Arrogant Prophecies -- The New Sex...

Today's installment of the "Arrogant Prophecies" begins with what seems to me a rather startling phrase, "When the New Sex was then declared...". Although the author's own notes, which you, as usual, can find at the end of each poem give some insight in understanding this piece, he is completely silent on how to understand the meaning of this strikingly graphic picture.

As you know, I have access to a rather large volume of information about the Third Galaxy in what is known as the Absolute Truth -- the 21st Edition, to be exact. Therefore I can shed a little light on the matter. Several years before that unfortunate land mutated into the United State of Arrogance, what passed for political debate had taken on a rather tenuous almost surrealistic air.

During what was to prove to be the last free elections held there, newspaper pundits and bobble heads on television were concerned, not with the opinions of the candidates on important matters of foreign and national policy. Instead, they blathered on about such things as how one candidate had spent four hundred dollars on a haircut.

Since such silliness is unheard of in our own world and I can understand if you think I am pulling your leg, but I assure you I'm not. Why, they even went so far as to muse whether or not that this fellow's concern with his hair meant that he was "gay" -- I'm not completely sure what is meant by "gay" in the Third Galaxy, but it seems to mean something more than "happy" and may even have sensual overtones!

When another of the main candidates, who happened to be a woman, gave a major speech, did they analyze what she had to say? No, instead they wankered on about her dress, whether or not it was too low-cut and if it revealed too much of her mammary cleavage. In fact, they even went on to pose such profound questions as, "What message is she trying to communicate?"

Finally, there was one fellow whose main qualification as a candidate was that he was tall and his rugged features were well known because he had been a police detective in a popular television series! They gushed about how "manly" he was, his deep, manly voice and how manly he smelled of old leather and cigar smoke!

So, whatever "New Sex" refers to it won't be what you think -- maybe it refers to how Ronald Rexona screwed the Groundlaw or maybe even the Imbuggeration of the Great She Goat!

When the New Sex was then declared
upon the White House Lawn by the President:

Few indeed, were those who shared
misgivings as to what it was he really meant!
Somehow, we seemed to have lost the thread
which held us close to what we knew, and now the dread...

The dread to open another page
and find, instead of dawnings to a bright, new age:
Chasms open to the abyss;
Primordial ooze spills forth from jagged rocks...

They obsidiantly preach death,
as life and love lie twitching with electric shocks.
The world totters upon the brink
and everything could change in one, sudden flash!

From east to west, in a twinkling blink,
all permutes to shining gold – or stinking trash!

__________________________________________
This poem deals with foreboding felt after the fall of the Wall just before the Union of Slovenly Socialist Republics collapsed, followed a decade later with the strange smells of communal insanity and the outbreaks of human virus after Terrible Tuesday and the events following closely upon it.

It is as if I saw the Land of Light and Liberty at a crossroads with one path leading to honor and glory, the other to arrogance, corruption and a terrible desolation. We will meet this theme again in "Arrogance, Wither Goest Thou?

Arrogant Prophecies - The Seeds of War

Perhaps I should apologize for continuing to post from the Arrogant Prophecies. It was certainly was not my announced intention, but then, our professed intentions are often in opposition to what we really want.

The fact is, this thematic cycle of poems fascinates me -- the unknown poet spent more than three decades muddling over and composing it. Now that I have direct access in the Third Galaxy to the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth, my interest has been fired even more.

Finally, there is something nagging me, an intuition at the back of my mind, telling me it is important to get through this rather extensive and complicated work.

It's not that I imagine in any way that the Arrogant Prophecies mirrors our own, real world -- far from it! Consider the opening lines of today's poem in connection with the ill advised, illegal and outright insane attack, invasion and occupation of Wudda-Wrek -- a country which posed no danger whatsoever to that Land of Liberty which later morphed into the United State of Arrogance. Those lines were written thirty years before the madness began and yet uncannily describe the mood of jingoism and bloody hysteria which gripped the country when Ronald Rexona clapped his hands and said, "O boy, we're going to war! This feels good!"

This is so outrageous, I know you will all agree that this in no way could be considered to resemble anything that has ever happened in our own world!

Enough! Let us turn now to "The Seeds of War":

The flower burst into the night,
a blossom budding bleeding stubs of sick delight.

All who see it lose their sight,
they madly rage and praise the "Majesty of Might".

There's an S.O.B. whose got a scheme
to make love live upon a diet of whipped-cream!

Many will say that it's a madman's dream,
I swear to you that I've seen it all on my TV screen!
Let me tell you what they do:
they kill some arabs and then they kill some jews.

The Hole will say, "That's not so nice!"
I can see him smiling as he slowly turns down the lights...
That is why we seldom do
get to see the real killer's face on the evening news...

I beg you to try to remember this,
All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists!

___________________________________________
"The flower burst...", could be understood in many ways. Perhaps it should be seen as an antithesis to the act of creation.

Like Isidor in the Lord of the Rings, what later became the United State of Arrogance grabbed the "Ring of Power" after the War to Make the World Safe for Whatever. As far as the analogy goes, it slowly but surely corrupted that which was good and bright in the Land of Liberty, as well as elsewhere in our poor world.

When this verse was first drafted, the dream [nightmare really] of imperial bullshit which would be later formulated in the "Project for the New Arrogant Century" was already nascent. Other than that, the poem seems to speak of the ways in which Bankers of Illusion poisoned the public mind with half truths, twisted and spun.

"All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists" is more than a clever turn of phrase -- it is the simple truth and the necessity to say it loud and clear burns in me.

Arrogant Prophecies -- The Crystal Ball

The theme of today's installment of the "Arrogant Prophecies", is what the composer, an unknown poet in the Third Galaxy, calls his "crystal ball".

From the internal evidence of the poem as well as comments attributed to the author, we can deduce that this "crystal ball" is not physical but something engendered deep in the psyche by a childhood experience or series of experiences.

One of the more reliable commentators in the Third Galaxy was Elmer Eggplant. His intellectual integrity, combined with, at times, an almost excruciating honesty, meant that, although known, he was never nationally syndicated in what would later become the United State of Arrogance. In fact, he found it necessary to expatriate himself at an early age. With the Imbuggeration of Ronald Rexona as Supreme Hole he had to go underground and, if the Alien Veggies had not appeared he would probably have suffered, as so many other unfortunates, a painful death in the Chambers of Secrecy, far below the clicking relays where the National Security of Arrogance was grown.

One of Eggplant's recurring themes in his criticism is how prophecy is often confused with prolepsis. Simply speaking, prolepsis is the gift (or curse) of speaking of things before they occur. Prophecy is the dedicated speaking of truth to power. Since truth is nothing more than the reality of the way-things-are and the way-things-are is simply the fruit of the past unfolding into the present. The future then is simply the unfolding of the potentialities implicit in the present into the future.

It should be obvious then that prophecy will necessarily strike sparks of prolepsis, however, it is merely a side effect -- and often a most troublesome one to boot!

I will leave you now with the unknown poet's "Crystal Ball":

I looked into my crystal ball,
but do not care to dare to speak of what I saw...

I saw sweet reflections on the screen
showing monsters rising amid choking clouds of steam.
They fill the streets with blood and screams
and bodies floating softly down silent streams.

Another time: I saw a man
between two rows of thrashing flails -- he ran and ran...
When he reached that wicked gauntlet's end,
he fell into a deep, white pit of sand!

Was it a film or some crazy show?
I asked my Mom, but Daddy said it wasn't so.
But as I go through rain and snow,
I wonder if they really didn't want to know?

When you really have a crystal ball,
you sometimes wish you didn't have a ball at all...

_________________________________________
Some time shortly after the War to Make the World Safe for Whatever, when I was perhaps four years old, I had an experience which I here call "Deep White Pit". It probably was a newsreel, but it may have been a dream.

If it was indeed a newsreel it was a scene of retribution and revenge acted out in a "liberated" country. The little child of my identity saw people being forced to run a gauntlet as people on both sides beat the shit out of them with flails. At the gauntlet's end they fell into a pit. The sight of them writhing in the sand is burnt into my memory. Does it matter the smallest piece of shit of what they were "guilty" of? The fact is, all compassion and forgiveness dwells in the heart of the little child.

Did I really ask my parents about it? Who's to know? The fact is that people often do not want to know the wicked things done to bring them their illusions and tingle-tangle. It is the truth that I really do often wish I did not know the things I know and the things I see coming down the tube.

Arrogant Prophecies -- An Initiation

In today's installment of the Arrogant Prophecies, I must admit that I was at first at a bit of a loss as to what the unknown poet in the Third Galaxy was getting at.

True, the title of the piece, "An Initiation" could be a clue, albeit somewhat enigmatic.

However, if we assume that the author's own comments are not just artistic smoke and mirrors, then perhaps we can understand that the reference to the "Sweetest Lady of the Night" is to the Moon and, in turn, to the feminine side of human nature. His reference to misogyny later in his notes makes this view more defensible.

I mentioned yesterday something which people in our more fortunate world may find hard to understand: in the Third Galaxy, sacred scripture was used to condone, in fact encourage attitudes and actions at loggerheads with the very spirit of the Book of the Holy Idaho!

Believe it or not, in the Third Galaxy, the Book was used to justify torture, mass executions by fire, ethnic cleansing and blatant genocide, just to mention a few of the more elegant excesses

However, it is clear from both the Old and the New Book that male and female are not only two sides of the same coin, but that this coin is dynamic. The coin, so to speak, spins in several dimensions at once. Therefore it is ridiculous to judge an individual solely from the sign on the body born by any individual.

Despite that, not only the Book of the Idaho but the Readings of the Masher were used to suppress, oppress and subjugate half the human race in the Third Galaxy, that is, all those who bore the sign on the body which marked them as women.

For long periods of time, women were chattel, in fact, cattle, breeding stock to owned, bought, bartered, gambled for, fought over and simply stolen -- and all of this was the Will of the Great Potato!

Enough of my mental tribulations! Let us go now to:

An Initiation

Knowing that the time was right,
I went to see the Sweetest Lady of the Night.

"Swear," she cried, "to never hide
the anger of the Wounded Heart So Long Denied."
"Sing! – for all the dandelions
cursed and crushed by stony hearts which never cry!"

"Expose the source of every lie
which blinds the wholly innocent inner eye!"
"To save our stranded innocence
and for all of those who gave their lives or took the chance:
Run, and shout and sing and dance!"

"Bring the flower home to reborn excellence!"
"When you have seen the apple grow,
can you tell another soul the thing you know?

What is done with no regrets,
and who could sleep in such a Procrustean bed?

_____________________________________________
Who, or what, is the "Sweetest Lady of the Night" -- the Moon?

Only those who have met Her can know -- and they speak in riddles! Perhaps, She is all that is maligned in the misogyny which puts us at odds with half of our nature, insisting that Great Potato is "He", when the fact is that "He" is also "She", as well as "All-that-Is", "It" and a googolplex of attributes and adjectives which do not begin to scratch the surface of the Reality-of-What-Is.

"Having seen the apple grow..." You may not be blind, but if you cannot see the hand in front of your face, of what use is sight? On the other hand, having seen but a tiniest corner lifted, or heard a tiny echo of the essence imbued in and permeating all that is -- how can you speak? Whatever you say, you will have to either stretch the truth or cut off one of its toes -- that is to say, put it to sleep in a "Procrustean Bed" of preconceptions.
Can anybody be satisfied with that? Well, I guess we have to make do with the best we can do!

Arrogant Prophecies -- Beauty and the Callous

One of the saddest things in the history of the Third Galaxy is the manner their sacred texts were often misunderstood -- sometimes even consciously twisted by hustlers -- and then used to justify ugly and even evil deeds.

For example, it was written in the Book of the Holy Idaho that people should "Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" [Beginnings, 1:28]. When it was becoming obvious that the greedy and wasteful use of natural resources was destroying the environment of that poor world and scientists sounded the alarm that this would soon end in great catastrophes, there were leading Peelers who pointed to this and similar verses in the Book, saying: "The Great Potato gave us this world to rule over -- we are the Masters!" The debate was so heated that environmentalists were often sneeringly called "consies" and considered to be almost as bad as terraists!

The tragedy of course is that the word translated as "ruler" had a much different connotative meaning in the original texts -- a "sar" was somebody who was in charge of something and was supposed to administer and take care of it. As a matter of fact, this is exactly why the Holy Idaho told so many stories about vineyards and how people who were supposed to take care of them and didn't behave responsibly got their butts kicked when the owner came to see how they were doing.

But enough of the boring details -- I give you:

Beauty and the Callous

I'm walking across an open field;
the weeds and grass in flower suddenly reveal
so free a beauty as to make me kneel!

How else to speak when such a feeling is real?
But all the same hill's other side
was ravaged by bulldozers and by dynamite!

The deed was done, not at night,
but legally, in the broad daylight!

Walking down the city streets,
with no shoes, or socks, or sandals on my naked feet;
some broken glass cuts my feet,
they bleed, and those who see agree the fool is me!
But who's the fool and who is free
when Love herself is just another luxury?

Who can bear the sightless poverty
when there is no love between you and me?

_______________________________
The hilltop mentioned here is near Ljungby. We spent many wonderful summer vacations there in a little red "stag", or Swedish cottage. The little house was on the side of a hill, near the top. The clearing around the house was full of wild flowers clothed in raiment of such delicate color. Wild strawberries grew in the shade near the trees.

One summer afternoon, when we arrived, I walked over the hilltop, but the dense pine forest from the summers before had been ravaged into a moonscape. I knew of course that the pine forests in Sweden are actually an agricultural crop. They is every so often harvested by enormous machines which crawl the hillsides, chewing them up. So, it was all legal and part of the order of things, such as they are: and yet, I was stunned!

Another time I walked barefoot in the city and someone yelled that I was an idiot as I stopped to pick away a bit of glass which had stuck in my foot. I agree, the fool was me -- however, the question remains: is there any greater poverty than when there is no love between us to confirm our common humanity?

Arrogant Prophecies -The Curse of Chocolate

I continue today with yet another selection from the "Arrogant Prophecies" [aka "RUST!"], composed by an unknown poet in the Third Galaxy.

It seems to me that the "Curse of Chocolate" is a turning point in this collection of rather strange poems composed with an odd meter of 4/6 foot couplets -- apparently, this "lonely freak" is shrieking about the evils he could see that was later to unfold which would reach their climax in the accession of Ronald Rexona as Supreme Hole of Arrogance.

Enough of my conjectures, straight from the Third Galaxy as recorded in the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth, I give you.

The Curse of Chocolate

The little man of bread-and-jam
stood upon the Limfjord shore and in his hand
he held the hand of a child-of-dreams.

The sky was blue with love and with life, the grass was green.
Suddenly -- a scream was heard!
A hunk of metal -- blacker then the night -- was hurled!

A black cross split the sky in twain
and pain unreal unreeled into a little child's brain!

I felt , goddam helpless
as I stood there with her face pressed against my breast.

God, DAMN! It isn't right
to build death planes and paint them blacker than the night!
But all that I can do is sing
a strong song of proud and tender love. And sing
I must, without a stop or rest...

And thus began "RUST!" – as a mutter in my breath:

Demons of death -- your deeds they are dust!
Your wings are broken, your bodies are RUST !

Your wings are broken.
Your wings are broken.
Your wings are broken.
Your bodies are R U S T !

_______________________________
"The Curse of Chocolate" was first uttered EXACTLY as described above. It happened in northern Jutland, the summer of 1978. The "child of dreams" is my daughter, who was three years old at the time.

A Demon of Death in the form of an F 104, painted dull black and engineered to make a horrible sound of terror, flew so low over our heads that I could see the face of the idiot inside the cockpit.

My daughter practically crawled up my leg and into my arms. In a flash of vision, I saw peasants in villages all over the world with no recourse of defense except to curse the evil Nasgul screaming over their heads.

In a moment of eternal time I spoke the words, "Demons of death, your deeds are dust...

Arrogant Prophecies -- A Prophetic Disclaimer...

Should I apologize for posting such dark embers of futility, of lost hopes, promises betrayed and dashed dreams? This is how many will regard the "Arrogant Prophecies" of the Third Galaxy!

Indeed, the Third Galaxy was faced with dire catastrophes on several fronts. The Ultimate Endless War planned and instigated by Ronald Rexona and his Evil Companion, Mr. "Big Dick" Snarly, was the most dramatic but not necessarily the worst. If they had not used "death dust" in their attempt to establish hegemony over the dwindling natural resources, the War could have ended as a "normal" catastrophe.

However, there were other tidbits in the pot some of which, in their synergy, more seriously poisoned the stew. The ever dwindling resources were compounded by the effects of climate changes which, in turn, had been engendered by the rapacious exploitation of natural resources. Much of this was do to the criminal negligence of the Bankers of Illusion and the MegaCorps. In turn, this increased the Arrogant leaders' perception of the need to establish absolute hegemony over these resources -- and this made the Ultimate Wars yet more inevitable.
True, it is difficult to find events in that poor world which mirror happenings in our real world with such potential for the unfolding of such absolute ugliness.

On the other hand, since the Third Galaxy is a parallel universe to our own, there is always a possibility that something similar could happen here if we should begin to trod an ill chosen path. I can assure you that in such a case it is not a good idea to expect some Alien Veggies to come and pull our collective chestnuts from the fire -- it ain't gonna happen!

I wish, in fact, I had not writ
a single line of this, but would it be fit to quit?

Should I say, "I fell and sprained my brains
upon my own and lots other people's pain?

Why did I write it? To entertain,
to denounce and shout about, explain or lay the blame?

No! Possessed by the flames of love,
I composed "RUST!" to keep from going completely insane.
Some may say it was obscene
a waste of time to write about these crazy beans.

But I swear to you that every line
was written by a witness at the scene of crime!
Between the madness of the mind
and the sadness of a world going completely blind:

There will always be a lonely freak.
He speaks to you – hear his silent, tormented shriek.

_____________________________________
As a poetic device, "prophetic disclaimer" refers to Isayah 6:6 ("...one of the seraphim came unto me, having a live coal in his hand..."). The poem professes to claim that these verses were composed in order to maintain a semblance of sanity. Seeing the lights going out all over the world and a certain evil madness unfolding, what can one do but cry out against the criminal negligence?
"Rust!" was the original title of this collection before I realized that the Arrogant Prophecies were being channeled to me by an unemployed angel in the Third Galaxy.

In my ear, "beans" is a homonym for "beings", as in "human beings".
What you hear here is the voice of but one of many "lonely freaks", whose "silent, tormented shriek is a protest, that is a witness to the unfolding of an ugly evil such as the world has never seen.

The heart of prophecy is the love of our common humanity which is prepared to smash all idols. Is there any way to say it any plainer?

Arrogant Prophecies -- Avoiding Unnecesscary Confusion

My postings on the Arrogant prophecies are not going at all like I thought they would.

I discovered something in the footnotes that had escaped my attention to which I think is quite pertinent that I draw your attention and that is way we take a small detour today.

I was quite aware that the unknown poet from the Third Galaxy had a view on the matter of prophecy different than the commonly accepted. From what that I had received earlier from Ishman, the formerly unemployed angel who has been sent on a secret mission to an undisclosed location, the unknown poet's view is that "Prophets are not 'chosen', for the Great Potato speaks to us all in the same voice -- rather, prophets are simply those who try to listen..."

But, shall I not let the unknown poet speak for himself?

"As I read the story of what we've done and do,
my heart breaks for sorrow, my head bows for shame.
We have killed all our yesterdays and tomorrows
and today is busting into flame."

But what is prophecy? It is a common misunderstanding that prophecy is foretelling the future – it just ain't so. In our culture, the touchstone for prophecy is the Book of the Holy Idaho. However, the Book is not at all prophetic in the sense of telling about future events which are
later fulfilled.

Preachers will tell you fables about "fulfilled" prophecies in the Book. But these were either written long after the historical facts they "foretell", or have to be misread and/or taken out of context. But such shenanigans give no, or what is much worse, can give almost any meaning.

There are those who abuse the Book and pretend to find in it divine screenplays for the End Times, Raptures, Second Comings and all kinds of nonsense of that order. These people are false prophets of the worst sort, that is to say, false prophets as they understand the term!

To write, sing, run, shout, speak, dance – to in some little way to try to tell about the way things really are – here, right now, in the world today – doing this not to gain fame and fortune, or to curry favor from, or out of fear of, the established power structures of the society in which you live – to do this out of love of our common humanity – that is to prophesy.

This is the sense in which William Blake* understood prophecy.

The present is the son of the past and the future is the spirit of the present carried forward – that is, the future is the unfolding of possibilities implicit in the present which are there as a heritage of
the past.

The terrifying thing today, which is almost enough to make a person bang their head against the wall, is the obvious fact that this slide into Arrogance, a world run by criminal negligence is emptying the present of possibilities for a future.
_______________________
* The reader may be puzzled to hear William Blake mentioned here -- however, as I have written before, the Third Galaxy is parallel to our own and some things are more parallel than others!

Arrogant Prophecies -- A Box of Chocolates

I had not thought I would be posting a second installment of the Arrogant Prophecies so soon.

But it struck me of importance that the reader be acquainted with odd metre structure the unknown poet in the Third Galaxy for some reason chose to use for almost this entire work of strange verse -- sixteen lines of alternating tetra- and hexameter. If I understand the third-level footnotes correctly, the unknown poet felt that this imparted a certain tension as the couplets seem to want and occasionally do go over to iambic pentameter.

Without further ado, I give you the second part of the Arrogant Prophecies -- A Box of Chocolates:

A box of chocolates, "American-Creams"
nicely wrapped in holy roller coaster screams.

I picked them out while traveling between
my home at "By-the-Brook" and central Copenhagen.

They are the things that I have seen,
amalgamated with some second-hand visions and dreams...

To understand them, all you need
is knowledge of the love which flows from seeds that bleed.

Perhaps there is no room for conscience
in a world run by criminal negligence?

I swear, as a robber and a thief:
There is a wound — and a night beyond all relief!

Hate is much too mild a word
for that which I despise, to which I weld this curse:

Prince-of-this-world! Your feet are lice!
Your cloak is rot! Your halo buzzing flies!

____________________________________
"A box of chocolates", is a pun on my name. "By-the-Brook" is a literal translation of Vedbæk -- a town near where I was living when I first began composing these poems.

The terrible things depicted in these verses are a mix of personal experience ("things I've seen"), dreams and pictures evoked in my mind by the Book of the Holy Idaho ("second-hand visions").

The concept of a "robber and a thief" is a central theme in my poetry and refers to Look 23:42. "Prince of this world" refers to words of the Idaho recorded in Jawn 14:30, but Jawn 12:31 and 16:11 also use the phrase. The image of "Buzzing flies" as a halo would seem to refer to Beelzelbub (Lord of Flies), "lice" is of course a near homonym for "lies".

Arrogant Prophecies -- Introduction

Ever since my unemployed angel in the Third galaxy finally got itself a job and was sent on a secret mission to an undisclosed location somewhere, I have been almost overwhelmed by the amount of material in the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth, to which I have since been granted direct access all the way down to the 2nd and 3rd level footnotes.

I have uncovered a compendium of verse known as "The Arrogant Prophecies". It seems to have been composed by an unknown poet of the Third Galaxy some thirty or forty years before the ascendency of Ronald Rexona as Supreme Hole of Arraogance. Because of its length, I will publish the verses weekly or bi-weekly, even then it will take the most of a year:

The word of the Spud came to him
in the late afternoon.
He cried: "O, no! -- this will never do!
I cannot sing such a song!

The verses are much too long, and I do suspect
That the message is...not quite...politically correct."

The word, she simply smiled, the way angels often do.
And the wind blew his hat right off his head
as he saw how the visions grew.

With special effects, and deep respect
for the panoramic view,
I hope you will forgive me, friends,
for sharing these visions with you:

________________________
The introduction was written long after most of The Arrogant Prophecies. I was bicycling and mulling over in my mind an interview L. Cohen had given on the radio where he remarked that he had been censoring himself needlessly.

As these thoughts tumbled in my mind, the phrase, "The word of the Spud came to him in the late afternoon...", popped unbidden into my mind. I spoke them out loud and, in that very moment, a gust of wind blew my hat right off my head. I retrieved my hat and the rest of the poem unfolded as I rode my bike. I learned the lines by speaking them as I pumped the bicycle pedals. Much of my poetry is composed in this fashion -- I speak or sing the words until I have learned them by heart

The Holy Idaho and Free Lunches...

Such a shock I had this morning!

For two hours today, Dick Cheney will be President of the United States!

But, fear not! This has happened before and the world did not end!

The wimp who calls himself Commander in Chief is going to have a teevee probe stuck up where the sun don't shine today and, once again, has chosen total anesthesia.

He was afraid to put his ass on the line when his country needed it and, now, when he has to literally put his ass on the line he, of course, cops out, again.

Jeeze, I've been through this procedure myself, so I know what it entails.

Yeah, it hurts -- I've read that a bullet in the stomach is one of the most painful wounds -- but, here we are talking max 10 seconds of pain. When the probe passes a certain place in your tummy it hurts like hell. But like I said, the fellow we have prancing around as Commander in Chief is a wimp, a wuzz, a moral and physical coward.

But still, I find it rather irresponsible. It's one thing to have a popinjay nincompoop in charge of the keys and codes with which one can blow up the world, but to give them to Mr. Snarly himself is, well, irresponsible.

But, I have sworn off snark and snide and will now treat you with a small excerpt from the Book of the Holy Idaho, the scripture of the Peelers in the Third Galaxy.

It happened one day when the Holy Idaho and his followers were crossing a rugged terrain north of the Sea of Scrolls, it was late afternoon and none of the Twelve had thought to bring either drink or food. Their hunger and thirst was great.

One of the Twelve, the one whom the Idaho called Stonehead, because he was so dense, said, "O, Idaho, we know everything in heaven and earth obeys the command of your word! We beseech thee to do as thou didst do on the shores of the Sea of Scrolls when thou fed five thousand people with half a Twinkie Bar and a slice of stale pizza, in truth we recall we received an extra bill from the garbage collectors for all the leftovers the crowds did not eat, will you not do that trick again, for our hunger and thirst are great!"

The Idaho, smiled and shook his head sadly, "O, Stonehead, Stonehead! You worry too much about your belly! The blood in your veins and the breath in your lungs are more important than all the burgers and french fries you will in your life ever eat!"

"Truly, truly, I tell thee, Stonehead, you have heard from the lawyers and smart folks that there is no such thing as a free lunch -- and indeed this is so! However, I tell you that not only is there no free lunch, there is no free breakfast and no free supper. In fact, I doubt very much there is any free dessert!"

The Twelve were sore troubled to hear such words from the Idaho, for they dearly loved dessert.

But then, just as they crossed a hill top, they could see the silver arches of a McDiggles in the distance and they knew the Idaho had only been teasing them. They were soon scarfing down on "Happy Meals" which the Holy Idaho bought for them with his Dad's credit card.

The Prophet and the Sage...

My love for the kind of poetry that people like Lewis Carrol and Dr. Zeuss is unabashed. The command of meter and rythmn enchant me much in the same way jazz and blues fans embrace, New Orleans jazz and Delta and Chicago blues.

The trifle I post today was a long time in gestation.

I hope, in the few moments you spend parsing it, that you will take the time to speak it out loud -- one of my prime axioms regarding poetry is that it must be spoken. So long as it is silent scribbles on a page, poetry is nothing but scribbles on a page.

One afternoon in the early spring, three hours before the dark,
the Prophet and the Sage were sitting on a bench in the park.
The Prophet was munching stale bread while sparrows chirped for crumbs,
although he was intelligent, he looked just like a bum.

"Now's the time to talk of many things," said the Prophet to the Sage,
"of love and life's eternal strife and the worship of Holy Cabbage!"
"I'd much rather talk about the simple truth!" replied the Sage.
"The truth isn't simple!" rejoined the Prophet, somewhat enraged.

The Sage, he smiled and stroked his beard and his smile was wryly weak,
"The truth's the first to die in war whatever else we seek.
Look at us! We get our signals crossed every time we speak!
I say your lines and you say mine -- now that's a sign of the End of Time!"

"End of Time, end of Schmime!" grunted the Prophet with a grin,
while brushing crumbs of stale bread from his scraggled chin,
"We're not looking at the End of Anything, except my peace of mind!
What I think I need the most right now is another drink of wine!"

"I'll give you a piece of my mind!" laughed the Sage in retort.
He pulled a bottle from his plastic bag, took a hefty snort,
and then he burped, "There are shiploads full of demons sailing into port!
The world's in need of heroes and the time is getting short!"

"We're all short," growled the Prophet, "as long as we're sitting down..."
He took a drink of his wine and then he slowly turned around,
returning the bottle to a briefcase, he had from the time before,
his employer exported his job across the seas to foreign shores.

"They're looking for intelligence somewhere in outer space?
They ought to see if there's still some soul left in inner space!
There's too damn many 'telly'-gents to suit my taste!
Just give me some 70-cent spread and some fresh bread on my plate!"

The Sage nodded, partly to agree and partly because he was stewed,
"Yeah, I know what you mean! Remember what we used to see on the news,
the fair and balanced bullshit we saw almost every night,
the no-spin zones, with the facts sliced and diced into sound bites?"

"I hear what you're saying," the Prophet mumbled as his chin
touched his chest...suddenly he started, "Repeat what you said once again!"
But the Sage didn't answer, not with the words he'd spoken just before,
the only thing the Prophet heard was his gentle snore...

It's Hard to Kick the Snark...

I really will put the snark up on the shelf for a few days. Honest, I'm not addicted!

For one thing, it's probably not healthy for one's thoughts to dwell on the consequences of the deeds instigated by garbage brains and executed by incompetent, megalomaniac leaders.

On the other hand it is healthy, once thoughts have formed, to lasso them with words -- when we concretize thoughts into words it help to keep them under control.

As you know, in the Third Galaxy public debate as well as political power is not only manipulated, but is in many cases directly controlled and even owned by the Bankers of Illusion. They do not have the people's best interests at heart, in fact, they do not have hearts! How could they? They are not human! As long as there is access to sustenance and room in which to grow, they are essentially immortal beings. They exist by grace of judicial fictions that they are "persons" -- the individual human being has little recourse when confronted with the power of a MegaCorp.

Give thanks to the Great Potato that things are not like that in our world!

End of rant.

I will now reach down into "Ye Olde Poetry Bag" -- ah! What a fine little pebble this is, let's see what it looks like when it is polished up a bit!

Every time I think that I would publish,
every thing I've written turns to rubbish!

It's really not some kind of coquetry
on my part -- it's as if something in my belly
suddenly turns into blocks of black ice,
when I move to show these poems to other eyes.

As I write these lines and try to get them right,
the laughter burns, thorns into the night!

Who am I, that I should try to sing
about the gifts our spirit angels bring?
Who am I that I should try to sing of truth
and if I did, what would be the use?

I'm just a bird sitting on a fence,
singing my heart out at my own expense!

The Clatter of Dropping Shoes...

I swore to my self last night that I was going to leave off the snark and snide and commenting on all the shoes I hear dropping.

Unfortunately, judging from clatter of dropping shoes, the critter must be mutated offspring of W. Burroughs' execrable "Black Centipede" mated with the "Yellow Serpent of Death".

It was one thing for Chertoff to blather to the press that he had him a "gut feeling" a big hit from Al-Qube was in the tube. That the September Report, which has already been written, will confirm the need to spike troop levels in Iraq yet another notch (or two or three) is a foregone conclusion.

The neo-cunz are blowing smoke from their nether regions in, even for them, amazing billows. Finally, the build up of land- and sea-based air power in the Muddled East could be seen by a blind man in the middle of a cloudy moonless night.

On top of this, I learned this morning, via Bernhard at Moon of Alabama that doggy-man Rick Santorum recently said:

"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we're seeing unfold in the UK.

As Bernhard observes, "How can he be so sure....Is [the] fix in?"

While retching for yet another barf bag, I must say that I lost count a while ago of the number of Repugnant politicians who have [darkly] hinted, alluded to, spoke outright of, or simply wished for a new terraist attack on the Homeland.

It's almost like they are praying to some nameless god for an event so heinous that America would "wake-up", hang a few librul traitors, hunker down and get serious about the important business of dominating the world so that we can suck the world dry of resources while we wait for the Holy Idaho to come and take us up to the Great Colander in the Sky while the heathens French Fry Forever in the Giant Vats of Boiling Oil Prepared From Before Time Began by the Great Potato.

Jeeze, I'm sorry! I'm letting my intimate acquaintance of what happened in the Third Galaxy influence my addled mentality. This is wrong! I apologize!

On the other hand, I also came across this morning a most troubling commentary to an article from The Gaurdian via Common Dreams. The article itself was about the fact that Mr. Snarly -- I mean, Mr. Cheney -- has won the power struggle and what, in the case of the Codpiece, passes for a mind. The Decider's commitment is now for military confrontation with Iran.

This was "mastershake's" comment:

But you know what's going to happen. PNAC and the oligarchy will attack America again, blame it on someone else (muslims), and we will be invading (liberating as they call it) Iran before you know it. Meanwhile the country, which will inevitably lose it's mind after another terrorist attack, will stand by and watch as the tyrants take more of our liberties, including the seizure of a third term for Bush and Cheney

The only rational explanation for such tin-foiled insanity is that, as I have long feared, a Rupture is about to occur between our world and the Third Galaxy. How anyone could suspect people .

As We Wait for the Other Shoe to Drop...

I wrote yesterday that I was puzzled and scared because of the conflation of two recent developments: the Senate's resolution further ripening the option for an attack on Iran; and the "leak" of a secret(?!) report that Al-Qube was not only back -- but back with redoubled strength(!?).

I can understand if my reader(!) thinks me out to lunch because of how I made delicious use of this opportunity for snide and snark. However, more serious and sanguine commentators with greater penchant for documenting their views and formulating their arguments more clearly than I, have similar misgivings.

True, as the Dover Bitch and Digby pointed out, there was an amendment to the resolution:

d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of Armed Forces against Iran

This is but a fig leaf to hide the shame of some of the 97 Senators who voted for the resolution. I say some because most of the Repugnant Senators and certainly not the fellow who put the bill on the table, "Holy" Joe Lieberman, are capable of such a quaint and old-fashion emotion as shame ! That would require not only a conscience, but memory of what they did only six years ago!

Meanwhile, almost unheeded, the military buildup in and around Iraq/Iran continues. Carrier groups are moving in out of the Persian Gulf and near by areas in a sort of shell game -- the sources I frequent are confused as to what is actually going on here with all the firepower capability even one of these flotillas controls.

Meanwhile, an air power buildup, and use of it, in Iraq continues. To put it in context: the number of bombing raids the first half of 2007 is six times of what it was the first half of 2006 and three times what it was the second half of 2006. This is really no surprise -- an ever more extravagant use of air power has long been expected.

However, even B1 bombers are being flown in. This is a strategic machine, designed and built to be able to deliver nuclear bombs and/or cruise missiles into the heart of the then Soviet Union. That a top-line strategic bomber is now being used for tactical sorties -- that smacks of desperation. Or, they could be there for another purpose? Iran? That is quite disturbing -- so, I won't mention Pakistan...

Puzzled, Confused and Afraid....

A couple of recent events puzzle me in a most disturbing way.

First was the resolution made by the US Senate authorizing the Codpiece to initiate (official) hostilities against Iran -- this resolution states as fact that Iran is actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons and that Iran is actively involved in the deaths of American soldiers by training and arming insurgent elements in Iraq.

If this doesn't bring back memories of WMD and Nigerian yellow cake -- WAKE UP!

More ugly, the resolution was passed with a nearly unanimous vote. The question is why?

Indeed, why did almost all US Senators go along with this blank check for war which so much resembles the brain-fart legislation passed before the illegal invasion of Iraq? I'm almost tin-foiled enough to assume that at least some Senators received small hints about embarrassing material garnered through (illegal) electronic surveillance. I mean heck, the FBI, CIA and NSA ought to be better than Larry Flynt in picking up on dirt!

The other development was the more recent public dissemination of a secret(!?) document telling the American People that Al-Qube is stronger now than it was even before that Terrible Tuesday six years ago this coming September. In fact, they now have twice as many operatives now as they did back then.

Not to be snide or snarky (like I said, I've given up on snark!), but it's like a message to be very very afraid, Ahsawyah been-Lately could be that dark-skinned person hiding in those shadows, or under your bed!

A sane person would say, "But why have we've been fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here when we're going to have to fight them over here anyway?" But that would be missing the point that certain elements in the Repugnant Party have been wet-dreaming about a big terraist hit on the Homeland that would unite the American People in a United State of Arrogance and them as what don't unite patriotically, a few can get shot and the rest go to jail.

Ooops!!! So sorry, I drifted off into my awareness of the Third Galaxy...

No, I don't really believe that we'd give up on the constitution, not much more than we already have anyway -- and martial law? You just know I've got to be kidding!

But the draft? That's an elephant in the room of a different color that would give new meaning to, "Support Your Troops!".

Of course, future, Cheneys, Pearls, Limburghers and Bushes would not have to worry -- there would be plenty of exemptions for those as have "other priorities" or cushy posts at home for the, um, well-connected.

Elmer Eggplant on Dreams and Reality

This may not read at first like something from the Third Galaxy but it is. It was written by Elmer Eggplant and would seem to have been influenced by the "Knower" writings uncoverered in the caves at Ragged Haggis. In fact this dream Elmer makes so much fuss over would seem to me to me something from the Book of Chocolate.

One morning, driving to work on the freeway in my old wreck of a car, a thought came into my mind. Not a thought really, but a memory, about something I had been trying to write.

At once, I thought, just when did I think of writing those words? It could not have been this morning, and it surely wasn't the evening before -- so when?
It then came to me that it was something I had dreamt the night before, in a dream where I had been trying and trying to write something without being able to actually do it -- it was a bit like dreaming about javing to pee.

I find it a puzzling experience when the memory of a dream I had not recalled upon awaking, comes to mind later, jogged by some chance event puzzling because of having to sort out if the memory was of something which "really happened" or was "just a dream".

This sort of phenomenon has happened to me many times and it has made me wonder just what reality really is! What is "dream" and what is "awake"? Is the memory of the one somehow different from the other? Is there a basic difference between the memory of a dream and a memory of something which "really" happened?

As far as the memory itself, I suspect there is no real difference and that a memory is a memory is a memory.

Most would say there is an intuitive difference between "dream" and "awake". The intuition could be correct, however it could also be a prejudice. In any case, we are hard put to really define the difference is between these two states of awareness.

In fact, I can quickly point to some similarity. There can be awareness and consciousness of both self and other in each state. So, that's not the difference!

There is the old saw about pinching yourself to "make sure you're not dreaming". This assumes we can "know" when we are awake and implies we cannot "know" that we dream. But is this true?

I have had the experience of the the "lucid" or "clear" dream where one becomes aware that one is dreaming. True, they seem quite rare -- but that doesn't mean that they are rare. When I'm awake, my dreams are memories and how many dreams -- including lucid dreams -- do I actually remember?

We can say for sure is that we can distinguish between dream and awake in both states. We can somehow "know" that we are awake -- that is if it occurs to us to think about it. Likewise, we can also "know" that we dream, if it occurs to us to think about it.

But how we do this is something of a puzzle.

Is it the tremendous abundance of detail which tips me off that I am awake? Common also sense tells me that dreams do not have the same richness of detail such as the waking experience -- but common sense may be completely out to lunch! Are the memories of yesterday more detailed then the dreams of last night?

Do "real" memories of things that have "really" happened have the vivid detail and synergy of sense impressions of what is happening now as I type these words on a morning sunlit patio with birds singing in the background, a car starting in the street and the concrete tiles of the terrace cold against the bare soles of my feet?
My guess is that our dreams are no different from the background of thoughts burbling in our minds when we are awake -- except that when we sleep there is little input from the "real" world to give us a feeling of logical consistency to what we experience.

But, to return to my starting point -- what was it that I was trying to write in the dream I suddenly recalled while driving to work?

I'll get that in a moment but first I want to point out that I have been talking as if there were only the two states, those of "awake" and "dreaming" and that is not quite right.

If there is anything I have understood at all of the teachings of the Holy Idaho, the Buddy, the Masher and other friends, it is that being truly awake to life is the heart and nitty gritty of all spiritual experience -- this is exactly why our scriptures often refer to "worldly" people as being "dead" or "asleep".

I will now try to reconstruct what I was trying to write in my dream but could not:

To what can we compare in trying to speak of the reality of the spiritual to someone who has not themselves known spiritual experience, that is some sliver of the truth of what-really-is?

One might as well sing a song for the deaf.

Or paint a picture for a person with no eyes.

Or make love to a woman with no feeling.

Or explain wet-ness to the burning fire.

Or kindle flames in the depths of the ocean.

The Great Rupture

Imagine my surprise!

I just learned that a term I've bandied around a bit was actually used in the Third Galaxy -- although with a somewhat different meaning than I would have thought!

What I refer to is the Rupture. I have used the term, it to describe a nagging fear that interstices which separate our world from the Third Galaxy, which is parallel to our own, would somehow "split" and the two realities sort of blend together, which obviously would be a nightmare.

But in the Third Galaxy, the Rupture referred to something else entirely. Before I try to explain, I need to remind you that up until about three centuries and a half after the birth of Holy Idaho, there were literally hundreds of small groups, sects and cults, all of them claiming to be Peelers. The Emperor Constipate of the Roaming Empire, who made the religion of the Peelers the state religion, demanded that the mess be cleaned up so that there would be a unified religion with a unified doctrine and a unified scripture suitable to a unified empire.

The result was that, after the collapse of the Roaming Empire, the Pooper of the Church of the Universe was pretty much the most powerful individual in the known world.

But everything has an end and by the time Ronald Rexona appeared on the scene the Pooper had very little power, that is except to stir up controversy such as when the Pooper Justadick bad mouthed the Masher religion and people were killed in riots in the Muddled East.

In modern times, instead of the single, universal church envisioned by the Emperor Constipate, there were, again, hundreds of sects, cults and splinter groups and this was no where more true than in the United State of Arrogance.

All kinds of nuts, wackos, charlatans and out right hustlers set up shop in the godbiz, concocted homemade theologies based on obscure texts in the Book of the Holy Idaho which no one had ever paid all that much attention to.

One of the nut-job ideas that gained a lot of traction among many Arrogant citizens was the Rupture. To understand this, you need to know that a number of passages and phrases in the Book of the Idaho had been taken out of context and cut and pasted into in a sort of screenplay of "How the World Will End -- Soon!".

A key point in this screenplay was the Rupture when the Idaho would sort of unzip the sky, reach down, scoop up his true believers and take them to live with him in the Colander-In-the-Sky. The Idaho would then zip the sky back together and all those he had scooped up would now get front-row seats, bottomless bags of hot, buttered popcorn and watch while the world down below turned to great big puddle of shit.

In order to be eligible to be scooped up when the sky "Ruptured" one had to have "Accepted the Holy Idaho as one's Personal Spud" -- it was very important to have done this before the Rupture.

It's true! People not only believed this brain fart of an idea, there was one enterprising fellow who sold 60 million books on the subject and got stinking rich! Heck, even Ronald Rexona believed it, or at least said that he did -- but then, Rexona also believed that the Great Potato had peronally selected him personally for the job of ridding the world of evildoers.

If Only...

I dreamt a dream of sorts one night and knew I should record it.

I was flying through the city streets, quite aware that it was a dream.

I was careful to note the details of the buildings as I flew by. I went a little bit higher so as to not disturb the buildings by flying into them.

I turned and flew into a church. It was an unusual church, when I offered to turn the water into wine they were not at all impressed!

Then I remembed that I had to do this science book report -- some sort of senior thesis, because I had gone back to school. This disturbed me very much because I had not even begun my studies...

Then I got this idea -- I would take all my poems and songs and writings about theology and philosophy and put then all together and give them that for my exam!

But then I woke up and realized that I'm really just a sick, a really sick puppy.

It's hard to say just what it really is
That makes us fret so much about the things we did
so many years ago!
Some carless act or word keeps coming back
and attacks our peace of mind...

Then suddenly -- we find ourselves thinking:
If only, if only if only...
If we had it to do all over again...
we'd have it to do all over again!

You said you would never, ever make her cry,
It's not so nice to break the same heart twice:
but, we're creatures of our own device!
That means we learn from all the things we've done,
from all the times we've hurt someone!

Then suddenly -- you find yourself crying:
If only, if only, if only...
If you had it to do all over again...
you'd have it to do all over again!

Some people say we've all been here before,
They take our memories when we pass through the door...
I don't know if that's true or not!
But I'm ready, if I can, to take another shot
and maybe prove that I've learned a lot...

Then suddenly -- I find myself in the same old jam:
If only, if only if only...
If I had it to do all over again...
I'd have it to do all over again!

Living with the War Pig...

Sadly, and with heavy heart I find I must, once more, return to that fateful time in the Third Galaxy which brought about the ascendency of an ignorant popinjay who, when he became the Supreme Hole of Arrogance, ignited the fires which led to Endless Total war.

Had not the Alien Veggies so graciously deigned to intervene, that poor world would have been turned into a lifeless slag heap.

However, a "happy ending" does not erase the pain, despair, desperation, torture and agonized death billions of beings in the Third Galaxy endured in those Terrible Times!

I say "sadly", because, when my unemployed angel, Ishman, was sent upon a secret mission to "somewhere", I was granted direct access to the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth, including 2nd and 3rd level footnotes. I now find that Ishman was not only not bullshitting me about the Third Galaxy -- as I a few times unkindly implied -- it was being somewhat gentle, sugar coating some of the worst crapola being visited upon in that poor world!

As we know, the reign of that silly codpiece, Ronald Rexona, was, although incompetent, at least uneventful until that Terrible Tuesday when the minions of Ahsawyah been-Lately made their dastardly attack and nearly three thousand died a horrible death drowning in twenty thousand tons of bullshit cast from hijacked hot-air terror-ballons.

It is obvious from footnotes to the Absolute Truth that someone knew about the impending attack...

Since Ronald Rexona apparently rarely knew even his ass from a hole in the ground, the consensus is that it was his Evil Companion, Mr. "Big" Dick Snarly. Did he plan or only "allow" Terrible Tuesday to happen? If the truth is to be found it must be buried in even lower level footnotes than those to which I have access. It is certain that it was he who instigated the order for interceptor planes to stand down -- the very planes which could have stopped at least three of been-Lately's hot-air terror-balloons!

Be all that as it may, what happened later was so anti-intuitive that the idea of bringing the world together in, well not exactly universal brother- and sister-hood, but at least something laid back enough to where one could call it "peace", which was the obvious thing to do, didn't even get in the letter box.

Instead, this is what the Rexona government did:

First, they attacked Farawaystan, where been-Lately had his base. Few, if any, had a problem with that. The Bullyboys, who controlled Farawaystan, were unpopular with almost everyone in the world except themselves and it was, militarily, a piece of cake to depose them.

Afterwards, Rexona went on television and swore to the people of Farawaystan, "We will not forget you!".

The people in Farawaystan rejoiced! Men shaved off the beards the Bullyboys, who, in their misunderstanding of the Masher's teachings, forced all men to grow and women shed the tent-like garments which they had been forced to wear whenever in public. There was music and singing in the streets!

Then Rexona did everything he could to not capture the terraist, been-Lately. Money promised to rebuild the infrastructures destroyed in deposing the Bullyboys never came. The military needed to stabilize the country were never sent.

The result was that the Bullyboys came back, taking over the countryside. The warlords who had been hired to help depose the Bullyboys made friends with the Bullyboys and returned to their occupation of choice -- overseeing the growing of opium poppies...

Instead of doing what the most incompetent person could see what needed to be done, that is assuming one had a minimum of integrity, Rexona next invaded Wuta-reck. A number of reasons were given for this invasion: weapons of mass destruction; collusion with been-Lately -- none of which had any basis in reality whatsoever! The result was that, on the one hand, the Bullyboys regained power in Farawaystan and, on the other hand, Wuta-reck really turned into a real wreck.
The country's infrastructure became nonexistent -- there was no electricity and the common people were reduced to drinking sewage in place of clean water which the evil dictator at least had been able to provide. O yes, as a side note, we must mention that over a million citizens of Wuta-reck died as a direct result of the illegal invasion and decade long occupation.

Unbelievably, the Bankers of Illusion continued to repeat the bleating of the Rexona government that deposing the Terrible Dictator of Wuta-reck had made, in some magical way, the world a better place!

Knowing this things, it can perhaps be comprehended -- although not necessarily understood -- how it was that, when Monstrous Monday happened despite the billions spent on "homeland security", Rexona ascended to ultimate power as Supreme Hole of Arrogance.

Finding himself upon the Great White Throne, he rubbed his hands in glee and ordered the bombing of the Evil Land of Urin, which was attempting to acquire the evil nuclear bomb.

This, otherwise unprovoked attack, was the beginning of the Endless Ultimate Wars which would have destroyed the Third Galaxy, had not the Alien Veggies intervened.

The Book of Choclate -- Passport to Eternity

As I promised yesterday, you now get a chapter from the "Book of Chocolate". The editors of the Absolute Truth generally ascribe it to someone in the Valantinian school of Knowers. The actual author is unknown, but that matters little as the identity of the actual authors of even the canonized texts about the Idaho is open to dispute.

"The Book of Chocolate" is one of the best preserved scrolls found in the caves at Ragged Haggis after the "War to Make the World Safe for...Whatever..." and this particular chapter, usually referred to as "Passport to Eternity". is nearly free of lacunas so that guess work as to what the unknown author actually wrote can be avoided. For clarity, I chose the translation of Elmer Eggplant as I think it captures the feel of the original text best.

These are words given by Holy Idaho to Tom the Twin about the Passport to Eternity:

There is a secret heart within you. When you find it, it will open like a flower.

Within that open heart there is a vast universe, I tell you is the kingdom of the spirit.

It is a place of no time or space, therefore it is not proper to say that it is either within or without, above or below!

You lose everything but gain all, when you enter through that tiny door which is no wider than a heart beat and is as narrow as a single breath...
The Passport to Eternity was prepared from before time began. What was freely made is freely given.

It is freedom itself and therefore is absolutely free.

Beware of any who would sell it to you -- the best of them are charlatans, the worst of them are, well, the worst...

If they command you to bow your head, lift your eyes to the sky and know that the sky and that which is beyond the sky belonged to you before you were born.

If they command you to kneel -- stand!

If they command you to bow down in obeisance, jump up and run with the wind!

If they command you to repeat a phrase, excuse yourself politely [but firmly] telling them you already have an appointment with the Great Potato...

You call me Idaho, but know that it is but a name for your common humanity.

If someone wants to call me by another name, there is no need for you to quarrel with them just because of that.

As for those shakers and breakers of the world, who treat humanity like cattle, like hunks of meat to be devoured from the bone -- let us pray they go somewhere to be alone with their insanities!

It is written elsewhere in the Ragged Haggis texts the Idaho told his friends that ability to recognize our common humanity is a gift of the Holy Wind and that this was the rock upon which he would establish his community.

Did the Idaho actually say these things? The question is moot! For there is nothing new in any of this, it is the ancient teaching, an old song with a couple of blue notes perhaps.

Ragged Haggis

In an earlier post, I mentioned that there were several hundreds "books" in the Third Galaxy which purportedly told the story and/or the teachings of Holy Idaho.

There is not anything unusual in this, a continent away and five centuries earlier, there was another religious founder, the Big Buddy. The amount of literature attributed to him in what are called the "Three Biscuits" are so voluminous that -- even though Big Buddy lived to be eighty -- it is hard to see how a single man could produce so much!

Apparently it is human nature in the Third Galaxy to attribute ones own thoughts as those of a famous, in particular a famous religious personage. Thankfully, things like this never happen in our own world!

One might well ask how could it be that almost all of the texts attributed to the teachings of the Buddy could survive for millenniums down to modern times in the Third Galaxy, whereas the material attributed to the Idaho is so scanty. The answer is that, a bit more than three centuries after the death of the Idaho, the Peelers became the state religion of the Roaming Empire.

As an absolute ruler, the Emperor Constipate didn't like that there were so many sects and splinter groups among the Peelers and he commanded that they sort these things out so that everybody would know what they were supposed to believe. In short, for his unified empire, he wanted a unified religion.

The upshot was that a small collection of the writings were determined to be inspired by the Holy Wind and everything else was banned, suppressed and even actively sought out and destroyed. The job was done so well that for fifteen hundred years the only thing known about these documents were screeds written by early church fathers bloviating about how wicked and evil were the teachings in these texts.

In modern times, after the "War-to-Make-the-World-Safe-for-Whatever...",
a number of scrolls that had been hidden in caves near Ragged Haggis were discovered*.

Although badly damaged, with many lacunas, these texts gave people in the Third Galaxy important insights into various ideas that were floating around during the early years of the Peeler religion -- in particular, those of the so-called Knowers, or as the Church preferred to call them, the Gnasties.

The Knowers were a far from homogenous group, but they were attacked and vilified by the Church of the Universe as if they were a conspiracy of the Devil Himself. However, when the Roaming Empire later broke up into two empires, one seated in Roam and the other in Constipated -- the church split also. Not that much later, when the Roaming empire fell, the Pooper of the Church of the Universe was able keep his organization together and for a while was perhaps the most powerful man in the Third Galaxy!

However, Humpty Dumpty finally fell off that wall and, as far as the Church of the Universe was concerned, all the torture chambers and bonfires roasting heretics could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

The Peelers then split into several hundred larger and smaller, churches, sects and cults and things were more or less like they were before, except that now they had a canonized text which was now raised to be the Infallible Word of the Great Potato.

This was something which the Church of the Universe had never intended -- they had only meant to get rid of texts which could sow doubt regarding the teaching of the Church. This was most unfortunate because charlatans and outright nuts began reading these texts and, because the words were "From the Great Potato", that meant that everything they thought while reading these texts was also holy, sacred and the "Will of the Great Potato". Many ugly and outright evil things happened in the Third Galaxy because of this.

Well, that was lot of history, spanning almost two millenniums, so you must forgive me if it was a bit sketchy!

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will post and excerpt from the "Book of Chocolate".
______________
The astute reader may complain that Ragged Haggis sounds suspiciously like Nag Hammadi -- but as Third Galaxy is a parallel universe, some parallels are to be expected now and then.

Beans in a Jar

[I must be the slowest writer anywhere between here and the Third Galaxy. I've been working on this bit of a trifle ever since the first lines popped out of my mouth some thirty years ago and just spent some time this morning once again reworking it only to find that I posted an earlier version not all that long ago. Well, I'm not going to have any more time today to write anything else as I have to go into town and help my daughter move. It would seem that "beans" should be understood here to also mean human beings.]

I dare you to take a good look at
the "beans" I have in this jar.
I bought them last night from a madman
I met in a stinky old bar.

He swore they were sure good for something,
but I didn't quite catch what it was
he screamed like a dying folk singer
as he was carried away by a flood
of crazy young college drinkers
who broke down the barroom door,
dragged him by his feet out into the street
and left the jar on the floor

I want you to come a bit closer
and examine what's here in this jar
I'm pretty sure that you will see
just what these "beans" really are.
There were three billion "beans" when I got them
and now there are three billion more.

Pretty soon, the jar will break
and spill all the "beans" on the floor.
What will happen then to the "beans"?
Will they just lie there till they all rot up?
Or will somebody suddenly come
and suddenly gather them up,
sort them and put them in a new jar
far better than the one before?

I want you to come yet closer
and press your ear to the jar
I want you to hear the sounds of a fear
which is near and not far,
a fear which mutates to hate --
a hate which is felt more than seen.

Did you know that the things that you do
can often come back and haunt you?

The First Spud-mas, When the Idaho Was Born

[Once again I present information about the Third Galaxy gleaned from the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth. Please bear with me if I wander -- it is an enormous amount of information I have had to plow through...]

"In the bad old days, when the Mob ruled the world, Tutti Frutti, the Boss of Bosses let the word go out that everyone had to pay protection money..."

Thus begins the story of the first Spud-mas, when the Holy Idaho was born in a barn in Bedlam, a small town in Holy California.

The fact is, we have very few "facts" about the Holy Idaho, that is historical facts. Except for a few references in other literature, all we have are the four books of Mark, Look, Matthew and John, some letters and a diary which have been canonized into what we know today as the "Book of the Holy Idaho".
True, there are a couple hundred other "books", but they were all decreed "false" by a committee about 300 years after the Holy Idaho left our plane of existence -- that is if he was ever here in the first place. These books were not only banned, they were actively sought out and destroyed in a manner that would make a modern day dictator cream in his jeans for the sheer joy of it.

Even an incorrigible cynic like myself must admit that there is a text which begins with the words cited above. Whatever one may believe or not believe, the Book of the Holy Idaho itself is a fact as certain as the yellow pages of the telephone book. Furthermore, it should be obvious to a blind man that the Book of the Holy Idaho is closely intertwined with the much older "Book of the Great Potato".

In fact, some say that the story of the Holy Idaho is an extended parable or commentary upon a sequence in the Book of the Great Potato, the story of the binding of Laughing Boy when his father Broken Wing came that close to murdering his only son because he imagined the Great Potato wanted a blood sacrifice. The reader is encouraged to read the the story here.

According to the text, the Idaho was "sprouted" miraculously by the Holy Wind, that is without the intervention of any human hand or other appendage. One can of course speculate on the fact that it was common in those times to say that great kings and princes had been conceived with the help of one of their "gods".

In the Book of the Great Potato it is writ that "a virgin would conceive" and that would be a sign from the Great Potato of something. No matter how often one points out that the word translated as "virgin", simply means "young woman" -- the Peelers continue to maintain Idaho was sprouted, through the agency of the Holy Wind without the help of any man, woman -- or potato for that matter.

That is the story which all which all Peelers must at least pretend to believe in order to be considered Peelers by other Peelers. At times, it has had most serious consequences when other Peelers decided you were not a "true" Peeler. I know that it is hard for people who have the good fortune of living in such a sane world as our own to understand how it could be that people could be mashed, crushed, maimed, tortured in the most delicate manner and even burnt alive for failing to profess belief in on the many tenets of the Peeler faith!

But I wander, I've already written so much and have yet to touch upon that first Spud-mas when Holy Idaho was born in a barn. Many young children have been taught to think that it was so sad he had to be born in such a place because there was no room in the motel in Bedlam. The fact is, it was a most felicitous place to be born. It was a warm, secure place, the young Idaho opened his eyes in pleasant surroundings, dimly lit and smelling of hay and cow farts.

People are often surprised to learn that most of the names in these stories about Holy California mean something in the original language. For example, the very name Holy Idaho refers to the Special Name of the Great Potato, that is, SPUD, the name which no one must speak. Briefly, the name, Holy Idaho, could be translated to "He Who Cries Out to the Great Potato" -- this ties in well with what Book of the Holy Idaho says were his last words, "My SPUD, my SPUD, why have you forsaken me!"

The Book of the Holy Idaho makes a great deal of the "fact" that he was born in "Bedlam". In the language of the time, "bedlam" literally means "House of Bread" or "House of Struggle". The confusion lies in the fact that the word for "bread" is elliptic, that is, it refers to the kneading of the dough when one makes bread. On the other hand, the same word root is used to speak of war and battle. This makes more sense when you consider that war in those days consisted almost exclusively of hand to hand combat with swords, spears and axes one stuck or whacked rather personally into the flesh of other humans.

Whether these and the many other word plays in these texts are deliberate or accidental depends on who you ask -- if you ask me, the answer is of course, yes, they are deliberate and give these stories a richness often overlooked.

Remove the Two By Four In Your Own Eye

Sorry about the hiatus, but I was a bit under the weather yesterday.

When I was in the 7th grade I was assigned to do a "book report" on Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West".

I didn't know dork about poetry then (and still don't know much), so, in desperation, I learned the damn thing by heart and recited it in class. When I was finished, I recieved the first round of applause in my life. Because of the method I used to memorise the poem, I can still recall the opening lines:

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

If I could wish, I would wish that I had learned other poems by heart -- not for content, but to burn their meter into my consciousness -- even today, a half century later, this form of iambic heptameter comes more easily to me than any other.

That said, you will have to do with this trifle from Ye Olde Poetry Bag:

When you close your eyes, what do you see on the back of your eyelids?
Do you see the kind of things that cheer you up and make you glad?
Or do you see sugarplums wickedly twisted out of shape?

Don't let these dreams of glory and pink clouds go to your head!
Don't let the snaggle-toothed monsters bring you down instead!

What you see is only You-Seeing-You, seeing you;
along with some half-digested videos from the evening news.
If only you could get to be real good friends with you,
these inflated dreams and porno flicks would shrink to normal size.

Don't be like the guy in "The Body Snatchers" who dared not close his eyes,
he thought that could keep the dreams and the stoopid pictures away!
The fact is, you'll see them pasted on the faces of the people you meet.
In the end, you'll see chimeras and monsters roaming city streets!

You'll run out to save the world for "jesus", "allah" or some nameless god
and end up doing nothing more than pissing in an empty pot!

When it all comes down to dust, you must become good friends with you!
The things you see and do must be the things you see and do!

Nothing more and nothing less, whether you're looking at your eyelids
or the man across the street -- that's what the Rebbe from Nazareth said.

Weeell, maybe not exactly, but it's close enough for folk music!

_______________
I use the term "Rebbe" instead of "Rabbi" to point out that the Magician from Galilee was considered a heretic, much as the blessed Israel ben Eliesher, aka the Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name.

Fourth of JULY, 2007...

As I wrote last year, July 4th commemorates not the signing, but the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence -- the actual signing was the day before.

I also wrote last year Http://chuckcliff.blogspot.com/2006/07/my-worst-ever-4th-of-july.htmlthat July 4th, 2006 was the worst ever I have known. It's worth a reread. Sadly, 2007 appears to set a new record for me.

As far as the weather is concerned, almost every month this past year has set a record, either for being the warmest, wettest or driest. This past June, for example was the wettest since they started keeping records a century and a half ago here in Denmark.

Unfortunately, every month the political weather also seems to set new records. We seem headed for "political bow-echo" effect. It is as if we are heading for a Rupture where the Third Galaxy, a parallel universe to our own will suddenly become a part of our reality.

Do I really believe that? Of course not! I may be crazy, but I'm not insane.

However, it is a fact that our beloved country is now considered by most of the rest of the world to be a rogue nation, one that invades, bombs and occupies other countries without cause, a country which intends to control the world's resources, a country which will allow no other to even get close to her in military might, a country of iron boots able to crush anyone and anything under her heel, up to and including sending the world to oblivion.

The Lady of Light and Enlightenment has become a Madam in a Fat Car with a a corrupt political culture insulated from the Will of the People.

She has also become a country where the Executive branch considers itself to be above the law -- in fact, is above the law, commits felonies and not only gets away with it, but brags about it. But Glenn Greenwald has written both better, more cogently and extensively about this than I ever could -- go read it.

Happy "Bring 'Em On Day!", Stoopid!

Warning: Red Rant Alert!

Today is "Bring 'em on" Day, the 4th anniversary of the dumbest thing the Codpiece ever said.

Not only was it dumb, it was stoopid, low and mean. It was the boast of an empty-headed popinjay which has cost thousands in the tens and hundreds of butchered and maimed bodies and minds!

On top of that, he commuted Libby and anybody with the understanding of a sliced tomato knows the reason why: A pardon would have meant that he was exempt for further legal consequences in testifying. The commutation means that in his appeal he can still take the 5th amendment -- and that means Mr. Tinkerbell and Mr. Snarly are protected because Libby won't sing, which is why he didn't sing in the first place because he knew the fix was in as long as he kept good faith, just like them goodfellows do in the Mafia.

The quarter million $ in fines? Please, the money will come from somewhere because good shit like this is what keeps azzholes like these stuck together.

Speaking of stoopid, there is a threadbare meme that people in olden times were
superstitious creeps who crawled under rocks when it thundered and shat in their sheepskins when there was lightning. Nothing could be further from the truth: They survived ice ages, drought, floods, wild beasts and famine for a hundred or more millenniums and they did that without television, deep freezers and humvees!

We, on the other hand will be lucky to survive this century, let alone a millennium!

The rant has ended -- and now, a tidbit from Ye Olde Poetry Bag about them bad old days:

In them bad old days people were stoopid, you know,
more stoopid than wooden clothespins and round doorknobs!

But did anybody ever really count
how many people really, truly thought
the earth was flat and that ships would fall right off
the edge if they should sail too far from land?

I doubt it very much that anyone did!
My guess is that it's yet another of those
things we "think we know", as if it came
direct from the Spud of the Great Potato Himself...

For so it is with many silly things
we think we've gotta believe, or go to Hell
and roast and burn with pain forever more
for daring to think, "This doesn't make sense to me!"

The Halls of Hell are strewn with dead beliefs
cast off by those who actually found -- faith!