In the Land of the Blind

Understanding Big Numbers

It's all  matter of perception. Those are some big numbers which used to be reserved for the use of Astronomers and calculating the odd of the Cubs winning the World Series. Today, the values verging on scientific notation size are used by our national accountants. 

Scared? Don't be, until you see this...

Okay, shit yourself. It's acceptable, probably unavoidable when you understand big numbers. 

Now, go on back to watching the Kardashians and keep voting for the Republican / Democratic (circle one) party of your preference.

Mike's Last Words: Vol. 1

Yup,  it's official...

They're all my potential last words. If you select the words which I will someday say before I die, a very, very, very long time from now or when we switch to the metric system, whichever comes last, you probably had something to do with my demise and since I most likely deserved it, you're still a son of a bitch!

Wisdom of the Prophet: Book 8

In the Beginning...it was Broken.

1. If God does not take the fullness of His Creation back to Himself after Perfecting it, then we are left with an incomplete or incompetent God. I do not believe in incomplete gods. An incompetent god is fallible, untrustworthy, and unworthy of our Worship. Our God is a Worthy Craftsman whose Works are Perfected by His Mighty Hand for His Name’s sake, Yahweh.   

2. The children of Israel were quite certain that they were the only ones Loved by God. They were mistaken. We should not follow in the footsteps of Israel.

3. Penguins, don't trust them.

4. A minister with red face, bulging veins, and dripping sweat can scream,  “God brings hellfire and damnation!” and everyone will shout back “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!” But walk out calmly and in a serene voice say, “God brings Love and Forgiveness.” and the congregation remains silent with invisible question marks hanging over their heads. Who have they come to Worship?

5. Those who take life too seriously or for granted will surely grow to hate life no matter what it offers.

6. Never send an academician to do a plumber’s job, it will cost many multiples of the product's value. The inverse is equally true.

7. “Organic” means twice the price, half the portion, and none of the taste.

8. As soon as we say someone is outside of God's Grace, we fall into error.

9. Mama always said I would make a good hand cart.

10. God is ever with the hand of mercy.

11. Belgium was not named after waffles.

12. If your father's greatest ambition was to create a creature, Dr. Frankenstein, don't accept his legacy. Don't follow in his hoof marks.

13. In the coldest, most lifeless, blackest void there is warmth. Barely perceptible yet fully present, nearly undetectable, but we know it's there, take it on faith.

14. Chaos is resident in the mind of the fanatic. The fanatic cannot accept a reality other than that which he accepted at the moment of his conversion. They will stifle, silence, persecute, prosecute, imprison, assassinate, murder, or execute any who prove or propose a different model of reality.

15. Many years ago we believed there was the vault of heaven and the frozen place of hell below with us caught between these two worlds. It was a simple model for simple people, and it worked because we believed in it. This raises the question, “If enough of us believe, can we call something entirely new into being?”

16. There are those who believe that humanity has been abandoned by our Creator or we are just a fluke byproduct of quixotic organic chemistry.

17. It's the little loves from which we can build a whole Universe of Love. We have the raw material. Sometimes we have the inclination. Sometimes we hear a Voice who calls to us “You are the Light of the world.” Like our Creator we can call and form chaos into order, we can emulate Him, but instead we choose the darkness, the emptiness, the void, and ask “Is absolute zero cold enough?” Jesus Saves and we spend. What God Creates, we spend millions, or billions, will trillions be enough to seek a better path of destruction on a grander scale and in greater proportion? Here we stand, hand to hand, arms against arms, with intent to do harm like some byproduct of quixotic organic chemistry. Then the Voice cries out, “You are the salt of the earth!” But we listen to the Serpent who whispers in our ear, burn these bodies and we'll see what the ashes are worth. There's bound to be some sodium in there. Who cares? Let's move down the periodic table and take the more precious metals.

18. In the final cost accounting you will find that people value their illusions far more than they appreciate Truth.

19. I have a theory that I will never understand the world, and in retaliation the world will never understand me back.

20. When my belief in Universal Salvation is rebuffed on the a priori argument of Judgement and Justice, I remember that I pray for Universal Salvation every day because,
    
    Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, if you have faith, and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it would be done. All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matt. 21:21-22)
    
    Their argument is based on the inability of God to be swayed by a single man's plea for Mercy on behalf of others or God's inability to act in a way other than they expect or wish and I fear they wish for Judgement. Then I recall,
    
    “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.”  (Matt. 7:1-2)
    
    I listen to their long, often erudite exegesis on why God prefers Justice over Mercy and then conclude the exchange with, “I will  continue to pray for you, as well.”
    
21. A lack of respect for Natural Rights tends to bleed over into other areas of relationships. This is why the Founders and Framers of the Constitution encapsulated them within the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

22. I think that I shall be terribly disappointed on the day I meet God to find Him exactly as I imagined Him to be. What a dumbed down and diminished God that would be which I could entirely comprehend in my tiny porous noggin.

23. Would you trust someone who told you they had to “...curtail your Rights to protect your Freedom.”?

24. The nouveau riche looked down from the Uplands into the blue collar community of the valley below and asked, “Why should we have so much and they so little... when we can just take it all?”

25. One cannot compensate for intelligence or personality with reiterative flamboyant cordialness.

26. If God be good, then what need have we for either sorrow or fear?

27. Love is worth the pain.

28. Perhaps, what matters more than miles traveled, the increase of the x over the y on a valuation graph, or the cycles of seasons we've passed are the lessons we learn in this short string of moments that make our lives.

29. I've got cake and explosives. I'll be just fine.

30. We know the truth when we hear it. But, if no one is speaking the truth then no one is hearing the truth, and any fiction will do.

31. When people tell me about climate change, I agree there's a lot more bullshit in the air.

32. American republic run by the blind

when facts are paid no nevermind

Truth is per the New York Times.

No leaders, just scheming pantomimes.                      (Ya don't say.)

Occupations of those exposed

in the Panama Papers

33. When we stand before the Throne, our Salvation will be by the Grace of the Living God who in His Glory and for His Name's Sake Redeems us. Our interpretations of this passage or that book, a prophet’s words or the meanings of the scrolls and seals will profit us nothing. By the Blood of Christ, being of His Provision, I am made acceptable to Him who formed me in my mother's womb. Nothing else is of consequence, and everything else is but fodder for theologians to build careers bickering about.

Seasoned Greetings

Yup, it's official...

Someone's got the Spirits... 80 Proof!

Different Animals, Same shit

That was when you realized that 

the future will be safe in his hands

She's always right, just ask her. 

Fired, bItches!

Network 2016

The following is based upon the dialog from the movie Network released in 1976. In honor of this  prophetic satire, I have attempted to update Howard Beale's rant for the contemporary audience.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression; your depression. Everybody's underemployed and scared of losing one or both of their part-time jobs. The dollar buys a nickel's worth of product you will have to replace ten times in your lifetime, banks are thriving while you're going bust. They charge you to deposit your check, charge you when you use your own money, and charge you when you transfer funds. Let's face it folks, these banks got us coming and going. 

Mom and Pop shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter because punks are running the streets and the only “reasonable” and “sensible” answer we hear is stricter gun laws. Who are they kidding? The punks don't care about private property, civil society, and they care least of all for the law! That's what makes them punks. Why?, you ask, I'll tell you why. As above so below...Those sworn to uphold the Constitution, the highest law in the land, act with utter contempt for the principles that document claims we believe. Everybody everywhere says they know how to fix it, but they all disagree, and no matter what we do, it just gets worse. 

There's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit for cattle, the water is liquid poison. We know that somewhere inside of us there is a single patient cell mutated by one of these contaminants just biding it's time, waiting to metastasize and end it all, and we sit watching our TV's, and clutching our digital devices which convey the horrors taking place just outside our castle gate. 

Today, we had fifteen unsuspecting people who naively wandered too close to another human being and were murdered by the “suicide” bomb he carried, and shows depicting the intricacies of homicides committed by family or friends remind us "trust no one", and sixty-three other garden variety violent crimes around our neighborhood reinforce nationwide paranoia, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. 

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're completely fucking psychotic! It's like everything everywhere everyone is in a crazy drag race to see who can out crazy each other. So, we don't go out anymore. We sit in our outrageously overpriced condominiums gobbling antidepressants and mood stabilizers advertised in commercials depicting an idyllic world, but when you go to your primary care physician to get this panacea he's no longer in your network and it's going to cost you a fortune to navigate through a gauntlet of tertiary care deniers only to be prescribed the last bottle before the recall. 

You never get to see the idyllic world instead you watch in terror as they announce the class action lawsuit pertaining to the very drug you were prescribed which has now become the catalyst to set that one dormant mutated cell on an unremitting rampage through your body. The end is near and it's yours as you come crashing down to a flat line ending. Inside, your body is becoming smaller while the abomination within you grows. Outside the world you're living in and your place in it is getting smaller, too. Our friends grow more distant and when you venture out to test the waters of their friendship with your toe, they creep significantly closer to your gold. 

So, all we can do is hide in our imaginary safe place, our redoubt of delusional defense and whimper, "Please, just leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my microwave, my TV, and my digital device, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. What did Occupy yield any of us? A chance to practice sleeping in the streets. I don't want you to riot. You would only be slaughtered. I don't want you to write to your congressman because they don't care about you. I don't know what to do about your depression, the stagnation, the terrorists, and the brazen crimes which go unnoticed and unpunished in the hallowed halls of our capitol. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' 

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your ergonomically designed chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to your architectural window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' 

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your exorbitantly priced, triple-pane, argon-filled windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' 

Things have got to change. Really change. Not the kind of change where the only difference is the occupants of the White House. Real change and for the better. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then, we'll figure out what to do about your depression and the stagnation and the terrorists. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" 

Keep yelling until half a dozen men in riot gear come and repeatedly tase you into submission or shoot you dead for acting erratically in a world where only the medicated are calm, only the insane are content, and only the deeply disturbed are able to make sense of it all. The only thing that may bring you peace will come a few seconds after you hear the words, “Tase his ass, again!”

...or you could always pray for a meteor.

If the Poets Ran the World

If the poets ran the world...
The sky would bear and bleed a million more colors
With the exception of the depressed who wouldn't bother
Every newborn would be held and loved by all mothers
Except for teenage boys rhyming to get at their daughters
War would be a word without need or definition
But the contrarians who would equate it with the human condition
The sun would shine and moon rise on intuition
But the Psalmist would take offense at messing with God's Creation
Love and fun would be our world currency so everyone would be wealthy
Save those goth kids who would exchange suicide notes as  currency
If the poets ran the world.