WTF???

So, I wake up and The Mighty Finn McCool's whining.  He wants to go out to pee.  The faintest hint of light is in the eastern sky. The stars are still overhead.  Some clouds have moved in and it looks like it'll be overcast, at least part of the day. The earth still smells sweet after the rain and I can hear the soft roar of the far away surf in the morning silence.

The world, in all it's miraculous glory. . . is still here.  WTF???  According to dear Reverend Camping (who, Mother Jones Magazine reports, has amassed $75 million from his faithful followers (WHAT?? $75 million???  Clearly, I'm in the wrong business.), the world was supposed to end today.  Absolutely, positively.  Bible and The Rev Camping's numerology said so. 

Yet here it still is, world without end, amen,  in all its wonderous stubborn persistent glory.  

So, you might as well have a nice day. 

Aw, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Aw, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions


According to Harold Camping of the Family Radio Broadcasting Network, using numerology of his own making, the Rapture will occur on Saturday May 21st (or maybe 12:01 Friday May 20th?). At that moment, the Rapture will sweep up the faithful, the rest of us will face five months of natural disasters and much suffering, then God will destroy the entire universe. Ka-Boom! Gone. Poof.

Naturally, some wags have started a website (www.http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/ ) which, for a fee, will promise to look after your pets (no horses or camels at this point; their kenneling space is limited). And, of course, there’s sure to be a brisk sale in the bumper-sticker trade: “When the Rapture Comes, Can I Have Your Mercedes?”

I’m also facing a quandary. I took The Mighty Finn McCool back to Dr. Szabo for a follow-up chiropractic treatment for his kinked neck. Since Dr. Szabo’s going to be gone for two weeks, starting Friday the 20th, we’re going to watch Finn carefully, then if he’s doing well, schedule the next follow up as close to Friday as possible so his treatment will buy as much time as possible while she’s gone.

But, there it is: Decisions, decisions, decisions. Take Finn in on Friday and by midnight I’ll be heading up to heaven thinking, “Oh, Crap! I coulda save myself forty-smackaroonies.” Or save a few bucks on treatment and figure Finn can just look out for himself. Or call the eternal-earthbound-pets organization and send them a large chunk of change. The only problem is they probably wouldn’t get Finn back in for his follow-up and the poor guy would have to suffer with a kinked neck while I’m floating around in heaven not giving a fig about his suffering.

Oh, what would Jesus do?

I know, I’m mocking dear sweet Mr. Camping and his followers, but c’mon, people have been predicting the ending of the world almost from the day the world started. Which is really such a fascinating phenomenon to me.

For example, what is it about Christianity that has, at its core, a hatred/fear/distain/disgust with corporeal existence? It’s that old Manichean Heresy in all its manifestations. Instead of cherishing God’s creation and loving and blessing and caring and being grateful for all of his splendors, a powerful strain of Christianity believes the world to be a wicked manifestation of the Devil, evil temptations all ‘round, a state of being devoutly wished to be exited from as quickly as possible. At the same time as it despises all that is worldly, Christianity strictly forbids makes exiting this awful place by suicide verboten. Which then sets up the odd religious notion that God must want humans to suffer in a hellish world, which lands us back into Manicheanism, which was also declared a “heresy” by the Catholic Church. Jeesh, would somebody make up their minds?

The end result of this core hatred of life is a religion that isn’t healthy for children and other living things. I mean, if you loved and cherished the world as an outward manifestation of God’s creation, why would you keep dreaming up and lovingly, droolingly, obscenely focusing on all the horrible ways it and all its creatures will suffer and die in sadistically awful ways? Except you, of course. That’s the ego-ridden mentality of somebody who pulls wings off flies while dreaming up even more elaborate ways to make the fly suffer. In short, that’s a mentality that profoundly DOESN’T LIKE God’s creation very much.

Well, I’m sure Mr. Camping will wake up Saturday morning profoundly disappointed to find himself still here in this terrible, awful, hideous, sinfully tempting place. (Chocolate! Mangoes! Sex! A baby’s smile!) Then he’ll go back and re-do his self-invented numerology and announce the NEXT rapture.

Then spend the precious moments of his life totally missing every splendid manifestation of God that’s all around him; splendor in a grain of sand, beauty in a bat’s wing, awe in the thunderstorm, all of which, every second of every day allotted to us demands a cry from the heart: Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Quick, Grab the Garlic. And a Mirror. Cross? Wooden Stake?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. First, La Donald has decided he likes show business better than being President so he’s out of the race. His announcement was all very anti-climactic. For a while there, you couldn’t turn on the television or open a paper without La Donald bloviating about some ridiculous topic or another. Hilariously, he ended up being hoist by his own “birther” petard when the President produced his long form birth certificate, (topic over), then at the Washington Press Corps Dinner, Obama stuck a few pins into the Comb-over King and SNL Weekend Update’s Seth Meyers went in for the coup de grace. La Donald was not amused.

A few days later the news came of Osama Bin Laden’s death and La Donald was heard no more. And who says God does not listen to prayers?

Mike Huckabee, another birther, decided God didn’t want him to run. More likely, it was God and Mamon now that he’s one of the well-paid Faux News Fellows.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is running around doing his version of I Voted For It Before I Voted Against It, declaring that the Massachusetts health care plan, which apparently is working very well and liked by most people in the state, is o.k. for them, but the nearly identical ObamaCare means the death of the republic and can’t be allowed for other people in other states.

And finally, we now have Newt Gingrich. Really. Newt? Seriously? He wants to be president because, well, he wants to be president. And once people see the wonderfulness of Newt in all his glorious bloviating gas-baggery they too will flock to bask in his breathtaking gloriousness.

Really. Newt. Dear God in Heaven.

Two? Now there’s TWO?

Recent headline announces that there has been a “second rape in less than a week involving Cal Poly students,” both victims “reportedly intoxicated and unconscious during the attack.”

I don’t know why they bother putting these stories on the front page. Clearly when it comes to some students and booze, Nobody Learns Anything. These young women are lucky they didn’t die of alcohol poisoning, and if they don’t end up pregnant or with an STD (or worse) they should consider themselves lucky. The young men, if they get caught, will find out how changed their lives will become, and not for the better. And the whole thing will Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Which is why Mother Calhoun can’t even get worked up over the whole issue.

But two? Really? That goes from Unfortunate Incident to, Aw, Just How Dumb ARE these Girls, Anyway?

Speaking of Dumb

The May 13 Tribune got around to writing about the May 5-6 Regional Water Quality Control Board Ag / Atascadero water pollution issues (reported here on the May 6 entry). If reporter Tonya Strickland attended the meeting, she clearly missed Chairman Young’s dog-whistle message. The City of Atascadero missed it, that’s for sure. The story quotes City Council-woman Roberta Fonzi as saying, “We’re not happy with the way the decision went. Their rules will be very expensive for us, and we don’t see the need for them.”

Hahahahahah. Councilwoman Fonzi doesn’t understand the game she’s now trapped in. When the State Water Board approves the stealth rule changes, the trap will be set.

In my blog report on this topic, I had two words for the dear Aggies and Atascadero: Los Osos.

Both Chairman Young and the Board’s attorney gave the game away but clearly nobody in the room was listening. And the Tribune missed the real story. As usual.

Freedom Riders

Don’t know if any of you had a chance to watch PBS’s “American Experience” program last night on the Freedom Riders, young black and white college students, many members of CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) who were trained in the principals of non-violence and set out to challenge Jim Crow laws in the south as they applied to interstate travel. In the late 40’s the Supreme Court had ruled that interstate travel could not be subject to segregation, a ruling that was utterly ignored in the south, which meant Whites-Only and Colored-Only bus station facilities throughout the state.

It was this situation the kids set out to challenge by riding on Greyhound and Trailways busses into the 1961 heart of darkness. And dark it was. The KKK-fueled mobs met the kids at their stops. One bus was fire-bombed, the riders nearly burned to death, other bus stations were scenes of riots, the kids severely beaten while local police stood by and/or arrested them (not the men assaulting them) and in the case of Mississippi, betrayed by a “deal” cut by the Feds and the Mississippi Governor, sent them not to city jail, but to prison. All of it documented by some equally brave newsmen.

The two-hour documentary is riveting, the bravery of those young students absolutely breathtaking (Imagine talking back to Birmingham, Alabama’s Commissioner of Public Safety, “Bull” Conner, an out-of-control psychopath who was even feared by the state’s governor. Astonishing.) The footage is often sickening in its accurate portrayal of the hatred and bigotry that was part and parcel of the “southern culture.” (And found in a more polite form outside the south.) And in the willing to face this danger in order to change the world, the documentary echoes events in Egypt’s Tarhir Square: Young kids, fearful, at terrible risk, who still go on, determined to change their world.

For someone born in the ‘70s or later, the documentary would likely look like ancient history that happened on some other planet occupied by ignorant, evil troglodytes. But for me, the film brought back so many memories of how the world was within my lifetime. I remember reading of the Freedom Riders, seeing the shocking images of “Bull” Conner and his police dogs attacking protesters, cringed at the ugly racial stereotypes, the easy use of the N-word, the hatred that usage implied. That was the given reality of the world the film so beautifully depicts; a world where, in many states, black people couldn’t get a cup of coffee in a J.J. Newberry’s, couldn’t use a “white” restroom in a Greyhound bus station, couldn’t even vote, let alone get elected dog catcher. And now, a black man sits in the White House.

Thanks to the young Freedom Riders, thanks to so many extraordinarily brave people willing to risk their lives to make the Constitution a living reality, that world changed utterly. And changed almost beyond recognition within my lifetime.

Which is what made watching the “American Experience” documentary so amazing; as a child and young adult, I lived in one world. Now I live in another world altogether.

That’s how quickly things can change when good people stand up.

Your Sunday Photos

Went down to Solvang for a visit a few days ago.  The following were taken at the Quick Silver Ranch (http://www.qsminis.com// ) where they raise miniature horses.

Lunchtime at the Ranch

                                                         Naptime at the ranch



 





Awwwww.

Until You Know Who Came Along

Right, THAT guy

Meanwhile, back at the home front, the Mantilija poppies are going berserk.







Forgetting Bin Laden

Calhoun’s Cannons for May 14, 2001

It’s hard to imagine how unremembered we all become,/ How quickly all that we’ve done / Is unremembered and unforgiven, / 
                                         Charles Wright

The first thought I had when I heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed was the same response when I hear that some old, forgotten movie star has died: Huh? I thought they died years ago. This was followed by the all purpose, Good riddance to bad rubbish, followed by astonishment when the jumbled story of the raid came tumbling out: Meh. Navy SEALs. Well, of course. When you want extraordinary courage and breathtaking competence that’s who you call, the SEALs.

But for me, a joyous celebration over Bin Laden’s death never came. What came instead to overwhelm any sense of satisfaction was lingering sadness and fatigue. It had all been such a pointless waste that could never be undone and now it was all too late. Those twin dark stars, Bush and Bin Laden, in a deadly call and response, had unleashed a rain of death: Murderous phony Jihad colliding with the cynically ginned-up lethal God of Imperial PNAC War. Shock and awe, baby! And now the body count is beyond what either man could ever possibly atone or answer for. No real justice for the dead now. Not really. There’s simply too many of them for that.

Instead, we have to settle for a majestically executed kill/capture, then it’s time to change the channel. The dead are forever gone and Bin Laden is soooo yesterday; a pointless old man holed up in a ratty house, dying his grey beard for his recruiting tapes and dreaming of paradise, while his planned-for Islamic caliphate went all Facebook on him and brought an Arab Spring, not with guns but with cell phones. And Bush has holed up in the Texas countryside, cutting shrubbery while historians unravel all the lies and the politicians who aided and abetted his misbegotten war have changed the subject. Time to move on. Game over.

Except for the dead and maimed. They remain unwanted guests at the celebration whispering, “Tell me, after all, was it worth it?” And, really, what do all these evil schemes ever ultimately bring to their architects but failure, death, and ignominious Saturday Night Live jokes.

Yet it never ends. In another dark corner of the world, another fool is plotting paradise and the fools who will follow after him are gathering their knives and clutching malice to their hearts, all of them repeatedly slouching towards Bethlehem in one long, endless line. It’s the Groundhog Day of history – nobody learns anything.

All of which accounts for my sense of fatigue, no doubt. No balloons and noise-makers for me. Just another sad re-run to be followed by a re-make. While I keep hoping that somebody will come to tell me that what I’ve been watching all these years was meant to be a road-runner cartoon, not Macbeth, but due to some unfortunate technical glitch, both Wile E. Coyote and McDuff’s slaughtered children keep staying dead.

If there is a glimmer of hope in any of this, I must find it in the breathtaking competence of the Navy SEALs. And I can only hope that President Obama’s ridding the Spook Agencies of political cronies and hacks will return them to a professional competency that’s focused more on counterterrorism in a troubled world ripe for jihadi picking.

I can also hope that perhaps the years-long insanity that resulted in our national nervous breakdown when those twin towers fell is over. We desperately needed cool competency then. What we got instead was incompetent “hair on fire” bunglers in meltdown mode. If this Navy SEALs operation is an indication that icy focus has returned, then it’s possible the nation’s fever has finally broken.

When Bin Laden unleashed those planes against the towers, he opened a Pandora’s box of call and response terrors. But in the myth, after all the destruction, there always remained in the bottom of the box, one item: Hope.

Hope in the form of cool, hope in the form of seriousness of purpose, hope in the form of those cell phones and Twitters from the kids in Tahrir Square. It’s their future that’s being born now. They have a chance to break this particular Ground Hog Day and write a better script.

Come to think of it, we all do.