ER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

Pulp

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

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

Mine’s yellow too!

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

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

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

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

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

J

Big Suppluh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

ggl

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

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

Orange suits them.

And this came up:

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

Ah, this is getting closer:

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

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

What, is it Sunday? Missed church again.

J

Hybrids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brrr.

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

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

...and this guy:

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

QED.

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

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

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

Oh, it gets cooler, but this is enough.

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

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

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

J

Horns

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

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

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

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

And how could we bear what is unbearable?

J

Slacker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

Shrinkage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

Faith v Credit

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

*Economics According Two Cows

YT

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

-----

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

----

You choose.


J

Butterfly Wings

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

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

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

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

Sort of a major difference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

Son

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

"Get to the point,

bitch."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


J

You were terrified,

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

Thus,

and of course,

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

And then, inevitably,

You're welcome.

J

COEXIST

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

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

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

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

J

The Third of July

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

Mohammad Please

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

and Minnie wearing the niqab,

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

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

So here's the Prophet Mohammad, PBUH,

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

Here's Allah,

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

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

posing for "her" centerfold in Blueballs Magazine.

Here's a wall

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

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

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

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

J

Poison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J

Logic, baby!

All atheists burn in Hell.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore atheists have beards.

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

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

All demogagues are liars;

Obama doesn't know how to handle a mop;

Therefore Americans are very stupid.

So in conclusions, you are very dumb.

J

Born the First Sunday of Last Month

In the Garden of Eden.

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

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

Eve: Gosh, Adam, you’re so smart.

Adam: Yes, I know.

Eve jogs the basket.

Eve: Um, what’s this called again?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam: Something small, I expect.

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

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

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

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

Eve: You know.

Adam: No, no I don’t know.

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

Adam: (looking down) What thing?

Eve: You know, your little thing.

Adam: What “little thing.”

Eve: You know. Your -- your dormouse.

Adam: What in creation are you talking about?

Eve: Your little pink serpent there.

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

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

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

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

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

Eve: No.

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

Eve: Um -- sort of, I guess.

Adam: Yeah, I guess, sort of.

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

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

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

Adam: “Only?” I’m twice your age.

Eve: Well that’s not so much.

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

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

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

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

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

Eve: You know, silly.

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

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

Adam: What are you saying?

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

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

Eve: Huh?

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

Eve: What?

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

Eve: Oh, yeah, that’s the one.

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

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

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

Eve: What’s the big deal?

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

Eve: Say it don’t spray it.

Adam lapses into stunned silence.

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

Adam: (silence)

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

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


End

Bailing

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

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

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

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

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

J

Perspective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J