When the Past Meets the Future

This is a new year where the future collides with the past. As you know in dig.com they talked about this massive of Evangalical Christianity in the rest of the world other than “here”, meaning North America and Europe. Everybody else in the world seems to think fundamentalist Christianity is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Moslems may have something to say about that. Meanwhile we have all these futuristic devices on the Today show like new ways to get your E mail and some small metallic device that can turn large objects into giant speakers. I can’t even begin to tell you how those work. We hear about Bose electronics that “whisper you to sleep” but nobody ever quotes a price. You have to take it on Paul Harvey’s word that these things reproduce sound better than anything else and apparently money is no object. Leo Le Port was chiding people, apparently like my blogs, who regurgitate the news to other readers rather than let the readers go to an outlet like world net daily or dig.com for their news. Well I’ll tell you I just might stick in more stuff about my personal life because that’s something the readers can’t get in other places. Leo was talking about how science is no longer charting a liniar progression path but there are often quantum surprises. If they ever isolate the graviton they will have discovered the warp principle. The graviton is a circular sub particle rather than a horseshoe style “string” that is “anchored” to something. Circular “strings” are free floating, which means their “influence” is lessoned. Someone likened the graviton not to billiard balls hitting each other, but rather the sound of the balls hitting each other. Science is and has discovered an awful lot of stuff that hasn’t made its way into the popular economy. Some things like cell phones and blackberries or viewing movies on your I pod seems so normal, and yet some of the more mundane chores in this world like unclogging toilets or mowing lawns or lubricating machinery- - are still things that need to be done. Religion is something that is still literally in the dark ages, and yet we expect it to compete in the world of today.

Today is December 31, 2006 and I was thinking of turning the Jesus Christ show on but I absentl-mindedly turned on the TV and Joel Olstein was on. I think we can learn a few lessons from his programs. Glen showed up with coffee while he was on. He remarked how young he looked. I guessed he was forty and Glen thought he was only thirty. He was saying how when you’re driving you have a great big windshield out in front of you protecting you from the oncoming wind, but there is only a little tiny rear view mirror. You’re supposed to spend most of your time looking out at what’s ahead of you. Joel says don’t look back at your sin. He mentioned how David while his son with Bathsheba was still alive drew a lot of prayers and moaning for deliverance but after the baby was taken by the Lord David put the whole affair behind him and moved on. This is perhaps what I should do with Christians in my past. He spoke of Caleb and how he asked God for a mountain when he was eighty and how it was the same dream he had when he was forty. If God makes a promise “The bill is still collectable”, so to speak. He spoke of how David’s older brothers tried to talk him out of fighting Goliath because he wasn’t qualified. Joel says not to let negative people around you interfere with your dreams, and also said “Even if you have good seed you need good ground to plant it in”. I’ll hold that thought. We had waffles for breakfast. It was those little round things and fortunately Richard gave me another because he didn’t want it.

This paragraph is being typed the next day, January 2nd. just after Ford's moving funeral at the national cathedral. That organ postlude thing had a lot of trippy chord progressions at the end. Of course I guess the congragaqtion are supposed to wait for the body to be escorted out first. I went out for a smoke. Of course there are benefits to actually being IN a wedding party. In the wedding I was in in October 1981 me and the Pastor's Wife were the third and fourth people out of the - - er - uh - - multi purpose room. Some people of course don't want a religious wedding at all prefering not to make a sacramental comitment before God for all eternity. I'm wondering if there is such a thing as a "secular funeral", where you want to celebrate the person's life but you're not really sure they're making it to heaven and don't want to speculate about that. This paragraph howsever is going to be one of those "Inquiring minds want to know" personal paragraphs so if you want to skip over it you can. On December 31st. 1992 on a Thursday afternoon I was coming back from the liquor store with either Colt 45 or the Blue Bull 24 oz. cans. I looked down the street seeing dark smoke and some teenagers saw my expression and said "Your house is on fire". It turned out the apartment complex I was in was on fire. A large swath of the west wall for two stories was blackened. Someone had set a car on fire and smoke was billowing into the air and wafting eastward. Ken had called Joe and Kathy even though they had just recently moved out. The cops were called and they suspected arson. If it was a car fire it must have been a big one. My parents were coming over later to take me to Denny's for my birthday. This tradition had started in 1990 when I turned forty and this was now the third year of doing it in 1992. I had written them a letter in which among other things I disputed my age, ie. my date of birth. I had developed a theory that I was actually born February 25th. and not Newyears Eve. (If I'd been born in England I'd be the next year already) There were some "anomalies" I wanted to talk over with parents. First of all at Christmas dinner my aunt's mother had been told I was due to be born soon and she looked at my mother and said "What are you giving birth to, a mouse?" Apparently she didn't look that pregnent to be due in a week. Then we have "the nine weeks". Nine weeks after I was born the doctor said I had to go to the hospital and quit nursing because something suspected was wrong with my brain. They later did a report saying I had "hypoplasia", which means under-developed brain. They said I'd have a bird head. This proved obviously to be untrue if anyone has seen me try on hats. I'm a real George Lopez contender. Photos of me as a very young baby aren't that comon and there's one labeled "five months" where I look awfully emaciated. When I was four years old there are two notations in my baby book around February 25th. One says "[he] had a good time earing birthday cake" and another one said "He talked about his birthday cake". Why would parents want me to be two months older than I was? I can think of one reason. There was a letter I had sent to parents in December 1992 covering four topics I had intended to write to four different people. I had been in ROP on and off from September 1990 to late February 1992 and gotten three completion cirtificates in Word Perfect, Lotus, and De Base IV. I could have gotten one in BASIC if they'd offered it since I was doing three dimensional arrays and later on graphics. Sometimes the "hopefull flook" can occur where you throw a can of paint against the wall and get a beautiful dezign. Another letter topic was the man from El Paso. Joe and Kathy's name came up. In court they consider the "excited utterance" admissable even though it would normally be considered heresay. Dad had said "You attack Joe and Kathy even though they care a lot for you and are concerned about you". (How would he know that) Admittedly my blog stuff kind of enphasizes the negative. Dad also misquoted a letter passage saying in respect to the Asshole from El Paso "There are places in Hell that are especially hot that are reserved for him" or some such thing. I never wrote that. I've said enough.

Tomorrow of course is Ford’s funeral. It will be the third out of four. Actually, Ford will be getting a longer mourning period than President Kennedy got. Of course we will be treated to more spiritual sentimentality and that’s all well and good. It’s nice to reflect on the workings of God even if you don’t believe in him now. It makes us reflect on our past. But things said at moments such as Funerals don’t necessarily reflect about the way they feel about the present, especially if you’re a President. Ford was a “steady hand” on the economy simply because things had “settled down” a bit from when he took office by the time he left. But to celebrate him for the Nixon pardon is kind of like a guy going through a money crisis and praises his personal Priest because he “gave him the personal strength to eat dog food, which he didn’t think he had.” He’s like a priest that gave a father the cajones to look his kids with holes in their shoes straight in the eye and tell them he can’t afford new ones. He’s like a priest who when your wife of fifteen years committed adultery and then sued you for divorce you decided not to contest the divorce because it might be “traumatic to the court system” but tell your four kids you and mommy wouldn’t be living together. People say that sacrifice and “sucking it up” as Caroline Brady says, is the height of religious piety. So if you’re an old lady rather than hand down those priceless family heirlooms to your kids, you give them to Gene Scott’s church. What an act of generosity! You ask “What does this have to do with national politics?” To quote Dylan again, “Money doesn’t talk; it snares”. The Church got rich because Priests had no children to leave their acquired wealth to so leave it to the church. You know that “bartering system” where you trade real wealth for the hope of a better hereafter” Of course you know a huckster on the street can’t be as hard up as he constantly claims to be; he just wants to make a quick sale- just as Gene Scott wasn’t “some poor desperate guy who needed our compassion and prayers”. He was a rich and getting richer guy laughing his ass off all the way to the bank. You know- - it is said that gay marriage won’t even be an issue with the generation following mine. If that’s true it means marriage will cease to be a “religious” act where God or scripture or covenants are involved in any way. Really President Ford’s passing is saying good-bye to an American era. The times they are a changing. There is a real chance that the republicans may go for Rudy-baby even if he is pro gay, anti guns, pro abortion and pro immigration. After all he’s not running for President as we know him but for Dictator. It’s this sort of fascist regime that Juliani wants to install that these right-wingers are looking forward to. You know, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter this country had never, and I repeat never elected a liberal Democrat on foreign policy. The last time we got close in 1968 the decision was made for us with an assassin’s bullet. The same thing might well occur again with Berock Obama. I’m just saying that the odds of a Hillary – Juliani contest are much higher than I might like to see. The republicans will go “left” if you call Musselini “left” and the democrats will swing right with fork-tongued Hillary Clinton. Let’s face it. Edwards is just too sincere to be President. If sincerity was a sinner he would have won four years ago. Like it or not we may still be a conservative nation despite the best Air America can do. Zel Miller shamed us all for even having hints of doubt about Bush’s war in Iraq and we all fell in line not wanting to be labeled as whooses. The polls really don’t bode as all well for the democrats. History teaches that democrats tend to lose ground as election time approaches and people lose their nerve retreating from those left wing protestations they may have registered in the primary. They say the race will be settled by February. If it’s Hillary and Rudy, the race could well be settled by February. Politicians have a history of quitting far before the delegate count would say they needed to. In Dylan’s words, “They just want to be on the side that’s winning”. People see politics as less an exercise in conscience and more “backing the right horse”, and of “making the right call” at Santa Anita racetrack.

Again they are saying in Iran that the Imam Mahadi will be returning, this time by the vernal equinox of this year. There is a possibility that we could see some gigantic upheaval or major regional war between the Shiites and the Sunnis, or between the “North” and the “South”. If “God” throws in with the “North” in this war than a lot of George Bush’s Arab friends could be crying in their beer. Obviously under such circumstances our President would need prayer because he might be in an agitated mental state. “Pushing the button” might just be an option the President would consider. It is said Iran wants to develop a Nuclear Bomb despite Iran’s repeated insistence they just want nuclear electric power. I don’t want to panic anyone, including myself, but there is a scenario people quote from Ezekiel in the Bible where people from the North- - and Iran and Syria are among these, come down and invade the south, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Yemen are among these. The general consensus is that the conflict is “settled” when those of the South set off a nuclear bomb. We have often heard that Bush doesn’t listen to his earthly father, or Collin Powel or Jerald Ford, but rather listens to his “father in heaven” like Jesus did. Jesus was perfectly willing to risk his own life to prove a point. There are things about George Bush I’d best not even say or think about too much. I could be getting ahead of myself. Things could always mellow out.