It's Been a While...

I have finally decided to pick up my social musings and commentary again as I have pretty much gotten past the internalization of the shit that goes on. I realize that on one level i really cannot do anything about the creeping anti-intellectualism that many conceive of as the mark of a "real" American. The rampant distrust of so-called elites, fostered by the gas bags of the right, as incarnated by the ex-governor of Alaska, seems to be in the DNA of the political process in this country since the aptly named "Know Nothings" of the 19th century. I am quite sure that those who embrace this mindset run for the offices of the medical "elite" everytime they get a fart crossways, as my grandfather used to say. I mean, why not just go to Joe the Plumber, rather than those pointy-head, intellectuals with all those letters after their name, like MD or PhD or RN, you betcha.

I digress. I am going to pick this up again, and I hope it will be readable, and thought provoking. That is all I can ask.

Tim

Changes

I guess that being sick last week, and doing some serious reflecting I am changing my focus here.

I realize that just squawking about the craziness that has infected our public life, and airways, is doing very little other than giving me headaches.

There are people who are going to believe whatever springs forth from the mouths of would-be theocrats, proto-fascists and their ilk. I also see that many regular people are beginning to tire of the right-wing circus of delusion.

That gives me some real hope, so I have decided to take a hike from the cacaphony of political 'discourse' and write about the thing I really do know the most about: living a whole and spiritual life.

My foray into the political realm, however well intentioned has left me feeling a tad grotty, so I think some purification is in order. Some oral surgery on Tuesday will help me focus I am sure.

Please check out my new blog timszenblog.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Excelsior!!!!

Tim

Congrats Mr. President!

I think it is a real honor, not just for the President, but for all of us and a recognition that the America that was the hope of people everywhere, is struggling back from the brink of the ossification that precedes the decline of great states.

The right wingers are beginning to go predictably bat shit. Matt Drudge whines "For What?"

I have a possible answer for the hysterics on the right. It is a simple answer, really, but it also involves something they are seemingly wholly unfamiliar with...HOPE.

The change of direction in both our diplomacy and foreign policy, speaks of a hope that maybe, just maybe, the 'Fuck everybody! Get out of the way, or we'll kick your ass,' posture adopted under George the Simple and his advisors, Cardinal Richelrove and Lord Vader, is really a thing of the past.

We still have a long way to go, but we are on that path which leads to a chance at real peaceful co-operation.

Hope is the greatest weapon in the 'war on terror' that one can wield.

That is a concept foreign to the right wingers.

Maybe Glenn Beck will cry. Last week, as he announced the failure of Chicago to win the Olympics, he was carrying on like he was in the throes of an orgasm. It will be fun to listen to the squealing and snivelling from the right.

Meanwhile, this prize belongs to the People of America as well as the POTUS. Let's be grateful to our Spirit, the Spirit of Hope.

Tim

Random Thoughts of Hope

I see by the news that a new poll shows that many Americans' opinion of the Republicans is unfavorable, like about 69% believe that.

What this shows is that the idiocy of the 'noise machine' is finally becoming too much for most people. People do get sick and tired of the constant barrage of 'be very afraid...' one gets from the gas bags on the radio and at Faux News. People get sick of living in fear especially when the boogie man never appears. Once in a while someone will do something stupid or violent enough to get them all excited, crying "We got that right! See! See!" There is an old principle that covers that: "Even a blind pig will find a truffle once in a while." The fact that the 'conservative' moronocracy was literally cheering over the fact that America lost the 2016 Olympic venue is so snivelling as to beg comment.

It just gives one hope that the REAL Spirit of America is stirring out of the fog of inanity brought on by television 'entertainment'. People have not risked life and limb to come here because we are a corrupt and decadent society. We have our problems, sure, but Goddamn it, we have the liberty to be decadent if we choose to be, just like the religious nutzoids have the freedom to pass around live rattlesnakes, because of something in a 1900 year old fan letter, called 'gospel' by some, written by a man named Mark.

Under it all, all the bullshit of talk radio, all the fascist wet-dreams of christian theocrats, and mechanistic reductionism of the atheists, there lives a radical and powerful idea, the idea of FREEDOM. That founding priciple of the radicals that put our democracy together, will always emerge at just the right moment and devour it's enemies.

My word to all the fundamentalist theocrats is simple, really. You mouth freedom, but it is only the freedom to agree with your pathetic ideology, or suffer the consequences. That is not freedom. Freedom lies in being able to look at what you propound, and say 'fuck you!' walking away unmolested by your idea of consequences. That same freedom entitles you to damn me to your hell. I could care less. My freedom is your freedom too.

Tim

Hey, It's the Weekend...

It isn't that I have trouble thinking on weekends, it is just that for some reason, weekends are when the ghosts come calling. You know them. Maybe they are Jinn, I don't know, but these ghosts are only too happy to whisper in your ear that you've fucked up too many things in your life. Haven't we all? The thing is, these lying pieces of rat wad try to convince you that somehow one can remake the past.

Sorry, that doesn't work.

We must always work with what we have at our fingertips, and that is the here, and the now. I can replay staying in school, and getting my PhD, rather than getting married, until my nuts explode. The ghostly sibilance tells me I could have been this or that. I just think of my kids, seeing their faces in my mind's eye, not as little children, but as the cool adults they are, and that ends the ghostly chorus of "If only...." It is a major league waste of time to go over and over shit that has happened, yet people spend an inordinate amount of their lives doing just that. How the hell can we have a successful life here if we keep jerking off the past?

Weekends are also the time when I tend to tackle really tough issues, and bore into them. I am no longer looking for salvation in some sweet 'bye and bye'. That train finally chugged out of the station, wheezing and gasping like an asthmatic marathoner. I am not on it. We humans must take responsibility for what we do, and the mistakes we have made. Believing that some god took all the responsibility for me is a total cop-out. Such beliefs are still stuck back in the 'let's slaughter some livestock so God won't kill us!' era of thought. I mean, why would the omnipotent Lord of the Universe demand a blood sacrifice for the 'sins' of some kid jerking off to porn? It seems that there are one helluva lot bigger sinners that need dealing with, but due to their money, party affiliation, or the mumbling of half meant words in a box somewhere, they are off the hook! Sorry, to my way of thinking they have every bit as much explaining to do as Joey Jerkoff does when his father catches him trying to clean his load out of the TV remote with a toothpick. 

I am going to go out and practice some kindness to real live people. Not to make some god happy, but because it is simply the right thing to do.

Have a good rest of your weekend.

Tim

Of Rules and the Thumbs Thereof...

I heard something that roused my hackles no end, today.

A former colleague, whom I chanced to meet, brought up the subject of my salvation, or lack thereof. She teaches in a conservative/fundamentalist academy. She was always convinced that I was hell bound, the summers she taught in our agency school. I told her that I was happily liberal, and feeling good about it. She looked a bit down at that and said that she would pray for me like she prays for her father every day. "I love him a lot, but I know he will be burning in hell after he dies." It is to my credit, I think, that I just looked at her and did not say what I was thinking. I did not even use the words "Utter pile of runny bullshit!" I said "You really believe that??" in my best 'WTF' voice. "That is what the bible teaches." she said, authoritatively. I said I had to run etc. and got the hell (so to speak) out of that part of Borders.

I plopped down and read a bit of M.M.Knight's Taqwacores. It helped settle me a tad. How could a person so blithely condemn (albeit using God's, at times incoherant 'word') a parent who held their hands, cuddled them when they were sick, and walked them down the aisle?? I know she has a good relationship with her dad, so it was really...really..ah, shall we say delusional at best, and actually sickly neurotic at worst. As she drove off I did see a few bumper stickers on her car that looked like the slogans for a 9/12 gagglefest or a Glenn Beck Weep-in. It sunk in that her world view is the shared view of many of the right wing's 'watchdogs', as Beck calls them. God help us.

Yeah, I know I have trangressed the great unwritten taboo, and said that someone's belief is bullshit. Mea culpa. They can believe that all they want, just do not push it down my gullet, or try to get it written into laws that curtail everyone else's freedom.

The thing that saved my acid reflux from overpowering my Prilosec was something I had read, and it serves me as a rule of thumb when dealing with religious 'true believers'. A Rabbi I was reading said, responding to a student who mentioned that some of the commands of God seemed genocidal, as regarded the dealing of the returned-from-exile Jewish nation, and the inhabitants of Canaan. What the Rabbi said is a very good rule of thumb.

"Whenever what you believe seems more moral than God, you can know for certain that that 'God" is a false god."

Remember that!

If you would not send people who really loved you, and helped you through life, to a place of eternal, sadistic torture, because they did not share your belief in God, then know that God is a false idol of fear and bullshit, and does not deserve belief. Harsh? Yes, but a lot less harsh than sloughing Mom or Dad off to hell because some book, or pastoral type says that is what they deserve.

Enough.

Tim

Ever Onward.

My rendevous with the dentist at the University of Michigan Dental School is past and I can settle down until October 20th, when my two problematic teeth become a lot less problematic, and also a whole lot less a part of my skull.


Looking about the world of our garden this morning was a revelation of the way life works when it is allowed it's wisdom. The leaves are beginning to turn, the black-eyed susans are wilting and returning to the earth for their winter rest, the plethora of small fruit trees, roses and other bushes, likewise are preparing for the dark of the year. "Bud" one of our local squirrels (we call them all 'Bud') was burying some treasures beneath our maple and the numerous chipmunks (we call them all 'Chippie') were racing about wildly, leading me to wish I had their BMR for 48 hours...I would probably drop 80 pounds.


It is wonderful just feeling the life forces in our garden.


I went in the house and began reading. One post was about how 'fallen' nature is because of human succeptabilty to buying whatever a talking snake may be selling.


"Fallen?" I thought. After I turned off the bullshit alarm in my head, I just read further, for a bit anyways.


I went back into the garden, amongst all my 'fallen' bushes and intrinsically 'wicked' critters. Perhaps I should introduce them to the 'wicked mice' of the Talmud. Hmmm...well anyway, I saw 'Bud' and said "Hey Bud! I was just on-line and I found a whole load of nuts for ya." He sat up, holding a small nut in his paws and stared at me, then  looked at the ground where Mary or I usually scatter some nuts, and back at me, as if to say, "Nuts! I don't see any." and scampered off at a leisurely pace.


I just sat down on our small bench and let the breeze blow over me, listening to the leaves of our aspin happily rustling in the wind.


I opted for the sanity of nature today.


Tim

It's Friday! A Couple Things

It was once said: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, and carrying a cross."


This seems to be simply true.


Check out  maxblumenthal.com


There are, behind the crowds of fearful people, men who want to end the Dream of the Founders, to scrap the constitution, and in the name of Jesus begin killing blasphemers, gays, Sabbath breakers, and all the others destined for death by Levitical Law. The beliefs of these men are dangerous. They want to destroy our freedoms. Make no mistake about it. These are the Dominionists, and Christian Reconstructionists, so called.


Finally, these cynical fanatics are 'religious' liars, plain and simple. They intimate that one can have absolute certainty in this life. That is impossible. That is just how life is. That is just how freedom is. Change is inevitable. To believe one can have certainty is stupid. If you doubt that, in spite of all Jesus's 'you shall not see death' and all the other assurances that death 'has been defeated", everyone born before 1850, let's say, is dead. End of discussion. To say they are not is to move into the irrational and unprovable.


Bottom line; anyone who gives away their power and freedom for 'certainty' has sold their most precious possession for a damnable lie.


Freedom!


Tim

Sing of Freedom With Every Breath

Freedom.

Our gift from the minds that dreamed America, is in danger of being forgotten.

Freedom, to me, is the right not to be oppressed, coerced, or punished for the things I believe, and to insure such rights, I also chose to submit to societal compacts and laws that promote the same right for others, and to act in such a manner as not to transgress anothers' right to safety and security, both in their person and their rightful property. Freedom also demands full acceptance of responsibility for my actions.

Today we are oppressed on all sides by idolaters, those who worship, as something sacred in and of itself, things other than God. Here are the idols we are surrounded with: 1.) The Bible, Torah, or Quran, whose more literalist believers have placed God in the box of being impotent to change any of the laws written down over the past 3000-1500 years, or giving new leadings appropriate to our lives today. If you doubt what I say just look up Joseph Smith, Bahaullah, or the lives of many levantine mystics who claimed that God was still speaking to us. Murder and exile were often the way the Scripturolotrists employed to silence such voices. 2.) Money, Debt, and Consumerism. This is the altar area of secular America. We were led to believe we were entitled to a lifestyle not in keeping with what we could afford, so the doors to credit were thrown open to distract us, while the corporate giants and banks accumulated unprecedented power. Now millions of people are saddled with debt (myself included) guaranteed to keep us chained to a system of economics that has itself reached the limits of catatrophic implosion. It is sad to watch thousands of middle class Americans out protesting the extension of free market economy into the health care insurance sectors. These people are holding the flashlights for the burglars, and Fox News daily passes out free batteries to them. 3.) Guns. I am surprized that many people don't genuflect when they see weapons. I overheard an older guy with some of his buddies talking about some of these things. He said "They can cut off my dick, but they better stay the hell away from my guns." This was met with murmurs of agreement, and a few ribald remarks,of course. WTF??? If that isn't idolotry, I'll kiss Glenn Beck's ass. 4.) Stupidity/ Anti-Intellectualism. I refer one to, Idiot America by Charles Pierce. In many areas of our social and political discourse, reason and logic are mocked, and held to open ridicule by 'Good Christian People'. I refer to the saddle on the dinosaur, and to my point #1.

These are just my insights into the major idols which oppress us through their infection of our daily lives, and which threaten to drive political descisions. Remember, there are many many people who feel that the existence of a day old human blastocyst to be more valuable than cures for diabetes, Alzheimer's, ALS, spinal cord injury, and the alleiviation of the suffering of millions of people. These believers will say that those so afflicted can just develop the patience that 'God has willed for them' ,because we dare not be so arrogant as to try to set limits on the amount of suffering God has 'decreed' for them, collectively and individually, in order to bring about some 'greater good'. Here is another huge idol; the self righteous judgement which sets a human being in the stead of God in deciding just what God's Will really is.

This begins my Manifesto of the Free.

Stay tuned.

Tim

It is the Very Base of Everything I Believe..

Today's blog will be short, as I am in process of really working out a succinct statement of that which drives me, the one thing I value the most.

I do not take such an effort lightly, so tune in tomorrow when I talk about the one thing that I feel is at the root of the fear that seems to be everywhere these days. It is something that terrifies people:

FREEDOM.

Real, true, Freedom.

Back Tomorrow!

Tim

They're Everywhere! They're Everywhere!

Atheists!!

People who don't really believe in God! People who ignore the basic commandments of God and His Son! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

OK...there was my sarcasm explosion for the day.

To make this clear, I am not referring to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and others of a similar mindset. I am referring to all these right wing shills who make such a big deal about cozying up to the Evangelical Right.

Glenn Beck's conversion story to the LDS Church is for sale through Deseret Books. Most of the rest of them make a point of supporting everything that comes out of the miasma of the Dobsonesque mind set that was so evident at the Values Summit last week. They also distort what is really taking place in our country, things that they know damn well are not true. that is called lying, and is against the behavior codes of the Levantine religions.

People who are some of the biggest greed mongers in our society make a big thing out of their churches, church memberships and avoid any censure by giving loads of money to the aforementioned churches. The Bible has very interesting things to say about those who have great wealth.

My feeling is that these people who deliberately and knowingly violate the tenets of their religion are the REAL atheists, and, they are all over the radio and TV.

Just my opinion.

A note to Glenn Beck. The people who hated and feared the Prophet Joseph Smith, whipped up other people with lies and distortions about the Mormons. This rabble-rousing led to the mob that stormed the jail where Smith, his brother, and other leaders were being held on trumped up charges, and since they were free to carry guns at protests, murdered Joseph Smith in cold blood. His brother also died, and others were wounded. The people in the 'mob' were just expressing their feelings and their anger at another groups' way of thinking and belief. Gee whiz.

So, Glenn, you are standing in a long line of 'Real Americans' who keep all these Unamerican ideas under control, by asking loaded questions based on lies and half truths. I would like to think this little fact would bother Mr. Beck, but I doubt it.

Godless Scientists at it Again Department

The University of Michigan announced today that human tests were about to begin on the use of stem cells to alleviate the course of Lou Gehrig's Disease, offering hope in the battle against this fearsome disease. It has worked in animals, so human trials can begin. I am sure the Pro-Life movement will be incensed, and God will most likely punish these doctors for their lack of respect for human life.

I guess my annoyance and sarcasm is fueled by something I read in a book I picked up and read a bit of, in Borders this morning. It was called 'If God is Good' and the snippet I read said that it was monumental arrogance to question God about suffering, because we cannot know how much suffering God needs to bring about in order to achieve His desired outcome, and sometimes God wills the death and suffering of innocents to achieve that result.

Fool that I am, of course, that very idea smacks of the kind of arrogance the author accuses those of us who often say "WTF??" when we read that kind of stuff.

That's enough,

Tim

Ever Onward

Pity the pundits at Fox"News".

The prez slighted them on the Sunday talk show circuit. I can't imagine why. They twist and distort everything but his bowel movements, so I don't blame him for giving them the finger. I mean, it is the network of Glenn Beck, who is usually carrying on like a liqueured-up chimpanzee about the 'Communist Threat'. That ended a long time ago in the real world, but not on Planet Beck.

Good for the prez!

I liked the video of the Fox producer whipping up the herd at the Thousand Shmeggegie (it is a great Yiddish word my grandfather used occasionally)March. It just shows how spontaneous that was. Which brings me to my thoughts for the day.

I am beginning to believe that all this idiocy, from the town hall tantrums, to the aforementioned crank-o-rama, is a dry run for next election. I hunch that Fox has decided to take on the whole idea of democracy, and interrupt the electoral process as much as possible. After all they do call themselves 'The Voice of the Opposition." Can you imagine outbursts as candidates try to campaign? They pretend to be a "News" channel and as such they can pump their delusions 24/7 into the hearts and minds of the faithful.

Is Fox the front for the corporate hostile takeover of the American government? If so, and it is not as far fetched as some might think, then progressives, democrats, and people who genuinely love freedom, are going to have to begin calling these corprobots out on their game, and not set back and shake our heads at their stupidity. We need to get at least as noisy.

Someone might say I am being paranoid about all this, and I can tell you there would be nobody happier than I, if that is indeed, the case. Having said that, I recall a t-shirt I saw many years ago. It read: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you!"

That is my two cents for the day.

Tim

Wow!!

I had several ideas I was kicking around for today's blog, then I found this:
http//www.wimp.com/hubblefield/

This really puts an awful lot into perspective, literally.

It says it all.

To the saddled-up dinosaur crowd; sorry about this.

No I'm not.

Tim

Short and Sweet

I love Jimmy Carter.

He calls them as he sees them, and he sees the latent racism behind much of the staged outrage we seem to be inundated with.

All the right-wing talking heads are pissing all over themselves in their feigned outrage. I am surprised one of them hasn't used the 'My best friend was a negro!' defense. Like we are too stupid not to catch the meaning behind their code words. Glenn Beck reminds his fans that the president '...isn't one of us.' Give me a break. It is clear that he wasn't telegraphing that Obama is really a dachshund. Unless Beck really is criminally stupid, he knows damn well that when he says that his followers will go for the most obvious 'difference'. It is old fashioned race baiting, and Jimmy Carter sees it, and puts it right out there.

Way to go, Mr. President!

I love it. Republican ex-presidents go to work for Saudi owned multinationals, and Democratic ex-presidents (and ex-vice presidents, I might add) do things that win Nobel Peace Prizes. Yeah, I guess that group really isn't like the followers of Republican/right wing bloviation.

Tim

Brother, Can You Spare a Tome?

This morning, as I drove to the downtown Borders here in Ann Arbor to stick my nose in Dan Brown's latest book, I saw something I had not seen here in a long time. There were about 8 to 10 white guys all dressed in shirts and ties, most seemed to be within a few years of my age, standing on corners handing out little green Gideon New Testaments to the students as they walked past. They would just hold them out to the students, and to the credit of the bible passers, they did not seem to be hassling the kids. I did wonder what one or more of the bible purveyors would have said if I had shown up with a box full of Qurans, and began passing them out.

Still, I do think it is a tad cheeky to stand there putting a book of moralistic fantasy in people's faces, who could really care less. I am sure that a perusal of campus waste baskets this evening will turn up a few of the books.

The upshot of all this, for me, is just another illustration of the one freedom that religion will not allow people, and that is the right to be left alone. I do not understand why people who are pious have such a hard time tolerating other people who may not share their beliefs. Is it because there may be someone who is happy and fulfilled who does not share their ideas of 'the only way you can be truly happy.' Such a realization would be a threat to their comfy little worlds. So, fine, just don't come telling me I have to be happy your way or I will go to some hell and be tortured forever. That belief is quite simply bullshit.

I have my religion and they have theirs. Fine. I also have a right to be happy and left alone as long as what I believe does not actually cause harm to other people or the social fabric.

One time a guy was offering me salvation, which I kindly but firmly refused. He then said, as I walked away, "It makes me sad that you will someday be in hell." I stopped and turned around and looked at him. I think he thought for a second that I was moved because I had made him sad. I said "Well, don't let that bother you. Go rent a porno, get a bottle of Crisco Oil and some tissues and you'll be all happy again." He stood with his mouth hanging open as I walked off.

I resisted the temptation to park my car and walk past one of these earnest gentlemen. I guess I am willing to give the same space to others as I ask for myself. Getting older does that for one, it would seem.

Besides. Dan Brown was waiting...

Tim

A Few Thoughts Through the Mucus...

I got my flu shot at the doctor's last Friday, and lo and behold, it kicked my mild sniffles into one of those hellish end-of-the summer colds. Ick. The beauty of the blooming Golden Rod does not help either. In spite of the mass of mucus, and learning the hard way not to eat asparagus a couple of hours before bed ( I love the little green things but it is a diuretic par excellence ), I am determined to write. I was up at least 4 times last night..at one point I saw one eyeball on the other side of the bed, and I mumbled something about it being the asparagus and not my prostate.

All this prepared me for the coverage of the March of the Terminally Befuddled yesterday.

It was kind of breathtaking. There was crank America on parade. I saw the signs, a few Confederate flags, veiled crap about triggers, and 'this time we came unarmed.' I was tranfixed. It was like watching a squirrel running into rush hour traffic. There was one guy passing out stuff and looking around like a gerbil on amphetamines. You could tell that he wanted to scream "Obama's a ni***r...he's a ni***r! We need a white president!" so bad his nuts were about to explode. Even the guys with the Confederate flags did not want to risk showing up on Fox News giving voice to the whole racist subtext that the Glenn Becks and the Corporations are subtly stirring up. So they screamed their slogans, had their 'Christian Nation' placards, and probably pissed in the bushes.

It is easy to look and laugh at this crap, but I must voice a warning, too.

There is a movie coming out in the next few months that should be required viewing for all progressives and liberals. It is called "Agora". (Check out the trailer on 'agorathemovie.com') It is the story of Hyapatia, her life and death as a philosopher and mathematician in Alexandria in the 4th century. She was regarded as the equal of the male scientists and philosophers. She was hated by Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, who with his ragtag army of desert dwelling monks and other 'Joe Six-Pack" type of Christians finally break into the great Library of Alexandria, and destroy it burning the hundreds of thousands of scrolls, and effectively destroying about 95% of the collected knowledge of the ancient and classical world, and in the process lobotomizing western culture. The scenes of the crowds, screaming and waving their crosses, breaking into and destroying the library made me ill. Hyapatia was seized by a herd of Cyril's' Jesus Thugs, beaten, dragged into a church, and flayed alive in front of the altar , and her dismembered body was then burned. Cyril is now remembered as St. Cyril of Alexandra, and is called a 'Doctor of the Church". These actions ushered in a period called the "Dark Ages", a time of ignorance, superstition, genocide of the Cathars, and numerous crusades and Jew killings. Thomas Aquinas and his philosophy are not enough to redeem the ugliness of the dark ages.

There is a lesson for us moderns in this true, historical story of the Death of the Mind at the hands of religious zealots.

Never underestimate the power of large groups of ignorant people.

Tim

Certainty? Not...

As I see it, one of the drivers behind the exponential growth of fundamentalism at home and elsewhere, and it's attendant belligerence, intolerance, and frantic insistence that their way is the ONLY way to the Big Imaginary Friend, is a near neurotic demand for the impossible. People who cling to this or that belief, and will tolerate no questioning of it, are demanding certainty.

They know they cannot avoid death, so this fact produces a demand to know, beyond any doubt, that after death, things will be wonderful, safe and blissful. That certainty is promised by religion if one follows all the laws to the best that they can, begs forgiveness for failures, and gives lip service to all the right formulas, prayers, and duties. On top of that there is the threat of eternal torture if you don't do the above things.

OK...prove it.

Prove to me that what you believe is true, and not wishful thinking prodded on by fear. If I question this, the burden of proof is on the claimant. Holy books and the like will not do. They prove nothing, except their existence, and that a lot of people accept them as holy. That proves nothing beyond that. Having 'faith' is no proof of anything beyond a person's assertion that they choose to believe a set of statements as facts. If having faith is such a powerful criteria for the truth of something, a short walk through a psychiatric hospital will prove that having faith in an idea or perception, really counts for nothing as far as proof of the truth of that belief.

I guess that is all I am asking, some proof that one's dearly held beliefs are, in fact, empirically true.

Until such time, I guess I will just go with what I and every other human being on the planet see and experience every day of their lives. Everything changes, people die, people are born, the great cycles of the seasons move along in their quiet progression. The sun rises and sets, night following day, and that there are NO guarantees, and NO certainty, aside from the inconvenient fact that there is no certainty. The more we close our eyes and stop up our ears to that truth, the more we suffer. If we accept it, then perhaps we will take better care of the things we have, like our health and our planet, and each other.

And that, is a simple truth.

Tim

OK, Now I've Gone and Said It...

I have a disease. Given the rapidly growing climate in the collective mind of the culture, it is a malady that has the scent of leprosy. No less an authority than St. Augustine, the mind that shaped most of the theology of both Protestant and Catholic Christianity today,, said about temptations, 'There is another temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity...which can avail us nothing..." (Dawkins; The God Delusion, pg. 159).

I am curious. Curiosity breeds learning, and that leads to reason and rationality, which in turn nurtures the intellect, and therein lies the rub.

It is becoming very unfashionable in America today, to be rational or reasonable.

I can see where this disease leads, besides to things like penicillin, polio vaccine, computers, and the like. It leads to that moment, when the gaze of the curious questioner turns to God, and says "Wait a minute..."

I have arrived at such a crossroads.

I asked myself, "Could the Creator of the sublime beauty of the universe, in all its' awe-full and terrible majesty as revealed in the Hubble telescope pictures; of the complexities of my garden, and the wonder that is the large bee I saw visiting our Russian Sage this morning, order the genocide of numerous peoples, even to killing their cows, so graphically described in Joshua, and the books in the Torah? Could that sublime artist order the death of a person who picked up sticks on the sabbath? Could this 'Great and Good God,' kill off all life, presumably children along with the rest, in a flood? Could this same God, incarnate, then kill a fig tree because it did not have fruit when he wanted it, even though it was out of season, just to make a point about producing results if you followed him? Could he have inspired Paul to dogmatically relegate women to lesser status in his church, simply because of their gender?" I could go on, but you get the idea. I took a deep breath, and answered honestly and forthrightly.

I said "no."

No.

I cannot believe in, nor do I believe in, such a bloody, atavistic god.

Such a god is the projection and elevation to divinity of the human id, yet it is the god worshipped by billions of people. Since that god has ostensibly given his followers permission and promise of rewards for history's crusades, jihads, inquisitions, tortures and bloody wars, then I also have to say that rigid fundamentalism is the greatest single threat to the future of humanity that exists today. Whether it is Christian, Muslim, Judaic, or whatever, it holds the seeds of destruction in it's permissions to 'War in the Name of God."

Humanity, indeed the humane people among the followers of these religions need to step out of their spiritual fogs and say "Wait, stop this madness in the name of God."

I fear that time grows short. People need to stand against this growing menace, and stop meekly believing that God will somehow make it all better. Remember this is the same God who told Joshua and his army, "...and ye shall leave none alive of them."

Time to go talk to the bees.

Tim

Rainy Day

It is a quiet, rainy day here. I am spending it reading Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan.

I am also enjoying the utter craziness of the class that H.L. Mencken called "the Boobieosie" (pronounced boob-wa-zee, for those with rusty French), shown on TV carrying on about Obama's School Speech. My fave was the blubbering blond on TV 7 from Denver, who cried as she said she was afraid that her kid would be exposed to 'socialism'. At that point her husband looked like he wanted to hork a hairball, and be somewhere, anywhere else. The reporter should have asked her to define 'socialism'. I am sure that would have been really hilarious.

Oh well, I have had enough news to give me flatus for a week, so I will go back to reading and watching the rain animate the leaves on our lilac bush. The quiet intelligence of nature is such a huge improvement over what we are treated to by the media.

Tim

Goring Another Sacred Cow

I will cut to the chase, right off the bat. I am going to use the word 'stupid' in the same thought stream as I speak about a religious belief. That is a bigger no-no than almost any other convention. I don't give a rat's ass.

Mary and I have been reading thru the Perek Shirah, the Song of the Universe, translation and commentary by Rabbi Nosson Scherman. (Mesorah Publications, 2006).

It is the songs of praise by the creatures of our small blue dot in the universe, for God. We read one each night, and while they did not lift one to the heights of insight into God, they were good to think about. Until we got to the mice that is. The mouse owns up to 'causing wickedness'. That is when it began to go south on me. The commentary says that mice are the 'very symbol of wickedness' according to the Talmud. They are further excoriated because "they gather in multitudes and plunder whatever food they find."(pg 132) As a sidebar, I might warn against reading Joshua and Judges in the Bible, right after reading this commentary. It goes on to say that figuratively,mice know they are wicked and they deserve the hatred and hunting, so they just acknowledge that 'God is just in letting them be treated that way."

WTF??

Mice suddenly have a moral conscience? They "know they are wicked", and deserve to be exterminated. Well, if mice have a moral conscience and judgement, then they are our equals and we had better treat them a whole lot better than we do.

The belief that mice are wicked (and I will grant that they are really annoying),and that they KNOW they are wicked is stupid.

A lot of the religious proselytizing I run into is a heckuva lot more annoying, presumptuous, and negative than a small mouse gnawing on my bag of organic flax seeds, yet mice are wicked, just for doing that?? Shall we extrapolate here??

Tim

It's All the Rage, You Know....

In my current readings of postmodern philosophers, I came across German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in Zizek's Violence. It was one of those "whoa!" moments. Sloterdijk brings to the fore the counterpart to the Freudian eros, that of thymos Eros, which is the buzz coming from the possession of objects, their production and enjoyment. which finds its' counterpart in plain old thymos, the psychological manifestation of envy, competition and recognition. (See: Zizek, Violence. pg 185-189)

Looking into various 'holy books', there is a whole lot of revenge fantasy, and the projection onto God of human rage at being thwarted in their pursuit of 'things' and recognition by the natural occurrences of life, as well as the tyrannies spawned by religion, which often led to seemingly endless wars and grinding poverty for about 95% of the people in Europe for 1600 years. God was seen as the great accountant in the sky who would, at some "Final Judgement", settle accounts and send everyone who didn't say the right prayers (read: like ours) believe the right things (read: like we do) and were just generally annoying, into HELL...a sadists' wet dream if there ever was one. Thomas Aquinas said the one of the pleasures of "Heaven" would be the ability to watch the suffering of all those "others" in hell. I have this picture of small booths in Heaven, with the little peep show windows, where you could go in and watch people (like that cute blonde who would not give you the time of day in the 11th grade) suffering in hell. I have listened to enough fundamentalists going on about what will happen in hell, and the obvious relish with which they related it, to know that these little 'peep shows' will need an endless supply of tissues.

Well, now these right wingers have taken this 'job' away from God, and are whipping up their listeners with such egregious bullshit, that some of the "Joe Six-Packs" use words like "bring down the government" (which is technically treason, but I digress) and "Getting rid of Obama", then when they show up carrying guns at Presidential rallies, it begins to get a bit dicey. The "base" has become a 'Rage Bank', and the right wing talkers are whipping them up with promises of revenge against the 'socialists, death panels, and other assorted intestinal effluvia which pours out of their mouths and the radios daily. The uninformed are paying great 'rage interest' to the talkers, and their masters. These cretins will say "we're not politicians, we are entertainers." So, if someone listens to your 'entertainment,' and for whatever reason, snaps and commits some outrage like Oklahoma City, the Limbaugh's, Hannity's, Becks, Malkin's, Coulter's, and their ilk can say "We are not responsible. (There is that awe-full word, 'responsibility' again.) They just didn't understand...yadda yadda."

Fucking moral cowards these so-called entertainers are. Period.

I wish, somehow, the scared, riled up mass of people who listen to that claptrap could understand that these people are well paid shills for the moneyed corporations that are REALLY causing the things that are squeezing the mass of Americans so hard. That would take thought however, and the media companies are keeping everyone distracted with all the mindless shit on television, and so on into the night.

America, you are being duped into holding the flashlight for the burglars robbing your homes and raping your future!! But, hey, Dancing With The Stars is coming on.

We may well be the first civilization to ever entertain itself to death.

More tomorrow.

Tim

Taking a Long Look

Yesterday, being in the park gave me a chance to think, setting under the trees in the sun and breezes, and I came to a few conclusions I would like to share.

Looking about us, seeing the many problems in the environment, and our lack of care for it, I am worried. There seems to exist in the minds of the powerful, that most Levantine of notions found in all three of the great Levantine religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. That is the notion that it will all somehow come out right in the end, that God will bring it all together, because God controls everything right down to the orbit of an atom, and that everything has a meaning. Right? I mean it does, it just has to have meaning beyond what we can see, doesn't it??

Well, no, not really.

All the followers of the Levantine dogmas would do well to read in their 'inerrant' books, the story of Job. God drops the hammer on Job, literally grinding him into the dirt, wiping out everything he had or loved. As Job sets in the dust, his friends show up, bringing out all their dearly held theological 'there is a reason for all this' explanations in order to make the disasters somehow 'meaningful' to Job. He tells them to cram it and shows his true grit and courage. He does not take a stance of his innocence in all that has befallen him. He insists that it is, in fact, meaningless. MEANINGLESS! His friends go away thinking that Job has lost his 'faith', shaking their heads, no doubt. When God does show up, blustering in the whirlwind, God affirms Jobs' position. In doing so God gives the Divine Finger to the 'defenders of the faith.'

The message is that taking refuge in theological niceties in order to blunt the trauma that occurs when a child is murdered, a hurricane devastates, an earthquake destroys, or a genocide happens, is participating in the devastation. The blunt horror that could move us to compassionate help, to doing whatever we can to alleviate suffering, to conserving what we have been given in our lives here, is negated by the 'It's God's Will' bullshit. Tell me you have a "Loving, Merciful God" who would will the slashing rape murder of a child, in order to somehow bring about a 'greater good, and I will probably puke on your shoes.

It all boils down to the fact that people are afraid of losing their God, who guarantees meaning to the whole of creation, who has His fingers on all the strings.

The reason is really quite simple as I see it. Absent the Transcendent God, humanity is left with something that terrifies it, almost beyond words.

The monstrous weight of FREEDOM and RESPONSIBILITY for this wonderful creation we were gifted with, this divine creation which embodies God.

God does not show up on your altars at the beck and call of your priests, rabbis, imams or pastors. God is in every leaf, insect, stone, animal and human person you can conceive of, and as such, WE, collectively and individually, are responsible for the care of God in all the forms God might choose to take. RESPONSIBLE!!!! ALL OF US!!

There are no divine punishments, only the simple consequences of our actions or inactions.

(to be continued tomorrow)

Tim

Well, OK....

Excuse Time!

I have a decent post all but written, and ready to type. At least, I still have it, because of a slight detour this afternoon. After lunch, we went to the Anthroposophical Society in America Headquarters, and after some quality time there we drove over to Gallup Park, by the Huron River, and spent the better part of two hours just being. The Gurlz ( Mary and Vicki) pushed my wheelchair and I and my cool gloves helped a lot, so we got exercise. There were pauses along the river, and once I just sat in a nice shady spot, while they went ahead a ways. It was quiet, and a fairly insistent breeze ruffled the aspen by the river. I just sat and took it all in; the breeze, the rustling leaves, a curious duck. It was a balm for my soul.

So I'll be back with my usual observations tomorrow. Right now I am going to just let the afternoon do something for me, that observation of the depredations to truth, beauty and goodness that the right wing media and their paid shills can never do...give me real peace of soul.

The rustling of the aspen made more sense than any of them ever could. The wind is the voice of God. The talking heads only think they are.

Tim

A Question of Respect

One of my readers (there might be seven if I am lucky) asked me why I show so little respect for the views of the Creationists and others, who are very sincere in their beliefs.

There is a very simple answer to that question.

I have very little respect for their views, and that is being generous.

I want to make it clear, that I have complete respect for a person's right to believe whatever the hell they want to believe, as long as they don't try to force it on me. I also have the right to think that their belief is a total load of runny kangaroo crap.

I deeply feel that there are some ideas that would be hysterically funny if the media weren't treating them as if they were the greatest thing to come along since penicillin and the polio vaccine.

I mean, Jesus....here is a very sincere looking news person, mike in hand, saying "Mr. Casswhistle Wynngnutt is the spokesperson for the Thousand Pound Rat Awareness Group. Members of the group have reported seeing rats the size of Volkswagens poking their heads out of manhole covers throughout Detroit. He says that these large rodents are lurking in the sewers and in the old salt mines awaiting the right moment to come forth and devour the entire Detroit Lions football team at halftime of their home opener..." The thing that moves this from the 'funny as hell' category, into the OMFG! category, is the simple fact that there are a lot of people who think that because they see it on TV, or hear it from some right-wing gas bag on the radio, that it is true. It moves further into the murky depths of ugliness when the politicians begin to base their views on these cockamamie beliefs...and these people are the ones who make the laws that we all are expected to obey.

When demonstrably crazy beliefs begin to exert influence over our lives in such a way, then maybe we need to start telling ourselves that these beliefs are like the guy who walks into your house party with dog shit on his shoes. The shoes need to be cleaned, or he leaves. If you think that there really aren't television 'news' shows who showcase idiocy, just Google 'Orly Taitz' and listen to her for a few minutes expelling her gospel of 'Obama is a Kenyan' on one of the cable news shows.

I find cranks entertaining as long as they are relatively harmless. When they begin making laws or derailing things that would actually benefit all the citizens, even themselves, then somebody needs to say, "We do not need to devote so much time and validation to ideas that simply deserve neither."

To wrap this screed up, I want to say that simply because someone is sincere in their belief does not entitle them to respect, in spite of the doctrine of political correctness. There were a lot of people in Europe who sincerely believed that the Nazi 'Final Solution' was a good idea. Shall we respect that?

Hell no!

Tim

A Quick Question

This question is important enough to warrant not being surrounded with my usual commentary, for today at least.

Why, in the name of all that is Good and Reasonable, not to mention rational, have we turned into a culture whose media celebrates angry cranks, pinheads, and those with ideas that a constipated gorilla would not wipe his ass on, while actively perpetrating ridicule and mistrust of bright, intelligent, driven people?

Watching the news, reading about the adventures of the creationist crowd and other religious fanatics of all stripes, I am convinced that if overt stupidity were money there would be no recession at all.

I have read pundits saying that people are afraid, that is why they are in the state they are in. If I get scared of something, I do not immediately lose my mind, strap on a gun, scream and begin throwing saddles on dinosaurs. I try to figure out how to handle the situation rationally. Silly me.

Snort.

Tim

OK..I am sure I left my mind around here.....

This will be a melange of things that have crept across my cortex over the past few days.

We have been up to our collective butts in the psychological and physical stresses that come with aging parents. Mary's parents had a bit of health crisis that we had to drive a two hundred mile round trip each day for three straight days to help successfully manage. Her parents combined age is 172, so it kept us busy, to say the least. Sarah Palin, the intellect of the Republican party, would be just durn glad to know there were no 'death panels' involved in all the work we did with the docs, etc. Socialized medicine, that is, Medicare, came through and all is well, at this point.

There were some things going on in the world that I did notice, I just can't remember what they are right now....

Edward Kennedy deserves gratitude for the tremendous amount of legislation he was instrumental in writing and shepherding through the Senate. I am sure the conservative noise machine (think grinding up live chickens in a blender..with due apologies to PETA) will be saying all kinds of crap about him, and his past. Yeah, well, they should also recognize all the adulterous hypocrites that litter their playing field before pointing fingers. I suppose the noise machine will say that the pious adulterers have all been processed through the 'Forgiveness Soul Wash & Tyrant Study Group' on C Street, so that doesn't count. Bottom line...Ted Kennedy helped a lot of people regardless of what the pinheads say.

The PETA Billboard: Wow...their advertising mavens are real shitheads. They have run ads in the past few months that would have you believe that being a Vegetarian will have you hooking up with skinny models who rub broccoli on their genitals, and that being a Veg will make you thin. Even my devoutly vegetarian spouse remarked that there a a lot of fat vegetarians around, to which I added that there were also a lot of vegetarians who could not get laid if their little vegetarian lives depended on it. She did agree, albeit with a remark about my irredeemably male take on it. The whole upshot of this crassly stupid billboard, was that it was just that, crass and stupid.

That is about it for today. I am still tired and need to go stretch out somewhere and snore.. loudly.

Tim

The Naughty, Naughty Poor

As I was getting back into real life, post-vacation, I came across a blog, posted by a very conservative, God, Mom, and Rush Limbaugh type. He is very religious, has his own small church, and is a decent sort over coffee.

His blog said that he had been taken aback by a magazine article that talked about the growing rich/poor gap in America, and used the term 'relative deprivation.' It was 'relative deprivation' that got him. He did some biblical research and decided that what 'relative deprivation' really meant was 'covetousness,' which all good Judaeo-Christians know is a SIN.

Gee, that really warmed the cockles (whatever the hell they are) of my heart. The message seems quite clear; "All you members of the quickly growing class of the unemployed, underemployed, fixed income, and generally poorer citizens, who may look at these wealthier citizens and want more for their kids: Stop it! You are filthy sinners, deserving of hell lest you repent and repent fast! Bad, bad people! Because so much of your labor has gone into the pockets of the wealthy, does not mean you can dare to want the value of your work in your pockets! SINNERS! Our Lord, Jesus said that you will always have the poor with you, and since He Is God, who are you, you pitiful souls, to dare to contradict the CEO? "

I could go on, but I think you get my drift. Bullshit is bullshit, even if it is cloaked in the garments of religion.

I would also point out, that the moneychangers Jesus drove from the temple were simply men providing a service to Jews coming from all over the world to worship at the temple, as commanded by their faith. These 'moneychangers' had families they were trying to support, you know, kids to feed, a home to maintain, etc. Jesus, kicked over their tables, scattered their money, and called them thieves. He evidently had little respect for their capitalist endeavor. It wasn't just because they were in the Temple...he called them thieves on top of it. Hmm.

The oligarchs of corprofascism, most of whom are 'Good God-Fearing Christian Men,' according to the current right wing, evangelical apologia, had better take note. If the parousia were to take place today, they may well see that 'knotted cord' in Jesus' hand, as he rolls up his sleeves, and looks their way.

Tim

WTF?????

As I reorganize from my vacation, I saw the story about the people carrying guns at Obama rallies.

I have only one thing to ask: What the hell would have happened if armed protesters had shown up at any of President Bush Jr's. speeches or rallies??? We all know, don't we? Goddamn right we do. I mean the cops hassled ladies wearing the 'wrong' t-shirts for God's sake! Were people afraid that if the Secret Service and police had hassled and removed the armed people, the right wing morons would have been screaming about the death of liberty? Let them spew their toxic fumes, the president must be kept safe, period, end of discussion. I would say the same thing if armed loons had shown up at Bush's rallies. It is a damn sad thing when people have been pushed, by morons in the talk world, into such states of fear and delusion, that carrying things designed to deal death is the most effective way to 'protest'. Now that IS scary!!

After seeing that kind of crap beginning to surface, whipped on by republicans and their drooling media sycophants, it makes me wonder just where the real Spirit of America has gone. I am beginning to see that there is a spectre haunting our America; it is the spectre of a fear driven craziness that can lead a people straight into the arms of dangerous political delusions, where they sacrifice their real freedoms for the false 'freedom' of a security that is neither free nor secure.

I am going to mentally return to the banks of the Hudson near Hyde Park, and let that heal me.

Tim

Resting in Connecticut

It was a long trip, but I spread it over two days, spending the night in a WiFi bereft hotel in Scranton on Wednesday, and arriving safely in Groton yesterday afternoon. Mary and Christy and the kids were about 4 hours behind me, so I visited the USS Nautilus and the Submarine Force Museum which I enjoyed. Historian that I am, I remember when the Nautilus made it's first ever voyage under nuclear power, and yesterday I stood on her deck. That was very cool.

I also will tell anyone listening, that GPS systems for your car are indispensable. I am sold on them. Since Christy knew the way, she loaned me their GPS, and I am buying one before we leave Groton. Huzzah!

Now I am going back out to enjoy the nice weather and the Atlantic breezes.

Gawking Tourist Moment: When I drove across the Hudson, I was amazed at its' beauty. It is something I want to see more of. I also had the privilege of seeing a Bald Eagle land in a tree along the highway as I putzed along. Just magnificent!

Back to resting.

Tim

On the Road Again....

Tomorrow morning I am off and PT Cruisering for the wilds of Connecticut. Mary and I are helping our daughter-in-law take Cally and Lucy, their obstreperous cat Moxie, and all the stuff that was required for their 6 week stay in Michigan while Adam is deployed. There also has been an accumulation of things for the kids from grandparents, and other sundry relatives. I am leaving a day ahead of time as I can't make the long drives like I used to because of my leg and knee. So, I have an audio book, some good music, and the silence of the drive to enhance the joys of the turnpikes. If I can find a motel with Wi-Fi I'll even blog tomorrow.

That is it for today.

No rants...I am just suffused with the simple profundity of breathing and living.

Tim

Now Here is a Thought...

Today as I was having my usual Tim Horton's Iced Capp and breakfast sandwich I was continuing to read Slavoj Zizek's Violence. I came across an utterly remarkable paragraph which I re-read about 4 times before highlighting it.

He had just quoted the warning of Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov about godless moral nihilism: "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted." We hear this a lot, about how God in his various permutations is all that keeps us all from turning into savage animals, yadda-yadda.

Zizek says: "He couldn't have been more wrong: the lesson of today's terrorism is that if there is a God, then everything, even blowing up hundreds of innocent bystanders, is permitted to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, as instruments of his will, since clearly a direct link to God justifies our violation of any 'merely human' constraints and considerations." (Zizek: Violence; pg 136)

Before any Christians begin their finger pointing toward Islam, I would remind them that their beloved St. Augustine wrote " Love God and do what you will." There is a term for that. It is called 'ethical suspension'; in short, that if one loves God then one can do as one pleases. There is an assumption that in doing what pleases God will always be ethical, which is, of course bullshit. Just ask the victims of the Albigensian crusade, Jew massacres, inquisitions etc. "There is no guarantee, external to your belief in what God really wants you to do. In the absence of any ethical standards external to your belief in and love for God, the danger is always lurking that you will use your love of God as the legitimisation of the most horrible deeds." (Zizek, Ibid: pg 137)

I am still digesting the truth in these statements.

I am going for a Maalox smoothie.

Tim

Let's get Real

I have a little mental zip drive that I call "Do These People Ever Listen to Themselves?" It has a pretty large capacity, I must add. I just downloaded a new one from the Rev. Ray Mummert, made during the controversy in Dover PA, over whether or not to allow the teaching of intelligent design into the schools. Pastor Mummert said: "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." I might wish to ask Pastor Mummert, that given that statement, just what segment he represents. This quote is from Charles Pierce's new book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. It is a great read!

The book made me take a good look at some things.

FAITH: Faith is not a fact. I can have something called 'faith', and the only fact involved there is that I have it, not that is contains one grain of truth. Faith should be based on facts, and this brings us to the next thing:

BELIEF: Just believing something without empirical evidence, does not make it true. It only shows that one is choosing to give the weight of provable fact to something that may not have a single provable fact. Hearing some person saying it on TV or the Net does not make a fairy tale true. There will be those who rise right up and yell (given the current state of right wing debate) that there are a 'billion Christians who believe that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and he is going to come again and splatter all the people who don't believe." So what? There are a billion Muslims, several hundred million Buddhists and Hindus who don't believe it. Nothing is proven beyond the fact that a lot of people can line up behind their most dearly held delusion. It is when they begin to threaten the people who do not share their 'belief' that it gets dicey.

This brings me to the thing that drives people into the arms of wholesale acceptance of irrational belief.

FEAR: The one fact that no one can argue is that we die. This earthly life will end. Nobody..and I mean nobody gets out alive. This basic truth can seem to render life meaningless, and this is intolerable to many, so as soon as man began to think beyond survival, man began to concoct stories to offset that last great unknown. The Egyptians thought they had it covered with the rites for the dead and mummification. Well, museums are full of those people, still dead and looking pretty much worse for the wear. Jesus told followers that some of them would not taste death until they saw "The Son of Man returning in glory." OK...that was in 33 CE, and all those people are dead, and Jesus is still a no-show. Theology has a term for this little hiccup in the accuracy department. It is called "The Delayed Parousia". Maybe they should call it "Ooops!"

The Buddha pointed out that all suffering is caused by clinging to a belief that something just has to be unchangeable, and therefore, one must hang on to that, regardless of how ridiculous it makes the the requisite system needed to sustain the belief seem. If a person just accepts that everything changes, and that everyone dies, two facts that all our senses and experience tell us are true, regardless how badly we may want to deny it, then the life we have becomes infinitely more precious.

I am now going to enjoy some sun and the summer wind, and I do not have to believe that Adam rode a triceratops, in order to do that.

Tim

Wheelin'

Today I took delivery of my new vehicle.

A hot Topaz 9000 wheelchair.

I am excited! This has re-opened some slowly closing vistas. I can get around the house just fine, except the stairs can have their moments, but nothing insurmountable. I can walk into a restaurant, into the pharmacy to get something, and most of the big retail outlets have Amigos to zip around in. The 'rub' came when it involved walking a distance, like evening walks with Mary, visiting a museum or aquarium, or walking around downtown Ann Arbor on a Friday or Saturday night. These had become very problematic. Now, I am not the kind of a man who thinks that his wife can just adjust, because he can't or won't admit that there are some bio mechanical issues he has to make allowances for. With a nice vacation coming up, I said to myself, "This will not be messed up by me being unable to get around!"

To make a long story short, I talked to my doc yesterday, and today the Topaz 9000 arrived. It is a rental through the U of M health systems, as when I lose more weight, I am going to get a new knee. So, it will be temporary, hopefully. At least that is what I am working toward. I am quite happy, now Mary and I can go for an evening st/roll (good pun, huh?) and do some more fun things.

I had over heard an older man talking to his son, at my doctor's office. The old gent was vehemently arguing about not wanting a wheelchair. "It just means I'm getting old, goddamit! No!" His son said "Dad, you're 82!" This elicited a snort, and his dad said "I'll sit on my ass in the house all day before I get in a wheelchair!" This feeling, and various permutations of it abound in the land of "Never admit to looking (and often acting) your age." Face lifts, ass lifts and tucks, several kinds of suction, botox injections, hair dyes, and so on, are the things used to convince oneself they you are not undergoing any type of aging. It can get rather funny at times. As I was shopping today in our local Meijer's, there was this lady ahead of me in the aisle, probably about my age, but really trying not to look it. I putzed up on the Amigo and stopped behind her cart. She was in front of it getting something, and seeing me she straightened up and said "I'll be right out of your way." "No problem" says I. Then I noticed a look of horror on her face. "Huh?" I thought, and I followed her gaze, from my face to her shopping cart. I almost burst out laughing. Since I was seated, my eye level was exactly at the level of the little kids seat in the cart where we all put small items when the kids no longer fill the seat. In her cart was a big can of Metamucil, a big box of glycerin suppositories, and some 'personal lubricant'. The very fact that I might have seen these things and come to the conclusion she was having some pretty normal effects of aging, seemed to be bothering her. In spite of internal laughter, I didn't bat an eyelash.
She really moved along.

We all get old. It is no big deal, if we just move into it, because nothing will stop it until we die. That is a fact.

So, me and the Topaz 9000 are getting ready for a few adventures. Rock and Roll!!!!

Tim

I Was Just Thinking...

It has been a busy day, out and about, so I have only this reflection for the day.

Jesus needed footnotes.

When he said "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." (Luke 6:31) He really needed to footnote that one.

Christian apologists say this rendering of the universal 'Golden Rule' by Jesus is far superior to all the other renderings of other faiths because it is a 'positive commandment'. It does not say what not to do, but what to do. That makes the need for a bit of explanation by Jesus a must, and it also shows a remarkable lack of insight for an omniscient 'God'.

What if one is a masochist? What if one is into kinky sex? What if one is a body hating ascetic? What are they going to do unto others, so that the same will be done unto them? One could see that this could lead to all kinds of odd happenings.

Just a thought.
Tim

Imagine....

Dostoevsky writes, in The Brothers Karamazov, "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted."

In Imagine, John Lennon says "Imagine no religion..."

Both these thoughts deal with how man might behave if we suddenly, somehow were given absolutely incontrovertible proof that God has been nothing more than the projection of the human superego ( with a huge dollop of Id thrown in ), and our own fears surrounding the seeming meaninglessness of a life that ends in extinction. There is the fidest view ( those who believe, as Aquinas did that faith must always trump reason and experience ) that since we are all in the grip of the pseudo-scriptural idea of 'Original Sin', without God to act as a brake, humans would just run wild and have wars, crime, untrammelled sex, out of control greed and oppression of the poor, the have-nots by the haves, exploitation of our resources to enrich the very few at the cost of the welfare of the many...hey! Wait a minute.....hmmmm.

Moving right along, then there is the materialist/realist view that, while humans do have inclinations to prosper themselves at the expense of others, there is also a natural instinct to care for other members of the social order, because when everyone has a share in the 'goodies' the reason to exploit and oppress drops accordingly. Good is not done to suck up to the Big Imaginary Friend, but because it is there to be done. If you fall, I help you up, not because BIF is 'watching', but simply because you have fallen. I help others, not because they are the 'image and likeness' of BIF, but because they need it. I don't hit upon a 'hot' lady because I am afraid that BIF will make my testicles bloat to the size of beach balls as I drag them around some hell in the next life. I don't do it, because I am still crazy about my vegetarian conscience/best friend/wife, Mary. There are a lot more things like this I could say, but I think my point is clear.

I am a theist. I believe there is a God. As such, this God cannot be limited by our concepts which are always colored by our desires. I need no reward for the good things I do, and I am humane enough to be ashamed when I act like an asshole.

I also feel that it is not moral to try and give the force of law to religious belief simply to deal with insecurities and doubts, as if by forcing others to believe, one can somehow be less doubtful about their belief system, not that I am talking about the right wing factions of any religion out there....like the followers of one such group that sent me a hysterical warning about the evils of the health care reform, which must be defeated, according to their view, because we are not real (insert denomination of choice here) if we don't act against the reform. Hmm, am I then to assume that the health of the multi-billion dollar insurance corporate giants is more important than relieving the suffering and cares of millions of uninsured or under-insured families. Maybe that is a new dogma that I am not aware of at this point.

That is enough for one day.
Tim

OK...That was Fun....

I awakened at 3:30 this morning with my GI tract in major rebellion against my antibiotics. OK, there are a helluva lot of other things I would rather do than tend to that sort of thing. 'Nuff said.

I received an e-mail from Josh, my son in Tennessee, with a great clip in it. It sort of puts the latest idiocy from the "I really, really need to get a life" crowd, the so-called 'birthers', in perspective. It features their leader, Orly Taitz. Check it out on yesterdays, Huffington Post. What a meltdown. Imagine someone giving a chihuahua about 15 amphetamines. It wasn't pretty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/orly-taitz-melts-down-on_n_250441.html

Then I saw this: http://http//www.associatedcontent.com/article/1995500/citigroup_considers_100_million_dollar.html?cat=3

OK...there go the bowels again....it seemed to be the only rational response when reading about a nine figure bonus for one of the people critically responsible for the gas prices going past four dollars a gallon last year and the resultant implosion of the US auto industry. As if that were not vile enough, his company is part of Citigroup, who got a multi billion dollar dollop of bailout funds.

What the hell is wrong with that picture??

The corpro/statists and their little lap doggies in the political system were actually making small whines of justification.

Well, golly, I am sure that all those people who are unemployed, wondering just how they are going to make it, and provide for their loved ones, will be really comforted to know that the great capitalist/free enterprise system is working just fine. I would go and listen to a bunch of politicians and talking heads, all of who have the very best medical insurance, telling us how we don't need health care reform, but I realized I have no Immodium left. I think I'll just go and find a website on the creative use of nasal mucous. At least there there is an honesty rare in much of the corporate dominated media.

OK, so I am annoyed. At least Orly Taitz was funny.

Tim

Monday Musings

I have had a reasonably quiet Monday thus far.

My daily routine included doing our shopping, a duty that has fallen into my lap with all the subtlety of a crazed beagle. Fortunately, it is a duty I actually like as I have done shopping for my family mostly on my own since 1962, when I was 17. Now, due to the vicissitudes of fate and the arthritic genes in my DNA, I have to use the Amigo with the shopping basket to get around the big stores, most of which seem to be the size of Central Park in New York City.

Now, some of the little buggies move about as fast as I can walk on my painful knee/ankle days. That is always a treat as everyone passes you. I once heard a child tell her mom that the 'little scooter looks older than the old guy (yours truly) driving it'. I just smiled thinking of the squirrel scene in Willie Wonka'. Today I got the fast one. I mean the little sucker really whips along. That was fun. Most of the other shoppers are really pretty nice about it too, offering to get something off a shelf for me and the like. It just is nice to see there are times when the social identifiers of class, race, gender and whose Big Imaginary Friend is the best, fall away with a pleasant 'let me grab that for you.'

The best moment came when an old gent pulled up beside me in another Amigo. I smiled, and he grinned and said "Wanna drag?" It was a good moment of shared humor, in the frozen food aisle.

So my Monday has been quiet, one of those days when the gentle boredom of 'not much going on' is the perfect thing.

It is even a gift at times.

Tim

Sunday, Sunday...

It is a beautiful day in what has been an exceptional summer in Michigan. The humidity is low and the temps are in the mid 70's with a glorious wind. On days like this I have no need to set in an officially sanctioned edifice to thank God for the wonderful planet we have been left to tend and care for. That vision tends to get a bit skewed by the corporo-capitalist system that sees only commodity and cash, not trees and grasses and mountains. But I digress...

I am getting off track. I try to keep my political side in tight rein on Sunday. When it gets too obstreperous, I threaten it with being made to watch Fox News for five hours. It quickly retreats to a corner of my intellect and sets down mumbling something about that being the equivalent of waterboarding one's rational mind.

So, without further ado I am going to return to what Sunday is really all about as far as I am concerned, being giddily grateful to the Divine Heart in all things, and breathing the fresh air. Today it also involves doing battle with our incredibly feisty Wisteria, which thinks it can totally envelop our front side garden.

Be Well and Be Grateful
Tim

Why Bother?

One of my friends asked me why I bother to write a blog. I can very easily tell you why I bother writing what I do. There are several very good reasons. Two of the reasons are running around the house having the kind of fun that only a three year old and a one and a half year old can have. Another reason is living in Tennessee working for the Navy. Another is living with her hubby in town, another is somewhere under the Atlantic on his submarine, of which he is the chief engineering officer, while two more reasons are pursuing the little ones: their Mom and their vegetarian/artist Grandmother (of whom I have written). Great reasons to my way of thinking.

I want the best for all our kids, their spouses and the grand kids. That does not make me unusual in the least. Maybe I worry about it more than most because there are a lot of people who seem not to want them, and all the other wives, kids, grand kids, and extended families we all care about, to have the chances, freedoms, or life we have had.

There are fundamentalists who want to turn this country into an oppressive theocracy where freedom is a stranger, and their delusions are given force of law. Here I do not speak only of the radical Islamists, who have the same desires for America. Read the new book The Family by Jeff Sharlet for more information on this aspect of things. I'll have more to say on this sort of thing as this blog develops.

So, I give voice to my worries and join the mass of other bloggers who share their thoughts and feelings, ideas and ideals for whomever might care to read them. We bloggers of all stripes may be what keeps the forces that would take away our freedoms at bay!

A final note for the day, on the dangers of grandparenting. As I was waiting for Cally, our oldest granddaughter to hop out of her car seat, I said, looking at the assembly of books and toys on the floor where she had dropped them during our trip to see Mary's folks, "Wow, got a lot of crap on the floor there kiddo." She said 'That's not a lotsa crap." Christy (their mom) said "Cally learned a new word!"

Oops.

Oh well, at least I didn't say...well you know.
Tim

Life With a Vegetarian

My wife Mary is a vegetarian. She has controlled Type 2 Diabetes for 4 1/2 years with her diet, which swings from vegetarian to raw vegetarian to raw vegan depending on her needs and what she feels is necessary. She is a real role model as far as I am concerned.

I am a carnivore, I just don't eat much beef. I like chicken, turkey, fish, and pork. She rarely lets an opportunity go by to gently needle me about my dead animal proclivity.

This afternoon, she was painting parts of a small wooden farm set she made for our eldest granddaughter's 3rd birthday coming up. Here was the conversation:

"I am painting the little piglets pink. They are really sweet."

Me (unsuspecting carnivore): "Cool"

"You ate one this morning."

"Huh? I ate what..?"

"You ate one this morning. A pig."

"I ate a whole pig?! It was a Tim Horton's Breakfast Sandwich..."

"It had sausage, right?"

"That hardly qualifies as a whole pig."

"Tell that to the pig."

I know when I am beaten....I went back to typing, secure in the fact that she loves me enough to want me around, but I do like sausage.

Mary brought the finished critters in to show me. They reflected her careful, beautiful work. I looked at the little pigs. I swear the little suckers were smirking...

Sigh.



Tim

Random Neural Firings on a Friday

Now that I am retired, Friday is not what it was when I was working, and one of my charges had inferred that I had had illicit carnal knowledge of my mother for the seventeenth time in a five hour period.

Still, the culmination of a week is always a good thing if one has been raised in a society that believes in weekends as being a time of relaxation, play, sporting events and betaking one's self to the consecrated auditoriums of faith, begging, whining and sucking up to the Big One. This is not to say that 'worship' does not help many people to feel that their lives are more tolerable, it does. It also serves to reinforce many prejudices about the 'other' that some people hold as dear as life itself. If you doubt that, say 'gay marriage' or 'pro-choice' or 'Muslim' in certain religious communities, and you'll see what I mean.

Speaking of religion, especially the Levantine Monotheisms , Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...I give Christianity a pass on the monotheism thing because they have three gods (four if you are Catholic and count Mary the Mother of God into the mix) but they just say "It's a great mystery and cannot be fathomed by the human mind...they are three but ONE!" Gee, I never would have guessed. So, back to my point...most of their appeal is based on the greedy desire to live forever, set on thrones, or recline on cushions if one is a Muslim, and have a select place in the beatific afterlife. If that does not work to bring one into line, then there is HELL, the place where everybody who does not believe 'the RIGHT way' is put to be hideously tortured for all eternity in a manner that would have made De Sade run for the barf bag. Selfishness, pure and simple. One wants to keep out of the torture garden, and be in the Paradise of untold delight. Nothing like appealling to the highest in man, huh?

The best thing I have heard about all this is from the Sufi Poet Rabia. She said that if she loved God in order to receive heaven she did not deserve it, and if she loved God out of fear of the fire, she deserved it. That idea is found in some Rabbinical writings and in some mystical Christianity as well.

Imagine if you will, a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam getting up in front of the congregation and telling them that if they did good and loved God, just for heaven, they should be put in hell, and if they did good and loved God just to avoid hell, they would get an up close and personal tour of the Inferno. I would buy a ticket for that one. You can bet the collection that day would take a hit.

That is about enough for one Friday.

These are just some of the things that crept across my cortex this morning. Take them for what they might be worth. I am just a fool...a fool who is going to go watch one of our chipmunks stuff his face with some of the peanuts I set out on the back patio.

Be well, and be kind.
Tim

Cash for Cluckers?

It is a bright sunny day, and at Tim's Chicken Ranch and Boutique, my 1972 Gremiln finally falls apart totally. I mean I have gotten tired counting the road kill that flashes by the manhole size hole in the floorboards. I see the "Cash for Clunker's" ad in the monthly Rag and Bugle, and I am excited...a new car!!!! Yes. I load up my capital, hitch the rusted corpse on the back and tweedle off to the dealer. They only allow me 2500$ for the Gremlin, which I take as it is about 6000$ more than it blue books' at, and I seal the deal. The salesperson asks how I am going to pay for the new Go-Kart sized electric/compost/propane powered cross-over. I take said salesperson out to the lot to see my slightly sagging truck piled high with cages and 12,562 squawking, flapping, shitting and fighting chickens. I must aver that I had never heard a salesperson say such an eloquent "What the Fuck!!" in the middle of a sales transaction before. I said that each chicken had a market value of a couple dollars, and there was also the egg and guano things that had value, for egg salad sandwiches and right wing talk shows respectively. "It's worth a good 20,000$!" I told the goggle-eyed sales person.

Later on the way home, chickens and Gremlin in tow, I pondered all of this. If I had said I had 20,000 small pieces of somewhat worn greenish/orange/bluish pieces of paper with the pictures of dead politicians on them, all would have been swell.

Which brings me to my point. Money has value because we believe it has value. We believe the government will back its' worth. The banks & credit unions believe the government will back their dispersal of said funds. It is all belief in money that does not exist in reality. Are there people who believe that every dollar circulating is backed by our horde of gold in Fort Knox? I suppose so, but then again there are people who believe that Sarah Palin is our salvation as a people (sorry, Jesus). Fact is economies today tend to move on money that does not really exist. If you doubt this as liberal twaddle, 'investors' and 'funds' 'bought' oil futures up the wazoo, pushing real time oil prices through the roof, hence gas prices, hence the loud, resounding crash of the US auto industry, and the ripple effect of the crumbling economy. Couple that with similar speculation on the housing market over the last 12 years, and you have the mess we have now, caused by those who bought oil not yet even produced, with money that they did not have, except in theory. The result, real unemployment, real hardship, real sorrow and fear. These speculators could have cared less. When you have that kind of money to be made, compassion has no place in their world. They are like a bull full of viagra and crack, who has just stumbled on a herd of cows. It is not pretty.

Well, I am going to try to get the Gremlin running. These were just some thoughts I had on the way home. Take them for what they may be worth.

Tim

Why the name.

I was reading Violence by Slavoj Zizek over an Iced Capp at Tim Horton's this morning and I came across a citation that really sums up my feelings, and I am sure the feelings of a lot of other people today. It is from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. "Si vous etes pris dans la reve de l'autre, vous etez foutu." If you're trapped in the dream of the other, you're fucked." I feel that would be a great paradigm to write my blog from, because as I find my own health insurance becoming more and more expensive, especially now that I am retired, and listen to the flatulent bursts from politicians, and talking heads, I do feel that I (and I might add all the GM retirees who are watching their dental and vision insurance evaporate) am trapped in someone else's dream. Not only that, we are all definitely beginning to experience the truth of the final phrase of Deleuze's statement.

Yesterday I heard some politico of some sort or other saying that he didn't want his health insurance premiums going for advertising, which would be the outcome of real freemarket competition incidentally. Well, fool that I am of course, I seem to see that millions are going into the pockets of campaign committees, and other sundry efforts to make sure that the great capitalist wet dream of the insurance and pharmaceutical corporate orgs continues unabated. Does the guy I heard yesterday think all that money is picked off a tree in the Garden of Eternal Cash? If he believes that...well I return to the word "foutu".

So I am off and running with this little effort of mine. I see things and I am going to share some of these insights for what they are worth.
Tim