I Have Seen The Future And It Sucks!

Well here we are at the end of another year and hey once again many people seem convinced the world will end within a year from today! The new year is a time when various psychics and clairvoyants make predictions about the coming year. Mostly they are wrong. I have decided to boldly enter the fray! My predictions are guaranteed to be 100% accurate! And that is not because they are tame or lame. I am not predicting for instance that Wednesday will come on Wednesdays this year or something stupid like that! These predictions are flabbergasting! They are colossal! They will amaze you by being both profound and completely accurate! So with no further hyperbole here are my predictions:

# 1. A natural disaster will strike a developing nation and they will be unprepared and ill equipped to cope with it. Hundreds of people will perish and thousands will be left homeless. Chaos will prevail and then be squelched by questionable authoritarian means. Squalid survivor camps will result in disease and exploitation of the weak.

# 2. A major corporation will be found to have engaged in unethical or even illegal business practices. These activities will have harmed many innocent people and ultimately the corporation itself. Despite this the consequences meted out to the guilty corporate officers will be largely symbolic.

# 3. A country that few Americans could find on a map will become of major concern to our national security. Our leaders will attempt to negotiate with leaders in this country but these attempts at diplomacy will be fruitless. We will be accused of using covert military force and unable to disprove these allegations.

# 4. A rising Hollywood star will be involved in a scandal that could destroy her career. Her fans will rally to her cause but she will become the object of ridicule.

# 5. A governmental leader will be exposed as being in the pocket of certain large donors to the detriment of his constituency. He will at first deny these allegations of corruption but ultimately will admit some minor errors in judgement. Ultimately he will leave government service in order to devote himself to family matters.

# 6. A new drug craze will sweep the country as young people use either a substance recently synthesized or rediscover an old substance but use it in a manner or form vastly different and more hazardous than it has been used previously.

# 7. A major sports figure once thought to be a role model will be found to be a disappointing and hypocritical figure.

# 8. A major piece of the infrastructure in a large American city will fail. Later investigations will reveal this failure was due to years of neglect and short sightedness on the part of political leaders.

# 9. A scientific discovery will have a major impact on our understanding of how the universe works. Long established theories will be threatened and new concepts will emerge but physicists will admit we know much less about the universe than we thought.

# 10. We will learn that one of our main allies has not always dealt with us fairly in fact they will be found to be two faced and selfish! Despite this our leaders will consider their cooperation so essential that they look the other way.

Well there you have it 10 amazing predictions guaranteed  to come true! Go ahead and quote me! Tell your friends! We know the future!



Russell

But Then Again Being A Pagan Sounds Good!

I was sorry to hear Christopher Hitchens passed away. He was one of my favorite people. I like nonconformists. I am not currently an atheist I am more of a non theist. I like the Course In Miracles class I have been attending and find their Buddhist like approach to Christianity pretty amazing. I know all my miracles happen between my ears. Which is also where many of my problems are. The Course would say all my problems are there. Maybe that's true, still this illusion of an objective reality containing others whose behavior is beyond my control is pretty hard to shake.

While I can understand how the whole universe could be imaginary, the idea leads me to expect to see Rod Serling standing nearby. I'd probably smell his cigarette before I saw him. I am not sure which is stranger; the idea that life is directed and goal driven or, the idea that it is not. It is strange that various religions and theologies have come into and gone out of existence. I think it's weird that polytheism used to be universal and now monotheism pretty much is. Why does having lots of gods seem silly when once it was taken for granted? Will current religions still be around in a few thousand years? If you are objective about it you know the answer is most likely "no."

I think it's weird when people think that people who disagree with their beliefs are going to go to hell or at least Lubbock. Of course they always disavow any personal enthusiasm for other people's eternal damnation. I knew a devout woman who lamented how sad it was, that many good people were going to go to hell because they did not believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. She felt sorry for them but said it was God's will that they burn forever. I don't understand how a person can believe in a god that they are morally superior to. This lady had compassion and tolerance but her version of God was an asshole! I couldn't worship a god I considered to be an asshole, I can't even believe in a god like that.

Truthfully I think what people believe in probably says a helluva lot more about them than about any deity. I like the idea expressed by a really wise and kind man that "God is Love and He works through people." Actually this concept goes really well with the concept of Jesus I get out of A Course In Miracles, or the Buddha nature as I understand it. I think it's possible that a really useful idea like this might last for thousands of years. I am not sure it needs a theology to sustain it. Theology may be more of a hindrance to spiritual growth than a means for attaining it.

I think it would be really cool of people could love each other while totally disagreeing with each other. If my affection for another person is conditional to their agreeing with me I really do not have any affection for them. Really what I am in that case is an insecure person needing reinforcement from others to avoid being overwhelmed by anxiety. I saw a movie clip once that showed some mostly naked people dancing around Stone Hinge, they looked like they were having a really great time and some of the women were beautiful too. I am not sure what they believed in but I have an open mind to whatever it was!


Russell

WARNING! This Is Maudlin

I would have figured I would have written something new by now, but my friend killing himself really knocked me for a loop! Nothing seems that important except how important we all are to each other. I am really going to... I was going to say going to miss him but, shit! I really do miss him he's gone right now! I thought I would be mad at him but I'm not, at least not yet. I have found myself getting mad at other people but I know I just want to blame somebody. They say a bad day is when everything goes wrong and there's nobody to blame! I don't blame anybody for my friend's death, not even him.

I know suicide is one of those selfish acts. But who hasn't been selfish? When I am in pain I have no doubt about my place in the scheme of things; I'm the part that hurts! Face it when we're sick or hurt we get selfish and self centered or at least I know I do. I suppose if the pain gets bad enough we will do anything to make it go away.

A little over 14 years ago another friend of mine had killed herself. She was married and had two young sons. It really bothered me that not only did she kill herself but also her sons' mother, her husband's wife and her parents' daughter. It's the same now but, maybe because I knew this friend's pain better than I understood her's, I just can't judge him. Maybe I have grown some too.

My first wife used to threaten suicide regularly and made many half-hearted and several earnest attempts to kill herself. Believe it or not you get used to it. I think what I have come to learn from all this is that life is really good and really tenuous. We are here for the blink of an eye! I don't care how rotten things seem at the moment it's only a moment. Life turns on a dime and every turn is unpredictable.

You will never live happily ever after but neither are we born just to suffer die. Life is like a game of Monopoly that nobody wins and nobody loses. The point is to enjoy your time with the other players. They are not going to be around forever and neither are we so, enjoy their company while you can! Whatever you do don't get mad and throw the game board in the air! Free parking is just around the corner! I miss you buddy...


Russell

Clean Up On Aisle Three

I don't mind blue jeans with holes in them or even paint from my palette knife smeared on them. Some people have even thought I bought them that way. I do have this thing about socks and underwear. The other day I noticed elastic showing on my underwear and I cannot  handle that. My underwear have to be intact and pristine! They don't have to be expensive though. In fact my favorite brand is only available at Wal-Mart. Normally I don't like shopping at Wal-Mart but I had no idea it could be suicidal until I saw the news.

Who would have thought that pepper spray was a shopping aid? Apparently it is. Before using your pepper spray on another shopper you should first ascertain that this action is justified. For instance it is justified to pepper spray another Wal-Mart shopper if they have more than the allotted number of items in the express lane.

There are other guidelines for shopping at Wal-Mart. For instance, tackling is okay in the Sporting Goods section but not in Electronics. You should also be careful using your Taser in Electronics as it may damage circuitry. It would be shame to leave another shopper convulsing on the floor only to get home and find out your Taser also fried your Plasma TV. Fortunately Wal-Mart has a fairly liberal return policy.

Another precaution when using your Taser on other shoppers is to try and avoid zapping folks with pace makers. I know those greeters at the entrance can be annoying but please don't fry them! A lot of them probably have pace makers and it would be a shame to litter the entrance with their elderly corpses! Unless of course you are trying to create a diversion so you can home in on a bargain unmolested by other Wal-Mart shoppers.

You know you have done a good job of tasing when you hear an announcement of "clean up on aisle three" and you have just left several other shoppers twitching on aisle three. So anyway I decided not to go shopping for new underwear on "Black Friday" lest I become just another Wal-Martyr!


Russell

Threats More Than Existential (Now That's Some Kind Of Scary)

Believe it or not I watched the Republican debates the other nite (well more than half of it, I stopped watching for a few minutes once to do something useful). I have been writing about anger a lot recently but kind of took a break. These candidates reminded me of why I had been doing that. With the notable exception of Ron Paul these folks are extremely bellicose. The subject was foreign policy and these guys pretty much advocate bullying the rest of the world around until they fall in line with us.

I think the stupid quote of the nite has to go to Michelle Bachmann who described the threat posed by Al-Qaeda as "more than existential." I wonder what are they going to do, kill us then follow us into the afterlife and kill us again? Just how does a threat become more than existential? But hey, she was not the only fear monger up there. All of them but Ron Paul seem to have a hankering to attack Iran. They are already building their grudges. I didn't hear the Hitler comparison yet but it cannot be far away.

They did engage in various fantasy scenarios of just how dangerous Iran is. Governor Perry wants to start a no fly zone over Syria. That's a sneaky way of saying he wants to start an air war over Syria. That's what we do to places we intend to invade. The Governor and the rest of them seemed to be on some kind of testosterone binge, even Ms. Bachmann felt the need to show gargantuan her testicles are.

Stirring up fear and talking up violent fantasies and then bragging about how awesomely powerful our military is. It just seems crazy to me! I don't think the Democrats are any better unfortunately. They say pretty much the same shit.

We are winding down supposedly, from the longest war in our history. But we have swarms of flying robots all over the world ready to kill at the touch of a button. Our military budget is not only the largest in the world its larger than the rest of the world's combined! Meanwhile our leaders seem to have a vision of perpetual war, fueled by never ending fantasies about threats that are "more than existential."


Russell

Lets Get Cosmic!

I cannot believe the holidays are coming again! When it comes to Christmas I think we should go on Martian time or something. I mean their year is twice as long as ours. So if you decide you are no longer an Earthling and instead a Martian you instantly become half as old as you used to be! This sounds really cool to me. I'm not sure how fast Mars spins so I don't know how long their day is. Maybe we could use Jupiter for days. Days on Jupiter last 10 of our hours I think. We would have to divide their day up into 24 shorter hours. What I have in mind is maybe working an eight hour Jupiterian day! That should mean the work day would last about three hours and 20 minutes! (Earth hours and minutes).

See we need to be more cosmic in our thinking, cosmic consciousness is what we need! We will have a Jupiterian work day and Martian years. Its going to be great! First we have to convince people that Earth bound thinking is somehow prejudiced. You know it really is too. I'm liking this more and more. By casting off our limited and biased puny Earthling point of view we not only become younger, and work half as long, we also get a whole bunch more time between having to "celebrate" the holidays.

But until everybody else gets as cosmic conscious as we are, we just gotta face it; Christmas is coming and there's not a damn thing we can do about it!


Russell

Hell's Geezers On Wheels

It's "Bike Week" on the island. So the town is full of AARP members. It's good I guess, but after awhile the constant revving of Harley Davidsons does get a tad gawdamned annoying, if you catch my drift. I went to one end of the island and found an empty beach to stretch out on. Listening to nothing but the ocean was great. Harleys really do sound like they have a problem with flatulence. The rice burning bikes are no better just different. I hope that term is not offensive to aficionados of Japanese motorcycles, but it probably is.

It is so easy to offend people these days. I am not an especially big admirer of the easily offended. I remember hearing an interview with John Cleese when he was asked whether it concerned him that the movie "Life Of Brian" might offend some people. He responded that he hoped it did. Cleese said he felt some people needed to be offended. Apparently some periodical in France recently published cartoons offensive to some Muslims. Their office was fire bombed (no proof it was by Muslims).

I know that in prewar (WW II) Germany antisemitic cartoons were published in so called humor magazines. I think what matters is intention or maybe attitude. I think it's cool to make fun of people who are too full of themselves but totally uncool to pick on the downtrodden. That's why I don't feel bad at all for making fun of people who are in love with their motorcycles. To me it's just another way people trying to be free and unencumbered wind up being slaves to their possessions. I also think it's okay to make fun of people's conceptions of God. Only people who believe their concept is somehow holy can get offended by this. I have faith but, I know that any concept I have of God is not accurate. How the hell could it be?

I don't believe in my concept of God and I don't believe in yours or anybody elses either! The nicest thing you can do for someone is to help them to quit believing in false idols right? So no matter what it is they have on a pedestal it's probably good to knock it off. But don't be mean about it! Make fun of their car, their Harley, their house, their wardrobe, their God but only if they have it on a pedestal. It's totally classless to disrespect the humble. But it's good to bring down the prideful.

Russell

Standing Up For Our Misunderstood Overlords

How can people be so insensitive? I heard today that once again a minority has become demonized by callous members of the majority population. Apparently there are some jerks out there without any sense of social consciousness. You would think that now that we understand the evils of racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia we would have overcome our pejorative attitudes toward minority groups. But no, here we go again stomping all over the sensibilities of another minority group!

Why are we so insensitive to the super rich? I hear these folks are feeling emotionally wounded by the castigating remarks of their economic inferiors. Can you imagine the angst of a billionaire seeing these occupy Wall Street bigots swarming around their work place? Just imagine their fear as their chauffeurs drive them home to their penthouses and mansions, while they scrunch down in the back of bullet proof Mercedes limousines drinking 25 year old scotch to steady their nerves. It just breaks my heart. I would love to comfort these poor plutocrats! Unfortunately I'm not allowed into their gated communities.

Still there might be something we can do to ease the hurt feelings of the ruling class. We could send them sympathy cards. Off hand I'm not exactly sure how to express the true depth of my concern for the emotional devastation of the obscenely rich. I guess I would say something like; "Dear ridiculously rich person, I know this has been a really tough time for you, what with all us uppity peons occupying Wall Street and such. I am sorry that you have to see such a disturbing sight. I know how terrible it must be too even have to consider that people of our icky ilk even exist! So please settle into your best over stuffed chair, light up a cigar with a one hundred dollar bill, sip on some antique brandy and realize that poor people don't really count. I bet you are feeling better already! So sleep well economic Czarist sleep well."

I'm not sure if I would include any smoochy marks on the letter. The rich probably have them embossed huh?

Russell

Q: What would you like to be when you grow up? A: Inert

They say it's good to have goals. Now I'm not so sure who "they" are. I think maybe "they" are the same people who provide us with what the media calls "conventional wisdom." Now I am terribly conceited but, I still think I am right when I say there is no such thing as "conventional" wisdom. Shit conventional wisdom brought us all kinds of great ideas such as; the world is flat, man will never be able to fly, the earth is the center of the universe, some people were born to be slaves, women are innately inferior to men, homosexuality is a mental illness etc. etc. etc. So you see wisdom is unconventional!

If they are wrong about wisdom maybe they're wrong about goals too. When I was little people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I remember saying stuff like first man on the moon, until that bastard Niel Armstrong stole my thunder! I also gave answers like President of the United States. Honestly though I wanted to be a garbage man. The garbage trucks in Omaha at that time loaded from the back and they had this big rotating compactor that squished the shit out of the shit that was dumped into them. It was cool! Only garbage men got to operate that sucker. As a kid garbage seemed a lot more interesting than it does now.

Today nobody asks me what I want to be when I grow up. I wonder if I seem grown up? Nah, no way! "They" probably figure it's just too late to bother with asking me. I am really not sure goals are such a great idea nevertheless I have one. My goal is be almost totally inert on a beach! Quite honestly that is really how I want to spend my life. I am happy to announce that I am in fact quite close to this goal! I do have a job, but I live across the street from the beach. I spend as much time as I can either on the beach or riding my bike to the ferry or to east beach. I get plenty of exercise but, I love hanging on the beach doing nothing. Well actually I am doing research. You see later I paint my impression of life at the beach or by the bay. I really love my life, even though I never do get to squish the shit out of shit!

Only A Nazi Would Call Someone A Nazi!

Previously I wrote about how big a problem fear is and how our leaders use it to manipulate us. Okay so now we know who to be afraid of but, still we have to justify that they are really very scary. This may sound difficult but it is actually quite simple. All we have to do is compare our current threatening individual to someone who terrorized us in the past. If your current boss seems kind of mean but you're not sure just how big a bastard he actually is, just think about how much he acts like that jack booted thug you used to work for after school when you were a kid. You shouldn't of had to put up with that shit back then, and besides you're a grown-up now! See, how easy it is? Compare your current boss to some tyrant you used to work for (I'm sure you can find similarities) and you're ready to quit. Compare your girlfriend to that tart that broke your heart and you're ready to hire a private detective!

You get the idea. But here's the thing! You do not even have to compare this person to a real person from your past. You can use a real person from someone else's past! Your boyfriend might be just like your best friend's boyfriend, the one who propositioned you even though he knew you were her best friend. Hey your boss might be just like Al Capone! See history is full of villains we can compare people to. You are probably pretty good at this but you are nothing compared to the politicians and their media minions. But then you just make yourself miserable with this stuff, they make a living at it!

Remember when we invaded Iraq? Remember the build up to that quagmire? Who was it we compared Saddam Husein to? Why Adolf Hitler of course! Man if someone is just like Hitler they're bad! So when we compared Saddam to Hitler I knew we were going to start a war. It's the second step to war. First you get everybody scared, and then you justify their fear by saying "hey this guy is just like Hitler."

We do this all the time, comparing people to some famous villain like Hitler or Stalin. We call people we disagree with Socialists or Nazis. The other day some TV talking head was saying the Occupy Wall Street folks were Nazis and that they wanted to kill him and other "patriotic Americans." Once you compare people to Nazis you have good reason to be scared of them. Liberal commentators are too quick to call others Fascists and Conservative commentators are too quick to call others Socialists and nobody but Nazis should be called Nazis! We need to quit drawing Hitler mustaches on leaders we disagree with too.

Sure it's fun to get all exorcised about how evil and stupid the people we disagree with are but, this Socialist, Nazi, Hitlerian crap is really dangerous! I am for free speech. So here is what I propose, let's quit listening to it. Whenever you hear someone start tossing around labels like Nazi, or Socialist, or comparing someone to Hitler, turn them off! I promise you they are trying to manipulate you into supporting something that is probably stupid, like war, or repressing someone, or ripping off the middle class. I don't care what political party they belong to or if they are Tea Partiers or Wall Street Occupiers if they're calling each other Nazis they are actually using Hitlerian tactics themselves and therefore must not be indulged.

(that's all for now but there is more to come)

Russell

Good Old Stinky!

Our brains are so wonderful it's really too bad that we misuse them. Building a grudge is a great way to misuse your brain. Here's how it works; just think about a situation in which you felt threatened and voila! your pissed! Don't believe it? Just think back to the last time you had to deal with traffic. I bet someone out there did something really stupid or offensive and it scared you! Your reaction to this threat was probably to get pissed. You might have even cussed out loud or shot them the bird. As you remember how stupid or offensive they were you're probably getting mad all over again. That's because you have a well functioning brain.

I really liked Kurt Vonnegut. He had a theory that, the reason we are unhappy and cause so much trouble is because our brains are too big! We are an evolutionary dead end due to our dysfunctionally large brains. He may have had a point. But you know, it is not just us ordinary people who misuse our own personal brains in order to hang on to anger and build a grudge. Our leaders deliberately manipulate us into building grudges. It's how they control us! But you almost (just almost) cannot blame them, it's just so easy! Besides we manipulate each other into building grudges all the time too. Don't believe it?

Have you ever had a really crummy boss? Of course you have. Did you and your coworkers get together on break and share with each other all the stuff you hated about your crummy boss? Sure you did! Shoot I remember this boss we nicknamed "Stinky" because he was. We used to share all kinds of disgusting stories about Stinky. It helped us hate him more. You've done something similar and you know it. We talk to family about in laws, to siblings about parents, to friends about spouses, and to everybody about traffic. Let's face it we're pissed! And we do everything we can to stay that way.

Oh back to how our leaders exploit our proclivity for resentment; they constantly remind us of who we should fear, who we should be pissed at! The media is their tool in carrying this out. Sometimes unwittingly as when they remind us to be pissed at the media (now that's some kind of mental judo!). And like lemmings running toward a cliff we do just what our overlords want us to do even when it is not in our own best interest. By the way, do you know that the Walt Disney Company actually herded those poor rodents over the cliff in that movie? Sick bastards! See now we can hate Disney! But back to the point, our leaders remind us to fear the terrorists, the liberals, the Tea Party, the immigrants, white people, republicans, democrats, those dirty hippies occupying Wall Street, the bankers, the French, rich people, welfare mothers,etc. etc. etc.

Basically some fear monger or other is always busy telling you to be afraid be very, very afraid! And you comply! If they can keep us scared and pissed they can con us into doing what they want. And it almost always works too. But hey this is only the beginning! This is just the first baby step on grudge building, but the journey to never ending war begins here.

(more to come)

Russell

Behave Or No Ice Cream For You!

Remember when you were a kid riding in the backseat of your parents' car next to your brother or sister? So there you were minding your own business when for no good reason at all your lousy sibling breathed all over you! Maybe they even touched you! So you poked them, and they poked back and pretty soon your mom intervenes, like she's NATO or something. She establishes a neutral zone running across the middle of the back seat foolishly believing she has provided a workable solution. But before long both hostile parties are encroaching on the neutral zone and hostilities recur.

Wouldn't it be great if this sort of ridiculous BS ended with childhood? You always hear stories on the news about how some adult returns to a party or bar he was kicked out of and violence ensues with fatal results. Tip of the iceberg! Only the fatal stories make the news. I am sure it happens much more often but only results in assault and battery (not newsworthy). Street gangs are always encroaching on each other. But it's not just gangsters and drunks that do this encroachment stuff. Tons of otherwise rational human beings get totally territorial out there on the road! You can see people who probably have good jobs, stable homes and a lot to live for risking life and limb to either invade or defend a car length of space!

Encroaching on others and defending "our space" is really bizarre! But it's a prime way in which we justify anger. "Of course I'm mad he got in my space!" It feels threatening and we respond by threatening back. So two adults wind up escalating in anger and chasing each other down the freeway like idiots meanwhile endangering literally dozens and dozens of other people who just trying to get home alive. Sounds kind of pathetic when you look at it objectively. But when we are justifying our anger by engaging in mutually threatening behavior we are not objective.

Here is the kicker, it's not just children, or just drunks or hoodlums or even otherwise rational adults who engage in this stuff. Political parties, special interest groups, religious groups, and countries behave the same way. Just imagine what would happen if we heard that North Korea had a naval ship anywhere near Hawaii! Or even in the Sea of Japan, we would send an aircraft carrier task force there right away! Of course we would after all we couldn't let them get away with that. All over the world countries are busy breathing all over their neighbors or even touching them daring them to poke back. And we treat this stuff with such seriousness, as if our leaders are intelligent adults not spoiled children.

Maybe it's time we put a dividing line down the backseat! "Now listen if you cannot behave and leave each other alone I swear I'll turn this vehicle around and nobody will get any ice cream!

(to be continued)

Russell

Would We Rather Be Right Or Be Happy? (or Being Right Makes Us Mad!)

So we have been at war for ten years and how is it going? How did this happen? I have to admit, initially I was for it. It was like hey we are going to catch or kill the people who financed, planned, and oversaw the 911 attacks. Well we accomplished that but, who knew it was going to take this long and cost this much and get so many people killed? I would not have agreed to the deal we got. I remember drawing a cartoon of a cruise missile flying up Osama Bin Ladan's butt, and thinking it was pretty funny. Of course cruise missiles cost a million dollars each and we were using them like a kid uses bottle rockets on the Fourth Of July. So now we're broke and we have not eliminated terrorism. It could be argued that with our drones and special operations we have become terrorists ourselves.

How is it that we become what we hate? I think it's because we hate. Still can we just decide to become a nation of loving people and never again sucker ourselves into going to war? I doubt it. I wrote about it once before but not in any detail. It's the grudge building thing, our national pastime, but probably not just ours. People all over the world seem to have this problem. Those idiots who attacked us ten years ago were grudge builders. Now we're suffering the inevitable consequences of our own grudge building. So why do we do it? Why is getting totally pissed off so damn popular? I think part of it has to do with our love affair with being right. We love to be right. We love it more than just about anything. I'm not sure we love being angry, maybe some people do. For some reason though it seems we have a need to justify our anger. It's like you're not supposed to get mad unless you have a really good reason. So if we're pissed off we better have a really good reason for it! It kind of makes sense until you really look at it.

We want to be right more than just about anything, and we need a good reason to be angry or we're foolish. So we justify our anger. You cannot get over your anger while you're busy justifying it. I think this is how we start a grudge, by justifying our anger. It's bad enough when individuals do it. When an individual builds a grudge it can have serious consequences. The worst kind of these we call "going postal." Nowadays it's not just Post Office employees who go berserk and start shooting people, and it's no longer a purely American phenomenon. School children do this shit, and it happens all over the world. As bad as this is it is nothing compared to what happens when whole countries engage in grudge building.

Every time a country starts a war it builds a grudge first. The politicians and the media collaborate in doing this. I'm not sure how conscious the effort always is but I suspect it's usually fairly deliberate....

(To be continued)

Russell

Don't Look At That It Will Ony Make It Happen!

I heard someone say that 95% of the things they had worried about never happened. I know what his intent was with that statement. But my evil cartoonist brain ran with the concrete version; Wow! what a great preventative strategy worrying turns out to be! So you want to avoid something just worry about it and there's a 95% probability it will never happen! cool!

Of course there are those proponents of the so-called "Law of Attraction" who say worrying about stuff actually increases the likelihood of it happening. They usually cite (very, very loosely) the observer effect from quantum mechanics*as scientific support for what sounds like a superstition. Nevertheless worrying does seem like a pretty negative hobby.

I used to be a news and current events junkie. I had to quit. Watching too much news is really bad for your psyche. It's like eating glass, totally unnourishing, and it hurts all the way down. Really any big news can be caught in a few minutes and checking in every few days or even once a week is plenty. Mostly there is just a lot of bad stuff that has nothing to do with anything you really need to know.

If you like to worry the media is a great source for you. I saw an "educational" show on all the various ways the earth could be destroyed. I think there was about 50 scenarios. By the time the show was over I could no longer justify doing the laundry. I mean why bother? We're doomed!

But hey we all like to worry right? I mean the news does have viewers, and that show I saw had sponsors (so it must have had an audience besides me - I don't buy shit). So in the public interest I decided to compile a list of stuff to worry about. You can add your own neurotic concerns of course, but I think this list should provide ample material to obsess on.

Stuff to worry about: global warming, flatulence, nuclear proliferation, space junk falling on your head, leaving the coffee pot turned on, drivers using cell phones, drivers texting, good mayonaise gone bad, terrorism, where are my car keys, getting laid off, you notice spinach on your tooth then realize it has been three days since you ate spinach so for the past three days everyone you have spoken to thinks you have a green tooth, the republicans, you could have a melonoma mole growing on a part of your body you never see, the stock market, all your friends have better friends, ear hair, was that tuna salad dolphin safe or did you just eat flipper's blow hole, you're not getting any younger, bad breath, you search your family tree online and learn your lover is your cousin, there could be someting hanging out of your nose and nobody wants to embarass you but it's making everybody feel nauseated, preservatives, tsunamis, bed bugs, a meteor the size of a mountain could pass through the atmosphere causing it to burn off and we would all be slowly roasted by cosmic rays, bird flu, paying too much, social security, the democrats, people might be just pretending to like you, what is that smell, forgetting to change your oil, plumbing problems, forgetting to pay a bill, there's never anything good on TV..... yada, yada, yada

Depending on your belief, this list could be either preventive or causative. But even as a prevention, 5% of this stuff could still happen. So you probably shouldn't leave home without your tinfoil hat!

Russell

*How do you become a Quantum Mechanic?

A Rose By Any Other Name Is Oh Baby, Baby!

I really have fun with my art. Whether I'm painting "realistically" or in a more bizarre way, or cartooning, or even writing, I am probably having fun. I think the idea of the suffering artist is kind of sickening. Art should relieve suffering not cause it. I have written poetry in moments of despair or grief, but I found this poetry to be healing. Even when it was angry it was a healing form of anger. I'm not talking about the wallowing around in anger typical of popular music. I think that stuff is just like the wallowing that happens on TV crime shows.

I do like art which is socially conscious, but I don't care for propaganda. Sometimes this is a fine line but I think it is discernible. The propagandist is using art to push an agenda. The artist is expressing himself. I like to think of God as an artist. People are always trying to figure out how the world we see can be the way it appears to be (messed up) if there really is a loving God. Any artist knows you cannot have light without dark. Actually I have tried to paint pictures that were completely lit up! They are so pastel they wind up just looking washed out. Who would want to read a story without any drama or suspense?

Lets face it without any ups and downs life wouldn't be very lively. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to paint a smiley face on depression. Actually I'm totally against any kind of feel good psycho-pablum. I just know life is never going to be all flowers and orgasms and that is what makes flowers and orgasms so much fun. Okay maybe flowers aren't fun.

Russell

Why Jesus Never Gets Invited To Parties

What is it I am supposed to be doing? I'm a pretty busy person. I grew up with the good old protestant work ethic. You know that sense that sense that no matter what you're doing you ought to be doing something else. Or if not something else I should be doing what I'm doing either faster or better, maybe faster and better! Behind all this self inflicted misery is the idea that I should have to earn the right to enjoy life.

I do connect this attitude to a certain kind of spiritual or religious outlook. It is the point of view from which comes the idea we should all be glad to do God's will but should not actually expect it to be fun. I come from a system which puts forth the view that God's will is, that I be happy joyous and free! Now that sounds like fun, right? So why does the idea of God's will sound like such a drag?

I think it's because God gets a bad rap due to the crowd that He is associated with. Lets face it a lot of righteous people are not much fun at all! I used to get a kick out of giving them a hard time. Okay that's a lie! I still get a kick out of it. I remember one particularly sanctimonious guy who used to warn me about falling into the Devil's company. I told him that the Devil and I were best friends, that I called him "Dev" for short. He actually freaked out over stuff like that.

Nowadays I think God is probably a lot more fun than we can believe. You know it's true! If God is infinite (if not He's not God) then he is doing some really weird bizarre stuff! He has got to have a real wild sense of humor. I like those statues of the fat laughing Buddha, now that guy is in touch with God's will. God wants you to laugh your pants off!

Beware Of The Pod People!

I am not sure how many remakes there are of "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers." The original black and white version is the best. The idea of being replaced by some unfeeling automaton is truly creepy. Creepier still is the idea that the people you love could suddenly turn into unfeeling automatons! Yet this happens to everyone sooner or later. Have you ever had a friend that suddenly seemed to become a stranger? Wasn't that pretty much the theme of junior high and high school? Too bad it doesn't stop along with adolescence, say at age 35, 40 or 60. It really hurts when someone you love turns into a pod person.

In the movie pod people would stash a big seed pod looking thing somewhere nearby and while you slept the pod would pop out a duplicate of you. The duplicate would replace you. Before it happened to you, you would experience your family and friends suddenly turning into cold unfeeling strangers. They would superficially mimic their former selves but they had no soul.

I haven't noticed any big seed pod looking things but I have experienced plenty of pod people. I don't think it takes an actual pod to replace a person with an unfeeling automaton. Well maybe an Ipod, or some other gadget or other. It's not the gadget that does it either. You could probably have all kinds of gizmos and stay human. But there is something about the emphasis we place on stuff that has something to do with becoming a pod. Also I have noticed we seem to be spending more and more time talking to and texting each other but I have hunch the more we communicate the less we say. That has something to do with it too.

Still, things and small talk are not the problem. Maybe we start seeing each other as a means to an end, or as instruments. If I don't see you as human does that mean I become less human? That sounds right to me. But what about the pod people? If I keep seeing more and more pod people does that mean I am turning into one? Shit! I hope not! Because they're here! They're here! The invasion has started!

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

Russell

What Time Is It?

Supposedly our national pastime is Baseball. I don't think so. Our real national pastime is building grudges! There are even professional grudge builders. They make a living through ranting and raving on either TV or radio. It's amazing because it's true! They are not necessarily from one end of the political spectrum, although right wingers like Limbaugh and Beck seem to get the most attention. Have you ever watched a so-called discussion on any of those TV News shows? Nobody listens they just shout each other down, interrupt and be sarcastic. I sort of like sarcastic I must confess.

It's not just political stuff that we love to get exorcised about. Remember that case in Florida, the woman accused of murdering her child? The furor over that reminded me of the pitchforks and torches scene from Frankenstein! There is nothing so invigorating as some good old fashioned righteous indignation! Being right is just so exciting, especially when you can focus your rightful pissed-off-ness on some poor slob who could use a good smiting!

It has been a while since we burned anyone at the stake, and that's good. Of course we are oftily fond of lethally injecting people here in Texas. Living on the island, I kind of like the bumper sticker which reads, "Galveston Island, Near Texas." Being near the beach may ameliorate grudge building to some extent. The ocean seems to calm people down.

Most movies and TV shows are about how somebody gets mistreated over and over until they finally build enough of a grudge that they go berserk and shoot the place up! Once they've done that everything is okay again (it's the hero, often a cop ala Dirty Harry, who goes berserk). Well in some martial arts movies they don't use guns, they just rip people apart with their bare hands (they are nonviolent gurus after all).

Shoot Baseball is way too passive to be our national pastime! We like Football because of the physical contact, hell it's more like physical assault! Believe it or don't but, Basketball was initially intended to be a non contact sport. Nowadays nobody would watch non contact Basketball.

None of this would even matter if it did not negatively impact our individual and societal growth. Grudge builders are not healthy happy people. Grudging societies do not create great works. Here we are in the 21st century and nobody has a flying car. We are not all brilliant and cultured. Why not? Maybe we have been spending way too much energy building grudges and shooting stuff up.

Just imagine watching some yelling match like the McLaughlin group and all of sudden they are listening to each other and saying stuff like "hmm you have a point there Monica." Of course Monica would have to settle down too. I do believe in miracles, but this one might take a while!

Russell

Zen And The Art Of Being Amazed

I really like the philosophy of Zen. At least I think I do. Which might be the same thing. I used to read alot of Alan Watts. Watts was one of those guys who popularized Eastern Philosophy. He also advocated the judicious use of LSD and Marijuana (for spiritual enhancement). I still like Alan Watts, hell I still like the Grateful Dead, despite my misgivings about their advocacy of drug use. I really don't care if people use or don't use drugs. I don't use them anymore but I don't regret having used them in the past.

I tried a Zen meditation class once and it was just awful! I got absolutely nothing out of it. It was me and three overweight women in warm up suits walking in a circle chanting nonsense syllables that meant something in a language none of understood. If I had had the guts I would have stopped and screamed, "What the #%@&!! are we doing?! Are you all crazy?!" but I didn't. I went along with the whole thing while thinking how ridiculous the whole thing was.

Why do spiritual pursuits lead to so much goofiness? Why do people figure they are going to find enlightenment by taking drugs or by walking around in circles chanting nonsense? We must feel  like being enlightened involves some sort of special effects or some kind of magic spell. 

There is a Zen story about two apprentices bragging to each other about their teachers. One of them says his Master can sit on one side of a river and move his finger through the air and a paint brush on the other side will paint a picture on a tablet. The other apprentice says his Master is even more amazing than that explaining that his Master eats when he is hungry and drinks when he is thirsty!

The truth of course is that we are surrounded by miracles all the time. Occasionally something happens that wakes us up to this fact. Most of the time we ignore all the miracles that are happening all the time. Here we are a collection of simultaneous processes which we call a human being, walking around on a wet rock orbiting a thermonuclear furnace on the edge of a galaxy and we think life is dull a lot of the time.

Russell

Don't Worry Be Happy!

I love to ride my bike. Right now it's too hot to ride until the sun goes down. Riding at night is okay but I miss all the stuff you can see during the day. Riding a bike is really the best way to see stuff. Walking is way too slow so you are limited by how far you can go in a reasonable amount of time. Going by car you miss just about everything. A bike is the perfect way to get around, especially on an island like where I live.

I wonder how I ever managed to stand summer before I lived by the beach. The beach is great! People talk to each other at the beach. Well adolescents don't talk but they are all crazy anyway. I think that shortly after puberty people start producing an invisible, odorless and tasteless gas that produces a psychotic state in anyone who inhales it. This would not only include adolescents but also their parents while they are within the "whiffing zone" which surrounds the youngster. Some kids have a giant whiff zone surrounding them! They can create a lot of craziness. The effects eventually wear off. Pubescent psycho gas is a growing problem. It seems that puberty is occurring earlier in the life cycle and adolescence is sometimes a greatly protracted stage. This helps explain all kinds of bizarre phenomena from things like "Toddlers In Tiaras" to Hugh Hefner.

I think we older adolescents should be called "Silver Back Adolescents." This name reminds me of silver back mountain gorillas. Those gorillas are like the kings of their domains. It is time to pay the same kind of respect to we people who have stretched the envelope on adolescence! But I digress (no shit!) the beach is the place to be in the summer. I always keep two low-rider beach chairs and a beach umbrella in the trunk of my Korean Mercedes (Kia Rio). I keep a beach bag packed and ready to go. Sometimes I just walk across the street and go to the beach there. Other times I drive to a far end of the island, walk several hundred yards and hang out on a less crowded more serene beach.

My bike has a basket and I can throw a beach towel in it and ride my bike in my board shorts and stop anywhere I want as I go exploring. No wonder the place gets perfectly lousy with tourists in the summer. Touristas are the only thing wrong with living in paradise but what are you going to do? I know the shortcuts if I have to drive in order to get somewhere. Otherwise hey "don't worry be happy," that is God's will for us afterall

The Meaning Of Life

I used to have a pretty bad addiction to cars. Cars can be just like a drug. No matter how many you have it's never enough! I never had enough money to get an auto stash of Jay Leno proportions, but I have owned way too many cars for me to maintain. The most I owned at any one time was five cars, none of which Jay would have given a sideways glance. I have collected other stuff too, magazines for instance. The urge to collect stuff seems to come from some misguided search for meaning. In a weird way it is almost creative. It's like making your own bizarre universe of objects that you have provided with meaning or even soul. Okay that's going too far maybe, but the attachment to this stuff only makes sense if the stuff means something.

I think we define ourselves by the stuff we get attached to. So if I had a bunch of junk cars at one time... hmm I'm not sure I like that definition of me! Thank God I only have one car now. But these old magazines, what will some future archaeologist think when he or she finds me buried under those? I need to get rid of this stuff. I don't have any car magazines anymore, but I have a bunch of ancient Life magazines and almost every issue of Oceans magazine (missing the first!). I am not ashamed of these but why do I still have them? I was saving them for some reason which I can no longer recall.

Maybe I should define myself by what I can do without instead of useless stuff I have gathered. I think that could be really liberating. I am going to get rid of these priceless treasures... but they need to go to someone who will really value them. Someone just like me! Of course there is only one person like that. Uh Oh!

Russell

Attack of the Blob!

So I was sitting on the beach in Negril Jamaica, not a bad place to be, thinking about God the universe and everything. A cigarette vendor came strolling by singing out, "cigarette, cigaretty, cigar, cigaro!" Occasionally he added "marijuana, hashish!" to his song. I was staying at a resort and they gave guests written notice that, "If you purchase from these people, you are supporting an illegal operation..." It went on to warn against buying drugs on the beach. Seems like good advice. It seems kind of lousy though that local people were not welcome on their country's beaches. There are high end resort areas in our country where this has pretty much happened too. Are we becoming a third world country? I sometimes think so, other times I am sure of it!

What are all those clowns up to in DC? According to a report I heard on NPR, yeah I listen to those commie bastards, while congress has been debating how to deal with our debt they have also been throwing fund raisers, at a rate of 100 fund raisers per week! Now I've worked at nonprofits that put on fund raisers. They were major events. Your congressman's main function is raising money. Guess what, he's not raising it from you or me. He's raising it from corporations. Now I know corporations need love too... No wait they don't! As a matter of fact, even though our goofy government has decided that corporations are people, they are totally lacking in humanity. Human beings are loaded with humanity, the good and bad aspects. Corporations are more like amoebas they just consume whatever comes along without conscience or mercy. They are sort of like the monster in the movie "The Blob."

Corporations are probably handy for doing business but giving them the rights of people and then arming them with mega wealth is pretty much suicidal. So anyway there I am soaking up the sun when I overhear another ugly American (could have just as easily been an ugly European) haranguing the cigarette vendor, "I want some of that red haired Jamaican! That weed you sold me yesterday was bullshit!" I bet he worked for a corporation. The blob absorbed people and they became part of it.

Russell

Enui

It is kind of sad that the space shuttle program has come to an end. There are probably more people on the planet born after we quit going to the moon than people who remember going there the first time. What has happened? I'm not sure which is worse, quitting the actual going to the moon or losing the desire to go there. I think most people have personal goals that give them a sense of purpose. Not having a purpose would be depressing. To be honest I have no idea what our national purpose might be nowadays. I know we are fighting some wars, I know there's a fight over our national debt. I know some folks are involved in some ideological struggles regarding the wars and the national debt. I don't see some grand design involved in either. Some times I start a painting by just slapping some paint on canvas and seeing where it takes me. Maybe that is what is happening in our society. Our leaders are just slapping on some stuff and who knows where it will take us. It's a reasonable approach to painting but I'm not sure it's anyway to run a country.

Russell

UFO Mania

Flying saucers are totally cool. The people that see them are not. Of course I think it would be sort of awesome to make a living as a UFO "expert." I mean how hard can it be? I have watched those guys on the History Channel (I kind of hate admitting that) and their job is pretty nifty! They go around the country trying to determine which UFO sightings are real and which are hoaxes or some natural phenomena. If as a kid I had told my parents I wanted to be a Ufologist they would have gone berserk, who knew it could be a viable career.

Actually I probably am qualified to be an Ufologist. You see as a child I was an accomplished liar. My best whopper was convincing the neighborhood kids that I actually had been abducted by a UFO! It must have been a good story because they all believed it. I cannot recall any of the details of the story. I know I enhanced it's creditability by feigning something that could only be called, PTUFOAD (Post Traumatic UFO Abduction Disorder). I bet those guys on the History Channel start using this term! The symptoms of PTUFOAD involved shivering and then entering a trance state where events were both re experienced and described in a robotic monotone.

Once as a teenager a friend and I were convinced we were about to have a close encounter of the second kind, that's when you see something that's scary as hell but don't get probed (ouch!). We were out for a walk, since we were too young to drive. It was a quiet night in suburbia, we were frustrated by the lack of drama in our lives. Unexpectedly we encountered an eerie blue-green glow emanating through the planks of somebody's backyard fencing. We were shocked and awed! Our jaws dropped, a wavering glow was pulsating from a backyard in our neighborhood. We knew there was only one possible explanation, FLYING SAUCER! We gingerly stepped closer and closer toward that fence, torn between rushing to it or instead getting the hell out of there. We held our breath. As we got closer we heard a low hum and intermittent gulping noises that had a creepy gastric quality to them. We haltingly peered between the slats of the fence expecting to see something either horrible or perhaps wonderful but certainly fantastic!

It turned out to be an illuminated swimming pool with a gorgeous blond in a bikini swimming laps. We were let down about not seeing a flying saucer but on the other hand we did find a bikini clad blond and she was pretty! Not being too perverted we crept away post haste. We wound up feeling foolish and laughing at ourselves.

Still I think UFOs may be real. Or at least I think it is possible some superior entity could be watching us without our ever knowing it. I learned of these tiny snails that live on the boulders along Galveston's Seawall. One day I was looking at about one square foot of surface area on one these rocks. There were hundreds of these tiny black snails covering the rock's surface. It was like a whole snail civilization. They were completely unaware of me but I was amazed by them. I picked a few of them up with caring gentleness and then put them back reasonably close to where they came from. For them it could have felt like a UFO abduction. Why would we be anymore aware of a being equally superior to us?

Oh yeah about the lying I did as a kid. The neighborhood children (despite my warnings not to do this) told their parents about my fantastic experiences. It was humiliating when they confronted me en masse and called me a liar. I quit telling whoppers. A few days later the kids asked (pretty much begged) me to tell them some more UFO stories. I of course refused. I warned them not to talk to their parents about it.

Russell

Other People

I'm a pretty easy going guy.  Really not much bothers me.  I really only have one pet peeve and that's other people.  What is it with other people?  Have you ever noticed how wherever you go there is always a bunch of other people there ahead you?  I wanted to go to the store to get a snack and the store was chock full, practically overflowing with other people!  I know other people need to eat and stuff, but it was like they were just wandering around aimlessly through the store.  It's not just stores either these other people are all over the place.  The roads are full of them.  I mean just try going somewhere!  There will be other people in the way, all the way, and when you finally get where you're going it will be llittered with other people.

What can you do?  You could stay home but there wouldn't be anyone around.