Da Black Whole

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Christmas in November














The day before Thanksgiving, I was tooling around the local burg, trying to kill time (failed, it still lives.)

I was pleased, but amazed, to find so many light-displays already up. It seemed very premature -- the weekend
after Thanksgiving being the earliest date I can recall for setting up Christmas displays, and the more common date being, perhaps, the first or second weekend in December.


. . . and premature is, I think, the operative word here.

But LOTS of folks already had their displays up, barely halfway through November.

It seemed strange, but I already had plenty of strangeness happening (as usual!), so thought nothing more of it.

Then today, the author of Egg Salad Annie -- with no prompting from me -- mentioned the same phenomenon. Annie and I live a couple thousand miles from each other, so it's not like we were canvassing the same town.

Annie suggested the early-jump on Christmas smelled of desperation, American-style. That hadn't occurred to me, but as soon as she mentioned it, I knew she'd rung the bell.

We're used to commercial interests "moving up" the holidays, but these were private homes. I think this particular zeitgeist has a lot to do with our collective national denial about . . . well, about damn-near everything.

I mean, pick a sickness: environmental degradation, mass homelessness, the prison-industrial complex, torture-as-policy, gender war, extensive government corruption, pandemic alcohol/drug abuse, empire-building, fatherlessness, and a host of other maladies, mostly self-inflicted.

We've done virtually nada over the past three or four decades to address -- much less resolve! -- our basic national problems. We've settled for superficial fixes that, deep down, we know don't work and can't last. But we lack the national will and courage to look at the reality of ourselves. Many of us are Phat, very Phat, in the sense of materialism and power, and we'd rather buy a new car, vote for obviously corrupt "leaders," turn on the teevee, and pop open a sixer than face the abject failure of our generation.

The human capacity for denial, whether individual or collective, is massive -- and to some extent, also necessary. The average developing human psyche, personal or national, can only stand so much. We live in times of exponential cultural and global change, and the very earth seems ever bucking and rolling beneath our feet. The handrails of tradition largely have disappeared. Despite the wealth of information available, we mostly don't want to know anything that might upset us, or challenge our biases.

The Bomb Generation, living under extreme global stressors, fled underground psychologically. We cocooned, and certainly our mass regression to matriarchy -- to Mommy -- is part of that collective denial.

But at some point, no matter how stressful, children must become adults, and face not only denial, but the serious problems underlying that denial.

To take merely one example: as a nation, we knew forty years ago that fossil fuels were running out, that our waste was shameful, and that both environmentally and econonically --even in national self-interest -- we had to change our ways.

But we didn't. We just kept on -- and keep on -- sliding into oblivion, barely bothering, as individuals or communites, to take easy and simple conservation measures that would greatly alleviate this particular problem.

We couldn't be bothered. We wouldn't be bothered. We won't be bothered. And, as always, our "leaders" -- looking to cash in, to consolidate power and influence -- facilitated our denial, making it "ok" to do the wrong thing, or more often, to do nothing. The destabilization of our economy -- no problem. The suffering of other beings -- so what. Extinction of species -- don't distract me, I'm watching The Simpsons.

Living in an ongoing Twilight Zone is psychologically comfy. We can endlessly put off our responsiblities with a litany of excuses: I'm tired, I've got kids to care for, my head hurts, I'm oppressed, I can't make a difference, or the perennial favorite, hey I already work 40 hours plus, get the hell away.

But hell, apparently, isn't going anywhere.

So a few decades back, intead of attacking our (admittedly severe) problems deliberately and honestly, we simply shut down. We crept into our hideyholes, let the iron door on the Bomb Shelter clang down, and shot the bolt -- from the inside.

Now we're stuck in the hole together -- and the pit we dug for control, safety, and protection became our prison. We know we're in there, we know we blew it, but it's easier to remain in eternal Twilight than kick open the cover and bear the piercing sun.

So we string up the Christmas lights, even though we haven't even had Thanksgiving yet. Zombie-ing along in mass depression, we literally can't wait for the Happy Holiday. Anything to jumpstart a little feelgoodism. In our fractured, psychotic, greedy, violent culture, Christmas is our final bastion of tradition, our last tether to togetherness. We cling to it because we've pretty much let everything else go to shit.

I love Christmas. I love Christmas displays, and I appreciate the time and effort folks take to make the holidays a little brighter. But everything has its time, including Christmas, and rushing pell-mell toward that day is desperate and, somehow, dishonest. It's self-infantilization, and lessens the intensity of the season, siphoning the holiness, the wholesomeness, from the holiday.

You can't force joy. Once we start facing our national maladies -- really attempting to ameliorate or solve the extremely pressing problems of our times, beyond fake bandaid solutions -- we won't hunger to have Christmas in November.

Feliz Navidad!

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Down Comes the Facade







Here's a rockin' little record posted at Egg Salad Annie's blog.

She's a chip off the old cellblock!

I guess old stoners never die, they just . . . fall down!


The caption for the above A.P. photo, btw, reads:

"Kenya Wright, 12, right, and her friend Aleza D'Agostino, 14, left, both of Benicia, Calif., walk out to take a picture of marble that fell from the facade of the Supreme Court on Monday, November 28, 2005, in Washington."

Benicia is the "sister city" of Vallejo, California . . . and Vallejo is the boyhood home of yrs. troolie, little dynamo. The incorporated areas of the two towns are probably so built-out nowadays that they almost touch. Both Benicia and Vallejo surfaced in a prior Black Whole post concerning rock-impresaraio Bill Graham's helicopter crash concurrent with his attempt to build a major ampitheatre between the cities of Benicia and Vallejo. (See our post of October 5, 2005, "Ragna Rok and Man Son Role")

Also, in our post of July 4, 2005 ("War in Heaven, Dispatch #73: The Mugwumps Attack"), we reported that the Apostolic Pillar of the West crumbled like the aforementioned court. Here's a refresher

Piece of famous Australian landmark crumbles before onlookers

After withstanding the pounding of the sea for an estimated 6,000 years, the 45-metre (150 yard) rock pile tumbled into a collection of rocks and debris on Sunday morning before a bewildered Sydney family.

The collapse was accompanied by a noise compared to a loud wave.

"They said it sort of shimmered or shuddered and then fractured and collapsed straight down on itself -- it was almost like a building demolition," a spokesman for Parks Victoria told the Daily Telegraph.

"building demolition . . . ah hmm. . .


"All that remains now is quite a substantial pile of rubble, about 10 metres above sea level.

"The collapsed pillar was one of the bigger rock formations and "integral to what used to be the view," he added. The Twelve Apostles are giant rock stacks of varying heights in the Southern Ocean which began forming 20 million years ago when erosion gradually began whittling away the limestone cliffs of Port Campbell.

BTW, the collapse of the Apostles took place on the same day the U.S. fired a missile into Comet Tempel I.

Apologies for the detours. Here's the promised story:


Posted on Mon, Nov. 28, 2005

Pieces fall from Supreme Court facade

ANDREW BRIDGES Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A basketball-sized piece of marble molding fell from the facade over the entrance to the Supreme Court Monday, landing on the steps near visitors waiting to enter the building.

No one was injured when the stone fell. The chunk of Vermont marble was part of the dentil molding that serves as a frame for nine sculptural figures completed in 1935. The piece that fell was over the figure of Authority, near the peak of the building's pediment, and to the right of the figure of Liberty, who has the scales of justice on her lap.

Not much interp required here, eh folks?

U.S Supreme Court . . . supposed protectorate of American freedom, Consitutional guarantees, etc. . . . Authority itself crumbling . . . Lady Liberty disintegrating, her scales unbalanced . . . don't take a prophet to figger this 'un out.


A group of visitors had just entered the building and had passed under the pediment when the stone fell at 9:30 a.m. EST.

Jonathan Fink, a government attorney waiting in line to attend arguments, said, "All of a sudden, these blocks started falling. It was like a thud, thud."


Government Attorney Fink -- speaks for itself!


Ed Fisher, a government worker, said some of the marble pieces shattered, spraying the terrace four floors below the pediment with smaller chunks of stone. A group of students from Columbus, Ohio, tried to pocket some of the fragments as souvenirs, Fisher said.

"A few of us attempted to. The police officers were like 'you have to put that back,'" said Sarah Rosenblum, 13, a member of the 8th grade class.
A short time later, workers loaded the roughly 40 pieces into plastic fruit crates and carried them away. Architects estimated a 12 inch by 10 inch piece broke off from the pediment, Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

A structural engineer and photographer from the Architect of the Capitol's office planned to use a lift to inspect the pediment, Arberg said.
The weight of the chunk was not immediately available. However, a cubic foot of Vermont marble weighs 172 pounds, said Robert Pye, director of the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor, Vt.

Earlier in the morning, dozens of people had lined up in hopes of getting a seat for arguments inside the court - a practice that is not unusual. Justices were back on the bench Monday following a two-week recess.
The fallen marble lay directly in the center of the path up to the court entrance.

Hmm . . . well, a random placement, no doubt.

:O)

Thank god America doesn't trust in god, otherwise we'd be hard-pressed to dismiss this little incident and all go on about our Business . . . which in the case of the Supreme Court this week, just happened to concern abortion.


The 70-year-old Supreme Court building is undergoing a $122 million, five-year renovation project, although it is unclear whether the accident was related to that work. The project includes an underground two-story police station.




It's so quiet in the ruins walking though the old town
Stones crumbling under my feet I see smoke for miles around
Oh it's enough to make you weep, all that remains of the main street
Up in the park on sunday, dogs chasing and the children played
Old man with his head down, can't see nothing more around...no

But he remembers how it used to be, back in the old days,
So nice to see you coming back in this town again
It's nice to see a friendly face come peeping through
having teaIn the afternoon,
so nice to see you coming back in this town again

Ah but it's all changed winter turned on a man
Came down one day when no-one was looking and it
Stole away the land, people running scared, losing hands
Dodging shadows of falling sand, buildings standing like empty shells
And nobody...helping no-one else

Young child with his hands high, ain't able to see no reason why...no
But he remembers how it used to be, back in the old days,
So nice to see you coming back in this town again
It's nice to see a friendly face come peeping through
You'd better know what you're going through now

You came back here to find your home is a black horizon
That you don't recognize, evil destruction has taken everything
You'd better walk on the side while you're still walking
Just keep on walking on down the street keep your distance
From the people you meet. oh lord and you'd better watch your eyes'cause if smoke gets in them, baby you won't rise again.

Where's it leading to? freedom at what cost?
People needing more and more and it's all getting lost
I want back, I want back
Back to the time when the earth was green
There were no high walls and the sea was clean
Don't stop that sun to shine, it's not yours or mine...no.


"Ruins" (Cat Stevens)

On Our Way To Beautiful

Hardly a day goes by anymore without some new outrage being perpetrated on western men, for the combined sin/crime of being male.

The sad truth is, I can't even come close to keeping up with the madness anymore, it's so pervasive.

However, this story demands comment.


Qantas ban on men 'discriminatory'

From: AAP

By Katherine Danks and Peter Williams

November 29, 2005

A QANTAS and Air New Zealand policy banning men from sitting next to unaccompanied children on flights implied all males were a threat to minors, civil libertarians said today.The airlines have been criticised after revelations an Auckland man was ordered to change seats during a Qantas domestic flight in New Zealand because he was sitting next to a young boy travelling alone.

Mark Worsley, a 37-year-old father of two, was approached by a flight attendant on a Christchurch to Auckland flight and told to change seats with a woman sitting two rows in front.

Both airlines today confirmed they did not allow men to sit next to unaccompanied children, with Qantas saying the move was intended to "maximise the child's safety".

"The policy reflects parents' concerns and a need to maximise the child's safety," Qantas said.

"Where possible we aim to seat children near crew areas or next to an empty seat."

Air New Zealand said the policy was common practice among airlines and that it had been in place on its domestic and international flights for "a long time".

"It's in line with other carriers' policies internationally," a spokesman for the airline said.

New Zealand's Green Party said the policy was discriminatory and it would take the matter to the Human Rights Commissioner.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties president, Cameron Murphy, said there was no basis for the ban.

"Not all adult males are a danger to children and in the reverse, not all adult women are safe in the company of children," Mr Murphy said.
"The real concern with this is that it seems to accept that there is danger posed by all adult males regardless of their circumstances – that's wrong."

Mr Murphy said while he was not aware of the policy, there was a danger some men could be refused air travel because there was not an available seat.

"What airlines need to be doing is taking proper steps to ensure the safety of unaccompanied minors," Mr Murphy said.

The NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People, Gillian Calvert, said while the risk of an attack was "highly unlikely and probably rare", it was not impossible.

"The statistics (showing the majority of sex offenders are men) speak for themselves, so in the absence of any other test, it's one way in which the airline can reduce the risk of children travelling alone," Ms Calvert said.


Ms. Calvert, like so many of her morally-superior sistahs in the Western world, conveniently ignores the fact that most physical child abuse is perpetrated by FEMALES (most often upon males, btw.)

Therefore, shouldn't the Authorities also re-seat women on flights, under the established fact that females are more likely to punch, suffocate, kick, drop, stab, or bite children?

Obviously not.

And why not?

Because the issue isn't really the safety of children. The issue is the mass-demonization, disempowerment, and shaming of males, and the concomitant "empowerment" of females thereby.



"It's a really difficult situation for men because it's only a few men who do this sort of stuff, but when they do it they diminish all men."
New Zealand's Children's Commissioner, Cindy Kiro, said she could understand the need for airlines to consider ways to keep children safe, particularly on long-haul flights.

"They've given it some thought and I think that clearly they have some preferences that they try and accommodate and I can understand it," she said.

"It's not for me to approve or disapprove."


Gee Cinder, that's exactly what the Nazis said about the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Catholics, etc. after the war.

"Just doing my job."


Here's a related story from the rotten heart of the Western matriarchies.

Notice that Yolanda -- from her morally-infallible perch high atop the Victim Hierarchies of the West -- absolves the females involved from any responsibility for their actions.

Instead -- as ever in the Victimocracy we once called "America" -- the guilty party is (ta da!) an "irresponsible man."

I am stunned!

Likewise, increases in female drug-use and drug-dealing have no connection to any individual female's will. Instead, we are assured by Yolanda and our "impartial" media, the REAL perpetrator is . . . you guessed it, Evil Males "taking advantage."

The (a)moral to this story is the same one we've been hearing for decades in the West: Females=Good, Males=Bad, and if any female anywhere does something dishonest, unlawful, or even questionable, it is not her fault!

Whose fault is it?

Why bother to ask!


Posted 7/7/2005 10:36 PM

Lil' Kim latest victim of lying for men

By Yolanda Young

Rapper Kimberly Jones (aka Lil' Kim) was sentenced this week to serve 366 days in prison for her perjury and conspiracy conviction. What the Grammy winner is really guilty of is falling on the sword in an attempt to save an irresponsible man.

We've known about this epidemic since the now-defunct black news magazine, Emerge,introduced us to Kemba Smith, a Hampton University student sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for helping her boyfriend, Peter Hall, run a drug ring. President Clinton eventually granted her clemency.

Lil' Kim, sadly, is merely the latest example. On Feb. 25, 2001, a surveillance camera captured Jones standing next to her manager, Damion Butler, outside of the Hot 97 radio station, WQHT, as he fired shots at a rival rap group, Capone-N-Noreaga, which resulted in one man's injury. Jones lied before a grand jury stating that she had not seen anyone fire a gun and that she did not see Butler or another associate, Suif Jackson. During her trial, she acknowledged in testimony that the two men were freeloading, frequently spending the night at her home and otherwise taking advantage of her.

Unfortunately, Smith and Jones are not aberrations. Instead, their cases have become fairly commonplace among women. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the female prison population has increased from 68,468 in 1995 to 101,179 in 2003. An American Civil Liberties Union-sponsored paper, "Caught in the Net," attributes some of this increase to women who are convicted on factors related to their men using or selling drugs.

The reason women sacrifice themselves is a complicated one that often involves domestic abuse. A study conducted by the Correctional Association of New York stated that three out of five prisoners had been abused by current or prior husbands or boyfriends, and that a majority of New York City's female inmates identified partner abuse as the primary force compelling them to commit their crimes. In fact, we see this street culture reinforced on Lilkimzone.com, a Web site where fans hailed Jones as a "QUEEN of RAP" for upholding the street code and not snitching.

Jones' plight demonstrates how women, even some who are very successful, can become victims by giving men money, jobs, a place to stay and then allowing them to be disrespectful and perhaps violent.
Indeed, U.S. District Judge Gerard Lynch told her at her sentencing Wednesday: "Going to jail because you lied to protect violent men with guns is not heroic. It's stupid and it's wrong."

But Lil' Kim was in prison long before the judge brought down the gavel.

Yolanda Young is author of On Our Way To Beautiful.



"On Our Way To Beautiful" -- oh baybee, I just love this!

I think we can guess exactly who "Our" is . . . and who it isn't!

So much for the goddess "Inclusion," hmm?

Yah, Yolanda, it's EASY to be, uh, "beautiful" when you pick the spots off your soul -- and off the souls of your sistahs -- and plant their tainted evidence on Someone Else . . . with that Someone Else always being male (white men preferred, of course, but any male will do in a pinch!)

Yo, 'Landa: handsome is as handsome does, and baby, you and your krew are ugly as original sin. Your scapegoating of males reminds me of the tactics and behavior of the Klan.

You're just a Walking Hate Crime, aren't you Yolanda?

Wow.

The world gets more pathological each day.

What's even worse than Yolanda's screeching sexism is the play her group-hatred gets in mainstream media outlets like USA Today.

No wonder god created the internet.

Speaking of which, here's a comment from "Geof," one of the autistic authors of Qim Tunes:

Geof: Religion is us quotes. Lie Kim. Lie Kim.

'Course, "Geof" made that statement in 1994, more than 10 years before these events -- but autistics, being retarded and all, often lose track of time.

LOL!!


Nobody will ever change Yolanda's mind, because it's not in the interest of her "empowerment" to change it. She has her Agenda,and her Agenda trumps everything.

I guess all we can do is wait for her spoiled, deceitful, coercive, sinister generation to die off, and hope the next one embraces sanity and love instead of self-serving madness and hate.



Monday, November 28, 2005

Your Move



















We’re entering nut-country.

-- J.F.K. to Jackie, Nov. 22, 1963, upon arrival in the Great State of Texas




I shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?!”
When after all it was you and me


-- “Sympathy for the Devil” (Jagger, Richards)






That this same degree of strangeness accompanies the other major assassinations as concerns rounds, times, and movements makes the Fortean point -- that every particle of the social embroyo is a smoking gun.

-- Politics of the Imagination (Colin Bennett)





The first shot – coward's blow, Judas’ kiss – strikes the Goat King in the back. As predicted, he slumps forward, braced against the rear of the front seat.

Immobilized, the quarry is primed for the kill shot. Dramatic pause, an elongated moment . . . the stars hesitate and wobble, unsure.

As ever, the Queen of Heaven wraps her arms around loverboy, and as their heads meet the gunman squints, exhales slowly, and the back of the Goat King’s head flies away: doves of heavenly due, raindrops of the Republic splattering the Great State's asphalt.

Two Queens scream: one in horror, one in glee, of fine let blood from the Goat King, sopped up by ten million lily linens, by grainfields ripened, by dessicated clouds hovering above the thirsty vampire land.

The fructifying rain. So satisfying. Like a goblet of sherry!



The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it.

-- J. F. K., April 27, 1961





On that day in Texas (Set-ax), what the Civil War and two World Wars could not do, American itself accomplished. The nation was overthrown, held hostage from within, its future frozen, its Dreaming Mind raped, while we exchanged inanities and goggled at the replays on teevee.

In Dea-ley (“Goddess-Rule” or “Goddess Law”) Plaza, the townspeople gathered to watch the old, sad drama enacted yet again, the Goat led up Calvary, the Wicker Man aflame in the trees, John Barleycorn feted and dead.


Licking Milk Duds smudge off our fingertips, we sat cross-legged with our parents behind, watching the price of the nation's unmatched wealth and power burst into star-spangled brainbits, the old debt that's never retired, paid.

Like Spiro Agnew, America pleaded nolo contendere, pretending it didn't see nutting -- even while the fairy tale snagged in the tape, looping endlessly and autonomically through our intertwined reptile circuits.

Music, drugs, dance, sexuality, all the original techniques in use, winding back through the neocortex, the civilized layers, down the Chubby Checkerboard Staircase, spiraling down down the midbrain rope to the limbic core.

Whoa! How low can you go?!

In the intervening 42 years, we have found out, hmm?



Say, don’t gimme no trouble or I’ll call up my double
we’ll play piggy-in-the-middle with you.
They got mesmerized by alibis
and limbo-danced in pairs
(please lock that door)
It don’t make much sense, that common sense
don’t make no sense no more.

-- “Common Sense” (J. Prine)





The Year-King went down before us, like Christ harrowing hell, like autumn rye under scythe, and we knelt again at the old blood-altar. Slipsliding down the worm's tail, down the pumphouse-well, partying like it was 1999.

Then suddenly, it was 1999.

The party ended, and we woke up and found ourselves not in Oz, but in Orwell's 1984, fifteen years henceward: in the land of Total Information, acceptable torture, Patriot Acts, Violence Against Women Acts, secret tribunals, and Homeland Security.

The Goat King was long dead, and so was his uppity brother. A few other Contenders also got snuffed. The nation plunged festively to the bottom of the sea, where dwell old things.

Forty-two years the Corn King moldered a’grave, a long walkabout in the Twilight Zone, a'snooze in the poppy fields before the emerald gates of the great city.

On that foul Dallas day in 1963, a blood-pact was sealed that cauterized a powerful potential surge of masculine dissent and creative renewal in the land. For the first time in history, men en masse were refusing war-service, and simultaneously chafing at their cultural chains.

American men were coming alive in the Spirit, and that was – and is – dangerous.

Ask Jesus.

The extremely public and theatrical nature of J.F.K.’s execution struck a primordially deep nerve in the collective male consciousness of the West. In short, it reminded boys and men from whence they came – whence being sacrificial blood-cults under the goddess and her man-drones (collective femininity in matrilineal/tribal systems).

Especially in America, with femininity idealized and intensely romanticized, especially in the arts, with religion under cynical scrutiny (however necessary), and with feminism sweeping all before it, boys and men got a visual lecture on just how vulnerable they are – and how much more vulnerable they can be – in a gynarchy.

Mass imprisonment, circumcision, warrantless surveillance, covert operations, scapegoated fatherhood, dirty tricks, affirmative action, feminized schools and churches, wars on drugs, mass homelessness, disenfranchisement of males – all these post-Sixties phenomena heavily favored females and the transgenerational “elite.”

Your Basic and Primate society.

Feminism effectively excluded tens of millions of American men from the opportunities and benefits of society, replaced the paternal with the maternal, re-deified females, empowered girls, and thrust women and men into relationships of open competiton and conflict – with females advantaged by law and cultural assumption as a “protected class.”

In sum, an entire generation of men was ritually betrayed – scapegoated, in the full and archaic sense of the word, paraded like the Goat King through the public thoroughfares, as in Middle Ages Europe, Minoan Crete, the Near East of 30 B.C.E., or any of countless other cultures and tribes manifesting the “pre-patriarchal” Mother-Son gyneaxis.


These are the “serprent-worshipping” cults (whether fraternal, sororal, or combined) whose occult strengths are psychological influence/propaganda, and ritual/blood magick -- especially terrorism via trauma-based group "workings."



Somersett: “Do you think he knows he’s a marked man?”

Milteer: “Sure he does . . . I’m sure he does . . . yes”

Somersett: “Are they gonna really try to kill him?”

Milteer: “Oh yes. It’s in the working.”


-- Miami police informant Willie Somersett and Right-wing honcho Joseph Milteer, in a taped conversation held thirteen days before the “Dallas Working”




So we have an answer to Mick Jagger’s luciferian accusation that “after all, it was you and me” who set up and murdered the Kennedys: our own tacit approval of the old psycho-sexual blood drama allowed the serpent’s tail to cycle back into dominance, sweeping aside the foundations of civilization.

We pulled the trigger on our own King, as we always do, and sealed our own fate.



Don’t build no heathen temples
where the Lord has done laid his hand.
There’s a well on the hill --
Let it be


-- “Lo and Behold” (James Taylor)




The ritual murders of R.F.K., M.L.K., and especially J.F.K. were reminders – like an eight-day-old boy thrashing in a Circumstraint, like an honest man nailed to a tree – that there is always a war going on around us, sometimes seen, sometimes not.

These intensely-orchestrated year-king sacrifices, straight out of Frazer’s Golden Bough, are time-bombs planted in our national unconscious, jangling us, dangling us like puppets in a perpetual psycho-physical stress of fight/flight mode.

So we scanned the skies for the imminent UFO threat, while the adversary took us from betwixt and beneath.

When the Goat-King fell, American masculinity was castrated, like every year-kings that ever walked in Diana's Grove.




The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

-- January 20, 1961 -- John F. Kennedy [Inaugural Address]



This country is on a perilous course.

-- R.F.K., March 18, 1968, on announcing his candidacy for the Presidency



John Kennedy didn’t die mainly for political, monetary, military, or even personal reasons.

He died for primate-hierarchichal reasons: for the consummation of a psycho-sexual fetility schema still branded into our cerebro-spines and D.N.A. -- a pattern of terrorism apparently embedded in the very soil of the planet.

The ritualistic murder of J.F.K. re-staged the oldest theatre in the human story: the primal psycho-sexual tension between the unconscious, material feminine, and emerging consciousness, the masculine/spiritual pole. Like Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey while the people laid down palm leaves, J.F.K. was paraded through the streets as Atonement Sacrifice for our fallen generation, in an ancient rite that still hypnotizes and charms the serpent in us all.

For the Baby-Boomers and other post-Sixties subgenerations, masculinity never matured, fatherhood never concretized. We were collectively frozen in childhood.


Forty-two years later, maleness remains catatonic. Partly in reaction to these “fertility” assassinations, a void opened in Western masculinity, a breach in the walls of heaven.

Something walked through that breach. Something occupied that void of power. A lot of Somethings.





















John Kennedy was simultaneously a sacrificed King and a mere pawn. He seemed like a check-mated and toppled Regent because we lived through Camelot, through the ritual and pageantry of his presidency with him.

But J.F.K. was actually an opening gambit (if perhaps an Endgame gambit) in the tessellation for the new millennium . . . a Pawn, at most a Knight, in a game played before the nations of Earth, under the spotlight stars of the “celestial court.” The movements of the terrestrial players are mirrored in the heavens, and the hands that manouvered J.F.K. into Dealey Plaza were as unseen as the Moon's ass.

The game ends, of course, when one of the kings is killed -- or captured, as in 1 Samuel:


And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain . . . And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily, and told Eli.

And the messenger answered and said, Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God is taken.

And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God, that he fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died. . . .

And his daughter in law, Phinehas' wife, was with child, near to be delivered: and when she heard the tidings that the ark of God was taken, and that her father in law and her husband were dead, she bowed herself and travailed; for her pains came upon her.

And about the time of her death the women that stood by her said unto her, Fear not; for thou hast born a son. But she answered not, neither did she regard it.


And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father in law and her husband.


And she said, The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken.




J.F.K. was sacrificed on the gameboard, in broad daylight on Main Drag, U.S.A., forty-two years ago. His body is now toppled over, lying on a sidereal sideboard, beyond the boundary squares of dualistic incarnation. But his blood must be restless in the Earth, because it still pounds like a cop at the door, demanding, relentless and fierce, with a warrant to come in.



The drum rolls, and the Butcher drinks a glass of fire.
When you kill a King, you don’t stab him in the dark.
You kill him where the whole Court can watch Him die.

-- dialogue, “Gangs of New York”





Noteach Boteach

Tom: "Directing past lives". Yes or no?
Brent: Yes
Tom: You sure that’s true?
Brent: Yes.
Tom: Would all the other guys say yes to that?
Brent: Yes
Tom: "Angels"?
Brent: Yes.
Tom: "Demons"?
Brent: Yes
Tom: Will there be fewer "demons" if you guys are happy?

. . .

Adrian: It’s us religion isn’t hasty.


"Qim Tunes"


"Fewer demons" doesn't offer the Instant Fix, the instantaneously Perfect Society that true-Believers and true-Users desire and demand (of others to be sure -- it's those others that are always The Problem!)

Just fewer demons, that'd be very tidy indeed -- notwithstanding the Immanence of the Kingdom-- gladly accepted but, given current trajectories, a long, long way away.
'Course King George and Co. have promised to exterminate all Evildoers from the planet . . . yet, somehow, I have trouble accepting that the folks at Halliburton, Bechtel, the CIA, NOW, etc. are up to exterminating themselves.

All these millennia passed, and we're still working on the Basics Here -- nothing too advanced, just figuring how best to cut down on the grosser stuff -- bombings, murder, rape, torturing each other and our "food," mass environmental degradation, and so on.

The Basics.

Sounds simple, but ain't, because the peskiest -- and nastiest -- demons are hardest to reveal, much less whup.

They are always Well Covered, so to speak, in robes of self-righteousness. Plenty of Spinmeisters surrounding them, lots of High Security. That's why they last such a looooong time.

No doubt all this seems a bit . . . underachieving of me! Someone more experienced would promise total victory, eh? An Evildoer Exterminato?

Maybe. But by individual count, "fewer demons" actually translates to fewer screaming kids being dragged into bushes, fewer electric prods in torture rooms, fewer writhing animals strapped to tables and burned with . . . well, you get the idea.

The B.T.K. mass-murderer, for example, enjoyed slowly -- very slowly -- strangling his victims.

Then, with his targets on the verge of death, he'd allow them to resuscitate, each time reviving to see . . . his friendly face looming above, smiling, playing the rope through his hands.

Then he'd repeat his little satire on incarnation, making sure that this time he was the Incarnatrix, and not the Monkey.

That's the real world. This world.

Think you can fix that?

No, no, not profit from it. We're already great at that.

Our tactics of denial and vengeance only produce more demons.

Vengeance is fun, and briefly satisfying. Everybody feels so much better, for a few minutes, that the demon got what was coming to him. (Except when the demon is a her, then we all look for the nearest male to blame.)

Which leads to our headline: who in hell is Rabbi Boteach?

And how does he fit in to the Demon Sweepstakes?

Well, first . . . it's Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, no less!

And Shmuley brays like a donkey!

In a WorldNetDaily Exclusive Commentary (which I am hereby unexclusiving), the Good Rabbi preaches:



Hatred of women that leads to rape

Posted: June 2, 20051:00 a.m.

EasternEditor's note: Parents are advised this commentary refers to language and subject matter that may not be appropriate for children and may offend some people.

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every two minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and one-in-two rape victims are under age 18. In a national survey, 27.7 percent of college women reported a sexual experience since the age of 14 that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape. To what can we ascribe such a shocking increase in violence against women?

Western democracies enjoy shining a light on the brutal treatment of women in the Arab world. But this does not deflect from what is going on in our own back yards and living rooms, and it will not serve to forgive the inhuman degradation of women in Western society.

In a previous article, I argued that the image of womanhood has been severely degraded by Western culture – from TV commercials to the music and fashion industries – which portray women as mindless nymphomaniacs. Negative stereotypes of women as little more than empty objects of desire, devoid of intelligence and individualized worth, have become mainstream. Not only does this sort of thinking bleed through to the women themselves and challenge them to live up to the negative portrayals, but it also seeps its way into the actions and convictions held by men.


Naturally, these degrading notions have a tremendous effect on the manner with which men view and treat the women they encounter. In some cases, when this sort of negative mentality is brought into contact with an already shaky psyche, the consequences can be deadly. Here is an extreme example that illustrates this point.

On Nov. 5, 2003, in Seattle, Wash., Gary L. Ridgway, a 54-year-old former truck painter, stood before a courtroom packed with weeping relatives and uttered the world "guilty" 48 times. In a horrible closing to what became known as the "Green River" killings of the 1980s, Ridgway admitted strangling an unthinkable number of women – mostly prostitutes and runaways – in his home or in his pickup truck while having sex with them, and then dumping their bodies around the Seattle area. With his confession, Ridgway became the most lethal serial killer in American history.

Sheriff Reichert, who started investigating the murders as a detective back in 1982, described Ridgway as a ruthless and remorseless killer who barely flinched when telling investigators about what he called his "patrolling" for prostitutes: "He said that he hated them and that it would be easy to get away with killing them." In court documents, prosecutors said Ridgway referred to his female victims as being "just garbage." Each woman, he said, was "just something" to have sex with before he would "kill her and dump her."

After the hearing Ridgway's chief lawyer, Anthony Savage, said: "I don't think we'll ever know what fueled [Ridgeway's] anger."

Hmmm. Well let me venture a guess. I have seen many loners and losers hate women. They speak of them in the most derogatory ways and often threaten them with violence. There is a direct link between the hatred that the Ridgways of this world display toward women and the culture in which they are brought up.

Here is how it works. Women in modern society are portrayed as having been put on the earth to entertain men. Men often get hundreds of e-mails per week telling them that if they click their mouse thousands of "slutty whores" will be at their fingertips to titillate them. When they turn off the computer and put on the television, they see that the networks have a special treat for them that day: the Victoria's Secret fashion show. While the models go prancing around in their skimpy underwear, the men sit salivating.

Oh yes, it is sheer bliss in prime time. The guys think, this is what life is all about. This is what women are for. They are created for my pleasure and enjoyment. When the TV show is over, the men can stroll off to strip clubs where they pay a couple of bucks and then even the underwear comes off. "Take it off b----!" they yell, and the women, smilingly, seem happy to oblige.

Now, fast forward a week, and a psychopath like Ridgway goes out for a drink. There is an attractive woman at the bar. He walks up to her. "Can I buy you a drink?" She looks at him, sees that he is dressed shoddily and notes that he is a loner and probably a loser. She says, "No thanks." He persists.

"Come on, it's just a little drink." She gets angry. "Look, I said no thanks. OK?" The barman walks over. "Come on mister," he tells Ridgway. "She said no. Now move on."

Ridgway leaves the bar. He is steaming. By the time he arrives home, he is full of rage. He is not angry that the woman rejected him or humiliated him. No, it is much worse. She does not know her place. The b---- does not know her place. He has a sense of entitlement. He is a man. She is supposed to be there for him. Everything around him tells him that women are beneath him and are created to serve him. They are just stupid sluts that want to hook up with a guy as long as he gives them something – a drink, some cash, any sort of trifle.

But this woman, and all the pretty ones in fact, why, they think that they are better than him. It is time for her to learn her place. It is just like a white supremacist who might have told a black to move to the back of the bus in the 1960s, but was greeted with a stubborn refusal to do so. The Klan guy walks away thinking, "This n----- is too uppity," and he goes back to his home and plans a method to teach this uppity black man his place.

And that is what the Ridgways of this world are thinking. They treat independent women like lower-class people who need to be taught their proper place in society. We can see how the Ridgways of our society who harm, rape and murder women come to speak of their female victims in the ways that they do as, "human filth" and "garbage." The anger they vent toward these women is rationalized as a response to the arrogance they believe their victim has shown them.

Bang. Bang. "Now I've taught her a lesson. Just try and be uppity and forget your place now that you're dead."

To say that there is no connection between the Ridgways of the world and the thousands of rapists who currently prowl America, and the culture of misogyny in which they were raised is as naïve as believing that there is no connection between white violence against blacks in the South and the culture in which white racists were raised.

SPECIAL OFFER

In "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Judaism," Rabbi Boteach teaches that Judaism is not about death or suffering, but primarily about seeking optimism and spirituality, bringing harmony to your spiritual and material natures and achieving success. Available now in ShopNetDaily!

If you'd rather order by phone, call WND's toll-free customer service line at 1-800-4WND-COM (1-800-496-3266).

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is a nationally syndicated radio host daily from 2-5 p.m. EST on the Liberty Broadcasting Network, and was named by Talkers magazine as one of America’s 100 most important talk-radio hosts. A best-selling author of 15 books, his latest work is "Hating Women: America's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex" (ReganBooks-HarperCollins). To learn more about Rabbi Boteach, please visit his website.


No, thanks. Just sharing the planet with him is plenty.

Demons. Demons was today's subject. Some folks remove 'em, some create 'em.

The Beast ain't so easily seen, else long ago conquered:



[I]n its application to justice the dyas [couple, duality] proves once again to be an'indefinite number,' as it was often called by the ancients. Its attribute is indeterminacy and endlessness, for it never leads to a conclustion, its innermost law is eternal fission . . . the justice based on duality must be the law of talion ... retaliation and retribution are the entire content of such dualist justice. . . ."

"The justice represented by the number two is bloody, always assuring the subterranean gods of two sacrifices, as we have seen above in connection with the tellurian justice of the Erinyes ... but such justice never brings a solution ... [T]he justice conceived as duality is an eternal, never-ending conflict. Murder begets murder and the demon of the race rages down through the generations until all are destroyed."

That's from J.J. Bachofen's Myth, Religion and Mother Right, written in 1861. It's not that we don't have any truth, it's that we don't want it, and can't handle it when we get it. (J.J., btw, though writing the best tome on "classical" matriarchy to date, paradoxically was a misandrist, believing that females are inherently superior to males, individually and collectively.)

But the paradoxes of J.J. are moot in our age of True Believers.

Instead we ever hark to Rabbi Boteach who, I'll warrant, has never even been in a strip-club (or seen a naked female!)

Uh, Rabbi . . . I don't think them Evil Men yell "Take it off, baby!" anymore, if they ever did . . . at any rate, it's the MEN in strip clubs whose sexuality is being degraded, raped, and commercialized -- not the women.

They are profiting from male need and pain, and most of them thoroughly enjoy themselves. The interviewed strippers I've read about state they feel "empowered" by their control over male sexuality.

But the Rabbi isn't interested in what strippers say, or how they feel. And he's even less interested in the welfare of Them Evil Males. The Rabbi already knows what he knows, and reality doesn't budge him an inch.


Rabbi Boteach instructs his flock that they live in cultures of misogyny and the mass-degradation of females by their overlord males. He then attempts to (ahem) analyze serial killers as motivated by a woman-hating, patriarchal culture.

And that, folks, is a rabbi preaching! Jews, the Patriarchs of the Patriarchs, fergodsake. Kinda moots the Unitarians and the rest of the goddess-worshippers, don't it?!

Today I saw a teevee program on the B.T.K. (Bind, Torture, Kill) serial murderer, Dennis Rader.

Rader lived a classic double-life in the Oz-invoked town of Witchita, Kansas.

Rader's existence and methods are a grisly refutation of Rabbi Boteach. Rader wasn't a spiritual man, but he taught a spiritual lesson, far more clearly than Rabbi Noteach ever could.

Rabbi Noteach merely scapegoats and collects. Like King George and America the Predator, the Rabbi is a demon-making-machine.

Spiritual lessons consist of information we don't want to hear.

There is not "another kind" of spiritual lesson. They are all, in that respect, the same. We don't like them, passionately and historically: the crucifixion of Jesus was not an accident, nor was it a solo-gig.

Similar examples are, unfortunately, almost endless.

Rabbi Noteach trades in a grave business, demon-gogery and mob-incitement, and in hatred of maleness in general -- a suicidal loathing of his own masculinity, so depressingly common to our times.

In his failed haste and obvious desperation to find some shred of masculinity within himself, he utilizes the favorite tactic of the modern world: demonize all males, and let God sort out the innocent.

Noteach cultivates and feeds the matriarchy's emotionalism and thirst for security, protection, obedience, and vengeance, pronouncing:

I have seen many loners and losers hate women.

I think Noteach has about as much truck with "loners and losers" as he does with strippers (zee-row) -- excpet, perhaps, to sniff disdainfully as he passes them in the streets, on his way to comfy lodgings to pen another "epistle."

The Rabbi proceeds to further scapegoat "shabbily dressed loners."

Hmm. How were the Hebrew prophets dressed, I wonder? John the Baptist, for example? In fine rabinnic robes and three-piece suits?

Woe to thee, Pharisee.

In his mass-scapegoating of males, Noteach inverts the recent history of his own people. You'd think maybe the Holocaust might have taught him something about demonizing groups of people.

But nope. It's his stock-in-trade, like so many of his colleagues, of all denominations.

But now he has Himmler's whip and ring, and the suffering of other folks has provided him with unchallengeable Moral Authority. Therefore he takes advantage, spewing his bile upon the defenseless.

The Bind, Torture and Kill serial-murderer contradicts the unlearned Rabbi: Dennis Rader was well-dressed and impeccably social, seamlessly woven into the Witchita community: married, kids, house, lawn, Boy Scout Leader. He and his wife were bishops of the Christ Lutheran Church. Fine Citizen B.T.K. was President of the Church Council.

How much further shall we go?

'Cause we can go pretty deep -- just as deep as the Rabbi requires!

Were I his father, I'd get little Shmuley in a room alone and whisper:

Boy, if God needs your help whuppin his goats, I'm sure he'll hotwire you. Meanwhile, s.t.f.u., get a job raking leaves, and mind your own soul.

Mr. B.T.K. wasn't a destitute or loner -- he was a Family Values Guy, a Faith-Based-Initiative poster boy -- as intensely concerned for "protection" for his own family as he was unconcerned about the families of others.

Indeed, the mass-murderer was staunchly family-first, precisely as we are taught. (Er, except by Christ, that same Christ the Lutheran Church in Witchita is named after . . . that guy . . . uh, he actually said something quite different, something about god before family . . . but oops never mind.)

B.T.K. hired on at ADT in Witchita, installing Home Security systems for the very community he stalked, learning how to cut phone wires and bypass security.

Hmm. What's that burning smell?

Peeuuuww! . . . must be the Irony Fat in our collective heart!

Rader, like most other serial killers, wasn't a member of an empowered, elite, oppressor social group -- the "patriarchy," or men in general, as the Rabbi slanders.

Rader raged, bound, tortured and killed precisely for the opposite reasons: because he was, and is, part of a culture that detests its own men, exactly as Rabbi Boteach hates himself, and his own subjugation and weakness before females.

Rader -- as an individual, and as modern American male -- was profoundly disempowered, and a citizen of a nation not merely feminized, but grossly matriarchal, and quite as psychotic as Dennis Rader often was.

. . . and therein rests the solution to this particular puzzle.

Like many male serial-killers, Rader targeted mostly females; the males he executed happened to be "in the way," to his thinking. B.T.K. was absoultely enraged at the power females, and that feminine extension called "society," had over him.

Everthing Rader did, including his ritualized killings, was a slap-in-the-face to society, a betrayal of his inner loathing of its corrupt modern forms, its anti-male institutions and idols.

Rader's long, drawn-out stalking and fetishism were expressly designed to gain and prolong a control he never had, and saw no hope of ever getting -- a control that he correctly understood as the power of the feminine over him, especially related to his sexual preferences -- preferences that again, betray a man so powerless before his own sexuality, that he could only orgasm when his female victims were dead -- and then, only on an article of their clothing. Only after his victims were dead did he feel safe from their power over him.

B.T.K. was terrified of American women, and of the tens-of-millions of Rabbi Boteaches surrounding him. That's not psychosis. That's reality. B.T.K. was correct: they ruled him, and he knew it.

Rabbi Boteach and fellow predators desperately want us to believe that Rader only imagined feminine power, that such a thing doesn't actually exist, that Western females are helpless, disempowered victims of males and their patriarchy. The Rabbi vampirizes our collective delusion that Rader had no human-motivation -- thus, Rader can be dehumanized, cut out from the human herd, and we are all conveniently relieved from examining our part in B.T.K., and in his actions -- which are admittedly gruesome and painful, but in no way mysterious or incomprehensible. Rader's not like US, of course -- he's like those awful others . . . those, ugh, men.

Very tidy indeed. We don't have to examine our complicity in constructing and maintaining the matriarchy that drove B.T.K. to multiple murder. We don't have to examine how we raise and treat males.

All we gotta do is jump on the Demon-Wagon with the Rabbi, and enjoy the ride.

People who are out-of-control surround themselves with ritual and control: Rader, for example, became a "Commissioned Compliance Officer," a city employee, and starting running around with a badge and walkie-talkie, generally harassing chosen targets, and often using his "on-duty" time to stalk women.

Rader received a B.S. in Criminal Justice at Kansas State University, and the evangenlical Christ Lutheran Church apparently served as Rader's "command center."

Are we starting to get the Picture here?

Add them up: family man, trusted and well-liked employee, Boy Scouts leader, church bishop and president, solid citizen . . . it sounds like my own father -- pretty ideal, though not perfect, masculine roles . . . in the Fifties.

But these are not the Fifties, and whatever "patriarchy" existed then, is long, long gone now:

The lawyers clean up all details

since Daddy had to fly

"End of the Innocence" (D. Henley)

Modern America is a matriarchy, has been for at least 50 years, and the vast majority of its forms and values are female-dominated. Rabbi Noteach has it backwards. But worse, far worse, this "man of God" spreads his ignorance, and throws the lambs of the LORD upon the pyre.

Like many other male serial killers, Dennis Rader wasn't expressing America's patriarchy -- he was living the deconstruction of its manhood, the criminalization and dehumanization of maleness in the modern world.

Examples are, unfortunately, endless. Here's one from today.

Rader is a ghost of unrooted, lost American masculinity, seeking to exterminate symbols of a gynophilic, pathological nation that despises his entire gender.

The Police Chief of Witchita also attempted the Big Dodge, and was interviewed as saying:

You'll never understand this . . . .

. . . but I disrespectfully disagree . . . .

Like the good Rabbi, the Police Chief's way is America's Way: more demonization of males, more money and power and status for all the Boteachers and Police Chiefs, for the prison systems, for Oprah and her endless screeching Oprahites, for the "therapists" and prison guards and lawyers, and on and on.

Rader was a scrupulously chivalrous man, to point of not permitting other men to tell "blue jokes" around female co-workers.

Strong men don't do that. But males who fear females, and are subjugated to them, do. And that "I'll kick your ass" chivalry, so typical of American men under matriarchy, is just a thin veneer over male powerlessness. It's a way of scapegoating other males for being males, rather than confronting the problem directly -- and letting females handle the massive trauma of hearing some "blue joke" most of heard before high school.

Females pay a price for that subjugation and perfect protection, for their Gender Gendarmes. B.T.K. is part of that price.

B.T.K. was part performance art, and part spiritual lesson -- a way to warn the goddess about her own mad dogs, unleashed now everywhere on the planet. B.T.K. used the very wardrobe of Miss America, the Society of Security -- the ADT installation job, the B.S. in Criminal Justice, the officious City Inspector gig, all of it -- to rub the matriarchy's snout in its own psychosis for "perfect protection," and in society's demand that males be whatever is requisite for females and "elite" males at any historical moment.

Likewise, Rader headquartered in the local Christ Lutheran Church to satirize -- and expose -- the blatant faithlessness of the parishioners -- and of America -- in God. No people with an actual relationship to God could be so obsessed with vengeance, security, punishment, and power.

It's ludicrous, and self-negating. Vengeance and "security" both belong to God. If not, the people do not live under God and God's protection. They have deigned to become God, and are worshipping themselves.

And whatta surprise, when we examine the denominations over the past 150, we find exactly that, including the feminization of "men" like Rabbi Noteach.

Call yourselves the Church of the Living Me, or whatever. But don't claim any connection to, or authority under, "God."

Blasphemous hypocrites.

At Dennis Rader's guilty verdict many women in the gallery shot to their feet, spontaneously high-fiving, as if their horse had just won the Triple Crown.

Gloating in vengeance is fun. It feels great. But it means more demons. Lot's more.

The object is "fewer demons."

Not, ooooh, I got you back, har har har followed by a Touchdown Celebration.

Do we really care about the safety of our children?

Not really. Not enough to challenge female power in the West. We're far more interested in parading our own self-righteousness and empowering in ways that make us appear morally superior.

The way to have fewer B.T.K.s, is by truly empowering American men.

Will that wipe out forever the Dennis Raders?

No. It will cut down on them, though, steadily and sanely -- meaning fewer kidnapped children, fewer bound, tortured, and strangled folks, etc.

But that would mean giving up our Touchdown Celebrations of vengeance.

So nah -- forget it!

Unfortunately, that's not where things are heading. This is the place and age of Rabbi Noteach.

Follow him down, then, if you insist.

Just remember that when you come back up again -- and you will come back up -- Dennis Rader will still be hovering above you, with your nylons wrapped around his fist.

Power? Yes, you will have the power. Society will be on your side, ready to mete out "justice." To be sure, the State not only will authorize your thirst for vengeance, they will rush to help you effect it.

Suit yourself.

Demons teach hard lessons, and they teach for real, but like the Rabbi's ancient Israel, we are a stubborn, stubborn People.

Two-thousand years, so little progress.

As Adrain, the "religious expert" from Qim Tunes comments:

Religion isn't hasty.

We are the opposite of religion, the opposite of faith. Even the rabbis just can't wait on God.

A stubborn, stubborn people.

God is loving, but lookout! stubborner.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Llorona and the Bus from Hell



Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming

saying something about a Queen.

There were peasants singing and drummers drumming

and the archer split the tree.

There was a fanfare playing to the sun

that was floating on the breeze.

Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s

"After the Gold Rush" (N. Young)

Okee hold on here we goez . . .

Note the datelines in the following two news accounts.

The first story involves a weeping "Mary" and the second concerns a Greyhound bus crash near the California town of Santa Maria -- the "host town" of the Michael Jackson/child molestation trial.

Believers Flock to 'Crying' Virgin Mary


By JULIET WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer

Sun Nov 27, 3:23 AM ET


SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Carrying rosary beads and cameras, the faithful have been coming in a steady stream to a church on the outskirts of Sacramento for a glimpse of what some are calling a miracle: A statue of the Virgin Mary they say has begun crying a substance that looks like blood.

It was first noticed more than a week ago, when a priest at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church spotted a stain on the statue's face and wiped it away. Before Mass on Nov. 20, people again noticed a reddish substance near the eyes of the white concrete statue outside the small church, said Ky Truong, 56, a parishioner.


Since then, Truong said he has been at the church day and night, so emotional he can't even work. He believes the tears are a sign.
"There's a big event in the future — earthquake, flood, a disease," Truong said. "We're very sad."


On Saturday, tables in front of the fenced-in statue were jammed with potted plants, bouquets of roses and candles. Some people prayed silently, while others sang hymns and hugged their children. An elderly woman in a wheelchair wept near the front of the crowd.
A red trail could be seen from the side of the statue's left eye to about halfway down the robe of concrete.


"I think that it's incredible. It's a miracle. Why is she doing it? Is it something bothering her?" asked Maria Vasquez, 35, who drove with her parents and three children from Stockton, about 50 miles south of Sacramento.


Thousands of such incidents are reported around the world each year, though many turn out to be hoaxes or natural phenomena.
The Diocese of Sacramento has so far not commented on the statue, and the two priests affiliated with the church did not return a telephone message Saturday.


The Rev. James Murphy, deacon of the diocese's mother church, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, said church leaders are always skeptical at first.


"For people individually seeing things through the eyes of faith, something like this can be meaningful. As for whether it is supernatural or a miracle, normally these incidences are not. Miracles are possible, of course," Murphy said. "The bishop is just waiting and seeing what happens. They will be moving very slowly."


But seeing the statue in person left no doubt for Martin Operario, 60, who drove about 100 miles from Hayward. He took photos to show to family and friends.


"I don't know how to express what I'm feeling," Operario said. "Since religion is the mother of believing, then I believe."


Nuns Anna Bui and Rosa Hoang, members of the Salesian Sisters of San Francisco, also made the trek Saturday. Whether the weeping statue is declared a miracle or not, they said, it is already doing good by awakening people to the faith and reminding them to pray.


"It's a call for us to change ourselves, to love one another," Hoang said.

**********

Man, Pregnant Woman Die in Calif. Bus Crash


7 minutes ago [posted on Yahoonews approximately 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 27]


SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A Greyhound bus ran off a freeway, overturned and slid at least 100 yards on its side before hitting a tree Sunday, killing a pregnant woman and a man on aboard.

Dozens of other passengers among the 44 people aboard the San Francisco-bound bus were injured, authorities said.


Four survivors were trapped in the wreckage and had to be rescued with hydraulic equipment, and some of the most seriously injured were airlifted to hospitals, authorities said. A preliminary investigation suggested driver fatigue may have contributed to the crash.


Faro Jahani, 50, of San Francisco, and Martha Contreras, 23, of Santa Maria were killed in the crash, said Lt. Dan Minor of the California Highway Patrol. Contreras' husband told authorities she was seven months pregnant.


Seven other people suffered major injuries, four had moderate injuries and 31 had minor injuries after the bus went down an embankment off Highway 101 shortly after 7 a.m., said Santa Barbara County Fire Capt. Keith Cullom.


The bus had left Los Angeles at 3:15 a.m., said Kim Plaskett, a spokeswoman for the Dallas-based bus line.


Minor said a preliminary investigation gave no indication of mechanical problems, and the bus driver didn't appear to have been impaired by alcohol or drugs.


"We do have reason to believe that driver fatigue may have been a significant factor," Minor said. The previous night, the driver had traveled from Fresno to Los Angeles, Minor said.


The bus drifted off the freeway about three miles from its intended off-ramp and came to rest on its right side a few feet down an embankment after striking a eucalyptus tree.


Both northbound lanes of Highway 101, one of the state's major corridors, were shut down after the accident and remained closed until mid-afternoon as the California Highway Patrol investigated. The closure caused a backup that stretched for two miles, officials said.


Santa Maria, which was in the media spotlight this year during the four-month child molestation trial of singer Michael Jackson, is located about 75 miles north of Santa Barbara.


Three buses were being sent to Santa Maria to pick up passengers able to continue the trip, Plaskett said.

OK here are the players in order of appearance: Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Maria. These are personified coordinates on a "grid" that spans -- and unites -- earthly and celestial, material and spiritual.

Sacramento is the geographical and political "heart" of California, founded in 1848 by John Sutter as Sutter's Fort. Almost ten years earlier, gold was discovered at his nearby sawmill, and Sacramento evolved from the hub of Sutter's Fort/Exchange.

California has a long-running tension and rivalry between the North and South, historically over water, political districting, sports, etc. In finding a "spiritual context" for the two stories above, it may help, as in Qim Tunes, to view references to north as generally "celestial" and southern references as generally infernal or earthly. (Santa Barbara, home of the Qim Tunes authors, is about 40 miles south of Santa Maria.)

Sacramento, despite/because of its geographic centrality, is still considered California's northern influence, and Los Angeles is its southern counterpart. San Francisco is "aligned" with Sacramento as "northern territory."

Wikipedia notes:

In either 1806 or 1808 the Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga discovered and named the Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento River after the Spanish term for 'sacrament', specifically, after "the Most Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ," referring to the Roman Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist.

So we're in the land o' blood-sacrifice/sacrament here, and "Eucharist" shares its prefix with "Eureka," the state motto of California, meaning "I have found it!" -- a catchphrase of the Gold Rush -- but carrying a much deeper lineage.

We pick up the story about a week ago, when a statue outside a "Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church" begins weeping red "blood" -- an infrequent but periodically-documented manifestation of Mary/Virgin statues around the world, especially during the last century.

Quoted is a "key" parishioner, one Ky Troung, who expresses sadness at what he interprets as the statue/Virgin's "blood-prophecy." Meanwhile one Rosa Hoang, a nun from San Francisco, in town to witness the event, interprets the tears as a call for repentance from hatred, as a sign for humaity/Earth to "love one another."

Rosa, of course, is "rose" is Spanish, and that plant and its scent are long identified with the Blessed Virgin, Mary, the Queen of Heaven, etc.

(Again: I'm not commenting on the personalistic aspects of the "halves" of California, nor on the lives of Rosa Hoang or others in these news items. I merely sensed a larger picture behind the two synchronous stories and am exploring.)

About a week after the statue-tears start flowing, a Greyhound -- which denoted an animal, of course, long before a bus -- leaves a "deep-south" city named The Angels, but colloquially called "The City of Lost Angels."

Following our supposition of south=infernal, this suggests "fallen" passengers who boarded, so to speak, the "outbound from hell." (Again, not inferring that all passengers actually boarded in L.A.)

The bus' destination is the City of Saint Francis. Francis of Assisi is patron saint -- with soaring paradox! -- of animals, merchants, and the environment in general. The Catholic Franciscan Order is named after him -- a brotherhood based on humility, poverty, asceticism, and especially loving service.

Francis is my dad's first name, so I especially favor it!

Christian orders, especially brother/mendicants (like Francis originally was) played a crucial but little-known role in the early affairs of California and the Sacramento/Suisun Valley. Some lived lives of service to the poor, aiding native populations under great stress from European settlers in the decades following the Gold Rush.

Thus, in our investigation, San Francisco stands as a kind of "staging area" -- a way-station on the road to the heavenly North, a spiritual Halfway House, situated between the infernal realms to the south, and the celestial City of Blessed Sacrament in the north.

San Francisco is 80 miles from Sacramento: not quite the Heavenly Tomato, it's still in the material/profane realms, the gritty, hands-on Fields of the Lord that Francis worked, in the Earth he loved

But S.F. is close, tantalizingly close -- given that illusion-filled, demon-haunted Angel City is more than 500 miles t'other way.

Our Demon Greyhound, then, is headed North like a bat outta hell; like Cerberus fleeing Hades, towing a passel of souls; like escaped slaves on the old Underground Railroad. The busload is bound for a haven beneath heaven, the City of Saint Francis.

Panting, the greyhound pauses for fuel and passengers in Santa Maria, a town in Santa Barbara County. Her nearest neighbor-town, nestled under one incorporated wing, is the little village of Rosemary.

Nine miles west of Santa Maria is the larger town of Guadalupe, named after the Mexican locale where, in 1531, an Aztec convert named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin allegedly witnessed an appearance of "Our Lady of Guadalupe."

Wikipedia states:

The origin of the name "Guadalupe," in the American context, is something of a mystery. According to a report at the time, the Virgin identified herself that way in a later apparition to Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino. Those who doubt the story of Juan Diego and the apparitions argue that the 1533 church was dedicated to the Spanish Our Lady of Guadalupe (see above), with the American version developing later. Others have suggested that the name is a corruption of a Nahuatl name "Coatlaxopeuh", which has been translated as "Who Crushes the Serpent". In this interpretation, the serpent referred to is Quetzalcoatl, one of the chief Aztec gods, whom the Virgin Mary "crushed" by inspiring the conversion of the natives to Catholicism.

Hmm. Serpent-crushing again. And I tried so hard NOT to include any damn snakes in this post. Just this one post.

O well . . . .

In Santa Maria the Greyhound collected at least two passengers -- Martha Contreras and her seven-month-old foetus, both killed in the incident.

In a Biblical scene Jesus, wandering, visits the home of the sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is rebuked by Jesus for obsession with earthly matters, while her sister Mary -- resented by Martha as lazy and carefree -- was praised by Christ. Jesus informed Martha that her hostessing and offerings were inferior to those of her sister Mary. This page makes an excellent (and personally timely!) comparison to the "story" of the brothers Cain and Abel, with Martha's "offering to God" equated with Cain's.

There's no direct translation of the surname "Contreras," but in our context, it fits with a general meaning of "contrary."

As we know, some of the escapees from the City of Lost Angels never reached the Promised Land of St. Francis, the stepping-stone to Sacra-mental heaven. (And believe me folks, if you've ever visited, you have to be Mental to imagine Sacramento as Heaven!!)

I was struck by the prophetic -- but empathetic and loving -- comments of the abovementioned Mr. Truong and Sister Hoang -- and especially the siting of the "miracle" at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church. Yoikez! Vietnam, so recently a warzone of the U.S., now imports Catholics that host milagros de Maria. And with real-life "martyrs," apparently.

Obviously I think there are connections between the weeping-statue and the bus-crash incidents, but like Mr. Truong (whose name, btw, resolves the apparently paradoxical "true" and "wrong"), I think the Queen was, and is, crying over more than the "spilled milk" in our local Santa Maria. Her tears prophesy more. I think "she" used the Santa Maria incident as a motif, a way of reading and interpreting more severe future events.

Put another way: the Gold Rush is about o-v-e-r, folks. Like a martyr's inner river, that seemingly endless golden vein called California is played out.

Narrow is the gate, a long, low, dark highway of lost angels. Some die. Others get smashed up pretty bad on the road, land in the Grey Hospital, dread Fixit Shop.

But some of our Underground Escapees made it north, in love and service, to the "safehouse" of St. Francis. They brought three fresh dog to run 'em up there.

Remember that.

From S.F., it's a straight-shot to the Sacred Tomato!

Been up that road many a-time.

Down it too!

So that's our blog-snog, tonite ennywayz, and we are assuredly sticking to it, because we Can, same reason we don't accept Comments.

Pfffftttt!

And what of little dynamo? [you rudely ask not, hmmph!]

Well, ole latter-day coughed up a little Thanks for Thanksgiving, whilst feeling decidedly Unthankful, and as he rocked down the road to nowhere a boyhood favorite found the wave, echo of sweeter times.

So he dialed 'er up, and along he rolled, lead on verse, chorus the harmony:

You really should accept this time he's gone for good

He'll never come back now even though he said he would

So darling dry your eyes, so many other guys

Would give the world I'm sure to wear the shoes he wore


I guess you're lonely now love's coming to an end

But darling only now are you free to start again

Lift up your pretty chin, don't let those tears begin

You're a big girl now and you'll pull through somehow

Oh, come on

Smile a little smile for me, Rosemarie

Where's the use in cryin'?

In a little while you'll see, Rosemarie

Rosemarie!

(Tony Macaulay, Geoff Stephens)