Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Bonaduce Broken

Don't expect to have a fun time watching Breaking Bonaduce starring former child star and now very troubled Middle-aged man, Danny Bonaduce. This is a raw, painful half hour of television which starts with the premise of Bonaduce and his wife undergoing psycho-therapy. The breaking part is - presumably - what the psychotherapist does to Bonaduce, confronting Bonaduce with his misdeeds, bad judgement and, all in all, just what a piece of crap he is. It hardly seems necessary. Bonaduce is already awash in self loathing and breaking him further would be a waste of time, as he is clearly self-destructing perfectly well without any outside help.

He is now struggling through his life's second act and not doing a very good job of it at all. His wife has caught him cheating and the therapy is his penance for that since, and perhaps his last chance to save that marriage. On the advice of this psychotherapist, he has taken up weight-lifting as this was viewed as a healthful way to channel his energy. The very worst that could happen if he goes overboard is that he gets in very good shape? Right?

It turns out not. Danny not only takes up weightlifting, but he also takes up steroids and the psychgotherapist reflects to him that in retrospect he might not have given the best advice. That's surprising. You don't mean to say that roid rage might be a bad thing for the mental health of a client? This psychotherapist seems a little suspect to me. It looks like he might himself be indulging in extra testosterone and his face looks suspiciously smooth and tight. I'm not saying 'face-lift', but this is Calfiornia, you know.

From watching the previews, the trajectory of Bonaduce's life as documented on the show is clearly downwards. It looks like in upcoming episodes that his marital problems get worse, he starts drinking again, his anger gets out of bounds, and he loses his job. Forgive me for asking this, but isn't the point of therapy to help improve someone's life?

The one bright spot in the former child actor's life seem to be his own children. The oldest one is entering into acting and she is as precocious a moppet as her father once was. In a voice-over Bonaduce says that he wants to show that a child actor can be raised in a healthy way. As improbable as it looks: This is exactly what he seems to be doing.

It feels indecent to watch this show. Bonaduce and his family are clearly suffering and this is such a wrong pretext for entertainment. Their unhappiness is engrossing, but in the horrible way that a car wreck is.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Toilet Seat Down

In Europe there is an 'anti-sprinkle' movement, the goal of which is to encourage men to sit down when they pee, and thus avoid the sprinkle effect. Restrooms in all the countries across the continent have signs urging men to be thoughtful gentlemen and sit down when they do their business. My brother-in-law, a German lawyer, as with many European men, now sits down when he conducts his business. Because he's always been a thoughtful gentleman.

Ladies, don't get your hopes up because that's never going to happen in America. Men in the states are going to continue to stand, and they're going to continue to sprinkle, and you - I'm sorry to say - are going to continue to clean up these sprinkles. Because they won't do it themselves.

It's certainly a cultural thing as we see in the above example of my brother-in-law and all those other European men. Part of being a man here in America is that you stand when you urinate, since you are not a woman and women, we know, pee sitting down. Indeed there is something intrinsically powerful about peeing standing up and the more elevated you are the more powerful you feel. In fact, nothing feels more powerful than peeing off of a roof ... um, I've been told.

In the war of the toilet seat lids I have finally decided that toilet lids should both be down when the toilet is not being used. Wait, here me out, guys. I'm not betraying my gender - much. There are very good reasons to have the lids down, and none of them have to do with being nagged to death if you don't.

Number One: You don't want the dog drinking out of the toilet bowl. Don't have a dog? You might get one and it's good practice for you in the meantime so that you get into the habit. Or you might have a friend with a dog visit you unannounced, and you want to be prepared for that. By the way, if you have a really big dog, it should be both lids down with a brick on top of them. They find the cool water, perfectly positioned for them to drink from, irresistable - especially when their lazy master has forgotten to refill their water bowl.

Number Two: You can accidentally drop things into an open toilet. Do you like fishing your tooth-brush out of the toilet? Or for that matter, do you like fishing anything out of it at all?

Thought not.

Number Three: It's bad Feng Shui. Okay. I'm a little bit out of my element on this one, but as I understand it, Chi energy or the life force naturally flows towards water and you just don't want all of your Chi energy going down the toilet. It's bad, believe me. To counteract this you need to either have a growing plant on the back of your toilet (draws the life force up), or you need a bowl of rice. My choice was the plant, because if you have a bowl of rice on your crapper people think you've been eating rice in your bathroom, and that's kind of hard to explain away.

Number Four: Maybe this is just me, but I've always found an open bowl of toilet water kind of scary looking. Alligators or Norwegian Sewer rats could jump out of it at any time. And the water itself leads directly to the dark depths of the underworld and I'd just rather see it covered and not have to think about that.

Number Five: It actually is a polite thing to do for a woman, you know like holding a door for her, or pulling out a chair for her at a restaurant, or helping her put on her coat, or other polite things like that. Don't want to be polite? Fine. I just gave you four other perfectly sound reasons why you should do this, anyways.

If you do happen to be a man who lives alone and has no friends or dogs or visitor and never plans on having any of those ... well, I feel sorry for you. None of the above applies to you. But in that case, you really should get a dog because, Buddy, you really need a little companionship. Just make sure you get a small dog that can't get it's head into to that open toilet of yours.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Hogan Knows Nothing


Now it's Hulk Hogan's turn to have his own reality show. I watched a few episodes and it's okay for what it is, that is, nothing else is on so I might as well watch this. It's in the same sort of genre as Newlyweds, with Jessica Simpson and Nic LaShay, or the Osbournes, with the Osbourne family. In other words, this show is a sitcom but with real people. The Hulk's show actually might have made a good TV show if it had been written by comedy writers and had great actors who knew how to say their lines. The premise is great: A retired wrestler copes with life and family after the spotlight has left him. The problem is that the show doesn't have comedy writers or great actors.

Hulk Hogan actually does not exist. Never has. The name and the persona were created by the man who grew up as Terry Bollea, who then used name and persona in his career in sports entertainment, that is, professional wrestling. Terry - Hulk - whatever - has a blonde ditzy wife who looks like she's in her forties, maybe pushing fifty, a sixteen year old daughter who's even ditzier than the mother, and a son who's fourteen and a bit of a smart-ass. They live in Beverly Hills in a cluttered mansion with several dogs and one rooster.

'Hogan' , now in his late fifties, looks as massively muscular as ever. But he also looks massively tired and in need of a good nap. He's still on the steroids, I can guarantee that, because no human being naturally looks like this, not to mention any human being who is a card carrying AARP member. On the show he goes for this tough guy act, the over-protective father, glowering at his young daughter's suitors. He does that glowering thing well, by the way, which I can attest to first hand because I ran across him at a Minneapolis Gym a number of years ago and every time I felt tempted to walk up and tell him what a big fan I was, I'd see that glower and I'd go back to lifting my tiny, miniscule weights.

In real life, I don't think he was ever such a tough guy. Please don't quote me on that, and especially please don't quote me to him, because I'm not calling him a pussy, I'm saying he's probably just a normal guy who doesn't look so much for conflict. Think about this: He says in High School that he was a fat kid, and when I saw him in person I thought he was a tad bit chubby. Didn't tell him that, but he wasn't so ripped. Anyways, as a fat kid he probably didn't get into so many fights. Then when he took up the weights and the roids, no other guy, no matter how drunk would want to fight him. So he probably hasn't been in many real, non-staged fights, if you think about it.

Hogan Knows Best is mildly entertaining. The story lines seemed to stretch a bit for their half-hour since it looks very much as if Hogan and his wife are good parents and they also have done a wonderful job of raising their kids. A functional family tends to be not very interesting. It is nice to spend a half hour with a nice family and that might be the biggest surprise of this show.

One Nation, Under Thor

Show of hands please. Who remembers who they voted for in the last Presidential election? Okay. Now, lower your hands because the fact of the matter is that unless you were one of five hundred odd electors - you didn't vote for the president.

The founding fathers decided that when they created this country that people like you shouldn't have the power to decide who runs the country. They also didn't think people like you should elect senators either. These men believed that bathing was wrong, that you should poop in a pot you kept under your bed, that half of all white human beings were incapable of thinking for themselves, that no person of African heritage should think at all, that bleeding was a cure for everything, that wigs for men were wonderful, and that humans could be considered property. The list could be longer, but you see my point, don't you? Geniuses that they were for their time, our founding fathers could hardly see omnisciently throughout time into the distant future that we now live in.

In California a court has struck down the Pledge of allegiance for school children because it contains the phrase 'under God' and the question comes up, then, what did the founding fathers intend by the establishment clause in the First Amendment? And my question is: Does it matter? Almost certainly the writers of the constitution intended that America would be a Christian country. Probably the majority of them could simply not conceive that it wouldn't be. The establishment clause really meant that America would not have a 'Church of America' like England had a 'Church of England'. What variety of Christian you were in America would be up to you. Maybe there would be a few Jews allowed to run the banks, but that was about it.

God, of course, shows up in many of our founding documents, like the Declaration of Independence as the creator who endows men (not women, you know) with inalienable rights. The declaration of Independence uses natural law as a basis and natural law posits that there is a deity who oversees the Government, which is answerable to the people. The government, in this case, could be a monarchy, or as was eventually chosen in the United States, an oligarchy composed of the white, property owning upper-class men.

In the United States seperation of Church and State was instituted in the United States school system when shrill, unpleasant, atheist Madalyn Murray O' Hare sued the US Government and won, throwing 'official' prayer out. I can tell you first hand that this did not eliminate all prayer and I remember bowing my head at many a school assembly as a minister recited a prayer and
I asked myself whether this wasn't supposed to be illegal. One of O' Hare's sons grew up to be an evangelical minister who has spent decades trying to get the prayers that his mother got thrown out of school reinstated. O' Hare disapeared under suspicious circumstances and was never heard from again.

Eighty percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian, according to recent polls. Of these, forty percent identify themselves as evangelical or 'born again' Christians. Two percent of Americans identify themselves as Jewish and one percent as Muslim. You'd think from the news that those last two numbers would be higher - but, no, that's it. This means that seventeen percent fall into the category of 'other' which can be anything.

If you happen to be a Moslem, Jew, or 'other' - guess what? Most of your fellow Americans would be more than happy to see your religious rights trampled on. They don't see anything at all wrong with making your children promise to love this country under a God that might not happen to be yours. The Pledge of the allegiance will never be one nation under Buddha, krishna, Allah, Zeus, Thor or any other deity or lack of deity that you can think of. Sorry.

The Supreme court will almost certainly rule on this. How will they rule? My guess is they'll find a way to keep us pledging to be under God. They found a way to keep the ten commandments in the courthouses, so they'll find a way to keep this in, too. You'll notice that God is and has been on our money forever and the Supreme Court has never found a seperation of Church and State problem with that.

What do you do if you don't want your kids to say that our country is 'under God' every day of their school life? My suggestion: Just have them mouth the words but say whatever you want them to say, though I've got to tell you that one nation under Thor just doesn't have the same ring.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Land O' Ventura

On This Week with George Stephanoplous newscaster Cokie Roberts made the statement that the people of Minnesota had voted for Jesse Ventura for governor because he was a wrestler. Excuse me, but this is the laziest journalism that I've ever encountered. Has she ever talked with even a single person who said that Ventura being a wrestler was the main reason, or even a reason they voted for him? Has she seen a poll that said this? No. Of course not. It's simply sloppy post hoc reasoning with no basis in fact. It goes like this: Ventura was a wrestler. Minnesotans voted for him. Therefore they voted for him because he was a wrestler. You know, post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Ms. Roberts should have talked with me. I could have told her why one person in Minnesota had voted for Ventura. And I wasn't drunk, and I wasn't crazed from wrestling fandom, and I hadn't been judged legally insane at the time. My intelligence was supposedly 'normal' and I was educated enough to have a college degree. And, no, I didn't think that it would be a swell practical joke to play on everyone else in Minnesota. The amazing truth was that I - like most of Ventura's voters - decided to elect him because of his performance on a series of televized debates on PBS. Incredible, but absolutely true. To a lesser Ventura benefited from his ability to energize a portion of the electorate - young voters - that usually bypass elections, through the use of new media (ie) the internet.

Consider this: Ventura started out with about ten percent support when he started the election and had the smallest advertising budget of any of the candidates, most of which was spent the week before. But, after each one of the debates (there were about six, I believe) his poll numbers went up, although the polls turned out to be amazingly inaccurate. Pre-election polls showed Ventura with twenty five percent of the vote when, in fact, he won with thirty-five percent. The young voters, who unexpectedly came out in droves, were entirely discounted.
If Minnesotans had been be-glamored by his wrestling reputation, as journalists believe, the polling numbers would have been exactly opposite. By the way, even though Ventura had not wrestled for more than a decade and had recently been a former mayor and radio announcer, he was always referred to as a former wrestler. How would you like it when people only mentioned your actions from ten years back, and ignored what you've done recently?

Everyone seems to forget that there were two candidates that Ventura ran against. The Democrat was Skip Humphrey, the son of former US Vice President Hubert Humphrey and a former Minnesota Attorney General of Minnesota. The Republican was the Mayor of St. paul, former Democrat and carpet-bagger from Boston, Norm Coleman. The reason everyone seems to forget about these guys is that they were two of the greatest political mediocrities of our time. Their great qualification for the governorship was that they were next in line in their respective parties.

Both of them are nice guys. This is Minnesota, so you expect that because nice is the law there. In fact, I've go a buddy who's on a first name with Coleman and he tells me: "Normie's a nice guy!" And from what I hear, Normie's making a pretty decent senator, now. But back then, he didn't shine at all and somehow for all the years he lived in the state he never was able to shed that Boston accent which just grated on my ears. You'd have thought he would have learned to at least say: " Yah, sure, you betcha!" That way he could've blended in better.

Like most Ventura voters, I watched him in the PBS sponsored debates. In the first debate I remember seeing him in between the other two candidates, absolutely dwarfing them, looking a tad bit like a circus strongman in a suit. I thought he looked like a buffoon and really wondered what on Earth he was doing there. Then the debate started and it was with an almost mounting sense of horror that I realized that I agreed with Ventura more than the other two, that he was actually making sense, that what he was saying was thoughtful and intelligent. Humphrey and Coleman? They had their lines well memorized and that's all I can say for them.

I watched the other debates thinking this must be a fluke and each time I came away with the same impression. Finally I confessed to a close friend that I thought I was going to vote for Jesse Ventura because I couldn't in good conscience vote for either of the other guys. My friend looked around and told me very quietly that he felt the same way and he was going to vote for Ventura, also. See, there were a lot of guys like us in Minnesota who were secret in our support of Ventura, but didn't want it publicly known.

So, Jesse Ventura got elected and he was an okay Governor despite what anyone tells you. His record was a little bit mixed, but mostly I think he looks worse than he was because - as he often charged - because the media was against him. Politicians always say that, but in this case it happened to be true. Why were they against him? Well, Media are people, too, and they have their opinions and beliefs and most people in the media voted for somebody else. The St. Paul Pioneer Press is an excellent example of this. They had a comic strip, which I believe they specially commissioned, called 'Venturaland' which was in the Newspaper everyday. Sure, newspaper's have political cartoons but never with such a clearly displayed bias. For some reason, The St. Paul Pioneer Press didn't have a special cartoon strip for the Republican Governor who preceeded Venura, nor did they have a special cartoon strip for the Republican Governor who succeeded him, either. Hmm, I wonder why.

The media can basically portray you any way they want to. Did you ever think about what it would be like if every second of your life had been recorded on camera? You could be shown to be anything, because there are portions of your life that could be taken out of context, exaggerated, etc. ... just like what was done to Ventura. Yeah. He said some pretty outrageous stuff, but so have you. It's just that his outrageous stuff was recorded for all time and yours wasn't.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Aliens Invade!

TV World is going to have two alien species invade this Fall. TV world is already set for anarchy when it will have two US Presidents, Geena Davis and Martin Sheen. I still don't know how that's even possible. Maybe President Sheen died in office, or something. With two different aliens invading us, I don't know what we'll do.

Perhaps these different species are going to be invading different parts of the world. Nothing says they both have to start the process of making us a part of their galactic empire in America. It's only are egocentric nationalism that makes us believe that we're so important that of course they'll begin here. Me? I'd send my fleet of space ships to China, get me some good sneaks for my feet - or pods, or tentacles, or whatever - first and then I'd hit the rest of the Earth.

Who says aliens even want our planet? They've got their own, thank you. What would they do with another one? Would they take over every single acre of our lake front properties and build huge, gross 'cabins' to vacation in? Is that what they want with us? Are they some sort of interplanetary version of people from Chicago?

No, no. If aliens had wanted to take over our planet they would have done it a lo-o-o-ng time ago. Think about it: Aliens can easily cross the vast reaches of space, while we can barely get off of our little planet. They're obviously a lot smarter than us - look how big their heads are - so, they could have figured out a way and they wouldn't have done it by sneakily taking over our bodies and pretending to be neighbors, either. They'd just show up and say: "Hi! We're here! This is our planet now. Get out!" In their minds there is something seriously wrong with Earth. Either it's too hot, or it's too cold, or there's too much gravity, or there's too little. Something.

The only reason they bother with us at all is because to them we're some sort of cute animal they like playing with - like penguins are to us. That's why they seem so interested in our reproduction. It's to make sure that we don't die out until their done having fun with us.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: If alien species are visiting Earth, it must be because they are part of God's plan. I've heard that alien space ships are actually manned by demons sent by Satan who pretend to be aliens. But why they would go to so much trouble is beyond me.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Meth America

Meth, I've just found out, is cool with teen-agers here in Wisconsin and I've been wondering how on Earth that can be. No cool people that I've heard of - you know, movie stars, musicians, rap stars and such - use the stuff. So how can this be the latest thing? Yeah, I'm not hip to youth culture anywhere anymore, but this stuff mystifies me. All drugs are bad, of course, and no one should use them, but some of the other plagues at least had some sort of a positive reputation. Cocaine, for instance, was supposed to make you thin and beautiful. And then broke and then psychotic. What does Meth do? It makes you skinny and ugly. And then broke. And then psychotic.

Kids, what do you see in this stuff? Is it just that Weed is too expensive? I guess it's like Chris Rock always said: People want to get high. And if you eliminated every single drug we have now, they'd find something else.

I'm pretty Libertarian about things and think that the legal consequences of drug use shouldn't be more punitive then the physical and social ones, but ... I don't know. This one turns people really bad. Maybe I'm kind of wrong and it should be very, very illegal.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: Drug use in the Bible was synonomous with sorcery and sorcery is a sign of the end days. Think about it.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Another Packer Fan Goes to Heaven

Recently deceased Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, it turns out, was originally from Wisconsin and was a Green Bay Packer fan. It also turns out that he was a mild and pleasant man who was known for his gentle wit. Ahhh Crap! I just hate it when people like him, whose philosophies I disagree with, are nice guys. It would've made me so much happier if he'd been revealed to enjoy murdering and eating puppies. Then I could've continued believing that he was vile in every single way.

Obituaries all make reference to Bush v. Gore as a defining case in his long career, mostly these obituaries refer to it as a 'blot'. 'Blot', I'd have to say, is much too nice a word for what he did. The United States will forever be changed because the Supreme Court upheld election fraud as a precedent. And his was the deciding vote.

I don't think many liberals are actually worried about John Roberts taking over as Chief Justice. Oh, sure, he's supposed to be 'qualified' and all that, but he's taking the place of a far right conservative and he'll be a wash as far as the make-up of the court goes. Conservative replacing a conservative. Status Quo. Even Sandra Day O'Conner's replacement isn't too much of a concern because she was appointed by a Republican president and even though she was well known as a swing voter, whose to say her replacement won't turn out to be a swinger, too? It's a funny thing that the Supreme Court Judges who turned out to be the most liberal were also appointed by conservative presidents.

Here's the big question, ready for it .... abortion. Will the new judges on the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade? My guess? Nope. Not at all. Conservative judges, real conservative judges, don't believe in overturning precedents. They also don't that the court should be activist (ie) they don't believe that the judiciarie's role is to be making laws, only interpeting the ones we have. So the more conservative they are the less likely they are to change things.

How this affects the Apocalypse: I might be wrong about William Rehnquist enjoying murdering and eating puppies. There's never been any evidence to the contrary to refute this rumor. If he did do these horrible acts, I hope he repented so he can go to Heaven.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Mort du Gilligan


For his time, William Shakespeare wasn't considered all that hot a writer. His plays were thought to pander to the vulgar masses being at the same time the modern day equivalent of either Soap Operas or Sit cons. Bob Denver's passing made me wonder if in three or four hundred years time Gilligan's Island won't be considered the pinnacle of the Dramatic Arts, much as the Bard's plays are considered now.

Think about it: In three or four hundred years time, no one will really understand twentieth century English, anymore than we understand Elizabethan English. We think Shakespeare is so great mostly because we don't know what the hell they're friggin' talking about, you know, all those 'Hither's' and ' thee's' and 'yon's". So, we all pretend we do and nod solemnly and praise the 'beautiful' language when we really don't want to look stupid. Centuries from now it will be the same with Gilligan's Island. Our descendents will be 'oohing' and 'ahhing' over the beautiful language of this show.

As envisioned by creator Sherwood Schwartz, Gilligan's Island was meant to be Social Commentary using the metaphor of cast-a-ways trapped on an island, each one of the cast-a-ways was iconic of an American segment of society. The interaction between the characters would be symbolic of the interaction in our cultures. Thus, you have Mr. Howell and his wife representing the American Upper classes, The Skipper representing the working classes, The professor representing the intelligentsia, Ginger the entertainment sector, Mary Ann the rural Midwest and Gilligan ... all of us. Gilligan was the American Everyman.

As with The Tempest, the island setting represented the deep psychological underpinnings of the story. Here you have a world unto itself separated from civilization, a Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short. Thus it is human nature itself.

By the way, if you're a High School or College student looking for stuff to steal for a term paper ... go ahead and steal this. None of these ideas are mine, anyways. And it's not really plagiarism if it's already been copied from somewhere else in the first place, so feel free to use this all you want. What's that? Just a second .....

Oh. I just found out it is plagiarism. I'm sorry. My Bad.

There also is the Religious interpretation of Gilligan's Island. This interpretation has each of the cast-a-ways representing one of the seven deadly sins in a sort of morality play. The Howells represent Greed, of course. The Skipper represents Gluttony, that one's obvious, too. Gilligan is Sloth ... I think. Ginger is Vanity. The professor is pride, because he's so pround of how smart he is and Mary Ann .... she doesn't seem so sinful, but I know there was one that was supposed to represent her.

Bob Denver by all accounts was a very intelligent and talented actor. You'd have to think that it would take a genius to play the part of such a boob to perfection. Denver's career, I have to believe, must have been forever crippled by brilliance of his character portrayal, such that he was never offered another acting role of merit because he had forever captured that one role to perfection, and was condemned ever after to live in that twilight world of Conventions and Super Market openings.

Now, please remove your hats and sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...

Losing the Blame Game

George Bush says he doesn't want to play the blame game and I don't blame him a bit. He doesn't want to play that game for the same reason that I don't enter boxing tournaments - I suck at it, I'd lose, and I'd end up beaten and bloody. George's outcome would probably be pretty similar. Yes, we need to get help to the Americans who have and suffered through this tragedy, but you know what? We have a little time left over to point how who's clear and obvious fault this horror is. Need any hints?

The President promises that there will be a thorough investigation later to analyze what went right and wrong with the disaster response. Do you mind if I save several millions of dollars right now? What went right is nothing. What went wrong is everything. And it all started about seven years back when the majority of Americans voted for Al Gore to be President and George Bush raised his hand and took the oath of office. This investigation will be conducted later after the emergency is taken care of. Yeah ... Right.

Okay. It's not all George Bush's fault. He has no control of the weather and the rumors that the CIA does have weather controlling machines that they use only on Democratic area of the country has not been proven. Yet. The question then becomes what would Al Gore have done differently? In the alternate Universe I like to visit occasionally - it's a wonderful place with fairies, and unicorns and Universal Health Coverage - in that Universe what would President Gore do differently.

Well, President Gore might have appointed someone qualified to head FEMA. The guy who's in the job now had little or no practical experience in the field of emergency relief. His most impressive resume item seems to be that he ran horse shows for several years, and got booted from that job.

The thing about this future investigation is that I know this is just a way to wait until America's collective gnat short attention span has moved on. Karl Rove, anybody? Does anybody recall that the President was going to fire anybody who revealed the names of covert operatives and that person turned out to be Karl Rove? Is this New Orleans investigation going to come after that investigation, perhaps? Or maybe the investigation will be conducted in George Bush's Alternate Universe.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: I've heard the theory - it's not mine, mind you - that this nation's problems these last few years are a result of the wrong person, the one God did not ordain, being in the PResidency. Of course, the Lord was angry that his divine will was flaunted and he's been punishing us ever since. Anyways, it's just a theory.

Monday, September 05, 2005

Inside George Bush's Head

Kanye West - a rapper, I believe - went a little bit off script at a recent telethon for Hurricane Relief. As comedian Mike Meyers stood by solemnly, Kanye started talking about how tardy the relief efforts had been and how scant the resources had been, to which Mike Meyers nodded in agreement, and then Kanye stated: "George Bush doesn't care about black people!" And Mike Meyers stopped nodding. The show suddenly cut away from the Rap star to somebody else - I think this guy was a relief official - who wasn't really prepared for his close-up and was still fixing himself up for his upcoming segment.

It made me think. While I'm more than happy to ascribe all sorts of villainy to our current president, I just don't think he actually is a racist. His cabinet, for example, is the most culturally diverse of any administration and has included two Secretaries of State of African ancestry. It would be pretty hard to say that one of the most important cabinet posts is just a 'token' job to him.

Does George Bush care about working Americans? That question might be closer to the mark, because what on Earth does this guy really know about being a working American? He never was one. He never had to have a job to put food on the table or to drive a big car or to raise his family or any of that. From time to time he had an occupation, like the Air National Guard, sort of. He did things in life but it was more from the perspective of a tourist who could leave the situation whenever he felt like it. The understanding of what it's really like to have to budget your money to pay the bills, to have employment as an absolute requirement to live - he never knew that.

I think the guy really does care about others. I do think that all of the tears I see him shedding on TV are real ones. But the true empathy that comes from walking a mile in someone else's shoes, well, he'll never know that. And that is why we see administration policies that destroy the lives of working Americans, not because he is plotting to throw most of us into twenty first century serfdom, but rather he has no idea that this is precisely what he's doing.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: The lost tribe of Israel is thought by some traditions to be black. Do you think George Bush cares about them?

Sunday, September 04, 2005

The Best Place to Live in America

A former co-worker of mine told me that she never watched the news, or read a newspaper or a news magazine because she'd heard that people who follow the news score higher on tests for depression. She figured that if something really important were going on in the world, people around her would be talking about it and she would hear about it that way. Her goal in being purposely ill-informed was to be a happier person. To my mind, she wasn't very successful at being a happy person, but maybe she would truly have been less happy if she knew what was happening. These days, I can definitely see her point.

In past tragedies, like this one in New Orleans (and Missippi, too, and other areas) I've wondered out loud why people live in these areas. My motivation for asking that question, often, has been frank envy. Coastal areas frequently are home to fancy, multi-million dollar mansions and it's easy to see that those people have a choice of not living there. They spent more money than I can imagine to get and maintain those homes and, yeah, if a huge hurricane comes by and they're inconvenienced ... nope. I'm not sorry for them at all. Even with the loss of their giant, gross castles on the sea, they're still a lot better off than me.

The fact of the matter is that most areas of the country have some variety of crappy, and occasionally, life-threatening weather. I'm drawing a mental map of the United States and I can't think of anywhere that you'd want to live year round. California? Mudslides and wild fires. Seattle? Rain. Arizona? Heat. Hawaii? Hmm... is there anything wrong with Hawaii?
Oh. That's right. Monsoons. Actually when I was living in Minnesota I met a guy who had grown up in Hawaii and moved away as soon as he could. 'Why,' I asked him, 'Did you decide to move to this frozen Hell?' (It was mid-winter) 'Did you get sick of paradise?' The reason, he explained to me, was that the temperatures in Hawaii were usually in the mid-eighties and very humid and that wasn't very pleasant to him. And Minnesota looked better.

Here where I live in Western Wisconsin, the crappy weather comes in the form of brutal Winters. Say it gets a little colder than usual, like now, when Fall's coming, you can never say: "Gee, it's kind of cold out today." Because Someone is definitely going to one up you. "You think this is cold ...?" For the record, if I ever slip and say that again, what I really mean is that it's colder than it has been recently, and not that it's the coldest that I've ever experienced in my life. You don't have to regale me with tales of how frigid and nasty it can get. Believe me, I have my own stories, thank you.

By the way, the coldest day I ever experienced in Wisconsin was fifty-five below. That's fifty five regular fahrenheit degrees below zero, too. No windchill. That was, of course, an unusually cold day for the area, but every couple of years or so it will get to thirty or forty below. Here's an interesting fact: When it gets to thirty three below zero, you can take a pot of boiling water outside, throw the water into the air, and it will then come down as snow. Then, as you're watching the pretty snow that you just made fall to the ground, you're also thinking that somehow you've got to start your car.

The reason that I live through this is because simply this is where my life is - job, family, friends, memories - the whole ball of wax. To move would be to sever all connections and leave my foundations. Which I've done in the past. When I was in the military I moved around quite a bit and when I went to school, I did it in a different state, Minnesota, and stayed there afterwards. I did stay within driving distance of my hometown so I could visit on weekends. I'd have to think it's like that with most people. Like those in New Orleans, and Mississippi.

Okay. Assuming there was somewhere in the United States where the weather was always perfect and every citizen lived in prosperous peace and harmony with all their neighbors, what then? Should all two hundred and seventy million of us move to that little bit of paradise? You'd think - wouldn't you? - that with that number of people it would just stop being a paradise. No. We have to spread out a bit. And those with less means are naturally going to have to be in the less deireable areas. Do you think, perhaps, that millionaires are living in trailer parks in Tornado Alley? None that I know of. You live there because that's what you can afford.

What this has to do with the Apocalypse: According to the Bible the best piece of Real Estate on the planet, the promised land of Milk and Honey, is Israel. Don't tell them this but ... I don't see it. I'd trade that whole scrap of scrubby desert for one chateau on the French Riviera.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Soldiers V. Prisoners

One of the new season Real Worlders on the MTV show The Real World is a former Iraq War veteran. The twist is: She is a girl! The Real World - I must admit - is one of my guilty pleasures. It always has a group of seven people who share two characteristics, which are that they're beautiful (or at the very least, cute) and they are extremely narcissistic. You'd have to figure that. Here's a group who each think that the whole world is going to want to watch them every second of the day. Usually there are a couple of cute girls who don't have much upstairs, and there is nothing funner than watching cute, dumb girls trying to figure things out.

Anyways, the black guy got into a debate with the Iraq War Vet chick. The debate was the difficulty of prison versus the difficulty of the Army. He took the pro-prison side and she, of course, took the pro-soldier side while I was just fuming that she would accept the premise that there is, or should be, any equivalency between the two. Let me explain what's wrong with the discussion: To join the military you agree to honorably serve your country and give your life, if necessary, to your fellow citizens. To join prison, you have to break our country's rules about how you should live with your fellow citizens. See the difference?

I know. I hear it all the time: 'Why do we send men to prison? We should just send them into the military.' In fact, it was very common back in the day to give young lawbreaking men the choice of prison or the service. When I went to Boot Camp I flew down with a guy who had been given that choice. He was a young, small, pretty guy so his decision was a no-brainer.

Confusing things even further is the fact that we now have boot camp prisons. The theory is that the same methods that are used to change decent, wholesome young men into killers can also change killers - okay, not killers, criminals - into decent wholesome young men. Actually, I hear it works pretty well, but I'm not sure how well it works once they aren't in the extremely controlled and coercive environment of the Boot Camp. It's pretty easy to get people to follow the rules when you have somebody yelling at them twenty four hours a day. Probably it's a different matter when it's only their conscience yelling at them.

How this affects the Apocalypse: At the end of the world all the great armies of will engage in a great final battle. Who are we going to send? Our military is already way overextended and we won't be able to send any one to fight at Armageddon, the way things are going.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Q & A

Q: Why aren't the National Guard in New Orleans?

A: Because they're in Iraq.