The Kafwellian Dystopia

Those of us who are level-headed and clear thinking, e.g. the rest of the world, should sympathize with America right now.  That country finds itself in the unenviable position in which half the country fervently believes the Anti-Christ has just been revealed, and the other half piously believes that the Second Coming has just occurred, and both are right.  In fact, one might think of the situation as the Second Coming of the Anti-Christ.

One the one hand, the Anti-Christers are so convinced that TEOTWAWKI has arrived, that they've decided to get a head-start on the death and destruction bit.  They have spent their life savings to hire a fleet of buses to haul them around from town to town, where they can help folks get going on burning down civilization and destroying culture.

On the other hand, the Second Cominites, in their orgiastic revels, are blind to the fact that the Old Baddies they just threw out are all getting reappointed by their Savior.

It's a rather pitiable position for a nation to be in.  Not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, they are both engaged in beating the living daylights out of each other, while both are wondering where the hell those attacks are coming from.  One can only assume that Kafka and Orwell have sat up in their graves and are gleefully watching the proceedings.  It is the birth of a whole new form of governance called Absurdist Kafwellian Dystopia, in which even the Elites who run the place haven't a clue what they are doing.

There was a priceless moment when Donald Trump, the Anti-Savior for lack of a better term, met with Barack Obama, the outgoing Anti-Savior.  One can only assume from the look on Trump's face that the Secrets of the Universe have just been revealed to him, and it looks nothing like the world he had planned on.  He has been handed the keys to Gringott's Wizarding Bank, only to find it stuffed to the rafters with perfectly ordinary lead ingots and not a horcrux in sight.

Suddenly, as the inebriated fog of celebratory and commiserative parties slowly wears off, both sides are beginning to realize the wisdom of P. J. O'Rouke's famous satirical invective, "Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards."  As folks stumble out into the glaring sunlight, they are dazzled both by their stupidity for both having been taken for a ride, and for not having chosen a more palatable Anti-Christ.  Even Mr. Trump seems a bit overwhelmed by his own rhetoric, if that makes the reader feel better.

Trump honestly never thought he'd get elected, which some people might find rather quizzical.  He entered the race to steer the dialogue; that's it.  What he found was that he had tapped a nerve more raw than biting one's tongue while enjoying a particularly spicy bowl of Tom Yum.  At some point, he realized he was too far in to quit, though he knows the next mouthful of Tom Yum is gonna hurt something fierce.

It's an amazing crazy quilt of interests who have all been playing a game of brinkmanship, and all of them have tumbled over the cliff.  As they all plunge inexorably towards the rocks below, they are all fighting each other to be the last ones to land, thinking the leading corpses will cushion the blow just enough to claim victory.

It is nice to think that Americans have learned their lesson now, and if they make it to another election, will choose the sane option of avoiding polls altogether.  After all, if no one participated in the circus, there wouldn't be much a circus to watch.  All shows require an audience, otherwise they are just rehearsals.

When will people realize that the only viable option is to not surrender ANY personal sovereignty to ANYONE for ANY REASON?  One need only look at history to understand that, in the end, NO ONE is ultimately happy with the outcome of any election, because it always means having to bow down to some undesirable result, no matter who claims victory.

So as we watch the absurd pageant of quasi-religious fervor unfold like the legendary Corpse Flower of Sumatera.  This is an appropriate metaphor because not only does the enormous flower smell like rotting flesh, it is also a parasite, an apt metaphor in so many ways.

If you swear allegiance to an abstraction or subscribe to a creed that you did not create, then you are part of a System that cannot be reformed from the inside.  The System is so inculcated into daily life that to change any part of it ripples out into the most insignificant parts of daily life.  Like a gangrenous limb, it must be entirely cut off.  There is no curing bit by bit.  The only way forward is to bit the bullet and get it over with.

Instead, the vast majority of people with endure any amount of absurdity and indignity, rather than suffer the momentary pain of the cure.  In fact, most will come to convince themselves that the bizarre and unwieldy System is preferable to any alternative, even liberty and individual sovereignty.  Ultimately, nothing will change until the pain of the System is so unbearable that there is no alternative but to crush it and take whatever follows, which as the people of Iceland learned is actually a far better choice.

Most people are terrified of making choices and taking responsibility for them.  They would rather play the victim and have institutions that rush to their aid, but they rarely realize the enormous price they pay for such cure, choosing to pay the price of liberty for the childlike state of eternal childhood.

And so the Kawellian (to coin a term) farce proceeds apace.  The Absurdist Dystopia grows unabated, sucking the life out of people like a massive parasite that the masses willingly accept out of fear of personal responsibility.  Such is the nature of insanity.

On the plus side, though, it makes for a helluva comedy.

Dude, Lighten Up

Alright, alright already!  Message received!

Readership took a nose-dive this week as I took a decidedly brooding and intellectual tone.  Sorry guys I just write what I think about, and sometimes my thoughts just aren't funny, or even vaguely humorous, or even darkly ironic.  Just happens, you know.

So on this Friday, as we stare down the end down the end of the ninth month, third fiscal quarter and history as we know it, let's try to lighten up a bit.

Back in the day, when I was a lowly acting student in the clutches of the legendary Cecil Pickett, I was taught that people are more or less a combination of dichotomies.  Some walk on their heels, while others walk on the balls of their feet.  Some are pelvic, while others are chest.  Some are head, others are heart.  And now, to these basic dichotomies, we can add Clintonite and Trumpian.

It seems the entire world has calcified itself into one of these two trenches, and like a WW1 re-enactment, the two sides are determined to take pot-shots at each other for the next six weeks with little forward progress.

The Clintonites believe that no amount of criminality, email scandal or nose-dives should deter the world from pursuing the status quo with complete abandon.  In fact, the globalist status quo has worked so well that the world needs at least three other Clinton look-alikes to ensure the agenda progresses unabated.  This is the "damn the supersonic Russian torpedoes, full speed ahead" school of thought.

The Trumpians, on the other hand, believe that the current course is Ultimate Evil incarnate and we need to do anything else, no matter how screwball, non-sensical or ad hoc it is.  This school of thought has adopted the Crazy Ivan tactic of unpredictable and erratic maneuvers in order to vex the enemy.

Like matter and anti-matter, these two worldviews cannot come in contact for fear the resulting implosion would annihilate Life, the Universe and Everything!

The whole world appears to be holding its collective breath waiting for the outcome of the US election.  Why, even the three other candidates have ordered a pitcher of margaritas and kicked up their heels to watch the show.

The world has decided there's no point in trying to get anything done right now, since a Clintonite win would almost assure WW3, pitting East versus West, while a Trumpian win would unleash a global chorus of economic Kumbaya.  Talk about your proverbial forks in the road, that's a lot of pressure to put on a geriatric basket case and whirling Dervish.

For those of us trying to make meaningful progress with our lives, this election season couldn't end fast enough, one way or the other.  If the Clintonites win, we need to quickly finish out the bomb shelter and get the quadraphonic shound system installed.  If the Trumpians win, we need to position ourselves to cash in on the entrepreneurial boom-bust certain to follow.  Either way, there's still a lot of work to do, and this constant rise and fall of a clear leader is wearing us out.  It's got us running back and forth between feverish digging and polishing up the five-year projections on investments.

In this global year of course-setting, the Brits decided they wanted to reverse course, the Germans decided Merkel wasn't doing it for them, and the Russians rather firmly decided they liked what Putin is doing.  One thing is rather glaringly clear: the world has decided globalism ain't giving the common man any warm, fuzzy feelings about the future.

Among the major global powers, the US is the last wild card still remaining, and the American people aren't making it easy on those trying to read the goat entrails.  In fact, the folks using "Islamic terror" to try and sway the public discourse are increasinly finding the tide turning the wrong direction.  Folks just aren't buying the official narrative, no matter who spins the tale.

If I had to call the US election and short-term aftermath, I would have to say the Trumpians by a landslide, followed immediately by a revenge market crash orchestrated by the Soros/Bankster/Military/Industrial/Religion/Freemason complex who, like spoiled children that don't get their way at Toys 'R' Us, hold their breath, throw a tantrum and stamp their feet in protest.

There are only two things wrong with this scenario: 1) Americans are the most controlled people on Earth, and 2) the Trumpster could open his mouth at any moment and completely ruin the festivities.

No matter what the outcome, can we just put this mess behind us and get on with the End of the World as We Know It?  I'm worried my bomb shelter will cave in while I'm seeing to my investments in the future.

2013 - The Predilection Issue

Welcome once again to our world-famous Predilection Issue.  Now, most folks around this time make predictions, but really what they are doing is forecasting trends, not predicting.  So we figure the better term is 'predilection'.

That said, we're pretty much always right since we correctly define the terms.  Clear and precise thinking leads to clear and precise predictions of future events.  Keep in mind that predilections are only good for a year or so into the future, after that, you're on your own.

So, we dim the lights, light up a good cohiba and stare into the crystal decanter, which happens to be loaded with top-notch single-malt scotch this year, thus we have high confidence in this year's report.  Last year, it was only rot-gut Manado vodka, yet we were still right, so it can only get better with the right jet fuel.

Our first prediction is that the word LIBOR will become a household word, but not in the sense of the British bankster class.  Rather, it will be in the sense of folks calling in sick worldwide to protest the fact that governments everywhere are sucking up as much as 90% of folks' incomes.  Libor, meaning 'free', will come to define the practice of folks just saying, "F^ck it," and refusing to work for Da Man ever again.  Black market economies will spring up like weeds in grandma's garden.  In the US, the gummint will fight the black market by saying it is a racial slur and prosecuting people under the hate crimes laws.

Three-D printers will become all the rage as folks find out they can print guns with them.  That will last for about six months till some genius realizes that printing a gun and printing ammo are two very different problems.  A lot of folks will end up with nifty wall displays, since the plastic guns aren't even heavy enough to use as clubs.  In China, they'll come up with the brilliant idea of printing knives, which are far more effective.  In the US, it will become fashionable to be seen with at least one name-brand sub-machine gun.  In Milan, gun holsters will become all the rage.

In Paris, it will be too dark at night to care what anyone else is wearing, as the lights go out for austerity.  Tours will promote "Paris - the City of Dark" and start talking about how romantic it is that way.  All the famous art museums will close at sunset, since you can't see a damn thing after that.  The Paris Opera will only have matinee performances...after they install the skylights.  The Eifel Tower will be destroyed by a jet on landing approach to Charles DeGalle, since the pilots couldn't see the damn thing in the dark.  Impressionism will see a resurgence because, hey, Monet was blind too!

Marijuana will become (once again) a global rage.  Laws will be cancelled, enforcement will die off, and folks will return to mental and physical health as usage of the plant becomes 'norml' again.  Until some nut job gummint employee in the US remembers that his best drug experiences were in Arab-speaking countries, where 'qif' and 'hashish' are commonplace.  Then the gummint will launch a major attack on pot-smokers because they support Islamic terrorists by enjoying a little Mother Nature.  Doesn't matter that it was grown in Joe Six-Spleefs backyard in Eagle Pass, Colorado.  Hollywood, lacking any other good ideas, will do a remake of "Reefer Madness" and scare the hell out of everyone once again, only this time, instead of being used by musicians and black people, it will be Muslims and anyone who hollers at the top of their lungs before dawn.

In space news, Congo will join the 100-mile high club by launching a refrigerator, which will be bigger (of course) than North Korea's washing machine.  In response, North Korea will launch six rockets to the Moon, which will land on each and ever Apollo landing site and erase Neil's footprint.  The US will have caniption fits, but the world will point to the fact that they are signatories to the UN Space Treaty which prevents gummints from claiming territory on heavenly bodies.  The feminists will latch on to that argument and claim that all marriages to good-looking women are thus null and void.  But really they're only angry that no one would marry them because they're too ugly and pushy.  Meanwhile, NASA will continue to release photos of ancient ruins on Mars from its Curiosity rover and talk about how cool light and shadow is while no one pays any attention at all...because only crazy people think about that stuff.

In environmental news, Fukushima will reach criticality and form a massive pool of molten lava in east Japan. This could be easily ignored by the world, except that the oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico will have circled the globe and ultimately be sparked off by the lava, creating a massive global ocean fire with a huge fountain of flame spewing off the coast of Louisiana.  Instead of getting folks to clean up their mess, it will become a romantic dining spot and set off a whole new tourist trade in Louisiana, since no one wants to go to the New New Orleans Post-Katrina.

On the tech front, the first android child will be born in 2013, which sets of a frenzy among the British aristocracy, as they fight over who gets to bugger the thing first.  Meantime Microsoft, in an Orwellian Politically Correct move, will ban certain words from the lexicon.  Anyone using a Microsoft product will not be able to type the words, "bomb", "gun", "government sucks", or "women are inferior to men".  Anyone trying to do so will find their license cancelled and they'll have to buy a bootleg copy on the Black Market, which is also a banned term.  Notablly, Bill Gates will die this coming year from hemorrhagic fever that he catches while giving vaccines to poor African children.  His last words will be recorded as, "I paid my yacht note, right?  Don't want to be like Steve Jobs."  Amazingly, the infant mortality rate in Africa will improve dramatically immediately afterward.

Which naturally brings us to the Big Pharma news.  One of the Biggies will announce that they have discovered the perfect panacaea: one pill that cures everything from hangovers to pregnancy.  The only problem is that the pill is too big to swallow, so no one can test it.  The company's stock will shoot to the Moon and then crash and burn.  It will be called the "Facebook" of the medical world.  Interestingly, the drug will become a major hit since someone in Bogota,Columbia discovers that if you smoke, toot and use the rest as a suppository, you will enjoy five days of perfect mental and physical health before you die.  It will become known as "horse", since it makes you as strong as a horse.  It will become the drug of choice among the Baby Boomer set, as they look for a graceful way to exit.

On the religious front, the Jedi sect will become the fastest growing religion in all of history.  Jedi temples will spring up everywhere and demand equal status with all the regular cults.  This lasts for a time until some guy in Hoboken, New Jersey, named Michael Valentine Smith, starts a new religion based on orgies and ritual cannibalism.  It will grow at twice the pace of the Jedis until someone realizes that the ultimate 'grok' will be when the last newborn eats the last old guy and the world comes to a crashing end.  However, for a time, 'born again' will take on a whole new meaning as cult members scream that phrase aloud while on the toilet.  The problems really begin when there is a major schism, as the 'water sisters' demand equal treatment with the 'water brothers'.

In entertainment, Britain's longest running and most watched soap opera, "The Royals," will have a major event when two of the key characters, Willie and Kate, breed.  A major plot will involve the doctor who delivers the Royal Brood.  See, there's twins in this go-round, and the second one is breach.  The doctor in charge of the delivery will be 'suicided' shortly after the blessed event because he will be heard to say of the breachie, "Looks just like Liz!"  This one event will set up a major theme for the next 30 or 40 years, as the audience tries to guess which twin will be the one to assume the throne.  Don't bother watching.  It will just dissolve into a rehash of "The Man in the Iron Mask."

And so that brings us to the final predilection for 2013, which is...drum roll here...NO APOCALYPSE!  That's right, there will be natural disasters and various other causes of death, and millions will die, as they would statistically anyway.  Some will drown, some will get old, some will run into the sharp end of knives, while others will fall into pits caused by oil drilling, and still others because the cure they needed was illegal or hidden.  Still others will get hit by lightning or bitten by rabid rabbits.  By mostly they'll be killed by mechanized pilotless machines in the sky.  But the world will keep spinning and no one's prophet or god will come riding to Earth on a cloud to mete out justice.  In other words, it will be just another year with its share of disasters.  Nothing unusual, considering Mount Vesuius buried two major cities 2,000 years ago, kiilling millions, and the world didn't end.  In fact, those cities are now tourist attractions.  One hundred and fifty yeats ago, Kerakatau blew up in the Java Sea between Sumatera and Java and changed weather worldwide for two years after.  And we're still here and still killing, screwing, cheating, fenagling, lying, back-stabbing, under-handing, stealing, coveting, destroying, and bullshitting each other.

If the world as we know it is going to end, then it can only mean that humans will start treating each other with respect and stop ripping each other off.  Simple as that.

In fact, an end to the world as we know it might actually be a good thing.  It might promote love and peace and harmony amongst the survivors.  It might prevent a lot of harm and pain and injustice.

Just something to think about.

And the Number 1 predilection for 2013?  Michael Jackson will still be dead, but unlike Elvis, Buddy Holly and Bob Marley, no one will imitate him.

Oh yeah, Big Bush will die in January and the world will be a better place.  'Shrub' ain't far behind him.  Babs will continue on for another couple of years, thankful that she can finally have a little peace and solitude.

In the immortal words of Linda Ellerby, "And so it goes..."

A Superhero Without Really Trying

"I'm beginning to think I'm invincible," came the first message as I got off the plane.  It was quickly followed by, "I survived Y2K, bird flu, 9/11, rapture 1 & 2, and now the Mayan Apocalypse!"

It was my Canadian bud feeling cocky with a new lease on life.

"Don't forget the planetary alignment of 1982, the swine flu and the Asian Contagion," I shot back.

Indeed, those of us of a certain age can boast that we have survived the End of the World as We Know It so many times now, it's getting rather passe.  I may even stop prepping, since if the end comes in the first half of next year, I won't care because I've dodged the bullet so many times I'm ready to surrender to the next shot fired.

I became a 'prepper' at an early age.  I was still in swaddling clothes when Hurricane Carla tore up Houston in 1961.  Then there were the double hurricanes in the early 70s.  Then Alicia, Rita, Katrina, and a half dozen other big storms.

I've side-stepped tornadoes and water spouts, earthquakes, wild-ass lightning storms, floods, and landslides.  And let's not forget the Munich bombing in 1980, or being shot at on the Afghan/Iran border the day the American hostages were taken when the Shah fell.

I've been in knife fights (I brought a gun...duh), nearly fallen 800 feet off a cliff and almost died from dysentery in Paris.  A little thing like the Mayan calendar ending ain't gonna stop me.

My bud was right...with all the apocalypses we've all survived, I think it's about time to admit we're all either dead and this is what hell looks like, or we're really immortals living out a Highlander existence.  Not sure about the latter.  I need to behead someone first to test the theory.

Here in Jakarta, it kind of seemed like the end of the world.  Beginning Friday evening, there was an epic rain for three days with severe flooding all over the city, leaving everything in gridlock.  As usual, I dodged that one by being 500 km away enjoying a lovely time eating Javanese food and hanging out in the mountains.  I did see Jesus there, but he was already dead, so nothing to fear on that account.  As for Muhammad, Buddha and Shiva, they were all missing in action.

No clouds parting, no stars falling, no whores of Babylon being eaten by dragons while drinking the blood of martyrs.  No seals were broken, no galaxies aligned.  No global coastal events.  And as far as I know, the sea is still blue-green, or at least the part that I flew over today.

The way I figure it, the Earth has been spinning around the Sun, according to best guestimates, for 4.5 BILLION years.  Odds are pretty good that it will go on spinning for another 5 billion or so.  About the worst thing we puny little humans can do is wipe ourselves out, but it won't be the end of the world.  We'll just be some cool bones buried deep in the bowels of the Earth for whatever creatures come after to dig up.

Hell, they'll probably tell themselves that oil comes from our rotting carcasses.  They might even theorize that we were wiped out by a giant meteor with a weird name.  Hopefully, though, they won't have a Mayan calendar to spook themselves with.

Those of us in the 50+ category have now survived at least a half-dozen apocalypses.  It's our job now to teach the younger generation to stop all the BS and start thinking about the future...as in making it better and not always wishing for some deus ex machina to come along and clean up our mess.  It's too easy to give up and hope for a supernatural 'do over'.  The real task is to realize we're on our own and our future is ours to make.  There won't be gods riding in on clouds, or ETs with miracle technology, or whatever dream team you believe in.

As a species, we are rounding adolescence and heading straight for adulthood.  Our parents, whatever we think they are, aren't there to clean up our rooms for us anymore.  It's time we grow up and take responsibility for our own actions.  We can't hide behind mama's skirt forever.  We now know our place in the Universe and it's time we get out there and start making something of ourselves.

Yup, we're all superheroes now.  We've dodged bullets, leaped tall buildings and outrun locomotives.  So, time to download or get off the pot.  We're still here, for better or worse.  Let's, gor God's sake, start focusing on the 'better' part of things.

Apocalypse Theater

And so it begins...

Today, being 12.12.12, is helping to fan the flames of apocalyptic panic here in Asia.  The Chinese are big on numerical symbolism.  One example is the number 4.  The Mandarin words for 4 and 'death' are very similar.  Therefore, they are very superstitious of the number 4.  They won't have floor numbers or room numbers or house numbers with 4 in them.  There's a whole industry selling phone numbers without the number 4.  License tags on the car can not contain the number 4.  I guess it never occurred to them to change one or the other word, or use a euphamism or something to avoid using the word for 'death'.

At any rate, since today is 12.12.12, Asians are attaching all this significance to the date.  Combined with the Mayan calendar thing, the Twits and BBMs and text messages are flying hither and yon predicting all sorts of nastiness. 

One of the most popular dire scenarios is that today marks the ten-day countdown to 12.21.12, with 10 somehow being significant.  Then, on 12.21, there will be three days of darkness followed by all sorts of horrible mean nasties.  Then 2013 will be the Apocalypse.

Give me a break...

The first big worldwide scare I can remember, other than hiding under my desk from nuclear bombs every Friday at noon, was 1982, or thereabouts.  Back then, it was all the planets lining up in the same quadrant of the Sun.  That signaled the end of the world as we know it.  All hell was going to break loose.  The Sun would spit fire, the Earth would crack in two, and the Universe would be sucked into a giant black hole.  That was 30 years ago and things are still spinning along quite nicely, Universe-wise.

Then it was Y2K.  That was fun, wasn't it?  What was it?  Five years of terror, horror and IT guys swimming in money?  Camping gear sold like pancakes at a church picnic.  People horded anything that wasn't nailed down, and built safe-houses over the things that were nailed down.  Bunkers...military rations...butane gas...  And what happened?  New Year's day dawned.  It was a beautiful day.  Mild weather, internet still humming along, unexploded computers.  In other words, not a damn thing.

Then, it was 9/11.  The world was under attack.  The US created gestapo organizations and started groping people's most private body parts for fear of terrorists.  Wars began.  Kids were back to diving under desks.  The world could stop spinning at any moment.  What happened?  The 'good guys' became the terrorists, and the terrorists were shown to never have existed.

So now it's 12.21.12.  Guess what?  We'll all be going about our business on 12.22, with the possible exception of regret that we spent all that time and money buying up books about the end of the world as we know it.  Won't we feel silly?

Apparently not.  Seems that no matter how stupid all this end of the world as we know it BS turns out to be, we can't get enough of it.  Next year, there'll be some new catastrophe waiting just around the corner to gobble us all up and spit out the bones.  I won't buy that one either.

The only thing the end of the Mayan calendar symbolizes is the half-way point in the 26,000-year precessional cycle.  It is remarkable that a 'primitive' culture had enough information to create a calendar capable of measuring a cycle that most brain-dead humans today don't even know exists, but it's certainly not the end of the world as we know it.

In fact, EVERY SINGLE DAY is the end of the world as we know it.  The only immutable constant in the Universe is change, which means that tomorrow will not be the same as today, no matter how much it may appear that way.  Thus, when you go to bed, that is the end of the world as you knew it up to that point.  Tomorrow, it will all change.  Somewhere in the Universe, a star will blow up or swallow one of its planets.  The wind will move leaves and paper around.  People will have changed position from when they went to sleep and when they woke up.  The Earth will be several thousand miles away from the point it was when you woke up yesterday.  The Moon and planets will have shifted several degrees against the background stars.  The puddle of water you stepped in last night will have dried up.

That world you knew yesterday is gone...ended...never to return.  Last night was the end of the world as you knew it.  So?

You wake up and start over.  The things that didn't change go unnoticed, and the things that did force you to relearn your environment, but the fact is you are still alive and the world is still spinning.

You want real end-of-the-world stuff?  How about the Black Plague?  The African famine?  The Asian Contagion?  The Banda Aceh earthquake/tsunami?  Hurricane Katrina?  If you didn't have to go through them, then your world seemed pretty cozy and secure.  If you did go through them, I'll bet it was the end of the world as you knew it.

The fact of the matter is, if we lived every day knowing it was the end of the world as we know it, this might be a much nicer world.  We might be a little kinder, a little more generous, a little more forgiving.  We might find time to smell the roses or bake a homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie.  We might take the time to tell our loved ones how much they mean to us.  We might step out of the rat race a little more often and watch the river flow.  If that's the case, then guess what?

It's the end of the world as we know it...right now, all day, just like yesterday and same as tomorrow.

Quick!  Hug your kids, kiss your wife and feed the dog!  Hurry!  Go watch the sun set, count the stars and pick a daisy or two!  Rush!  Call a friend you haven't talked to in a while, bake a double chocolate cake and turn off the damn TeeVee!

It's the end of the world as we know it!

Does that mean the Sun will wink out, the stars will fall and the Moon will fly off its course?  No.  But the world in five minutes will not be the one you woke up to this morning.  That world ended and we've just started anew.

Why is it that no one ever stops to remember that 'apocalypse' means 'to reveal' or 'revelation'?  It means that the old world has died and that the new one is revealing itself to us...all day, every day, 365 days a year, millennium after millennium.  It means that the world we knew is gone and we now have the chance to make the new one better...day after day, month on month, eon beyond eon.

Why is everyone is such a hellfire rush to destroy things when what we have is 86,000 chances to recreate the world every single day of our lives.  The world ends 86,000 times a day and a new one is born 86,000 times before tomorrow comes.  We're looking at this whole end-of-the-world stuff all wrong!

There will always be earthquakes and comets and omens in the numbers.  None of them mean a good God damn.  The world will continue to spin and orbit, the Sun will rise and set, and the breeze will still be as sweet.  The difference is whether we humans will be here to enjoy it, and at the rate we're going, that may not last much longer.

But it won't be the end of the world.  Just us.  And we ain't the world, just part of it.

Hey you!  Yeah, you...sitting there reading this.  The world just ended!  What are you going to do about it?  Look!  It just ended again...and again...and again.  You're still sitting there!  Don't you have a new world to build?

Report From FSWHQ

We here we are, the end of a rather remarkable year and the beginning of the dreaded 2012!  It's got us so stirred up here on the Far Side that we've retreated once again to our jungle nest, known as the Far Side World Headquarters, or FSWHQ, for short.

Looking like a scene from the old King Kong movie, we moved our clan back to the forest.  The four wives carried my sedan chair, while the kids and animals were loaded with important things, like a new plasma TeeVee, a pedal-free generator and the new Far Side Satellite Telecommunications Center (FSSTC).  We're going deep undercover for the coming year.

Looking back, we marvel that the world limped past the finish line, though technically we still have hours to go.  The US markets battled to a 'flat' return in the closing seconds of the year's market.  The euro ended up as the worst-performing currency in the world, which is why we brought all our euro-bonds into the jungle with us.  Perfect fire starters.

As far as economics go, Asia looks to be standing head-and-shoulders above their western counterparts.  Indonesia, Vietnam and China are red-hot.  Thailand was doing well until the floods.  Japan is white-hot, though for a different reason.  In fact, we've been collecting the new glow-in-the-dark Yen.

What's really been interesting this year, though, has been watching the PTB/W absolutely panicked, as in cold sweats and sleepless nights.  Their reckless and wild abandon in trying to nail down their little Medieval World Order (MWO) has been rather entertaining to watch, as long as you weren't in a country they destroyed to protect their little fiefdoms.  The MENA (Mid-east/North Africa) folks weren't so lucky to have ring-side seats.

One has to laugh, though, since the MWO is positively falling to bits.  The desperate invasions and attempts to control true grass-roots uprisings across the MENA regions have been like watching the Keystone Kops Kapers.  Part of their problem is something that will never change...human nature.

You see, the MWO has been a multi-century pax belli between a bunch of inbred nutcases, who are so rich and so bored, they cooked up this world domination game to have something to do.  The problem is, the closer it got the reality, the more they started fighting among themselves to be the one king on the top of the dung hill.

As fast as the inbred crowd started sniping at each other, the normal humans out here in Reality Land decided it was a good time to exercise some God-given rights.  So as the self-annointted elites tried to outmaneuver each other, the World was out-maneuvering them, and when they turned to try to nail down the World, the elites would shoot each other in the back.  Now, when you stop laughing at the mental image of that, take a look around and see the results.

Egypt was supposed to be a controlled Soros-colored revolution, but then the revolution revolted against itself to get rid of the MWO clowns.  The MWO clowns wanted to install radically fundamentalist Islamic authoritarians, which the MWO control.  But the good and very intelligent Egyptian people wouldn't hear of it.

The same is happening all across the MENA.  Folks just want to be left the hell alone.  They are tied of trading one totalitarian yutz for another of a different stripe.  Real people really enjoy just going about their business, living in peace and harmony with their neighbors, regardless of what building they choose to worship in.

Amazing how that works.

In Europe, folks everywhere are getting fed up with the whole damn package.  They are tired of the German Neo-Nazi unification called the EU.  They are tired of a completely fabricated currency shoved down their throats.  They are tired of having Goldbar Sacks alumni brazenly take over their countries in un-elected coups after watching the banks rape and pillage their economies.

The Irish fought the EU until it was literally rammed down their throats.  They then watched their red-hot economy turn to ash.  Greece and Italy, while not exactly massive industrial economies, had perked along just fine for centuries, until the EU came along.  Spain and Portugal the same.

The US is quite a tale.  The largest, most powerful economic engine ever known completely imploded due to fiat and regulation.  At the same moment the country was shipping its heart and soul overseas in the name of profit, the Puppetmasters were shoving ever draconian regulations through CONgress to prevent competition from springing up naturally to fill the void.  As a consequence, America poured gallons of Round-Up on its garden since they figured they could buy cheaper veggies from the Asian gardens.  Then the Asian gardeners got properous and wanted to keep more of their produce, so now the American garden is dead and the cheap alternatives have gone on to better deals elsewhere.

All that led to the OWS, which originally was a home-grown movement of folks sick and tired of being Rounded-Up by the bankster classes.  Of course, the Giant Sucking Media (GSM) tried to package that movement and give it a little Soros treatment, so the real folks drifted away, and it became another Tea-Licking Party (TLP).  All the real people are flooding into the Ron Paul camp, which absolutely mystifies the PTB/W crowd, because they did such a fine job of hiding Paul from themselves that they can't see what's going on.

In the meantime, the US, once global champion of peace, human rights and economic miracle-cures, has become a rogue terrorist state that is eating its own children and trying to cobble together a controlled economy without any of the ingredients that constitute an economy.  If you get enough perspective on it, it really is quite entertaining.  Harder to see that part when the bastards are auctioning off your worldly belongings in the yard where you raised your children, while you stand in the icy drizzle clutching your photo album watching your neighbors pick through your DVD collection.

Yep, we gotta admit 2012 is going to be a verrrry interesting year, and no, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Mayan calendars.  It is, though, a self-fulfilling prophesy.  In their in-bred scramble to keep us in terror-induced zombie mode, the PTB/W made up this whole apocalypse thing, hoping it would keep folks busy battening down the hatches, just like Y2K did.  Instead, it is quickly shaping up to be The End Of The World As They Know It (TEOTWATKI).  They have successfully created the Second Coming, only it's coming for them.  Those who live by the apocalypse, die by the apocalypse.  The rest of us are free to sit back and watch with amusement as everything the PTB/W predicted and tried to scare us with comes true...for THEM!

We, however, meaning us here at FSWHQ, will be happy to sit back and watch the whole thing on the new plasma TeeVee being set up in the village clearing.  The kids are busy scrambling up the coconut trees to put the new dish up.  The wives are busily nattering and playing with the new pedal-less generator.  We're preparing for our celebration tonight by tying sparklers on money tails.  It's just so damned entertaining to watch them run through the tree-tops with their tails on fire!

Out here in the jungles of Borneo, nothing changes much.  Empires come and go.  Currencies rise and fall.  Revolutions sweep across the globe.  But tying fireworks to moneys is always the same great fun.

The world is too much with us, as someone once said.  Time to put away our fear, because the PTB/W are so damned terrified that we can all just sit back and watch the in-breds shoot each other in the foot.  Think of it as the Saturday matinee writ large.  We could even open a window in Vegas and start laying odds on which in-bred families will die-off first.

Oh, they're calling us over to the TeeVee hut to do the honors of tuning in the Thai horror movie channel.  Great fun that.

So we'll wrap up the year by wishing all of our great readers a Happy and Fortunate New Year/Selamat Ulang Tahun Baru.  We'll light up a monkey for you!

And thanks for making Life on the Far Side increasingly popular!  We have added hundreds of new readers in the past year from 93 countries.  We will continue to offer arguments and diversions, and we hope you will continue to enjoy them.

Ah, wife #4 just brought us a large shell full of cap tikus (mouse piss), which is fermented coconut milk.  Nasty stuff, but after the third or fourth shell-full, you can eat the fetal deer at the bottom of the jug and not think twice about it.

Don't give the fascist pigs any reason to haul you off tonight, and we'll see you all again in 2012!

OK, Now What?

Got a note from one of my faithful readers in Pennsylvania, in response to my article, "See Ya And Raise Ya:"

We are on the same wave length, it is almost scary, like being into someone elses mind.

I posted a think about the Catholic church and got a response that shows "people hear what they want to hear", so I guess you have to save your breath. So much is happening so fast that it is getting hard to keep up. I don't think the masses want a world bank, they want a fair shake and know that the banks are the ones that are preventing it. Then you get all the "political invaders" in there, stirring them up.  Most people don't want to face the facts, that is a truth.

My reply, in part, was along the lines of: we have to give up trying to wake folks up, and start discussing what we're going to do once the whole damn thing collapses.

From the way things look over here on the Far Side, the complete and utter cave-in of the New World Order (i.e. what we got now).  And we shouldn't be thinking about what scraps we can save.  It's better to utterly destroy the whole thing, lest it rise again from the ashes.

It's like that scene at the end of 'Time Bandits,' after they've completely baked Evil.  The Supreme Being tells the boys to be careful and get every bit cleaned up, or Evil will just rise again.

Another metaphor is bamboo, which is rather apt for our current surroundings.  If you cut down a bamboo stalk, two grow back in its place.  If you don't dig down about two feet and make a wall around the roots, then it will spread like wildfire.  The only way to stop it is to uproot every bit of the plant and burn the whole thing, or you'll be cutting bamboo again in about two months.

Let's look at the situation this way.  Not too long ago, you were a kook if you:

• believed in black helicopters - now everyone knows about them and many know that the N-numbers and insignia are painted in infrared colors;
• refused to believe the official song and dance about 9/11;
• you said the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were about oil;
• if you thought the next president would be worse than Reagan/Clinton/both Bushes;
• believed in the existence of the New World Order;
• didn't genuflect and cross yourself every time you said the name Obama.

This is all common knowledge now and it's hard to find someone to disagree with you for an entertaining argument.  Frankly, if anyone still believes that America is the savior of the world and that Obama is a Man of Peace, there's no hope for them.  Heck, it's even hard to find someone who admits voting for the slimeball these days.  I actually hear some folks say they wish they had voted for Hillary, though I daresay that's like wishing you had Satan while Mephistopheles is poking you with his trident.

The proper way to go about this, is to wish that Obama would go hunting with Cheney.  Now we're getting somewhere.

The point to all this is that we should start turning our thoughts and efforts to deciding what to do AFTER the collapse.  What do we replace The System with?  How do we handle banking and finance?  How about governments in a post-centralized world?  And should banksters and lawyers become the new N-word and F-word...unspeakable and unthinkable?

To begin the argument, I think it's obvious we can not go back to centralized anything.  With the state of technology, there's no reason to have mega-cities.  Most cost-center jobs can be done from the living room, while manufacturing is quickly moving towards mass-customization, meaning small, multi-purpose assembly lines scattered around in various strategic locations would allow anyone with come up with an idea and make it nearby.  A prime example is the car built with a 3-D printer that hit the headlines a while back.

The guy who discovered Comet Elenin was using a rent-a-telescope in New Mexico while he sat in his house in Russia.  Why can't we do that with factories?

As for banking and finance?  No reason why we can't use digi-bux, as long as it's backed by something real.  Each geographic location could produce their own accounting and statistics, auditable by any other geographic location.  Based on the total output of a given area, they could issue a certain amount of digi-bux, which the locals would earn for goods and services, and then spend in the open markets.

If a certain region didn't want to join the world, and wanted to live like the Amish, they could.  If another region wanted to become trans-human and turn themselves into cyborgs, they could.  But no region would be allowed to dictate to any other region.  And people traveling would have to abide by the rules of the region they were in.  If they didn't like it, they could move on.

Each region would be limited to a certain physical size, say 500,000 square kilometers.  No region could annex or take over another.  Each would be completely autonomous and could form whatever governance it wanted, or go completely without.  There would be no passports or ID cards.  You are who you say you are until someone says different.

The upshot of this little discussion is that everyone gets into revolutionary fits and wants to tear down the existing regime.  But no one sits around and thinks about what they're going to do afterwards.  Look at Libya and Egypt right now.  Just a bunch of folks wandering around picking their noses asking, "What now?"  A successful revolution is NOT kicking the bad guys out, it's putting something better in their place.

There's no reason why we can't have a global set of Rights and a global integrated system.  The secret is to keep it from getting centralized and sucking up all the power, wealth and resources.  A good start would be to ban corporations and lawyers and banksters forever and a day.

All laws must be written in plain language, address only one issue, and can not be any longer than 10 pages.  There can be individuals and groups of individuals, and groups of groups, but no entity can have individual rights except an individual.  All companies and associations must have officers who are personally liable for the actions of the group under their control.  Most importantly, all banks can only operate within the confines of their home region, and may never have branches or allegiances outside of it.  

Finally, all trials must be jury trials, no one may hire themselves out as a 'lawyer' or 'attorney,' and judges only exist to answer questions of law and keep order.  Basically, a referee.  In fact, they can't wear black robes, only striped shirts.  Juries are selected by randomly picking the first 12 people you find outside.  No voir dire.  

One last biggie.  No public schools operated by a government entity.  All schools must be privately owned and operated.  They can teach any curriculum in any manner they see fit, and the market will choose the ones with the best track records for turning out smart people.

That's it.  See how simple that was?  Now all we have to do is implement it.  We;ll get the chance, because revolution or not, the system is collapsing.  The situation boils down to making sure we get off on the right foot after the mess is cleaned up.  If we continue to do what we've always done, then we'll always get what we've always had: serfdom and poverty.

Now's the time to be thinking about what to replace the current mess with, and even starting to build on it, so that when the other leg gets kicked out from under the stool, we'll have a running start for the exits.

How can we act on this now?  Well, while you're stocking up, why not think about tools you'll need.  How about books?  Think about what 10 books you'd want in civilization collapsed and you needed to rebuild.  "The Way Things Work" would be a great start.  Maybe a chemistry book or two.  Some philosophy and classical discourse.  Physics?  Why not?  Put them in your safe storage with your rice and beans and water filters.

Communications are vitally important for rebuilding.  How about some radio gear and a book on electro-magnetic propagation?

Telescopes and microscopes, definitely.  A good book on astronomy would help you predict the seasons.  Heck, if you know the stars well enough, you can puzzle out your exact location on Earth by the declination and right ascention of key stars.

Storing away some bricks and mortar BEFORE the earthquake can never be a bad idea, both literally and metaphically.

Chances like the one we are in the middle of now only come along once every few hundred years.  With some careful thought and planning, we can make a pretty good stab at doing it right this time.  It's all just a matter of thinking and acting, instead of veging and watching.  No one ever solved a major global issue watching football and soap operas.

By the way, has it occurred to anyone else to save old vinyl recordings?  You can play them with a styrofome cup and a sewing needle, without electricity.  Just a thought when you really need that Mozart fix and the CD/DVD players don't work.

How many 'survival' sites have you seen THAT on?

Singin' WWIV Blues

Since I was one of those lucky kids who had to hide under my desk at school every Friday at noon, when the air raid sirens went off, I think i can safely say this is the opening of WWIV.

WWIII took place from the end of WWII until the 80s, when the rest of the world went socialist and there was no point to fighting with your friends.  It was a 'cold war,' which means the sides blew up other people's countries as a proxy for their own ideological differences.

Here in WWIV, it's the banksters against the rest of the world.  This war is fought in board rooms and stock exchanges, using paper and bytes.

There's no nation vs. nation, because all the governments (with the exception of Libya) are already owned lock, stock and ice-cold barrel.  Any country that has money and a fair cut of resources has been subsumed.  The few that haven't, well, they're not important because they don't have anything of value to the banksters.  Qaddafi had about the only large stock of sovereign gold and oil left that wasn't in the bankster inventory.

WWIV is a war of thinking people vs. the Sheep.  The handfuls of independent folks out there who still think and act in ways that aren't sanctioned by The Owners are slowly being cornered.

Things like the TSA grope-a-ropes are actually sorting bins.  The Sheep just shuffle through silently and take their vaccines and soma.  Those who complain are being tagged and catalogued for later rendering.  The hot war will come soon enough, but for now, the banksters need to figure out where all the hiding places are, since the rebels aren't in a single physical area, like a country or something.

The whole thing reminds me of that old Star Trek episode called, "Taste of Armaggedon."  The gang lands on a planet which is at war with another planet, fought by computers.  The machines launch virtual attacks and calculate virtual damages, and then the assigned Sheep are tagged to voluntarily walk into disintegration chambers.

I mean, every time I read one of these 'cyber-war' stories trying to make me afraid of someone else' bytes, I just have to laugh!  Did all those Pentagon and bankster idiots watch Star Trek too?  Because it sure seems like they're trying to bring that episode to life.

Certainly, one gets the impression this whole charade is coming to a head.  The US is fighting six wars at once, while at the same time it's going flat broke.  The EU is about to go 'foof!', which is Greek for "oh hell."  Russia and China are playing footsie as they look at the entire western hemisphere going in the crapper.  The entire Middle East is singing the Rolling Stones (hey you, get offa my cloud!).  Even Antarctica seems to be having troubles, since Emperor penguins are swimming 2,000 miles to New Zealand to get out of there.

That's almost a good as Spalding Gray swimmin to Cambodia.

The interesting part of all of this is that one gets the distinct impression that the banksters are acting out of desperation.  They are moving fast and apparently not too concerned if people see behind the curtain now.  Maybe their TSA headcounts of the wild ones is showing just a few more heads than they had anticipated.  Certainly, places like Texas passing laws making the 'yellow shirts' criminals was not in their play-book.

Where's Gandi, or Emerson, or Thoreau?  Where are the Bob Dylans and hippies?  Where's the righteous indignation and the social conscience?  Have everyone gone nuts, gone soft or gone completely to sleep?

What really amazes me are the hippies.  They turned on, tuned in and burned out.  They vanished into the woods and became Microsoft and Celestial Seasonings.  An entire generation of trouble makers have become a bunch of gelatinous proto-plasm whose biggest concern is timing their investments and and hoping Social Security lasts long enough for them to get theirs.  A complete waste os resources, that bunch is.

It's a sad state of affairs when the shining hope for the future is a bunch of pasty cyber-punks whose idea of fun is cracking security on the US Senate's webpage.  I mean, come on...that's not a victory, that's a flea on an elephant.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud  -- Bob Dylan, Masters of War

It's over, I think.  \\If the world was turned right, neighbors would show up at the house next door with pitchforks and torches when the banksters came to repo.

If the world was turned right, people would shun corporate products and sparkly gee-gaws and politicians, and start their own economies governments.

If the world was turned right, everyone would stop paying credit cards and mortgages at the same time, and shove a middle finger in the face of anything that resembles 'old school' power and control.

Than's if the world was turned right.  As it looks from here, it ain't even turned at all.

Pretty soon, the scanners at the airports will become disintegrators, and we'll all be living a Star Trek episode where we march happily into them and vanish forever, on command.  There won't be need for bullets and bombs, we'll all just fall on our swords when told.  When the message comes that little Johnny had his virtual leg blown off in a virtual attack, poppa will eargerly run over and hack it off so that the game can continue.

Who knows?  Maybe Roddenberry was on to something.  After all, we all have communicators now, phasers are being tested at Livermore and warp drive exists for the privileged few.

Beam me up, Scotty.  There's no intelligent life down here.

We Have Met The Enemy...

These people are freaking insane!

You and I are nothing but lab animals to THEM.  They are willing to maim, mutate and kill us to see 'what will happen.'  They will spray us, inject us and feed us anything to test their little theories.  They are willing to destroy the entire Earth for sport!

They weaponized e. Coli to kill large populations with a horrible, vomiting, wretched death.  In the process, they discovered that the e. Coli pooped a substance called 'aspartame,' an excito-toxin that had the effect of tasting sweet, while at the same time causing massive chain reactions in the body's nervous system.  What do they do?

Put it in our food!

They built a massive electro-magnetic ring in Switzerland to try and re-create the conditions that existed in the first few split-seconds of the imaginary Big Bang.  It may create mini-black holes and gluon-stranglets, which Kcould sink into the center of the Earth and eventually cause the complete implosion of the Earth, and possibly this entire region of the galaxy.  What do they do?

Just up and down and celebrate with big headlines when they come '' this close to destroying the entire world!

They test new drugs and vaccines on prisoners, who are promised faster release (if they survive) and poor, unsuspecting populations as part of UN 'health' programs.

The effect of all this are the release of new diseases on humanity, irradiating the entire Northern Hemisphere, and the drugging of huge segments of the global population without people knowing or being fully informed about any aspect of these programs.

It's all a massive fraud that is so egregious that there is no way it can be argued that any part of it is accidental. It is being done with malice aforethought.  In the process of killing off billions of people, THEY are taking advantage of the situation to observe and document the horrors THEY have unleashed on the world.  These slime are not even woth the effort to scrape off the bottom of my shoes.

Back in Babylonian times, there was a fourth planet, between Mars and Jupiter, that was called Tiamat.  Tiamat was also the name of the ruler of the planet.  Tiamat was into creating chimera.  She/they enjoyed making creatures that were part human/part cat/part bird.  She/they created all kinds of vile creatures that were gross mutations of natural beasts.  In fact, these chimera had gotten off-planet and had infested other places, like Earth, which necessitated a global flood to kill these creatures.

The other gods were so horrified by what she/they had created that they destroyed the ENTIRE planet.  What we know today as the asteroid belt is the remnant of that destruction.

It's tempting to dismiss these myths as fairy tales, but when one looks around and sees so-called 'scientists' doing the exact same thing, it seems a little more real.

Here's whats going on...

Our son has an electric drill, can of gasoline, bag of gun-powder, and box of matches, and is playing out by the propane tank in the back yard.  We stand at the back door and smile, as we proudly watch our son 'play' around while learning valuable new lessons.  In fact, we are so full of pride, that we take a couple of blasting caps out to him, so he can learn what that will do to his toys.

Every time you pay taxes to out-of-control, megalomaniacs, you are giving them blasting caps while they are spraying gasoline all over the world and are striking matches.  These people are certifiably insane.  But what does that make us, who willingly support these psychopaths, or if not willingly, certainly don't put up a fight.  Those of us who don't fight this madness are simply turning our backs, while we get sprayed with gasoline, and denying that anything is wrong.

We can't play along with this madness.  We are not part of the inner-circle.  We can't use the toys they have created to 'go with the flow.'  We can't survive the pure evil these people have and continue to create.  Willful ignorance is simply an act of suicide by standing on the blasting caps, and closing our eyes and ears, as if that will stop the explosion.

The Earth and everything on it are under direct attack by people who are willing to kill us all to 'see what happens.'  They have invaded our most personal and prized possession...our bodies.  That is a direct and frontal attack, and they are defying us to say, "Stop!"  The terrorists are, in fact, the ones yelling 'terrorist' in our faces.

THEY are destroying our health, our economy, our lives, our families, and our civilization.  The question beomes, what are we doing to stop them?  If the answer is 'nothing,' they we are literally handing the ax to the executioner while begging for our lives.  And that makes us just as insane as the evil bastards who are killing us.

If THEY don't destroy the entire world, then they are certainly trying to clear the planet of anyone who isn't THEM.  This is an intolerable situation by any measure.  The inmates have designed and built the asylum, and we are marching into the cells at their orders and for their entertainment.

We must either wake up soon, or go quietly into the long night.

For those who are afficianados of comic strips will recognize the title's allusion to Pogo's famous line, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"

The Apocalypse Diaries

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer

Yes, folks.  Out of the billions of people who have read the Bible over the past few millennia, one man has finally figured out the Code, the Secret behind the cryptic writings.  He alone has tapped the Great Unknown to reveal...

The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI).

That's right, Harold Camping, of Family Radio fame, has determined that on May 21, 2011, at sunset, God will come and destroy the nice little planet He made because some bad apples screwed it up for everyone.  Oh, about that last prediction Harold made back in 1994?  He got the math wrong...just ignore that.

Let's forget that the word 'Apocalypse' has nothing to do with the world ending.  After all, the word comes from apo and kalyptein, which together mean 'lift the veil.'  In other words, to reveal something hidden.

Let's also forget that Harold figures the Great Flood happened seven thousand years ago (it was 3.2 million, actually, give or take an egg timer).  We are acting on faith here, and everyone knows that to have Faith means to deny what you plainly know in favor of someone else's pipe-dream.

Harold figures, based on some linguistic legerdemain, that Jesus died in early April A.D. 33, and since one of the prophets said that, in God's Eyes, a thousand years is but one day, then the crucifixion occured on God's Friday, and May 21st, at sundown, is the end of Sunday, so God is going to wipe out the Earth and throw everyone in Hell.

Harold Camping

Frankly, I've heard this EXACT same argument about, oh, let's see...a MILLION times.  Folks have been discovering secret codes and uncovering hidden math problems in the Bible since roughly A.D. 800.  It all involves this mysterious line, "To the Lord, a thousand years is but a day."  One line out of several hundred thousand, which ignores all the lines to the contrary, such as God promising Noah He won't go and wipe out the Earth again.

All these folks seem to forget a lot of other details, as well.  Like the fact there are dozens of apocalyptic books, not just the famous one by John the Divine (a.k.a., Revelations).  Then there's a whole mess of Jewish, Buddhist and Islamic apocrypha.  And then there's the extinct works of Egypt and Babylon.

Oh, and if we read Saul of Tharsis, popularly known as Paul, he was convinced the Second Coming would be in the lifetimes of his contemporary readers.  Peter thought that, too.  Couple of heavyweights there.

Really, if you read Revelations without all the crap that's been stapled to it over the centuries, it's a rather detailed description of the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jews in A.D.70-77, by the Romans, who were getting rather tired of all the messiahs and revolts and such.

All this end of the world stuff, and the systems called Millennialism and Dispensationalism, were developed just a little over 100 years ago by a flim-flam man in Kansas, USA, by the name of Scofield.  Since that time, it has infected the entire world and now a billion or so christians are castrated.

Why?  Because they've all been told that Jesus is coming soon to straighten things out.  So why should they worry, or try to fix anything, or oppose the bastards taking over the world?  After all, Jesus will be here soon, so just sit back and relax and it'll all get sorted out on Judgement Day.

What a scam.  If you wanted to neutralize a billion people and prevent them from opposing anything you did, then convincing them that the End is Nigh is just about as good as it gets.  It's been highly effective.  Now christians will put up with any amount of crap, especially in Europe and the States, because Superman in on the way!  He's just rounding Jupiter and will be here at any moment!  So let the heathens take over and steal the wealth and life of millions of people!  They're all going to Hell in a few days!

On May 22nd, can we all forget about all this doom and gloom crap and start putting some bastards in jail?  There's a group of folks robbing the world blind while putting us all into abject slavery to them, and we are just sitting back swilling beer and watching the game, because hey!  Jesus is coming soon, or 2012, or Y2K, or ET, or any of a dozen other excuses to let someone else clean up our mess.  We allowed it to happen.  We were too busy playing video games and watching TeeVee and being entranced by our gee-gaws.  Now we have a real mess here and no one is coming to clean it up.  The world is not ending.  Jesus isn't going to separate the wheat from the chaffe.  ET ain't going to phone home.  2012 will be just another year (other then the economic catastrophe, which is the point here).

Mayan Calendar

Either we're busy living or we're busy dying, but waiting around for the Cosmic Maid to show up is just plain lazy and stupid.  The bullshit has been so deeply pounded into our brains that we can't see the Light for all the Darkness in the way.

If you need some inspiration from Jesus, then read the parable of the master who goes on a trip and leaves money with his servants.  Take a look at which one makes the master happy.  It ain't the lazy, frightened ones, I can tell you that.

If you're waiting on Jesus to clean up after you, then you've got about another 400 years until the next messianic age, when the Age of Auquarius finally dawns.  In the meantime, what are your great-grandkids going to say about you?  Will they even remember they had great-grandparents?  Will they curse our names?

Or will we start cleaning up this mess and quit pushing it off on some deus ex machina?

Eco-Comics 101

Recovery is everywhere! Just like cow manure in the pasture.

Back in the day, we would bring our city cousins out to the farm and do things like put firecrackers in a pile of fresh (economics reports), and then position them just right to get a good spatter pattern on their backs. LOL!

Another fun thing was giving them a spoon and telling them that one of the most important jobs on the farm was separating the white chicken (economics) from the dark chicken (economics). Hoo Hoo! Great fun!

Those were the days, I tell ya.

It was good practice for waching the current global economic situation, though. Even now, it's important to make sure someone else is between you and the steaming pile of cow (economics), sorting the white from dark chicken (economics). So much of it is utter rubbish, anymore.

As one scans the headlines, one sees the touts screaming about the 'recovery, the recovery is at hand!' The end is nigh, is more like it.

Housing prices are falling. The dollar index, which was 110 just a few years ago, can't get above 80 now. Bank of America just wrote off a whole pile of mortgages. Oil, the very foundation of modern society, is heading for the Moon, first to $150, then $200, by year's end. Gold and silver are absolutely in orbit (and don't talk to me about the current little drop, ten years ago it was $300/ounce).

And what about food prices? Everywhere one looks, there are articles on top of articales about shortages, natual disasters hitting supplies, rising energy prices adding to costs. Just to put a fine point on it...we're talking about FOOD.

Here in Indonesia, one of the large rice growing areas was struck by flood just as harvest time was two days away. Storms and rough seas are keeping fishermen from going out, now at 16 days and counting. Chili and fruits like rambutan have jumped in price, or just disappeared from the shves.

Interest rates in most places (some South American countries excepted) are in the toilet, which is sending hot money into the markets, which is pushing inflation into the stratosphere. And speaking of inflation...

All those bailouts a while back? Where'd that money come from? Was a couple of trillion dollars just sitting around in someone's bank account, waiting to bailout the banksters? No. It was all created with a printing press, and putting that amount of money into the markets, one way or another, will show up as massive inflation. Can't help it. It's a natural law. If folks have $10 chasing a product, and that suddenly changes to folks having $1,000 chasing the same product, if WILL cause inflation, just as sure as the Sun will rise over Greenland in January.

On top of all this, there is a rash of natural disasters going on, with huge blizzards in the northern hemisphere and biblical floods in the southern. There are earthquakes, volcanoes and typhoons all over the place. And it's just the first three weeks of the year! Oh boy, can't wait to see what happens over the next 49.

And then there's the stories about the PTB/PTW creating seed and DNA banks all over the freakin' planet. What do they know that the rest of us don't? And why don't we know it too? It's our freakin' planet, you know. Not to mention, it's our freakin' tax dollars that are paying for all the machinery flying around the nether regions. I want some freakin' answers for my money!

And then there's George Lucas. The man simply twisted off about the end of the world in 2012, and how it's all going to hell in a handbasket soon. That ran for a couple days before it became, 'oh, he was just joking.'

Oh really?

From what I know of Lucas, he had his sense of humor surgically removed years ago. He doesn't know how to tell a joke, much less about something like that. Just look at his movies, fer cryin' out loud. The dialogue is stilted and the actors are leaden, with the director's heavy hand all over it. Does that look like the work of a man who has a sense of humor?

Which brings us to the big ass rocket that the Air Force shot off from Vandenberg AFB yesterday. What in the hell is so big that they need the largest rocket in inventory to get it up? And don't forget the weirdness about the GPS system and airports needing new directional numbers on the runways.

So, doing some addtion, which I'm not very good at, but we'll give it a try, we have:
1-the PTB/W trashing the global economy,
2-and stashing seeds and DNA like squirrels on acid,
3-all kinds of natual disasters going on all over the place,
and 4-military rockets and GPS reboots.

Yup, sounds to me like a big, huge, steaming pile of cow (economics) with a baby giant firework stuck solidly in the middle of it, with the PTB/W holding a lit match, and we the people have our unsuspecting back to it.

One way or another, there's going to be a (economic) storm when the (economics) hits the fan, know what I mean?

Remember the jerk in school? Not that one, the other one. The one who, if you told him a secret, he would start dancing around yelling, "I know a secret!" You just wanted to punch the little twerp.

Well, the PTB/W are, collectively, that little jerk. They are jumping around trying to get our attention to let us know they know something we should know. They are teasing and tempting us with it. They are daring us to beat the living (economics)out of them until they tell us.

From the looks of Europe, north Africa and other places, they are getting what they deserve, but is it enough to make them part with the goods?

At any rate, seems like a good time to start storing up some seeds and DNA ourselves, before the bastards get all of it.

You know what it reminds me of? You know the movies where folks find out the world is coming to an end, so they start robbing and looting and generally going crazy. Now look at the actions of the banksters, et al. Notice a resemblance? Just looks like a bunch of rich jerks robbing and looting, trying to get the last scraps before the whole thing crashes to the ground (possibly literally).

Got your massive underground city full of food and seed and frozen DNA ready yet?

What's the hold-up? Don't have the power to steal people's money at gun point, get away with it, and then lie to everyone about what you are up to? Niether do I.

But the bastards do, and they are holding the match to the firecracker.

Just another huge, steaming, stinking, semi-liquid pile of cow (economics).

The Omega Man

"O what tangled web we weave,
When at first we practice to deceive."
- Marmion, Sir Walter Scott

In the Middle Ages in Europe, a plague struck that, in the span of three years, killed an estimated 25 million people. To this day, Westerners still say, "Bless you," when someone sneezes, and children still sing "Ring-Around-The-Rosie" to commemorate it. The cultual memory of it has affected the entire civilization for 600 years.

Yet, from the year 1901 until the year 2000, a plague struck every nation on Earth, killing the equivalent of the entire population of the United States with its direct effects, and probably close to half a billion people altogether. This virulent plague is still killing to this day, by the hundreds, if not thousands daily, and nothing is being done to stop it.

WHO has issued no alerts. Pharmaceutical companies are not developing vaccines. No NGOs are running around calling for global conferences and treaties to stop it. And most of us are doing everything we can to maintain the current infection, but spread it even further and make it more virulent than ever. In fact, I'm willing to bet that everyone reading this column have had someone close to them killed by this plague, and than each reader is doing something to continue spreading it.

The plague is called government.

It is by far the deadliest thing known to Man. Over the centuries, some form or another of this plague has killed millions of people, and it does not discriminate between friend and foe.

Every tine you pay taxes or tolerate some new form of outrage or allow illegal wars or support the status quo, you are, in effect, placing your infected, contagious hands all over your children and grandchildren.

Many times, this plague can lie dormant, even appear beneficial to those that come in contact with it. But, more often than not, it becomes a ragin infection that eats the life our its victims, stripping their flesh, roasting them alive, blowing holes in them, gassing them, burying them alive.

One strange side effect of this plague is that individuals think their strain is better than most others, and some even become fanatic supporters, deny ineir own senses tell them is true.

There are many mutations of this plague: the democracy, the republic, the socialist, the fascist, the communist, and often one form will mutate into another, often violently killing many victims in the process. It is so bad, that most people can't imagine living without this organism eating them alive and are willing to die to protect their variant of it.

What seems to be the key to the violent mutations is a very simple factor called 'secrecy.' Once the plague has convinced the host that it needs secrecy, then almost immediately the organism begins to lie. Once it reaches that stage, then it must lie and lie again to continue covering all its previous lies, until someone or something exposes the lies the infection becomes extremely virulent and begins killing wontonly, lashing out at anything that seems to be a threat to its existance.

Here it reaches the most dangerous and deadly stage of its growth cycle. Now it begins to consume everything in its environment and killing even its own host, which it now perceives as a threat. It starts to launch attacks on other tissues, using the very global immune system against itself. It becomes so enraged and gluttonous that believes that it must kill everything to continue to hide its secrets. Finally, it sees its own survival as more important than the hosts which have protected it and nourished it.

Finally, in a great orgasm of death and destruction, the global body manages to kill off the deadly strain, only to cause another to rise up and take its place.

The truly amazing part is that, despite thousands of years of proof that this organism is deadly and inconsistant with free will and self-development, humans have not reached the point where they think they can live without this horror. Instead, there are repeated attempts to modify the plague, to give it more or less power, to channel it, limit it and modify it. Regardless of every attempt to tame the beast, it comtinues to maim, kill and destroy.

There seems to be little hope. As long as the hosts believe they derive some benefit from this horror, they will continue to infect themselves, and to spreak the disease indiscriminately. Those who have attempted to wash their hands and take even minimum precautions against this killer are ostracized and/or slaughtered.

The truly odd part is that there are segments of the host population who are absolutely convinced that some outside power will come down from the heavens, destroy all existing strains of the plague and install a new, benign form that will benefit only the true believers, while all other hosts are tortured in eternal damnation.

Seems like more of the same to me.