'm always right, so of course I had to take the bull by the horns. Long story short, we whipped them out, and I was astounded to see that of the four or five dudes, mine was MUCH smaller. Turns out it's pretty tiny. I did not know that. I had thought it was HUGE.

It wasn't so much an optical delusion thing, or a matter of perspective. It's that while it's long enough, about the length of a thumb, it's super skinny. And the twist, and the hook, don't help. Seems I had been confused, or distracted ... anyway, my judgement was thrown off because of all the hair, which is indeed very long -- I braid it, like a Valkyrie.

And then all the guys were commenting on my testicles too, saying they were very small. I argued about that as well but they pointed out that I was talking more about my scrotum. Sac skin is not nards, they said. Well, true, but.... But nothing. They were right. I'd been confused by the granny knot someone years ago must have tied it in. Once I got that undone -- I had to use pliers -- my bag's like an airport windsock on a still day. Just hanging down to my knees, pretty much empty. I dug around and did manage to find the actual testes, or teste rather ... seems I have only one, about the size of a shelled peanut.

Is that normal? -- about average at least? I'd have to say so, but I thought I'd like to know, so I've been searching through the internet looking for pictures of penises. Haven't found any yet. Must not be using the right search words -- "gentleman's member", "linga measurements", "intimate human thing". Nothing relevant comes up. Been at it for 3 or 4 hours, and I just have to suppose nobody else is really interested in the matter.

Ah well, just thought I'd share another of my insights. Isn't psychology interesting? My deep understanding is one of the reasons people like me so much. I'm so fascinating, and generous, and frankly so damn goodlooking. And on a more personal note, my penis is very long, which it may be a tad immodest to say, but it is after all one of the reasons all the chicks dig me so much, and the dudes are all so jealous.


J

Skin Color

Normally at this time I'd be basking shirtless, and pantless, in a public space for all the chick passersby to ogle and totally dig me, but it's raining. I have habitually avoided the poisonous rays of toxic sunlight, but the low spring sun is not as deadly, so I figured I'd give myself a chance to immunize, build up some much-needed melanic resistance to its peril. And just the other night a great hue and cry arose over my new beautiful golden-bronze glow. I knew they were admiring me, of course, but I did have to enquirer as to which particular aspect of my beauty they were awestruck by. Something new. That's why I don't believe in perfection: even when you think you're done, there may be some other small virtue to add.

Looks like they're railroading Zimmerman. Still don't know the details, but Trayvon seems to have doubled back -- was followed, then himself followed -- and jumped Z. It's hard to know. Impossible in fact. "Out to buy Skittles" -- not shoplift -- is such a harmless thing. But the fact that he said he was going to, or did, buy Skittles does not mean he wasn't also creeping through the night. What the black racists won't acknowledge is that teenagers too, and not only white hispanic adults, have bad judgment. Even hypothetical honors students get in trouble. So, that Zimmerman claims he was, and shows evidence of having been, attacked and beaten ... well, it's complicated. In any case, a second degree murder charge is his reward.

Zimmerman. Well, he used to wear an earring, there's that. But, a "white Hispanic." Is that a new thing under the sun? Much has been said on this. I remain, as always, neutral and fair-minded and utterly impartial. Ask anyone. My question is this: Has the New York Times, or its acolyte MSM, ever described Obama as "a white black", or "a Caucasian African-American?" "President Obama this morning lead a prayer breakfast of the Northeastern Branch of the National Cee Double Eh Association, which appointed him as its honorary chairperson."

Whatever -- I just want to be the most politically correct ... don't want to be insensitive. I mean, I am a white non-Hispanic, and therefore racist. My grandfather visited LA in the '60s and talked about Coontown. So of course I'm racist. I contain multitudes. A white hispanic black golden-bronze white racist. Do I contradict myself? I am vast. Just ask my friends, white blacks, white asians, white latinos, white whites ... all humans are white, except the non-racist ones.

It's moronic. We congregate around those who are like us. Sometimes the similarity is behavioral, sometimes racial ... but it boils down to like-mindedness. For me to be able to tolerate the presence of the racist Sharptons and jacksons I would have to loathe myself, as they would loathe me. My contempt for them is based on their conduct, theirs for me on my coloration. And my ideology, which demands impartiality before the law, rather than favoritism.

I was sent this link. It is unreadable. I looked up the writer, David Leonard. An Associate Professor in some Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies. "White America is never suspicious." He says. That's why I had to look him up. His use of the pronoun "we" was confusing. "We aren't Trayvon Martin, we are George Zimmerman: presumed innocent until proven innocent." He must never leave his campus. Boiled down, the schmaltz rendered out, he is a sociologist, so busy looking at his clipboard that he doesn't notice the hostility of the real world. He must never have been falsely accused of a crime. It happens, you know. Maybe it's happened to Zimmerman, and Leonard is holding the stone-throwers' cloaks. I don't know. Neither does he.

Blacks have gotten a raw deal. No, actually, I'm not referencing slavery. No black in America has any remaining part in that institution. Lots of black slaves in Africa, still. Google it. American Africans, rather, suffer from having an insufficient number of their fathers who loved them enough to stick around. That's whack. But the statistically high number of scum youths who result from that raw deal are scum. You now, actual, real, lawless criminal drug-addict thugs. I don't know the statistics. I know that any culture that values fatherhood wouldn't be in that boat. Perhaps the slave ships from centuries ago are still around? I think rather it's the Great Society social engineering, that subsidized fatherlessness and led to three generations of degeneracy. It's not a black thing. It's a liberal thing. All you're entitled to is what you earn. Anything else is charity.

Leonard, a Jew-looking non-black, goes on with a paragraph or two of touchy-feely empathy questions. More padding. Information, please. Can you imagine a bunch of bad things happening to your kids, whitey? "No, you can't. And you don't have to." The Amazing Leonard! -- Who Reads Minds and Knows the Future! Fact is, black on black crime is astronomical, and black on white crime is profoundly disproportionate, and white on black crime is minute. That's where the outrage should lie, but it doesn't. Because the order of things is accepted -- countless dead black youths, murdered by black thugs.

But it's the anomalies that stand out. Thus Zimmerman, a non-Jew Hispanic, on his gallows if not cross. Thus the honorifically-styled reverend jesse jackson, ordained instrument of some sect, who gets an erection when a black teen is killed by a white hispanic, but uses black on black crime as a sleeping pill. Trayviagra Martin. jackson doesn't care about individuals. he cares about institutions. Thus, he is irrelevant. Institutional racism is over, when it's aimed at minorities. Indeed, nowadays we call it Affirmative Action, and that lot loves it. For shame.

Fortunately Leonard's shallow little grave piece was little. I only skimmed it, so maybe I missed a fact in it. But I think it had no facts. It's like that Zimmerman thing. We'll find out the facts, as best we can, and a verdict will be given, hopefully just, and all the while we will be moving on with our lives, and Zimmerman will too, one direction or another, and fatherless Trayvon will remain dead. Leonard and jackson will be unaffected by any fact, consumed as they are with hypotheticals, idealism, ambition, greed, self-loathing/rage, and delusion.

Perspective is such a hard thing. Opinions can get out-dated pretty fast. But I realized that the picture of Trayvon we've seen, of a sweet-faced youth, is him when he was 14 years old.
At the time of his death Trayvon ... Mr. Martin was 17, 6'2" per his family. Puts a different face on the matter. And that big old fat unsmiling orange-jumpsuited Zimmerman? Pic from an arrest 6 years ago. He's not big and fat now ... maybe 5'8, 170. Unsmiling though, now, no doubt, picture not withstanding. And a more recent pic of Tray? All gangstahed up for the hos, what with his gold grill all up in your face.
At least in this pairing of pics, they're both smiling. But such observations are prejudicial.

Trayvon's "Myspace" page has a picture of him holding out a fistful of money. A white supremacist site uses this as evidence that he was a drug dealer. His gmail was hacked into. It has replies to his inquires re colleges. He was just a teenager. His parents were divorced, and appear to have been decent people. The least hateful solution to this puzzle is that Zimmerman saw a suspicious "punk" and sought to act responsibly if proactively to staunch the low-grade crimewave in his neighborhood, while, conversely, Trayvon -- off to the store to sate his non-marijuana-induced munchies, and acting like a man, doubled back and confronted his "stalker". This is not second-degree murder. It's not even a crime. It is homicide certainly, but it is a tragedy. Different circumstances, Zimmerman is the corpse. Nothing to do with race. Has to do with being human.

I wish the world were different. Too bad there's no way to change it.


J

Why Nixon Was Great

Well, he wasn't. Not if we use a high enough standard. Reagan was great. If our standard is low enough. Point being, hardly anyone is great. Gandhi wasn't great. I'd say Lincoln was, and Washington, and TR. But that's just me. I like them, and see that their personal lives were as virtuous as their public lives. Seems like a reasonable standard of greatness. That being said, Nixon was certainly not great. But he was.

Just after the 94th Congress completely abandoned its duty and honor and humanity, mandating through its cowardice and its Satanic values the destruction of South Vietnam and of Cambodia, and later of Laos, to name only a few, Nixon, who had felt it necessary to resign due to his malfeasance, was asked what he would have done re the most recent and final southward aggression from North Vietnam. He replied, "I would have bombed the blazes out of them. ...I would probably have been impeached ... but so what? I would have saved thousands -- no ... millions of Southeast Asian lives."

And he would have. So, Nixon was not great. But he would have been. To save millions of lives is another of those things that would make someone great.

As for Cambodia, garden spot of Leftist virtues as cultivated by the Khmer Rouge via its lush Killing Fields, Nixon said that renewed bombing of North Vietnam would have discouraged Red China from propping up the KR, "and if not, Khmer Rouge enclaves would not have been excluded from the bombing. Frankly, knowing what we know now, I should never have stopped it, Congress or no Congress, until all the enclaves were out of business."

As I say, millions of lives. We don't abandon the Constitution for idealism. The Constitution after all is idealism. In this particular instance I find myself in the Andrew Jackson camp ... separation of the branches of government, and let each enforce its will.

Colonel Bui Tin of "North" Vietnam claimed to have been, during the 94th Congress's mandated Fall of Saigon, first to tank-smash through the gates of the Presidential Palace of our erstwhile ally, personally receiving the surrender of "South" Vietnam's ultimate, last and final leader. Such a personage as this has recorded: "When Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [NV PM] said of President Ford that 'he's the weakest president in US history.' ... We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January, 1975. When Ford kept American B-52s in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam."

Elsewhere the Colonel stated that the "American" anti-war movement "was essential to our strategy. ...our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news ... to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us."

Ah, Hanoi Jane. Last week sometime I saw most of The China Syndrome again. I remembered it from the 70s, and thought it was good then. It's so dated now, and looks like it was shot on video tape, but it holds up as a thriller. Sure, it's an anti-nuclear, anti-business, lefty screed. But I never have a problem with that. Businessmen can be corrupt. Utilities can be unsafe. It's just story-telling.

But isn't it odd that at the very time the lefties were crying wolf about the China Syndrome, they were assiduously ignoring the real and present atrocity of a Red China syndrome (its support of monsters and their monstrosities). Oh, irony, once again you rear your fickle head. You blind fools! Why, WHY won't you LISTEN to me!?! If that nuculer core goes melting down into the Earth's depths, millions of Southern Californians will, like, totally DIE! And closeup on plucky youngish newsman Jane Fonda as she lets fall a single trembling tear for mercilessly slain Jack Lemmon. Fadeout. Fin. So touching.

In actual reality, from Bruce Herschensohn (in his An American Amnesia, whence many of these passages) we learn of a "leading network newscaster" who, when asked why the Cambodian genocide was utterly and completely and utterly ignored by the "American" media, lied that there "is no way to bring cameramen in there. ...we need pictures." When it was pointed out to this eminence that brave investigative reporters heroically reported to the world CIA secrets, and that courtroom sketches were widely employed when cameras were not allowed, and, further, that actual true-to-life SE Asian witnesses and victims were available for dramatic interviewing to guarantee American audiences a dynamic television-viewing experience -- really first-rate entertainment -- well, that was sort of a long sentence.

But in response to this logic, the famous network newsreader "looked down, then back up, and had no response other than a small shrug."

Such eloquence seems like a good place to stop.


J

Kidneys

Just got the call that my step father is in the hospital again in serious but stable condition. "It could go either way." Kidney infection -- dialysis. He's one of the few people I care about. Not that anyone would know it. But I am disrupted. Disassociated as I am from myself and my humanity, my feelings, when I have them, come upon me out of no where. So I will have just finished talking to people, and stand off to the side, and I am near weeping. No one notices of course. So it's okay.

Being a profound intellectual as I am, my brilliant mind wanders over a vast panorama of disciplines, sociology being not least of them. So the other night I was forming amazing insights that only I am capable of, dealing with prostitution. It's a phenomenon of which I have been aware, but have never really pondered. One of the costs of my genius seems to be a presiding melancholia, and in such a state I understood why men go to prostitutes. It's not something I have ever considered -- but I recognize it, like drug-use, as an anodyne for existential desperation. It's not sex. It's not pleasure -- neither drugs nor this other. It's a quest for meaning ... as I say, existential. Perhaps I'll address drugs some other time. As for meaningless sex in the pursuit of meaning, the key is intimacy.

We pair up. If memory serves, it's the first observation ever made of mankind. It is not good for man to be alone. Even those who are eunuchs by nature -- though sexless, in the sense of drive -- are not companionless. We need air, and food, and survivable environs, and we need meaning. And meaning seems to be inseparable from other people. A solitary life is meaningless.

The anguish some feel at the thought of their own mortality is assuaged in the comfort of their progeny. Somehow I will live on. For religionists, they almost always have some commandment in their traditions to do good works in the world. Always it is through other people that we find our own meaning. Even the sadist couches his fantasies or his monstrosities as a relationship with some victim. Even Satan's great sin, pride, is a relativity, a context, a comparison, a relationship. Even God is not a singularity. He is a Trinity, out of necessity. Nothing exists, alone.

So when we think of love, as a high or highest calling, well, that's because it is the most intimate, the most other-oriented of affects. Just as wisdom and evil are so very close to each other, so love and hate are the right side and the left of the same thing. A thing is so very important to us, that we feel the passion of love, or hate. Passion. What is more powerful, than passion.

I feel like I've abandoned my step father. Nutrition could have saved his health, not to say his life. It was working a few years ago. But he wouldn't have it, and degenerated. A choice then, and an act of free will. And I have learned that I can't save anyone. My travails, granted to me through God's condign will, taught me that. Nevertheless, it feels like, and is, a kind of abandonment.

I'm not the man I could have been. Something happened. And I was not strong enough to pass through those fires, and remain sane. See? We need to be saved, again and again.


J

Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid.

Generally I don't bother with this sort of illiteracy. If I want self-satisfying erotica, I'll shake hands with myself in the shower. But I found this particular piece of intellectual pornography to be so prototypical that I just have to masturbate a little to it, it public. What, is my conflation of religion and biology confusing? It is a phenomenon well-known to those familiar with the metaphysical musings of saints. Evinced here in Zappa's evocative image of God offering to "fuck" us over.

Zappa's conceit of God is, well, obvious. Sophomorically so. We all have spent some part of our adolescence admiring our capacity to be glib -- how proper and fitting it is, to outgrow this stage, as the outworking of normal maturation. As for the mis-particulars here, they are hardly worthy of note. Yes, Frank, that's right. God in the Garden was against knowledge. It's all about ignorant faith. Mm-hmm. Just be a dumb blond and you can use my jacuzzi. Cuz, first, we all know how dumb those blonds are. Me, for example. Pathetic. And second, God just wants to use us ... that's why he invented us ... like the pervert who has children so he can molest them. Mm-hmm. And third, God's gonna git you if'n you disobey.

Well, that last one is true. But the other two, not so much. And it isn't God who gets us anyway ... it's the implacable laws of physics, and their precursors, the laws of metaphysics. Quantum mechanics after all takes us only so far, teetering on the brink of potentialities ... beyond which, the only vocabulary that applies is borrowed from the lexicon of angels.

Zappa is/was too sophisticated to deign to notice this bothersome anomaly of his atheism. Zappa supposes that he -- and humanity, and the universe -- like Satan, created himself. As an act of will he calls himself out of the void of nothingness, thither to return upon his will's failure. It's a theory. And one theory is just as good as any other, as Communism and Evolutionism prove. If you just believe, it answers all questions. Didn't Marx tell us so? But I was wrong just now when I said "just as good" ... LOL ... what was I thinking? Silly me. Cuz I left something out. I said "Communism", when what I should have said was "Scientific Communism". Oh, the things science can prove. It's like a Dr. Suess tale ... irrefutable in its encompassing eloquence.

"Get smart and I'll fuck you over." Man that's good. Cuz I too have profound daddy issues. And I too am spiritually dry. I don't know if Zappa used drugs. Some of them didn't. If he did, he counted drug-induced psychoses as spirituality. If he didn't, he would have consoled his soul with the cold ruminations of his intellect. As for the absolute anti-intellectualism of the religion he was attacking, Zappa must have avoided intercourse with informed and articulate corespondents. Nobody challenged his opinions. He was convinced, in the echo chamber of his quotidian milieu, by the vibrations of his pervading sympathies.

It has to do with self-righteousness, which is no-righteousness. Real righteousness is comparative, not reflexive. Like some politician who declares that, when he has momentarily stopped speaking, the debate is over -- well, we must recognize hypocrisy when we run into it. Having a strong faith is the opposite of having a narrow mind. Strong faith is strong enough to confront, and answer, opposition.

I say all this as a way of diverting myself from discussing things of a more personal nature. Logic is easy. Vulnerability is hard.

J

Stay of Execution

I have been to court, you know. Quite a bit. Hardly ever, overall, on my own behalf. Toward the end there, yes, it was about me, somehow, and a lot now that I pause to consider the matter. Went on for years, actually. Changed my personality. But there was a time when I knew all the Juvenile Halls, and all the Juvenile Courts, in LA. Well, as I constantly affirm, I am a fool. But the last time I had a traffic thing was in the mid-90s. A left turn that a cop didn't like. And last month I did something not dissimilar, and was awarded a citation for it.

So I have been in a state of very real anxiety for this last month. Completely irrational, but there it is. Catastrophizing, even though I know it's just a little traffic thing. But nowadays it seems these things can be taken care of entirely online. No need for the early-morning court appearance, before a judge and a prosecutor. That's how it used to be. In those days, before the Fall, I had no real anxiety in this regard. But the mind bleeds, and a psychic trauma leaks into adjacent brain tissue, and eventually the whole system is poisoned. A septic soul. It's a theory that explains sexual fetishes, and also pervading and irrational anxieties. I don't have any fetishes. I am controlled by anxiety.

I managed to communicate that I had a concern over this, and some generous soul took me in hand and led me through the online steps. It just about -- not quite but almost -- brings me to tears, the relief, and the associated casual human kindness. But it's like being a parent. That's how I see being a father. Lessons should be taught through patience, and gentleness. Not always, only, through blame and anger and punishment. We need the quiet calming humor and the compassionate hand and the steady example, the normality, that maturity radiates. We need it the way we need forgiveness and grace. Otherwise the world is the way I see it in my dark hours, and a world like that is unworthy of the life it contains.

So that's a load off. I have been given a small but significant blessing. Now I need to find some way to pay it forward. But right now I need to clean the damn floor.


J

Spring

Done with the Opens. 81st place! Yeeah! Top, maybe, 12%. Oh. That's not so good. Well, my legs are not as strong as they need to be. A lot. Still, I haven't been entirely serious. Top twenty go right to the Games. That group, I see, clusters together, then a big gap, then everyone else. So, the serious guys, the also rans, and the drop ins.

I have a motivation issue. The depression is back, and a few nights ago it was so bad I considered pharmaceutical medication. Not actively, it just occurred to me that that's how bad it was ... medicatable. This can't be, cannot be the way we were meant to be. Depression. Self-destruction, of the proactive sort, seems not to be in my makeup. But if it were, I'd be done by now.

Spiritual, emotional, chemical. I don't know which, as a root cause. My alienation from God, and the concomitant assault, as needed, by demonic forces. They probably don't bother with me much anymore. I know they used to. My prayers, when I pray, consist of me seeing myself on a storm-blown peak, at the edge of a vast cliff, calling into the wind, "GOD! GOD?" He has never replied. God nowadays appears only to communicate via writing. Well, I'm a reader. Or used to be.

The baggage from my childhood? -- with its abuse and neglect, bitterness and unforgiveness. Something organic? -- some molecule, hormone, peptide, amino acid, that's just present in the wrong ratio? I don't know.

Staying alive is a duty, not a pleasure. Habit and stubbornness sustain me. I know this can't be the way it should be. It's interfering with my training. Utterly unmotivated. It's kept me from doing things I was born to do, from doing even the conventional things that normal people do, like living in a home, or having a mate. Recently it's been subterranean, a reprieve, but here it is again. It's not even about hope, or hopelessness. Pointlessness. Sometimes I can hardly stand it.

Do not argue with me when I say mine is the God of Unanswered Prayer. Yes, silence is an answer, of sorts, as is punishment. But I'm one of those characters who needs to be rescued more than once. I need mercy to be renewed every morning. Mercy, a word that has meaning.

But all that was a few nights ago, and I'm better now.

Trayvon, the boy in Florida who got shot down. Well, he was visiting relatives because he'd been suspended for possessing a bag with marijuana debris ... so he was a fresh-faced kid with an Obama-bright smile, but he wasn't a saint. And along comes Zimmerman, who sees the boy on the way to buy Skittles -- the munchies? -- and Z wants to be a hero. The boy was on the phone with his girlfriend ... some guy is following me! Maybe he turned on Z, but that would be maybe the "stand your ground" situation that Z is claiming for himself. Still, no rush to judgment. We can't punish wannabe heroes just for wanting to be heroes. Guys who blow away people who are confronting a threat, though ... a little tougher situation.

The Old Testament has the idea of the City of Refuge, where someone who causes an accidental death, as an ax head flying off and killing someone, can flee and be safe from the life for a life justice the victim's family. Sort of a punishment. Sort of a mercy. Z appears to have had grass stains on the back of his head. So there was a confrontation, not just a cold murder. It's complicated. If it's complicated, justice will not be clear. Either we're not allowed to be wannabe heroes, in which case we are no longer men or Americans, or if we are innocent and stalked while Skittle-buying and if we confront our stalker who perhaps pulls a gun and if we rush him ... we can be killed without it being a crime -- in which case, well, it's confusing.

Here's an example of what's not acceptable. No City of Refuge for unrighteous prosecutors. Where is God's swift justice when we need it?


J

Probably the Greatest Poem Ever

There once was a maid, who, quite sick
All day, had cravings, and went out to pick
Hulled gooseberries. Boiling
A tea, and spoiling
Her thirst, she made of meal of a pickle.

I know. Amazing. Your admiration is a mere redundancy. A shallow thinker might suppose that rhyming sick All and  pick Hull(ed) with pickle is also a redundancy, but these are clearly different words, not even homophones, so critics should shut the hell up and just admire the beauty and eloquence. Morons.

Why is it okay to say moron, but not retard?

I may be going back to being a street poet, busting out extemporaneous verse on topics of the day. Dude can pick up a lot of change that way. I recently got some disappointing news about circumstances, and being the soulful sort, I get depressed. So another career change seems attractive. Oh, my Muse is speaking:

A Poem on the Vicissitudes of Circumstance

Okay?
No way.

Man that's good. People don't appreciate how brilliant I am. People should appreciate my brilliance. Instead of always disappointing me the way they do.

Whenever something goes wrong, I think it's God, punishing. Certainly not protecting. Somehow a lesson? Sure, okay ... a lesson taught through punishment. It occurred to me last night that, just as "A woman's right to choose" is an unfinished sentence -- right to choose what? -- so, "God is good" is unfinished. God is good to the good? None is good but God, to quote the Pharisees. God is good to me? Well, I'm breathing, and that's good. And worse things aren't happening, so that's good. But I don't have the emotional maturity to be satisfied only with the blessing I have. I want more blessings.

I find I don't worry. I get depressed. God isn't impassive, but he's implacable. King Hezekiah got his prayer answered, and was granted a longer life -- during which time Manasseh was born, next king, an absolute disaster. Seems almost like a punishment? Pray for something God doesn't want and you'll get it but be sorry? Won't someone comfort me, please?

I was not entirely pleased with my results from last week's Opens performance, so I did the workout again the next day, and improved the score by a minute degree. Tweaked my back doing it, and have been twingey since. I'll be fine by Saturday. But for that second workout I filmed, no taped, no, uh, videoed -- recorded it on one of these computer phones from the future. I hadn't seen myself for some decades, and when I reviewed it, to make sure I'd met the standards, I was truly surprised by how much I looked like my son. Or visa versa. I'm more gangly, but the way we move and hold ourselves, and just the facial expressions -- it was striking. There might be something to this genetics thing. Seems that in this one matter, my former wife was true to me. I haven't quite gotten what folks have meant when they said we look alike. Now I do. It's not just features, it's carriage. My posture is better than I'd thought.

What to do. What to do.

J

XFO

Did a sort of prep workout for the real one on Saturday. Worked hard but not brutally -- didn't want to fry my CNS. I meant to take the splits, to pace myself on Sat, but, um, I didn't. Just have to be steady. Rest is the enemy. Eighteen minutes of work -- easy. I've had orgasms that lasted longer than that.

I have no desire to compete, or to be noticed. What do I want? Well, I want respect from the people who are important to me. Strangers don't really matter -- what they say amounts to flattery -- random opinions that may have a benevolent motive but have no real weight. To be honest, if obvious, I would like the respect of my father. He of course has no idea about what I do. If he's been told, via say my brothers, that I do BJJ, he'd just think it was some gay thing I'm into. See? Disrespect. He thinks I'm gay. I just remembered this a few days ago ... when I was in school I played the bassoon. The hardest Western instrument. If I had it to do again, I would have chosen the flute -- no reeds, easy to carry, and more prestigious than the recorder.

One of the things I used for my bassoon was cold cream, to grease the corks. My father saw that I had cold cream, and thought I was gay ... you know, like, maybe a secret drag queen? I don't know. I just remember the ... weight ... of his disapproval and unspoken accusation. I had a little pirate chest from Knotts Berry Farm, and I put some junk jewelry in it, to, you know, look like treasure. My father saw that and supposed I was gay. That drag queen thing again. And I listened to Classical music, and I didn't care for sports, and I didn't date. You know, evidence that I was gay. Later, as a father, I helped him coach his baseball team of nine year olds, and I hugged one of the boys. So that made me gay too.

I am deeply conflicted, but I do suppose I have to say it. Fuck him.

So this is the man that I'd like, in my fantasies, to get respect from. He knows that I'm "some sort of genius." He seemed resentful of that, and somehow competitive. He sees that I'm not aging at a standard rate, but somehow, even so, my diet is weird. He brags about his health, seemingly forgetful of his divers reticulitis and hernias and gangrenous gall bladder, etc. A life not notable for radiant health, yet it is I who am open to ridicule? How confusing.

Sort of an aside, but it has been on my mind. I have never slandered my ex-wife. I have made it a point to find honest good things to say about her, to my son, and to any with whom I have conversed. Whereas, my poor father is incapable of containing his bile, re the ex-lovers in his life. This trait strikes me as evidence of a low character. He has not understood that his adulteries, discovered, create powerful anger. He is in his mind the victim, of evil and unforgiving women. Even my poor mother, who as far as I know has not been viciously slandered by him, is still, in his words, a nag and a scold. He slanders my eldest brother's very young wife, as a sort of internet whore ... they met via a sort of, um, mail order bride thing. I hope my brother is happy; I would find it surprising if she were ... married to my brother, who is rather too like his father. Who also slanders my other brother's wife ... who is a decent woman, and has been very good for my brother, although she is a bit limited and frustrating to try to converse with. No matter. She's good for him, and that's what's important. Point? My father doesn't like women? Now what would that make him?

Not meant to be a rant about all that, though. Meant to indicate the irrationality of the relationship, father and son. I am utterly assured that my son respects me. No longer the hero worship of the very young ... now matured, informed, and benevolent. He knows I am flawed, but he knows the virtue to which I strive. He knows that I will never manipulate, never seduce, never give insincere flattery. He knows that I will find a positive truth to say, and that I will take pleasure in saying it. What I like in myself, my son likes in me. How pleasing.

The curse that my father blessed his sons with, in his hours-long lectures in the living room, we three seated on the couch, hearing his soul crushing musings about his unhappiness and his failures, and his predictions, promises, curses, that we would be the same, failures and bad parents ... well I broke that curse, yet I am cursed by it. Every paradox contains within it a false premise. Would that I could identify this one.

So, we will see what I do, re this XF Opens thing. I'll do pretty well on this third one, but real strength, and running speed, will undo me. If I fluke into the Games, I will not make a great showing, but I will do my best. On the other hand, I have the bit in my mouth, and next year I really do expect to make it ... if the field remains as I hope, and the really elite old guys are busy with their trophy wives and their investment brokers.

I currently associate with positive and supportive people, who encourage me to excel. That's nice, but I have a lifetime habit of viewing both praise and criticism as something like graffiti. I don't need to question motives, or judgment, in either case ... but I simply cannot afford to allow my self-image to depend on anyone else's opinion. If I had ever done that, in my vulnerable youth, I and perhaps some other people would not currently be alive. So there's that.

I'd rather write angry and sarcastic political things. I use it to vent, and it's harmless. Sometimes though I have to vent at a deeper level ... maybe there will eventually be a change. Maybe I'll be rescued. Perhaps God will take pity on my wretchedness, my unforgiveness and my inability to forgive. I would appreciate a real and present blessing.

So, um, thank you God, in advance.


J

Update

I find to my dismay that I am currently ranked 39th in the world, for old-guy XFers. It goes by 5 year increments, and only something like 500 in my category, but even so. Some folks around here are thinking I'll make it to the Games. But Corporate only has to throw one big strength workout into the Opens, or a tough run, and I'm #467. Even so, I had not realized that the old guys don't have to do Regionals or Sectionals -- it's just the top 20 from the Opens. That does put a different spin on it. And the third workout was posted today -- it's stuff I'm pretty good at. I'm okay at burpees -- the first Open workout was 7 minutes of burpees ... I'm piss-poor at snatches -- but my 60 for the second workout pulled me up from the 130s into the 30s ... or whatever ... I seem to have a block.

This third one is 15 box jumps onto a 24 inch box, 12 push presses with 115 pounds, and 9 toes to bars, rounds in 18 minutes. I'm not amazing at any of these, but they are within my comfort zone. With a bit of "luck" ... well, my natural modesty inhibits me from saying. Oh, alright: I'll bump up another order of magnitude. Not greedy though -- top 5 is fine for me.

Seriously though, I really have no desire or ambition at all to do the Games. But if it's within my capacity, I have the obligation. Cannot communicate how much I do not want to compete. Really dislike it. Waiting around in a strange place, tension, crowds. Only good thing is that everyone will get to see my amazing body. It's really fantastic. If you get one of the ESPNs you'll see it. And all the chicks will really be into me -- I've decided to get a tattoo: Ride the Silver Fox! That'll be in a circle around my left nipple. Apparently my back is as astounding as my front. I wouldn't know, fixated on my amazing front as I am, but it makes sense.

Ah well. I just dared to look at the rankings. I was 39th for the snatches, along with about 20 other dudes ... but my overall ranking is also 39th. How odd. The leader is my weight and 7 inches shorter -- there is a profound mechanical advantage for him, unless there's a refrigerator-carrying event, where a long reach counts and leverage doesn't. Keep yer fingers crossed, cuz all them chicks is waiting. But it is an honor ever to have been nominated.

Just a little narcissism, to keep up the family tradition.

Yeah, I picked up on the gossip. My mother was actually physically going to my father's house and helping him during his convalescence. Seems the deal was only that he not bad-mouth any member of her family. His family. Of course he couldn't honor that. And furthermore, the water was too loud, when she was washing the dishes. It bothered him, a lot. And that led to some unpleasant language, and he said, "You're fired!" and she said, "I quit!" Meanwhile the Mexican slave that the father has had been coming to the mother's house, trimming trees and painting walls, whether she wanted it or not. But he ordered the slave never to return, so the jobs are half finished.

I find that until now I have never actually been ashamed of my father. Angry and repulsed, but never ashamed. Until now.

Good think I'm so amazing, right? Keeps me sane.

J

Two Random Thoughts

Just heard on Hewitt someone say that no one ever regretted hiring Romney to do anything. They missed the obvious followup: No one ever hired Obama to do anything -- prior, that is, to his current, first, entry-level job.

Another random thought: Nation-building works when there is an actual nation to build. Successes: Germany and Japan. Failures: Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Germany and Japan, despite their disturbing laps into savagery, were not tribal societies. They were, in the literal sense, civilized, meaning that cities played an overwhelming role in their culture. So there was a foundation, firm, on which to build. Afghanistan, as Mark Steyn has lamented, will shake off American's billions and lives and efforts in a few short weeks after we bug out, and what we thought was bread upon the waters will prove to have been offal down the commode. Something about leopards and spots. Something about scorpions needing to strike. Something about the nature of things, as opposed to magic. We have to look deeper than the fingernail polish and makeup. Maybe it's a Sea Hag. Maybe it's a drag queen. Maybe it's a culture, a people, a nation, incapable of sustaining the ideals of liberal Western representative democracy. As I wisely say in another context, we can't help our bones, but we can control what hangs off of them. Middle East moslem bones are tribal. The most we can hope is that they act in their own best self-interest. As should we.

Were I moslem, I would be an islamist. I would work to build the Caliphate. The way a Christian should work for Christ. As Prager said this morning -- I heard him in the car -- kindness done in the name of God makes believers; evil done in the name of God makes atheists. In the former instance, of kindness, it is not fanatics who act; in the latter, of course, it is. The Ancients counted history in terms of Ages, Golden and Silver and Bronze and Iron. We ourselves, Modern, have moved from the tangible to states of mind, and have Ages of Faith and Reason and Technology and currently Information, and still more currently, full circle, we return to Faith, and Unfaith.

As as a moslem, islamist, fanatic that I would be, I would see the deaths of woman and children as just a tribute to, a dues, an offering to Allah, a moon god, although I would acknowledge that particular factum of history only as a deceit, as Jehovah is called a volcano god. The momentary splatter of marrow and gray matter that a marketplace bomb produces is but the outworking of Allah's caprice, and all return to their proper place, for nothing exists outside the will of Allah. Easy. Human grief should be a passing thing, and islam is a word meaning "surrender", as moslem means "one who has submitted". Easy. Shut up and obey.

Even adhering, as I profess, to a doctrine of love, I find that a sword, and swiftness amounting to cruelty, seem natural to my sense of justice. So, really, I should have been moslem. Ah well, the happenstances of birth. Maybe God is capricious? Or maybe there are dimensions to election that remain unperceived. The way humanity is such an elusive quality, as recent essays here at FP have suggested ... you know, this abortion thing.

But don't get me started.

J

Open

The XF Opens are ongoing, 5, one each week. I tweaked my shoulder Saturday letting a white belt get a sense of a shoulder lock from side mount. The price of taking on a teaching role. I was going to do the workout afterwards, but I tried to be cautious and did it today instead. Snatches, ground to overhead, ten minutes, 30@ 75lbs, which is nothing, just toss it up, 30@ 135, which takes either a fair bit of strength, or skill ... and I have no skill, then 30@ 165, and then as many as possible in the remaining time of 210. So I got sixty, and my shoulder is sort of throbbing. We'll see. I was sorely tempted to p-factor out, but ya gotta represent. I am not proud, at all, of the score. But it's not a disgrace. I muscled it up for all of the 135s, maybe a little, or a lot, of actual screaming going on. The old guys, 55 and over, only have to do a max of 120lbs. I would have dominated. Blast my youth. Ah well, three years to practice.

Arnold got a statue in Ohio, and some radio guy yesterday was saying if it were at Venice Beach, and when he was governor, he may have been bribed to resign, and maybe this formerly great state would be less-badly off. The interesting thing was the observation that Arnold had chosen to excel at the very most narcissistic endeavor possible, bodybuilding, which makes you less athletic, less useful, less of everything except big. He apparently had a father who refused to acknowledge him, and it sort of messed him up.

And it just clicked, as it never had before, even though I had always been well-aware of it, that my own father had been a bodybuilder, and up until his latest health issue, had continued to "pump iron." It was the secret of his health, along with his diet of fish sticks and cranberry sauce. Sarcasm is not appropriate, given his gangrenous gallbladder, but I remain frustrated by his ignorance, arrogance, manipulations and need to dominate and suppress.

I have not seen him since his operation. I was told he did not want visitors in the hospital, and I'm too cowardly to just call him up and invite myself over.

I had been wondering and disturbed about how depressed I've been in the past few days. Then I remembered the Feb 29/Mar 1 constellation, a sort of coincidental anniversary, the anode of which was March 1, lo those many years ago now. It used to be a clockwork event, twice a year, in October and now, when an unspeakable blackness would overtake me. But it's passed a few times now unmarked. I had thought I was good. Seems not. There are circannual as well as circadian rhythms, and sometime they leap.

I know that time is limited. My father is highly mortal, and loneliness crushes him. One day it will be too late, and I will be surprised by the rage of my grief. Apparently my mother actually visited him in the hospital -- they have not met for 35 years -- I have not spoken to her about it, but she said that he was so grateful, so very lonely. Indeed, to this has his course brought him. I myself expect to die a very old man, alone, in the desert. One must prepare for one's old age. But of course we do that every day.


J

After-birth Abortion

There are such things as "morally irrelevant" human beings. No, we do not mean sadistic monsters, or genocidal despots, or sociopathic megalomaniacs, or medical ethicists. Certainly not, the idea is risible. We mean "babies", who are not "actual persons" and have no "moral right to life."

This fact is self-evident, and only “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society” could object, avers Journal of Medical Ethics editor, Herr Doktor Professeur Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Double threat! How could such a personage possibly be in error? Like, there are no Ethics as correct as Practical Ethics ... far more reality-based than, say, Moral Ethics or Human Ethics or Parental Ethics. Ethics are highly adjectival, utterly modifiable, mutable and relative. As a charming young gay man just told me at the Trader Joe's checkout, "There is no right or wrong, just different." I find that comforting. I wonder what he looks like naked.

“The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.” They can't be talking about white babies, surely? They should write more carefully ... someone could get the wrong idea.

“Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’." Ah, good to know. Note to self: not all humans are persons. Good. Lets me off the hook re the duct tape, coroner's saw and heavy-duty garbage bags in my trunk. "Human" bodies hold a lot of moisture.

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.” One may have supposed that to love something is to increase its value, but no, we have just been informed, that would be a mistaken belief. Personhood is reflexive, real only when it is self-attributed. Again, good to know ... only forebrain activity need be considered when evaluating humanity.

Therefore, it is “not possible to damage a newborn [human non-person] by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”. Furthermore, I add, we can harvest her organs, enjoy intercourse with her, feed her to dogs ... the list is limited only by your imagination and capacity to suppress the gag response. She is incapable of being damaged. As the crows observed of Dumbo, so we are given to understand that you can't hurt her, she's made out of rubber. Therefore, “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”. Disabled, dismembered ... splitting hairs.

As for the really undesirable, like Down's Syndrome "babies" -- you know, Mongolian idiots -- “To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole...” Well, might be. Unbearable, like having your '82 Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan served at 15°C. Hey, stupid: seventeen degrees, bitch ... se-ven-teen. We can't be wasting precious resources on crippled babies. There are abortions to pay for.

And "it is reasonable to predict that living with a very severe condition is against the best interest of the newborn..." Clearly, clearly: not living at all is clearly clearly better than living with a severe condition. That's how I feel a lot of the time too ... I just don't see the purpose of life. I'd be better off dead too. Who will free me from this body of death. After-birth abortionists? Practical ethicists? Damn these intrusive laws. There is entirely too little killing going on nowadays.

The retards are next.

I should submit this to Kos or The Huffington Post. One of my better essays, non?

J

Circles

I don't learn things very often about my brain. I've been a close observer all my life, and the pickings get slim, further alone the road. But I had an insight about what I think loyalty is. It's not gifts and back-pats, kind words and smiles. These are gestures, incidents, that can be as much a function of mood as of devotion. Loyalty, I'm thinking, shows itself most dearly through consistency. You are patient with your kids even after a hard day at work. You return a phone call in a timely manner. You forgive the shortfalls of someone who repents an error. Not as a whim but out of the presiding spirit of your relationship with that person.

I have a lot of pride. I'm touchy. It's not a consistent thing -- there are slights I just don't care about .. but these would be from people I don't care about. As with I expect almost everyone, I cannot abide being disrespected, slandered, ignored. A shortcoming, I know. I should be strong and independent. Like I was told with words to be, when I was a child, via parental preaching.

I was in my mother's house earlier today ... she'd lost her phone ... it was lying in the grass in the front lawn ... and I somehow noticed that my father had published his memoirs. I knew he'd written it, but it's out there in the great wide world now. I won't be reading it. I know the story all too well. It's got a good title, except he subtitles it with a self-description of "certified schizophrenic", and as I've noted before, that's his self-serving self-diagnosis. He is in fact paranoid, narcissistic and borderline. I flipped through it. Desperately needs editing, of course. Otherwise, same old. All about how evil the women in his life have been.

Well, I'm rambling. Circling the drain again.

I did the XF Opens workout on Saturday, 7 minutes of burpees, score of 95. Little disappointing, but I have no right to expect more. My training is consistent but not serious. On the other hand, the top posted scorer for my age group got 122, and he's 5 foot 5 and 155 lbs, which means in terms of actual workload and power (work over time), I beat him. That's not how they reckon scores, though. Anyway I'm simply not strong enough, in terms of real competition, and I don't run enough, cuz you know there will be runs in upcoming trials. Had a bit of concern about getting my score posted in time ... other people needed to be involved in the registration, in a managerial capacity, and lines of communication were for one reason or another occluded.

But I'm paranoid too. I have long imaginary monologic diatribes about my imaginary father. "You should be please that I agree with you about your being crazy, and you should listen to me, because I have a lifetime of observation and contemplation on the matter. " But I don't actually say such things to him, because there is no hope of real communication, and I'd just go higher on his enemies list, and I in fact am crazy too -- the burden of too-great truths having shattered my equipoise.

What the point. What's the fucking point.

Given what the world is, I am surprised both that there is such a thing as a humanity, and that there continues to be such a thing. I look at what life is, and it is clear and self-evident that there is no God as the Bible presents him, no benignant presiding Intelligence who guides things to an ultimate good end. It is clear, because there is no evidence for faith in such an outcome. The end is never ultimately good. The end, per the actual evidence, of real observation, is death. Everything ends in death, which is almost always fearful, painful and full of sorrow. Counterbalancing this is a hope that what appears to be the end is in fact not that thing -- hope, based on faith, based on trust. Trust in what? A God who created a universe in which everything that can be observed ends in death.

Yet I have never questioned the character of God. Without God life is impossible ... the magical thinking that would suppose an alchemical transmogrification of inanimate matter into the higher order of life ... well, if you haven't discerned it yet, I do not believe in magic. So of course there is a God. Why did he create? So that he might be observed. Thus, revelation, and therefore authority, and ultimately logic and submission or rebellion to the requirement of faith. As with gravity, one cannot disobey, only avoid and delay, God and his inevitabilities.

God is not schizophrenic, for all that he is three persons. He is not paranoid ... he has real enemies, that are truly evil. He is not a narcissist, because he is worthy of the admiration he requires. He is not borderline, because the universe reflects his mercy as well as his judgment. But for all that God is justified, I don't like him, and I don't love him. The only excuse he has is Jesus. Without Jesus, God would be just a more confusing Satan, whose purposes are obvious. God would be Allah. This is as much as to say nothing at all, of course, since there could not be a God without a Jesus. They are one. Lucky for us they have different names then, or we would find it simply impossible to understand any of it.

Not that I do, understand. Oh, I talk a good game. But sometimes all I want is to be left alone. Sometimes I know that if I unbarred the door of my soul, the screaming loneliness would crash out and tear the flesh from my bones. I wouldn't be so proud, if I could trust. But who is trustworthy?


J

Decline and

Prince Sirik Matak of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to US Ambassador Dean, 12 April, 1975:

Dear Excellency and Friend,

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky. But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.

Please accept, Excellency, my dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

Sirik Matak

Obama's spiritual mentor The Reverend Jeremiah Wright famously declaimed the imprecatory prayer from his pulpit, "...God Bless America? No no no ... not God bless America, God damn America..." The Reverend no doubt had other things in mind when he so urged God, and his congregants. And I do not wish or pray for America's damnation. Anyway, seems like that slope is already being slipped on. Free citizens being required by apparatchik diktat to pay for abortions. The Reverend was right. The chickens have indeed come home to roost. May they find happiness under the sky.

America won the Vietnam War. All major objectives were achieve and ratified by the Paris Agreement of 1973. Two and a quarter years later, South Vietnam (a currently non-existent country, like Carthage or Oz) ceased to exist. While the Democrat-controlled Congress systematically worked to forsake US obligations, North Vietnam (now "Vietnam"), aided by loyal allies Red China and Soviet Russia, built up and invaded and won the peace. Could have been stopped, but pols couldn't allow it. I mean, hadn't Nixon just resigned in disgrace? Therefore we must be, um, betraying scum.

Some other time perhaps I'll notate a few of the humanitarian achievements of the North Vietnamese ethos and of the Khmer Rouge etc. Dude, it's like something they should make a movie about. You know, so it seems real. Enough for the moment to observe that after the actual war, during, you know, the peace that we lost, North Vietnam was depopulating. Rather than moving North to bombing-free Hanoi, humans headed South. There were no refugee camps in the North. Something about not living under communism seemed attractive enough to leave home and risk death.

Liberty. What a concept. Too bad us white men are the only people who truly value it ... you know what I mean ... the liberty to do as we please, regardless of honor or mercy. And after all, Evolution proves that some people are more human than others, so, uh, QED. People primitive enough to commit the mistake of believing in the Americans? God damn them.

Oh, by the way, funny story: Prince Matak was executed nine days later, four days after his capital fell to Pol Pot, who was almost as much a Leftist Hero as Che. ¡Viva!

I will never be ashamed of being white, or American, or the designee of any arbitrary birth-group. It is not some group that gives me pride. If I am proud of the goodness of this nation, I must also be ashamed of its manifest cowardice and decadence. That's all just too dang confusing. So I will not be proud, or ashamed, of the actions of others. I will judge, and approve or condemn accordingly. I will admire and praise, or otherwise, each action and responsible agent, according to its merit.

So, certainly, absolutely and utterly, God damn the 94th Congress of America. Indeed, these chickens have, mostly, gone home to roost -- gone to their own place, the ninth circle of hell, reserved for those whose nature is steeped in treachery. God damn them.


J

On the Point

Is it possible, does it even make sense, to announce unilaterally a "compromise"? That's what the Occupant of the United States has done. His "health" "care" diktat, that his Democrat Senate and Democrat House rammed down America's throat, requires all Americans to have access to abortion services, you know, just in case, like, I somehow get pregnant and need the services of abortion.

My own healthcare plan is focused around prevention, but maybe I'll be raped? Male, you say? -- I'm male? True, but nevertheless in our egalitarian society of fairness and indiscrimination, I am required to subsidize the possibility. We are all after all equal. No one is any better than anyone else. All equal in the eyes of the law and goddess. Just a matter of deciding who's human, and then we're set for life, cradle to grave if not womb to tomb. Those troublesome fœti, you see, with their irritating pond scum presence. Something should be done, and has been, thank you very much, Occupant, to eradicate those vermin. Babies indeed.

But I digress. What manner of "compromise" is it, where religious institutions are required to provide a service that is contrary to their conscience and convictions? I do not agree with Roman Catholic doctrine re contraception. To prevent conception seems to me like a non-religious issue. Whether through celibacy or Onanism or frottage or orality or interuptus or prophylactics or anality (I had not previously realized the variety!), I see no necessary connection between every ejaculation and the potential for conception. Any more than food must be correlated to nutrition. Sometimes it's just about taste. Until the Churchmen in question also pronounce an Edenic nutritional system ... the Vatican Diet ... The Papal Weight Loss System ... I shall continue to suppose that I see an inconsistency in the catechism. Purity of purpose must be more an angelic than a human attribute.

Understand, of course, since words have meaning, that contraception and birth control or two profoundly different things. No third-party life is involved in the former. The latter, like Pandora's box, hides a multitude of evils. But perhaps infanticide is not an evil? I haven't been keeping up with progressive thought on the matter. Birth control. Heartbeat, life, baby control.

But I digress. It is overtly unamerican to command someone else's conscience. This is exactly what O has done. Well, of course. And to call, declared, denominate, proclaim ... to call this a compromise is almost breathtaking in its cynicism and hack pol manipulation. With whom has O reached an agreement? His toadies? It feels like the kind of rape from which no conception could ever result ... you know what I'm saying, sugar ... the San Francisco kind, and I don't mean ramming it down the throat after the Democrat example of politics. But we're all equal, and our preferences and practices are all equal, and a vagina and an anus are equal, and marriage between one man and one woman and one or more man and/or woman more, it's all good, and equal, and anyone who dissents is a hater and refuses to compromise.

But I digress. That we have a "president" who poses himself in front of cameras and telepronounces his theories about all this free stuff that nobody has to pay for ... golly, why doesn't he just do that with the deficit? If just saying so makes something free, then let's be debt free. And he can fix the economy and cure AIDS and halt Global Warming too. What is not possible, when words are the same as reality? I knew about the Saul Alinsky influence ... I had not realized O was also a disciple of Aleister Crowley. We may have a Mormon in the White House. We do have a Magician there.

This is a character who is at core a dictator. He hates politics, because politics requires real compromise, rather than shoddy cynical ploys merely called by that word. This is a character who does not understand the ethical use of communication. Words are tools for the lowest sort of manipulation. Choose, Dear Reader, any hierarchical organisation of communication, and Obama's style will be at the lowest level. The man is a fœtus. One more example of this, and he will be demoted to the lower case. It is inevitable.

Fucking scum.

J

Friendship, Love and Grief

I wish I'd known him when I was young. But he would have been a baby. That's the problem with time travel -- everyone else still has to be on their own timeline. We did a workout last night -- I did 8 rounds +6, he did 8 rounds +10, and I said, "Oh, so that's how it is." A joke. I'm very funny. Truth is, while I am reasonably competitive, yet I take pleasure in the excellence of the people I care about. I'm proud of E, and want him to be my equal, better at some things, not, at others. Parity. Friends compete. But one of the ways my love expresses itself to me is through the pride I take in him. Just cuz.

If I had known the people I know now, only when I was young, I would be much healthier. The example of normality is a revelation to me. I observe people, like an alien, like an angel, studious, and sometimes I think, "Ah, so that's how it's done." You know, being friendly, sociable. We learn by example, positive or negative, and by imitation. I am so tightly wound, so guarded, by aloofness and humor and information, that I am beyond being influenced. Almost.

I have opened a window on my heart, in these pages. I am honest as far as I go -- certainly keeping my own council here, as everywhere. I've never told E that I love him, somewhere between a brother and a son. I know what loving a son is like, and it's like that. Must be what loving a brother is. I don't invent reasons to give gifts, but a perceived need occurred to me a while back, and I wanted to fill it, but by coincidence it was being taken care of. Good, but how do we show our love, but by being a blessing? Kind wishes are easy, if not meaningless. They have meaning. But actions matter, the way food matters -- beyond wishes and hope and prayer and faith. We look for ways to help, and sometimes we find them.

There was some good personal news he told me about. And I was pleased for him, and the broken part of my soul was dismayed that people could actually be healthy and loving. I wish I'd had these examples when I was young. I did not adequately convey the tenderness I felt for him at that moment -- mustn't be maudlin -- but I would have hugged him longer. Believe it or not, I'm a hugger, with people I love.

I take pleasure in the observation that E is smart enough, and wise enough and good enough to cherish his family, jealously guard his wife's happiness, diligent over his sons' characters. Maybe this is not a rare thing. Mostly what I notice on the subject is just a lot of talk.

My father is in the hospital having his gall bladder removed. He thought it was food poisoning for 4 days, then finally called the ambulance. He lives in a castle with 72 steps to the front door. He's almost 80 now, and steps are a problem. It was great when he was a Hollywood playboy, big seductive letch, but what now? My mother, who has not seen him for 34 years, is going to visit him at the hospital now. Must be done by now. I haven't gotten a hysterical phone call, so it may have gone well. They have grown old, one and a half generations beyond the couple they had been. A sort of time travel.

This is the place to which always being alone has brought me. My unforgivness amounts to hatred. I have been given the blessing of a good friend, the curse of a crazy family, and it may not be in me to nurture the blessing into a sort of redemption. But how else? If there are angels, they go unrecognized. We ourselves have to take others by the hand.

I've never talked about the culmination of my great and ruinous calamity, all those years ago, because I am ashamed. Of my stupidity, and my victimization, and my stupidity. I made lots of mistakes, of calculation and of character. Much of my stupidity is that I expected the world to be like me -- concerned for justice, even at personal cost. As I say, I am stupid.

Maybe I'll tell that story. But I do have pride, and there is a difference between my affirming that I am a fool, and your knowing the details.

How fortunate, to live beyond the fear, the awareness that love makes us hostage to fate. To love is to grieve. But everything in its time, and love lasts, where grief must be only an interlude.

My father may die soon. My step father, whom I dearly love, is on a feeding tube in an institution -- his brain is degenerating. Well, actually, just 10 minutes ago I got the voice mail ... he's been taken to the hospital with pneumonia. I may feel nothing, when they go. That's how I am -- monstrous. It would be better to grieve, as an interlude.


J

Two Things I've Never Talked About

I find that my rage against God and my unutterably deep craving for violent justice is undiminished by the passing of the years. Just submerged. I've been burning for the past hour with the memory and affect of a time of particular pain, loss, outworking of betrayal, and there's one slashing razor of a memory that just won't grow dull.

I was a really good father, but I certainly don't pretend to have been without fault. Almost always I kept my own damaged psyche to myself, but everyone, including of course my son, knew I was odd. I don't remember the details, but the only time I showed rage in front of my son was when he was 17, and I had been under attack for a few years, by then, unremitting, wave after wave, almost funny, from an impersonal, God's-eye point of view.

I was overwhelmed, and succumbed to rage and despair, and I was ranting to my son, probably actually hysterical. "God," I said, contempt dripping in my tone, "...sitting on his throne ... judging." It was actually funny, the eloquence. I believe, now, and then, in the God of Unanswered Prayers. The God of Mercy But Only After Hard Lessons, and the Mercy Is Only That the Lesson Was Learned. Thanks, God ... for nothing. After Hard Lessons, I want Actual Comfort.

During my rant, I kicked a laundry basket with a flailing leg, ungainly, undignified, futility making me clumsy and impotent. My son laughed, because it was indeed comical, and I turned on him and snarled, "Are you laughing at me?" Well, he was. But he said no. He has never lied to me. We won't count this as a lie.

I was pathetic. The way a burn victim is pathetic. We have skin for a reason. When it is peeled off, the wailing and limb-flapping is comical.

That's what my soul is like. I have not forgiven God. I can't say he is a liar, because I have not come to him, with a repentant and contrite heart. I would contend with him, and his shit world, of butchered innocence and unpunished horror. Well, it's a Fallen world, theology pipes up, and not God's fault. Indeed. Fuck our fallen nature -- these unclean and unmended vessels demonstrate their worthlessness by their inutility. But I think I need an actual angel to come and take my hand. Anything less, I'm too brilliant and incisive to have my mind changed.

My son was a sniper in Iraq. I've never talked to him about that.

J

Brooding Yet Again

It's a little irritating, how much I suck at bjj. More than a little. Even with white belts, I'm quite stupid. Rolling a bit now with some big ones, and I can't really do much. Easy to get by when everyone is smaller than you, but when it's a more equal playing field, well, I suck. I manage to get some results, but it's sloppy and non-technical and if they had any more skill I'd be just a doofus with too high a belt. Quite, quite irritating. Anyone else who'd rolled as much as I have would be good. I have an amazing brain, really first rate in some ways. Both analytical and creative -- a rare combination. In terms of the actual measurements, a genius, thank you very much. Ah -- now I feel better. But reality is what it is, and just as real brilliance is measured by what it produces, just so there is a difference between fighting, and being technically good at bjj. I get results, sloppy, the way a mugger earns his cash. Gracelessly.

Tonight there was a little humorous banter about repeating a word someone had said, maybe giving it a sort of accent, and then augmenting it, and I'm not quite sure, didn't really hear, but there might have been a bit of stereotyping involved, and now here I sit getting all bothered by it, because I am very protective of my friends, but we can't be hypersensitive, but how do we show our love and our loyalty, if not by acting in the moment? I didn't quite catch it, and I was aware that I may have been misunderstanding, so I butted in with a different tone, as a diversion. It probably all went unnoticed. But sometimes I am hypersensitive.

I was thinking, brooding, earlier today that I had as a very young child a teddy bear, and then a sort of stylized cat-pillow, and I invested these things with meaning and a sort of "love." I have the very real recollection of being aware that I did not actually love these things, but used them as a symbol of love. High-order thinking, for a 6 year old, but I do remember it. I needed something to love, and was aware of settling for mere symbols. Latter, when I was 10 or so, and had discovered reading as my drug, I read all the Hardy Boy books. I liked the original ones, not updated. And I had the very clear awareness of why I liked those books. It was because the brothers, Frank and Joe I think, really loved and respected and cared for each other. I had two older brothers, I regret to say. One is still a complete, complete asshole. The other is weak but likable in his way, if I were capable of forgiveness.

Ever since I last saw my father, well, I haven't seen him since. He told me I'd have prostate problems, and I asked when was the last time he'd read a book. Sometime in that conversation I told him, honestly but imprudently, that he was hard to be around. So he has no doubt given up his fantasy of being my buddy. Well, this is a man who told me, to my face, a number of times over the decades, that he didn't like me. Sort of hard to be around that. I don't like him either. But I don't think I'd say it to his face. A little hypocrisy must be a good thing. Wish I were more adept at it. Best I can do is keep my mouth shut, most of the time.

I just can't help but hear him fucking his girlfriend with the windows open -- I was at the other end of the block, out for a run. She was a screamer -- 19 ... I was 18. He'd just thrown my mother away ... you know, cuz she was 42. Point is, he was maybe sort of clueless, reckless, stupid, destructive toward dependents. As best we can, we need to nurture each other. Maybe I'm done sacrificing myself on the obsidian altar of Narcissus. We had thought him to be a minor divinity.

I just can't let go. I have a few phobias, but I can fake my way through most situations. Someone just found out that I don't like to be touched. "Oh, so now you've figured out that I don't like to be touched, and you're going to be touching me all the time." Indeed, that's her little joke, but it's under control. She seems to stand a tad too close to me. Well, she's just about the prettiest woman around. Married. I don't claim to be able to read signals very well, but it is just a joke of hers. Still, people shouldn't mess with my head. "Really?" someone else asked, "You don't like to be touched?" "It takes years and years," I replied, "for me to allow someone into my space."

Was I anally raped as a toddler?

As a toddler, only a very little older than a toddler, I was sexualized. These things should happen in their season.

There is some regularity to my schedule now, and I find I have more energy. Still controlled by my neuroses, but life is a bit more secure. I have my little jokes in these pages about sex, but in actual human interactions I don't think I make a lot of sexual jokes. Maybe I'm unaware of it? But I don't think so. What a, well, an irony. From what I've overheard of reality, it is my impression that I have a rather extreme overabundance of libidinous energy. Here I am, then, with this body, and this personality. What a mismatch. It's wonderful to be youthful, and hormones are great. Know anyone who could use some? What a waste.

But the same could be said of my gigantic intellect. In heaven, these gifts will be taken from me, since I did not use them. I'll be a retarded eunuch.

So if you're not too busy, and so inclined, maybe you'll do what I can't be bothered to do for myself, in my apathy and rut and self-loathing -- and pray for me. It would be a mitzvah. Yer a mench.

J

A Pep Talk

Ah, I see. Jesus wants us to pay higher taxes. Got it. So preaches Obama, using the National Prayer Breakfast to pronounce this doctrine. Cuz, like, to whom much is given much is required, and that means support government-funded abortion. Cuz, like, render unto Caesar and all that shit. Obama's plan, then, is that we all go out and catch a fish that has a coin in it with which we shall pay our taxes. Pay down the debt that way. It's biblical, dude -- Mt 17:27 ... I Wikipediaed it. What with the lowering sea level thanks to Obama, them fish is gonna be so much easier to catch. So it all comes together.

Shoddiest, sleaziest president ever. Unprecedented. Imagine a conservative using such a forum to say that God supports his partisan policies. Nauseating.

Heard Newt trying to blast Romney. Seems Romney somehow made a profit out of Fanny May or Mac or what the hell ever. Needs to be investigated. My admiration for Newt has waned. I just don't like obviously cynical obvious manipulations. Don't care much for rampant hypocrisy. You know, cuz Newt was a "historian" for Fanny M. Made a million bucks, or whatever. For being a historian for them. Did he publish his research? I'd like to review it. History is one of my things.

So it's President Romney. Howdy Doody. He won't be a total disaster. The current occupant of the White House is an antichrist. Mormons think Satan is Jesus' brother. I disagree with that doctrine, as I do with the idea that true believers will become the god of their own planet. Maybe Newt would get the Moon? But I would not expect a President Romney to outight attack the Roman Catholic Church. Oh, had you not heard? Yes, it seems that their doctrine regarding birth control and abortion is unacceptable to the Federal Government, and must be abandoned.

Per Obamacare, Catholic hospitals and insurance providers must support reproductive prophylactics, abortifacients and abortions. Poor stupid Catholic Church is behind the times it seems, and has been acting in an unconstitutional fashion since before there was a Constitution. Hey, dude, Jesus wants us to pay for abortions. To whom much pregnancy is given, much abortion is required. I think it was Jesus who said that. Maybe Moloch. Whatever. One religion is pretty much the same as any other. All roads lead to gods.

The bishops, for once, are getting it right. Outright calls for civil disobedience. They're taking time off from debating how many strikes molesting priests get ... isn't it odd that boys' masturbating seems to be a bigger sin than that of the priests sodomizing those same boys? -- time off I say so that they may now act to save their religion. And mine, and yours as well. Because what Obama pretends to now is the right to command our consciences. Think abortion is wrong? Tough. Pay for it anyway, and, doctor, perform them.

"Perform." Ta dah! 'And for my next performance I will conceive a life, and then make it disappear!' ... grunt uhngg oh baby oh baby grunt ahhhh ... ... stab stab snip suck slurp suck plop (that's the abortion). Ta dah!

You, stupid stupid stupid Americans, elected this vessel. The way you inject heroin between your toes. The way you put a gun to your head. You are very stupid, and deserve what you get. Beg for mercy. You do not deserve it. You deserve to be publicly flogged, for you gluttony and sloth and sodomies. Living with pigs the way you do, your worthlessness is self-evident.

What, you wanted a pep talk? They never did you any good before, so why more? Repent, moron. Your sins have found you out.

J