Sharpen Your Knives, and Eat the Rich

Reply to TH- Restaurant at the End of the World- By M

It's worse then all that TH. Yesterday, all across France, women's fashion shops refused to open their doors to paying customers. Eerie quiet slipped over city centers where shopkeepers neither lunched nor struck, but went about marking discounts for the new years sales starting tomorrow. Why sell for full price today what you can mark down and sell for half as much tomorrow. What happened to capitalism goddamnit, where am I? Where are the obnoxiously good looking, constantly smoking and wine drinking French people who would mortgage their house and sell their children to raise funds for a tres chic bit of designer wank rag. Sorry, that's been building up, I haven't had the eau d'some young girl on me for a little while and, I mean really, come on this is FRANCE for fucksake.

Excuse the digression but may I recommend, for your viewing pleasure The Man Who Sued God with Billy Connolly, its a little camp, a little corny but the idea is fantastic, and in my mind, Billy Connelly and Morgan Freeman are fighting for the image of God rights. Maybe they can both be Almighty: A long haired, bearded Glaswegian as Vengeful, but funny God, and Black and freckled Morgan as benevolent, kind but slightly sneaky God.

Anyway, these questions stand: is the end coming soon or is God just pissed off, and what is the reason for the Almighty's displeasure? If you care to know, because thanks to what T calls my intense study of the Catechism, I know how God thinks.

Frankly I think he's pissed off with us, for trashing the earth, killing each other willy nilly or being silently sinful and self obsessed, self abusive-- B, get your hands out of your pants! He is the Hairy Bearded Glaswegian, shouting incoherent and wrathful, shaking a heavy, blunt farm implement in your general direction.

Consider this biblical end of days stuff, Europe has been suffering the meanest winter since Thor was considered master of the universe. America has dead animals falling from the sky, washing up on its shores and presumably jumping into traffic. Floods are soaking Australia, War in probably eminent in the Cote d'Ivoire, and if not there then probably in post-referendum Sudan. My knowledge of Revelations had to be scrubbed up, thanks to wikipedia-- Here are our Seven Seals

First Seal - Pestilence, White horse
Second Seal - War, Red Horse
Third Seal - Famine, Black Horse
Fourth Seal - Death, Green or Pale Horse
Fifth Seal - Vision of martyrs
Sixth Seal - Cosmic disturbances: sun turns black, moon turns blood red; sealing of the 144,000
Seventh Seal - Prelude To The 7 Trumpets of 7 Angels & The Final Judgement

Now Ollie Stone, er T, we've had 1-5 running wild for longer then our life times in one way or another, but the last lunar eclipse looked like this on December 20th 2010:

Does this mean it's five past 6th Seal? Is the apocalypse and armageddon and the Fat Lady Singing?

Personally, I think this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12112673 ------- Is the root of the God's displeasure. Follow me on this one; You're the almighty, you spend your eternity looking down on people. Pattern baldness, from that perspective is as telling as facial structure. I assert that God is pissed off that we are squeezing into his domain, by curing baldness we are depriving him of one of the less painful punishments, one of the more amusing abuses-- Think of how many goats Alec Baldwin must regularly sacrifice to maintain that mane. He must get a twinge in this neathers every time he writes his surname, Don't jinx yourself Jacky boy.

As for the Mayans, Any culture that sacrifices virgins should be wiped from the archeological and historical record, bloody waste of potential, but that's where eating too much chocolate and licking poisonous, hallucinogenic toads will get you.

Anyway, paranoia is good- T, and faithful friends, paranoia is a motivator, unless you take it to an unBuddhist extreme like Howard Hughes. I suggest you all come and meet me in the Holy Lands, swing by France first and we'll load up on top shelf plonk, then we'll head to Megiddo and start the Restaurant at the End of the World. The food will be simple, the wine will be fantastic, the floor show will be worth repenting for, and we can sit back, drink it all in and watch the fucker burn. See you then, you sweet, simple bastards

let the new year in w/ a biblical bang-- By TH

Hello all,

Man with news headlines like this, you can't help but truly think reality is stranger than fiction. (Just tune into CNN)

As of Saturday, between 4,000 and 5,000 birds had been found dead in Arkansas, fallen from the sky-- raining birds. Almost 125 miles away, 100, 000 fish suddenly rise to the top of the rivers, also dead. In a seemingly separate incident, some 500 red-winged blackbirds, starlings and grackles were found dead in southern Louisiana in Labarre.

Then, all the way around the world:

Rising floodwaters cut off the last ground route into the eastern Australian city of Rockhampton on Monday, as police pegged the number of people affected by prolonged flooding at 200,000.

This is all very biblical... isn't it? Max help me out here, you had intense study in Catechism. Sounds like end times shit, yeah? If Locusts appear in New York, I guess we won't be too surprised.

2012 is approaching. The year the Mayans--though they had no use, or even the concept of telescopes--predicted the entire universe will end. Or maybe just planet Earth. I can't remember which.

Some of this also bears a striking resemblance to the Delillo book White Noise. In the book's second part, a chemical spill from a rail car releases an "airborne toxic event" over the protagonist Jack Gladneys' home region, prompting an organized/chaotic evacuation. A government organization called SIMUVAC (short for "simulated evacuation") is then introduced, an indication of simulations replacing reality, no one in the book quite sure if event is a test or true disaster... and for what reason would the government set these disasters or simulations into motion, to what purpose? Yes, indeed. What purpose?

Oh, the puzzles. Oh the mud. Let's bring in the New Year w/ puzzles and mud, huh. I mean, I know some of this stuff sounds strangely similar to Fox News Killer Bee scare back in mid-2000's. And that was all bullshit. But 5,000 birds, 100,000 fish. Multiple incidents in the south. This is weird.

Well, paranoia is officially setting in, my noble listeners. Why the fuck are birds mysteriously falling from the fucking sky? Somebody fucking answer me. I'm feeling a bit like Oliver Stone here. Plots are in motion. Fuck it.

Hey, sleep tight.

Lawyers,Guns&money

Take A Deep Breath--By TH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE

This is from the movie "Network." If you haven't seen it, watch it ASAP. It's damn near Shakespearean in its script writing, and is a great prophetic, social commentary/satire on the media.(Though made in the 1970s, the film could not have predicted how awful reality could truly become: the 24hr news cycle, Limbaugh or Fox News.)

I thought there were some brilliant things said in the recent Newsweek about the current state of psychology in politics: MAD AS HELL!!!!!

All caps, see? I'm very, very mad.

"Angry Voters say they'll support a republican rather than a democrat by a margin of 73 to 19."(newsweek)

These days, it seems, voters are more interested in seeing their candidates as angry than they are with their candidates ability to reason or debate the issues. In fact, debate has been avoided in most cases. And reporters are being assaulted and ignored simply for asking questions, doing their jobs. Carl Palladino, running for senator of New York, said to a reporter, "I'll take you out, buddy."

Jann Brewer, running for Governor in Arizona, recently made some bogus claims about decapitated heads in the desert of Arizona. Here she is simply ignoring the press. They're asking too many questions, asking her to explain her position. This proves to difficult for her. Apparently, our politicians don't even have to answer or explain anything to the press anymore. The Press is more like an agitating mosquito buzzing in their ears... god forbid some questions get asked. These teabagging governors complain they are victims of a liberal media. When did simple questions become "liberal"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1xV7nTSqww

Is this what the political arena has devolved to? The politicians don't even have to speak anymore.

Rick Snyder is trying to glide his way into the position of Michigan Governor, simply taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't need to debate on tv when democratss are expected to be outvoted 73 to 19. Shame, shame.

And just one question (or a few):

how do teabagger candidates expect to govern-- if elected-- when they believe, like many Libertarians--which is what teabaggers are in most ways-- that "Government is the evil of individual freedom"?

Is it all as Margaret Thatcher said? (Max, help me out here) "There are no such things as society, there are only individuals."

Really? Meaning, in other words, there is nothing we can do collectively? Not one single, important thing we can do together, for the better of the human race?

I'm not sure Ayn Rand's "free market" utopia is all it's cracked up to be. Sounds good on the page-- like the Communist Manifesto, or immaculate conception in the bible-- but when applied to reality, seems completely immoral and irrational. Immoral because this system leaves many citizens hanging to dry. Irrational because teabagger's proposed philosophy is often contradictory. (Believe me, the irony here is not lost on me considering I just wrote a "rant" disavowing such words as "morals.")

Atlas certainly does shrug. Look at all the Neo-Con bullshit weight he hefts above his shoulder.

I wonder if most libertarians/Republicans know that Ayn Rand was an atheist and "not primarily an advocate of Capitalism."

The teabagger's anger is so misdirected. Where were these people, and their anger, during the eight years of Bush?... two wars, bloating deficit and expansion of government yet matched in our lifetimes. Talk about bureaucratic black holes; try traversing the labyrinth of the departments of Homeland Security...(paraphrasing from Friedman in NYTimes)

Ummmm, I've digressed... oh yes, Psychology of Politics. Yes, the great quotes from Newsweek.

There is some interesting psychology going on among the voters.

“People have a great capacity to engage in what’s called motivated reasoning,” says political scientist Hank Jenkins-Smith of the University of Oklahoma. “If you have a strongly held belief with an emotional component, the brain defends information that reinforces those ‘priors’ and is skeptical of information that challenges them... People who hold these hard priors filter information to support their perceptions,” says Jenkins-Smith... People tend to adapt their baseline expectations to what they already have,” says linguist George Lakoff of the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the 2008 book The Political Mind. “That is why the president gets little appreciation for what he has already accomplished. If he’s done it, we take it for granted.

When people are angry, they want to see their anger reflected in their leaders. Many voters believe “that getting angry is somehow a ‘good thing’ in a leader, and that the [apparent] absence of anger betokens someone who is out of touch or insensitive to the moral dimensions of the problem,” psychiatrist Ronald Pies of SUNY Upstate Medical Center wrote in Psychiatric Times. “There is a ‘magical’ dimension to intense anger: it transforms the world from one in which the person feels helpless and impotent into one in which the person has the illusion of power and control. It is as if to say, ‘If I get angry enough, the laws of physics won’t apply—I’ll be able to plug that damn oil leak through the power of my righteous indignation!’?”(Newseek)

"If candidates don’t display sufficient wrath, voters’ own anger intensifies, as they unconsciously try to stoke anger in their would-be leaders...Obama hasn’t been able to show people he feels their anger, which only makes them angrier,” (Newsweek)

So it's the worst of political times, right? A great polarization. Things are so fucked up we can't even express it in any other form less than anger, even bordering on the irresponsible call to action through violence. For example, In Nevada, GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle cemented her anger credentials by warning, “If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.”

Do these people realize what serious trouble they are stirring up by saying such horrible things? What if a modern Lee Oswald wannabe were to hear this statement, just so damn mad from feeling so helpless, picked up his gun and decided he was going to murder Obama. Then did. This woman, this Sharon Angle, would have blood on her hands. Statements like these are unacceptable.

As Jimmy Carter said, this country is one of "the ballet, not the bullet."

Maybe we can all take a que from some of Obama's 2006 words from "Audacity of Hope" to find solace in:

"When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist we live in the worst political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Act under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several administrations as having possibly been worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath."(Obama)

There is some sort of weird struggle going on in this country, a demented revolution. Something new will come out of it. I'm optimistic it will be for the better, for if you look at history it's always forward progressing, in most cases. But the struggle will be difficult. The struggle is beautiful, as Martin Luther King says.

Hmmm, yes, I'm taking a deep breath... oxygen, it is said, in copious amounts, gets you high and keeps you mellow. Go and do likewise, gents.

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Reply to TH- Restaurant at the End of the World- By M

let the new year in w/ a biblical bang-- By TH

Take A Deep Breath--By TH