The Great Decider

This is for our Glorious Leader (with deep apologies to Buck Ram, who wrote the lyrics and melody to The Great Pretender)

O yes, I’m the Great Decider,
Playing my part like a clown.
I decide, you see, what is reality
And I’m playing my part like a clown
Deciding what facts can be found

So real is this feeling of what I decide,
If you’re against me, there’s no where to hide.

Anybody got more verses -- you're welcome to pitch in

Understanding the News

When I was a kid, I heard that Nikita Krushchev asked, I think it was Nixon, how it was we in the US were able to ensure that our media reported the news in such loyal fashion. Krushchev explained that back in the USSR they had to work real to make sure their journalists understood and kept to the Party Line. That was some forty odd years ago and that old shoe banger would likely be even more amazed today, if he were alive. However, being a smart cookie, he wouldn’t be as surprised.

Today almost all mainstream media (+95%) is owned by just five mega-corporations. The end result has been that the “news” has become more and more geared to entertainment. The reason being that, entertainment, put forth as news, keeps the listeners glued to the tube and their finger off the zapper while the commercial breaks infuse their minds with desires to acquire and consume the products of the sponsors.

That is to say that what passes for news today is all about the bottom line and if it happens to bring any actual information to the public – it is accidental, an incident of little value, because, without the connections and background, “news” is little more than a collection of “rumors”.

An example you’re hearing now, in the “news”, as if it has suddenly been uncovered, about the massacre in Haditha, last November.

The fact is, Haditha has been known by people who get their information from internet blogs for almost six months, that is, very soon after the crimes were committed.

We will now see a dance where some people will go to jail. Perhaps more people will get burned than just a “few bad apples”. Some people higher up the food chain may well go to the slammer – but don’t hold your breath and don’t put good money on it! More likely it will develop like Abu Ghrib and all responsibility and punishment will be assigned and meted out to people in the lower ranks.

Enough rant – but let me pose these questions.

Do you really think that Haditha is the only time innocent Iraqis have been killed indiscriminately and in cold blood? Or that Abu Ghrib is only place Iraqis have been tortured?

And now yesterday, in Kabul, some humvees slam into the morning traffic jam in Kabul, do you really believe the report that “brakes failed”? Well, hell, maybe the brakes did fail, but still there’s got be more to the story than that!

And there is, but I’ll talk about that later.

I see hours on end of poison dreams
Emanating from glowing screens
I see Banks of Illusion, modified souls
I see garbage exchanged for the purest of gold

-- from my song “UNGLUED!”

The World is Full of Rainbows

I saw a rainbow this morning, one of those real bright ones, sharp and crisp, arching from one horizon to the other. As I was walking down to the bus stop, I distinguished seven colors – but I didn’t have time to think of the name of each color. By the time I got to the bus stop, the colors had faded and I could distinguish but six – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet – and while I was thinking about it, I wondered: what was the seventh color?

A rainbow has seven colors – everybody knows that – it’s common knowledge! Yeah, right! There is a tribal culture somewhere, and they say a rainbow has three colors, or maybe two – I forget which. What’s the matter with them? Are they color blind?

Whatever the truth is, the truth is that when a thing gets to be “common knowledge”, most people stop looking and only see what they have learned they are supposed to see.

You do not know the reality of a thing unless you’ve seen the reality yourself. I know there is a Milky Way, because I’m nearly 65 years old and saw it many times when I was a kid. But if I was younger, I probably wouldn’t. the last time I saw it, it was but a pale wraith of what I saw as a child. It’s a fact, one of the most amazing wonders, the Milky Way, is hidden from us by a combination of dirty air and city lights.

The world is full of rainbows
But you will never know, you will never see them
Not until the day that you begin
To wipe and wash away each thin
Layer of dust that covers your eyes

-- special thanks to William Blake for the vision

Introducing The Crazy Bird

Who is The Crazy Bird?

The Crazy Bird is a picture, a poem, a song and a vision of the reality which can unfold in the human heart. In the drawing to the right you see a heart which opens to what must be the open sky. But the heart is also flying in the sky, so what sky is this?

At the bottom of the heart is what could be the sun, either rising or setting. But it could also be an open door -- opening to what? Further up, we see three birds, but they could be three rips or cuts in the sky. The Crazy Bird has wings, so perhaps it is flying, but what are the three lines above the Crazy Bird -- is it energy rising or coming down, smoke, a flame? Or all of them in constant permutation?

Actually, the Crazy Bird is also a bird singing in the sky, a lark? a black bird? The song is healing a young man who has lost his mind and is wandering in the wilderness of a winter afternoon.

We'll return to the Bird every now and then -- until then:

Crazy Biiirrrd, O, Craaaazzzyy Bird, won't you sing your song for me!

I'm just a poor boy, headed for eternity -- I know I said eternity, I might just have meant something else:

This earth can be a heaven, this earth can be a hell

A Post about Nothing

Since you can't start a blog with out a post and my head is emptier than normal I'll just say the weather today in Denmark is kind of lousy unless you happen to be a fish or a frog.

That is to say it has been raining like cats and dogs in between the a few times when a small break in the clouds let you know that there still was a sky up there.