Catching Dog Poopers Prevents Terra!!!

In the wake of Terrible Tuesday, laws appeared out of nowhere, laws of several hundred pages were passed with large majorities. A weak minded person, or a skeptic, might think that these laws had been prepared beforehand, in anticipation of the awful events of that September. Such thoughts, of course make the thinker, at least, eligible for a high class tinfoil hat.

How can a reasonable person with the slightest grasp of our commonly accepted reality be opposed to a law with such a fine name as PATRIOT? Indeed, how can anyone be puzzled by the appearance, out of the (red, white and) blue, so to speak of the ominous term Homeland Security? Only a pansy, a wimp, a librul could take offense!

Our leaders protect us and if they need special powers to protect us, my gawd, give them such power so they don't have to take it illegally (for our own good, of course).

In the Happy Large Kingdom we sometimes call the Great Brit, they had similar, ill advised discussions when the RIPA bill was passed. This super patriotic law gave greatly expanded powers to the local governments to use cameras in surveillance of public areas. The public was assured that these expanded powers would only be used to "get terraists".

People, in their wussiness, are now complaining that the local gov'ts are now using the surveillance cameras to catch litter bugs and dog poopers. What else can you expect of libruls? Is not litter-bugism and the leaving of stray dog poops as close to terraism as you can get with out saying "boom!"?

I'm just asking!

Quadrennial Horse Races, Final Heats...

Meanwhile, in the Happy Little Kingdom, as I peek out the window over the Big Puddle towards the United State of Arrogance, I wonder -- are they going bonkers over there? Is it something they put in the water or, more likely, the soda-pop?

The purported purpose of the Quadrennial Horse Races is to end up with someone who can take upon themselves the burden of being for at least four years the most powerful person on our poor world.

As it now stands, Mad Kane has long been basking in the glory of being the candidate of the Repugnant Party -- we have only to wait until the Autumn when he will be annointed by the spewing of approbations by all the major poobahs of the Repugnant Party, each of them trying to outdo the others in saying ridiculous inanities about why a fellow who, at certain phases of the Moon rabidly froths at the mouth would make a cool Prez..

As for the Dumbrats, the show still goes on between the front-runner, Bulimo Charisma and Pillory Flintstone.

In Arrogance, they have a most peculiar custom of televised debates between politicians seeking voter support for the same office. Well, it's not debates in themselves -- many countries have televised debates -- no, it's the manner it which the debates unfold and in particular the kind of questions asked.

I won't go into the details, as to recollect too much of these shows is liable to induce nausea in all but the most strong stomached.

However, can you possibly imagine why, national television, a candidate is asked why they don't wear a flag pin on their lapel? Can you understand the importance of asking a candidate why they laugh so much?

Indeed, can you imagine a commentator in a sane society exclaiming, as a candidate scratches his cheek with his middle finger, "Why, he's throwing a bird to the sound technicians!!!"

Ah, yes, I understand -- I mean, I understand that I have entirely misunderstood what these seances are all about!

The purpose is not find a person suited to assume the most powerful office in the world. The purpose is to find someone who can fill the cod of the Codpiece and become the next incarnation of the Supreme Hole. Mad Kane is, hands splayed, the candidate who best fits the bill. True, both Bulimo and Pillory have said they might bomb Youran, but Mad Kane is the one we can be confident will not only remain in Wudda-Wreck until it is as flat as a billiard table, but will also bomb Youran into submission -- or dust, which ever comes first...

Therefore, I predict that, by hook or crook, by preemptive strikes or by conveniently timed terra attacks -- Mad Kane will be, in not elected, at least selected as the next Prez of the United State of Arrogance. For only he can fearlessly lead us into yet more ill-advised wars and military adventures.

Of course, I do hope I'm completely wrong!

The River Descending...

[This is an unusual piece from the unknown poet of the Third Galaxy. In his notes he writes: "River Descending" is one of those things I compose in my bed at night as I go back to sleep after having gotten up to take a leak.

This explains their dreamlike quality, I suppose, but offers little in the way of understanding their meaing.

However, I do know that, in the original language of the Book of the Holy Idaho, the word-root, JRD has the meaning of "descend". Therefore, what we read as "Jordan", could just as well be "River Descending" -- which is the meaning Strug mystics use in their thinking.]

...my Accuser finished his diatribe
with a smirk upon his face.
I sat there in silence before I replied,
while speaking thus from my place:

"I am feeling very lonely now,
after your attacks.
Why don't you step up and take a bow,
while I dissect your 'facts'?"

If the truth be told and be told it must
(and this you surely know!),
the lack of faith is grounded in lack of trust
and dries up the sacred flow
known as Holy River Jordan.

However, it's real course
is the River of Life which first descends
and then returns to it's Source.

Go ahead and laugh, if think you must.
It doesn't bother me.
In the end, when all goes down to dust,
what remains is Reality!

That is the Question we all must face.
What we profess to believe
has little to do with our quality of faith.

Beliefs bring many to grief,
especially when we use them to hide
from the nitty gritty of life:
Which is that all things born must die,
and that is the source of all our strife.

A Man and His Dog...

[I referred to this story a couple of posts ago. It's an old story that's been wandering around the internet for years which I retell here.]

This is guy is walking along and he has his dog with him. He can't remember how long he has been walking and exactly where he is. He comes to a place where there is a great big mansion with a big sign with blinking lights, HEAVEN!!!

There's a big iron gate and a fellow in a snazzy uniform is standing there.

The guy with the dog walks up and asks to come in. "Why sure!" the guard at the gate says, "but you have to leave the dog behind!"

The guy thinks about that for a while then says, "Well, thank you sir, but I think I'll just keep walking."

A ways on the guy comes to a run down ramshackle place with a rusty wooden gate. Also here, there is a person standing at the gate, albeit a much more relaxed and laid back person. Tired of walking, the guy asks if he can come in to rest a bit. "Why sure!" comes the immediate answer.

"Uh, can I bring my dog?"

"Of course!"

"What is this place?" asks the guy as he goes through the gate.

"Heaven."

"Heaven? But there's another place down the road that has a big sign..."

"O, that's the competition -- that's Hell."

"But why do you let them have that sign?"

"Well, anybody who'd leave their best friend behind to get into 'heaven' deserves what they get, don't you think?"

On the Importance of Orange Juice as Opposed to Torture...

I thought of doing some snark with Snarly, Ms. Lice and all the others sitting around, drinking coffee and soda pop, deciding how many slaps, how much water to pour on a fella's face, how long to hang some poor bugger from his arms behind his back -- and then hear them say, "We don't torture -- we decided to call it intensive interrogation..."

But it's too sick -- this is not my country, this is not the Lady of Light and Liberty. This is not the "City of Light upon the hill"


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Codpiece himself drawls, "Why shore, I knew, I approved, sheet, I thought it was kinna cool."

Meanwhile, the Bankers of Illusion yawn and get down to the serious news, did Bulimo Charisma turn down a cup of coffee and ask for orange juice?

Meanwhile, Mad Kane, the media darling and prime candidate for Supreme Hole after Rexona, the First, continues to babble, confusing Sunni and Shia -- but hey, if you are a straight talker, a manly man, who needs to know anything except where the button of power is?

The Subtlety of Reality...

[I lurk around a bit over at the UCC Forum (you can see the link to the right under, "United Church of Idaho...") In fact, I sometimes post what might seem to some as incomprehensible ramblings of muddled mentality.

A couple of people over there responded to a story I told about a man and his dog with stories about loved ones who spoke of seeing people coming to meet them as they were sucking their final breaths. This was my reply]

It's surprising the number of people who can come with anecdotes of this order, ranging from dreams to the so-called out-of-body episodes some have reported.

This is mine: The last time I was to visit an aunt to whom I was very close, I had almost deliberately put off the date to November. The night she died in September, I saw her in a dream, she told me she was sorry, but she was soooo tired. My sister called me the next morning and told me she had died that night after a coma of some 10-12 hours. My first feeling was a recognition of how selfish I had been.

Besides their value to the one who experiences them, do they prove anything? No, I don't think so, at least not in the normal meaning of proof.

On the other hand, I think that they strongly indicate that Reality has a deepness and a subtlety we generally overlook in our daily lives and that we are connected to one another and all that lives in ways we barely begin to imagine when we speak of things like Heaven.

If Boats Were on Land...

When the English surrendered at Yorktown to the American insurgents they played a song which begins:

If boats were on land, churches sea.
If ponies rode men and grass ate the cows

And the verses end with the coda:

Then all the world would be upside down!

Well, I just read that farmers in Helmand province in Farawaystan are planting wheat instead of poppies -- that's kind of upside down, don't you think?

The reason is that because of the rise in staple foods prices (and the fall of the price of heroin on the street), wheat has become the more profitable crop!

That would be cool if it wasn't because there is something more serious going on here. Serious in the sense of not only going to bed hungry, but starving to death.

In a sort of bow echo effect, climate change, the price of oil, the production of bio-fuels and other factors, the price of wheat, rice, maize, soya and other staples are rising because of shortage in production.

Compounding the effect is the fact that exporting nations are restricting if not forbidding export. India has forbidden export of all rice export the basmati sort which brings a high price. The Philippines are strapped because they are finding it hard to find the millions of tons they need to import. There have been demonstrations in Italy over the price of pasta and deadly riots in Haiti where the poorest are being reduced to eating mud cookies.

If you think about it a moment though, the world ain't upside down -- it's wobbling along like it always has. The upside, if you can call it, that is that the hunger won't go unreported or denied like it was during the Great Potato Famine in Ireland.

Potatoes were exported to England under armed guard during the height of the hunger and I suppose things like that, or worse, will happen in our more modern and humane world.

A Prophet in Plastic on a Pedestal...

When Martin Luther King's birthday (April 4) was made a holiday, part of the effect if indeed not the intent was to encapsulate his legacy in a plastic cube and soften the edges of his often fiery and always intelligent rhetoric.

King, particularly in his last year, was a challenge and, to some, a threat to the arrogance of American Exceptionalism and its accompanying and growing militarism.

That is to say he was beginning to speak to America's bad conscience, warning the Lady of Light and Liberty that she was in danger of becoming Madam in a Fat Car, Bitch of Babylon.

Everyone has heard and remembers, "I have a dream...".

But how many have ever heard, let alone remember, "The choice is not between violence and nonviolence, the choice is between nonviolence and nonexistence."?

I've thought and written about this phenomenon before and I wish I could coin a term for it:

When prophets cannot be silenced, when they are dead, as much truth is drained off as can be gotten away with without making them look completely bloodless.

What remains is diluted with trivialities.

Then they are sealed in plastic, placed on a pedestal and, if needed, their birthday becomes a national holiday.

Listen to the Night Winds Wail....

On the early morning news here in the Happy Little Kingdom, they talked about the missle base being built about 100 miles from where I live -- it's part of the "Missle Defense Shield" boondongle which is advetised as a defense against a rocket from Iran.

The Russians for their part say they'll target such bases with their rockets. I can't, for my part understand why -- don't they trust our good intentions?

Time out for a little sad song...

I lie upon my bed at night
and stare into the light.
These sights I see, can they really be
what's causing our misery?

Perhaps it serves no real use
to explain it all to you,
but it's the things that
we all do that are
tickling the Dragon's Tail!

It's kind of strange don't you think,
our world totters on the brink
of global catastrophe and
endless, Total War…

But how is it we all react?
We go out and shop for more
of them Shiny Things that
glow in the Dark and
tickle the Dragon's Tail!

If we keep on going down the road we're on,
there won't be no turning back!
Pretty soon the tarmac will crack
and the zeroes will attack!

The world will go down to the shade
when the roses all fade,
We'll all sleep
in the bed we made
by tickling the Dragon's Tail!

There are those who say a better day
will come if we only pray.
The "Lord" will come and kiss our thumb
and smile and wipe our bum.

I swear by hope and faith and love
and by the Lord Above:
that it ain't a-gonna happen
because we've all been
Tickling the Dragon's Tail!

Listen to the night,
listen to the night,
listen to the night winds wail!

The Price of Peace is Soxcess

Success is a funny thing -- a lot depends on how you define it. As a matter of fact, a lot depends on how you spell sugcess!

But no one can deny that Wudda-Wreck and the Battle(s) of Body-bag have been a sucksass beyond our wildest expectations!

Who could have known that the grateful citizens, as we waltzed around our cakewalk, would throw that many flowers at our brave soldiers? Who could have foreseen that four thousand would be smothered to death in all those petals?

It was tragic, but tragedy is sometimes the price of peace!