Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Polite Vultures

A lot of people have commented that it took George Bush long enough to decide to cut his vacation short, what with half the South being underwater and millions of people homeless. It must have been some mighty important brush he was clearing out there at the ranch- more important certainly then the tragedy that overtook the nation that he's supposed to be governing. His vacation had the air of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, with the only difference being that Nero could play a musical instrument.

Yep. A lot of people have been saying that stuff, but not me. The fact of the matter is that I like him out vacationing at his ranch. I feel a whole bunch safer with him there then when he's in the White House, because when he's sitting in the oval office gas prices go up and Americans die. I hear he would have been back to work sooner, but there was a frightening middle-aged woman standing out in the road with a sign, who wanted to know why her son was dead. If I were George Bush, I wouldn't want to answer that question either. Now, I've made mistakes in my life, but all of my mistakes are still around living and breathing. No one's died yet (that I know of) because of my bonehead decisions.

It does bug me that he's getting five weeks of vacation. I've never had five weeks of vacation at a time, or per year or anything close. Have you? Do you know any American other than the president that does? Convenience store managers put in far more hours than this guy and you'd think, wouldn't you, that running this entire country should take up more time than running a seven-eleven.

Here's a little history about New Orleans: In 1801 the French Emperor Napolean Bonaparte sent a vast naval armada under the command of General Rochambeau (yeah. I'm not sure of that spelling) to New Orleans with the purpose of attacking that port and then taking his great fleet up the Mississippi River and then securing the land on both sides for the French Empire. You'll notice that we citizens who live near the Mississippi aren't speaking French and somehow aren't citizens of the French republic. So what happened? Napolean, in his 'wisdom', instructed the General to stop by the colony of Haiti - which was having a slave revolt - on his way to America. General Roshambeau was to mop up those pesky slaves and then proceed merrily on to mopping us up. Unfortunately, those pesky slaves absolutely creamed him and his fleet, with the result that Haiti became to first country established by freed slaves.

(I know some of you are thinking that Spartacus did that in Rome. No. He tried. And failed. And was crucified.)

The news media coverage of the hurricane and it's aftermath has, in my mind, been remarkably restrained, respectful and dignified. Of course, I haven't seen all of the coverage and I haven't been able to find the time to watch much TV. I know, I know, TV's important so I should make
the time and I really promise that I'll do better in the future. The problem with the news coverage is that it still has to walk that uncomfortable line between news and entertainment. They have to tell a story, but then they have to sell stuff, and the story they're telling is really there so that they can sell stuff. It absolutely makes me cringe watching one of these heartbreaking scenes and then they stop for the commercial. This tragedy has been brought to you by our sponsors at .... You know, that kind of thing.

The media are vultures. They circle around disaster so that they can feed on the carnage. This time, they're being rather well mannered about it, but they're still doing it. One of the interviews I saw on - NBC I believe - was a female reporter intrviewing a man whose wife was missing, who had lost his home, had a young child to care for, and didn't know what to do. The reporter was in tears hearing this story which I'm sure were genuine, because she's a human being and the man's situation was very sad.

My question is: What happened when the cameras stopped rolling? Did they then help this man out? Tell him where to contact the Red Cross or something? I'd like to think they did, because reporter are humans with feelings. But do we know that they did? It's like when we're shown pictures of starving children. After they got their pictures did they just pack up their cameras and move on, or did they at least have the decency to give some of these kids a sandwhich or two?

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: New Orleans has a magnificently debauched reputation and it wouldn't surprise many people if God had it pegged as the next Sodom and Gommorha. Unfortunately, when the big guy takes it upon himself to get rid of all the crummy sinners in an area, his aim tends to be awfully poor. Sure there are a lot of girls gone wild out on Bourbon Street, but that's not the majority. Not every day is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, either. Most people just live there, and raise families and go the synagogue or church or mosque or temple or ashram or any other place of worship that I may have left out.

Monday, August 29, 2005

Coffee is Health Food

That's right! Turns out that your daily cup of Joe is rich in health giving anti-oxidents. Scientists now believe that coffee has the same benefits as eating a big, giant basket of vegetables and fruits, maybe even a couple of baskets. Recent studies have shown all of this recently. I'll tell you it's quite a relief to me, since I kind of thought that my coffee habit would've been considered bad and I really wasn't about to give it up even if Einstein had come back from the dead and told me it caused war, famine and plague. That would've been just too bad, because I'm too much of a grouch in the morning without it.

This isn't just a theory on my part, either. At a former job of mine, people wouldn't even talk to me until they had verified that I'd had my coffee. They would come up to me with a question, hesitate, then ask: "Have you had your coffee yet?" If I said 'no' they would tell me to 'never mind' and walk off. It took me a while to figure out that it was probably because I was unbearable otherwise. After realizing this, I was hurt, and troubled that co-workers thought I was unpleasant. Then it occurred to me that this might not be such a bad thing, because inevitably the question they'd be bringing me was some problem or other and if I never admitted that I'd had coffee, they would go away and so would the problem.

It worked like a dream. For awhile. Then they would just go get me my coffee for me and then pester me with whatever they wanted me to deal with.

Where I work now, I alway make the coffee in the morning. It's such an easy and cheap way to bring joy into so many peoples' lives. And I'm all about joy.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: The Lord used to be pretty picky about what his chosen people were eating. He never said anything about coffee, so maybe drinking coffee is really a sin, since God didn't specifically say we could drink it.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Wack Pat

Televangalist Pat Robertson has really disappointed me. Recently he went on his show and said that the CIA should assasinate Venezualan Commununist President Hugo Chavez and then - here's the disappointing part - he backed down and took it all back. Oh, C'mon Pat! Have the courage of your wackiness and stand your ground no matter how goofball what you say is. If you're going to be wrong, the best kind of wrong is indignantly wrong.

I shouldn't say this, but I think Pat Robertson is onto something. What the US foreign policy has really been missing badly is insane religious extremists, and this would have just fit the bill perfectly. Think about it: Don't you think it would strike fear into the heart of some of these terrorist nations if they new some of our nut jobs were out there hell bent on a little payment in kind for all the terrorism aimed at us and our allies? America makes the most cars in the world. America makes the most bombs in the world. You do the math, terrorists.

Anyways, it's just a thought. What I'd like to know from the Reverend Robertson is whether he thinks God doesn't know who should be on this earth or not. This guy Chavez, sure he's been shooting his mouth off pretty bad, but I really think that if Jehovah were having second thoughts, he could have taken the guy out on his own with no help from our CIA. Perhaps God has a purpose for Chavez. Perhaps Chavez will repent, become a born again Christian, and give the United States all the oil that Venesuala can pump for absolutely free. Pat Robertson would sure have egg on his face then, wouldn't he?

Listen, I think the good reverend is seriously overestimating the CIA. They haven't pulled off a good assassination since Mao Tse Dung. (Oops. That was a secret. Forget I told you that). These days they don't have it in them to do even an easy political murder.

Think I'm wrong? Watch this. Hey, CIA! Why don't you assasinate me? Yeah, that's right. You come out to Wisconsin and take me out. You have my permission, but I know you won't do it, because you can't. Don't give me that Presidential order crap. Even if you wanted to you couldn't.

Okay. I'm going to take a break, make some tea, read my National Enquirer and give them a little time to get over here, which they won't, because they can't because the CIA is ineffective.
See you in a bit.

I'm back. Eva Longoria is really a man. Brad Pitt really isn't. By my watch, an entire forty seven minutes have gone by and you'll notice that I'm still typing this and not only that - I'm doing it with my back turned towards the door. The CIA has not shown up in that time and they have not killlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllldfmmmas

Sunday, August 21, 2005

The President of TV World

Geena Davis is going to star on a TV show as a woman Vice-President who becomes president and I'm very disturbed because - and forgive me if I'm wrong - isn't Martin Sheen already the president on TV? His show The West Wing hasn't been canceled so I can only assume that something must happen to President Sheen since TV can not have two presidents. TV shows, I've always believed, must exist in the same world, so that Jed Clampett could at some point, run into Darrin Stevens, or Al Bundy or Homer Simpson or even President Martin Sheen. As a matter of fact, I know this to be true since I see characters show up from different TV shows all the time, you know, like Granny from the Beverly Hill Billies fell in love with Mort Drucker on Green Acres. Different shows. Same World. What's going to happen when, come this Fall, TV World has two presidents? Does this mean that TV United States is having a civil war?

It does seem kind of quaint and old fashioned that a network would think that just the concept of having a woman as a president is enough to launch a whole series. Aren't we a little beyond that already? I mean, we are almost certainly going to have Hilary Clinton as a presidential candidate in the next election. I don't hear any other name mentioned for the Democrats, so what's the big deal? Women have led big, important countries - I don't know, like Catherine the Great in Russia, Margaret Thatcher in England, Indira Ghandi in India - there've been a few. So, it's not at all out of the realm of possibility.

The only problem I would have with a woman president is that I think the constitution still says that the president has to be a man. I hate to point out this fly in the ointment, but did we have a constiutional amendment that I never heard of? Was there a supreme court decision somewhere where they said that anywhere where something says man, it also means woman? (You know, maybe there was. Would somebody let me know, if that's the case?)

I'm usually a Democrat most of the time. And if Hilary is the Democratic candidate I'll vote for her, though, I've got to say that there's just something about her that annoys me. Maybe it's the condescending Ivy league smugness. I can't say. Nonetheless, she has my vote. The biggest problem with Hilary is that she isn't a Southern governor. That's the only real hope that the democrats have of getting a candidate into office, because senators make horrible, horrible candidates. See, they have voting records which can be exploited because the way the senate works there are compromises and each bill they vote for has tons of extraneous crap added as the price of getting this or that senator's vote.

The promos I've seen for the Geen Davis president show have Donald Sutherland as the Speaker of the House berating new president for taking the job when she knows she isn't qualified - because she doesn't have the internal qualities. Geena Davis and Donald Sutherland are both fine actors, but this particular promo makes me wince. I hate seeing these wonderful actors reduced to what looks like mediocre tripe. If they need the money, I'll forgive them for it.

Otherwise, shame on them.

What this means for the Apocalypse: The roles of women in the Bible has almost always been portrayed as subordinate to that of men. If I remember correctly, the only woman specifically mentioned in Revelations is the whore of Babylon. Maybe the rest of the women in Revelations are at home cooking for their men.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Second Son of a Second Son

Yeah, I know it's supposed to be seventh son of a seventh son, but that doesn't fit in at all with what I want to say, which is: We second born sons sure have had it rough. I was watching a show about the English royal princes, William and Harry, and it occurred to me that the second born prince, Harry, really has nowhere to go in his chosen career path - monarch of England.

The only way this poor guy's ever going to get ahead is if something happens to his dear older brother William. He loves his brother, I'm sure, but if I were William I know I'd be a might bit nervous every time I accepted a glass of wine from Harry and he stared at me while I took a sip.
You know, If I were William, I'd sent Harry off to the army or something. (Hey, wait. That's what did happen). I'm not saying that Harry has designs on the throne or anything, but I've seen a lot of William's Polo 'accidents' where Harry was watching in the audience and smiling. Hmmm.

Traditionally the great tyrant's of the world have been the first born sons, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan .. and so on, while all the great revolutionaries have been second born, like Castro and Che Guevera. This shouldn't be much of a surprise since the lot of the second born has been considerably less glorious than that of the first. The first born son gets to inherit the kingdom while the second born, what does he get? Well, usually it was one of these choices: the preisthood (Yay! Lifelong celibacy!), the army (bloody violent death! Hurrah!) or they could make their way in foreign lands (I don't have a parenthetical comment for this). Given this, it's no wonder that the second born views the world and the social order that he was born into as unfair and needing viloent change.

Okay. Here's the obvious question. I have an older brother, so, do I consider him one of the great tyrant's of the world? No, no. He's a mild and pleasant man and doesn't have it in him at all to be a cruel, vicious dictator.

I think.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: Jesus had a younger brother, James, and do you think that he might have been a little bit resentful of his older sibling who got to be the Messiah while, what did he get? When Jesus returns to Earth do you think his little brother James is going to be somewhere in the background carrying Jesus's luggage?

Friday, August 19, 2005

Leaving the Promised Land

The Jewish Settlers who are leaving Gaza are pretty unhappy and not even the two to three thousand dollars they will each receive are enough to dry their tears. You can't blame them much. The same joker who told them they should go settle there and obligingly kicked out everybody who happened to be there already, is the same clown who's telling them they now have to leave. That's Ariel Sharon, in case you were wondering.

I don't know how much of Gaza could be considered the promised land even by the most ardent of ardent zionists. When old Jehovah made out the deed to Israel he wasn't very specific as to what was included in his heavenly land deal. And so when Moses looked down at the new land for the chosen people, it just so happened people were living there. God hadn't gotten around to giving them their eviction notices yet. So, it was up to the Israelites to battle and fight their way to actually get the 'promised land' they were promised. Some promise, huh?

You'd think being the special chosen people of God he would have chosen the most primo real estate for the Israelites, but if there's milk and honey in Israel - I aint' seeing it. Tahiti. Now that's a promised land - fabulous weather, lovely scenery, and bare breasted island beauties who give you all the coconuts and free loving you could want. If you ask me the Tahitians were the chosen people. They were just smart enough to keep it to themselves that they were the real chosen ones. The Tahitians knew that if they went blabbing about their special 'chosen' status the big guy might get mad and rain fire and brimstone down on them. As he's been known to do.

The question of who actually owns the Holy land is a pretty thorny one for sure. It's been under dispute for the last five thousand years when the Palistinians were called Philistines and five thousand years from now, whatever humans are left in the area will still be fighting about it. I don't need to visit the future in a time machine to figure that one out. In the old days - throughout most all of human history - there never was much question of who owned what. The Pharaoh, Emperor, King, Caeser, Czar, Khan ... whatever you wanted to call him, he owned everything, which included everyone else. The high muckety muck with the biggest, strongest army got to claim anything he could, and if he could completely slaughter his neighbor's entire population and take all their land and homes and cooking pots ... well, that was fair. And nobody thought any differently.

The idea that the first group of people who are at a place automatically own it, is one that I would strongly dispute. I know that, as the ancestor of Northern Europeans who brought disease and slavery to the new world, my opinion might be a little suspect. But hear me out. At some point in history there was one person who was the actual, very first person to set foot on the continent of North America. Should that one person have the right to claim ownership of the whole entire land mass? Most everyone living here in North America are not, in fact, descendents of that one person, which means pretty much everybody, including 'native' Americans and not just genocidal white-skinned devils, are trespassers and we should get out. Don't you think?

Okay. Maybe you can say that the group that the one first man setting foot in America was with owned everything. What if that group was in Alaska and another group were in Florida, but came a minute later than the first group. They're invaders, aren't they? Probably you can agree that there isn't any problem with these groups sharing the continent. Right? And if you add another small group in California and maybe another in Texas and another in Nevada - still no problem. At some indefineable point, however, it does become a problem.

Which is why Israel will never be at peace. No matter who used to own what or should own what or lived in the land one, two, three thousand years ago, both the Palistinians and the Israelis are both there and they're both going to stay there. Period. Dismantling the settlements in Gaza is a very good idea, as is removing other settlements in what are now Palistinian controlled lands. Those settlements were and are nothing but a provocation and the Israelis who settled in them pretty much had no good reason to. If I were an Israeli being evicted from Gaza right now, I would take my two or three hundred grand and head off to the promised land - Tahiti.

What this means to the Apocalypse: If I'm correct, it's entirely possible that the final great clash will occur in a pleasant tropical island and not a rubble filled desert.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Google Me!

Actually, I can save you the trouble. I don't exist in Google World. When you google my name you get people who share my name, but aren't actually me. I just tried it and I was, like, seventy or eighty entries out before I figured out that Google refuses to acknowledge my existence, which of course led me to an existential philosphical crisis. If I don't exist on Google, do I exist at all?

But Steve, you may ask, if you don't exist, then who's writing this?

That is a very good question.

I like to imagine that old friends that I've long ago lost contact with, from time to time, will google my name and then wonder to themselves whether that could really be me. For example, the number one Google answer for Steve Sommers is film-maker Stephen Sommers, nicknamed 'Steve', who did the Mummy movies and the Scorpian King, which I rather liked, and then he did the totally dreadful Van Helsing, which I wanted to like, but couldn't. He had one other movie that I thought was good, but I can't recall the title. From time to time, I've hoped that people will, in fact, somehow mistake me for him, you know, like they'll see my book and think he wrote it and want to read it mistakenly. I'd be okay with that. Sommers has written his own books (or maybe I should say 'written') but I've never read any of them.

The next Steve Sommers that comes up is a wacky DJ who does a trucker radio show down South. I think it's called the 'bozo' hour. It strikes me that it might not exactly consist of the witty Oscar Wilde-like sophisticated humor that I'm so fond of. However, if anyone did want me to be a co-host of a wacky trucker show - I'd do it. A paycheck's a paycheck and I'm not going to look down my nose at what somebody else might consider entertainment. If the money were right, I'd be yelling 'Yee-haw!' at the top of my lungs for as long as the checks cleared.

The Third Steve Sommers is gay, male, porn actor Steve Sommers. I'm definitely not him. Not because I'm anti-gay (I'm not) and not because I'm anti-porn (no, no, no), but I seriously doubt that I have the other 'qualifications' .. ahem ... that the job would require. I do wonder if somebody, somewhere saw that listing for gay, male, pornstar Steve Sommers and thought to themselves: "Yes, I knew this is how he would end up."

Looking yourself up on Google is supposed to be an ego trip for most people, but not at all for me.

(Look me up on Yahoo! I'm listed second and third).

How this affects the Apocalypse: I hope Jehovah uses Google so he won't be able to find me come judgement day.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Too Many Blondes Spoil the Show

Suddenly I don't want to be Hugh Hefner anymore. It seemed like a really good idea, in theory - you know, you live in a beautiful mansion, have all the money in the world and hot, sexy women at your beck and call day and night. Now ... I don't know. Not so much anymore. See, I just finished watching one and a half episodes of the new reality show 'The Girls Next Door' which is about Hugh and his nine or ten girlfriends and their life in his mansion. And it turns out that there's a bit of a fly in the ointment. Problem is, these beautiful women ... they talk.

Don't get me wrong. Women should talk. I'm not disputing their right to, either. But these women ... well, let me put it this way: the saying 'dumb blonde' is not about to be replaced by the new saying 'genius blonde' any time soon. They aren't great conversationalists.

It's not that beautiful women can't be smart or interesting. It's just that they have no incentive to be. No matter what comes out of their mouth, most heterosexual men are going to pay attention to them as if they were Monday Night Football. They have one commodity - their youth and good looks - and when that's gone, it's gone.

I truly feel sorry for Hef in this. He's an extremely intelligent and well read man and even fistfuls of Viagra can't make up for all the time he isn't in bed with them and he has to wade in that shallow brain pool. And the poor guy's getting old. He's up there near eighty and on the show it's really obvious. He's stooped over and he shuffles when he walks. Before when you used to see Hef lounging in his bed in his PJs it looked like he was getting ready for the bedroom activities to follow. (If you know what I mean). These days it looks like he needs to be there and he wants the cameras to leave, so he can nap. Then all of these girls each have their own little yapping dog, so that the mansion is aswarm with these cute little animals who have no other purpose there than to be cute, because all of these beautiful women are lonely and b-o-r-e-d owning only about one tenth of the time of a very busy executive.

These girls pretend like being one of a half dozen of a harem to this geezer is their dream come true, but how much of this can we believe? Naah. It's gold digging. Plain and Simple. Which I guess I can kind of respect, because what else do they have going for them?

Ok. So Hugh's pretty much in it for the sex. We can agree on that, can't we? But, when women are living together in a house they tend to cycle together. (Scientifically proven in studies). This means that once a month, poor old Hugh has to put up with all of these non-brain surgeons being witchy at the same time and he can't get nothing from any of them. All he can do is try to get away from their yapping dogs and hide in one of the mansion's many hiding areas.

Does it look like I might have some sour grapes here?

Yes! Oh, please, Hef invite me over to the mansion. I can take over some of the load of listening to your hot girlfriends. Really. I'd be more than happy to do this.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: Hugh Hefner's perverse hedonistic lifestyle is certainly a symptom of the filth that is overtaking this once great country of ours. And if Hugh Hefner invites me to the mansion, I will tell him this to his face. Preferably on Hot Tub Night in the grotto.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Running Diapers

My friend Eric used to be on the news every night on the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis. Just before the Sports segment came on, the news would play this quick little montage of local sports events, and Eric would be shown crossing the finish line in the Twin Cities Marathon. Every single night.

His wife, Chris, thought that it had more to do with Eric's appearence - blond, blue-eyed, Scandanavian - than what a great athlete he was. The actual winner of that race was Kenyan, as were the second and third place winners. Eric, I remember, ran about three hours and three minutes, which is really great, but far out of the money for one of these deals. Like about forty-five minutes. So, you can see why he would be a suspicious choice to show on the clip reel for athletic excellence if that's all you were going on.

I was a spectator at that race, standing at the sidelines along with other of Eric's friends and was watching as the actual front runners crossed and I happened to notice that the fifth place winner had poohed herself. On the back of her legs there was this greenish-brown explosion of pooh that ran from the back of her running shorts down to her sneakers. The announcer at this event, who was also doing the televised play by play, accurately reported that this woman had finished fifth overall for women and first in her age, but he didn't report the one most important fact, which was that she'd crapped on herself. I thought he was a horrible announcer.

How could you ommit the most impressive part of this woman's victory? She was so dedicated to winning that she bypassed the many port-o-pot ties along the route so that she could finish in the money. In her case that was five grand.

It made me wonder. How much money would you have to pay me to take a dump in my shorts and run for miles and miles at my top speed in front of hundreds of thousands of people viewing me live and then millions more people watching on TV? Not five thousand, that's for sure. It would have to be a lot more than that, I can tell you. And this woman did it not for a sure five thousand but just the chance that she might win something. You know, even if you assured me that I could guarantee world peace for all time and humanity would be happy thereafter, I wouldn't do it. I guess I'm too selfish.

In my prime I used to do a bit of running (still do. But I'm not in my prime). I used to enter three or four ten K's in the Twin Cities per year. The big joke for my friends the day after one of my races would be to ask: "Did you win?" That alone would cause great mirth in and of itself and I wouldn't even have to answer. Well, no, as a matter of a fact, I never did win any of those races. I was usually exactly in the middle of the placings. When my age was factored in I placed considerably better. Anyways, I would occasionally read Runner's World and came across an account of a woman racer who had done precisely what that other woman had done. She'd lost bowel control during a race and persevered, and in the article she was very detailed about how it felt - very detailed.

Ewwww! It was far too much information. This was long before I saw it first hand at Eric's race, but until then I hadn't known that runners did this sort of icky thing. I guess I'd thought that if you needed to go during a race, you found a gas station restroom, or something. That's what I would do.

For non-runners, I know, the question is why anyone runs at all. It's really one of those things that you have to experience to understand, but I believe the answer is that it's one thing humans were designed to do. (intelligently. ByJehovah. In one day). I've read that being able to run for long distances was an advantage for human hunters, who would outlast their prey that could run fast for short distances, but couldn't outlast people in the long haul. For me, there is a sort of 'runner's high', which isn't all that high anymore and definitely not the same as being high 'high', if you know what I mean. (Drugs are bad. Don't use drugs). And there's a bit of back to nature, since I usually contrive to run somewhere where the scenery is pretty.

Lastly, it affords me the opportunity to eat like a hog- not entirely anymore - and not have to pay all the consequences thatI normally would. If I had never run a single step in my life, I truly believe that I would weigh four hundred pounds right now. Never mind what I actually weigh; It's not four hundred.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: If God actually designed us to run, how come you're not running? Aren't you a good Christian?

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

No Heaven for Harry

I was wondering where God is in the Harry Potter books. Don't get me wrong. I've read them all and I plan on reading the next one when I can get my hands on it - all seven thousand pages, or whatever monster volume J.K. Rowlings comes out with, because nobody edits her anymore. (I'm not such a huge fan, but I find these books pleasantly diverting enough so that I read each one all the way through).

But as to my question, after reading all of these books I was just struck by the fact that nobody ever goes to church in her books. Even the cruel Aunt and Uncle who care for young Harry in the muggle(non-magical) world never go to church. It seems to me that she Rowlings posits a sort of agnostic or secular type of England where no one much seems to have any sort of spiritual philosophy, outside of perhaps just the existence of magic.

There are ghosts in her books which indicates some sort of after life. They function sort of as a comic relief and they don't do much of anything except basically hang around and make conversation every now and then. There's no indication that they ever faced judgement or will or might go either to Heaven or Hell or even what unfinished business they might need to finish on the Earth. Major characters who have died, Harry's parents, Sirius Black, don't become ghosts. So, what happens to them?

There's never any mention of God. There's also no mention of the Devil. And there's never any mention of where magic comes from or why there's even magic in the world. (I know. The evangelical answer is: The Devil. But these are her books and it's for her to answer). This finally makes her books rather unsatisfying because she lacks a unifying framework to put all of her stories in.

I haven't dismissed the idea that her books are in themselves metaphors for a Christian theology. In this case, Hogwarts schools would represent the world, the students are us, Lord Voldemort would be the Devil (obviously) and Dumbledore would be God, you know with his long white beard and all-knowingness. Maybe then Harry is Jesus. Well, I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with this interpetation.

Generally, I don't think Christian symbolism works too well in fantasy. I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis's Lion, Witch and Wardrobe books, whichI read when I was eight or nine. I read a few of them and then stopped when I figured out what was going on. The fantasy elements were fun, but the preachiness turned me off. And I got enough of that in church, anyways.

How this affects the impending apocalypse: If you believe that we're nearing the end of the world Harry Potter books are not good books to read. Read the Left Behind Series. That would be more appropriate.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Who DID move the Cheese?

When I was a medical records underling (that was my title, too. 'Underling') at a big city hospital, I and the other underlings were at a deparment meeting where we were shown a little movie called: 'Who moved the Cheese?' The movie was taken from the book of the same name which was told in an overly cute way as a parable. You know, like none of us watching this were real adults, but collectively had the mental age of six year olds. The manager who had the brainwave to show the movie was about twenty-four and had come almost directly from the school that taught her kind, St. Scholastica, in chillyDuluth Minnesota.

I used to call these St. Scholastica degrees 'magical' degrees because they seemed to be all that was required to run a medical record department, even though the degree holders (I would complain scornfully) had never been in one. I'm in that program now, so, I can say that it turns out I was wrong. But not by much. There are tours of medical records departments and internships of several weeks, but experience really isn't required. Nope. Not at all.

I probably should have resented the manager who was showing us this demeaning movie more than I did, but she was cute, wore short skirts and had long tan legs. So, I forgave her. At that time, I was building my house in Wisconsin and knew that I wasn't long for that job, and if they suddenly wanted to run the place like it was a nursery school, then who was I to complain? I was going to be leaving in a couple of months and all I cared about was having a job for those couple of months.

I've got to say, they presented this movie to us with a great deal of smug triumph, like they had just discovered Plutonium or something. It's pretty trite, really, when you get down to it, and there are tons better ways to make the point. Anyways, here's how 'Who moved the Cheese?' goes: There are two tiny men. They live in a huge maze. In the maze there is a pile of cheese. One day the cheese is moved. The smart tiny man goes and finds the new location of the cheese. The dumb tiny man keeps going to the same place and complains when he can't find any cheese. The End. The message is that it's necessary to be able to accept change.

My, that's profound! And putting in the form of a children's fairy tale is not in the slightest bit insulting to grown adults who think they're doing a serious job. Not ... at ... all. Well, possibly management was trying to prepare us in a healthy and positive way for a number of changes they were planning to institute, but what I got from this was that they were going to pull a bunch of crap and they wanted to prepare us to shut up and not question what they were doing.

My problem with the this movie was that they never did answer the question of 'who moved the cheese?' and that's the whole crux of the matter. Who are these cheese movers? Are they supposed to represent management, and if they do, was our management identifying with them, telling us that they wanted us to consider them remote and God-like, like the omniscentcheese movers of the movie? Did they consider us like insignificant laboratory animals whom they could cruelly manipulate as their whim dictated? Was the maze supposed to represent our work environment - a frustrating, pointless, puzzle that we were trapped in and couldn't escape from? Didthey think this was a good work environment to provide their employees?

Why was the cheese moved? What advantage was there to the new location as opposed to the old location? More importantly, why was this decision made without any input at all from the primary cheese users themselves, the tiny little men? Surely, the people who had the most stake in the location of the cheese and who were most involved with its use and consumption should have something to say about it. Don't you think?

You see, they were teaching us, for sure, but the message that they thoughtthey were giving us wasn't the one being received. I imagine that they thoughtthey were impressing us with the clever way they made their point, with a simple, engaging story. But, really, they were showing us that to themwe were silly, whining children.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: Jehovah will have all of your records in the sky, and not just your medical records either. And he will judge you with them. Hopefully, Jehovah won't have my former employer handle those records, because then they'd be almost sure to be lost. Come to think of it, that might not be so bad.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Why Do You DO this to Me, George Lucas?

The trailer for the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith looks fantastic. But so did the trailers for the last two Star Wars movies and my God what a pair of snorefests those were. They were like some intergalactic version of C-span, live coverage of the Jedi council debates, Imperial senate sub-commitees on trade and so on. It all looked so wonderful and then ... nothing happened, or things happened and I did not care at all. Watching the acting was like watching the Thunderbird puppets. Did Lucas direct all of his actors to not move their faces at all? It looked like every single one of them had their faces shot full of Botox.

What kills me is that I'm going to see the next movie. I've got to, just on the off chance that it'll actually be good, that I'll actually want to see this. For a change.

There are some good signs. Lucas didn't write this one himself, and that's a very good sign indeed. He's notorious for writing dialog that actors can't actually speak. Apparently he got somebody good to write this one.

The basic problem is that he now has no one to tell him when his stuff is crap. Whatever he does he thinks is great so it's all up on the screen -all four hours of a two hour movie.

Star Wars happens a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But where, I ask, is God? Any kind of God. Wouldn't you think the supreme deity - however you call him(or her) - had as much to do with the Star Wars universe as he(or she) does with ours but he (or she) doesn't even get a mention. The movies clearly have Good and they clearly have Evil but not God - TheForce is talked about, of course, but in no ways does The Force seemto represent an all powerful anthropomorphic deity of the kind we're used to. And want. And need. Likewise we also don't have a Heaven or a Hell and that just doesn't seem to be right. It really burned me when at the very end of the third movie, Darth Vader chooses the good side, finally, then dies. The next thing we see is his ghost, laughing and smiling surrounded by a glowing blue aura while he's with the ghosts of Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, who also seem pretty happy.

Wait. This guy destroys billions of people. He's personally responsible for suffering on an unimaginable scale. And there's no reckoning for him? He just gets to party on in the Jedi after-life for all of eternity, because - what? He made the right decision at the very, very last possible moment? I've never seen the movie 'Clerks' but I've been told that this exact question is discussed with great insight.

Which bring me to the question of where is God in the rest of the Universe? Most scientists acknowledge that there must be life elsewhere in the Universe and NASA's strongly suggesting that they've found it for sure on Mars. I believe they actually found it there a long time ago, but that's another story. Some of this life is going to be intelligent. Does that mean then that Jesus's is going to have to go to each and every one of those planets and get crucified so that he can sacrifice himself for whatever intelligent species in on that planet? That would explain why it's taking him so long to get back to Earth. He's busy elsewhere and there are alot of places for him to get to before he can get back to us.

How this affects the impending apocalypse: Hopefully the World won't end until after I see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Tom Cruise: Crazy in Love, or just Crazy?

Tom Cruise really wasn't the best person to make the case for the overuse/misuse of psychiatric/psychotropic drugs. The way he's been behaving lately, it looks like he might be badly in need of the aforesaid drugs himself, you know, because of the way he's been getting snippy with interviewers and jumping up and down on every couch he can find. C'mon, Bud, sure your fiancee's hot, but calm down. You're going to have a lifetime to enjoy her hotness. So, cool it already.

It doesn't help anything that Cruise is a Scientologist, a 'religion' that many consider extremely wacky. Scientologists, I've heard, like to pretend that they're talking to the ghost of a dead carpenter while they're performing cannibalism on his corpse. Wait. That's Christianity. Never mind.

Okay, maybe I don't know what Scientologists believe, because I've only heard bad things about them and I kind of think that the people who've been saying those bad things have an agenda of their own.Scientologists do (according to Cruise) believe that mind control drugs like Ritalin, and antipsychotics are overused or maybe should not be used at all. Ihave to confess that I only saw the soundbite of the Cruise interview wherehe was telling Matt Lauer that he - Matt - did not know the history ofpsychiatry and then accused Lauer of being glib. That might not be the adjcetive I would choose for this guy.

The problem is that there is indeed a very good case to be made that psychiatry in America is misusing drugs, but the case should be made by gray haired, middle-aged doctors and not by the sexiest man alive. Tom may indeed be very well read and knowledgeable on the subject, but he has zero credentials and - I'm sorry to say - ripped abs just don't cut it in this type of debate.

A very good book on the subject is Toxic Psychiatry (I don't know theauthor). It's very convincing, highly footnoted, well researched and fascinating in a very horrifying way. It goes into things like lobotomies, electroshock and stuff like that, then shows how the new class of neuroleptics have successfully replaced those other two techniques, forthe most part. But not in a good way. Another good one is Mad in America which explore the mental healthtreatment history in the United States. It was written after the WorldHealth Organization did a study and found that the mental health outcomesfor patients in third world countries was considerably better than it is presently in the United States. (Hint. It has a lot to do with that Toxicpsychiatry stuff).

Finally, there's an older book called Confessions of a Medical Hereticwhich goes into problems with the medical establishment in general. Those last two books I don't know the authors for, either.

Have those books read by Monday. I expect two typed, double-spaced pages for each of them.

How this affects the Apocalypse: Back in Biblical days no one had mentalhealth problems. They were possessed by demons or they were Holy Prophets. That's all. If they'd had Thorazine back then, I seriously doubt we'd even have a Book of Revelations to worry about.

Ambassador Walrus Mustache

Dick Cheney recently stood up for our newU.N. ambassador, John Bolton, by saying that, sure, he's an A-hole, but there are lots of A-holes in Washington, including a lot of senators, so what's the big Deal? (I'm paraphrasing. But not by much). In other words, sure he's a bastard, but he's our bastard. It doesn't matter that as a U.S. diplomat he seems to be notably lacking in the one usual prerequisite of diplomats, you know, diplomacy. When did people stop feeling that being an A-hole was wrong? Theway Cheney talks about it, it almost looks like he thinks its an admirable trait, like ambition or guts.

From what I hear about Bolton, he demeans people and thinks its alright. He's totally unapologetic. I must have spent too much time living in Minnesota where nice is the law. This doesn't make sense to me. John Bolton and Dick Cheney are public servants. They are not our lords and masters. (In theory. In theory) Public servants work for us, which means that they do should do whatwe tell them to and Dammit, if we tell them that they should be nice, they should be nice. Shouldn't they?

It's probably not very fair to make judgements on someone based on their physical appearance, but guess what? That's what I'm going to do. I mean, what's up with John Bolton's mustache? Have you seen that thing? He's got this great white bush under his nose, matched by equally white, bushy eye-brows. How sound can this man's reasoning be when he thinks this is the best look for him?

His hair is also pretty shaggy which made me wonder if he didn't know he was going to be on national TV and he must have had some time to get a trim before-hand. Wouldn't you think? I can just imagine him negotiating some terribly important something-or-other, maybe nuclear disarmament, with someone also terribly important, say the premier of China, and this treaty will be blown because the premier of China just can't stop thinking to himself: "What's up with that guy's mustache?" World peace goes down the toilet because of this guy's ridiculous facial hair.

Thank God for Condaleeza's legs. Boy, all she has to do is flash those gams and she has them all eating out of her hands. That was some brilliant stupidity on Bush's part, I've got to say. Get a chick with great legs. Though, I think he should have gone all out with that strategy and had Lindsay Lohan as Secretary of State. She wouldn't even have to think for herself but just say the lines that she's given, exactly like Condoleeza. Lindsay's a good actress. She can do it.

What has this do with the impending apocalypse? Perhaps John Bolton is the Antichrist. He seems to have the proper dispostion for the job.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Planet X



Astronomers now say that they've discovered a tenth planet in the solar system about ten billion miles out. This would be exciting, except now they're quibbling about whether or not Pluto should be a planet or not. They think it might be too small, or made of too much ice or some such. ('They' are the astronomer people who have some sort of real official organization and I don't know what it's called.) So, even if there really is another planet out there, we're still back to nine planets. I suppose if they find yet another planet even further out then they'll demote this newest planet down to something else so that it'll still be nine no matter what.

It's not like this new planet is going to affect much. School children will have to learn the new name of this new planet - some Greek God, I'm sure - but that'll be about it. We can barely see the brand new planet as it is and
gravitationally it doesn't do much, either.

Now, what we might care about is that some scientists have the theory that the Sun has a companion star circling it, a secret black dwarf that has a very eccentric orbit so that when it visits our solar system it rains death down on all our planets. The name of this proposed star is Nemesis, because it's so cool and dangerous and sounding. The orbit of Nemesis is supposed to be about twenty three million years which sort of coincides with mass extinctions on Earth. Sort of. Give or take a million years.

God hasn't been exactly clear on why he chose the number of planets that he did. It made a lot of sense when everyone thought that seven was a sacred number and there were seven known planets and that worked out
swell and everywhere people looked it was sevens. (That's why Newton chose seven color names for the light spectrum - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Ever wonder what Indigo was doing in there? That's why. He wanted it to be seven) Now there are nine or ten. And an asteroid belt. And a belt full of comets. And what's so sacred about this arrangement?

Numerology was very important in ancient times. The Hebrew alphabet also doubled as their number system, as did the Greek and Roman alphabets doubling for theirs. Words were numbers. Which would be really great if they'd just used this curious fact for party games, but they didn't. Geometry was sacred, too, so that anything that could have a number put to it, must also have a mystical relationship. It does, but it all depends on how inventive you are.

How this might affect the Apocalypse: Don't you wish God would make up his mind? I thought he finished creation in seven days, but it looks like he didn't. He's still flip-flopping about the solar system, so maybe he'll take more time deciding when to destroy everything.