a very special episode of the new hit '12 and a half'...

'The following takes place between 8:15 and 9:15pm. Events occur in real time.'

A man sits at his kitchen table and fiddles with a laptop.

He gets up, puts on water for tea, sits back down and fiddles with a laptop.

The water comes ever so close to boiling, so he gets up, kills the heat, makes tea. Then he sits back down and fiddles with a laptop.

A Muslim Terrorist who is actually a Mercenary paid by Russian Separatists who are actually Ukrainians of Bulgarian decent comes to the door. He is selling siding. The man uses sophisticated methods of counterterrorism to fend off the attack. That is to say, the man ignores the knock at the door.

The man sits at his kitchen table, drinks his tea, and continues to fiddle with his laptop.

As we reach the end of this crucial, stressful hour in one man's life, it occurs to him that it would be pleasant to pick out a book and go to bed.

Cut to a clock ticking away the seconds as a split frame shows the man choosing a 19th century Spanish Realist novel while outside not a whole hell of a lot happens and the sun starts to disappear. 

a poem reprised...

Turn About



My sorrowful pen, my notebook, full of pain
from long neglect, confront me as I plead
my case for treating them with rough disdain –
for they can’t abide a careless deed,
however driven by necessity –
We are the petty servants of the heart,
it’s true, they say, but anyone can see
how far you fall in failing to depart.
So let fatigue and sickness do their worst,
I’ll walk a while under the sun today,
perhaps repent of caring who’s the first
or who’s the last along this weirder way.
It feels like death to turn aside and choose
to ditch what wiser men would fear to lose.

well damn...

Goethe!

Find the poem here.

     O the periphrastic locutions I'll employ to avoid the word 'tweet'. 

irresolute resolutions...

     I've been thinking lately that it's time to return to a more deliberate practice as a poet, a more persistent practice as a theologian. How to get there is a poser, but I suspect it has something to do with simply going down the street to that parish church every Sunday whether I like it or not. O, and I still need to make a living. We shall see. In the mean time, I give you this from Madeleine Delbrêl: 'Our Christian life is a pathway between two abysses. One is the measurable abyss of the world’s rejections of God. The other is the unfathomable abyss of the mysteries of God. We will come to see that we are walking the adjoining line where these two abysses intersect. And we will thus understand how we are mediators and why we are mediators.'
     I don't know how to be that. 

     So, our air conditioning is broken. It's as if we've been plunged without warning into the 1970s. 

I for one support Steven Spielberg's right to hunt Ceratopsians for sport.

just thought i'd point this out...

     You know who you are:

     If you are among the easily offended; if you are outraged by the Hobby Lobby ruling, and think that a Gay Pride parade signifies the expansion of tolerance and equality; if you complain because no one wants to pay to have your child killed; then congratulations, you are among the New Bourgeoisie. 
     You are the bien pensant, conventional, milquetoast, soft and squishy mediocrity at the heart of any ordered polity. You are in charge of most of the Bourgeois institutions, from colleges to hospitals to investment banks. You are a rich class, but middling because of your fears, fears which in good middling fashion you project onto the rest of us in your quest for control. (The Bourgeoisie crave control the way a heroin addict craves the needle.) 
     What's so sad is that, again like all middling classes, you imagine that you are interesting, radical, on the cutting edge of history, or whatever else they tell you is good in the NY Times, on HuffPo, or on one of those Disney channels (including of course ESPN - yay Soccer!). You're not. Your speech codes, your implied sumptuary rules, your protected classes and your peccadilloes, are all so thoroughly boring and conventional as to make me want to mainline scotch. 
     You have all the power, but are increasingly vicious in the use of it, as befits the middling rulers that you are. You are vicious, moreover, because like all middling classes you fear the inevitable fall, for you know your time is short on this earth. You are, at the last, old and lashing out as a result of the fact that, while you won and have become settled in your middling power, you know that soon you will die and leave nothing behind. 
     Have a nice day.

something from Goethe...

     So, I’m learning German. It’s a slow process because I have little time to devote to it, so I'm still in the first group of lessons. Still, poetry is beginning, just beginning, to reveal itself to me word by word. With that in mind, I give you this delightful, brightly sad poem by Goethe, 'Permanence in Change'. Blütenregen - blossomshower! - is just lovely. 

Dauer im Wechsel

Hielte diesen frühen Segen,

Ach, nur eine Stunde fest!

Aber vollen Blütenregen

Schüttelt schon der laue West.

Soll ich mich des Grünen freuen,

Dem ich Schatten erst verdankt?

Bald wird Sturm auch das zerstreuen,

Wenn es falb im Herbst geschwankt.

Willst du nach den Früchten greifen,

Eilig nimm dein Teil davon!

Diese fangen an zu reifen,

Und die andern keimen schon;

Gleich mit jedem Regengusse

Ändert sich dein holdes Tal,

Ach, und in demselben Flusse

Schwimmst du nicht zum Zweitenmal.

Du nun selbst! Was felsenfeste

Sich vor dir hervorgetan,

Mauern siehst du, siehst Paläste

Stets mit andern Augen an.

Weggeschwunden ist die Lippe,

Die im Kusse sonst genas,

Jener Fuß, der an der Klippe

Sich mit Gemsenfreche maß.

Jene Hand, die gern und milde

Sich bewegte, wohlzutun,

Das gegliederte Gebilde,

Alles ist ein andres nun.

Und was sich an jener Stelle

Nun mit deinem Namen nennt,

Kam herbei wie eine Welle,

Und so eilt's zum Element.

Laß den Anfang mit dem Ende

Sich in eins zusammenzieh'n!

Schneller als die Gegenstände

Selber dich vorüberflieh'n.

Danke, daß die Gunst der Musen

Unvergängliches verheißt:

Den Gehalt in deinem Busen

Und die Form in deinem Geist.

just thinking out loud here...

     So it seems I'm an idiot for suggesting that so-called 'abortion', that is, the killing of children for convenience and profit, is Big Business. Planned Parenthood is after all a non-profit corporation, and as such I suppose is incapable of pursuing the Big Evil for the sake of money. Well, no. Consider - $1.6 billion in assets, executive positions commanding high six-figures, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding at stake - that's real money last time I checked.
     Whence all that money, you ask? People want to kill children because the children get in the way, are inconvenient and cost money. Some of the children have - gasp! - defects, and are therefore unworthy of life. These people cannot yet legally kill their children, so they need someone to do the job. Planned Parenthood simply offers what the market demands.    
     Let's keep it straight. The people who kill children, and who have their children killed, are doing it deliberately, with malice aforethought, and we have to start saying that out loud. We also have to turn it around and point out that keeping the money flowing through the Organization is what drives Planned Parenthood, and essential to that revenue stream is the killing of children.
     In any case, I'm tired of glad-handing people who kill children for a living, and I'm tired of giving their supporters the benefit of the doubt. This is the Big Evil, and it makes anything done by Monsanto or BP look rather bland.

it's the art of the possible after all...

     Were I a man of energy, vision, and courage, but little wit and less soul, I might think of forming a new political party here in the US. Our platform would be simplicity itself.
     First, all registered Democrats shall be required to demonstrate the ability to dismember a living infant with just a boning knife. Ideally, each Democrat should meet this requirement by dismembering his or her own newborn with a boning knife, but if that is not possible an infant shall be provided at no cost by the State, which will levy a dedicated tax on all registered Republicans.    
     We will need tutorials in how to dismember a living infant with just a boning knife.  In addition to a series of Public Service Announcements for adults, such children as live to attend school shall be taught the techniques necessary using chickens and rabbits, with the added value that they will thereby learn important cooking skills at the same time.
     Obviously Braised Infant With Crispy Skin will be a delicacy served at all state dinners. 

you don't really want a revolution, trust me...

     I know, I know, this Potemkin Protest took place several news cycles ago, but I've been busy. Anyway, seems some fifty thousand or less took to the streets of London to protest Austerity. 
     Russell Brand gave a speech. Russell F*cking Brand.
     Bored now.

     I mean, look, Austerity is a way of saying Bend Over, but what is this 'revolution' of which they spoke? Were they going to shut down Sellafield? Storm Buckingham Palace and occupy Westminster? And what the hell, not a revolution of radical ideas but of ideas we already have? Like the Poor Laws, perhaps, which were and are designed to keep poor people poor? What a joke. Lest we forget, Austerity is the English Way and it's about time they revolted. Russell Brand et al, however, are making this so much trivia. Where's their Vaclav Havel - let someone like that come forward and we've got a ball game. (Come to think of it, where's ours?) No, spare me the Hippy Branding and the Lefty Lite pseudo-revolutions that change nothing while shuffling the deck chairs and reassuring the powers. 
     Not that I want the full-on, Leftist Stalinist Iconoclast Desert of the Real either. Had to make that clear.

i rant a little about some emergent christian lunacy or another...

     So, it seems we must learn to let go of Sunday worship. It's about freedom, it's about going with the flow of God's Spirit, it's about, well, I can't keep going like that because it makes me want to set my hair on fire.     
     Look, let's not waste time with bullshit - it's all about the Money. I'm a wanderer and a lazy bastard, gotta have my eggs benedict with scallops and a couple of mojitos of a Sunday kind of guy, but that's not a principled choice, it's not something anyone should imitate. So take it as written that I'm no shining example to the wider world of how to live. How do I know that? Well, I'll tell you.

     Is it only me who sees how blindingly obvious it is that Money needs us doing anything on Sunday but going to church and all that entails? You who want Community (whatever the hell that is), riddle me this - how would you like to have one day, just One. Freaking. Day., when everything is shut down and we worship the Lord of the Universe for our own good? Worship being, of course, that time out of time when He *serves us* and pardons us and gives us His Life so we might not be dead weight falling falling falling.... But you know all that. Might it also be meet and right that it be the Same Day for Everyone, so we're not atomized fragmented scattered to the winds? And how about it being the Eighth Day and all that archaic stuff the Fathers tried to teach narcissists like us, so Sunday it is? Why the f*ck do we want to mess with that?

     Money, that's why, and not our money, o no. I make a lot of money, but I don't make any of it on Sundays. I *spend* it on Sundays, spend it on those who make way, *way* more money than I'll ever see.

     Think Starbucks wants us to abandon them on Sunday? Love that New York Times Sunday Subscription? O, it's so cozy to sit around with our [insert insanely priced coffee drink] and read the different sections of the paper. Of course it is. You should get a gold watch from 'em when you turn 65, you're their best employee. 'But we spend Sunday with Family.' Good for you, blood and soil are the best really. Maybe you can watch sports, or talk about sports, or maybe there's a movie to see - hey, if we don't choose the HD version the price is lower. 

     But...but, we have to adapt, don't we? Yes, that's what we learn in every marketing program. This is how organizations survive. You think the Church is an organization, right? You're ambivalent about it, but that's the way it goes. Seminaries really do offer great Marketing Degrees I have to say.

     So, it comes down to the real Good News - batteries don't need rest, and they certainly don't need God. I, however, do need a mojito, but it's a working day. Some days I really do envy alcoholics.

what's your hobby now?

     Everything I read about the so-called 'Hobby Lobby' case makes me angry. It makes me want to turn over the tables in a rage and chase even my friends with a whip. You're all wrong, from the smug Progressives who are out to convince the world that 'Corporations' are evil (except Planned Parenthood and every single freaking Union that exists, but pay that no never mind), to those on the right who seem to think that this is a victory of some sort. It's about 'religious freedom' don't you know, and it is, which is precisely the problem. We lost, they won, which is why we have to sit in the corner and beg for scraps from SCOTUS. What's more, as I've said before to apparently an empty universe, all this ruling does is change the mechanism whereby the owners of Hobby Lobby, and everyone else, will continue to pay for the killing of children for convenience and profit. 

     And that's what it's all about folks. When are we going to stop using the other side's language, when will we stop accepting their terms and conditions for what only seems like a 'debate'? Stop for the love of God saying 'Abortion', would you? It's not 'Abortion', it's Killing Children For Convenience And Profit. Say that every time you get into this. Tell those who are 'pro choice' that they approve of the Killing Of Children For Convenience And Profit. They are complicit in the murder and disposal of human persons who are by definition helpless and at our mercy. We must say this clearly and without hesitation. We must be indifferent to their fine feelings when we tell them that it is they who hate women, they who hate children, they who have done all this in the name of power and money, for the killing of children for convenience and profit is big business. 

     Yes, it's existential decision time. There is Good, and there is Evil - what's it to be? 

     And I'm writing this on a blog platform owned by Google. Le sigh.